CoW 1.5 balancing changelog June 2020

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  • Some more words about centralization to cities: You wrote it's supposed to
    1.: Make battles evolve around neuralgic spots. Doesn't really work out, in my observation. Even if it did: Why should that be better than battles along a front? I like battles along a front better, because that's more realistic for WW2 times.
    2.: Prevent endless scrolling in province list if wanting to give production orders. This was hardly an issue in CoW1.0... partly because I'm sure most players don't give their production orders in the province list anyway. Secondly, if you do that, you'd sort it by the respective production facility anyway. That would work the same, also if barracks can be built in rural provinces. All in all I really don't find the province list better laid out or easier to handle than in CoW1.0. The centralization to cities helped nothing with that.
    3.: Make maps less uninflected by highlighting some provinces. Maybe I can understand that a bit. I agree cities should be more important than rural provinces. But for that, it would be enough to give them higher money, manpower and (optionally) goods production. Also restricting ordnance, armour, planes, secret weapons and sea unit production to cities OK. But not so giving them higher food, oil and rares production and restricting infantry recruitment to cities. That's an unnecessary exaggeration. Sure, you don't want barracks outside cities so all six units branches are fully synchronous and thus easy to balance out. But do players also want that? I don't. I don't even want all unit branches to be equally important. Cause that's not realistic and not interesting.

    Bottom line we've now tried the extreme, over-exaggerated centralization to cities. It feels just as bad as expected from the start. So now I'd say it's time to paddle back in that regard.
    One more argument, although already mentioned by several concerned players after 1.5.2: The exorbitant importance of cities makes players more vulnerable to sneaky surprise attacks. One city lost for a minute and you won't recover. That's not positive at all!

    Please at least reduce the gap between urban and rural resource production (except money and manpower). You can still keep it the way that industry in cities has a quicker return on investment than in rural provinces - which is a good feature, cause it creates a nice trade-off decision between either raising production buildings or industry in core cities... you want to do both, but can't do both at the same time. For that you don't need resource production 4 times as high in cities.
    Following suggestion as easiest step in the right direction:
    * Reduce cities food, goods, metal, oil and rares production to 66% of what it is now (12.000 to 8.000 if optimized).
    * Reduce costs of industry in cities to about 70% of what it is now.
    * Increase rural provinces food, goods, metal, oil and rares production to 150% of what it is now.
    * Decrease money income of rural resource-provinces to 40% of what it is now.
    * Increase money income of non-resource provinces to 200% of what it is now.
    * Increase costs of local industry to about 133% of what it is now.
    * Convert one non-resource province per country to a resource-province. Choose the resource this country so far doesn't have (otherwise resource differences between countries would become too big).

    => Result: Overall amount of resources and money in the game would remain as good as the same. But the terrible resource centralization would be softened very much.
  • Today's bugs (reported under bug reports):
    1) I received a supply drop in a coalition partners province
    2) Set a trade for the supply drop province and when I implemented the trade, no menu pop up of what was received if anything for the supply drop. I even posted a unit there in case a unit in the province was required.
    3) A tank landing on Pago Pago was apparently caught by my sub, but now the tank is on land and beating the hell out of my sub, which is not allowed to run away???????? Something is really messed up here. Please explain if this is supposed to happen.
    "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
  • OK, I think I found my answer:

    This is a Medium tank. The last attack factor is versus subs. (1.0)
    Attributes
    Strength against armor class
    Attacking4.56.53.52.01.01.0
    Defending3.04.32.30.5


    As my sub is dying I have to assume the tank is getting the 1.0 attack factor.

    Here is my sub: ( I believe the third box "blank" is the medium tank)
    Attributes
    Strength against armor class
    Attacking6.02.5
    Defending1.06.02.5


    Therefore, if you see a medium tank disembarking do not attack it, because it will continue to disembark while attacked and once on land your sub is toast, as the tank will go on the attack where combat odds are 1.0 tank versus 0 sub.

    This never worked this way in the past that I ever ran across.
    "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
  • Peter Mat wrote:

    Today's bugs (reported under bug reports):
    1) I received a supply drop in a coalition partners province
    2) Set a trade for the supply drop province and when I implemented the trade, no menu pop up of what was received if anything for the supply drop. I even posted a unit there in case a unit in the province was required.


    3) A tank landing on Pago Pago was apparently caught by my sub, but now the tank is on land and beating the hell out of my sub, which is not allowed to run away???????? Something is really messed up here. Please explain if this is supposed to happen.


    1). while supply drops are not intended to appear in allied provinces there is the occasional possibility that this happens due to capture of the province after the supply drop is scheduled.

    2). Capturing a supply drop requires capturing the province in combat. Trading for the province does not activate the supply drop.

    3). Combat is intended to continue in most cases. Naturally submarines are not very effective against land units. To prevent this in the future be sure to place the sub far enough offshore that the unit cannot disembark.
    War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can't smile, grin. If you can't grin keep out of the way til you can. - Winston Churchill



    VorlonFCW
    Retired from Bytro staff as of November 30, 2020.

