Call of War 1.5 round 2!

My Humble Assessment on the new 1.5 Version (Page 2)

• All countries start out with the same amount of Resource Production, (Double of each of the 5 main resources).
  
• It is far too expensive to upgrade your units and you have to upgrade each individual unit. I still do not understand why you are insisting on not giving us automatic upgrades as we complete research when every post I have read from other players have stated we do not like this concept. However, if you persist with this, then here are some options.
  
  • First, there should be no cost associated with upgrading your units in the field. We have already paid for the unit build. The penalty we pay is the down time while they are upgrading. It makes it near impossible to upgrade your existing units. It also takes away Build Que from HC members as you have to clear everything out just to save up the resources in order to do this.
    
    • As a side note, I believe if you are going to insist on this being put into 1.5 despite the feedback and you make us pay for the upgrade, then I believe that most could live with say paying only in Manpower or Cash or maybe both.
      
    • Why would anyone want to upgrade a unit that is now going to cost them double, triple or more to get to the highest unit level? The odds are their health is lower than 100% so it would make more sense just to build new units and leave your lower level units out there to die.
      
      • It is almost like you want us to lose our units. If you upgrade nothing in the field, you would also have more units vs the same amount after upgrade.
        
  • Give us an option to upgrade all units at the same time without having to go to each individual unit. That is if we can afford it of course.
    
  • The upgrade button is in the Orders Box. This can put too many buttons in the box and hides the stop button. It would be nice to just click on the unit in the unit box and upgrade a specific unit, (ie: such as you would do when wanting to disable a Naval Base or Barracks)
    
• Can only build units in cities.
  
  • You get 5 cities, capture your enemies 5 cities and game is over for them.
    
  • There is no strategy in this. All you have to do is gather up as many units as you can and rush the cities. Forget about the other provinces, you can go back for them later. Taking out those cities, you know your opponent can’t build anymore units. This only gets
    

My Humble Assessment on the new 1.5 Version (Page 3)


worse as the game progresses as it costs more to build units as research goes up making it near impossible for a player

• All the point Provinces are the Cities.
  
• Cost & Time to build units go up with the higher research.
  
  • Time to build units also increases
    
    • How can you justify that it takes almost a day to build a Level 3 Anit-Air Unit?
      
  • Take a Level 3 Artillery, at 1570 in goods, it is almost out of range to build.
    
  • Adding in Rare to build units also puts the units at higher level impossible to build
    
• Unit Health and Damage seems to be all in chaos
  
  • Lost 5 Lvl 1 Bombers & 5 Lvl 2 Bombers against an opponent’s 12 stack unit without destroying one of their units. I will add that there was not any AA in the stack.
    
    • Their overall health did decline but they never lost any units at all.
      
  • 1 Level 1 Tank lost 38% health after attacking and destroying a convoy of 2 Flying Bombs
    
  • Units mysteriously lose health here and there when taking unoccupied provinces.
    
    • I had two different Infantry units drop from 89% to 73 percent moments after taking an unoccupied province
      
    • I had one Light Tank drop 5% after taking an unoccupied province
      
  • Even though it shows only a .7 defense to Air compared to Infantry at 1.5, Tanks were doing more damage to the Air Squadrons than Infantry was.
    
• Artillery units have no benefit to upgrades other than strength.
  
  • You have preset all Artillery Units to a range of 50 even at the Elite Units.
    
  • The way this is set up with the increase of cost and time to build, you might be better off just staying with level 1 and building a bunch of them or going to SP Artillery strictly. You could probably get more damage having 10 Level 1 Artillery than say 7 level 2 or above. Plus they would be cheaper to build.
    
• Big problem with moral.
  
  • With 50 provinces and a moral of 82, I captured 1 province and my moral dropped to 77. This of course dropped my resource production on all resources.
    

My Humble Assessment on the new 1.5 Version (Page 4)

• Infrastructure is basically obsolete giving no real value.
  
• Rare now associated with build costs on certain units and buildings
  
  • It is hard enough to get rare as it is and this will only slow down the production of certain units.
    
  • All Air Bases and Air Strips require Rare.
    
