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Tegetthoff

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Apr 14, 2006
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This has not really been a secret since we have informed you quite a few times that work on CORE 0.50 for AoD is underway, but with 1.06 in the pre-release state we can make the definite announcement that CORE 0.50 for AoD 1.06 is in an advanced state of development.

The reason we held back with an official announcement was that AoD 1.05 broke mod-dir and all our development versions could only restore save files (and load scenario files) with a couple of tricks. 1.06 has fixed this so we can now speed up the beta testing and can also promise a playable version on release.

Where are we:
We have carried over the CORE 0.41 development version into AoD. All compatibility issues have been resolved and the current development version 0.50.6 is playable. We have activated a couple of AoD features like artillery bombardment and industrial bombardment. We are holding back on items like synthetic oil and rares plants and we have not yet used all the new brigades that are available.

There are a few graphics issues with slightly skewed tech trees that any user of 0.49 will know.

We have also done a basic revision of the economical model, which is one of the main features that require extensive changes when moving from ARM to AoD. This will require beta testing on a large scale to check.

The testing has also turned into a hunt for small bugs together with the CORE 0.41 finalisation, so there has been continuous bug fixing and about a month of parallel development of the two version, with anything changed in 0.41 going into 0.50 and vice versa.

We have not yet touched combat mechanics, but have seen little abnormal behaviour so far.

The release of an 1.06 alfa version yesterday has given us a huge morale boost and I am sure our beta crowd will turn up for detailed testing on the Terranova board. The development process of CORE 0.50 will be conducted similar to the 0.49 process, which means it is completely transparent to the Betas (but unfortunately all other users will not see a lot).

Thus we will keep you posted over here on the Paradox board regarding our progress.

Cheers,

Tegetthoff
 
So am I, but first things first.
 
Nov. 14 update:

We have had a very productive weekend, producing a dev version 0.50.6 Friday night and 0.50.7 Sunday night.

Corrections are still going on for CORE 0.41 for ARM and CORE 0.50 for AoD in parallel, and we have spotted and fixed half a dozen errors regarding the drift of the Eastern European nations (including Finnland) into the Axis. Most issues of pe-mature Axis alignments have been fixed (including the other extreme with Finnland joining the Allies in 1940). Add to this a dozen spelling corrections.

Specifically for AoD, we have progressed a lot on the Ethiopia issue and now have Italy winning the war at a historical time. We have started to tweak the Japanese AI which for some strange reason evacuates the Kwantung Army in 1936 to Kwajalein and keeps it there until the Sino-Japanese war. Some work there still.

Open issues at the moment are:
* the above mentioned Japan AI bug
* improvements to China which will have to come when the Japanese Ai is fixed
* work on an overaggressive German AI that punches through the Maginot in winter 1939

With so many things to be fixed in 1940/41 we still have not visited Barbarossa. First indications are that it is very hard for the Germans, which is a good thing because a weak Soviet Union was one of the major problems in CORE 0.40 and before.

Hagar as produced hundreds of improved leader pics and they are now included in the dev version.

AND we have also migrated to AoD 1.06 without any problems.
 
No really. The Japanese garrison AI should be easy to solve (hopefully). And I think the problem with the Maginot line is combat modifiers rather than AI.

But again, Barbarossa will be the test and at the moment I have usually logged so many small improvements by the time I reach 41 that I have to restart.
 
Ok, much testing and development work going on over the weekend. We have reached dev version 0.50.9

First of all we switched to an installer version, which makes testing easier for the Betas.

We have solved the Japanese garrison AI problem and have a satisfying solution for the German behaviour against the Maginot Line.
There has also been some strengthening of China, within historical parameters.

We still have a very indecisive Spanish Civil war, though.

0.50.9. will probably remain a standard version for some time to get some serious testing in.
 
Any issues with Germany by 1942? I mean, MP or resources depletion? Do they build the right stuff?
 
I have seen two hands-off games to mid-1942 so far. Germany advanced into Russia, with a slight tendency to get farther than historical in the South (almost reached the Caucasus) and not as far as historical in the North (still 2 to 3 provinces distant from Leningrad). Since the old CORE weakness was an underpowered Russia I see this as encouraging.

Germany was not in deep trouble in mid-42 but not booming either. The biggest problem I see at the moment is a huge build queue (600 IC), with all the ships and many air units at the bottom. This ties up manpower, among other things.

They build a lot of infantry, tanks and mechanised divisions.

One square off was 300 Ger divisions againgst 300+ Russian ones. This game had gone unhistoric with Japan attacking from the East.
The second war was very historic with 290 GER agains 390 SOV divs. (Off the top of my head, can look up the real numbers).

Unfortunately, in this last game I have a CTD each time I push beyond Oct. 1942 (probably due to modding as I go), so I cannot reach 1943+.
 
Well, another dev diary:

We have kept 0.50.9 as the standard version with just a little patch to 0.50.9b.

Many devs and Betas have joined the testing by now, so there is a lively discussion going on and a lot of feedback coming in. We have received information that additional fixes will come in in the 1.06 patch, so we are holding off on some balancing issues to see wether they persist with the final 1.06 patch.

The weekend has seen a lot of China coding, since we have arrived at an internal agreement how to model the German trained divisions. We will also change the way Yunnan works, drawing it slowly into the KMT fold as the war advances.

Hagar has produced another improved set of leader graphics which is in the current dev version as well.

Betas have been reporting enjoyable games. Currently, there is the following list of issues:
* Japan Ai is going for a continental offensive more than for an expansion in the Pacific
* Still issues around the German attacks on the Maginot line, though that may be fixed with the next 1.06 alpha
* Spanish Civil War AI still needs work

Improvements to be made:
* We need to use the additional brigades AoD offers (currently we only have the CORE 0.41 brigades)
* We need to rework national ideas

Generally, the current version is certainly playable, but needs polishing.
 
I`m really looking forward to this ! :)
 
Dec. 5, 2010 dev diary

First of all a very tentative promise:

The dev team as agreed to release CORE 0.50 for AoD when the 1.06 patch is out. We definitely will not release before 1.06 is out.

So, what happened this week:
Many small fixes to the China changes we made last week.
New leader and minister graphics from Hagar´s workshop.
And a new National Idea: we replaced national culture with industrial development level. This is a big change and will require a lot of testing and fine tuning.

New brigades are in the works and just did not make it into the 0.50.11 dev version.
 
The industrial tech tree remains the same (or to be exact: remains the same as in CORE 0.41 which is yet unpublished - there are some small changes there regarding recovery from the recession). But we have some commands in national ideas (or rather in minister traits) that do not exist for techs. Military salaries is the most important one. Now a subsistence economy can have 20% of the military salaries of a fully industrialised country.
 
The industrial tech tree remains the same (or to be exact: remains the same as in CORE 0.41 which is yet unpublished - there are some small changes there regarding recovery from the recession). But we have some commands in national ideas (or rather in minister traits) that do not exist for techs. Military salaries is the most important one. Now a subsistence economy can have 20% of the military salaries of a fully industrialised country.

great
 
Are you planning to change the ressource distribution(or maybe it's already done). We did a lot of MP games with friends(last released version) and there is a huge problem of rares materials in the world.
 
The resource distribution is the "usual" CORE distribution, which is different from vanilla. I have played too little vanilla AoD to be able to comment about changes. I can check when I am at home and give you total rares for AoD vanilla and CORE 0.50 (of course both are modified by province effectiveness).
 
Well I have the files too. In your playtests, haven't you run out of rares as Germany? In my experience shortages are unavoidable after 1940. In MP other players join the rush and Germany basically depends on japanese help after 1938.