Call of War 1.5 round 2!

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    • Balhog wrote:

      I gotta say, I like Ver 1.5. It needs some tweeks here and there, but it is already preferable to 1.0. The one thing I don't like is the added complexity of the upgrading process. Its workable, and can probably be used for strategy separation from the herd, but having multiple levels of aircraft I can attest to is more of a pain than its worth.
      Another aspect that needs looked into or maybe just more time to get used to, is the shortage of manpower. It could be strategy, I didn't start upgrading Ind Comp in time. But the bottle neck is definately manpower. Is it a coincidence that manpower is the only commodity that can only be purchased with gold? I doubt it. But hey, over all, its great. When are you going to put another trial up, cause I don't want to play the old ver anymore...
      And the good thing about 1.5 is that you can go straight to the highest level with a cost of course but I understand that it will obviously cause a bit of a mess. Shortage of manpower in the 1.0 version is easy to get rid off. That will be to attack however things change rapidly so I am not sure now.

      pametna joskota wrote:




      • Trading fees: this is a general remark and not specifically referring to 1.5 only. I appreciate the fee but charging a fee already for just placing an order goes to far. The fee should apply only on executed trades. Trading resources should be a crucial element of a strategic game, however, by imposing such a silly rule takes this feature away, especially when the money is the most scarce resource no-one wants to place orders and also spread gets ridiculously huge. An essential part of trading is placing and cancelling orders. I read the argumentation and again it seems that someone thought that he had a great idea but apparently never made any trades in real life. No online trading platform is charging any fees on placing trading orders. Please reconsider.

      This will be really complicated to say. I agree that they should not put in any silly fees and even if they do, put on ones that have had a successful trade. However, is there a possibility for a spam in the Trade Market for the developers to add a trade fee? Just wondering.


      pametna joskota wrote:


      • Naval bases: I agree that naval bases have to be possible on every coastal province because their function is to reduce embarking/ disembarking times.

      Some countries that are near the coast might unfortunately not even have naval bases in their coastal provinces or cities there which puts them into disadvantage in naval operations.

      pametna joskota wrote:


      • Infrastructure: seems to be a useless building unless you are playing a big country. The moral boost does not justify the production cost.

      Completely agree! Also the morale boost is only needed for big countries that are far from capitol most of the times!

      pametna joskota wrote:



      • Some bugs: while I do like the new look of navy units, the battleships are too big covering subs completely when they come close to each other so that in the desktop version one cannot access the sub. Especially in combat this means a serious problem and one has to switch to the mobile version where this bug is not present. Another one is that the combat icon of fighting battleships almost disappears if the battleship is in vertical position.

      Not only covering subs, they cover all units, I believe that there is positioning system for ground units. Not sure if they have it for naval units too. After the graphic change battleships are humongous, even bigger than a provinces sometimes. I suggest we make it just a tiny bit smaller so that it is more realistic and more convenient for us to use.
      BeaveRyan
      Moderator
      EN Community Support | Bytro Labs Gmbh


      Training Alliance United Leader
    • Ryan04px2025 wrote:

      Talking about hiding units, is it possible if you send a commando unit to the capitol of the enemy before declaring war and then suddenly declare war and take the capitol? With enough commando units, you could take down the enemy almost without fighting as you know where the units are.
      Its not possible with Commandos to go through provinces without fighting. So you cannot just place alot of Commandos sneakily into empty provinces and wait for the right moment to declare war. We deliberately did not allow that although it would be possible, because it would be too OP. Well ok its actually possible but only for players which gave you right of way, because they don't see your stealth units :p
    • CityOfAngels wrote:

      I believe they did this to address an exploit, where players could hide their resources on the market with a "Sell for $30" offer when they were in danger of losing them (for example right before your double-iron province gets pillaged).
      If this is true then this is quite a silly solution. If players really hide resources by placing a high selling order then developers should simply implement a function that whenever this happens the selling orders are automtically cancelled and the "hidden" resources are seized. Problem solved.
    • freezy wrote:

      Ryan04px2025 wrote:

      Talking about hiding units, is it possible if you send a commando unit to the capitol of the enemy before declaring war and then suddenly declare war and take the capitol? With enough commando units, you could take down the enemy almost without fighting as you know where the units are.
      Its not possible with Commandos to go through provinces without fighting. So you cannot just place alot of Commandos sneakily into empty provinces and wait for the right moment to declare war. We deliberately did not allow that although it would be possible, because it would be too OP. Well ok its actually possible but only for players which gave you right of way, because they don't see your stealth units :p
      Noted! Another thing we could implement is to not allow Commandos to take over provinces. Unfortunately, that is a CoN thing.
      BeaveRyan
      Moderator
      EN Community Support | Bytro Labs Gmbh


      Training Alliance United Leader
    • My thoughts on 1.5. Played 28 days, Egypt.

      I wonder how many players jumped right in building infrastructure in all double resource producing provinces. Many if not all in my game. Luckily I noticed my mistake after 15 mins or so( I know, I should have looked before I leapt.)and that infrastructure now plays a much weaker role in the game losing it's resource multiplier and level requirements for heavier/higher tech units. Infrastructure now seems a little bit lost only increasing unit speed and morale boosts from fortifications. As some have already said, the only obvious use is in distant provinces to improve morale. Seems odd to need infrastructure on a distant front line while it's relatively useless in or near your core where you'd expect lots of development.

      Resource incomes have changed quite dramatically. Early in the match all running at around +500 left me feeling I need not worry about resource management. Just keep building and spending until you run out of any given resource.
      Easier and more simple maybe but on the other hand I felt a management element was missing. Now it seems you don't worry about running into resource deficit. Just increase industry at your leisure. Individual resources have lost their identity and they now seem like a big pool of similar.
      For me manpower was the restricting factor especially with higher levels of research requiring considerable amounts.