    >>> Click Here to submit a bug report or support ticket <<<
  • @VorlonFCW
    Thank you, I may not like it, but at least I understand it better. I always thought disembarking stopped when combat commenced (as it is movement), but based on what I saw and you are saying, that is not the case.
    "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
  • I also don't like it that the battle doesn't stop the moment the ground unit has disembarked. Vague memory says it's been like that some time ago, but I'm not sure about this.
    Anyhow even if it was, this probably cannot be changed back without other negative effects.

    The issue is that intuitively, before running into this trap the first time, players of course think it's a good idea to attack a ground unit that's currently disembarking with a sub. While in fact, currently it only is beneficial if the sub manages to destroy the ground unit before it has finished disembarking.

    However, with next release, subs will most probably get a small damage value against ground units. So assumably from then on, it's also good to attack disembarking ground units if the sub heavily damages them before they finish the landing. Which I guess will turn out to be alright, but we'll have to see...
  • Paratroopers?
    I landed a paratrooper at an ROW airbase, and did not check the unit stationed there that happened to belong to a third AI that I was declaring war on (they had an ROW also. Both AI's had been in our coalition but went inactive.) Now my paratrooper is on the ground and caught in combat, but is fighting as a plane. In some future update, is it possible to either have the unit automatically convert to a grounded infantry as if it had jumped, or give us a conversion option from air ready to grounded?
    "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
  • Peter Mat wrote:

    Paratroopers?
    I landed a paratrooper at an ROW airbase, and did not check the unit stationed there that happened to belong to a third AI that I was declaring war on (they had an ROW also. Both AI's had been in our coalition but went inactive.) Now my paratrooper is on the ground and caught in combat, but is fighting as a plane. In some future update, is it possible to either have the unit automatically convert to a grounded infantry as if it had jumped, or give us a conversion option from air ready to grounded?
    Codewise not that easy to do due to alot of edge cases and intertwined mechanics. Would be certainly nice to fix, but because of the difficulty of the fix and the rare occurence of this situation it is rather low priority.
  • freezy wrote:

    Codewise not that easy to do due to alot of edge cases and intertwined mechanics. Would be certainly nice to fix, but because of the difficulty of the fix and the rare occurence of this situation it is rather low priority.
    A player button for manual conversion might be a lot easier to implement and be a applicable to a lot more situations.
    "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
  • Peter Mat wrote:

    freezy wrote:

    Codewise not that easy to do due to alot of edge cases and intertwined mechanics. Would be certainly nice to fix, but because of the difficulty of the fix and the rare occurence of this situation it is rather low priority.
    A player button for manual conversion might be a lot easier to implement and be a applicable to a lot more situations.
    We could probably easily add a manual convert button additionally as the feature exists already, but converting does not happen while a unit is in combat (will convert after combat is over) and this is also a mechanic that we won't change. So if you didnt spot your paratrooper being attacked before the attack started, the convert button would not have helped you.

    I actually have another use case in mind that speaks more in favor of adding this: Sometimes you may want to move some paratroopers into one of your own provinces that soon will be attacked, such a button would allow you to increase your garrison before the attack started, without the need to drop the paratroopers onto the enemy directly. Will discuss this proposal in the team.
  • BALANCES DESTROYERS VS SUBS

    In the new balances the destroyers equal the subs in their match up so the
    Destroyers are say 5.9 vs subs and the subs are 5.9 vs surfaces/

    This is not a good match up, at the least the Destroyers should be 20% higher against the subs. When you are equal it does nothing to counter the spawning of mass amounts of subs since the sub stealth is so much work more than the destroyers and the costs for the destroyers is more.

    I therefore appeal for a change to increase destroyers vs subs by 20 to 33% over the base of the subs. Subs should not want to think that they are a 50 50 chance vs a destroyer.
  • Economic balance in new players.. change needed

    Comparing the new player economy in the Beta tests what you see is a 50% increase in the month production of the new players. Now while it is a good idea to give new players a boost, you should do so in such a manner that does not make them more of a target for the Veteran players.

    When you boost their provinces base production it makes them a real ripe fruit for picking.

    Instead I would suggest that you either
    a. increase the stockpiles
    or
    b. increase by a lot the rewards for doing things like building troops and facilities.
  • EZ Dolittle wrote:

    BALANCES DESTROYERS VS SUBS

    In the new balances the destroyers equal the subs in their match up so the
    Destroyers are say 5.9 vs subs and the subs are 5.9 vs surfaces/

    This is not a good match up, at the least the Destroyers should be 20% higher against the subs. When you are equal it does nothing to counter the spawning of mass amounts of subs since the sub stealth is so much work more than the destroyers and the costs for the destroyers is more.

    I therefore appeal for a change to increase destroyers vs subs by 20 to 33% over the base of the subs. Subs should not want to think that they are a 50 50 chance vs a destroyer.
    I'm not sure this is out of balance as the unit convoy has a greater factor versus subs then they used to. In 1.0 I remember attacking un-escorted convoys with no harm to my subs and now I am receiving significant damage. Throw a destroyer into the mix and the sub is playing with fire. Unless your going to make a sub pack it is dangerous for the sub to attack much in 1.5. They are still great scouts and a threat to un-escorted convoys, but the subs seem to take a lot more damage in 1.5 after hitting convoys.
    "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