Call of War 1.5 iteration 3: Balancing changelog

The secret lab should only be for nuclear weapons and rockets

That's true of course. But with CoW1.5, Bytro added doctrines, which increased complexity. So in order not to let it become more complex than CoW1.0 and to make it playable also for little kids, everything else was simplified, unified and equalized.
It's one of these simplifications that all 6 production buildings have the same costs and same importance/relevance. Therefore all 6 research trees have to contain a similar number of units.
Consequently, even though moving railroad guns and rocket artillery to ordnance and possibly also rocket fighters to planes would make sense, it won't be done.

Which I can accept. It's one of the smallest violations against realism in CoW1.5.

Well spank me and call me sally, strategy games aren't for little kids there supposed to be for more mature and older teenagers, and if these units where shifted around in there correct tab it would barely make any difference in similar numbers as the secret tab has 8 functional units and the rest have 5 to 6, so if you move the rocket fighter to the air tab there would be seven units and if you move all the rocket artillery and railroad guns to the ordnance tab there would be 8 units so... that couldn't be done? also i don't get why there needs to be a similar numbers that just doesn't make any sense, nothing of this game makes sense the maps, nations, resources everything, it's pretty good idea tho i'm proud of it, sad it won't be a feature but what can i do

Tested CoW1.5.3 on 100player map.

Before looking at changes in detail, I want to compare it with CoW1.0 on a higher level:


Improved:
* Strategically and tactically it is more interesting, challenging and diverse... simply better in these two respects.
* Now in some situations it still makes sense to hyper-focus on a few units, while in others it is better to research and build a broad variety of units. Which is perfect. This not only contributes to above mentioned advanced strategic challenge, but also is exciting seen for itself.
* The number of unit production orders a player can and should give now is almost the same in early and late game. In other words, we got rid of the slow start as well as of the clicking orgy in late game. Although this hardly matters for my personal needs, it's clear that this is a big improvement for most players.


Well so far. But then, these areas are
debased:
(1) Realism is gone down the sink.
(2) Was already discussed (see --> this post <-- and --> this one <--), I add this only for completeness: Except for winning the map you're currently on, there's no goal any more. In CoW1.0 we could at least care for improving our K/D. That was not the perfect long-term motivation, but at least something that remained after winner of current map becomes clear. With doctrines and the very high unit power progression, K/D in CoW1.5 doesn't make sense any more. If fixing K/D is too difficult, implementing a ranking that shows how well players perform (like --> this one <--) would also do the job.
(3) The overall look and feel of the map has turned from a carefully designed model with precisely shaped details to an over-simplified and chunky Teletubby world for little kids. I'll come back to this in my analysis of changes in detail and explain why that is.


(1) and (2) are show stoppers for players like me, who hardly care about accessibility / facility of gameplay. So CoW1.5 still isn't something that I or players like me would like to play. Which is a pity, because with all the effort you put into CoW1.5, you could have turned CoW1.0 into a game that's extremely fascinating AND strategically challenging AND realistic AND has a goal AND doesn't have the very slow start and big flood of units in late game.

On the other hand, I'm quite sure that most players will prefer CoW1.5 over CoW1.0.

Can planes be upgraded if they're on carriers?

My three 1.5 games are moving along. Doesn't look like I'll win, but I'm still in every game and will be around at the end. I have to disagree with many posts here in that I feel 1.5 is just as fun to play as 1.0. I think the new stuff will take some time to get it right, but the positives far outweigh the negatives. As a starting point, 1.5 is already vastly superior to 1.0. Its time to leave 1.0 behind.

Strategy is still there. In fact there seem to be more strategic options (choices) avaialbe for all players at all leverls. There are a couple of suggestions or at least oberservations that may warrant design attention.

1. Upgrades- Adding more cost to upgrade units didn't add anything to game play. It did add to the cost of playing. At least if you want to win. Jury is not out on this. As cost prohibitive as it is to upgrade units, it is equally balanced so all players share in this strategic option. The only player with advantage here is the guy with the wallet...

2. This is hard to explain but the logos of the cities are so bold and large its difficult to see if there are troops in them at times. I've actualy been surprised by hidden armies behind these logos. Perhaps a more transparant logo on the cities will allow for better visibility of units inside.

3. We are all the tank spammers? I used to be able to count on about half the players spamming tanks all over the map. Havn't seen that in any of the three games I'm in.

Overall, great improvements that I think players will like once they get the hang of it.

Totally agreed. Just like you, I also disapprove CoW1.5 aiming at satisfying rather immature clientele.