• Refueling time takes too long
  
  • One of my Air Bases takes 45 Minutes to refuel, a level 2 that takes 40 minutes and yet another one that takes an hour.
    
  • It took my Air Squadron almost 3 hours just to fly three provinces over and over 8 ½ hours to fly from the Beirut to Moscow.
    
  • This makes Air very vulnerable as well
    
    • Let me tell you what most people are going to do.
      
      • They are going to build a bunch of Flying Bombs and I mean a lot of them. Then they are just going to fire them at all the Air Strips and Air Bases. The health is so low, (even with a level 2), it will take them all out. Then your Air will be in a convoy and they will just keep firing at them until they destroy them. While some can argue that this can be done in the current version, I beg to differ if you know what you are doing with your air and how to protect them. With the refueling times of what they are now, there is no way to protect them. I have always said that I believe Flying Bombs and Rockets need to be double the cost and take twice the time to build.
        
      • Honestly, 30 to 60 minutes? Someone on your development team actually thought this was a great idea and the players would like this?
        
      • Yes, it takes only two hours to build an air base, but why would you do it if you just lost your entire Air Force?
        
      • Even a level 3 Air Base I believe the refueling time would still be 20 minutes. I could never afford to build one when you have a cost of rare of 2850.
        
    
    
• Times vary for upgrades in the field. Some units were 1 hour 45 minutes. Artillery is showing 2 hours 15 minutes.
  
  • I believe this is maybe a percentage of what it takes to build the current level of the unit
    
    • Just set it at one time for all units
      
• Fighters having a lower strength on defense.
  

My Humble Assessment on the new 1.5 Version (Page 5)

• Strength and Speed of Tanks in Cities
  
• Global Popularity still drops when someone invades your provinces and you declare war on them before they take your province.
  
  • This still needs a major overhaul
    
    • You should not be penalized due to the size of your military, (that is what this game is about after all)
      
    • I agree that it should drop if you do not Declare War, (Surprise Attack)
      
    • You should not be penalized if you declare war on someone that is attempting to invade you. As it stands now, if someone is moving in on your province and
      
    • You should not be penalized because of your relation to another nation that has a low GP. You may have made a NAP Agreement with that Nation and you don’t want friendly fire so you have ROW with them to prevent that.
      
    • Even with a High GP, it is very rare that you get the AI to ever change their status with you. This goes both for ROW or if you were at war with an active player that now has gone inactive and you want peace, you can’t get it.
      
  
  

you declare war on them, you are penalized, not them. What are you supposed to do, let them attack you first or take your province first just so you can hold your GP?

In summary I can only say that I am very disappointed in the product you brought out. I spoke to a few of the players in our map and they all said pretty much the same thing that I thought. This was a very boring map/game as nobody could build anything as the research increased. There was a lot of down time as well. I have never had to stop building and advancing my troops. Three different times I had to do both that amounted to almost 33 hours of down time, (doing absolutely nothing at all). Most all had level 1 units in the field as they could not upgrade them and after research, most could not afford to build newer units due to cost after research so they stopped researching. Air is basically ineffective not only due to cost, but the damage they take compared to what they deal out. That and the refueling times make it a very slow game with a lot of down time. You have taken out a very important part of the game. In every war, Air was a very important part of it. In order for Air to be even remotely viable, you would need to build 25 to 30 Bombers and hopefully you did that after your research was at least a level 2. But then you probably would not be able to do that unless you did not build any ground units or even upgrade your buildings in your provinces. Having Rare associated with build costs on so many items

My Humble Assessment on the new 1.5 Version (Page 6)


including just a basic Air Strip hampers everything in the game. You have pretty much priced yourself right out of the market place.


I understand this is a business and you need people that are willing to pay to play. At the same time, you need to keep the ones you have even if they do not pay to play. If you lose them, you will lose a great deal of your customer base. If you lose that customer base, well then you have less people playing and less competition. It then becomes a tailspin. Once in that tailspin, it is very hard to recover.


Maybe if you shared with us players, (Your Customers), of what you are really trying to achieve here, more players could help you with what is good for us and not just you. Is it to get new players? Is it to keep the players you have here long into the future? Is it to get more paying customers?


