Making History: The First World War - Early Access Update #10

March 04, 2021

The latest update is mostly focused on cleaning up the game in preparation for the transition to a final release. Since all the key gameplay coding is complete and the primary content is in game, we feel it is time for Making History: The First World War to exit Early Access. This does not mean the game is out of the development stage. There are still aspects that need improvement and we expect bugs will be found as the game is exposed to a wider audience. But from a playability perspective, the game has received a lot of testing and we think it’s ready. Unless some issue alters our decision, Update #10 will likely be our final Early Access update for The First World War.

After we announce the official release version, we’ll continue looking at ways to further improve the game. While in this release we were able to squeeze in a few new UI features from the community generated wishlist, there are more suggestions we’d like to implement. There’s also our own internal wishlist for the game. All this needs to be quantified and weighed against other priorities but we promise there will be more updates post-release.

In addition to user feature requests, there are a number of content fixes and rebalancing in this update driven by reports from the community. One idea we’ve seen several times in both FWW & SWW is to give players the option to kick out members from an alliance. As designers, we’ve always resisted changing this rule since the concept of joining an alliance was meant to offer both risks and rewards. We decided to implement a compromise. The power to kick a nation from an alliance is limited to alliance leaders only.

There’s also some new UI enhancements like displaying the ship names on the Military Groups Ships list. And we added the ability to Mobilize/Demobilize Air and Artillery groups from the Groups panel in the same way Army groups operate. While doing this work we found and fixed a bug that prevented demobilization on this panel when your nation was at the highest readiness.

On the balancing side, combat and recruitment properties have been modified on several units. Starting armies, aircraft and ships were updated for all three scenarios. And national resources, money and relations received some attention. A detailed list of the changes can be found in the Release Notes #10 shown below. Let us know if you have any questions or comments on the update.

For those curious about what might be coming next, we’ve finally begun writing a manual for the game. This will contain instructional information on key features and hints for new players. If all goes according to plan, it should be made available within a week or two after the final release. Longer term plans will be announced sometime after the final release of The First World War. But I can say that work on Making History: The First World War will be a part of that future.

And now I would like to extend a very big thank you to the community. Buying a game before it is finished has inherent risks. We appreciate the faith and support the users have afforded us and the input provided to improve the game. As a very small developer, this relationship is critical to our ability to continue making games.

Thank you.

 

Update #10 Release Notes:

• Fixed logic error in Holy Sites of Islam Achievement
• Modified Holy Sites of Islam so Ottomans can’t gain this Achievement - they start with all 3 cities in 1912 and 1914
• Expanded Art background to extend for longer Decision Point UI
• Fixed UI frame and label misalignments on City Select Panel
• Increased some recruit times on Infantry & other military units
• Added Moldovan to Romanian nationality
• Gave Tank Prototype II a Military Mechanization research prerequisite
• Increased Offensive power of Tank units
• Rebalanced Cruiser Subs to have more offensive power than Sub Minelayers
• Added Feature Action to allow Alliance Leaders to kick members without breaking the Alliance
• Added missing title labels for some City building categories in Encyclopedia
• Added Add/Remove Claim functions to Government/Nationalities & Demographics tabs
• Added Readiness tooltips to main Government tab
• Implemented feature to turn on/off mobilization for Air and Artillery from Unit Group list in Military Reports
• Fixed bug in On/Off mobilization feature on Group List that disallowed Demobilization
• Removed phantom object from Military Unit Totals tab list
• Updated Tips/Tutorial UI
• Fixed Regional Resource content errors - Sweden Coal & Iron
• Updated Historic Ship names and starting naval units TBW, TJC
• Added Research Category Icon to encyclopedia project info
• Added Region name beneath City name to City Selection info
• Now display Mobilization properties for related Research projects in Encyclopedia
• Added Ship Names to ships on Ship List/Military Panel
• Included more Nation descriptions to the Lobby Select Nation UI
• Updated National Territorial Claims
• Added missing Air Bases in TBW, TJC
• Balanced military units in TBW, TJC & TRR
• Balanced starting Money & Resources TRR
• Revised and added missing Encyclopedia Descriptions
• Added Air Defenses to Western Europe in TRR

 

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