New Features in CoW 1.5

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    • New Features in CoW 1.5


      New Features in CoW 1.5

      Attention, generals!

      Our next test phase of Call of War 1.5 is starting on May 25th 2020. We already told you about Doctrines, Attack Bombers and Rocket Artilleries last week, but there is so much more!

      Runtime
      Let’s start with how long we plan on keeping this test phase running for. You might have noticed that we did not call it an ‘event’, like we did with previous iterations of Call of War 1.5. That is because we are confident enough to have Call of War 1.5 run longer than ever before. This test phase has an open end. You will be able to sign up for new game rounds not only this weekend, but also the week after, the following weekend and the week after that etc…

      More Maps
      So far all our Call of War 1.5 tests were done on the 22 player “Clash of Nations” map. This time we want to scale things up a bit. We took the time to make the beloved 100 player “World at War” map Call of War 1.5 ready! This classic map will be available during the test as well. During the Call of War 1.5 test phase there will be a CoW 1.5 version and a CoW 1.0 versions of both maps available to players. The 100 player map also features all four of the new Doctrines on one map, so don’t miss out on the fun! We are already working on other maps to get them ready for Call of War 1.5, so more maps are coming soon!

      Paratroopers
      With Call of War 1.5 paratroopers get a feature the community has been asking for, a ‘convert feature’. This new feature allows generals to have their paratroopers board a plane again, after they got deployed. The ‘convert feature’ converts the paratrooper from an infantry back to a plane. This can be done anywhere on the map, but we highly recommend to do it in a province with an airstrip. Converting a Paratrooper will cost time and money. This makes paratroopers much more flexible and a force to be reckoned with on the battlefield!

      Game Ending Timer
      All Call of War 1.5 game rounds have a maximum run time, the same way events have them. When the time is up, the player or coalition with the most points wins the game round. Game ending timers prevent long running games with a low amount of active players from continuing, to avoid straining our game servers. For now, smaller maps will run 5 weeks, medium sized maps will run 7 weeks and large maps will run 10 weeks, if not won earlier. With the implementation of the end game timer only system generated maps will be affected. However, user generated maps will receive a game ending timer at a later stage as well.

      Interface changes
      The new test phase of Call of War 1.5 also brings an overhaul of the user interface to allow the new Doctrines being highlighted in various menus throughout the game. You will notice that with the new interface historical unit names are featured more prominently in the production menu and in the unit details panel. With the new interface we also disabled production and rally point buttons for rural provinces, as production is limited to urban provinces in Call of War 1.5. This significant change in Call of War 1.5 is also reflected when toggling through provinces in a game round. You now switch from urban provinces to other urban provinces and from rural provinces to other rural provinces.

      Balancing changes
      Last but not least, there are a lot of balancing changes in this latest version of Call of War 1.5! Like in the past, these balancing changes are heavily influenced by the community feedback we received in the last test event. We will focus on the main changes in this article, but you can find a more detailed list with all changes in the forums.

      • Research does not cost manpower anymore. We replaced previous manpower costs by normal resources costs, specific to each unit.
      • We rebalanced resources in general to alleviate resource constraints players experienced especially in the early stages of our last test event.
      • The stack limit at which additional units do not add any more damage to an army is lowered from 15 to 10 units.
      • Upgrading costs were reduced from 100% to 50% of the target level price.
      • We added a new “Local Port” building, that allows units to embark or disembark faster in rural provinces.
      Apart from these big changes we did a lot of fine grained balancing changes to individual units related to the community feedback, the new Doctrines and the new units in the game. Check out the forum post containing all the details. Let us know what you think there and share your experiences over the next couple of weeks while you play Call of War 1.5. We are eager to hear from you!



      Your Bytro Team


      Discord: Call of War
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    • THEARBITER117 wrote:

      Everything is good except for the forced time limit, there shouldn't be one in the future for user generated content come on...
      There should be one for several reasons:

      First off most normal game rounds end way before the time limit. For example nearly all 1.5 rounds in the last test events finished before the 28 days timer ended. Now we give even more time than that, so normal rounds should have enough time to be ended.

      But sadly there are also a few game rounds from time to time which go on for a very long time and which players dont want to end. In those games large amounts of troops are amassed and lots of AI calculations take place because usually only ~3 active players are left in those rounds. This strains our servers unnecesserarily and we think that offering such sandboxes to a few amount of players to the detriment of most other players is not worth it.
      We rather want players playing together with the rest of the CoW community and regularly start new rounds than playing their own private rounds for years, which basically just creates costs and lag to say it bluntly.