In the end, if I were a new player and joined this game, I would not stay. I would get bored and move on to find a better game. I would hate for this to happen and not saying that it is going to. But I am not sure even I, after all these years of playing Call of War would stick around. So you know, once you lose your players, they are not coming back. They will find another game that they enjoy more and stay there. Even if you send them emails with great offers to come back, they won’t. Trust me when I say, I have had those same emails from previous games. I didn’t go back as I found Call of War.

I am sorry this is so long but it is the notes I kept over the first 7 days. I didn’t want to be posting things I was not sure about at the end of each day. As you see, I did divide them up into 6 posts so it was not 1 long post that nobody was going to read.I am sure there are still many things I left out, but I am in hopes that you will take this feedback seriously and give us a product that is as good as the current version if not better.


With all due respect,


General cdub

I feel that the new "upgrade" feature is far expensive to be used, in time and resources, as we can't cancel the upgrade once launched or heal our units. For example: Infantry level 1 in 38% Condition being upgraded at Infantry lvl 3 Research, will cost the same as a new infantry level 3 and will take 4 hrs 10 minutes. Will our units upgrade to lvl 2 or actual lvl 3? Will condition be restored as a new unit? I suggest that the new upgrade feature would be affordable if: cheaper, faster or profitable (Condition benefit).
At day 9 of my game (#3038039) I feel that the Rythm of the game has been enormously increased, level 1 units with level 1 building can be produced at little cost and time. For example: Destroyer Lvl 1 produced at Naval base lvl 1 will take 2 hrs 45 minutes and will cost -1k resources in exception of Money that is +1k ($1,160).

The pros I found are:
-The new Resource balancing for all countries, now I'm able to choose any country and leans towards any strategy in mind.
-Advanced units (Commandos, Railroad gun, Strategic Bomber,...) are easily reachable
-I feel the AI is getting better
-In combination with the new Buildings config, we are able to have lots of units of different types (Infantry - Ordnance - Tanks - Air - Naval - Secret) at early game, as basic lvl 1 production for most lvl 1 units is cheap and easy.
--Advanced units are available at early game:
*Strategic Bombers, that can be produced in 14 hrs hours since game started (9 hrs of production + 5 hours of research) with a cost of -2k in all resources.
*Battleships, than can be produced at day 2 with 21 hrs (day 2 + 16hrs research + 4:15 hrs production) with a cost of -2k resources
--Massive armies (In comparison of regular COW) can be spawned at early game:
*8 Anti Air at Lvl 1, can be produced at day 1 (22hrs production / 30 min research) with a cost of: -4k Food /-6k Goods /-8 Mnpwr (1.4k research / 5.8k production) /-2k Metal /-6k Money.
*7 Cruisers at lvl 1, can be produced at day 1 (22:45 hrs production / 2:30 hrs research) with a cost of: -4k Food /-10k Mnpwr (6.7k production + 2.5 research) /-6k Metal /4k Oil /10k Money.

The cons I found are:
-The new Research config might become counterproductive, the vast amount of time that is increased to the production cost when producing an advanced unit might be unaffordable for a lvl 1 Barrack, for example: We can upgrade Infantry to level 3 at day 4 and a lvl 1 Barrack will take 18 hrs to produce it. In contrast, lvl 1 Militas can be produced in 45 min at lvl 1 Barracks since day 1.
-The increased Game Rythm has leaned me towards MicroManagement, the fast/cheap building and unit costs is making the game more demanding for me, sleeping/studying/working seems deadlier in late game. X_X

Those are my impressions at day 9, am hoping to survive until end game and have a new experience to share with you later Am really looking for CoW 1.5 and not a new game, am sure you'll reach the correct balance.
Btw, I think the new Game Design looks fantastic, all the new unit skins looks bomb I love the Japanese one! (May Blitzkrieg game mode be possible with Japan included? )

where does the man power come from to produce "massive armies"?

cycle9,

I can only refer to the game I am playing. While manpower may or may not be a factor and what -0-0-0 wrote that they are available, you can't build the amount that he refers to. Nobody in our game has been able to do that. Many of the units you want to build require rare materials as well as some of the buildings. You just don't have the rare to get to "Massive Armies". The other problem is cash, you just do not have the cash to build the "Massive Armies" either.