      Upgrading units. Seemed messy at first but it worked ok.

      30 minute attack. Still not sure about this or it's intention. I was very surprised how quickly my artillery destroyed a mixed 10 stack in just 4 hours. It felt like a x2 game, I even had to check a couple of times it wasn't x2.
      Production of units also felt that way at level one. I preferred once an hour.
      Maybe it's to grab new players with more action early in the game or during an evenings gaming, I understand that but I wonder if there's also a case for those players missing the action, instead just missing battles and stacks they can only read about in the paper. It's a 24 game after all.

      Artillery range. If we are sticking with one fixed range then maybe we need light and heavy field guns. 75mm,120mm etc.

      Health bars, I really disliked the new stack health behaviour. I understand the old model wasn't perfect destroying one unit while leaving the others relatively unscathed but it was reasonably predictable and made sense. I'm not sure it's fair to say the new stack damage model is more realistic. Is it realistic to share the damage evenly across all units in that stack? Eg, if 5 units v 10, would every unit in the 10 stack really be damaged?
      It's not a huge problem during your first battle with green health but afterwards you're left with orange or red health bars with barely a unit lost. My two damaged stacks of 25 units each were then unusable for the next 10 days gaining less than 10% per day. As others have said, do you rest them in Tahiti for a fortnight or waste them as level 1 cannon fodder. No self respecting general wants to send an ill looking troop with red and orange health bars into battle to be wasted! I tried adding 10 fresh units to the poorly looking chaps but still the improvement was minimal. The release notes mentioned repair so I think we need more help with that.
      My battles completely stalled waiting on ill looking troops after relatively easy skirmishes.

      Level 1 production rates day 1, I understand the need to bring some action to day one, two and three by increasing unit production rates but I do wonder what will happen when disruptive players and multi-account's join the fray.
      They won't bother developing the core they'll spend everything on a level 1 tank farm and tanks and throw 50 or 60 units at you for breakfast day 3. With recent attacking bonuses that will be difficult to defend against on day 3.
      Recent balancing also favouring the attacker. Just a thought because all of us regulars know the spoilers out there will try and exploit that early power. They won't play the game in the intended way, some resources to units some to research some to province development. Don't give them too much power without having to work for it.

      Other than that the game played quite well. Difficult to judge the action based on this one game as there was a sense that everyone was testing the game rather than trying to win.

      Did I forget anything....

      Probably!
    • Hi. I'll now need several weeks to read this thread (won't have a lot of time). So I drop my feedback before doing so - sorry if parts of it have already been discussed.

      Summary beforehand:
      * Gameplay: OK, different from CoW1.0 and similarly good. Better for mobile, less fun for desktop users on the other hand.
      * Strategical challenge: OK, different from CoW1.0 and similarly good.
      * Realism: Gone.

      So people who're looking for a trivial game well playable on smartphones might like it. Those who favour a sophisticated game resembling WW2 won't.
    • Positive:

      * Units don't upgrade automatically any more, but can be upgraded manually for costs.

      * The new buildings. Love them already. Partly because thanks to them, production capacities now have become something precious, something you have to invest in (in CoW1.0 you anyway upgraded your ICs and built new ones just to get the resource production bonus). And since the second test event, they demand difficult strategic decisions of the kind "either enhance economy or rather enhance production capacities". Well done. I also like your move to make production of level 1 units very quick, but to reduce only the production times of higher unit levels with higher production facility levels. Great idea I would have never had - my appreciation on that one!
      Although one minor flaw I'd like to mention: Building railroad guns in a "secret weapons lab" feels like being in a Duck Tales world. Maybe RR guns should be moved to the ordonnance tab.

      * Morale bonus from fortresses removed. Finally. Thanks for that.

      * Changes done to rockets and Commandos.

      * Speed malus on allied territory removed. That's good. I think even a little bit better would be: 50% speed on neutral and hostile territory, 80% if having right of way, 100% if sharing maps.
    • Hans A. Pils wrote:

      Hi. I'll now need several weeks to read this thread (won't have a lot of time). So I drop my feedback before doing so - sorry if parts of it have already been discussed.

      Summary beforehand:
      * Gameplay: OK, different from CoW1.0 and similarly good. Better for mobile, less fun for desktop users on the other hand.
      * Strategical challenge: OK, different from CoW1.0 and similarly good.
      * Realism: Gone.

      So people who're looking for a trivial game well playable on smartphones might like it. Those who favour a sophisticated game resembling WW2 won't.
      tldr: ppl are mad about manpower for research, upgrades for units being extremly expensive, the huge gap between shorter production times and "slow" movement speed
      oh and ofc aboutthe focus on cities
      Teburu

      GER/EN Forums
      Conflict of Nations Veteran
      I suck at COW
      idk what else to put here :D
    • Negative:

      1.: The role of manpower. I liked the old interpretation much better - manpower = recruitable soldiers. Now it's... what is it now? With all units needing a similar amount of manpower, it's something like a "total unit limit" you may not exceed. Isn't realistic and annoying.

      2.: This extreme centralization of resource income to cities. It's not realistic and doesn't add anything positive to the game. Cities should make up the main part of goods and money income, yes. Also a bit more manpower, OK. But steel, oil, food and rares? These should be at least equally found in rural provinces.
      Also Luxembourg being as important as London, Reykjavik being as important as Leningrad? You might just as well make it an entire fantasy map, then.

