Posts by Petruz

there is no such limit

Thanks to user Lethal Legume for helping out.

The Europe 1914 historical map is the only map that has variable population. This post contains a population chart depicted here and some effects of population on important game aspects:

Population effects a lot of game aspects, but that is only noticeable and relevant in this map.

Some effects:

• economic output (resources and output) is proportional to population (2000000 population will have half the output of the default 4000000 pop province)
• corruption naturally is proportional to population
• number of starting infantry is 1 for every 400k population rounded upwards. (highly populated provinces have more starting infantry)
• infantry recruitment time is inversely proportional to population
• upkeepcost of provinces is proportional to population

Double resource provinces in the regular EU map, that are depicted as single resource provinces in this historical map also have double economical output and infantry recruitment. This is because the output is doubled as in regular maps, but below a certain threshold output of 6000, due to population. This implies that you can have very valuable provinces that produce just under 6000 due to population being depicted as single resource provinces.

output = morale/100 * corruption * population/4000000 * constant * bonus_single/double

Money and resource output have a different constant. The bonus factor is either 1 (if the province is a single resource province on the regular map) or 2 (if the province is a double resource province in the regular EU map).

There are 3 pre-game fixed teams in this map. People are unable to attack team-members and to alter team affiliation.

USA-MEXICO MAP

The USA-MEXICO map has the peculiarity that economical output is somewhat variable despite population being homogeneous. Also the maps starts with corruption at 12%.

S1914 GAME INFO

This post concerns displaying the number of provinces for each S1914 map and their resource-type. As a consequence the base availability of resources of each map will be represented. The representation currently uses 100% fixed morale for output. With lower fixed morale or instead a range of province morale values the differences between the resource-type availability gets more amplified. These statistics were only available at this s1914 discordserver, that is currently constructing a sensible combat-predictor: http://bit.do/S1914.

Besides the stats mentioned it is also useful to be aware of the size of the maps in comparison to each other:

• the last map uses sizes based on the max/min values to cities on the x/y axis.
• the Mesopotamia map is actually a round map.
• europe 1914 and historical-europe use the same map, but contrary to all other maps, population and as a consequence many other values, like output, are not homogeneous (the map is atm omitted in the representation of resources underneath).

RESOURCES PER MAP

battle of the balkans

battle for western europe

europe 1914

flanders event

Antarctica (steel and ice)

• special provinces have been ignored and treated like double resource provinces

Mesopotamia

• special provinces have been ignored and treated like double resource provinces

historical europe (variable population)

southamerica

south-east asia

the great war (500)

the great war (31)

middle east

Based on this information other information can be retrieved like the province density of map. Values like these will probably be submitted at some point.

Demonaire wrote:

Seems legit, after all, since enemy troops means morale decrease.

You also get a warning in advance that you might provoke war if you do so. But something that can be easily tested no?

I am reworking and moving some of the data posted here: supplements and some data atm only made available at this discord http://bit.do/S1914 to this place. Some of this data can contradict the manual. Most data posted has been retested accurately recently; some values might still depend on display values though and might need minor correction.

Under Construction

COMBAT

To generate plots like these resort to the discord channel bit.do/S1914 and use the command !indicator to generate the manual.

Tick: a tick is a one way action between one army dealing damage to the hitpoints of another army.

Combat-round: a series of ticks initiated by one army, the attacker.

Offensive damage: damage that is dealt by the attacking army. Cavalry deals double damage in this capacity. A unit is attacker if it actively attacked another unit or moved while having enemy units in its close combat range (5 km). In legacy the attacker is displayed by a red lightning bolt above the unit display.

Defensive damage: damage that is dealt by the defending army. Armoured cars deal double damage in this capacity. A unit is dealing defensive damage if it remains completely passive while being attacked. If everything works and responds like it should, the defending army ticks before the attacking army does, but the damage that can be dealt is calculated before it is applied by any side if it concerns a ground-battle, meaning that the defender cannot reduce the damage that can be dealt by the attacker by striking the first. However, in air-to-air battles and air-to-ground battles the defender will apply damage to the attacking planes.

There are 3 main types of combat (close combat, ranged combat and aerial combat):

1. Close combat is combat between units that make direct contact or are within 5km range of units to whom a 5km close combat range applies to. Close combat is not resolved until one of the armies is completely destroyed (unless both sides grant each other right of way). The defender and attacker both deal a tick every hour (speed 1x). A defending army can initiate its own separate combat-round, where it will be attacker and deal offensive damage to the other army, that will deal defensive damage. This way there will be 4 ticks every hour. If two moving armies collide with each other there will be two combat rounds and there is no way to tell what the succession of the ticks will be in advance.
2. Ranged combat is dealt by units that deal ranged damage. The damage is dealt unidirectionally and can be discontinued by the attacker at any time. There does not seem to be a difference between the damage that is done by a ranged unit that pinned in close combat or is bombarding from a distance.
3. Aerial combat is a hybrid form of combat. The damage is done ranged, but there is a close combat interaction resulting in the planes taking damage by both ground-units and planes. Aerial combat against planes that fly or are located on an airfield is the sub-type where aerial-aerial damage applies to. Besides a direct aerial attack there is also combat by patrol and this operates differently: if you set out a patrol the patrol will react to enemy planes that have an event in de patrolling area: attacking a city/unit, landing there or setting out a patrol with overlapping area themselves. It is very important to be aware that in the latter case, the planes that arrive take damage one-directionally and will not return any to the enemy planes that are already patrolling there: damage is only taken by one group at the moment it clocks (patrol-clock is 1 hour on speed x1).

Units can deal damage to either other units, buildings and provinces (lowering of province morale). Unit-damage is first applied to the units and after that structure-damage is applied to buildings. Unit and buildings do not absorb any damage for each other and are calculated separately without affecting each others input of damage. Both structure damage and unit damage are subject to randomness where good hits are corrected by subsequent bad hits and vice versa. The lowering of province-morale is not random (see structure-combat).

HITPOINTS

n = number of units
mc = morale/condition
hp = hp display in game (continuous quantity, hp = mc * n * hp-type)
hitpoints = discrete hitpoints that a unit is made of and that can be either be erased or not be erased (can differ from hp)
hp-type = the number of hitpoints that make up one (100% mc) instance of a unit-type
hp-type reduction: when hp-type is reduced to 1. This means that if you erase one hitpoint while this condition applies n is decreased by 1.