Admittedly, my response hadn't been precise: You're right the number of units in the secret weapons research tab still wouldn't be smaller after moving one out (it now has 7, since rockets should be counted as one unit in this respect). But these units are or should be rather seldom, rather for special situations and not the backbone of your army. Rocket artillery currently can be seen very frequently, but that hopefully won't be the case with the next balancing update any more.
So moving a unit out of the secret weapons tree would break the principle of having all 6 production failities with similar importance. I'm not saying I want to keep equalizations like this in the game, but that you won't convince Bytro easily to drop them.

Totally disagree. Having to pay for upgrade of existing units is by far the best change done with CoW1.5. It opens the option to research and build a big number of different units instead of blindly having to hyper-focus on the few units you chose at the start. Thanks to this, each research and production decision in CoW1.5 is (as you noticed) difficult and interesting.
Secondly, it's the only aspect in which realism is improved compared to CoW1.0, since in real life units also didn't upgrade just like that and armies didn't consist of just a few unit types.

Just discovered what may be a fatal flaw for 1.5 for me. At day change, I had about 10 provinces revolt. Some killed my units, some changed sides. Quite random in nature; and nothing I can do to prevent it. Other than not conquer any territory. Who's the imbesille who asked for this?

That never ever happened to any degree like this in 1.0. Maybe 1 or 2 in a game would switch sides. This is quite crippling. And there is no strategy to stop something like this since it is random. This is bad. I wont play a game that cheats against me.

Revolts are a feature CoW has since many years. Only they hardly occurred for a few months due to a bug that was fixed for both CoW1.0 and CoW1.5 with --> this release <--.
You can place troops in the province center at day change to reduce the risk of an uprising. If the garrisoned army has a strength of 10.0 or more, the risk of an uprising in that province is down to 0%. Also if the province has 33% morale or better, there won't be any revolts.

However, in CoW1.5 it's a bit harder to deal with them, because the morale malus from distance to capital is higher than in CoW1.0. Provided a province in CoW1.5 far away from the capital has a neighbour from same country, it will forever have a risk to revolt unless you place troops in it or build infrastructure. Which is a bit too tough, probably.
In my opinion, the best way to smooth this out would be to reduce the morale required to reach 0% uprising risk from 33% to 31% morale. If that can be done easily.


This I rather wouldn't do. Strength of 10 is really easy to reach in CoW1.5 after the first days are over.

Thanks for playing 1.5 and sharing your opinions, Hans and Balhog!


Regarding revolts: The mechanics right now are not different from CoW1.0 to CoW1.5, so the same amount of provinces should revolt right now in both versions. As hans said, there was a bug that was fixed recently, so if you didnt play CoW1.0 in a while and came back to play CoW1.5, that would explain why you are surprised. There are only slight differences in both versions, like the amount of army strength needed to suppress a revolt. This value currently is actually higher than 10 for CoW1.5 and higher than 6 for CoW1.0 due to a bug, it's more around 16 for CoW1.0 for example, which is too much. In a future update we will lower the strength needed again to 10 for CoW1.5 and to 6 for CoW1.0, which should make it easier to suppress revolts. Plus, we will make the curve for needed strength more linear so it is easier to calculate yourself how much additional strength is needed.

Yes the distance to capital penalty is higher for far away provinces, but is also rises a bit slower. Plus you dont have any "at war" penalty anymore, which could amount to -25 as well. Morale boosting buildings (Infrastructure) are also built quicker in CoW1.5. So all in all I think morale management shouldn't be harder in CoW1.5. It may be a bit harder for far away provinces if you avoided any wars in CoW1.0, but for your core territory it is actually easier now to maintain good morale due to the removed war penalty.
Yes you can.

Here is where random switching sides gets very troublsome. One of my provinces that switched sides had an airport and 19 of my aircraft. Those aurcraft are grounded until I can get a troop there to take the place back. Probably about 6 hours game time. Had I been at war right now with a human player, with a front right there, which was very likely yesterday, my 19 grounded planes would have cost the battle and likely the game.

This is out of scale. As in any game when a human is playing against a human, the more you can remove random events from the game, the better the game. MHO of course. That's why Chess is the ultimate game. There is NO LUCK involved. I can attest to this, because I almost always lose...

Actually, even with a strength of 15 there's a possibility of rebellion. This is much higher than it ever was in the past. Also, the 60 point morale penalty for distance from capitol will eventually hit most of your territory if you keep expanding in the world map. I find that even if I take a capitol every day, I still can't keep these distant provinces from rebelling unless I keep troops stationed in all of them, or build at least a lvl 2 infra. This slows down the game considerably and makes it no fun. I'll stick to the smaller maps until they change this.

