CoW balancing changelog - 2020-07-14

    This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse this site, you are agreeing to our Cookie Policy.

    • CoW balancing changelog - 2020-07-14

      Greetings Generals,

      please take a moment to read the following list of balancing changes. Unless stated otherwise these changes are only available in new game rounds of Call of War 1.5, which are created after this update. This guarantees that most ongoing military operations or strategies in older rounds are not influenced.

      There are also some changes which affect CoW 1.5 and even CoW 1.0 game rounds started before this update, such changes are marked accordingly in the list.


      These changes only affect CoW1.5 games created after the update:

      Doctrines:

      These changes intend to make the doctrines better balanced.
      • Allies
        • Decreased the general buff for reduced research costs and times from 30% to 25%
        • Added buff for reduced unit upgrade costs and times of 20%
      • Comintern
        • Increased the general buff for reduced upkeep costs from 20% to 25%

      Buildings:

      These changes intend to make higher level fortifications more worthwhile and to give additional means to improve province morale via Infrastructure.
      • Fortifications and Bunkers: Now hide units beginning on level 3.
      • Infrastructure:
        • changed province morale gain from 5%/12%/20% to 8%/18%/30%
        • Increased costs slightly to make up for the increased effectiveness

      Units:

      Stealth overhaul:

      These changes intend to make the stealth & scout gameplay deeper, by providing additional opportunities to set traps and ambushes, and by also making the revealing of land and sea based stealth units more logical.
      • Stealth:
        • Militia: Is now hidden in forest, hills, mountain and urban terrain.
        • Paratrooper (Infantry): Is now hidden in forest and hills.
        • Anti Tank: Is now hidden in forest, hills and urban terrain.
        • Tank Destroyer: Is now hidden in forest and hills.
        • Submarine: Keeps its current stealth capabilities.
        • Commandos: Keeps its current stealth capabilities.

      • Scout:
        • Armored Car: Now reveals hidden units already on level 1, but doesn’t reveal Submarines anymore. Can now also reveal troops hidden inside higher level fortifications/bunkers.
        • Motorized Infantry: Now reveals hidden units already on level 1, but doesn’t reveal Submarines anymore. Can now also reveal troops hidden inside higher level fortifications/bunkers.
        • Naval Bomber: Does not reveal hidden land units anymore.
        • Interceptor: Does not reveal Submarines anymore. Can now also reveal troops hidden inside higher level fortifications/bunkers.
        • Destroyer: Now reveals Submarines.
      General unit balancing:

      These changes intend to improve some slight unit imbalances. They also adress changed unit capabilities due to reworked stealth and scout features.
      • Tank Destroyer: Increased costs slightly. Lowered terrain bonus in Plains from 50% to 25% and added terrain bonus in forests and hills of 25%.
      • Militia: Increased costs slightly.
      • Submarine: Increased damage slightly and decreased costs slightly. Also added small damage values vs. land units to prevent nearly endless battles in some rare occasions.
      • Destroyer: Decreased its view range by ~30%. Decreased damage vs. Submarines slightly and increased costs slightly.
      • Aircraft Carrier: Added small damage values vs. land units to prevent nearly endless battles in some rare occasions.
      • Aircraft Transport: Removed damage values against ships and submarines as workaround for a particular bug where airplane transports appear on sea.
      • Interceptor: Slightly decreased damage vs. ground units.
      • Railroad Gun: Decreased damage and hitpoints slightly.


      Mechanics:

      These changes intend to give more value to morale management by adding build time modifiers based on province morale. They also intend to make morale management more consistent, which was too easy in core provinces and sometimes too hard in far-off provinces. We also made adjustments to the revolt threshold to better line up with player expectations. Additionally we slightly shortened the amount of Victory Points needed to win in order to shorten the long drag at the end of game rounds when they are basically already decided.
      • Decrease maximum capital distance morale penalty from -60 to -30
      • Added Expansion factor morale penalty:
        • Starting at 0 penalty when conquering provinces that amount to 1 nation (slight variations depending on the map size), goes up to -35 penalty when owning ~45% of all provinces on the map.
      • Added morale based production & construction times:
        • With lowering province morale also build times of units and buildings increase. Value examples:
        • Starts at +0% when below 80% morale
        • Maximizes at +900% when at 0% morale
        • Is at +162% when at 25% morale
      • Lowered victory thresholds:
        • 65% for coalition & team win instead of 70%
        • 45% for solo win instead of 51% (if more than 1 player reaches it, the player with more points wins)
      These changes apply to both CoW1.0 and CoW1.5, for old and new rounds:
      • Reduced army strength needed to suppress a revolt:
        • CoW1.5: For a province with 25% morale an army strength of 10 is needed to suppress the revolt completely (was unintentionally higher before)
        • CoW1.0: For a province with 25% morale an army strength of 6 is needed to suppress the revolt completely (was unintentionally higher before)
      • Reduced revolt chances:
        • A province at 25% morale with no garrison troops now has a 19% chance to revolt instead of 24%.
        • A province now only has a revolt chance when its morale is lower than 31% instead of 33%AI now starts to act earlier in "starts when full" Event games