There might be a connecting notion missing, but it seems that two different rules can apply to determine how many hitpoints a unit (of a certain unit-type) has:

1) if the hp-type is 1 (eg armoured car or infantry) --> hitpoints = n

2) if hp-type > 1 --> hitpoints = mc * hp-type * n (hp-type reduction occurs under this condition: (n - 1) * hp-type >= hitpoints)

These simple rules also govern the game display in terms of number of units and condition/morale:

1) if hp-type = 1, mc is no variable and mc stays static

2) if hp-type > 1: mc = hitpoints/(hp-type * n)

morale versus condition

This means that there is no difference concerning morale and condition units in the game display. If there would be a 2 hp-type morale unit it would act like condition units of 2 hp-type do and a 1 hp-type condition unit operates in the same way as the morale units (that both have 1 hp-type). So what is the difference between morale and condition?

1 ) Morale units are sensitive to terrain-type (own, ally, non-ally) at daychange, resulting possibly in changing morale (see armymorale) while condition-units restore universally, regardless of terrain.

2 ) After normal damage is applied and processed morale units lose an additional amount of morale/hp in combat, making them more vulnerable as condition-units and explaining why morale is not fixed as condition is fixed for 1 hp-type units.

3) To compensate this somewhat morale units receive a boost in morale if they completely destroy an enemy unit (or are attached to other units doing that like artillery).

COMBAT CONCERNING BUILDINGS AND PROVINCES

• Buildings in a province or provinces themselves do not absorb any damage to the benefit of units that damage is applied to

• Damage done to buildings is taken in separately and distributed evenly among the buildings present. The damage can be done to either the city itself or a unit in the province. The distance to the city is inversely proportional to the amount of damage that can be applied to the buildings. Randomness is involved.

• Damage done to the province itself is taken in separately as well and results in a lower province morale (see graph). No randomness is involved and the distance to the city is not relevant.

• Some of these statement should be backed up by better tests or refinements, but the data is quite convincing and the statements it supports are sufficient.

EFFECT OF MOBILITY AND MORALE/CONDITION ON UNIT DAMAGE ,SPEED AND HP

• Usually mobility is at 100% (from day 4 on) and everybody is affected in the same way by reduced mobility the first days. This however can have major consequences for team battles.
• Mobility is affected by the availability of oil. If there is oil it will rise 20% each day. Starting at 50% at day 0 and 100% at day 4.
• It is not clear how mobility is affected by a shortage of oil and it is not clear how it should be affected. It does not decline 10% each day anyway and also does not in combination with a shortage of other resources.
• A shortage of grain has no effect on mobility and also has no direct effect on army morale. Like any resource shortage it can influence army morale indirectly by lowering province morale.

DAMAGE

• All units besides close combat landunits get raw damage applied simply proportionally up and to 50 units.

• Close combat landunits are an exception to this. Though close landcombat might not be the most common form of combat it is very important to be aware of how raw damage is added to these units, especially to infantry that is arguably the most important unit in the game.
• Splitting up these kind of units offers the most obvious way to increase combined damage.

UNIT RANGES

Concerning view ranges:

• balloons have 4x more surface area and are for this reason valuable. They do move however slowly and are best attached to a group of artillery since they share the same speed; they will add some nice airdefence as well.

• you can become aware of the slowest unittype of a questionmark-unit (nationality visible only) in the opaque area, by looking at the speed it is moving in sometimes.
• planes cannot be attached to other units and "stick out separately", hinting at their presence this way.

Concerning combat ranges:

• close combat range (5km = 5 pixels) is very important: you can attack everything (also empty cities), except airborne units, in a range of 5 km, but the battleship and the light cruiser are exceptions to this.
• splash/blast damage range is not clear: it concerns a smaller portion of damage being done to units in the vicinity (2-5 km max) of the target.
• the ranged combat ranges can be misleading in utility: a railroadgun e.g. is by lack of vulnerable railroad often locally static, while artillery can move freely within its large range, actually covering a larger range that way, conditions provided, while the great speed of the light cruiser can overcome its poor range.
• fort cover range of 2km only seems to be applied to locally stationary units within this range.

UNIT SPEED

• speed of a stack (formation composed of several different unit-types) is determined by the slowest link/unittype.
• though seemingly trivial being aware of the different speeds of different units on different terrain is very important.

ARMYMORALE

Contrary to condition-units, morale units (cav and inf) are influenced by the terrain they are on at day-change. There are 2 ways in which terrain can influence army-morale:

1) Own terrain: armies standing on own terrain will have their morale influenced by the difference of their army morale with the NEW province morale. It will move within the grey range given in the graph: 20% of the difference downwards and upwards.

2a) If armies do not stand on own terrain their morale will not be influenced within a range, but it will change in a constant manner towards 50% (either downwards or upwards). If armies stand on ally terrain (blue line) their morale will slowly move towards 50%: armymoralenew = armymorale_old + (50 - armymorale_old)*0,10.

2b) If armies stand on all other terrain (sea/enemy terrain/neutral terrain) they will move towards 50% morale in a quicker manner (green line) with 14.28%, 1/7th.

facts concerning armymorale:

• morale units that are part of an formation that destroys another formation will receive a boost in morale. It is not clear (to me) how, it might be based simply on the morale it has at the moment it destroys another formation.
• morale of units on sea is preserved when being attached to a ship (or a railgun: addition user furry1).

CONDITION REPAIR

• See also the purple line in the previous graph. Condition units: everything but infantry and cavalry.
  
• Condition_new = condition_old + (100- condition_old)/7
  
• The restoration rate is independent of the number of units involved.
  
• Condition-units repair universally at the same rate depending on damage taken, regardless of position , movement and being in combat.* Morale units in combat also react like morale units that are not in combat.
  

INFANTRY GENERATION

• Barracks with low province morale will not only output infantry slowly, but will also produce low morale infantry: switch them off.
• Spreading out barracks level 1 will offer more places to produce cavalry.
• Locate barracks on double resource provinces (see green line eg). 1000 grain a day will be expensive very quickly usually.
• The Mesopotamia map red dot generation has been confirmed. Antarcticamap dots however do not offer this kind of max inf generation.

TECH/MECH PRODUCTION REQUIREMENTS AND VALUES

• production-times are determined by factory level segments of 12 hours that go from segment 0 (fab1) to 12 (fab4).
• If you cancel a build (either production or building) the build will be reset to the last finished segment of 12 hours, but any remainder over a segment of 12 hours will not be refunded.
• cavalry and armored cars can also be produced by garages.
• cavalry also requires a barrack. the barrack level is irrelevant.
• balloons do not require an airfield to be produced (and are apart from the high defense-value in all respects land-units)

PROVINCE MORALE

* The sum of province influences (displayed province info) determine the new target morale. Morale moves to this new target morale with 25% at day-change (naturally maximally to 100%).

