New Update - Release notes - 2023-02-21 - My Feedback

  • Hi,


    First of all, thank you devs and mods for all your hard work in studying the game and continuously trying and keeping it balanced.


    Appreciate all the work!


    Now for the constructive feedback:


    This is regarding Most recent update (and perhaps some older updates if relevant)


    1. What does lvl 1 fort at 50% construction give? Previously it used to give 50% defence bonus - the highest jump for a partially built fort.


    Suggestion:I believe lvl 1 should be as before, and then they can go 1, at 50%-> 50%, 1 complete->60%, lvl 2->70%, lvl 3->80, lvl 4->85% lvl 5->90%


    2. Mixed stack (With respect to: "The survivability of units with a high hitpoint pool w....") - in mixed stacks, infantry seems to take 1st damage, before everyone else. What's the point of having a tank batallion with infantry...when the infantry is tanking the damage first? Also, how do we estimate how much is the dodge rate? is it given somewhere?


    Suggestion: either make stack organizable where the user can move 'tanks in the front, arti in the rear' or vice versa. or place them by default, higher hp units in the front, infantry in the middle or along with the tanks, range at the back as it is usually done in the real world.


    Suggestion 2: If you do consider the stack manually organizable - you may have your range units be able to damage in a specific order (Eg: Bombers attack rear of the stack first, Railgun attck the middle, arti attack random, etc...)


    Finally the most imporant one:


    Quote
    • Balloons can reveal submarines and fortresses now. As Fighters can reveal submarines and fortresses because they are high up in the sky, which is also true for the balloon, we enable balloons to scout submarines and fortresses from the sky too.

    This is terribly game breaking, and should be either repealed, or have a very short range (like a fighter's patrol circle) where it can reveal hidden units.


    Reason is simple - a 5000 money, 1k wood, 1k gas unit (longest is 1 day construct time) is able to nullify both 8000 iron 8000 money + 2 days of investment (lvl 2 fort, and more if higher) or even worse....a factory 2 unit (Submarine), costing 20k money, 3k iron, 2k wood and 3k oil.


    The problem does not end at such a cheap unit nullifying such a relatively expensive unit. Atleast with fighters or spies, the investment to detect stealth is similar or based on chance. The stealth of a sub, and the fighter needing to actively scout the seas is a good balance.....which gets thrown out by this new update. This also makes fighters only to provide cover while bombers attack, as they cant be in the same stack of bombers when attacking due to the damage and purpose mismatch.


    This also means, if you put a balloon with a battleship, it will effectively render the main in-game anti-battleship defense useless. The only other anti-BS unit is bombers, which is tied to land based airports unlike COW.


    also, this would make 1-BS, 1 Balloon, 2-4 LC stack game-breakingly powerful - with the last counter being attrition warfare. An unsightly option for a strategy game.


    Not to forget, an LC and 1 balloon can wipe out several subs just due to speed - which begs the question, why have the only anti-navy navy unit, when it can be nullified this easily?


    Suggestion: Roll this upgrade back.


    Suggestion 2: If you want to keep it, let the detection range be limited, and like a circle around like an LC. Atleast let subs get a chance to sneak to its targets...else what's the point if its just a slow moving melee unit?




    Other bugs or suggestions:


    * when a province is captured, the travel time through the province does not get automatically updated. a new command needs to be given to get friendly territory movement boost.


    * Espionage reports do not update automatically after day change. the game needs to be closed/page refreshed before we see new information.


    * When a range unit is given an attack command that makes it move towards a target which is also moving towards your range unit, the unit does not automatically attack when in range. It continuously to move till the point it was supposed to be at when the command was first given - this does not fit the description of "fire at will", when the command originally is to fire....



    * Melee (Non-range units) combat prevents GoldMark healing, which is nice - but is there a reason why this does not carry over to ranged combat or one side attacking, other receiving damage? Is it because they can (essentially) move out of range?


    * Ceasefire does not disengage active combating melee armies. it only stops range units from attacking each other. Can this be fixed? Its not doing its intended job. When its coalition vs coalition - peace trade does not achieve disengagement. One has to do ROW/Sharemap for disengagement, which again....is not available if its coalition member vs coalition member.


    * Why are there two penalties of the same kind? Expansion and distance from capital are the same thing, its like provinces are being double taxed. This tax on morale needs to be franked/removed/modified. You can have upto 7o% penalties cummulative of both. to counter you'd need lvl 5 fort(+25%), (lvl 4 factory +12%), railway (+7%) and harbor (7%), if possible. You're sitting at max around 51% regain. With the new update of slower build rate with below 80% morale, this makes holding and having reasonable morale on further away provinces not possible. Now that attacks bring down morale, this COW's feature will strain S1914 players.





