Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: WanderingHead

Hi guys,

At long last, there is finally a patch on the way! I've tested the installer. I imagine that it will be available by the end of Monday.

Warning1: This patch is not compatible with older saves. For those wishing to continue playing current games, we suggest you first copy you’re A World Divided game to a new folder before applying this new patch to the originally installed AWD folder. You will be able to continue your old games by running the exe file from this copy of the game.

Warning2: This patch is a beta patch. Changes have been rather extensive, and playtesting only with a limited number of players. I hope the community will promptly report any issues, and I hope that I can promptly address them.


v1.020 RELEASE NOTES

0. Known bugs/issues
Unused factory points warning: this warning no longer works. Unfortunately, this issue was not observed until the patch was basically out the door. I hope to address it in a month or two, after the patch has some legs.


1. Scenarios
Global Glory: This is a brand new scenario! The scenario emphasizes the importance of oil with consideration of resources and “oil refineries” (factories in zero-population regions that can only produce supplies) and adds some rules for realism (such as air penalties at maximum range, narrows overflight by air units, and port benefits for transports).
Please check the scenario notes in a separate file.

All preexisting scenarios: Japan’s starting intelligence Security is increased from 8 to 12 for all ’39-’41 scenarios, to 15 for ’42-’43 scenarios.

All preexisting ’39-’42 scenarios: starting artillery evasion for all Players reduced to 5 (from 6).


2. Rule Changes
Note: rule changes apply to all preexisting scenarios. The new scenario Global Glory includes all of the following rule changes, and other additional rules. See the Global Glory description separately.

Japanese a-bomb surrender: this rule has been changed, so that now the a-bomb must actually be successfully dropped on Japan to induce surrender. The Japanese VP threshold for surrender is also reduced from 10 to 7.

 IF
   (     the a-bomb is dropped on a factory in a non-zero population Japanese nationality region
     AND causes a double hit
     AND at the end of that same turn the Japanese VPs is below 7
     AND Japan at war with Russia
   )
   OR 
   (     the US has the bomb 
     AND Japan has no regions with both a working factory and non-zero population
     AND at the end of the turn the Japanese VPs is below 7
     AND Japan at war with Russia
   )
 THEN
   Japan surrenders.

French surrender: surrender can now occur if East France is German controlled, but in this case Vichy will not be established: non-European French regions that typically become Vichy would remain WA controlled.

Artillery targeting: changed for the Range 2 portion of combat (the second time that the artillery fires, after the first fire at Range 3). Now, the target selection at Range 2 is unconstrained random, rather than artillery targeting artillery first. Range 3 targeting is unchanged (at Range 3 an artillery unit will still select an available artillery target first).

CAG counter strikes: counter strikes are modified, so that the counterstrike may be aborted if an overwhelming number of air units defend the counterstrike region. This modification prevents a gamey tactic of baiting counterstrikes.

• when the cstrike is "organized", the quantity of cstrike air units (all types of air) is counted, call it ca (cstriking air)
  
• the quantity of defending (active player) fighter and CAG units in the cstrike target region is counted, call it da (defending air)
  
• the "observed" quantity of defending air is computed as the sum of da rolls of die(3) plus one, divided by two, rounded down. That is, oda = floor((1 + sum_over_da(die(3)))/2).
  
• the counterstrike is aborted if oda>ca.
  
• if the counterstrike is aborted, then all of the defending air in the cstrike zone is marked as "cannot undo move", so that a player cannot simply load up the air, prevent the cstrike, then undo the move and use the air some other way.

The die rolls give some uncertainty as to whether the cstrike will occur. The range of the "observed" quantity of defending air will be 1/2*da<= oda <= 3/2*da, but it is not uniformly distributed. The larger da is the "tighter" the distribution is in relative terms.

Damaged units to damaged factories: damaged units will now be able to queue for repair in damaged factories, rather than being destroyed if they can’t trace to an operational factory.

Bombardment attacks and cumulative suppression: bombardment attacks will no longer benefit from prior suppression (i.e. a bombardment will not receive the bonus for already suppressed units). Allowing bombardment to benefit from suppression had the effect of allowing suppression to “compound” (like compound interest) and grow exponentially, so twice the number of bomdardments was more than twice as good.