      But we will for sure monitor how many games end before the timer ends and how many don't, and then we can make adjustments to the timer length.
    • gusv wrote:

      THEARBITER117 wrote:

      Everything is good except for the forced time limi
      I wonder if he means that his game is bombing out after about 15 minutes on-line, as it's been happening to me the last 48 hours ... Thus I have to re-start or re-load to get back in the game ... Could it be an enhanced graphics issue? ... :(
      We are not aware of such an issue. Please try the usual troubleshooting steps and if it does not help, please contact support.

      VIRVCOBRV wrote:

      So how exactly does paras reembarking work ? Can they start reembarking immediately after jumpring or does the deoplyment timer first have to deplete for them to be able to reembark ?
      They can be converted back to a plane after the mobilization timer ended. Converting also has a timer of its own. So it is not an immediate thing for balancing reasons.

      Drakan wrote:

      About Doctrines, if I choose one type (Allies) and my friend another type (pan-asian), can we continue play as allys in the same map or its not possible, and be at same coalition?
      Yes you can ally with players of different Doctrines, and you can also be enemies with players of the same Doctrine.

      CoW1.5 round are available now btw, check them out in the games list!
    • Playing Egypt in a 100 map, the new local port is going to be interesting to see how effective it will be for reducing crossing times into the ME, I believe this will be quite a niche but great addition. Thanks! :)
      Torpedo28000
      Main Administrator
      EN Support Team | Bytro Labs Gmbh
    • I am playing my first round of 1.5 and I am not sure if I like it that much more than 1.0.
      The resource balancing seems good enough, but the fact that "rare" material is now used so commonly, seems wrong. Having certain countries that have more of one type and less of another is one of the challenges I enjoyed in the game. It would determine at what stage in the game you had to prepare for most... early....middle....or late.
      “Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.”
      Sun Tzu, The Art of War

      GMTPERSONALIZED
    • I think that a new building - Supply Center - would be a good idea. This would allow for cheaper (or free) upgrades to the next level. After staying in the city with this building, it would automatically start upgrading the unit (it would increase only one type of unit). To reach the next level, you must be in this province, for example, as long as the upgrade in local provinces is in progress.
      Of course, this would not replace the upgrade that is currently there. Why would the promotion price be lower? Because of this you have to step back from the front line. There should also be a limit for such a building. For example, if you have >100 victory points, you can build one such object. If >200 you can build such two.However, if you have 2 Centers, but you lose points and have less than 199, nothing happens. Only you can't build more of them

      +

      There should be one additional bonus to the axis and the comintern. Because he makes them the worst doctrines to play
    • Gen. John J.Pershing wrote:

      I am playing my first round of 1.5 and I am not sure if I like it that much more than 1.0.
      The resource balancing seems good enough, but the fact that "rare" material is now used so commonly, seems wrong. Having certain countries that have more of one type and less of another is one of the challenges I enjoyed in the game. It would determine at what stage in the game you had to prepare for most... early....middle....or late.
      Thanks for the feedback.

      Rare materials are only abundant in the early game because alot of units that require rare materials unlock in the mid and late game. We may tackle this with the next rebalancing.

      It is still the case that each country produces a little bit different resources, it is just not as different anymore as in 1.0. In 1.5 each country has varying amounts of resource types in their rural provinces.
    • I have played the 1.5 events and...the most I can say is it’s enjoyable. I did like it, until I figured out why. It’s simple, at least to me, but more importantly it’s just a combination of Conflict of Nations and Supremacy 1 set in WW2 so it could still be called Call of War.

      Urban focus? Removes the distinction between CoW and CoN. The Industrial Complex is a mechanic that makes Call of War recognisable to me, whether from having to repair damaged lvl 1 ICs or being able to build it in certain provinces to maximise production. It’s a defining feature, in S1 you can build production buildings anywhere and in CoN you have the cities with its urban focus. CoW has the IC, you can build it anywhere and that’s more resource production and another place for unit production, but it’ll cost you valuable Rare Materials.

      Speaking of Rare Materials, having every resource needed for anything but in varying quantities removes the distinction between CoW and S1. The individual resource loses value when it’s pretty much the same as the others. Even S1 has some sort of specialisation for resources, Food and Fabric for unarmoured, Tools and Supplies for Light Armour, Metal and Chemicals for Heavy Armour, Fabric and Chemicals for Air and Tools, Metal and Supplies for Naval. The generalisation of resources removes an avenue of strategy, you can’t take away opponents’ strategic ability effectively in CoW 1.5 unless it’s a mad dash towards the cities, where good players will focus their defences. But this is the Urban Focus. What I mean by “take away opponents’ strategic ability” is the seizing of provinces with resources that the opponent needs for their war effort against you. For example, focus on their oil provinces and cities to attempt to limit how Mechanised, how many units in what was the Armour class, their defense can be. Take away their food provinces and their army will starve. Take out the ICs and their sources of reinforcements are gone. This, however, requires the specialised resources of CoW 1.