    Ty

    OMT

  • South Paw

    Approved the thread.
  • Thanks for the Feedback!


    1) Since the first completed level gives 50% bonus now, then half of the first level should give half of it. We deliberately lowered the defense bonus based on alot of feedback from veterans so we currently don't intend to increase it again.


    2) The point of Inf in a stack is that it protects your expensive powerful units. Inf is basically cannon fodder. As someone who builds a tank you probably want your tank to survive and not your Inf because Inf you get basically for free. But in the previous version Infs blocked a bit too much damage, that's why we made to block less damage from other units. Note that the total amount of damage for the whole army will remain the same, this is only about the share of damage each unit in the stack gets when it is a mixed stack. The new values were shown in the changelog. Inf was reduced from 1.0 to 0.5 for example, meaning half of the damage that Inf previously received will now go to other units in the stack.


    Your suggestion with configurable battle rows is nice and we thought about it many times in the past. But this is essentially a new combat system which is a big task. Currently it is not in the scope, so won't be coming any time soon, sorry.


    3) The balloon change is currently being discussed internally. It may be reverted in the next release.



    Regarding the reported bugs:


    1) Yes that is known and was like that since forever, that is sadly due to how the engine works. Would be expensive for server performance to do it differently, but maybe it will be fixed at some point (not soon).


    2) noted.


    3) I doubt that this universally the case, it might happen in specific situations due to the time interval in which the server updates unit states. Unfortunately it is too expensive for performance to update units all the time, so there are intervals, if you are lucky the next update is shortly after the enemy unit entered the attack range.


    4) Its a point of discussion, maybe it will be changed at some point but sadly it also enables exploits. In the engine airplane attacks are similar to ranged attacks, so for example you could block gold usage just by giving an attack command to airplanes even if you have no intention of actually attacking. So stuff like that needs to be fixed first.


    5) noted.


    6) Expansion and Distance are not the same thing. Distance only affects far away provinces, Expansion affects all provinces. Similar to how previously there was distance penalty plus "at war" penalty. The at war penalty was also for all provinces, but it got replaced by the expansion penalty.
    Currently the penalties are beign reviewed, there is a chance that they will be revised in a future update.

  • freezy At this moment, regarding the cumulative penalty of expansion plus distance from capital, my only worry rests in the fact a -70 penalty is almost unassailable for provinces without coast.


    Those provinces, without harbor, only can add until +42 of morale boost. Even moving the capital to the center, I see truly complicated a province keeps its morale at 100% when facing a total penalty of -28, even with the neighbors moral boost, the disadvantage is reduced to -18, still a fearsome quantity.


    I openly support the new moral penalty mechanism, but I think players making the decisions you want them to take shouldn't still be strongly penalized for that system.


    Greetings.

    Demonaire
    ES. EN & PT Game Operator

    Bytro Labs | Supremacy 1914


    b78//+

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  • Well it is basically not intended that your far away provinces reach 100% morale, so it is not needed to have morale boosting buildings completely negate the maximum possible penalty. It is enough if you can keep the morale above 30% so they don't revolt. But the morale boosting buildings should be enough to at least keep your core territory at 100%. In your core you only need to negate the expansion penalty and you are helped in that by your neighbor province morale influence.


    As I said in my previous post we are aware that there might be some challenges now in the endgame. I hope you agree though that the early game definitely got less challenging morale wise due to the removal of the at war penalty, and expansion penalty only kicking in in mid to lategame. So maybe the meta now is to use the easier time in early game to prepare for the harder time in lategame. It also only harder if you try to win solo, as coalition players won't be hindered by the expansion penalty much (they only need to conquer like 15-25% of provinces each). But we will think about the topic again, and potentially make some adjustments.

  • While I really appreciate the lack of war pressure (-5 Morale per war), I thought it was "no -5 if you formally declare war". I later realized it was no war pressure at all. I thought one would still suffer war pressure, if they were declared upon, or were invaded or surprise attacked.


    That's good and bad.


    now some of the historic maps will be easier to play, like where germany gets declared war by 5-7 countries, previously would struggle for resources - now is on even footing.


    On the other hand, you have no geopolitical punishment except trade embargo. Previously, In world map games, we could change the tide of a war by uniting against them. Now, its only neighbours who can do anything at all. This weakens diplomatic options and flavour in the game.