      3.: Barracks should be constructable in every province.

      4.: The morale malus from being at war was removed. I miss it a lot.

      5.: Faster attack tick. Is one more bonus for players who can play 24/7. And one more reason for people with commitments in real life not to play CoW at all.

      6.: Uniform schema upkeep = production costs / 20. Not realistic at all and boring. Unit upkeep should be like in CoW1.0.

      7.: Level of buildings is visible, also if country doesn't share maps with you.

      8.: Costs for research are a joke. After a few days of boosting your economy, you can fully neglect them. Don't even bother to read then. Only research time matters.
      I'd like to go back to research requiring mainly rare materials. That made the most sense.

      9.: Firing range not increasing with research any more. It's clear why this has been changed - you didn't want to bother players with handling stacks having many different ranges - steering these isn't easy, because if you let them fire at a target that's within the highest range, but not within the lower range(s) of that stack, then the units with lower range won't fire at all until next attack tick. But researching higher attack ranges is a very beautiful, nice and also realistic detail I wouldn't want to loose. My suggestion: Bring back higher ranges with higher levels and make upgrade costs dependant on the number of levels the unit is modernized. Like: upgrading 1 level costs 25% of it's steel, goods, oil and rares production costs. Upgrading 2 levels 50% and so on. That would be better anyway. Note: Upgrading units shouldn't cost manpower or food. Since these are the main costs of infantry, consequently upgrading infantry would be very cheap. Which would be realistic. In order not to let infantry become too strong, reduce it's hit points progression to a very, very low one. Which would also be realistic.

      10.: Nuclear ships have been removed. I miss them. Provided they require the highest level of the respective oil-driven ship type like in the old days, they were a very nice addition to late game. Only comment explaining why they have been removed said "due to role conflicts". What role conflicts? I totally don't get the point.

      11.: Now sight and patrol radius of all planes are the same(?) That's bad, because in CoW1.0 you can send your planes on a scout mission with an enemy province center inside the sight radius, but outside the patrol radius and then log off for whatever time you want. In CoW1.5 you have to login again latest 15 minutes after arrival of your planes - otherwise you might find them killing themselves above a big stack of AA. Sight and patrol radius of planes is perfect in CoW1.0, please don't change that!

      12.: The beautiful flag pins marking the capital have been replaced with chunky 2D flags and ugly, giant capital names.

      13.: SBDE counting for total number of units in a stack. I know why you did that, we've been discussing it at length. But this now made me automatically shape stacks of precisely 10 units most of the time. Then, as production continues, open up the next stack. I'm open for people to correct me on this, but in my CoW1.5 match, this seemed to be the winning tactic. So my regular army formation consisted of several 10-unit stacks and 1 smaller ground stack and 1 smaller air stack currently being built up. What does that have to do with WW2? Imagine that article in World Herald - history rewritten by CoW1.5: "War! The Italian fleet of 10 ships opened fire upon 10 French ground units stationed in Marseille. At the same time, a quick Italian motorized army group, consisting of 10 tanks and SPAA, crossed the Alps, but was soon after stopped by the 2nd French army group, composed of 10 AT and infantry regiments in Lyon. Later on, 10 Italian naval bomber squadrons spotted 10 French submarines in the Mediterranean, but were quickly shot down by 10 French strategical(!) bombers...
      And so on... well, 10 is a biblical number, but nonetheless this doesn't feel right (I have a new idea on how SBDE should be - will post it soon). I know that unit graphics are the same in 1.5 and 1.0, but when looking at them in 1.5, they suddenly have the appearance of kids toys. If armies in 1.0 are carefully designed Revell models, then armies in 1.5 feel like Duplo bricks. Like a 5-year-old had played with modeling clay. And the prevalent 10-unit-stacks is one of the reasons for that. Some more reasons to come:

      14.: Victory points only from cities. Really boring and adds some more to the "chunky Duplo bricks" feeling.

      15.: These giant cities are ugly. When zooming out a bit, they look like there were a few stains of dirt on the screen.

      16.: Crazy unit stats; just to name some examples:
      16.1.: Production of planes doesn't require steel. What are they made of, then? Paper?
      16.2.: Militia deals too much damage, especially to armoured units.
      16.3.: Heavy tanks better against light armour than against heavy armour. WTH?
      16.4.: SPAA better against heavy armour than against light armour. That's also wrong. I already find this disputable for non-self-propelled AA. But for SPAA, it should even be the other way round. All SPAA had low caliber guns.
      16.5.: AC a defensive unit. I like sarcasm, so that's the funniest of all. Imagine a heavily camouflaged armoured car waiting behind a corner for it's prey to appear in sight. That's hilarious.
      16.6.: Motorized infantry an offensive unit. Yeah. Cool. Which Hollywood movie was that from? I totally don't get why you insist of having both defensive and offensive units in every unit category. It doesn't make players go for a bigger variety of units. Some like to engage in melee battle, so they choose the offensive units and neglect the defensive ones. Others prefer to have superior artillery, so they choose the defensive non-ranged units and neglect the offensive ones. Having both offensive and defensive in both infantry and armour research tree makes this worse. It allows players to continuously follow their favourite play style in every situation of every game.
      16.7.: Bombers better at attacking planes than at defending. Even strategical bombers. That's revolutionary! So whenever a CoW1.5 strategical bomber sees an enemy fighter at the horizon, the pilot just presses the red turbo-boost button in his cockpit, which will accelerate him to triple speed to bring the fighter within range of his guns. Since the majority of his board guns are pointing to his rear, he then uses the widely known high maneuverability of his heavy 4-propeller bomber to perform a half looping and let his board cannons shoot down the fighter. That's how Strats were used, wasn't it?
      16.8.: The production costs of buildings appear to be the result of a random generator. To name just one example: Fortifications needing mainly food and goods. So bunker walls in CoW1.5 are supply crates, attached to each other with the new mortar mixed of grain and milk? Well, in reality, as everyone knows they were made of concrete, so representing that with the resource steel was the closest you can get.
      16.9.: ... There are so many more... I don't even look at naval units now... tired of lisiting them all.
      16.10.: Worst of all: The progression that units take by researching has nothing to do with reality. Just two examples: arty/AA/AT/infantry from 1950 have 300% HP of arty/AA/AT/infantry from 1935?!? AC level 4 has higher air defense value than AA level 2?!? There are sooo many other examples. Please just revert to the values that units had in CoW1.0 (I'll soon post a slighly different progression that's perfect in my eyes as an alternative).

