[S1] Iron Order 1919 - A New Era

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    Attention, Generals!



    We’ve got some long awaited news in store for you today, containing crucial information of the highest importance.


    After several months of hard work by our game designers, artists, developers and everyone else involved in the process, we’re proud to inform you that the major changes which we announced and showcased during the last 6 weeks are about ready and will be released on 2021-08-04.


    In this regard we want to make sure that you are aware of the scale on which this will affect the game itself and the way you will be able to play in the future.

    Our feature showcases and unit teasers might already let you presume that the changes to come are so vast, that they are essentially reshaping the entire game, apart from keeping core gameplay aspects. With the emergence of towering Mechs, altered country borders, names, governments and an alternate history preceding the setting, the project outgrew our initial idea to merely expand the game. It is for this reason that we decided to seek a more fitting name that better represents the world in which you will soon be able to strife for glory.

    Once the update is completed you will find yourself as head of state and military leader of a nation in Iron Order 1919.

    Before you will get a chance to assume direct command of Mechs and establish your nation as a dominant power on the continent, the existing game will undergo a transition period in order to prepare everything for a great start.

    We will therefore first disable the ingame shop on 2021-07-20, meaning you won’t be able to make any further purchases until the release of Iron Order.

    Users who have logged into the existing game within the last 3 months before the release will have any remaining gold transferred to the new game and converted to an amount of equal value. On top of that, any account that has been active within the last 3 months will also receive a starting gift worth 20.000 Gold.

    As a next step we will disable the creation of new maps by users as well as by the system on 2021-07-27. Please note that all maps have a fixed time limit of two weeks. Even though this limit is rarely reached, it would still be possible for an ongoing map to end before it is concluded, as the release of Iron Order will instantly result in the closure of all ongoing maps. Make sure to create or join any maps you’d still like to play before this date in order to guarantee that you’ll be able to bring them to a conclusion. This is also your last chance to settle open scores with rivals or friends on the battlefields of old Europe, before they will change forever.

    Speaking of scores, with the release of Iron Order any profile statistics will be reset, including won matches, scored unit kills and constructed buildings. Everyone will have a fresh start, an opportunity to leave old grudges in the past and forge his legacy anew.

    Until then we will make sure to drill the first batch of recruits for your armies, finalize the last field trials of Mech prototypes, ready assembly lines for mass production of vital equipment and ensure a sufficient supply of iron ore and other essential resources required for the inevitable rekindling of the great war!



    We wish you the best of luck for your last campaigns in Tesla Wars and are looking forward to meeting you on the battlefields of Iron Order 1919!


    Your Bytro Team

    Quote from fieldmarshal model

    your release states that each game is fixed at 2 weeks, will that be enough time to research and build a flying fortress ??

    This refers to the current maps in the "old" version. You will of course have enough time to build all units once the update is released and also be able to utilize them to a great extend.

    I played about 5 S1 (Tesla Wars) and 2 Call of War games. Not really that good. Although there are more unit types and better graphics, they don't really make the game better. S1914 is a simpler game with less unit types and lower graphic, but it seems more complex.


    One feature that is absent from S1 and Call of War that is available in S1914, is the choice to choose which resource to use. For example, if we are short of grain, we can use fish. And there is also production choice and interplay with buy and sell. This is not available in S1 and Call of War. In this aspect, these 2 newer games are rather static in regard to resource management.


    The other important aspect is the players. S1914 has many hardcore and veteran players that makes the game very intense especially on the 500 player map. S1 and Call of War don't seem to have such type of players. May be, I have not met them yet and are playing on a small map of mostly new and casual players.

    Call of War definitely has quite a few hardcore players that min-max whatever possible to win. You could try some larger maps, especially 2x or 4x world maps attract the more seasoned veterans.

    I think the original S1 is better. Road system, aggressive AI. I see the current version already upgrade the cavalry portrait. And it looks creepy. A man with iron mask, another one has giant gas mask which is bigger than his face. Well, according to the image. It's definely not connected with his helmet.


    Also, if these previous content not want to use. They can transfer to the S1914. Shape S1914 to the better game.

    Okay, started my first game, and my first comment is that I cannot BELIEVE how scarce resources are in this game. It's like a spartan version of Call of War. I can see that once I have built half a dozen units from starting reserves, I will be barely able to build TWO basic units per day because of manpower limitations alone, but other resources are scarcely more abundant.


    Additionally, I was able to research only FOUR unit types before I ran out of rare materials - and for one of those I had to spend most of my money to buy rares on the market - one of my research slots is now lying idle and it's only day 1! In spite of the fact that I already conquered an enemy capital with rare materials, I have barely enough to conduct 1 new research per day.