*Province morale is very important for the output of resources, money and infantry (see output and infantry graphs). It can be best influenced by reducing these negative factors:
- distance to capital: this penalty can be very significant. Reduce it by minimizing the sum of distances to the capital by relocating the capital. The distance penalty is based on the direct straight distance (not the distance by actual roads/paths) between a province city and the capital city: penalty = distance_to_capital/55.
- number of wars: -5 for every war that is ongoing at day-change with a max of -25.
- preventing enemy units from being in your province: -1 for every unit with a max penalty of -30.
- shortages in resources-types have a negative influence that is build up and build down during the day depending on the duration of the shortages.

* Other factors:
- buildings: on large maps forts are for example constructed solely sometimes to compensate for the steep distance penalty. A fort level gives +5/2000 iron. Other Buildings that provide morale points: railroad/harbour (+7), factory-level (+2.5 rounded downwards).
- conquering enemy capitals gives a direct raise of 10% in all provinces. Not having a capital gives a -40 morale factor. Losing a capital gives a direct drop of 20% in all provinces.
- neighbour factor: each province of a nation directly bordering another will influence it by this formula (that will be summed for each neighbouring province): 2 - int(100-province_morale/10). (based and checked on data provided by Alexiel Lucien)
- enemy neighbour factor: -5 for every bordering enemy province.

PROVINCE OUTPUT

A province has 2 types of output: money and resources.

output = basis (single or double resource prov) * province_morale * corruption * building modifier (harbour, railroad, factory)

Both types are proportionally affected by the corruption percentage; the percentage is floored in display with eg 2.99% being depicted as 2%.

All provinces require 800 food (either fish, grain or both), 800 building material (either iron, wood or both) and 800 energy (coal, gas, oil) a day as upkeep. Not meeting these requirements results in a steep morale factor penalty, that can have a major effect on your economy, as output is proportional to province morale.

money output:

- single resource province: 708 + 19.5 * morale_percentage
- double resource provinces: 1320 + 39 * morale_percentage
- not to be increased by buildings

resource (raw) output:

- single resource province: 750 + 24 * morale_percentage

- double resource province: 1500 + 48 * morale_percentage
- railroad: + 33% bonus (500 coal/day upkeep)
- harbour +25% - factory level: +8.25%
- building modifiers stack, eg harbour + railroad = (33 + 25)% bonus
- railroads, factories and harbours incease production proportional to the percentage of hitpoints they have.

SCORE

There are 2000 points available and distributed over the players from the start and the objective is get a certain amount of them; e.g. 1000 of these points as a solo player. The score you have displays a contrast between your provinces, the morale of those provinces, the upgrades that have been built there and all the provinces you do not have, their morale and available upgrades.The most dominant of the factors mentioned are the provinces you have and the morale each one of them has in relation to all the other provinces on the map and their particular morale. It is therefore an economic score (that can be considered to quantify military potency).

Some reservations have to made in asserting that the score does reflect economic power however: the DE score makes no distinction between single resource provinces and double resource provinces, while the latter are economically very potent since they give double the resource output for only a single province upkeep cost; making them more than twice as valuable as single resource provinces.There is a bonus to 99+ morale provinces, but this extra score, giving a considerable extra 27% points to a 100% morale province, reflects no real economic power and are in that sense empty points that can distort the view on how economic power is actually distributed in the map.

CORRUPTION

• Corruption affects both money and resource output negatively with a penalty of maximally 15%.
  
• Corruption is directly linked to population and for that reason to the number of provinces in all maps except 1910 historic (no homogeneous province population).
  
• The rates at which corruption grows are about the same, but differ for particular maps somewhat.
  
• The display for money lost due corruption is bugged, since it is effected by buildings that only increase the resource-output. It seems this money is not actually lost, but only incorrectly displayed.

FORTS

• forts only reduce damage applied to units inside of them
• display map values are rounded values based on this formula: hp_fort/(hp_fort + 1) (correct formula supplied by user Forest_Dog)
• forts are the only buildings that absorb damage that is being dealt to units. Other buildings and/or provinces as such do not absorb any damage that is applied to units.
• The fort level is not reduced before damage is applied to the units inside the fort first.

FORMATIONS

formation of ships use the following names:

• 1 battleship present = battlegroup
• no battleship + 1 light cruiser present= light cruiser flotilla
• else: submarine-fleet

UPRISING

• Suppression of revolts is based on garrison-damage (not strength as the display suggests).
• If an uprising does occur the garrison will attempt to suppress it and if this fails the remainder of the garrison will defect.
• Planes cannot be part of the garrison and do not reduce the revolt-risk.

DZE DAILY EUROPEAN

Being a newspaper dze DE, surprisingly, provides a lot of information. Among this:

• world's most powerful armies: this is based on the complete strength of your army (the damage unit-types of your army do (on their native terrain) without being confined by combat-mode or size-factors). This is an useful statistic, but can be deceptive since most strength will be made up of infantry units.
• largest economies: sum of a nation's complete resource output (not money). Just like the previous statistic does not distinguish between type of unit, this one does not between type of resource.
  
• richest countries: what capital is a jackpot and what nation is investing poorly? Resources should be valued at least 3:1 over money.
  
• world’s most efficient economies. The value that is depicted is not very meaningful but the relation to the other ranked values is somewhat useful. Ranking seems to be determined by the complete resource output to population ratio (but this has not been checked carefully).

Popularity of your nation among elite AI can be looked up easily now, but little was known about what it is influenced by. Freezy has made available the following factors concerning popularity:

Actions that improve your popularity with AI:
- being enemy with their enemies
- being friends (high diplomatic stance) with them and their friends
- trading with them

Actions that decrease your popularity with AI:
- having peace or better relations with their enemies
- having bad diplomatic relations or war with them or their friends
- starting new wars without declaring them
- when producing a lot of troops while already being unpopular
- having troops in their country without right of way
- getting your spies caught by them

The weight of these factors and how they quantifiable influence popularity is unknown, currently.

Completely agree. Enable tactical unit display in the revamp modus again plox!

The Flanders Front event introduces not only a lot of new units, but also levels of these units and research that is required to enable these. In an attempt to display the large amount of statistics concerning the buildings and units in this event some barcharts have been made.

A lot of these values will be tweaked in the near future and in that case the maps will be updated as well. The layout of these maps will also likely be improved if such an update will occur; spaces and colours for example.

