Finally got through most of a game, I first tried age of titans but it was quite slow and not that fun because you couldn't do much. I then tried sleep of reason and it was incredible. Building took 1-2 to build so industry was great for everyone, I got about 10 turns of building industry before I had to save Songhai (my league refused to help except for me). Ended up wining the world war by quite a bit, losses were 800 on my side vs 2500 on their side. Couple of things to notice, there aren't any ranged units which makes combat feel a bit weird, air units are useless except for mopping up unit once you've conquered a city or if they've run out of anti-air/fighters. Finally unique units aren't worth it, going for innovations every time. Overall great experience just a few things that felt odd.
Thanks for leaving a feedback!
Bombers are indeed much less effective than in base game:
- Combat against wounded unit generates down to 50% less damage for both sides (capped when enemy has 50% missing hp).
- Their main strength against Cities is in secondary effects (destroying buildings or temporary breaking city defense).
- Their promotions were nerfed (vs land units from +33% to +15%) (repair increases heal rate instead healing each turn).
I wanted to create more "combined arms" strategy when you need land forces to clear anti-air guns, bombers support in city-siege and finishing off targets while navy helps a lot in securing coastal cities (battleship being the ranged unit of an era). In fact Battleships are very effective against land units, Bombers against navy and anti-air counters an aircraft. Fighters are good at intercepting when you are in offensive (because anti-air gun has only 1 movement).
Oil is capped at 25 and there were earlier versions (pre-nerfs) in which it was heavily consumed by Bombers (a situation I disliked).
I will actually try a game without constructing aircraft and see how dreadful their situation is.
The option to specialize unit with Scientific Bonus is indeed a beginner's trap and may need some improvement, I am not sure I picked it even once. Worth to note that unique units can be achieved through training and gaining xp (progress can be seen in military overview).
It was a bit wacky concept when I added unit specialization that player spend first scientific bonus on obtaining unique unit and then plan a game for it (however unique units by design are not powerful enough for that).