      Interface:
      This change applies to all CoW1.5 rounds (old and new):
      • Added an info button to the army bar on desktop and mobile. By clicking it you can open a popup that provides alot of useful information on the army size limit, on the army's damage potential and damage efficiency (including current damage values), damage distribution and protection. Check it out if you want to know how much damage your army may do or receive!
      Discord: Call of War
      Facebook: Call of War
      Twitter: Call of War
    • shouldnt have been implemented for games already running, alliance game been turned on its head by this..... because im asleep when it dropped they headed straight to my capital. By time i awake my caps been taken n im having to deal with morale issues all over the place... fucking joke... i get starting a game with new rules but changing em halfway through a game is ridiculous... way im setup this has become very detrimental and if id started game with these rules i would have taken a different approach
    • but comitern is just less resources needed and comitern natio s rarely make it to the top few of the gme..before the update ally was my favourite doctrine, now it is jut OP. you have low reserach times and resources, low production times and resources. the is a only a 10% speed decrease, which isnt much compsred to 4 20% to 30% reductions
    • I didnt see Any ally nations on top on my games, by contrary the only place where they survived Is in Norteamérica and only because there are only Alied doctrine nations, also upgrading your units are not that great.

      comintern it's great because they dont get Manpower shortages, for this reason they can upgrade they units More often and spam More units to compensate the lack of damage.
      "Si crees que esto tendrá un final feliz, es que no has estado prestando atención"
    • d.jahnsen wrote:

      I didnt see Any ally nations on top on my games, by contrary the only place where they survived Is in Norteamérica and only because there are only Alied doctrine nations, also upgrading your units are not that great.

      comintern it's great because they dont get Manpower shortages, for this reason they can upgrade they units More often and spam More units to compensate the lack of damage.
      when you sre ally you hsve lots of spare resources and you can build industries. thats what i did to get second as New zealand.
    • RiverWolf74 wrote:

      d.jahnsen wrote:

      I didnt see Any ally nations on top on my games, by contrary the only place where they survived Is in Norteamérica and only because there are only Alied doctrine nations, also upgrading your units are not that great.

      comintern it's great because they dont get Manpower shortages, for this reason they can upgrade they units More often and spam More units to compensate the lack of damage.
      when you sre ally you hsve lots of spare resources and you can build industries. thats what i did to get second as New zealand.
      comintern also have a lot of resources for build industries. Axis and panasia with the same resources have More power so you can use the resources left to build industries
      "Si crees que esto tendrá un final feliz, es que no has estado prestando atención"
    • d.jahnsen wrote:

      RiverWolf74 wrote:

      d.jahnsen wrote:

      I didnt see Any ally nations on top on my games, by contrary the only place where they survived Is in Norteamérica and only because there are only Alied doctrine nations, also upgrading your units are not that great.

      comintern it's great because they dont get Manpower shortages, for this reason they can upgrade they units More often and spam More units to compensate the lack of damage.
      when you sre ally you hsve lots of spare resources and you can build industries. thats what i did to get second as New zealand.
      comintern also have a lot of resources for build industries. Axis and panasia with the same resources have More power so you can use the resources left to build industries
      ok yeah all doctrines are good in their own way but i still think allies is the best doctrine for me
    • Overall I like these changes except one aspect.

      Added morale based production & construction times:
      • With lowering province morale also build times of units and buildings increase. Value examples:
      • Starts at +0% when below 80% morale
      • Maximizes at +900% when at 0% morale
      • Is at +162% when at 25% morale


      Production based on morale I think could be interesting and from my limited use of it in S1 I did like it.