Depending on the need of these charts, new charts will also be made concerning the buildingtime, buildingcost, researchcost and researchtime of all units and level of those units. So if you find this useful let it be known to be useful.

What will certainly be implemented is a second calculator and indicator for this event concerning all these units at this discord channel (moderated by the nl sup crew atm): https://discordapp.com/invite/7U3yBBk

UNARMORED UNITS

UNARMORED UNITS ZOOM/CUT

LIGHT ARMOR UNITS

HEAVY ARMOR UNITS

AIRCRAFT

BUILDINGS (VALUES ARE STACKED HERE, NO OVERLAP)

BUILDINGS LOGARITHMIC

UPKEEP UNITS OF CLASS I, II, III AND IV

Bot at https://discord.gg/7U3yBBk is evolving and is also generating Fort damage reduction and building times. Other updates will follow.

You can generate your own material with this application. See an example below.

A bot-application for discord users has been made that can be helpful to supremacy1914 players. The bot displays valuable information about the composition of an army on a certain terrain: number of infantry-HP, number of tech-HP, how these units are affected by morale/condition and how they compare to each other, damage, damage_comparison, oil, coal, buildingmaterial and money being involved. More sup14 applications will be implemented. More explanation and updates on the mentioned application will follow.

The channel is moderated by the supremacy nl crew and available to everyone at: https://discord.gg/7U3yBBk

An example of output generated by the bot:

An indicator has been made that generates information by user_imput containing the comparison of units. The indicator is available at this discord channel: https://discord.gg/7U3yBBk The channel is modified by the supremacy1914 NL crew.

This is a random example of output of information the bot is able to. More applications will be implemented. More explanation is available at the discord channel that has been mentioned.

MAXIMUM NUMBER OF DAYS TO BE ABLE TO JOIN PARTICULAR MAPTYPES, TYPES OF MAP:

EUROPA HISTORIC, 10 PLAYER MAP: 10 DAYS

WORLD IN FLAMES, 100 PLAYER: 10 DAYS

TOURNAMENTMAP: 10 DAYS

500 PLAYER MAP: 14 DAYS

MEXICO VERSUS USA, 2P: NO LIMIT

PASSWORD PROTECTED GAMES: NO LIMIT

EVENT MAPS: 7 DAYS

ALL OTHER MAPS: 7 DAYS

Polakko

A lot of more material will be added, but gradually. I'm a bit preoccupied atm. Concerning battle, I suppose I will first address size_factors. Size_factors are mentioned in Articles and not arcane at all, but I will address some applications and implications.

NarmerTheLion  

That tool can be useful in assessing the damage that can be dealt by an enemy force quickly yes; especially if it concerns possibly game changing close combat interaction of large stacks. (The info that is apparent on the display concerning your own units, but has to be computed concerning units of another.)

A sloppy error; naturally what I meant is that it is disclosed. The explanation of the score is supplementary.

NarmerTheLion wrote:

Further most information seems to be correct on the first sight

Does this concern the matter of disclosement or is there other information not correct according to you?

It is relevant since it enables and explains the utility of the AC as early available tech, but I consider the exact building times to be the topic of the standard manual. I can however add that another advantage of the AC is its short building time and I will: time is a valuable resource as well, or maybe especially, and if I mention the disadvantage of the AC being expensive in resources I should add that it is cheap in the resource time.

thx

7/12 update: added cav under units section

8/12 update: added AI section, AI versus AI sub, P versus AI subsection

18/12 started general UNIT section and subsection province_morale

19/12 expanded UNIT section; splitting up units among other.

20/12 subsection condition under section morale

29/12 artillery unitsubsection added

02/01 railgun unit subsection added

06/01 tanks unit subsection added

07/01 light cruiser unit subsections added

15/01 basics unit graph

16/01 submarine subsection added

20/01 province out put section created

22/01 factor morale mechanism troops own terrain slightly adjusted - brought to my attention by EasyG. (needs check)

29/01 army morale illustration added

01/2 infgen graph added and morale illustration improved, infregenformula corrected

05/02 graph province output added

09/02 corruption mechanism under province outcome.

11/02 AI exploit added

15/02 under basic concepts: identity+ mobility added

13/05 productiontimes graph added

30/05 condition restoration updated

02/06 mobilisation update

20/7 view/combat ranges

moved compressed and expanded some info in this mail to: S1914 GAME INFO

SUPPLEMENTS

This entry will expand and intends to give players ideally the same tools to play the game with. It might hence be considered a somewhat advanced manual at some point or a mere supplement, though some of its material, concerning unit exploits especially, is probably too debatable. Whatever it may be or become I am convinced that it will be of use to some people.

SCORE (MAP)

There is nothing arcane about the score you receive in the map and it is disclosed: https://www.supremacy1914.com/…in/files/PointFormula.pdf. There are 2000 points available and distributed over the players from the start and the objective is get a certain amount of them; e.g. 1000 of these points as a solo player. The score you have displays a contrast between your provinces, the morale of those provinces, the upgrades that have been built there and all the provinces you do not have, their morale and available upgrades.The most dominant of the factors mentioned are the provinces you have and the morale each one of them has in relation to all the other provinces on the map and their particular morale. It is therefore an economic score (that can be considered to quantify military potency).

Some reservations have to made in asserting that the score does reflect economic power however:

• The DE score makes no distinction between single resource provinces and double resource provinces, while the latter are economically very potent since they give double the resource output for only a single province upkeep cost; making them more than twice as valuable as single resource provinces.
• There is a bonus to 99+ morale provinces, but this extra score, giving a considerable extra 27% points to a 100% morale province, reflects no real economic power and are in that sense empty points that can distort the view on how economic power is actually distributed in the map.

BASIC CONCEPTS CONCERNING AN UNIT

mobility

Mobility is simply proportional: speed = mob*maxspeed. Mobility builds up the first three days and is at 100% at day 4: 50-70-90 (?). Since everybody is affected simultaneously by this it is usually no factor, but the decreased movement can be a major factor in teambattles (and also helping allies very early game) since certain position are not reachable due to decreased mobility at the start of the game. (If mobility drops below 100% afterwards you are out of required resources and you will soon be game over)

Units have a mobility that is dependent on the unittype, terrain, forced march, railroads and harbours. It is crucial to be aware of these differences in speed and to know that a composed unit will be slowed down to the unittype that is the slowest link. The following graph should be helpful:

Although seemingly trivial, It is also important to be aware of combat ranges and view ranges:

Concerning view ranges:

• You can become aware of the slowest unittype, that is or is part of the questionmark unitdisplay in the opaque area (nationality visible only), by looking at the speed it is moving in (if it is moving naturally).
• Planes do not attach to other units and unlike other units in a city "stick out separately ". You can become aware of them in the opaque area that way.
• Balloons have 4x more surface area and are for this reason valuable. They do move however slowly and are best attached to a group of artillery since they share the same speed; they will add some nice airdefence as well.