Here's the result of testing I've done, holding the morale constant at 25 (newly conquered)

Day change in another hour in both my 100 and 22 player games. I'm waiting to see if I get devastated once again on revolts in my 100 player game. There was another negative impact from yesterdays random AI play that affected me huge. As mentioned yesterday, the AI saw fit to take away a few of my provinces and give them to the #2 human player on the map. Whom, I was at peace with. When I tried to move my other units out of the area I somehow started a war with this player. I'm sorry but this is ridiculous. While some of the unit changes in 1.5 are cool, at least in the early game, there are some real problems with how the game plays. Fairness is even in question. I'll write another review after day change today for anyone who cares.

As I already mentioned in my preious post, the current strength value needed to suppress revolts is higher than intended due to a bug and it will get fixed in an upcoming update. Then the curve will also be linear.


Thanks for the feedback but as mentioned above the revolt mechanics are not really part of the CoW1.5 test, as the revolt mechanics are nearly the same between 1.0 and 1.5. There are already several forum threads discussing the revolts in general.

Well I got my butt kicked in the 100 player game. Not necessarily the result of random AI events. I made some errors as anybody who is learning a new game. While there are some aspects of 1.5 I enjoyed; the complexities and lack of control as a player are big negatives for me. Also, the disparity between using gold and not using gold may be worse than 1.5. I purposely didn't use any gold in this round because I wanted to compare to 1.0. While 1 game isn't definitive, it turns out, that even with a pretty strong coalition, we couldn't compete at all with the gold spenders.

In play it seems to me the one underlying impact of most changes is to increase game revenue, or from player perspective, increase the cost to play. I suppose you have to pay all the programmers and others who make it happen, but frankly, while the early game was interesting, the rapid dropout of players by the 3rd day made it pretty boring. The middle game was confusing and ... well I won't make it to the end game. In all, this game wasn't fun for me at all.

In the other game I'm in, it also has been very dull. As there are only a few actives left in the middle game. After several days of killing AI, I finally reached the border of an active player.

It is now day 16 on our 100 map, and more or less the map has been won. We have about 1500 VP to go and now our primary opponents are going AI. So I think it’s a good time for my next review. So far up to this point there hasn't been much to report on really. Most has already been discussed, or I have been testing in my game and now have more results on.


Just as a note, some things in this review have been discussed, but I will mention them again if they are imo important.


So far, 1.5 has been very enjoyable, there are many new features which are just great. Rss balancing (except MP) are very well done. I really like how each rss is balanced and has an equal production rate now. Troops also seem much more diverse and this will result in far more strategic options and choices which is great. The pace of the game certainly is faster, which for an active player like myself is also great. I will say tho the 30 min timers do make it challenging to fight late night battles. While in 1.0 I would have 50 min powernaps between shots during the night, 20-25 min powernaps don't quite have the same effect lol.


On the whole, 1.5v3 is a far superior imo to the other versions. Everything feels well balanced rss and troop wise and its very enjoyable to play. I have three current "issues"/ main areas of feedback to provide now.


1. Manpower, I know this has been discussed a lot.I will link an image below which I think sums it up very well. It is day 16 and currently MP is such a limiting factor I can't do a whole lot. Up to about day 8-10 it was difficult, but after day 10 the limit of MP has turned the game into a slower slog feel. Seeing my rss rise without being able to use them is not an enjoyable feeling. And while yes, we can (and I have a lot) use those rss to build more ind buildings, the amount of excess rss I have even after building them is a large amount and for me, cash limits it further. But additionally, it feels somewhat redundant to build up our rss through ind when we cannot use those rss. While yes it does also increase our MP, as a player it is not enjoyable to have 50k+ rss and 1k MP meaning even if I do increase my rss, as MP is still so limiting I cannot really use these rss as much anyway. Imo MP should be limiting, but after give or take up to day 10, it shouldn't be much of a worry if you are in the top 3 players. I can only guess how limiting it would be for smaller players.Research. Now I am playing the axis doctrine which has more expensive troops, and no research benefits so I do have to keep this in mind. But imo all players should be able to research a strong base of troops, and then allies get the bonus of researching another branch of troops. Rather than all players being super limited by it, and allies simply less so/how all players should be.


2. Research is a core aspect of the game, doctrines should imo add a bonus, not change how the game is played fundamentally with the current rss productions.



As I said above, rss being evenly spread and produced I think is great, as long as we can use these troops. I initially attempted to use a balanced army approach. In this I planned to have two main stack types.


One with infantry, arty, AT, AA, RA, and motor inf. This stack was to use up my food and goods production as otherwise there is limited use for these rss. They would be more of a reserve/slower moving force to follow behind my faster armoured stacks


My second stacks would consist of SPA, SPRA, SPAA, TD, MI (motor inf) and these troops would use up my metal and oil production and some rares. Thus giving a perfectly balanced rss approach to my army… in theory.


