A User’s Guide to the 1.1 Update
Anyone who has taken the trouble to read through the enormous “readme” that comes with this update may well come away wondering what it’s all about. As one player’s contribution to highlighting the more significant changes among this thicket, here is a user’s guide to the most significant changes you can expect to see in-game from it.
Land Combat
A great deal of attention has been paid to slowing land combat down and making it more difficult. “Fortress buster” generals are now less powerful, which translates into making fortresses more effective. Attacking in poor weather will now prove more harmful for the attacker, and both sides will find attacking (or counterattacking) at night more difficult. The bonus awarded to dug-in defenders now has a maximum of 20%, doubling the old bonus of 10%. A number of factors affecting land combat have been exported to the misc.txt file, where they can be modified according to your priorities. In particular, the effect of experience on combat have been halved in this patch and exported to misc.txt, where it can be adjusted further. Note too that the delay for units to recover from combat has been extended to 24 hours and also exported for further tweaking. A lot of comment in the general forum has already focused on the centrality of this factor in gameplay, so its availability for adjustment is particularly noteworthy. Another change, which Johan signaled would be forthcoming after discussion about it in the general forum, was to make it possible to arrange for units from more than one province to arrive at their destination simultaneously. So now, when you give the order to a unit to attack, you will see a button on the pop-up allowing you to designate simultaneous arrival. Note, however, that
ordering the units to arrive simultaneously doesn't actually
make them all pop into place at the same moment. But it will get them there closer together.
Convoys and submarines
If I had to pick the most significant group of changes in the entire update, these would be my choice. The intent of these changes has been three-fold: 1) To make submarine attacks on convoys less lethal, both by reducing the number of attacks the subs can make and by increasing the convoys’ protection by escorts. 2) To make convoying less susceptible to sub attacks by directing the convoy a.i. to choose sea zones that are not currently being attacked by submarines. Of course, this places a greater burden on a nation’s convoy pool, but the advantage for convoy survivability should be noticeable. 3) To make submarines less vulnerable to detection and destruction by aircraft carriers or sub-hunting surface ships. The overall effect, therefore, should be to keep submarines at sea for longer periods without being destroyed and to reduce their effect on convoys. You should note that the presence of the submarines will also have an effect on the efficiency of your trade agreements. More subs at sea translates into lower trade efficiency, which is handled separately from convoys.
Air combat
In an attempt to avoid the creation of huge stacks of air units locked in seemingly eternal combat, a limit of 4 units has been placed on the size of any one single air stack. The command limits of commanders have been defined as 2 units for a major general, 4 for a lt. general, 8 for an air general and 16 for an air marshal. In principle, this means an air marshal still could assemble and command a 16-unit “stack” (4 x 4-unit stacks) for a major “Battle of Britain,” but given the randomness built into the air mission routine this should not be too frequent. Noteworthy too here is the attempt to better coordinate the air and naval portions of the game. The a.i. will provide better air cover for naval units and the effectiveness of naval bombers has been raised slightly.
Diplomacy and political considerations
One of the most important changes in this part of the game has been made with respect to guarantees of independence. When countries are a.i.-controlled, those guarantees should now be honored more often, making it more difficult for would-be world conquerors to go rampaging around without consequences. Some effort has been paid to keeping an a.i.-controlled US from entering the game too early. Isolationist countries (read “USA”) will no longer provide guarantees of independence or form alliances. The effects of breaking non-aggression pacts are now more severe in terms of a country’s belligerence rating, which again should slow down WC (World Conquest). One of the most important changes is a small one: dissent now affects your IC total, just as it did in HOI. Dissent had lost much of its meaning in this game – this change makes it something you once again have to pay attention to. It now should be easier to create puppets from your conquered territories, a must for countries hoping to reduce their belligerence levels. And on the subject of puppets, veterans of HOI will want to know that now you can attack from a puppet's territory, and, when a province is taken, the province falls to the puppet
master, not the puppet.
Production and research
A number of miscellaneous changes have been made in the production of particular units. Air transports are now less expensive, as are rockets and atomic bombs. When you deploy province installations such as radar sites or air bases, what you are “deploying” is only an increased capacity for those installations. Only over time will they grow to be the size specified. The effects of tech advances on the rate of airbase construction has been reduced, which should slow a player’s ability to continually hop forward with new bases (again, slowing WC). One of the more interesting and easily overlooked changes has been the placement of an upgrade and reinforcement cap (a limit on the sliders, actually) on a.i.-controlled countries. The aim here has been to get the a.i. to produce a more varied military force. These caps have been exported to misc.txt for further tweaking. A considerable number of tech blocks (i.e., instructions not to research given techs) have been inserted for a.i.-controlled countries.
There you have it. Along with many, many other miscellaneous changes, I hope this provides a satisfactory overview of the 1.1 update. And by the way -- I have been playing with the beta version of this update as Japan on hard/aggressive and having one
hell of a hard time. I hope you will have similar fun!