Concerning combat ranges a lot can be said. This is arguably most important to commend on:

• The close combat range is very important: you can attack everything, except airunits, in a range of 5 (km). This entails for example that you can attack or get attacked sooner than expected or pin a ship land in a very narrow sea strait.
• The ranged combat ranges can be misleading in utility: a railgun e.g. is by lack of vulnerable railroad often locally static, while artillery can move freely within its large range, actually covering a larger range that way, all though not instantly. The same applies to the light cruiser whose small range can be overcome by its fast speed.
• Battleships and light cruisers have no close combat range.

identity

In order for a unit to have certain health and damage characteristics it necessarily has an identity. This identity is labeled of displayed by its unit number, e.g. X13. This might seem very trivial, but allows for very important exploits that everybody should, unfortunately maybe, be aware of. A variety of exploits namely exist by attacks being fixated by unit identity. Here are two of the most common instances:

1) Planes are overvalued for several reasons, but the most important one might be (fortunately maybe if you find no use for overpowered planes in a wwI simulation), that they can be quite useless against an active opponent that uses this exploit. If e.g. his unit X13 of 40 inf is attacked by planes, he can slide off 1 inf and split off 39 inf. His single infantry unit will have the identity X13 and the enemy planes will either pursue this single inf or will have to fly back to start a new attack.

2) Enemy artillery can be exploited in the same way. If it bombards e.g. incoming unit X13, you can split a couple of infantry in forced march that will take the damage. Be aware though that splash damage can occur if the split of infantry is in close combat range (=5km) of the unit (with eg art) you want to protect; something that can happen in enemy terrain where movement is very slow.

PROVINCE OUTPUT

A province outputs two types of resources: organic and non organic. Non organic resources can be somewhat said to be either intrinsic (food, building material and energy) or extrinsic (money). Every province outputs one intrinsic resourcetype and money proportionally to the morale of the province: 50% morale means half of the max resources with the current buildings in place. Provinces with double resources have double that base output.

The output of non organic resources are of a linear nature, but the output of organic resources is of a reciprocal nature. The generation of infantry in recruitment agency takes 28 days at 0% and decreases to a percentage of this in the manner displayed in this graph:

The generation of infantry can be given by this formula (divide by two for double resource provinces):

infantry_generation_in_hours = 338.68/((1+0.5*barracklevel)*((province_morale/10)+0.5))

Important implications:

• Your barracks not only output infantry with low province morale, but also at a slow rate for the same cost: in general switch off barracks under 60% morale.
• Barracks lvl 1 produce infantry more efficiently (and spreading these out can also offer more places to produce cavalry).
• Recrutingagencies are not worth the cost for provinces under 40% morale. This might be questionable. You can derive your own conclusions based on this graph for a situation with certain requirements for infantry and factors like the grainprice.
• Try to limit barracks to double resource provinces.

production of non-infantry units

Productiontimes go in factorysegment 0 (fab1) to 12 (fab4). The productiontime decreases reciprocal. The possible productiontime for a unit at a certain segment is maximally 4 days. Draw your own implications and utilities.

Based on this mechanic, due to factorylvl and airfield requirements the minimum building time should be:

FIGHTER day 15 10 hour 0 minutes

BOMBER day 17 19 hour 30 minutes

LIGHT CRUISER day 12 14 hour 40 minutes

TANK day 14 10 hour 0 minutes

BALLOON day 13 14 hour 40 minutes

RAILGUN day 17 7 hour 31 minutes

SUBMARINE day 14 10 hour 0 minutes

ARTILLERY day 12 14 hour 40 minutes

BATTLESHIP day 17 7 hour 31 minutes

HEAVYTANK day 16 7 hour 30 minutes

Most units have not been checked actually. Since it is correct for artillery and the light cruiser, production time is only increased at buildingsegments of 12 hour. A building is btw always completed in segments of 12 hours. If a build is cancelled it will be reduced to the last finished segment of 12 hours, but buildingcost however are only refunded to the percentage of buildingtime that was left at that moment. (eg: factory 2 build is cancelled at 90% buildingtime: 10% will be refunded, but the build will be reduced to 75% complete.)

corruption

Corruption is a minor factor that affects the netto income in resources and moneyt in your entire nation. Since the effect is rather small it has not been sufficiently explored, but it seems to have these features, including probably a design error:

• Corruption is proportional to the amount of provinces you have.
• Depending on mapsize the value seems to be 0.05-0.10 corruption percentage/province with a minimum of 0.01% and a maximum of 15%.
• Smaller maps have a larger corruption quantity added by province ratio, this is related to the total numbers of provinces in a map (or population (population is a superfluous variable since it is equal everywhere)) to the number provinces you have.
• The exact amount of corruption is not correctly displayed, since 1)
  actual corruption is affected by buildings that probably were only intended to modify recourse output (not money). 2) corruption is a rounded floorvalue: 6.99% corruption is displayed as 6%.

Concerning 1:

corruption_percentage = floor_round(corruption_money/(btw_money_income + corruption_money)) and the corruption display do not match for provinces that have resource modifiers as harbours and railroads: the display is correct if you multiply it with the following factor: 1/(1+factor), with e.g. 0.25 for a harbour and 0.58 for a harbour and a railroad. So actual corruption is factored by production modifiers.

Despite the rather small maximum effect of circa 15 percent money loss on btw income (much more money is involved in active trading), some maps might be tracked to display the rise of corruption in relation to the map size exactly, since more importantly, resources, are also involved.

MORALE

Morale might very well be the most underestimated aspect of the gameplay. If you take morale systematically into consideration by taking notice where your troops will be located at daychange a habit will soon emerge that will give you a really big advantage over players that do not take this into account. Morale units (infantry and cavalry) have their health directly factored by morale (30% morale means 30% of the maximum health) and 45% of the damage these units can deal is factored by morale as well (see graph basic unit compostion). Hence, morale makes armies and terrain makes morale at day change.

Note that the display for morale is a rounded value. Morale actually works with tenth of percentages; e.g. 45.6% can be displayed as 46%. The most important mechanism concerns cav and inf at daychange on your own terrain:

armymorale_new=armymorale_old + (provincemorale - armymorale_old)/factor*

*factor seems to be 5 if morale drops and 6 if morale rises contrary to the factor 4 first proposed; needs to be rechecked, but the mechanism stands and is useful enough regardless.

