Generals!

Since the first open beta release we’ve focused on a few areas to continue to develop, before releasing the update full.

Naval AI
We continued to look at naval AI and making them perform better, we are happy to say that they are in a much better place compared to 1.17.3. That said, we have a few more things to work on, which we will do through future game updates. For example, the AI can run out of screens, which means there could be no patrols out, and without patrols a strikeforce is useless. The AI might have some capitals left to defend against naval invasions, but they won’t today. Sure it’s costly and not very efficient to patrol with capitals, but as a last resort you probably should. We’ve been getting some excellent feedback from the community, of which we are super appreciative!

Air to Ground
Part of the 1.17 release was fixing a bug that plagued the game since NCNS, where it was quite easy to exploit CAS damage. This was fixed and it had all sorts of repercussions, through the feedback we’ve narrowed down some of the issues we were seeing, mainly due to the AI not being that effective with their air. We also took this chance to take a first stab at rebalancing divisional AA, and we plan on continuing to work more on that in the near future.

Historical AI balance
We had nerfed the Soviets a bit too much previously so we decided to take a deeper look at how the AI plays Soviets and made some improvements there. In the same vein we did for Germany & England, although less deep. A lot of these changes were made with your feedback in mind and we'll continue to keep an eye on it.

Patch Notes

Balance

• France's "Victors of the Great War" national idea now has a 50% mastery gain penalty

• The Japanese focus Finish the Fight now takes 35 days and no longer unlocks an obsolete decision

• The Finnish AI is now more likely to pick subdoctrines that fit/work well for them

• Added a new national spirit for the Guangdong and Guangxi cliques to incentivise them rushing the Liangguang Incident

• Added a national spirit and focus for the Chinese Warlord States regarding Military Looting to slow down production in exchange for a slight military boost

• The Qing Empire now has access to the warlord integration decisions to speed up the lowering of their puppets' autonomy

• The Greater Iraq integration decisions now take 14 days instead of 30, and target controlled states instead of owned

• The Falangist Spanish bonus Eliminate the Carlists now lasts for 90 days instead of 60

• Finland now starts with its fifth submarine, the Saukko

• Adjusted the modifiers granted by the Putschminister trait

• Adjusted the location of some starting resources in Brazil, and adding a small amount of rubber production to Acre

• Added one dockyard in Istanbul to represent the Taşkızak Naval Shipyard

• Turkey - Moved the Turkish character Kamil Tolon to the political advisor slot

• Turkey - Added two new starting ideas regarding the first five year plan and illiteracy. Added two new early-game focuses for utilising Sümerbank for more industry and tackling the illiteracy. Reduced the focus time for Ratify the Six Arrows to 35 days.

• Japan - the missions for Naval Demands relating to building more ships now last 545 days instead of one year

• The communist shared Baltic focus A Revolutionary Cabinet now takes 35 days

• Latvian Ugonkrusts divisions are now militias and their national spirit fascist paramilitaries now gives a slight boost to militia attack and defense

• Historical Afghanistan can now seek investments from both the Axis and the Allies, provided that they expel the nationals of the one they sought investments from first

• Aussa - The focus Every Man a Warrior now unlocks militias

• Portugal - Boosted the amount of democratic support gained from the national spirit British Influence

• The Romanian national spirit Iron Guard now grants a 5% recruitable population factor bonus

• The Portuguese focus Portuguese Legion now also grants a one time research bonus to military police, and the national spirit granted also gives 5% core defence

• Repairing ships can draw local supply if not enough is available from their homebase. This will only ever eat up leftover supply

• Reduced 1936 starting static AA in England to slightly reduce German bomber losses during the Blitz

Soviet Specific Changes

• Lowered focus duration of "The Means to Wage War" and "Superior War Machines" from 70 to 35 days, and reduced the 75% bonuses to 50%.

• Updated Superior War Machines requirements now to require basic medium tanks researched, rather than improved medium tanks.