    I would suggest: if someone have wars with more than, say 3 nations, they can start having war pressure like before.


    2ndly, more often than not, you have one person pulling the weight of the coalition. Its rare that you have 3 player coalition contributing 33% each. Most will try to get themselves carried So, while you believe expansion penalty curtails further Dominationists, it also delays the game unnecessarily.


    Also, the argument of Factories in core provinces alone, I feel is not fair. a) having factories closer to borderlines helps your war machine nation move faster, especially if you are on island and expanded into a mainland - your supply chain becomes very vulnerable, again not fair to those who start at disadvantages, and are unable to go further. Remember, pure defense nations do not win games, they just allows you to barely survive.


    Lastly, every time we expand by even a single province, our resource requirement to feed the population (non-combatants, citizens) remains the same, but the yield per population keeps falling, further it is. You just said


    "you only need 30% morale to keep a province", That's a very militaristic way of thinking. What about Economic Strategy?

    What is the point of expansion then? Not just to gain provinces, but to gain resource, fund your war machine.

    Well it is basically not intended that your far away provinces reach 100% morale, so it is not needed to have morale boosting buildings completely negate the maximum possible penalty. It is enough if you can keep the morale above 30% so they don't revolt. But the morale boosting buildings should be enough to at least keep your core territory at 100%. In your core you only need to negate the expansion penalty and you are helped in that by your neighbor province morale influence.

    The province at 30% still eats similar amount of daily food, consumes materials, and energy. So, just to feed that sustainability demand, we need to build production buildings just so you can keep them fed, and then build a stockpile.


    Please remember, economic success also contributes to your total points - as the score formula was based at 104 morale average points, unless this also changed.


    While military sense dictates, solo player needs >50% of the map, and coalition needs >75% of the map, when you factor in economics - solo player would need about 60-65%, 80-85% for coalition of the map due to low morale pulling points down.


    unless all the resulting effects of these changes were also addressed, it makes things more difficult to comprehend.

  • Another thing I noticed now was the new AI War behaviour. I'd like to appreciate the team for the new configuration.


    Now AI is annoying as hell, camping in their forts till death. If they do charge, its quite random. I am still learning this pattern. I am more used to emptying whole nation using range units, speed and like a pack of wolves - thus disappearing whole nation's armies. I can see why some might want this changed. Although, I felt the older Ai behaviour of chasing a range unit with melee units made sense as the other alternative was to accept death slowly, only a few took advantage of this?


    Personally, I still feel the new AI becomes wasteful - one destroys all the resource buildings by the time they capture the province. Also additional capture damage to buildings. Forces scorched earth upon you for the most part - not my choice.


    Its like, my wars are with the armies and the government - the people and their economies are better left unharmed if possible.


    Suggestion: No suggestions at the moment. Just feel scorched earth conquest is way too cumbersome along with expansion, distance penalties and new conquest-low-morale build penalties.

  • It also only harder if you try to win solo, as coalition players won't be hindered by the expansion penalty much (they only need to conquer like 15-25% of provinces each).

    "only harder" - but so much fun more


    gourgeous

    unbelievable great

    I like it so much - an others, too

  • In the update tomorrow we will make morale management easier btw, by reducing the capital distance penalty, adding bigger morale bonuses to several buildings and making the expansion penalty kick in slightly later.

  • Edited 2 times, last by Colonel God: clarifying my text. reorganising to make more readable and succinct ().

  • In addition to my critique of the expansion-penalty I would like to say that the former being "at war" penalty actually made alot of sense (to some degree). And I would support there being a penalty for being at war with everyone all the time. At least with this penalty you could manage that in a realistic way - example by choosing to focus on one enemy at a time. It was an interesting and realistic penalty - even though it didn't really represent the spoils-of-war adequately. Again that "at war" penalty needed a "glory/military success" modifier so that nations who kept winning wars got less penalties than nations who were in just as many wars but were not having any military success. So there should be an "at war" penalty but there should be a "military success" bonus modifier as well.


    So, if possible, if you consider mitigating the expansion penalty with a "stability/cultural dominance" modifier (as suggested in my former commentary) please try to reinstate the "at war" penalty. as part of the mix. The idea behind it was a very good one. BUT please also mitigate that with a "military success/glory" modifier to both penalise AND reward players who are at war with lots of nations but also having major success militarily. This is a more accurate representation of "real-life". (nations who wage lots of war unsuccessfully should suffer a heavy "at war" morale cost that kicks in after a certain amount of time). Thats just quite realistic.