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

OldMan Temujin · Feb 22nd 2023

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This is terribly game breaking, and should be either repealed, or have a very short range (like a fighter's patrol circle) where it can reveal hidden units.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

freezy · Feb 27th 2023

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.

Demonaire · Mar 1st 2023

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.

freezy · Mar 1st 2023

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.

OldMan Temujin · Mar 3rd 2023

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.

Quote from freezy

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.

OldMan Temujin · Mar 3rd 2023

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.

perry89. · Mar 3rd 2023

Quote from freezy

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

perry89. · Mar 3rd 2023

Quote from freezy

But we will think about the topic again, and potentially make some adjustments.

Ah, don't do that

the first move is the best move

everybody will love it

in the end - I am sure !!!

freezy · Mar 20th 2023

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.

HannibalBarca1 · Mar 23rd 2023

All good tweaks, but please just fix the broken ranking points and achievements system. It has been broken for over a year And yes, I know - it's being worked on and no one can say when it will be fixed.

Colonel God · May 27th 2023

Quote from freezy

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.

I am tending to win most games I play lately since the expansion penalty came in. I only play 1-2 games at a time. I am basically playing a "building-game" pretty much full-time these days (and a boring one at that). Due to my strategy (not GM) I am coming to the lead usually in the first 10 days - and usually by 14 days I have knocked out the significant competition - but by then, as a solo player I'm getting up to a significant expansion penalty. Because I understand this, I then am spending almost all my time building fortresses - and then when im big enough or have enough wood, railways. As a solo player (but also in my coalition games where I am usually the largest country) the game is becoming tedious because in this scenario, I have limited choice but to maintain my morale pretty much full-time. Example in my last couple of games, when the expansion penalty really starts to bite, I built nothing but fortresses for a whole week!! In all these games I have had masses of double metal and still it has taken me 7 days to stabilise my morale (not build it, just stabilise it and recover it). In my most recent game I played Sweden so I had quite a lot of wood provinces near my centre so I could build more railways which is a good boost. But still I only get these tiny windows of opportunity to build weapons. Then my score starts stagnating (because you can only build limited score via buildings and morale) and to win the game solo, I then have to keep pushing to get more territory. And then, as a result, the expansion penalty shoots up (along with Distance to capital because more territory = further away) and so then im stuck for another 3-7 days of just building buildings.

I am finding that being a good solo (or even the dominant coalition player) is becoming tedious and somewhat joyless under this new expansion penalty. I like what you are trying to achieve but there is kind of no end to it for a successful solo player. I should not be penalised for being good at winning the game alone (this is obviously undesirable when a player shoots to the front and dominates using gold mark early on - but for players who manage this "ala naturale" via skill, the expansion-penalty combined with distance-penalty is very punitive). The effect of the penalty is way too strong for way too long.

I wondered if the expansion-penalty could be partially mitigated by a "stabilisation/cultural dominance" morale bonus each time you go through the "expansion VS stabilisation" cycle? Surely if you spend a whole week building fortresses throughout your whole empire (and building NOTHING else) this should have some kind of perpetual adjustment to your overall morale? This seems to be the imbalance in the application of the penalty - that you get no credit for your good works.

Example - Like if I expand to 20% of the map as a solo player, and then I spend a week stabilising my empire (at the 20% of map size) - the system should acknowledge that achievement somehow and make a recalculation - there should be a global reduction in the expansion penalty for that 20% of the total map (which represents the concretisation of my culturel influence over that part of the map = which is a real-life effect). New territory acquisitions after that would then be subject to the full effect of expansion penalty but the original "20% of map" gains a "stabilisation modifier" for rebuilding and maintaining morale over a period of time. This could be symbolised by a "stabilisation" or "cultural dominance" +modifier that counters the expansion penalty in each territory in the original "20% of map". In this way, the dominant player has been slowed down by a whole week but then gains a reward that represents the solidification of his cultural influence over 20% of the map. This 20% of the map then becomes somewhat more "stabilised" (meaning the expansion penalty becomes somewhat mitigated in this older more established territory.) Say I then conquer 30% of the map, the most recent 10% of map is subject to the whole expansion penalty but the prior 20% has lower expansion-penalty. Perhaps I spent the next week stabilising the morale on this whole 30% of the map (there's another week I can't build weapons or expand for other players to catch up). But then my current "30% of the map" then receives a "stabilisation" bonus. Then I am not being crippled to the point that it is almost impossible to win solo. Im getting rewarded for stabilising and maintaining my morale over a significant period of time - and then I have a chance to enjoy some warfare and strategy. In the current model, my hands are so tied-up in managing morale that it feel like I have no room to breathe militarily.

Surely the purpose of the expansion penalty is not to destroy the ability to enjoy the strategic essence of the game?

In the current game success is being penalised so heavily that the essence of the game is being lost for talented solo players or dominant players .

I totally support the idea behind the expansion penalty - of slowing down and interrupting the dominant player - to allow other players a chance to get back into the game - and to avoid early growers (especially those using GM) from completely dominating the game. But it has now swung the other way too far and im thinking of giving up the game because as a building game its rather dull (lets face it, its not designed to be like Civilisation with all the cool facets of culture and research etc - its a strategy game. period. ) And I am not able to get any space to explore my power strategically under the current conditions. Its just morale-building-grind over weeks and weeks and weeks. If you are winning each game you play and focusing into one main game, then the fun strategy stuff is over in the first 7-10 days - then its just a build-fortress/railway-morale-grind until the end of the 6 weeks / time period.

Until this recent game mechanics update introducing the expansion penalty, MANAGING MORALE was still THE CRITICAL factor in winning the game. It ACCURATELY represented the significance of ECONOMIC power behind any Military power. That was what I loved about this game. It was so hard to win. You had to manage both economy & resources & military strategy & diplomatic relationships all together to succeed at the game. It was quite well balanced and the most accurate strategy game I had ever played (not withstanding that a player could run away with a constant expansion and pretty much just steam roll everyone, up to a point - that was the only drawback). But the expansion penalty does interrupt that steamroller effect now but the application of it needs to be mitigated.

I think the previous comment of mine is the essence of my current experience - that I do know how to manage my morale under the expansion penalty. BUT, that all the strategic fun happens in the first 7-10days as a solo dominant player. And after that its just a morale-build-grind after that interspersed with tiny moments of weapon-building/attack-someone and then back to another week of morale-build-grind. Its becoming boring as f##k and its also a massive time-suck even using the build-menu. Because I'm powerful in these games, I get to destroy 1 country per week really quickly usually in less than a day. And then the next 4-7 days is spent managing my build cues. Its boring.

Please consider introducing a "stabilisation/cultural dominance" bonus modifier as I explained earlier to counter the impact of the expansion penalty. The current expansion penalty is killing the game for successful solo players.

In summary - we need to radically adjust the application of the expansion penalty so that it interrupts and slows down the relentless advance of dominant players. BUT they should then be able to integrate the expansion and therefore be able to mitigate the expansion penalty with a "stabilisation/cultural dominance" modifier, as a result of successfully managing their morale through sustained building and infrastructure development.

Secondly - the issue of morale pre-expansion penalty was already very significant in game success - it was closer to reality before the expansion penalty - so the expansion penalty has made the game less realistic because it impact is over-the-top, especially on solo players. Its application needs to be quite radically reconsidered.

Thanks for considering my feedback.

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Colonel God · May 27th 2023

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.

South Paw Feb 22nd 2023

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