    I thought Call of War didn't have enough resources, but this game makes it look generous by comparison. This is pretty disappointing as Tesla Wars had much more abundant resources and I was expecting much the same for this one.


    Oh, another disappointing feature of this new game - scout mech (the equivalent of scout cars in other Bytro games) can't take provinces. So kiss goodbye the tactic of speeding up conquests by sending scout units to take undefended or poorly defended provinces - one of my favourite tactics, and one of the few things one could do to speed up conquest a bit and get an advantage over other players. You also can't use the tactic of getting scout units into the enemy rear and messing up their communications by temporarily taking their provinces and breaking stuff in their cities. (Update: it turns out NO mech can take provinces - or to put it more plainly, the only units that can take provinces are from the infantry branch. So a humble militia unit can take a province but your monster mech unit can't. That's just silly).


    In sum, first impressions of this game are not promising from my POV, but I haven't played long enough to come to a definitive judgement yet. But I will say that I thought Tesla Wars was a potentially great game with lots of great ideas, that was seriously flawed by an unworkable province morale system - had they fixed that, I still think the game could have been a big hit with gamers. I was hoping that Iron Order would keep all the good aspects of Tesla Wars while removing the bad, but it looks like they've gone very much in a different direction with this game, and I'm disappointed about that. I don't want to play an even more spartan version of Call of War with a different skin. But still. I'm reserving judgement until I've had some more experience with this one, because after all I'm still only in day 1 of my first game.

    Okay, here are a couple of positives. Firstly, infrastructure is relatively cheap - unlike other Bytro games, where higher levels of infra cost a lot more, there is only a modest increase in cost in this game for each higher level. Also, you get good value for some infra - for example, there are only 2 levels of railroads, but each gives a speed increase of 100%.


    Terrain effects are also simplified - I'm not sure whether this is a good or bad thing, but it does make calculations a bit easier.


    Add: Units upgrade automatically for no cost when the upgrade is researched. I actually enjoyed manually upgrading my units in Call of War, but given the resource limits in this game, auto-upgrading for no cost is clearly a plus.


    One additional thing I'm not keen on with this new game though: combat rounds are back to an hour. I got used to half-hour rounds in CoW and Tesla Wars so I'm not terribly happy with this change.

    Perhaps it's because I had a good start and am winning the round, but I'm kind of enjoying this game ATM. Once I got over the disappointment of finding that it's nothing like Tesla Wars, I'm finding that I like some of the features, like the auto-upgrades, and the game looks - at this early stage at least - to be quite well balanced. I would still love to see Tesla Wars reconstituted with a better province morale system, as that game had a much more sophisticated bunch of algorithms for resolving combat than other Bytro games, which I thought worked very well, and the auto-retreat mechanic was clever and added to the sense of authenticity as well as the challenge. It does seem as though Bytro threw the baby out with the bathwater with that game. Iron Order has gone back to the simplistic combat system of CoW, but it at least has the virtue of predictability, which is something.


    IO is basically a streamlined version of CoW but with its own flavour, the unit balance looks quite good and I can't see any reason why it wouldn't be as successful. It is odd though, that Bytro are presenting it via the Tesla Wars/S1 links instead of as the entirely new game it is. This doesn't seem to me to be a very good marketing strategy given the unpopularity of Tesla Wars, I guess time will tell whether or not this was a good move on Bytro's part.

    i have 1 issue that i would like clarification on ............ if you go to any city, scroll down the build menu to capitol city it quite clearly states that if you capture an enemies capitol you get a morale boost in every province. i have captured 5 capitols by day 4 and not 1 bit of morale boost at all. is this meant to be the way it is ???

    I don't know - Tesla Wars had the same issue, I complained about it and the guy who responded said he would pass it on to the devs, but then shortly after they shut TW down. But if they deliberately don't give a morale boost anymore, they need to update the wording to remove the statement about a morale boost, because it's confusing.

    yes i remember that in tesla. they told us that it was meant to be no morale boost in tesla. thing is this is a new game and everything is different and im assuming it has all had the ok from more than 1 person so why would they have that wording and do something different ????

    Well here's a major negative - you can buy manpower in this game. As I recall, you couldn't buy manpower in either Tesla Wars or CoW, which put a brake on cash gamers. But in this game you can buy as many combat units as you can afford, which obviously puts players with limited means at a potentially big disadvantage.


    When I think about, the scarcity of resources in both CoW and IO is probably there to tempt users into spending $$$ to buy more, since it doesn't make any sense purely in game terms.