Myself, (Turkey), Yugoslavia and Egypt are the most experienced players in the game and us three have the largest armies according to strength listed in the World Herald. Here, midway through day 8, none of us have what it takes to be classified as "Massive Armies".

Even if you could, who wants the so called "Massive Armies" that are all level 1? You would not be able to afford to upgrade them to even level 2. We started off with I believe 20 or 22 Infantry. I only have two of my Infantry leveled up to level 2 out of the 16 I have left as it is just too expensive to upgrade the rest. Some of them have taken damage so I also do not want to waste my valuable cash in doing that. So I am just using them as back fill defenses.

I believe a better question to -0-0-0 would be, if he is building such a "Massive Army", then why is he quote, "Hoping to survive"?

The following units require Rare to build and the cost at level 1. It only gets more expensive after you start leveling up in research.

Commandos = 410
Paratroopers = 810
Medium Tanks = 390
Heavy Tanks = 970
Tank Destroyer = 380
Fighters = 770
Tac Bombers = 1330
Strat Bombers = 1330
Naval Bombers = 770
Railroad Guns = 1820
Flying Bombs = 780
Rockets = 1330
Rocket Fighter = 1390
Nuclear Rocket = 13,910
Nuclear Bomber = 11,000

In order to build those items, you would need the following buildings that require Rare to produce them. Here they are with their costs.

Tank Plant = 800
Air Factory = 1600
Secret Lab = 1800
Air Strip = 500

This does not even count the cash it requires to build them and there is very little cash available.

I hope this answers your question you posed about the so called "Massive Armies".

General cdub

Only day 9, so the unit upkeep costs is a mere 1/3d of the daily production.
Cannot imagine the draw down between day 21-30!

Some minor things to change while you are fooling around in the code:

Trades: Stop with the WE DEMAND ... also prefer if you reverse the order to comply with the way your create the trade. Suggest We Offer.... For....

The Zhuchov quote is not translated right into English ... it should be "as if"

If you are on the PC and you have High Command you can select an item for future production if there is nothing already producing so when the resources arrive it builds. On the mobile you cannot queue something up if there is nothing being produced in that category,

Today I pressed speed up Naval Bomber by mistake and cost 894 gold, haha!

About Homeland defence bonus. I think devs dont understand what is the best. Espcially in 1.5, you can only produced units from urban. Once homeland province falled. Defence bonus 15% will turn to 0. Then where is the homeland defence bonus?

->player should have 15% defence bonus even province falled.

And I rememberd Freezy said he played a game with a good experience. Are those players are inactive? I fighted a very good player with double units while my units spread all the place, try to crashed my peace treaty. Well, I used 18000+ gold to build 2 forts, 1 lv2(30%+15%) and 1 lv3(45%+15%). Then keep add morale on my wounded infantries. Finally stop the attack wave and I got better K/D ratio.

Oh, and lost 6 hours sleep time too.

Due to my play hard. Our game not just 2 coalitions. There has 3 now. If I didnt play this game. Maybe 2. Because you got more power. It's easy to knock others down.

In the view of game speed, player think too fast. Because if you didnt have artillery to guard your units they will bombed to death in the short time.

The game also slow, develop unit tech require more time. And if you dont level up your milotary building. High level units produced very slow.

So, if a player said CoW is fast or slow. Both correct.

If devs want to update this game. Why not try to one thing right? Balance, history detail, stragy. Supremacy 1 is doing good on this point. I know this forum is for Call of War. But look at S1. Why cant borrow the experience?

In supremacy 1, player can use balleon, scout or spy to expose target position. S1 has gas artillery to damage units on area. Easier to get than CoW Nuclear weapons. There has road player need to defend it or enemy may sneak in. S1 doesnt has the unit history picture for each level update. But it's original art. In this part, I think it's better than CoW too.

