I tried the Soviets for my last game, their unit could one-shoot its enemies easily. I have 9/7 cities with 3 territories each, except my capital have 5. I build Arms Factory(total 27) for every territory except my last city. They could be your best ally or your worst enemy.

Difficulty: Metropolis, Game speed: Fast, Pollution effects : Off

I will try with highest difficulty and turn on the pollution effects for next test once I got time to play.

My Missile Cruiser have 101 combat strength.

Stability still manageable.

It's ridiculous, there needs to be at least placement restriction, like, make it give -5% unit industry cost and +1 CS if adjacent to Uranium or Iron. Or even better, make it only placeable on Strat deposits.

I just can't believe that on one hand devs were rightfully stingy with bonus CS and then give you event that provides +14 for handful of turns, Inner Sea Mastodonte that makes Battleships obsolete before they even appear or Soviets that provide + whatever you wish it be, sky is the limit.

My suggestion is to put a dmg cap(+10 to +15 only), and any exceeded bonuses will be distributed as +stability. Also Arms Factory will increased the unit upkeep to prevent it from making a large army. Adding debuff to Arms Factory like make it visible to everyone and volatile, it means the factory will be destroyed with just one drop of bombs and all nearby buildings will be damaged.

Hey there! we are fully aware of the "Soviet issue" and are currently working on their balancing. So soon, it should only be a distant memory ^^

Have a nice day

That’s great! Looking forward to the balancing patch. 

benblond wrote:

Hey there! we are fully aware of the "Soviet issue" and are currently working on their balancing. So soon, it should only be a distant memory ^^

Have a nice day

Sure, I will enjoy while it last ^^

I don't think it's just a "Svoiet issue" every culture that has a placeable luxury that then applies to all units / cities has this issue, if you do it with the Cubans, Argentinans or future ones it will break a part of the game. I think there probably needs to be a cap to these things or diminishing returns.

Just to add my 2 cents - it shouldn't be nerfed into oblivion.It should also not add stability, since it takes away stability already.

One thing people seem to miss is the bonus applies to anybody who buys it. So as long as you or the AI is selling resources, anybody can access the benefit.

Yes I know it's still OP. The problem is attack value is very difficult to adjust since it's below 100 - meaning even 1 point is more than a 1% increase, and likely 2%.

But please consider carefully how to adjust it. I like the idea that it increases army maintenance (an opposite of the Argentina one).

There should be either a soft or a hard cap, imo. Having handful additional CS points can be bypassed by positioning well and tech advantage, but there's no fighting against 10+

Even it applying only to unit attacks, so that they can still be pummeled into ground by someone on relative tech level would already help.

We're being once again teased that rebalance is coming soon™, though, and now confirmed that Soviets will be part of it, so I can sleep soundly, at least until someone chooses Soviets in my next game (thankfully, lately AI hands my butt to me around Early Modern/Industrial, so no worries aobut that).

The thing about buying Weapons is that one can't buy from the Soviets while one is at war with them :( If one is on friendly enough terms to trade luxuries with the Soviets, then there'd be no need to buy Weapons in an arms race against them.

The CS bonus scaling for Weapons probably needs to be slower than linear, something like the Xth +1 CS requires X more Weapons (so +1/+2/+3/+4 CS requires 1/3/6/10 Weapons and so on).

That, or else restrict the CS bonus to only apply in certain locations, something like requiring the units to be in a territory with an Arms Factory to benefit from the bonus.

CoconutTank wrote:
That, or else restrict the CS bonus to only apply in certain locations, something like requiring the units to be in a territory with an Arms Factory to benefit from the bonus.

Hmm, that's interesting, if the Arms Factory would provide a city-wide bonus it would be more in spirit of urban defense, like during siege of Leningrad and Moscow, but it is a hard nerf for it.

To be honest, my perfect scenario would be if Weapons was simply a Contemporary resource, available to everyone (maybe still with a restriction of being buildable only near/on a strategic deposits and once per territory) and Soviets had access to a special version of building providing it. Ability to grow CS of your units beyond tech is really enticing.

I don't think I would like more options to increase CS when there are more players will be force to pick up at least some, especially because the value of CS doesn't scale linear. If you already have an advantage getting even more becomes more valueable as you become able to deal enough damage to prevent the defender from being able to retaliate

CoconutTank wrote:

The thing about buying Weapons is that one can't buy from the Soviets while one is at war with them :( If one is on friendly enough terms to trade luxuries with the Soviets, then there'd be no need to buy Weapons in an arms race against them.

The CS bonus scaling for Weapons probably needs to be slower than linear, something like the Xth +1 CS requires X more Weapons (so +1/+2/+3/+4 CS requires 1/3/6/10 Weapons and so on).

That, or else restrict the CS bonus to only apply in certain locations, something like requiring the units to be in a territory with an Arms Factory to benefit from the bonus.

Both great ideas! I support them.

I also hope some sort of batlte mechanic overhaul. That would just make this whole discussion moot. There needs to be a boost to defense (TBF offense is the best strategy in almost all 4X games so it's not a unique problem to HK).

I propose a simpler solution, to make the weapons factory accessible to everyone. At the same time, each next plant will be twice as expensive as the previous one, that is (conditionally) the first one costs 100 next 200, 400, 800, 1600....

The Soviets should be given an industrial area that will give double the industry from the neighborhood with other industrial areas.

And also rename their inherited trait to "The Red Army is the strongest."

I found that having the globalism civic already achieves this effect, but if you are unaware you MUST have 5 merchant stars for it and aren't working towards that from the start of the game you are out of luck once you hit final era - either you will never make enough money to get the remaining stars to unlock the civic or its just entirely impossible.

Totalitokrat wrote:

I propose a simpler solution, to make the weapons factory accessible to everyone. At the same time, each next plant will be twice as expensive as the previous one, that is (conditionally) the first one costs 100 next 200, 400, 800, 1600....

The Soviets should be given an industrial area that will give double the industry from the neighborhood with other industrial areas.

And also rename their inherited trait to "The Red Army is the strongest."

What is even more ridiculous is that allies of your Soviet enemy can buy those weapons through trade and sometimes the result is you being the only one without them so nukes are your only comeback lol

CoconutTank wrote:
This isn't as restrictive as applying only to territories where there are Arms Factories, but it does make it harder for the Soviets to offensively use their Weapons advantage!

I did like the idea of limiting it to territories where there are Arms Factories (or on a city-by-city basis:  Are you standing in a city with four Arms Factories? You get +4.  Are you standing in a city with 2?  You get +2).  But the problem with territory-locking them is that as a tradable luxury item, how would that work with other people trading for them and not owning any arms factories?

This is an interesting tradeoff.  It also means you get the buff in allies' territories where you have a logistics agreement, which means you can protect your allies better.

It also means that allies buying the weapons can use it themselves as well, so in retrospect the original proposal of restricting the CS bonus to territories with Arms Factories was much too restrictive.