      One last smaller issue, the 1.5 system of production buildings, where to train a unit you only have to research it and upgrading the production building only increases production speed wouldn’t fit in CoW 1, but this is a small one since it’s in CoW 1.5. Personally I prefer the CoW 1 version because to upgrades production speed, it’s upgrade the barracks, which would cost you higher food upkeep, or upgrade the IC, something you can only do when you have peace or when you don’t need to upgrade the production buildings to gain access to certain units.

      There are some other issues, ranging from not enough money given at the beginning of rounds and the meta is completely broken with some units making others obsolete, but these are all just parts of updates and they don’t need much fixing. Players just need to adapt.

      There are some good things in CoW 1.5, the research tree is wonderful after you cleaned it up, more neat, organised, tidy and more nice to look at. The upgrading Mechanic is very good in my opinion, provides more opportunities for strategy. Some examples I can think of include sending in your best units attempting a killing blow, sacrificing your worse units to let your better units escape or using your best units to hold the line while your worse units upgrade and then relieve the units holding the line. Also, any Bytro staff reading this please add the upgrade Mechanic to Supremacy 1. Speaking of S1, its in game timer keeps me invested in the game, and since the games worth playing end before the time runs out, I have no arguments with the timer. The Paras really needed that reconversion. Pretty much useless in CoW without it.

      Now I apologise if I was impolite and I mean to give this feedback respectfully but that’s the blunt truth as I see it. I respect your position as game developer and recognise that this is your game, and you are free to do as you’d like with it. I actually do enjoy Call of War 1.5, but I would not like to have Call of War 1.5 replace Call of War 1.

      Some people have suggested you make a new game for Call of War 1.5 and leave Call of War for Call of War 1. I don’t know about the logistics of making another game, but I imagine it’s expensive and would take a lot of effort. Instead, I propose making half the Call of War games run on CoW 1 and the other half CoW 1.5 and then change the 1.5 ones to Call of War 2 or whatever it will be. In fact, I’d like to see the new units, Paratrooper reconversion and upgrade Mechanic, the refurbished research tree and the round timer added to Call of War 1

      Whatever the case, I understand this may not have been the most respectful and polite feedback, and I sincerely apologise, but I am appealing to you, player to developer, please do not destroy Call of War 1. You are free to create Call of War 1.5, 2 or any other updates or overhauls, but please keep some, preferably half, rounds running on Call of War 1

      thank you for reading,
      Echo
    • I'm in two 1.5 games currently. In a 22 player map, it is day 4 and there are 7 players left. Not good. On the play of the game. It is ok. Don't really like the new strike bomber. It added complexity and expense to the player without much benefit. It may be good; just haven't tried it much yet. I like the way you centralized resources and production in city provinces. That is more realistic and much easier to manage. As to whether1.5 is an improvement... I'd say it has added additional bells and whistles; however, the main opportunities to improve the game are still not being addressed.

      My advice is to pick which version you want to run with and stop tweeking the game. Instead start solving some of the broader issues that make it difficult for players to be a part of the game. I'll list a couple of them again for you here:

      1. Very few players who start these roundsare serious enough to play a whole game. So, as stated in several posts, we end up with easy wins against AI players. Suggestion: Create Pay to Play Games where serious players can play against serious players; and where the element of GOLD is not the driving force for victory. I believe there is a demand for this. A Pay to Play game can balance the game play by setting and capping the amount of gold in a round; while ensuring and protecting (probably expanding) your revenue stream. .

      2. Fix the communication problem with Alliances. Your potential long term customers are the ones who join; or try to join alliances. What we find is a convoluted disjointed system in which players can't hardly even communicate at all, let alone set up games easily.
    • Interesting. I like the graphics. Learning to develop took me a 2nd try. My first join I butchered it badly, but the 2nd game is going better. I missed the need to build the specialized first and then improve the industries later in the first game, and as a result couldn't build anything I researched.

      I am looking forward to my first Attack Bomber, looking through the stats I realized it's heavy armor piercing ability makes it a ship attack plane as well. Nice to have something with longer range then a NAV even if it does not have quite the same strength. This should be a great addition to the naval game having something that can stop a tank or a ship. Looking forward to the day I stick one on an aircraft carrier.

      The game does seem a bit sluggish, perhaps because I am on the 100 player map.

      I need to find the write up, but I am not seeing building upkeep, only unit upkeep. Building upkeep went away?
      "A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week." - General George S. Patton, Jr.

      "Do, or do not. There is no try" - Yoda