      Of course it's your choice, if you now want to neglect realism in CoW. But I'll be gone if you replace CoW1.0 with CoW1.5 - and with me most who value CoW1.0 as being high-class / sophisticate compared to all those fantasy Pokemon games out there.
      Sure, I'm only one voice. You can still continue on the chosen path. But you should rename the game to "CoW Arcade" then.
    • My suggestion:

      * Merge the changes from my "Positive:" post into CoW1.0.

      * Implement the easy quick win changes from --> this thread <-- in CoW1.0.

      * Change the "deactivated" setting for barracks and naval bases to "deactivated if not producing" and make that the default setting. In other words, if this setting is chosen instead of "activated", the building only consumes resources and only gives it's bonusses while a ship/infantry production is ongoing. That would free players from the hassle to switch on the building if wanting to recruit infantry / build a ship and to have to remember switching it off afterwards.

      * Make the first week of regular CoW1.0 games run at double speed. I.e. two in-game days in one real-life day. Only during the first week. This singular change is enough to get rid of the slow start of maps, that makes a lot of impatient players leave CoW(1.0). With CoW1.5, you did a lot of changes to get rid of the slow start and the hundreds of unit production orders a player can and should enter in late game. You gave unit production times, unit damage output, hit points and speed an immense progression (and also unit costs a low progression), which destroys all realism. And you reduced the attack timer, which forces players to nervously check their game even more frequently than before - makes CoW even less compatible with having a real life. Reverting all these changes and instead running CoW1.0 games with double speed in first week would have the same positive, but less negative effects.

      * Then drop the CoW1.5 development branch. Too many bad concepts in there, sorry.
    • Thanks for the detailed feedback and your suggestions. A lot of your points have been discussed already in this feedback thread and in the Feedback Thread of Event 1. So I won't discuss them again. Just want give feedback that I read them.

      Some of your suggestions are fitting to our approach, so I noted them down and they have a chance to end up in the next event. Keep in mind that we can't do all of your suggestions since some things are deliberately the way they are and on some things we received very varying opinions. Maybe that's also because CoW is a simplification of reality and allows for different interpretations what certain stats or resources stand for, for example.

      We won't drop the 1.5 approach though, but you can help us shaping it by continuing to give your feedback on the next Events.
    • freezy wrote:

      I am a fan of single-purpose buildings, so we could of course split Infrastructure into 2 buildings.
      Please don't!
      Infra giving both morale and movement bonus makes decisions where to build it difficult and that's good. It also adds to realism, because it gives an incentive to build infra in both rural provinces and cities. If you remove the moral bonus from infra and invent a new building giving it (for example called "civil facilities"), players would build infra exclusively in tall provinces (and in those for which they expect a lot of troop traffic) and the new building only in cities. Would be both too simple and unrealistic.
    • And thanks for your (as always very diplomatic :) :thumbup: ) answer.
      It's clear you get different opinions on what's realistic and what isn't. Partly because not everyone who's commenting here has good historical knowledge and/or understanding and partly because not everyone sees clearly on how to convey the historical truth with CoW mechanics. Nevertheless there is only one truth. Which you hit pretty well with CoW1.0. And clearly not with CoW1.5... of course I might be mistaken with a few points and possibly some others are not that bad if seen from a different angle. But if I say that the overall impression of CoW1.5 is a Duplo kids world, I think you should halt for a moment and reflect on whether you're really on the right path.

      Forgot some more details in my list:
      16.11.: Artillery bonus +50% in mountains. Because it has higher range from an elevated position, yah? Is physically true, but placing artillery positions on a hill or even a mountain top because of that... is somewhat medieval logic. Not WW2 reality. Artillery could be used even more effectively in less rough terrain, because targets were easier to spot on a large distance and couldn't escape the grenades behind a slope.
      16.12.: SPAA +50% bonus in mountains. WTH? Should be 0%.
      16.13.: AA +50% bonus in mountains. I could maybe agree with +25% for them, but +50% makes no sense. If you insist on having units with bonus in mountains, rather give it to regular infantry than to arty, AA and SPAA.
      16.14.: Mot. and mech. infantry bonus on plains. WTH? They have higher speed on plains, yes. But fighting better on open terrain, without shelter? No way.
    • In CoW1.0, nobody would ever want to research and build all ground close-combat units (I'm talking about AT, regular infantry, motorized infantry, mechanized infantry, AC, LT, MT, HT and TD - militia and Commandos are a different story). Clever players choose only 2 or 3 of these early on in the game and then research them to the max, without thinking about it any more.
      This is neither realistic, nor motivating, nor strategically challenging. It's really boring and there's an overwhelming consensus in the forum that choosing a big variety of different units instead of hyperfocusing on a few should be beneficial in many situations.