• Soviet Union now starts with -15% land mastery gain. Can be removed with Lessons of war. Purges makes the malus worse, some focuses makes it better

• Removed -10% army xp modifier

• AI Soviet will start building T34 earlier

Overall Naval Changes

• Minimum chance to hit during a naval battle is now 2% instead of 0.05%

• Strike forces are allowed to repair if they are in harbour. They will repair up to a certain strength percentage, depending on the repair priority.

• Taskforces that are in combat are no longer reinforced from the reserve fleet. This solves an issue where those ships would arrive late to the battle and almost instantly killed.

• Increased chance to hit for big guns by decreasing the maximum hit profile from 80 to 70. (Note: torpedo value is *not* changed from 100, this did get accidently changed in the open beta update, but has been reverted).

• Updated naval grand doctrines to have the more fitting bonus to the correct track

Overall Air/Ground Combat Changes

• Decreased air to ground strength damage from 0.05 to 0.035

• Decreased air to ground organization damage from 0.10 to 0.035

• Increased air to ground organization dice roll from 4 to 5

• Division AA damage to CAS is more consistent

• You require more division AA to get the maximum bonus to reduce cas damage. To reduce by the maximum 75% you need now ~55 anti air attack

• Division AA negated air superiority better when it is stronger, and weaker when it is not as strong. The maximum is around 50% decrease, versus 40% decrease previously.

Doctrines/Mastery Changes

• 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

• "Desperate Defense" now requires a defense war to be able to be picked

• "Infiltration Tactics" now enables the correct tactic to be used

• Reordered milestones in "Fire Concentration" so that the combat width reduction is unlocked slightly later

• Overall org gain rate has been halved in most instances in the various doctrine tracks.

Misc Changes

• Increased Energy Cap For Factories by 10% (from 6 to 6.6)

New Features

• You can now select which backgrounds you want to have shown in the main menu, they will be randomly chosen every 20 seconds while in the main menu. The button can be found in the bottom right of the menu.

• MIO trait queues can now be saved between sessions

Gameplay

• Greece - The focus An Orthodox State can now be taken when going down the absolutist royalist path, and grants different bonuses

• Congo - If the Barotse Litunga has been approached before the war for liberation commences, Yeta III will now become available as a field marshal

• Added the option in the Afghan historical branch to swap out the Prime Minister for another Royal Successor

• The Greater Mongolian formable nation now includes the state of Hebei-Chahar

• Added a new focus for Nationalist China in the air branch to open AFAMF factories, granting military factories and a small bonus to light airframes

• He Yingqin now becomes available as a general for Nationalist China after completing the focus Crackdown on Corruption in the army branch

• China can now rename a few Manchurian cities after recapturing them

• Added a Bicycle division name list for Japan

• Reforming the Chinese Empire as the Kumul Khanate or Ma Cliques now provides different flavour/versions of the cosmetic tag

• Added an additional focus to Sinkiang's unique sub branch

• Added an internal politics sub branch to Khotan Ma

• Added two additional focuses to the Qinghai Ma's unique sub branch

• Added a focus for the Qinghai Ma to rebuild the Ninghai Army

• Adding in event for imprisoning Zhang Xueliang as Nationalist China

• Added a unique focus tree sub branch for the Yunnan Clique

• Monarchist Portugal can now inherit a few Brazilian characters when reuniting the kingdoms

• Added the ability for a player puppet Mengkukuo to ask Japan through a decision to launch Suiyuan Campaign

• Manchukuo can now request the annexation of other Japanese puppets in China through decisions when going down the Chinese Leadership path in the Obedience branch

• Added the ability for Brazil to establish and develop Rondônia

• Added a new focus to the Brazilian industrial branch to found the Companhia Vale do Rio Doce to increase steel and aluminium in Minas Gerais

• Added the ability for a westernising Iranian state to secularise, and made the choice between the different democratic leaders more interesting

• Completing the focus Unified Kurdistan now grants additional core states

• Fascist Turkey can now make Nihal Atsız their country leader after completing the focus Turanist Ambition

