Generals!

Batya here again.

We’ve gotten a lot of input on the beta patch and we really appreciate it, thank you. While reading all your comments we decided that there are a few things that we want to work on before going live with our next patch, especially the Germany VS Soviet balance and Naval AI. We’ve been testing internally and have made some additional changes to Germany’s AI so they produce the correct things and overall perform better as a result. Additionally we increased the Soviets’ mastery gain somewhat; let’s see how it balances out after this patch.
Regarding the Naval AI, we’re looking at adjusting some of the templates and the AI’s willingness to fight naval battles. We have seen some results but some issues still remain, such as retreating from battles too quickly, before any decisive battle can take place. With this in mind we looked into changing some more structural aspects such as retreat time delay, and damage done in naval battles. Note that we do not want it to be too explosive, but we do want the AI to commit to necessary fights to make it fun to engage with them.

We’ve also looked at CAS damage more and moved the strength & org damage closer to the original setting, which should make CAS still strong, but less overpowered as it is today.
For mods, we’ve also added specific dice roll settings, so it can be tweaked to your taste.

Lastly, if you’re more into Multiplayer, we’ve made some tweaks, but we could really use your feedback. Get some friends together, play some matches and let us know how it goes. If you do give us multiplayer feedback make sure to include extra information, e.g. are you using specific mods? Is your experience the same when playing vanilla?

Remember to update your beta build to Musketeer v1.17.4.0.d086 (3a52), try it out and let us know what you think in this thread.

(Remember to submit your bug reports. You can read our guidelines on how to write a bug report here!)

Updated Patch Notes:

Balance

• Soviet mastery gain is now -15% rather than -50% (still impacted by the purge)
• Lowered focus duration of `SOV_the_means_to_wage_war` and `SOV_superior_war_machines` to 35 days, and nerfed the bonuses they gave
• Reduced max monthly mastery gain from 50 to 40
• Increased Armor mastery gain multiplier from 4 to 10
• Decreased artillery mastery gain multiplier from 10 to 8
• CAS org & strength damage reduced. Added specific air to ground dice rolls
• Division AA damage to CAS is more consistent and less spiky
• Division AA negates air superiority better when it is stronger, and weaker when it is not as strong. This is a buff.
• Strike forces are allowed to repair if they are in harbour

AI

• Updated AI weights for armor, air & anti-tank research
• Updated AI equipment templates for England, Germany and Soviet Union
• Tweaked historical german focuses to pick slightly stronger start and align historical events closer to their actual dates
• Soviets will produce the T34 earlier
• Soviets rely more on the T34 now in their templates & production
• Tweaked the order of focus selection for soviets to create a more accurate historical timeline
• The Ma Cliques will now not do their mutual guarantees focus until the late game, and the SIK ai will now not become a Soviet puppet unless they fully control all their owned states.
• Soviets start making military factories a bit earlier.
• AI will now use its reserve fleet to create new task forces if possible/needed
• The AI will only build the required task forces before looking to see if it can build any of the additional, optional task forces

Bugfix

• Fixed an issue where Yunnan's decisions could disappear after switching focus tree.
• Fixed an issue where the Rif could no longer form Arabia
• Fixed the frozen naval dominance
• Fix Vandervelde's death event not having a fire_only_once
• Fixed a bug where all AI task forces were allowed to split off repairs, instead of just strike forces
• Fixed a bug where reserve fleets couldn't travel to a repair base