      To tackle this, two changes were made in CoW1.5:
      1.: Units don't upgrade automatically any more after research of a new level. This is a very good change, partly because it is realistic in itself. It helps a lot to achieve the goal of bigger diversity, although is not yet fully enough.
      2.: Motorized infantry was changed from +50% defense to +50% offense and AC was changed from no def/off focus to +50% defense. This is a very bad change, because it's terribly unrealistic and because it doesn't add to bigger variety in unit choices at all. Or do you doubt that last statement, freezy? We can discuss it in detail, if you think differently.
      Note: LT and MT now offensive I don't mention - this I can accept from realism perspective and it indeed makes tactics more interesting if there are a few offensive close-combat units in the game. But the changes to AC and mot. infantry just don't make any sense at all.

      So I suggest to make AC and mot. infantry historically correct again and to instead implement the following, since it would be the final, complete solution to mentioned problem and would additionally render several other aspects of the game more interesting and more realistic: Don't reduce the damage efficiency of stacks > 10, but reduce the damage efficiency of more than 1 close-combat unit of same type (regardless of research level) in one stack. For artillery and ships allow 5 of same type in one stack without malus - otherwise it would make players split up stacks too much... would result in too much micromanagement.
      Like this:
      One LT in a stack fires with 100%.
      A second LT, no matter of which research level, adds only 80% of his attack/defense values to the stack.
      A third LT adds 60%.
      A fourth 40%.
      A fifth 20%.
      And all further LTs in this stack don't fire at all. So for example 3 LT in a stack would have (100+80+60)/3=80% efficiency, 5 LT in a stack would have 60%, 9 would have 33%, 10 would have 30% and so on.
      Of course the same for all close-combat units - LT was just an example.
      (Note: anti air defense of ships (including subs) and artillery would have to be reduced a bit, because the above nerfs planes more than these and the good balance air vs. ships should be maintained.)

      Some might say it would be difficult to understand, because many players didn't understand the SBDE solution in CoW1.0 either. But the conclusion is wrong. SBDE in CoW1.0 isn't understood by everyone, because of these reasons: It's displayed with the very misleading name "state based damage efficiency", the desktop version displays it in one figure mixed up with what you'd intuitively call state based damage efficiency and the mobile version doesn't display it at all. If these mistakes aren't repeated, a malus for overcrowding a spot on the map with several units of same type is not difficult to understand at all.

      Well, freezy mentioned three other potential arguments against such a solution:
      * A malus is less motivating compared to a bonus. That's correct in general, but come on, you don't want to have bad fundamental game concepts because of some psychological nuances, do you? That feels like Marketing making you buy a bad product by fooling your brain by triggering only positive associations. You're producing a PC game, not making a TV spot for a car or a perfume. Better focus on making the product good.
      * We would see nasty micromagement tricks with players splitting up stacks to avoid the malus. No, I still don't think so. I mean, not for close-combat units and I now propose the strict limit only for close-combat units. If you're the attacker, you will never want to split, because two attacking stacks have to swallow 200% defensive fire and cannot reach 200% offensive fire - not with my solution above. And placing two stacks extremely close to each other so a close-combat attacker would get defensive fire from both? Is that really possible? Even if it is, has it been thought hard about whether there really isn't a solution to it in game mechanics or in combat result calculation? For example maybe you might even snap all attacked stacks into one in case of a close-combat attack? Even if there is no solution, hardly any player will guess it can be done. I've never seen anyone using that exploit.
      * Would be harder to display than the total-stack-size-greater-ten-malus from CoW1.5. OK, maybe a bit. But it's obvious by now there are a lot of frontend developers at Bytro. Instead of redesigning all graphics, better ask them to find a way to display this. Because it would be soooooo much better than the CoW1.5 solution. For example how about this for Desktop version:
    • pjrobbo wrote:

      Health bars, I really disliked the new stack health behaviour. I understand the old model wasn't perfect destroying one unit while leaving the others relatively unscathed but it was reasonably predictable and made sense. I'm not sure it's fair to say the new stack damage model is more realistic.
      I'm pretty sure the whole point of this change is to prevent an exploit that dominates competitive play (splitting any defending stack into many tiny stacks), which causes the need for extreme micromanagement on top of making the game less intuitive/accessible.

      Hans A. Pils wrote:

      We would see nasty micromagement tricks with players splitting up stacks to avoid the malus. No, I still don't think so. I mean, not for close-combat units and I now propose the strict limit only for close-combat units. If you're the attacker, you will never want to split, because two attacking stacks have to swallow 200% defensive fire and cannot reach 200% offensive fire - not with my solution above. And placing two stacks extremely close to each other so a close-combat attacker would get defensive fire from both? Is that really possible? Even if it is, has it been thought hard about whether there really isn't a solution to it in game mechanics or in combat result calculation? For example maybe you might even snap all attacked stacks into one in case of a close-combat attack? Even if there is no solution, hardly any player will guess it can be done. I've never seen anyone using that exploit.
      Like I said, it dominates competitive play. I watched one of my teammates in the Alliance World Cup destroy a huge airforce trying furiously to drive back his beachhead in Spain, by constantly splitting before any of his stacked units reached the 'one dies' point, until he was down to 5 stacks of 1inf+1AA+1arti all sitting on top of each other (by giving them all move orders with a long delay to keep them from merging.)

      And yes, it works when defending against ground attack (and of course artillery) too. There are some really nasty exploits related to artillery which end up forcing you to basically play for days on end without sleeping - That's my biggest gripe with CoW 1.0 from a competitive perspective.