• Added Etibank as a new industrial concern for Turkey

• Updated the Iraqi Military Branch to be more flavorful, giving them the ability to gain the river navy bonus among other things

• The Iraqi focuses demanding Syria now demand they get annexed instead of puppeted

• Updated the Kurdistan branch for Iraq to have more flavourful effects such as the ability to train militias from the Peshmerga focus, and added the ability for them to take Eastern Syria through a border war

• Added a new industrial concern and two new military advisors for Iraq

• Added two new focuses to the Iraqi industrial tree for expanding the Cotton and Cement Industries

• Afghanistan - Added Abdul Hadi Dawi as an advisor for the Amanullah Khan branch

• Vichy France now has access to the political advisors it should have

• Vichy France now no longer has access to Generals who fought with Free France

• Added one new Air Chief to Vichy France. Added 2 new High Command to Vichy France

• Added two more focuses to Iraq regarding the Sunni Dominance and Shia Unrest

• Added three new focus for Afghanistan in the democratic branch to Ally the Young Afghans and gain more democratic support and advisors

• Added two capstone focuses to Iran

• Added two new decisions for Saudi Arabia and Oman relating to modernization initiatives

• Added four new political advisors for Iraq

• Added a new shared national spirit and joint focus tree for the Ma Cliques

• Italy - if King Vittorio Emanuelle died while being a national spirit, he will be replaced by a national spirit version of Umberto II

• Added Gwadar to the map

• Most navy move commands will ignore avoided areas, but still respect blocked areas. This allows navies to move a bit more freely

UI

• Show energy consumption modifiers in energy resource tooltip

• Adds more info to Spymaster 'operatives slot' tooltip

• Adds an 'effective change' clause to the BalanceOfPower tooltip

• Adds disabled states and new tooltips for 'Repair Now!' buttons for task forces and ships

• Japan - Added an explanation of which levels exist for the factions in the Imperial Influence system when hovering over the Emperor in the focus tree inlay window

• Fixed issue where convoy protection map icon efficiency tooltip would repeat the same info for every task force in a fleet, though already accounted for

• Model Selector buttons now toggles

• Stockpile data is now sorted. (Actively produced first, then sorted on stockpile size)

• Afghanistan, Iraq - the Free Arabian and Turkestan Legion decisions now properly show their infantry equipment cost as part of the decision

• Added focus branch navigation button to the Indian and Iranian focus trees

• The Romanian focus White Squadron now has a more appropriate focus icon

AI

• Tweaked AI to only research coal efficiency if they are struggling with energy

• Tweaked historical german focuses to pick slightly stronger start and align historical events closer to their actual dates

• Tweaked the order of focus selection for soviets to create a more accurate historical timeline

• Fixed issues where Japan would keep the Potsdam Conference and National Defense State spirits after being puppeted, and made the US more likely to puppet Japan and less likely to force change their government when they surrender through their focus

• If Peace is accepted between China and Japan through the decision and subsequent events, truces are now also added with HBC and KUM and the Japanese AI will be less likely to attack and antagonise Chinese nations

• 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 the fully control all their owned states.

• Adjustment to the Air Base Access AI Acceptance logic. AI should now be less accepting for Air Base Access, especially in other ideologies.

• Soviets start making military factories a bit earlier.

• Soviets will produce the T34 earlier.

• Soviets rely more on the T34 now in their templates & production.

• Soviets will redeploy Far East garrison forces if required to defend the homeland.

• Germany will refrain from costly and ineffective air attacks in the west during the Phoney War

• Germany will refrain from air attacks on UK before France is defeated

• Germany will break off the Battle of Britain in November 1940 to recover and reorganize for Barbarossa

• Germany has set air strategic air zone importance for Baltic, Eastern Poland, and Ukraine air regions until 1942 so the German air force concentrates on helping the army break through in the border battles

• Germany won't research amphibious tanks as soon as possible anymore

• Countries are less likely to build the new special buildings unless needed

• Normalized AI weights for tank armor & engine research, generally they are done around the period where they make sense, rather than too soon.