This implies that the greater the difference between your army (inf and cav only) and your province morale, the greater the rise or drop in morale is and it implies that it is extremely bad practise to keep a main army in a recently conquered 25% morale province. This is something that always has to be prevented, but can be easily done so, by for example resorting to different types of terrain (like enemy terrain of ally terrain) or another province of yourself with better morale.

Different types of terrain namely have different morale mechanisms. If your army is not on your own terrain it will move itself, in accordance with the terrain type, in one of two possible paces to 50% morale. This indeed means that infantry that has less than 50% morale will actually rise to 50% when it is not on your own territory, including enemy terrain. The further away army morale is from 50% the greater the change in morale will be towards 50%.

The formulas are helpful in understanding how a certain terrain type affects your morale. For units at sea, neutral land (peace_relation) and enemy terrain the formula is close to (might be factored 1/7.5 rather 0.133):

armymoralenew = armymorale_old + (50 - armymorale_old)*0,125

Ally territory (right of passage and shared map) behave in the same manner but move even slower to 50%:

armymoralenew = armymorale_old + (50 - armymorale_old)*0,10

CONDITION

Tech has condition and not morale, but condition functions mostly in the same way as morale does with the important exception that it is not effected by terrain at day change and can only regain itself. It possibly does not restore condition when it is in combat at daychange and when it is it does, it restores universally in a manner like this:

condition_new = condition_old + (100- condition_old)/7

The restoration rate is independent of the number of units involved.

PROVINCE MORAL

Armymorale is made by provinicemorale (and/or relationship towards the owner), but what makes up provincemorale? These days all morale factors of a province are neatly displayed and it is also indicated if morale will rise of fall. The morale of provinces itself is regulated by the following mechanism:

provincemoral_new = (100-∑ moralefactors -old_provincemorale)*0.25 + provincemoral_old

One of these morale factors interestingly is the presence of enemy units in the province: up to a certain quantity enemy forces are proportionally contributing to a negative province morale factor. Since, as has been specified, morale does not drop very hard on enemy soil, being at day change in an enemy province, lowering its maximum morale, is actually one of the best places to be. People that want to play optimal have their scouts on enemy soil at day change as an implication.

UNITS

Concerning the manner in which damage is dealt there are 3 types of units: close combat units (infantry, cavalry, cars, tanks, balloons, subs), ranged units (art, rail gun, light cruiser, battleships) and planes, a hybrid one, doing close combat damage in a ranged manner. All damage that is dealt by a unit is factored by its size, meaning that the damage that is dealt by a quantity of units of the same type together does not proportionally add up. Ranged units and planes though actually do add up proportionally (50 art does double the damage of 25 damage e.g.) but they do so up to and including size 50: any art added to a group of 50 art is adding 0 damage and is therefore size factored by 0. The graph concerning units that have their damage proportionally add up is not very insightful, but is convenient to refer to later:

More detailed knowledge of size factors is required for the close combat units excluding the submarine and balloon. It should be noted though that the ranged units do apply the same damage as they do in close combat with the exception of grounded air planes. The size factors have been made public for a long time now and can be found under articles. It is especially useful to display these size factors of close combat units in a graph to discuss some implications.


                 

splitting up units

Concerning the last graph it should be apparent that the most important unit is naturally...infantry. When you go into combat namely you do not only consider damage, but also health points on which this damage can be inflicted. Moreover, due to sheer quantity, besides adding protective health points around valuable tech, known as meat, the infantry itself is adding a lot of damage by sheer quantity. A lot of people do not exploit this vast quantity though: if you have a group of 80 inf you can deal double damage simply by splitting these up into two forces of 40 instead, since infantry above 40 is not adding any damage. If you repeat the process and divide the group in 4 units of size 20 the graph indicates that they do a damage of 40 combined versus the circa 25 damage the two groups dealt previously. Naturally this also applies to the other units, but increasing damage in this manner is less common: you need e.g. either more than 5 or 6 units to halve to increase the damage of respectively tanks and cav/ac.

If you consider splitting up your forces to increase damage you should also consider its health points though: if you make your groups to small their destruction can cause the morale of the enemy main force to rise during the battle. Whatever you may accomplice however, the total duration of the combat will always be shorter simply due to the doubling of fighting rounds: do not split up your forces if you want to save time, do split them up if you want to win time. Splitting up forces thus enables you to either win time or battles or both. In order to split up your unit into two effective fighting component lastly, it required to give both a different destination: if you split up your force and give them both the same destination of e.g. the enemy city, both will fuse into and battle as one unit when they arrive at the target.

An extreme application of splitting up your forces in order to win time, is to down a fortification, by splitting up assaulting infantry into a lot of small infantry units (below size 6 preferably 1). This application is actually very limited, since the morale of the garrison will rise due to the destruction of all the small inf units and naturally casualties are considerable. It also requires a lot of tedious management to split them up into many units of size 1 and fortunately there are and you should pursue other means to down a fortification.

UNIT EXPLOITS

Some legitimate unit exploits are exposed here.

Armoured Car

What probably is widely known (and highly important) is that the AC is a unit that is early available and that it has great defensive capabilities in cities: its modest damage (1.2) can tipple the odds in early regular close combat encounters when not a lot of other tech is around, but it deals double damage (2.4!) when defending a city.

Probably less known are the reconnaissance capabilities of the AC and in connection with this the ability to sabotage by taking enemy provinces by surprise most importantly manipulating the movement speed of armies. Namely, besides great defensive capabilities the AC is very fast: 72 and hence in forced movement/march 108! This means that on enemy territory an AC in forced march goes slightly faster (37.8) than an infantry unit on its own soil (36). A lot of people do not realize how fast an AC can be and if they do not and leave their cities without garrisons the AC can be very destructive. I do however not consider the sabotaging of provinces as such to be the greatest exploit, but if this is done to manipulate the movement speed of your armies and that of the enemy. I have won a few hard fought maps by having e.g. an isolated AC take a province in forced march so that my army was able to catch up with and destroy a retreating enemy main army.

This brings me to make a more general statement: be prepared to trade off condition (or morale) for speed with a forced march, because this opens a window of opportunity.

The disadvantage of the AC is its cost; it is a rather expensive unit. The production of AC goes at the expense of the development of other tech and infrastructure to build that tech, but I always prefer to have some around, also late game, for the reasons mentioned above. It should however be noted that the AC does not require much of the perhaps most important resource; i.e. time.

