Soul

Yea great patch, just the missles and nukes need to increase their damage by 25-50% because of the HP buff, which was needed

Yes, they do declare war on you What difficulty level are you playing on. Only play aganist the AI on expert level, nothing lower

I was not talking about you N3rull, just the OP and Rick. We are talking about balance here, and this is just a game design thing, the higher tech units might need a larger seeing radius because of the increased movement rates of the higher tech units. They move farther and faster per turn. This is overall a game and in some cases, may not be realistic for balance purposes but it needs to be balanced. We all know airpower is Overpowered in real life, it does not have to be in EoS (just as an example)

Tried a game with the new resource balance, I will say Brit it works WELL. As in I can produce an actual army to defeat an opponent instead of having to weaken my defenses to attack someone. For example, with a typical garrisson 1 inf 1 tank 1 flak and 1 missile launcher, plus pop usuage and roving units, I can actually afford an offensive army for transports and taking out other players. Before you had to weaken your defenses, because you would run out of food fast before you could mount an assult on a heavily defended island

Most of the issues I've brought up have resulted in changes. I don't think any of the issues these two guys will bring up will every result in a change. Now if only we can get the seeing radius larger for the higher tech units, fix the battleship owns all problem, and find out a way in which a combined attack will actually be useful (as in stacking) or 1 attack per .10 ticks of a turn instead of each unit getting an attack aganist every unit

Like that won't happen nowadays with crusie missiles and coastal batteries. It may not be artillery but they are anti-ship missiles, so I think its a good trade-off.

LOL I couldn't agree more N3rull, people don't want a balanced game, they want a uber super unit they can build and kill everyone. That is not the kind of game I want to play. Artillery and Missile launchers are necessary to keep battleships and crusiers from bombarding cities right now

I like what I see, thanks for the new update

Ok, so there is no way to grow your cities, but you can kill their population from missiles, bombing, and food stravation...there is no way to regain that lost population or production?

Your cities grow over time with a food surplus. However, your cities will die very quickly if you don't have enough food.

Great, Thanks

I see other people have posted about the food issue in other threads so I gave this one a bump. Seems like that mostly everyone agrees that food needs a slight buff, or some building similar to an oil refinery for food consumption. Once you enter the late game stages with your cities ranged from 12-18 population, these cities consume over 2-almost 4 per turn. So your production grows over time but you can build less units over time. I think this is something which needs to be fixed

This is a list of fixes which must be fixed before release -Infantry attacking from an entranced position. Any form of attack requires movement, thus the attacker should not be entrenched -Nuclear bombers - I built three nuke bombers, and I attacked cities with each of them, all of them ran out of fuel over the target. WTH? -Missiles - Sometimes missiles run out of fuel and do not hit anything. This may be a valid point for V2 missiles but cruise missiles and ICBMs need a 100% to hit unless shot down I find the middle one slightly game-breaking since it takes nearly 20-30 turns to build one of the bombers.

LOL, takle a look at the thread I started on naval balance, it outlines about the same thing, as well as my radar and aircraft balance thread. Glad I'm not the only one noticing these unbalanced units The BB is really the most game breaker of all, since if I just build battleships and destroyers and transports, I own the game. The fact people forget about building your own battlehship si that if I have my battleship outside your port, when your battleship gets produced, it begans docked, which my battleship will destroy with ease (this just may be a balance thing not talking realistic here)

Everytime I try to download the update it freezes when trying to apply the update. I've already tried to reinstall and update as well, it does the same thing. I also get an error message when the game tries to autosave as well.

I suggest a modest increase for food between 20-40% should do it Or have the cities build a farm similar to an oil refinery. I understand food is supposed to limit how many units you have, but by for example turn 90+ your cities account for over 75% of the food consumption.