In reality it resulted in two groups (groups of multiple stacks) of under developed, under research and under staffed armies. Quickly I will note the limited MP production certainly meant these armies where under staffed and not built up as much as my rss would allow. So with MP not being a limiting factor they would have performed better. BUT, the MP was not imo the core issue. Having this many troops meant they all where very much under researched. Some troops still being at lvl 1 to ensure I could research them all. At the same time I was also researching my navy, but tanks, not majority of the infantry not majority of the secret branches and no aircrafts. Thus I was planning on using about: 33% of infantry, 100% of ordinance, 20% of tanks (TDs) 0 air, 70% of navy and about 30% of secret troops. I was totally unable to research this amount and upgrade troops every 2-3 levels. While I planned to use those amounts, in reality I maybe researched half or 40% of that. This resulted in my stacks when I fought asia being under developed and researched. As you would have seen Freezy I struggled very hard advancing in Asia. My stacks could not fight the enemy who focused on less troops but kept them stronger. More of a 1.0 approach of perhaps a focus on 6 troops and only producing these. In comparison, Libya used a more 1.0 approach with only armoured stacks and a smaller range of troops and wiped through europe and asia very fast and successfully.


I do not believe the goal of 1.5 is to have players only use about 6-8 troops and not use others due to research limitations. After about 3 days in Asia and trying to successfully use this approach of all unit types, I gave up and ditched the unarmoured troops. This resulted in a faster capture of asia and was far more successful as I researched and upgrades these troops. Unfortunately I now have a HUGE surplus of goods and food as apart from infrastructure I have nothing to spend these rss on. This imo does not fit with the unit diversity approach of 1.5 as we cannot research up enough troops. While there certainly does need to be a balance between being able to research everything, I strongly believe we need the ability to research more. While currently imo it is more effective to research less troops, and based on our spy reports this is how you built your army in North Argentina, I personally think we should be able to research more to ensure we can actually use all our rss, and because 1.5 has the focus on unit diversity and using all troops.

Perhaps if there was some method of having lower day troops being able to be researched faster? For example, on day 20, if you tried to research something that unlocked on day 10, it would take less time.

Alternatively, perhaps a method to speed up research with rss. Perhaps 5x the research cost instantly researches it. Or halves the time? (This research cost would need to be high enough so that if I purchased the rss with gold, and used these rss to instantly/speed up research it would cost more gold in total to ensure gold research speed ups are not useless).


3. Moral, now this for me is far less of a concern. I do have an idea how to improve it. No moral war penalty is great. But, -60 is almost as painful in far off territories. And I don't think it is super feasible to build infra in every province. - assuming research is balanced. Otherwise it totally could be as for my style of faster troops, I am now not using much food or goods as mention above.


To improve this, perhaps the friendly neighbour bonus could be increased from +2 to +5 or +10. This would mean one province with the +20 infra would give other provinces more of a bonus and provide an increased incentive to build infra. As without it there will be no bonus. But with infra, it will provide a moral boost to its neighbours. I think this would solve the issue of far off lands having too low moral. And even provide more of an incentive to build infra. I personally think if research is reduced we will not have as much available foods and goods for infra. So it would not be feasible to simply build them in every province. But if perhaps we built infra in every city province. What ever + amount is used it also imo should occur at around 60-70% moral or what ever can be achieved with the -40 moral (-60+20 with distance and infra).

If players do not build infra, they will have the same issues they do now. But if infra is strategically built 1-3 provinces apart, the neighbour bonus would provide enough moral boost to make the provinces at a good level. I believe this would encourage infra to be built, increase strategic decisions for where to build it and potentially solve the moral issues of far off lands. Many players I have seen commenting on that the -60 penalty is too severe. While I believe alone it certainly is. With this idea it could be solved. I do not think it is feasible to build infra in every province, and the friendly neighbour bonus currently is only +2 and at 80% moral there is no bonus. In fact 80% gives a minus 1 penalty. This would not really impact core lands as they already have 100% moral. This change would mean the transition between lands would be more gradual, which I feel makes sense. And mean that strategic building of infra more viable and if anything more important as infra not only impacts one province, but provides a stronger bonus to the 'ring' around it.




Overall, currently my 1.5 experience has been very enjoyable. MP has been a significant issue and has slowed the pace of the game greatly. While all troops are better balanced, I do not feel that with the current research times we can successfully build enough troops to use these balanced rss amounts.

Thanks

For Torpedo's above post, I can summarize into these points:

1. Manpower is a big problem and needs some balancing.
2. Research needs some improvement for diversification.
3. Neighbor morale bonus can be increased, but not necessary.

Everything other than that is great and working well.

Hope my summary is accurate, makes sense, and helps any who's too lazy to read Torpedo's post!

Thanks for the detailed feedback again Torp!

We will adress some of the concerns in the next balancing version (coming soon). Would be great if you could play the next version as well and get back to me how the resource situation is in mid to end game in that version.