Cavalry

The introduction of cavalry has much changed the game since its introduction, though it might generally be an undervalued unit, it allows for playing games at a much higher pace.

Cavalry is distinctive in the type of resources (food) it requires, having morale like infantry and the low production requirements: a garage, barracks and a short building time. This makes the cavalry an important early game asset that can determine the outcome of close combat encounters, dealing an amazing double damage in attacking the garrison (not the buildings) of a city. Its morale and more modest speed in comparison to the AC are disadvantages, but in a early stage of the game the cavalry can be considered more affordable, since its resources do not directly go at the expense of the development of infrastructure for future technology (in solo games). Mirroring each other in dealing double damage (a cav-unit however has to be at 100% morale to deal 1.2 damage) by either defending (AC) and attacking a city, the game is allowed much more speed by having available in a very early stage of the game, when fortifications are not maxed out, the combined power of two types of units with a high sizefactor up to 6. As a result most teambattles can be concluded these days before any artillery has been build.

Concerning solo battles those that do not deploy and utilize cavalry early game are likely to unnecessary drop behind people whom do so. The importance of cavalry does however decrease as the game progresses. Cavalry naturally keeps dealing valuable damage throughout the game, but its importance will decrease as the game progresses and other close combat technology will become paramount. One is tempted to deny this and state that, since contrary to tech, food is required as a resource, they can remain just as relevant: cav keeps adding valuable damage throughout the game, not claiming any iron, wood and oil, needed for the construction of more powerful units. The norm however seems to be that food prices will soon rise (partly because cav is being produced) and with that the cost of a cavalry unit does as well, making the consumption of food for unit generation going at the expense of maintaining your army, stockpiling food or directly selling it in order to invest in infrastructure for/or other tech.

Artillery

Artillery was the most important tech unit before most other units where only available in special gold rounds. If you look at the graphs concerning damage that can be dealt by artillery compared to the graph for close combat units and consider that damage will not be necessarily returned by the enemy it might not be surprising that artillery still is the most important techunit. Artillery is also not an expensive unit and quickly to build compared to other technology: if the oil price does get high it might actually get cheaper relative to other technologies that require more oil. Even if you are in the unfortunate position to have your art in close combat it should perform greatly: adding 1.5 damage per art proportionally, implying that 33 art is almost doing as much damage in close combat as 25 tanks. So why would you use close combat units at all? Well, a tank for example has 7(00) health points compared to 1(00) for an art, making art more suitable for ranged combat, but this does not entail that units like the tank are required in the manner like artillery is, since close combat is simply not as required as ranged combat is.

The only real downside compared to other land units is its speed. Moving around a third slower than other land units is considerable, but on the small 10 or even 31 player map not minimizing your casualties is mostly not an option and sensible players avoided notable close combat. Fortunately the introduction of larger maps (and cavalry) has led to some more diversity, since with the scaling up of size the pace or speed of expansion can become more important than minimizing your casualties to killed ratio. Moving around solely with artillery and especially waiting until everything is its way is completely destroyed by it is simply taking too much time. If you play with artillery only and focus solely on minimizing losses as you would previously do in a 10 player map, especially in teammodus, you will most likely lose the game simply by not have expanded quickly enough compared to players who were more willing to sacrifice troops for speed. Hence the importance of artillery has decreased a little.

railgun

What about that other ranged landunit, the railgun? It has a great range, which is great since that compensates for being greatly immobile: it moves very slowly and when you really require it to move, spies or combat will prevent you from doing this, by easily destroying vulnerable railroad. Besides being practically unmovable it is a very expensive unit that takes a long time to build. Considering its inert nature the railgun is a defensive weapon and as such theoretically can enable you to move other troops somewhere for an offensive to win the game, but it is best to think of the railgun as something that at best will enable you to hold ground somewhere and not as proper investment to obtain victory somewhere else. Maybe the railgun only has real merit as a psychological weapon: it can deter people to attack you while actually doing modest damage. Unfortunately this psychological weapon often turns on its user by providing a false sense of security, rather than providing four useful and movable pieces of artillery. It has to be admitted though that the railgun can be of utility, but this is in my opinion very circumstantial. I had some useful pieces for example in narrow sea straits, that were hard to reach by enemy planes, while doing considerable damage against sea units, but in general they certainly are a poor investment.

tanks

Supremacy is not all about getting the best killed to casualty ratio, it is, certainly in larger maps, sometimes also about making proper pace at the expense of that ratio. If you need to expand quickly you need to throw in some close combat units. You most often want a close combat unit to quickly remove the remainder of an unit that has been battered by your artillery, but sometimes it might be best to win more time by throwing in your close combat units around the start of the bombardment. It can actually also be a viable option not to use combined arms at all: instead of waiting for slower artillery, getting much more casualties in exchange for destroying and taking over certain positions in a shorter time span can be sensible. Beware though that the absence of ranged units can prolong the duration of the combat significantly, if you do for example not split up your forces (see unit section) if the situation allows for that. As the game progresses you want to reinforce your close combat unit consisting of morale sensitive cavalry with some tanks. How many tanks you can make depends on the situation. In my opinion, if you play against an opponent of equal size that prioritizes artillery, you do not want to drop behind with your artillery production and tanks will remain of an auxiliary nature. That is not to say that tanks are auxiliary against active opponents, but that they are auxiliary if people with equal resources play optimally.

If you stick enough infantry on a tank, 21 might be a sufficient number, a normal tank, with its 7 health points can withstand quite some combat, since it will also restore some of that max condition at daychange. The same logic applies to the heavy tank with at least 27 infantry attached to it. A heavy tank uses 1.33 more oil, 1.4 more iron and 1.5 more money than a normal tank for production in exchange for 1.5 more damage and 1.5 health. Since blueprints are no longer required, the heavy tanks look like a better deal and they probably are, but they also require 1.5 times more of the arguably most important resource: (production)time. If you stick more than 5 tanks on a stack, considering the size factors, you should naturally add at least one tank of a different type.

light cruiser

The light cruiser is often said to be convenient only for emptying AI countries in an early stage of the game, but it is actually one of the greatest and most misunderstood units at your disposal.

Contrary to the other ships the LC is very fast (67 to 30 and 21) and it is truly multifunctional if you exploit its abilities and allow it to go in a forced march at a speed of 100 km/h sometimes. You can afford this forced march situationally, since the LC is a very cheap unit, that does not only has a short buildingtime, but due to its speed also has a short traveltime to become useful somewhere.