      All competitive players use stack-split micromanagement with their planes, as you pretty much can't win an air supremacy war without it. Most/All use it for artillery, and the top players use it sometimes with ground troops too (those situations arise less frequently.) It is a really really powerful (and annoying!) exploit, so I appreciate them trying to do something about it in v1.5.

      The way it works in v1.5 (units not dying until the stack gets to quite a low %) is essentially the same as what you get in v1.0 as a defender with intensive micromanagement, but the attacker gets the benefit too, and you don't necessarily need to stay awake all night. The devil is in the details, but I like the idea!
    • I see your point as an argument for the new rule of units dying only if stack reaches very low health.
      But not as an argument for the new damage-malus-if-total-stack-size-greater-10 rule (we shouldn't call it SBDE any more) and that's the thing that I was criticizing.

      Artillery: It's clear that players split up while attacking with it. Is the same in CoW1.5. The different calculation of damage malus per stack size changes nothing about it, since the damage malus per unit isn't the reason for splitting up artillery in CoW1.0.

      Air: Here you must be talking about the "swarm of bees" exploit of killing a patrolling enemy air stack by moving several own air stacks underneath it and all the time avoiding own patrol attack tick. That's prevented in CoW1.5 by making planes offensive (which I find alright, although it would be enough to make fighters offensive - for bombers it's unrealistic; strategic bombers even have to be defensive). Has nothing to do with the question whether damage malus should be calculated per total stack size or number of units per unit type.

      Ground melee battle: As I said, if you attack, you never want to split up. And splitting up for defending against a close-combat attack? You wrote top players sometimes do it? Well, then I've never seen a top player. Oh wait, I am a top player 8) ... OK, let's keep it modest. Have you ever done it? No? Then please ask yourself why not ;) .
      To be fair, it might become relevant if damage malus would start already with two close-combat units of same type, as I propose. But I'm opotimistic there's a good chance that Bytro can prevent two stacks very close to each other both dealing defense damage but swallowing only once attack damage from a ground melee attack (if that currently is possible at all, as I said I've never seen it) if they try hard. That's why I'm trying to convince Bytro that the difference between damage malus per unit type vs. damage malus per total stack size is an important one... that it's worth looking into mechanics or battle calculation for a way to prevent that potential exploit.


      All in all: I dislike stack micromanagement giving an advantage just like you do - it's not fun, tempts you to waste your lifetime with it, is non-intuitive for beginners and is not realistic. But I don't see how the damage malus per total stack size calculation really contributes against that.
    • Hans A. Pils wrote:

      freezy wrote:

      I am a fan of single-purpose buildings, so we could of course split Infrastructure into 2 buildings.
      Please don't!Infra giving both morale and movement bonus makes decisions where to build it difficult and that's good. It also adds to realism, because it gives an incentive to build infra in both rural provinces and cities. If you remove the moral bonus from infra and invent a new building giving it (for example called "civil facilities"), players would build infra exclusively in tall provinces (and in those for which they expect a lot of troop traffic) and the new building only in cities. Would be both too simple and unrealistic.
      Yeah, we probably won't. Just mentioned it as a possibility, if enough support for it arises. But right now we don't plan to do it.

      Hans A. Pils wrote:

      And thanks for your (as always very diplomatic :) :thumbup: ) answer.
      It's clear you get different opinions on what's realistic and what isn't. Partly because not everyone who's commenting here has good historical knowledge and/or understanding and partly because not everyone sees clearly on how to convey the historical truth with CoW mechanics. Nevertheless there is only one truth. Which you hit pretty well with CoW1.0. And clearly not with CoW1.5... of course I might be mistaken with a few points and possibly some others are not that bad if seen from a different angle. But if I say that the overall impression of CoW1.5 is a Duplo kids world, I think you should halt for a moment and reflect on whether you're really on the right path.

      Forgot some more details in my list:
      16.11.: Artillery bonus +50% in mountains. Because it has higher range from an elevated position, yah? Is physically true, but placing artillery positions on a hill or even a mountain top because of that... is somewhat medieval logic. Not WW2 reality. Artillery could be used even more effectively in less rough terrain, because targets were easier to spot on a large distance and couldn't escape the grenades behind a slope.
      16.12.: SPAA +50% bonus in mountains. WTH? Should be 0%.
      16.13.: AA +50% bonus in mountains. I could maybe agree with +25% for them, but +50% makes no sense. If you insist on having units with bonus in mountains, rather give it to regular infantry than to arty, AA and SPAA.
      16.14.: Mot. and mech. infantry bonus on plains. WTH? They have higher speed on plains, yes. But fighting better on open terrain, without shelter? No way.
      I don't really have time for in-depth discussions right now, sorry. But I will still give you feedback on these proposals.

      Artillery bonus in mountains: You can argue in both directions. Slopes hinder artillery, but they can also gain advantages by being able to fire over obstacles and hit enemies which in turn cannot hit them in a straight line of fire. Plus higher range when shooting from the edge of the mountain range into lower terrain. If a situation arises where one can argue in multiple directions we usually choose the one which adds the most to the gameplay and diversification, enabling more strategies.

      AA/SPAA: I think its perfectly valid to give them mountain bonus, as they a nearer to the flight altitude of airplanes and harder to hit for airplanes due to obstacles. Plus again, diversification.
      Regular infantry already has a bonus in cities and we dont want to give bonuses in too many categories to one unit.
      Mountain bonus in general is 50% for most units as there are fewer mountains in the game, therefore units having a bonus in that category get a bigger bonus to make up for it.
      Mot/Mech Inf: They combine the bonuses of Infantry and vehicles, as they are a hybrid. Also here I think one can argue in multiple directions. Yes less cover, but they can maneuver more freely (thats why also vehicles get a plain bonus) and could for example encircle opponents quicker as regular Inf before dismounting to fight. Plus they can use their own vehicles as cover in certain circumstances.