AI Equipment

• Updated T34 designs

• Updated Spitfire designs

• Updated german medium tank & airplane designs

Naval AI Changes

• AI does a better job assigning their admirals to their various fleets.

• Updated AI task force insignia assignment to mirror compositions

• AI will in general use its strikeforce until it's no longer effective

• Better task force templates

• 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

• Improved behavior of strike forces when engaging spotted enemies

• Improved Naval AI reasoning for use of engagement rules, and added scriptable values by mission (risk/aggressiveness)

• Fixed an issue where you could have ships do training mission when outside the range of the homebase

• Fixed an issue where task forces would not move closer to their active regions, even when homebase was set to close by. (This should make strike forces better at catching up to naval combats)

• Increased importance for naval invasion defense goal

Modding

• Fixed triggers is_demilitarized_zone and is_border_conflict crashing when used in any_state trigger

• Added `energy_ratio` trigger to see the energy fulfillment on a country scope, returning between 0 .. 1

• Implemented `only_imported` for `has_resources_in_country` trigger

• Implemented warning for triggers that work in a normalized range but gets compared to a non normalized range

Bugfix

• Fixed a bug where country events would always roll the same random number

• Correctly updates research speed tooltip when tagging between countries

• Fixes issue with tech bonus claiming that causes asserts

• Fixes CTD when a unit given from CountryA, which is exiled, to CountryB and the unit is standing in CountryC and then CountryC is also exiled

• Fixes HighCapacityElectricalGrid tooltip displaying +10% instead of +10%/infra

• Faction color now correctly follows the leader's color dynamically if not overridden

• Fixes 'Goes to ' showing wrong country

• Fixes resource specific resource rights

• Polish AI will not take boost monarchism decisions if monarchism claim level is above 90%

• Poland can now get their Habsburg alliance focus if Joseph August von Habsburg becomes country leader of Hungary

• Requesting the South Atlantic islands now target whoever is controlling the states

• Fixed an issue where the Chinese Expedite the Political Tutelage decisions could be redone in states that had been lost and recaptured

• PHI: Philippines will actually be granted independence if they peacefully complete the American Intervention.

• PHI: You will no longer lose the Reino de Filipinas or Hispanic Empire tags when completing the Treaty of Manila while at war.

• Fixed an issue where the Spanish Carlists wouldn't get the correct 3d unit models if going with a Habsburg monarch

• Fixed a few instances of broken localisation in the Italian tree

• Fixed an issue where the Moldovan characters would show up as debug strings

• Fixed an issue where the faction goal Fortify Okinawa was checking that the naval forts were being built in the wrong province, ending up unable to be completed

• Fixed an issue where Nationalist China puppeting a warlord after completing the focus Appoint Sympathetic Judges would apply the intended spirit on themselves instead of the warlord

• Fixed an issue where the Nationalist Chinese focus The Seas of Tomorrow wouldn't grant the promised Naval Facility unless if controlling Hainan

• Fixed erroneous mastery gain bonuses in a few focuses

• Fixed Ye Jianying's portrait not showing if you don't have La Resistance

• Fixed an issue where the Japanese army faction wasn't affecting cas production cost if BBA was disabled

• Fixed an issue where the Japanese Armored Car designer could show up when LaR was disabled

• Fixed an issue where the Spanish focus Join the Allies would ask multiple countries for faction joining at the same time, and would launch an incorrect news event

• Disabled an event if "No Compromise, No Surrender" is enabled where the United Front is dismantled after defeating Japan, thus blocking China's focus "Victory over the Invaders"

• Fixed an issue where the Afghan and Raj focuses to attack Sinkiang wouldn't give wargoals on KHM if they occupied the target territory

• Fix for "Establish a Marine Corps" faction goal not granting the listed general's reward when the country only possess amphibious tank technology.