      But I personally prefer the Supremacy 1 model which means at higher moral you gain a bonus rather than just a penalty for low morale. I think the penalty for low morale is perfect as well as a reward for high morale. While this does mean getting to 80% morale is all that is needed, a 100% morale bonus I just think is more rewarding and better balances out the negative for poor management. I do think it also historically and realism wise makes sense as it is proven a happy workforce is a more effective workforce.


      "These changes reward good morale management and reduce the effectiveness of immediate unit production in newly conquered provinces, which was more effective than it was intended to be."

      If that is the goal then I do not think the current system quite matches it yet. Really it penalises poor management but does not reward good morale management as there is no bonus for good management, just a penalty for poor management.
      Torpedo28000
      Main Administrator
      EN Support Team | Bytro Labs Gmbh
    • Nn gg wrote:

      for allies, now they are op, like what river wolf said. Increased production speed means mega mass production...
      Only if you can afford the rss. Even 100% faster production time is only as good as the rss to build the troops. Allies gain no advantage for rss production meaning they will only get the troop produced faster once it has been started. The overall number of troops produced between lets say Pan asia and Allies (Pan asia has no troop cost factor so it is a good base to judge from) if only LT where produced would be very similar. Allies can produce the troop faster but cannot gain the rss for the troop any faster, so perhaps they will have the troop produced a couple hours earlier than Pan asian, they will not have more troops as rss will be the limiting factor.
      Torpedo28000
      Main Administrator
      EN Support Team | Bytro Labs Gmbh
    • R4mp4g3 wrote:

      shouldnt have been implemented for games already running, alliance game been turned on its head by this..... because im asleep when it dropped they headed straight to my capital. By time i awake my caps been taken n im having to deal with morale issues all over the place... fucking joke... i get starting a game with new rules but changing em halfway through a game is ridiculous... way im setup this has become very detrimental and if id started game with these rules i would have taken a different approach
      We did not implement any morale changes to running games. As stated in the patch notes, all listed changes only apply to new CoW1.5 rounds and not running rounds, unless otherwise stated. The only thing that was implemented in running games was reducing the revolt chances, because it was a positive change in favor of the players that did not harm any strategies.

      RiverWolf74 wrote:

      but comitern is just less resources needed and comitern natio s rarely make it to the top few of the gme..before the update ally was my favourite doctrine, now it is jut OP. you have low reserach times and resources, low production times and resources. the is a only a 10% speed decrease, which isnt much compsred to 4 20% to 30% reductions
      Well we have a graph that shows us the wins per faction, and right now it is pretty balanced. We will keep monitoring it.

      Allies do not have any buff for production resource costs. Their research buff was made worse by 5% with this update. But they received a new buff of 20% to make unit upgrading to higher levels more worthwhile, as we think it also matches the Allies Doctrine quite well.

      Comintern received a small buff because it has disadvantages at the start of the game due to having weaker starting units, but not having more starting units. Axis on the other hand has stronger starting units that it did not need to pay for. Axis also has a slight advantage in terms of the stack limit and Comintern a slight disadvantage (10 Axis units in a stack perform better than 10 Comintern units). Due to these things we felt like that the cost/upkeep buff for Comintern needs to be greater than the power boost of Axis to make it balanced.

      Nn gg wrote:

      for allies, now they are op, like what river wolf said. Increased production speed means mega mass production...
      They had this production speed buff already previously, it was not changed.


      Torpedo28000 wrote:

      Overall I like these changes except one aspect.

      Added morale based production & construction times:
      • With lowering province morale also build times of units and buildings increase. Value examples:
      • Starts at +0% when below 80% morale
      • Maximizes at +900% when at 0% morale
      • Is at +162% when at 25% morale


      Production based on morale I think could be interesting and from my limited use of it in S1 I did like it.

      But I personally prefer the Supremacy 1 model which means at higher moral you gain a bonus rather than just a penalty for low morale. I think the penalty for low morale is perfect as well as a reward for high morale. While this does mean getting to 80% morale is all that is needed, a 100% morale bonus I just think is more rewarding and better balances out the negative for poor management. I do think it also historically and realism wise makes sense as it is proven a happy workforce is a more effective workforce.


      "These changes reward good morale management and reduce the effectiveness of immediate unit production in newly conquered provinces, which was more effective than it was intended to be."

