Early Access Game Update #3

November 03, 2017

Last week we took most of the restraints off military recruitment. This was done mostly because nations were being too reserved about spending money to support units. Now you may find that certain Nations build too many units. A new restraint system is coming soon along with a lot more Military AI improvements.
 
The AI work is currently focussed on border security, coastal sea zone defense and amphibious assaults. There are improvements to the sea invasion targeting. The AI should be applying more rational criteria when ordering an amphibious assault. For one thing, they no longer look to invade regions outside their Sphere of Interest except when defending an Ally. This should result in more sustainable operations.
 
Nations now place a higher priority on defending their land and coastal borders. Although there are a few layers of decisions not yet implemented, you should see a difference. The naval AI that manages coastal sea zone defense needs some attention. We find the AI is wisely putting ships into port for repairs but they sometimes leave sea zones undefended in the process. Sometimes it makes sense to stay at sea even when a ship is crippled.  
 
We modified some of the game data to improve balancing. Some of this was in response to feedback from the community, other changes were made as a result of internal testing. For example, I have again sped up Research to make sure nations get through the tree in an expected timeframe. My goal is to get the US to drop an atomic bomb on someone. Getting this to playout at a semi-historical rate could add a nice urgency and suspense to the overall game. In other words, we’d like the nuclear gameplay to be more than an afterthought. There will be more to say about this topic later.
 
Work on military AI will continue to be our priority for the next release. It’s also time to implement some Operation Barbarossa events. Much of this rests on Germany’s ability to defeat the French in a timely fashion. This key strategic aim is another challenge that is driving our military AI decisions.

We did not expect to complete a full revision of the military AI system in a single week and this process could last several more. At this stage in development, we must keep the game playable, so major code changes will need to be carefully added. Sometimes portions will be kept back until we feel the impact won't undermine the player experience.
Every update will have many changes listed, too many to describe. Please feel free to inquire about features and changes you have questions about. The feedback from the community has been a very big help. Thanks.
 
Notes for Early Access Update #3
- Balanced AI Army Recruitment Templates
- Reduced Food Cost for Arms from 2 to 1
- Reduced MPU Growth Rates for Higher Food Infrastructure
- Balance Construction Requirements for Transportation Level 6
- Increased Regional Tax Income for Resources (Modified by Transportation Level)
- Removed Setups for Some kinds of Artillery due to UX issues
- Relabeled Army Columns from Mechanized Infantry to Mobile Infantry
- Implemented new Nation Target triggers for some Events
- Revisions and bug fixes in several existing events
- New events for Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Yugoslavia joining Axis or not
- New Italo-Greek War, Tripartite Pact Events
- Fixed Decal on German Rocket Artillery Model
- Added New Infrastructure Icons for Transportation and Food
- Updated Default Motorized Infantry Unit Render
- Updated Mechanized Infantry Unit Icon to Mobilized
- Added Attack Power to Coastal Guns
- Balanced Region Infrastructure properties, Transportation, Movement
- Increased Speed of Research
- Fixed bug in City content that prevented Boston from upgrading Research buildings
- Removed some Cavalry units from a few modern armies
- Modified Opportunity Attack AI
- Improved AI Sea Invasion criteria
- AI will not order Sea Invasions when target Regions are not in the Nation's sphere.
- Include enemy navies and coastal defense when looking for an overseas target.
- Only consider Sphere Infractions if the affected nation is directly in sphere or the region is in sphere
- Fix a rare Unit display bug.
- Removed map edges for the Amazon Channels so that ships can't path there.
- Added Mobile Infantry category to the military panel.
- Include Airbases in Fogged map objects.
- Added a "Target Nation" operation to the Event scripting routines.
- Fixed bug in AI evaluation that made nearby over water regions as valuable as Claims.
- Changed building reqs for research so that they will work with higher level buildings belonging to the same "track".
- Added MPU to extract cost for resource capacities.
- Fixed AI MPU checks for expanding resource caps.
- Fixed some issues with transportation display in the encyclopedia and region select panel.
- Updated AI strength estimates for non-equipment units when determining units to recruit
- AI will no longer recruit units that they have no desire for.
- Fixed broken encyclopedia link for research in the gov panel.

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