Naval Balance Issues (Hot fix) If this is too much for implementation than I suggest just a few changes to bring the balance in line Subs- first strike ability and more damage to units bigger than a cruiser, slight speed buff (less than cruiser) Destroyer- better against subs Cruiser- increased speed but still slower than a destroyer, sight buff to damage to destroyer and either take off land bombardment or make it a little stronger, I hate having to GIVE FIELD ORDERS to cruisers so they will engage other sea units instead of firing on cities and units endlessly without any damage. Battleship- less effective against subs, Carrier- No idea yet, have not used them as much as I would have liked to get a feel for balance

Naval Balance Issues I know I have posted quite a bit recently and most people are asking just who am I LOL with all these changes, but I really want to see this game succeed when launched. But this is another thing I have noticed with the sea units. I am asking for a radical change so be prepared, but right now Sea balance is broken. How? Easily, the only ships I need to produce are Transports, Destroyers and Battleships. Transports for you guessed it, transporting units Destroyers for killing fast transports and taking resources Battleships for destroying any land naval or air forces. What about subs, well they are too slow and too vulnerable as it stands. Transports sink subs easily and out run them. Additionally, subs don’t have any good “first strike” or attack modifier. In the old Empire subs did 3 points worth of damage and had 2 hit points. I don’t propose that for this game but if they attack they need to do more damage than what they do now. Cruisers are worthless. They can’t hit anything on land, and destroyers sink them a tad too easily. For my production I rather have a battleship, its only 6-7 more turns. Destroyers are essential for hunting down transports and taking resources in this game. No other sea unit is as fast as they are. Additionally they kill subs (usually) and can take on cruisers, so why spend the extra production time for a slower ship (cruiser) or a less hit point and slower ship (sub) Battleships are of course king of the sea and kill anything with ease. With their massive HPs they can retreat and get repaired to fight another day. I see why the AI only builds BBs and DDs I don’t know about Carriers because I can easily build an airfield on an Island, or launch attacks from cities. Additionally sea units seem to kill bombers easily, so why build a carrier at all? If I lose the carrier, I also lose all of the fighters and bombers on the ship, way too risky when I can just base them from a city or airbase(s). Long winded of course but this is what I propose as a start. I don’t know how this will work but this is the “vision”. Make the units dedicated towards a specific threat and 25-50% less effective against others. Transports can remain as they are. Destroyers become decided anti sub killers and get sonar (researched after radar) they still remain effective against transports as well but less so against air. Cruisers become the air killer, getting radar and a range radius like a flak gun. They are still vulnerable to subs and can take on destroyers with a 60%-70% win ratio Battleships destroy everything above the sea and are bombardment ships for landing forces. They are somewhat effective against air but -25% effective against subs. They can take on destroyers with a 75-80 win ratio and cruisers with a 65-70 win ratio. (Reason being is a DD and CA have the same production time as a BB, as it stands now I can send a DD and a CA and both will be destroyed by the BB with little damage) What will save the BB is the hit points, so we are not reducing the strength of the BB. Subs become effective against battleships and get a first strike chance if not discovered. If this can’t be implemented than a higher attack ratio for BB, and CV. This is the part which will require the most balance because we don’t want to make subs too powerful. Carriers, like I said before I have not played with because of ranges, but I suspect with only 50% research on, carriers will become necessary, so in that case Carriers need to be an air killer but even less effective against surface units.

Playing with the game even further, it seems almost any unit a strat bomber runs into has the ability to shoot it down, for example I built 9 to bomb a city from another player, on the way 3 were shot down, 1 shot down before bomb, 4 bombed than shot down and 1 made it back safety. Pitiful for the amount of build time, I could of built 3 or 4 battleships with the COMBINED build time. Tactical bombers are balanced fine, since they are used for attacking units outside of cities. But the strat bombers are "city bombers" and yes they should die but not so quickly. I don't want to make them too powerful but I beleive a HP buff is necessary for people to use them. Perhaps increase the fighters combat value aganist bombers if they get 2HP because I think they really need this buff. Does anyone else have observations about this issue?

I agree, with what you are saying Moon, but in any war, the objective is ususally one of three things, capture the capital, destroy industrial capacity, or take over resources. The game currently has the the Industrial and resource part, but I would like to see another objective. A daring raid on a capital in a war or if the capital is on the front line, forcing the enemy to defend it heavily or move it elseware. Think of it as a "capstone" to a war or the end objective. Right now playing is just a slugfest usually, with players taking over major cities as they come across them. Adding a capital would add more planning in a war and I feel make the game better. Like I said before, its like a management game, but where are you managing the empire from? A representation on the map would be great. I think almost every game from Civ, Master of Orion, Gal Civ, along the same genre has some type of capital building giving bonuses to your empire. And in those games, one of your objectives is to take the enemy capital, or destroy their production.