      Hans A. Pils wrote:

      In CoW1.0, nobody would ever want to research and build all ground close-combat units (I'm talking about AT, regular infantry, motorized infantry, mechanized infantry, AC, LT, MT, HT and TD - militia and Commandos are a different story). Clever players choose only 2 or 3 of these early on in the game and then research them to the max, without thinking about it any more.
      This is neither realistic, nor motivating, nor strategically challenging. It's really boring and there's an overwhelming consensus in the forum that choosing a big variety of different units instead of hyperfocusing on a few should be beneficial in many situations.

      To tackle this, two changes were made in CoW1.5:
      1.: Units don't upgrade automatically any more after research of a new level. This is a very good change, partly because it is realistic in itself. It helps a lot to achieve the goal of bigger diversity, although is not yet fully enough.
      2.: Motorized infantry was changed from +50% defense to +50% offense and AC was changed from no def/off focus to +50% defense. This is a very bad change, because it's terribly unrealistic and because it doesn't add to bigger variety in unit choices at all. Or do you doubt that last statement, freezy? We can discuss it in detail, if you think differently.
      Note: LT and MT now offensive I don't mention - this I can accept from realism perspective and it indeed makes tactics more interesting if there are a few offensive close-combat units in the game. But the changes to AC and mot. infantry just don't make any sense at all.

      So I suggest to make AC and mot. infantry historically correct again and to instead implement the following, since it would be the final, complete solution to mentioned problem and would additionally render several other aspects of the game more interesting and more realistic: Don't reduce the damage efficiency of stacks > 10, but reduce the damage efficiency of more than 1 close-combat unit of same type (regardless of research level) in one stack. For artillery and ships allow 5 of same type in one stack without malus - otherwise it would make players split up stacks too much... would result in too much micromanagement.
      Like this:
      One LT in a stack fires with 100%.
      A second LT, no matter of which research level, adds only 80% of his attack/defense values to the stack.
      A third LT adds 60%.
      A fourth 40%.
      A fifth 20%.
      And all further LTs in this stack don't fire at all. So for example 3 LT in a stack would have (100+80+60)/3=80% efficiency, 5 LT in a stack would have 60%, 9 would have 33%, 10 would have 30% and so on.
      Of course the same for all close-combat units - LT was just an example.
      (Note: anti air defense of ships (including subs) and artillery would have to be reduced a bit, because the above nerfs planes more than these and the good balance air vs. ships should be maintained.)

      Some might say it would be difficult to understand, because many players didn't understand the SBDE solution in CoW1.0 either. But the conclusion is wrong. SBDE in CoW1.0 isn't understood by everyone, because of these reasons: It's displayed with the very misleading name "state based damage efficiency", the desktop version displays it in one figure mixed up with what you'd intuitively call state based damage efficiency and the mobile version doesn't display it at all. If these mistakes aren't repeated, a malus for overcrowding a spot on the map with several units of same type is not difficult to understand at all.

      Well, freezy mentioned three other potential arguments against such a solution:
      * A malus is less motivating compared to a bonus. That's correct in general, but come on, you don't want to have bad fundamental game concepts because of some psychological nuances, do you? That feels like Marketing making you buy a bad product by fooling your brain by triggering only positive associations. You're producing a PC game, not making a TV spot for a car or a perfume. Better focus on making the product good.
      * We would see nasty micromagement tricks with players splitting up stacks to avoid the malus. No, I still don't think so. I mean, not for close-combat units and I now propose the strict limit only for close-combat units. If you're the attacker, you will never want to split, because two attacking stacks have to swallow 200% defensive fire and cannot reach 200% offensive fire - not with my solution above. And placing two stacks extremely close to each other so a close-combat attacker would get defensive fire from both? Is that really possible? Even if it is, has it been thought hard about whether there really isn't a solution to it in game mechanics or in combat result calculation? For example maybe you might even snap all attacked stacks into one in case of a close-combat attack? Even if there is no solution, hardly any player will guess it can be done. I've never seen anyone using that exploit.
      * Would be harder to display than the total-stack-size-greater-ten-malus from CoW1.5. OK, maybe a bit. But it's obvious by now there are a lot of frontend developers at Bytro. Instead of redesigning all graphics, better ask them to find a way to display this. Because it would be soooooo much better than the CoW1.5 solution. For example how about this for Desktop version:
      We of course analyse the data of these Events and we were already seeing a much greater variety of units and buildings built in the Events, exactly what we tried to achieve with the balancing. It also matches my experience in my own live Event rounds that I played, I saw a greater variety of units than in 1.0, and also myself felt greater need to combine different units because their roles have become more diverse than in 1.0.

      Yes AC and Mot. Inf may be a point of contention, but here again I think one can argue in different directions. Your arguments of course make sense, but we can also interpret the offensive damage bonus for Mot. Inf's ability to encircle or surprise enemies quicker as slower units like regular Inf could do it. But the more important factor here is indeed diversification. Speed alone just was not enough, because players tend to mix different units in their stacks anyway, which often times nullifies speed bonuses of units. By making one of them defensive and one of them offensive there now is a perfect reason for building both of them. Same thing regarding the AC, it unlocks at the same time as light tanks and has the same requirements as light tanks, so it having the same bonuses as light tanks would remove most reasons for producing them (plus historically they also were not used for offensives that much). I think 1.5 does a greater job at giving reasons to players to build both of them. We try to stay historically accurate and I feel like we already changed alot of things from Event 1 to Event 2 to make the game more historical again, but certain things we don't want to change in favor of diversity and usability. I also have to say that probably most of our players are content with the game being historically authentic (having everything there was in WW2 and letting them play around with it), without necessairly needing everything to be 100% historically accurate (there is a difference between authenticity and accuracy).