• Custom Game Rules - Fixed Democratic AI Strategy of Lithuania wrongly using Latvian description

• Fixed an issue where Nicaragua was missing two of their political advisors

• Fixed issues where certain countries intended to be able to form Central America and Gran Colombia weren't able to, and added Balta-Tiraspol as a target in all Greater Lithuania and Greater Commonwealth focuses

• Fixed a few instances where event options would be unselectable for the ai due to the option being scripted with a factor = 0 rather than a base = 0

• Fixed an issue where Chile could have multiple Mapuche Conflict spirits at the same time

• Fixed an issue where the hidden event to change Mao's portrait would retire the character and incorrectly swap the portrait

• Fixed an issue where some vps would be incorrectly named after forming Greater Greece

• Eleftherios Venezelos passing away while Greece is democratic will no longer kill their country leader unless it is Venezelos himself

• Fixed issues where Mexican characters who were unlocked through focuses and not intended to be transferred were transferred anyway to breakaway countries whenever any of their civil wars would fire

• Fixed the missing loc strings for the Nanjing Presidential Palace

• Fixed an issue where the Sinkiang focus Reestablish the Guominjun would send the wrong event to China

• Fixed an issue where warlords couldn't get the Morozov Design Bureau if NCNS was enabled

• Extended the speed bonuses from subdoctrines to motorized support units to include motorized and truck-drawn rocket artillery.

• Fixed numerous literally unplayable "the the" typos throughout the loc

• Fixed missing officer trait in "expand infantry forces" faction goal reward description.

• Changed numerous cases of "Poznan" to correct Polish name "Poznań". Zwirbaum happiness +1.4%.

• When auto upgrading equipment the manually set icon and model would not persist

• Removed Cancun as it wasn't founded yet and replaced it with Chetumal

• Fixed "Magnatron" typos, renamed correctly to Magnetron

• Fixed an issue where democratic Japan could attract industrial investments from the same major country multiple times

• Fixed an issue where a "Warlord Demands Subjugation" event would always say the sender was China even though it wasn't

• The Portuguese focus Expand the Chinese Territories can now also be taken if Macau is controlled by a subject of theirs

• Fixed an issue where the Lithuanian focus Restore Greater Lithuania would be unavailable if any of the target states had already been cored

• Congo gaining a Brown Water Navy will no longer think it is in South America

• Austria can no longer liberate other people's subjects by creating the Central Powers

• Fixed an issue where Japan and the Soviet Union signing a separate peace would give the spirit Full Focus on the West to Japan instead of the Soviets

• Fixed a bug where bonus to org gain rate was applied twice

• Fixed an issue where Warlords could demand the subjugation of Chinese states that were already subjects of other foreign powers

• Raj - The focus Riches of the Raj now properly includes both coal and chromium

• Added cores that were missing to the Finno-Ugria formable

• Fix tooltip for faction goal Expand Our Armored Force to also include Armor Officer

• Raj - Fixed an issue where the Dams gained from the focus Industrialise the Ganges wouldn't show up on the map

• Fixed Burma's military advisors being the wrong costs

• Fix CHI focus Fund The Marine Corps using Invasion Preparation Speed instead of Invasion Preparation Time

• Fixed various issues with the Neo-Mesopotamian formable nation

• Fixed a few issues with naming for The Great and Eternal Nordic Empires

• Fixed the icon for Improved Anti-tank in the Philippines

• Greece: Fixed missing tooltip GRE_host_soviet_bureaucrats_in_greece_tt

• Fixed missing French loc for Husqvarna weapons factory focus in Swedish focus tree.

