Hi. Here is a feedback about what I liked and disliked in CORE. After 1 long game with Soviet Union.
LOVED :
* the new pictures (from the travel guide)
* reserve divisions. Their historical role in WW2 was very important, as armies definitely used a multiple Tier division system. France had officially Tier A & B infantry, so did (officially or not) most other countries
* The 6/9 battalion system, which reflects the qualitative superiority of Germany against SU
* The tank&artillery tree, more clear, more linked to industry (yes, you wont produce SoTA tanks without a SoTA heavy industry)
LIKED
* The air doctrine tech tree. With different choices of doctrine, some better than others at certain points
* The more complex industrialization tech tree
* The Secret Weapon tree
* Additional interesting events. Events are fun.
NOTICED
* finer tuning of allied minor nations. Not sure I like it, but whatever.
* bigger TC. Which alowed me to field 60 armored division or more as SU. Dunno if the different TC formula (induced by different IC allocation) is something good or not.
* the new flags/shields directory. Players who want to import custom flags have to override those two directories.
DISLIKED
* while this requires confirmation, I feel that Germany, whose job is already extremely difficult in vanilla, has an even harder job. I think this could be improved by having the tech "Political commissioner officers" be downgraded to cause "your units take an additional 20% casualties", to reflects sovietic komissars poor consideration for the survival of their troops. Or, if it's simpler to code, just having this tech give a -5% maxorg penalty to land units
* Some marginal events. Having events giving yiou 2 bonus Submarines or 1 bonus IC is just needless detail that should have been abstracted in etiher original troops or a single events rassembling all "minor improvements" events.
* Infantry improvements augmenting MP cost of infantry, making reinforcmeents too costly end game vs their early game cost.
* Infantry "improvements" reducing infantry effectiveness in bad terrain. Those should at least be compensated by commando troops (all 3) receiving huge bonus in those hard terrains, making late mountainers/paras/marines the undisputed kings of difficult terrains versus low tech infantry.
* The land doctrine tree. Too many micro improvements, too little branches. I think each coutnry should have some different land doctrine branches (say 4 of the 8 possible choices) with choices rebalanced to make sure that each subtree is different but roughly balanced. In vanilla AoD, the german organisation vs soviet morale creates an intersting dynamic.
HATED
* All your naval crap
* Including the bazillion crap ships that you have to manage individually. Fuck micromanagement, and plase reempower detroyer groups instead of individual ships.
* Including the epitome of shit, the naval doctrine tree. From 1942 and later, the carrier is the king of sea yet only a few select nations will ever be able to use them decently. Is the modder who committed that a borderline fascist yankee ? Cause it sounds like arrogant and cocky starstripe flag waving. You can find it "historical" as it ensures that Italy's Marine will be no more than bozos. But that's all what this unbalanced idioticness ensures. Independant air forces tree is superior to integrated air forcestree late game, but this is not a problem as you can switch tree later on (for a reasonnable cost). Carrier tree is too good, as it is a tree specialised in boosting your fleets' main forces whereas other trees boost your patrol or obsolete ships.
* Having exclusive branching trees is cool (like vanilla land/sea doctrines). Having some of them being so vastly superior is moronic. Really moronic. The "america rules against inferior nations" stupid carrier tree is just imbalanced and uninteresting.
* I insisted on CORE naval warfare being some stinking piece of trash when compared to vanilla.
In the end, I think that CORE is slightly worse than vanilla, due to awful changes in naval warfare. Restoring all of vanilla's naval concepts (which could improved, but not by the CORE naval monkeys) would of course make CORE a huge improvement
LOVED :
* the new pictures (from the travel guide)
* reserve divisions. Their historical role in WW2 was very important, as armies definitely used a multiple Tier division system. France had officially Tier A & B infantry, so did (officially or not) most other countries
* The 6/9 battalion system, which reflects the qualitative superiority of Germany against SU
* The tank&artillery tree, more clear, more linked to industry (yes, you wont produce SoTA tanks without a SoTA heavy industry)
LIKED
* The air doctrine tech tree. With different choices of doctrine, some better than others at certain points
* The more complex industrialization tech tree
* The Secret Weapon tree
* Additional interesting events. Events are fun.
NOTICED
* finer tuning of allied minor nations. Not sure I like it, but whatever.
* bigger TC. Which alowed me to field 60 armored division or more as SU. Dunno if the different TC formula (induced by different IC allocation) is something good or not.
* the new flags/shields directory. Players who want to import custom flags have to override those two directories.
DISLIKED
* while this requires confirmation, I feel that Germany, whose job is already extremely difficult in vanilla, has an even harder job. I think this could be improved by having the tech "Political commissioner officers" be downgraded to cause "your units take an additional 20% casualties", to reflects sovietic komissars poor consideration for the survival of their troops. Or, if it's simpler to code, just having this tech give a -5% maxorg penalty to land units
* Some marginal events. Having events giving yiou 2 bonus Submarines or 1 bonus IC is just needless detail that should have been abstracted in etiher original troops or a single events rassembling all "minor improvements" events.
* Infantry improvements augmenting MP cost of infantry, making reinforcmeents too costly end game vs their early game cost.
* Infantry "improvements" reducing infantry effectiveness in bad terrain. Those should at least be compensated by commando troops (all 3) receiving huge bonus in those hard terrains, making late mountainers/paras/marines the undisputed kings of difficult terrains versus low tech infantry.
* The land doctrine tree. Too many micro improvements, too little branches. I think each coutnry should have some different land doctrine branches (say 4 of the 8 possible choices) with choices rebalanced to make sure that each subtree is different but roughly balanced. In vanilla AoD, the german organisation vs soviet morale creates an intersting dynamic.
HATED
* All your naval crap
* Including the bazillion crap ships that you have to manage individually. Fuck micromanagement, and plase reempower detroyer groups instead of individual ships.
* Including the epitome of shit, the naval doctrine tree. From 1942 and later, the carrier is the king of sea yet only a few select nations will ever be able to use them decently. Is the modder who committed that a borderline fascist yankee ? Cause it sounds like arrogant and cocky starstripe flag waving. You can find it "historical" as it ensures that Italy's Marine will be no more than bozos. But that's all what this unbalanced idioticness ensures. Independant air forces tree is superior to integrated air forcestree late game, but this is not a problem as you can switch tree later on (for a reasonnable cost). Carrier tree is too good, as it is a tree specialised in boosting your fleets' main forces whereas other trees boost your patrol or obsolete ships.
* Having exclusive branching trees is cool (like vanilla land/sea doctrines). Having some of them being so vastly superior is moronic. Really moronic. The "america rules against inferior nations" stupid carrier tree is just imbalanced and uninteresting.
* I insisted on CORE naval warfare being some stinking piece of trash when compared to vanilla.
In the end, I think that CORE is slightly worse than vanilla, due to awful changes in naval warfare. Restoring all of vanilla's naval concepts (which could improved, but not by the CORE naval monkeys) would of course make CORE a huge improvement