      Thanks for the long explanation regarding your unit limit proposal, but this is pretty much settled already: We are keeping the whole stack limit and also lower it to 10 units.

      Regarding offensive role of strats: We simply changed all aircrafts to an offensive focus simply for balancing reasons. Them being 1:1 or defensive focused would again open doors for things like the patrol exploit. So we made no exception here. We also wanted to give more incentives for using direct attacks with airplanes. Plus we didn't like that defensive focused aircrafts were so good at close combat inside provinces (if stationed alongside a ground arm they will actually join the fight in the province with their airborne def values due to how the engine values stats off. focused, and I think a strat being def focused in all values makes less sense than a strat being off focused in all values. And since strat. bombers are not meant to fight air units anyway I think its not a big loss for them to be offensive focused also vs. air (and one could even argue its always more effective in the air to surprise or attack enemies then by letting them come at one, as in the air there is no defensive cover).

      Hope you don't get the impression that we disregard every suggestion you make because in fact we will be changing some things based on your feedback, for example making SPAA better vs. light armor than heavy armor, and also did so in the past. For example I think us changing tank destroyers from offensive to defensive was also in part due to your arguments (if I remember correctly). So please keep giving feedback on the next events but keep in mind that we will not change everything.
    • Yo freezy,
      OK, point taken about +25% bonus for mot./mech. infantry in open terrain. I can accept that one now.
      But these arguments I don't think are valid (no hard feelings though :) ) :

      freezy wrote:

      AA/SPAA: I think its perfectly valid to give them mountain bonus, as they a nearer to the flight altitude of airplanes and harder to hit for airplanes due to obstacles.
      OK, AA against air attacks in mountainous terrain feels hard to tell. There your arguments may count, so a slight bonus (theoretically, rather planes should have a malus against ground in mountains and above forrests, but since that cannot be realized in CoW, giving AA a slight bonus in mountains and forrests/hills is the best alternative) is OK. But not a big one, since AA against ground targets clearly didn't have an advantage in mountains (have in mind that most AA guns could hardly or not at all fire downwards, so placing them on an elevated position wasn't practical against ground attacks).
      So far, so good. But now imagine a SPAA vehicle in mountains. Bonus? No way. Their mobility advantage is gone there. And even if you manage to get it up a steep slope, it would stand there like served on a silver plate to the enemy.


      freezy wrote:

      Regular infantry already has a bonus in cities and we dont want to give bonuses in too many categories to one unit.
      Why not? I mean why not leave the (correct) +50% bonus in cities to regular infantry, additionally give them +25% in mountains and in return slightly decrease it's basic strength or slightly increase it's costs. What's the benefit in almost all units having either one +50% bonus or two +25%. You're looking for consistency? Not required there. To make units easy to compare? That's not positive. Reading unit stats and comparing units, thinking hard which one to research or build is a big fun part in the game. Units should be realistic (and thus intuitive), not easy to compare.


      freezy wrote:

      I saw a greater variety of units than in 1.0, and also myself felt greater need to combine different units because their roles have become more diverse than in 1.0.
      You're totally right that in CoW1.5, a healthy diversification is way more often the way to success than in 1.0 (which is very good). But not with your statement this comes from giving a clearer offensive or defensive focus and in particular not from having a mix of both in both infantry and armour tech tree. It comes solely from units not upgrading automatically any more.
      Let's look at AC+LT+MT+HT (but analysis for regInf+motInf+mechInf or for LT+MT+motInf+mechInf would be the same):
      * Either you're a player who likes to attack with close-combat ground units. Then in CoW1.5.2 you choose between LT and MT, maybe build both, but forget about AC and HT.
      * Or you're a player who prefers ranged attack with arty and who thus has no use for close-combat units with offensive focus. Then you possibly select AC, or HT, possibly both. But for sure never LT or MT.
      * Or you're one of those seldom players who prefer to have both ground close-combat units with defensive and offensive focus, so you have the right stack for each situation. With stack sizes of more or less precisely 10 that's hardly imaginable, but well, maybe for a few players in few constellations on large maps it might be the right choice. Then you still don't research and build all 4 of AC/LT/MT/HT. But either select AC and/or HT plus motorized infantry, or LT and/or MT plus a lot of reg. infantry / militia / AT / TD (there's never a big need for fast stacks with defensive focus).
      Do you see my point? Offering both defensive and offensive units in both infantry and armour tech tree doesn't make you choose a bigger selection amongst regInf, motInf, mechInf, AC, LT, MT and HT. Which we'd all like to see, because it's boring and less strategically challenging to have to pick just a few of these at the beginning and then not think about it any more - and because all major powers had all of these units in WW2, so why should a CoW player not be allowed to have all of them and still have a chance to win? That's why I so vehemently propose damage-malus per unit type.
      And def. focus for AC and off. focus for motorized infantry is just wrong. Yes, speed was useful for offenses. So I could live with motorized infantry being 1:1. But mot. infantry having offensive focus is neither authentic, nor helpful for anything else. And AC you think weren't used for offenses a lot? I'm sure they were. At least more than by defending parties. Sure, scouting missions were equally important for defender and attacker. But whenever an AC decided to make use of it's (limited) firepower, that was for attacking, not defending. (P.S.: As you said, speed was useful for attacks or counter-attacks :P .)