      If that is the goal then I do not think the current system quite matches it yet. Really it penalises poor management but does not reward good morale management as there is no bonus for good management, just a penalty for poor management.
      Thanks for the feedback!
      We can discuss adjusting this later, would need some smaller frontend adjustments again because the CoW build menu does not support displaying of positive build time effects yet. But since our team is already hard at work on the next features we cannot just squeeze it in, so it will stay like this for a while now. Let's see if it already has the desired effect on the game.
    • freezy wrote:

      R4mp4g3 wrote:

      shouldnt have been implemented for games already running, alliance game been turned on its head by this..... because im asleep when it dropped they headed straight to my capital. By time i awake my caps been taken n im having to deal with morale issues all over the place... fucking joke... i get starting a game with new rules but changing em halfway through a game is ridiculous... way im setup this has become very detrimental and if id started game with these rules i would have taken a different approach
      We did not implement any morale changes to running games. As stated in the patch notes, all listed changes only apply to new CoW1.5 rounds and not running rounds, unless otherwise stated. The only thing that was implemented in running games was reducing the revolt chances, because it was a positive change in favor of the players that did not harm any strategies.

      RiverWolf74 wrote:

      but comitern is just less resources needed and comitern natio s rarely make it to the top few of the gme..before the update ally was my favourite doctrine, now it is jut OP. you have low reserach times and resources, low production times and resources. the is a only a 10% speed decrease, which isnt much compsred to 4 20% to 30% reductions
      Well we have a graph that shows us the wins per faction, and right now it is pretty balanced. We will keep monitoring it.
      Allies do not have any buff for production resource costs. Their research buff was made worse by 5% with this update. But they received a new buff of 20% to make unit upgrading to higher levels more worthwhile, as we think it also matches the Allies Doctrine quite well.

      Comintern received a small buff because it has disadvantages at the start of the game due to having weaker starting units, but not having more starting units. Axis on the other hand has stronger starting units that it did not need to pay for. Axis also has a slight advantage in terms of the stack limit and Comintern a slight disadvantage (10 Axis units in a stack perform better than 10 Comintern units). Due to these things we felt like that the cost/upkeep buff for Comintern needs to be greater than the power boost of Axis to make it balanced.

      Nn gg wrote:

      for allies, now they are op, like what river wolf said. Increased production speed means mega mass production...
      They had this production speed buff already previously, it was not changed.

      Torpedo28000 wrote:

      Overall I like these changes except one aspect.

      Added morale based production & construction times:
      • With lowering province morale also build times of units and buildings increase. Value examples:
      • Starts at +0% when below 80% morale
      • Maximizes at +900% when at 0% morale
      • Is at +162% when at 25% morale


      Production based on morale I think could be interesting and from my limited use of it in S1 I did like it.

      But I personally prefer the Supremacy 1 model which means at higher moral you gain a bonus rather than just a penalty for low morale. I think the penalty for low morale is perfect as well as a reward for high morale. While this does mean getting to 80% morale is all that is needed, a 100% morale bonus I just think is more rewarding and better balances out the negative for poor management. I do think it also historically and realism wise makes sense as it is proven a happy workforce is a more effective workforce.


      "These changes reward good morale management and reduce the effectiveness of immediate unit production in newly conquered provinces, which was more effective than it was intended to be."

      If that is the goal then I do not think the current system quite matches it yet. Really it penalises poor management but does not reward good morale management as there is no bonus for good management, just a penalty for poor management.
      Thanks for the feedback!We can discuss adjusting this later, would need some smaller frontend adjustments again because the CoW build menu does not support displaying of positive build time effects yet. But since our team is already hard at work on the next features we cannot just squeeze it in, so it will stay like this for a while now. Let's see if it already has the desired effect on the game.
      but they buffed it by another 20%
      hi
    • NoobNoobTrain wrote:

      Some very good changes in there. There's no logic in scout cars and interceptors spotting units hidden i bunkers, though. It means that bunkers will virtually never hide anything.
      And finally destroyers can reveal subs! This was one of the most counter-intuitive of all the game mechanisms.
      We are thinking about implementing "real" scout or spy units in the future, which would then also make more sense that they can check out hidden troops in forts. Right now the scout ability was assigned to AC and MI units for the lack of other suitable units.