New Features in CoW 1.5
Attention, generals!
Our next test phase of Call of War 1.5 is starting on May 25th 2020. We already told you about Doctrines, Attack Bombers and Rocket Artilleries last week, but there is so much more!
RuntimeLet’s start with how long we plan on keeping this test phase running for. You might have noticed that we did not call it an ‘event’, like we did with previous iterations of Call of War 1.5. That is because we are confident enough to have Call of War 1.5 run longer than ever before. This test phase has an open end. You will be able to sign up for new game rounds not only this weekend, but also the week after, the following weekend and the week after that etc…
More MapsSo far all our Call of War 1.5 tests were done on the 22 player “Clash of Nations” map. This time we want to scale things up a bit. We took the time to make the beloved 100 player “World at War” map Call of War 1.5 ready! This classic map will be available during the test as well. During the Call of War 1.5 test phase there will be a CoW 1.5 version and a CoW 1.0 versions of both maps available to players. The 100 player map also features all four of the new Doctrines on one map, so don’t miss out on the fun! We are already working on other maps to get them ready for Call of War 1.5, so more maps are coming soon!
ParatroopersWith Call of War 1.5 paratroopers get a feature the community has been asking for, a ‘convert feature’. This new feature allows generals to have their paratroopers board a plane again, after they got deployed. The ‘convert feature’ converts the paratrooper from an infantry back to a plane. This can be done anywhere on the map, but we highly recommend to do it in a province with an airstrip. Converting a Paratrooper will cost time and money. This makes paratroopers much more flexible and a force to be reckoned with on the battlefield!
Game Ending TimerAll Call of War 1.5 game rounds have a maximum run time, the same way events have them. When the time is up, the player or coalition with the most points wins the game round. Game ending timers prevent long running games with a low amount of active players from continuing, to avoid straining our game servers. For now, smaller maps will run 5 weeks, medium sized maps will run 7 weeks and large maps will run 10 weeks, if not won earlier. With the implementation of the end game timer only system generated maps will be affected. However, user generated maps will receive a game ending timer at a later stage as well.
Interface changesThe new test phase of Call of War 1.5 also brings an overhaul of the user interface to allow the new Doctrines being highlighted in various menus throughout the game. You will notice that with the new interface historical unit names are featured more prominently in the production menu and in the unit details panel. With the new interface we also disabled production and rally point buttons for rural provinces, as production is limited to urban provinces in Call of War 1.5. This significant change in Call of War 1.5 is also reflected when toggling through provinces in a game round. You now switch from urban provinces to other urban provinces and from rural provinces to other rural provinces.
Balancing changesLast but not least, there are a lot of balancing changes in this latest version of Call of War 1.5! Like in the past, these balancing changes are heavily influenced by the community feedback we received in the last test event. We will focus on the main changes in this article, but you can find a more detailed
list with all changes in the forums.
Research does not cost manpower anymore. We replaced previous manpower costs by normal resources costs, specific to each unit. We rebalanced resources in general to alleviate resource constraints players experienced especially in the early stages of our last test event. The stack limit at which additional units do not add any more damage to an army is lowered from 15 to 10 units. Upgrading costs were reduced from 100% to 50% of the target level price. We added a new “Local Port” building, that allows units to embark or disembark faster in rural provinces.Apart from these big changes we did a lot of fine grained balancing changes to individual units related to the community feedback, the new Doctrines and the new units in the game. Check out the forum post containing all the details. Let us know what you think there and share your experiences over the next couple of weeks while you play Call of War 1.5. We are eager to hear from you!
Your Bytro Team