Because of its speed the LC can harass coastal enemy coastal provinces by making some kills and damage provinces, possibly having the enemy deploy much needed artillery (and more temporarily planes) away from the front to prevent this. I am convinced that even in a teambattle on the 10 playersmap, that is played optimally with artillery (and is somehow not concluded with cav and ac) two light cruisers can make a valuable contribution by not only making kills and doing some damage, but possibly also enabling a successful coastal landing somewhere, since most coastal provincies on that map are whitin LC range and you can not shield everything off initially with much slower moving artillery, that is likely to be required elsewhere anyway. The LC will also be instrumental in clearing important sea scouts.

The LC is not only much more useful against landunits as is often thought because of its reduced range of 40 compared to 50 for the art, but also much more powerful against naval units as is commonly assumed. An LC namely can and will destroy very expensive unprotected battleships that have a range of 75. If in the most unfavorable circumstances both the LC and the BS are and remain on the same straight line and the battleships respond directly, the BS will only have the opportunity to fire either one or two times earlier than the LC. If the BS moves away and the LC group is forced marched for an hour, the resulting distance, after the LC have also fired, can maximally be 5km (100-30-75); which is exactly the close combat range where you can use the LC as submarines, resulting in the following ranged tick of the battleships to be returned by close combat damage of the light cruisers. If the LC are not forced, the battleships, depending on the reaction time and the shape of the movement grid, can deal ranged damage for a second time before you go into close combat. If the battleships go into forced march themselves this can be exploited by moving forced around yourself half a time shorter. No matter how the battleships respond, if they are not protected and slowed down by infantry and submarine healtpoints, they will lose more resources than you will.

Going into close combat with your LC actually means that you will be using them as submarines, which you perfectly can. Concerning naval warfare two LC (doing also 4HP and 4 damage) can function together as a more expensive, but more than 3 times faster submarine that also deals ranged impact before self-impact. It will also do a better job at protecting battleships, not so much because submarines would slow down the BS speed to 21 if no infantry is attached, but since, contrary to a submarine, the LC is adding very valuable air defence power. The light cruiser thus either protects battleships and enables them to operate at all or requires the enemy to protect its battleships against it. The light cruiser is thus formidable against both land and sea units, active and not so active players and AI alike.

submarine

Considering all that has been said about using light cruisers as submarines, submarines themselves appear redundant and I will further argue that they indeed are.

For just 2k extra oil and 5k money you can make two light cruisers instead of one submarine, that deal exactly the same damage and have exactly the same health as the sea-tank known as submarine. Admittedly also half a day more production time is required, but this is compensated easily by the much shorter travel time of the light cruiser: submarines even slow down naked (=no infantry attached) battleships and are more than 3 times slower than LC. LC, by the way, also make better escorts for battleships since they add 2.5 more necessary airdefence power than submarines do. Of course a submarine, as a sea-tank, is the most suitable for close combat at sea than any other vessel, but for a some more resources you can have two LC do exactly the same besides doing a lot of things the submarine is not able to do or is doing worse, besides being supposedly invisible.

A submarine is not very invisible. Besides planes, their whereabouts are regularly revealed by spies during daychange, especially in larger maps where one can and should afford the required spies to make that a likely event. If you furthermore really want to use it as a sea-tank you have to stick infantry to it, which is equivalent to an alarming shark fin. Because the submarine is rather visible it is a rather a very expensive scout and expendable, moving around the same speed, generated sea-infantry or actual spies are a far better alternative.

You can come up with scenarios where the investment of resources into submarines is optimal, but all these scenarios are circumstantial and passive: they require a mostly rather peculiar or careless move of an opponent in a very limited area and it is not strategically sound to spend resources and await such eventualities. Every function a submarine fulfils can either be better performed by another unit or performed by a unit that is far more multifunctional and useful.

AI

AI versus AI

There is an AI exploit that might be a bit ugly, but since it must be practised by some people and since it can significantly speed up the pace of expansion, the method should be shared to equal the playing ground. The method is simple and concerns playing off two AI counties against each other: once you have right of passage with an AI, you can shoot with an arty on another AI and have the incoming enemy AI forces collide not with your arty, but by positioning either before or after the shot,with the other AI. This may also be obtained sometimes without having a right of passage with any AI. At day change the two AI will be at peace again, but a repetition of this method can result in AI significantly cleaning up each other.

P versus AI

One of the great applications of the Light Cruiser (an underestimated unit that will be discussed separately) is in luring coastal AI forces into sea. The slow AI will chase the fast LC (21 (inf at sea speed) versus 67), enabling the LC to make a loop somewhere at sea most of the time and repeat the process in the same or another coastal province. Try to avoid having to kill the into the water lured infantry, since this requires a lot of maptime and gametime/management; the infantry will disappear once the AI country disappears. Beware however: the AI will keep pursuing your LC until the AI-country is conquered.

Another AI exploit is to empty a fort and to wait until the AI attacks the empty fort and reoccupy the fort before the AI arrives. This would however be a very demented enterprise as you do not know when the server will respond to an empty neighbouring province; this is not always (also) at daychange for example. If however AI troops are in movement within the AI country itself, by e.g. your artillery fire, you will know the exact time when it will be evaluated if the arriving troops, possibly together with the already present garrison, will attack your empty neighbouring province: the moment they arrive simply, you can check if an attack has been launched; usually you have hours of margin to respond.

The functionality of Supremacy 1914 has decreased beyond the point of being a playable game due to what to a great extent is a cosmetic makeover that I do not even find more attractive. The aesthetics of the new layout/layover is matter of opinion, but that it makes the game hard to play and operate is a matter of fact considering the following:

1) A supmap essentially consists of vertices (cities and intersections) and nodes (roads and sea routes) between them. Concerning movement and local relations on the map everything else is irrelevant, but the graph/movementgrid is very obscured in the current version.

2) A supgame consists for an important part of the movement of units on the mentioned graph/grid. The display of these units is not clear at all and I am forced to resort to the pindisplay with the disadvantage that I am not aware of the exact composition of a unit in the blink of an eye.

3) Planes do move between points of the map instead of roads, but I consider their movement to be even more opaque in the new version.

possible solutions:

1) Roads and intersections need to be crystal clear. Can adjusted contrast and colors manage that?

2) Improved pin-display: make the exact composition of the unit directly visible (how many art/other tech exactly). (Perhaps even try to improve their attractiveness by using something else than the present pins. The good old java version e.g. used classical military unit display, which looked really nice.)

I am not going to open a game in December, since the old version is probably only around for two or three months and I really do not want to be confronted with a late stage game that is unplayable and that I will certainly not enjoy.