Balancing changes (only affecting new games)

General: 

• reduced stack size limit 10 → 6

Reason: We wanted to allow for more diversity in a single stack but increasing the stack size limit worked against the goal of making combats last longer. Therefore we reduce the stack size limit to 6 again so it is just slightly above the original value.

• reduced embark time by 50%

Reason: Defending against landings on the land side was made much easier with all the speed improvements. By changing the embark time sea landings should be more viable again.

Units: 

HP buff for the following units

• Infantry +25%

• Militia +25%

• Motorized infantry +25%

• Mechanized Infantry +10% 

• Light tank +25%

• Air units +25%

Reason: Some units suffered from the previous hitpoint increase, especially low hitpoint units got much fewer additional hitpoints than units already starting with high hitpoints. Therefore we increase the hitpoints of some units further to add more value to them. In addition, this will increase the combat duration a little further. Air units in particular got their hitpoints buffed as they were not performing up to expectations.

Speed decrease:

• Anti Air ~ - 15%

• Air units ~ -33%

• Sea units ~ -20%

Reason: Air and Naval units had quite high base speeds already. Therefore we reduce their speed again since they benefitted a bit too much from the overall speed increases. To keep the relevance of air units intact we also decreased the speed of anti air units slightly.

Firestorm:

• reduced damage tick cooldown by 66%

  • damage tick now happens every 5 minutes

Reason: With the previous speed and hitpoint buffs firestorms lost a lot of power as units sustained more damage and were able to exit firestorms faster. With this adjustment, firestorms will become much more efficient against stationary units while moving units still have better chances of avoiding damage. Having Firestorms deal damage every 5 minutes instead of every 15 minutes also means that they deal 3 times as much damage overall.

Transport ship

• reduced hitpoints -33%

Reason: With faster and cheaper unit production fleets of transport ships could become bullet sponges. Therefore we reduce the transport ship hitpoints in order to keep them vulnerable.

Bug fixes

• An issue was fixed where the messages window was not updating after sending in coalitions, resulting in users seeing the same message sent multiple times.

• A bug was fixed where an exception was shown when trying to open espionage from the province list or province details, and it would also deselect the province.

• An issue was resolved when players were unable to access finished games as spectators as it triggered error messages.