I find that hard to believe, in any game you do not produce enough food no matter what you do, for example the population consumption takes about 75% of the food leaving few for units. No matter how you play you will not have enough food even when controlling nearly all of the resources. Food needs to be rebalanced. Keeping units in cities is not a good solution. You need patrols, attack forces, in order to maintain your empire. In a city I have inf or armor an anti air and 1 artillery, keeping units in cities invites an attack from a missile, battleship or some pillaging transport force As you advance into the late game, food should have an impact on how large an army is but should not limit you to about 20 units. I just saw you said 1v1 against ai that's why I'm talking about human players and multiple ai players Game I'm in 3 ai 1 human

Training, Unit Experience Another suggestion is the addition of unit experience and training to the game. In order to not bog down people with a lot of information, use 1-3 or 1-5 levels for unit experience. This would also result in another city building such as a training facility and later on in the game, combined arms training facility. Each level would increase the strength (or I guess the attrition?) of the unit. Example of 5 levels Untrained 0% Recruit 5% Trained 10% Veteran 15% Elite 25% The training facility will be able to train up to recruits, (all units built after the facility) and the combined arms training facility (which replaces the training facility) can train up to trained. The facility will cost 1 $ per turn once constructed For research, the training facility should be available early game with the other facility being available mid game The build time (to encourage use) should be low, about as long as the radar takes to be constructed Furthermore, during battle, units can gain experience from winning battles for example Untrained 0 Recruit 1 Trained 2 Veteran 3 Elite 5 This would allow people to not waste units and allow the use of smaller trained forces aganist larger untrained forces.

Capital City Currently in the game, there is nothing to represent a capital in Empires of Steel. I am suggesting you implement a capital city function in order to add more strategic depth to the game The Capital City would have a building such as a Government center, Palace, etc. which represents the seat of your empire. This city would get a 25% production bonus. The loss of the capital city would result in half of all stockpiled resources going to the enemy, and a restart on current research. Additionally, the empire would receive between a 10-25% production penalty per turn until the capital is rebuilt This building, Capital, is in the beginning city of the game, but may be built by any other city, ie resulting in a move of the capital. Once you discover an enemy capital, the city is highlighted with a star. This building should also take some time to be built, between 7-15 turns, so that someone cannot instabuild a capital when their capital is threatened from invasion. What do you think about this suggestion?

Radar Although radar is useful in the game, I don’t think it is balanced for the end game. I understand you need units on patrol in order to see enemy units, and that was the intention of the game, however many mid and end game units move fast and you won’t have a chance to respond to any sightings. With the development of UAVs in the game, I am suggesting the additional facility, (replaces radar) Surveillance Net be available mid to late game (after development of jets, but before UAVs. This Surveillance Net increases view radius by same amount as radar and has the same build time as radar. Strategic Bomber Looking at the balance for the strategic bomber, I am asking for a look possibly increasing the hit points to 2. I am suggesting this because of the long time it takes to build one, and it would better balance the use of the bomber for cities. I hate building all those bombers, and having them shot down all in 1 turn. I expect that of tactical bombers, but not of strategic bombers. Right now as it stands, taking all that time to build one of these is almost useless. I know this is not very realistic, but it may be necessary for balancing the game.

The Food Issue There is a significant issue with the use and balance of food in the game, especially for games that last into the mid and late game stages. The population consumption of food, in addition to units results in people having to buy food. For example in one game I owned half of the map, in addition to over half the food however, I still had a SIGNIFICANT food shortage. This led to my cities being reduced to populations of 2-6. In the major cities, most people are going to garrison a land unit, anti air unit, a missile unit, or some type of airplane. This alone consumes 2.0 food, in addition to the city consuming 1-3 food as well. So as you see this adds up very quickly…too quickly I might add. (Oil does not have this problem due to the nuclear power plant) A few suggestions A city improvement (such as the oil refinery) (Farm, Food Plant, whatever) allowing you to produce food similar to the oil refinery. Increase the amount of food resources or increase the numbers gathered from each resource by 50% Example a food resource producing 7 would increase to 11 Research (called Logistics) decreasing food usage by 10% 5 levels of logistics decreasing all use by up to 50% I believe one of these changes would balance the food issue better for game play.