A real CoW 1.5 should like this. Make something really different and interesting. I played S1914 and S1 almost the same time. Once I played S1. I dont want to touch S1914 again. Can CoW can become a game like that?

Speed Bug ???

Initially
I had a stack of infantry in Lille of Level 1 at 95% and level 4 at 92%
Speed details are level 1 is 30 and level 4 is 36 on the terrain of both Urban and flat.

Speed of the level 1 to Paris 3 hours 50 minutes
Speed of the Level 4 to Paris 1 hour 54 minutes

There seems to be either a missing factor here or there is a bug in the scale since the there is only a 20% difference in the displayed speeds but a almost 100% in actual 'race' times.

HOWEVER 10 minutes later after going to another game and back, the speeds had been adjusted down to a relative correct relations. Have no idea what causes this.

That meant he agreed.

Greetings Dolittle,

One little bit of information you left out is if you were traveling on and/or through your provinces, friendly provinces, (those you have either SM or ROW with) or enemy provinces.

I have not seen those discrepancies you are referring to myself. Not saying they are not there, but remember that in your own provinces, you are at 100% speed. In friendly provinces, you are at 80% speed. On Enemy Provinces you are at 50% speed.

Let's say you are traveling to Paris and and some where along the way your Infantry is going to pass through enemy provinces. They would be at 50% speed. However, if you have another unit that is ahead of it and takes that province, it is now your own province and your speed will be adjusted back to 100% if you reset your travel path. So it will reach Paris that much quicker.

I am not sure if this answers your question or if this was the scenario. I have also found that when you take a province with a unit ahead of other units trailing, the trailing units do not automatically adjust. You must reset your travel path for it to represent the time in the Unit Box.

If none of this is the case, then maybe it is a bug I have not seen or even looked for.

Hope this may answer your question. If not, then maybe someone else can shed some light.

General cdub

Upgrade cost too high, especially man power
Limiting production to cities could make the game faster. However I like building in any province.

The player that takes the most provinces at start win. Why, because you are only stuck building in three cities.
Too many wars at start and no consequences. I saw players conquer two countries in two days.
Need to be back war weariness. Make it 2 for first war. Add 3 for 2nd war and 5 for each war after that.

African counties are too powerful. Not realistic for a WW2 game. However, if you want all countries to be equal thats your design.
African countries still have an advantage. Should reduce the amount of resources they have. Why? Because they don't have any neighboring countries to fight.
Resources should be based upon how many counties are next to you.
You could slow down there production rates to fix this for counties in Africa and Mideast


Milita should cost zero or be reduced in cost.
Make Industry available on any province after level 3 infrastructure. Maybe let player build all factories and units too.
Can not upgrade my light tank level 1 to level 2
After buying Naval bomber, Statistics for attack and defense do not show up when you click on it.

By day 10 the man power shortage is alleviated somewhat. Mostly due to not
researching much. Most unit types still level 1 or 2, and no real benefit to
raising that level.

Got laminated by two powerful coalitions in one game.




A few more players quit, and not the level 11-20 players, some were 40+
I imagine they saw the adds for Sone and quit CoW to go there?

The unit will be upgraded to the currently researched level. So if you have researched level 3, they become level 3, if level 7 is researched they become level 7. Skipping from 1 to 7 will cost the same as going from 6 to 7.

Condition will remain the same, so there is no free healing with this mechanic currently.

In my road example the travel was along all owned provinces.
However I wonder if it was reflecting prior travel time before I captured both.
So maybe not a bug but a feature that you have always reset your travel after you take a province along your route. This is not a good feature by the way.

Speed of game
I am finding that the opening especially is more time sink intensive. That is that you have to be on line much more than in the prior version. This has good and bad features. It may reduce the drop out of new players because there is more action in the start, but it will also cause problems for those that actually work and sleep for 8 hours at a clip/

While being able to be on line every 2-3 hours around the clock in a focused game, this is not the typical profile.

Maybe we will have negative 'speed rounds' where the game takes 50% or 100% LONGER than the prior 1.0 version where the x2 x4 x10 versions are attractive.


DO OTHER PLAYERS find this TIME SINK to be the same case or is it just my feeling?