• Reduced speed of Elephantry units

• Fixed broken tooltip localization in Form the Nordic Council

• Fix SWE - Question Neutrality event title doesn't check current German leader

• Fix Appoint a Spy Master - Tooltip displays faction goal rewards other than those actually granted

• BEL - Vandervelde's death event is missing trigger

• Fixed an issue where the event The Coronation of Mohammad Hassan Mirza wouldn't actually make Persia non-aligned

• Fixed an Issue where the Philippines could flip-flop back and forth between their Maphilindo and Hispanic Empire tags

• Fix Claire Lee Chennault quitting immediately after getting hired

• A Trotsky-harboring Mexico that hasn't invited him to the government and seeks to join the Comintern through the focus International Proletarianism will now send him to Moscow, instead of him forever being out of reach for the Soviets

• Afghanistan - Qargha Dam will now appear in the correct location

• Fixed an issue where female characters in Arabic countries could have ibn in their surnames, instead of the linguistically correct bint

• Fixed an issue where the AI strategy values added from the Iraqi focuses Nationalize Anglo-Iraqi Oil Company and Anglo-Iraqi Oil Expansion wouldn't properly apply for the UK

• Raj - Restoring the Timurids as the Raj now also grants cores ´on their former Transoxianian and Caucasian territories

• Afghanistan - Fixed an issue where a few focuses that mentioned claims didn't inform the player that they could core the claimed states once captured

• Scaled the numbers of techs needed to complete the Faction Goal of "Develop Joint Research Practices" based on the average numbers of researched techs between the faction members when selecting the Faction Goal. The more techs the faction has when starting the Faction Goal, the less techs are required now.

• Gunther "Adlerauge" Rall gets his portrait back - Fixes

• Bypassing "Clamp Down on Danzig" and "Ban the Nazi Party" will now remove resistance and rename the city - Fixes

• Norway will now gain their two off map civs when completing "Invite Foreign investment"

• Fixed an issue where the Democratic Chinese faction invitation decisions wouldn't add the target to the faction if China wasn't the faction leader

• The democratic Chinese focus Shifting the Balance now has a small bypass effect to enable faction creation

• The Afghan Oil Concessions now only give access to the oil in the selected states

• Democratic China - The Stir Republican Sentiments decisions can no longer target warlords, which are already a target of a different democratisation decision

• Fixed a few instances where Uruguay would fail to go down the fascist path when set to do so in the game rules

• Fixed an issue where Paraguay could fail to go communist when set to do so in the game rules

• Fix for OOS caused by international markets having a difference in prices compared to the drafts

• Fixed an issue where the reward from the faction goal to control the Bosphorus would construct forts in the wrong state

• Turkey - Fixed an issue where the Kurdish State Management decision category would disappear when there was no ongoing mission or decision

• Entering a war with a nation removes naval blockades imposed by either party.

• Fixed a bug where equipment used by supply system was not properly return (disappearing trucks)

• OOS fix in peace conferences

• PRC - Fixed an issue where all stated rules weren't applied when completing the focus Burn the Paper Tigers

• Clients were creating naval mission commands that caused mp performance problems

• Fixed an issue where Mexico could be annexed by one of their revolts even though they were winning if both sides were the same ideology

• Fixed mapmode brightness. (When fixing an old legacy bug in the rendering part of the game, it caused several mapmodes to become brighter, unintentionally.)

• 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 a bug where all AI task forces where allowed to split off repairs, instead of just strike forces

• Fixed a bug where reserve fleets couldn't travel to a repair base

• Fixed a bug where the blacklist was used as a whitelist (naval targeting options)

• OOS that could occur in the gamestate due to running in different languages

• Fixed various trigger bugs where the incorrect comparison was made (example: 60 instead of 0.6)

• Fixed crash that can occur when dismantling faction

• Fixed an exploit where recreating factions allowed you to instantly get the reward for completing them

• Fixed a bug where naval dominance calculations wouldn't always refresh correctly

• Fixed a bug where the naval distance was incorrectly calculated, which had an effect on the automated homebase logic

• Swapped cases of air_superiority_bonus_in_combat modifier (which only works on a character scope) to army_bonus_air_superiority_factor in various national spirits and focuses.

Remember to submit your bug reports. You can read our Guidelines on how to write a Bug Report here!