Bombardment attacks and evasion modifiers: when there is an evasion adjustment (e.g. evasion is reduced by 1 if the targeted unit is unsupplied), then bombardment attacks (suppression fire) have an additional modifier added to the die roll. This roll modifier is -3 times the evasion adjustment.
For example, if a unit is unsupplied then evasion is reduced by 1. In addition, if the fire is bombardment then the modifier of ( 3)×( 1)=+3 would be applied. This is doubled (as normal for bombardment), so that +6 is added to the roll result.
This change allows all of the typical evasion based modifiers to have a more reasonable impact in the case of bombardment attack.

Naval bombardment penalty with no land units: when there are no land units in support of naval bombardment, the bombard roll penalty is now 4 (was 5).

Unsupplied op-fire: op-fire now suffers a target evasion penalty (evasion increase) if the op-firing unit is unsupplied and there is no supply available for the op-firing unit. Note that this checks for supply availability, but does not consume supply.

Combined arms: militia no longer counts as an infantry class unit for combined arms, and airborne now will count as an infantry class unit for combined arms.


3. Features
Note: Mod-ability features are listed separately.

View Mode: Added a read-only mode for loading files, so that a player may load a file of any player’s turn, even the opponent’s. When loaded in View Mode, the game cannot be played and the file cannot be resaved. When view mode is enabled, the loader will prompt for a player password and load the game as the player with the matching password, with appropriate FOW visibility. If multiple Players have the same password (e.g. Germany and Japan), one can click “No” to loading Germany and will then be prompted for Japan. If the player uses an empty password (“”) then the game will load as Player “Neutral”, which allows view of only those regions visible to both sides.

Unit Stacking: differentiation of displayed units in non-movement phases has been improved, so that for example one may distinguish repaired versus damaged infrastructure when viewed in the production phase.

Resource movement: resource movement in production phase improved, so that it is less likely that unused resources will sit in a major factory region until they are eliminated when production is complete. It is now more likely that unused resources will end up in a factory+resource region where they can be stored until next turn.

Retreats: retreat decisions have been improved by taking into consideration the presence of friendly factories and population in nearby regions. This should only be noticeable when retreating from a region with no functional rail.

Region Info Screen: this screen now includes a "TOTAL" row at the bottom of each column, which is the sum of everything displayed.


4. Bug fixes
Airfield attack: the “airfield attack” defense value of 15 will no longer be asserted for land-to-air fire.

Air unit retreat to factory: fixed air unit flight based retreat to factory, so that air units must fly to a land zone before tracing to factory. Flying to a sea zone and then tracing is now precluded.

Damaged CAG trace to factory: Damaged CAGs attached to a carrier will no longer be able to trace an infinite distance, they will be limited to factories within 20 MPs, similar to naval units.

Damaged units teleporting to factories: Units could previously trace to any friendly factory (i.e. of a non-hostile nation) then teleport to the factory of the unit’s nationality with the most available production, even if the traced factory was surrounded. Now, a unit can trace to any friendly factory. If that factory is a port, the unit may “teleport” to any port-factory of the unit’s nation within 18MPs. If the unit cannot trace to the unit’s nation, or to a port for shipment to the unit’s nation, then the unit will be stuck in the friendly nation for repair at that location. E.g. Soviet units damaged in an isolated East Poland will be stuck in East Poland for repair, instead of teleporting to Moscow.

Op-fire from Saudi-Arabia: the Mandab Straight will now behave as a straight from Saudi Arabia, so that artillery in Saudi Arabia will now op-fire on naval traffic through the straight.

Naval port-to-port: A naval unit doing a port-to-port move, which is stopped in transit by FOW revelation, may continue its move to a port that is in port-to-port range. Previously the unit would be stuck where it stopped.

Infantry damaged as dropped airborne: Infantry that move via heavy bomber transport and are subsequently forced to retreat in the enemy player’s turn will no longer be damaged as though they were dropped airborne units forced to retreat.

Fuel cost: Fixed a bug that sometimes allowed an armor unit to move 2 regions and expend only 1 supply.

SPs for air in range of New Zealand: there was a bug which prevented the removal of this bonus when Victoria was captured, which has been fixed.

Memory bugs: a couple of memory corruption bugs were fixed, which should hopefully eliminate some sources of instability.

File interface: files will now reliably sort in order.


5. Modability
Note: for more details and how to use mod-ability features, peruse the data files. An attempt was made to thoroughly comment each feature. Many of these modability features have been used in making rule changes or the Global Glory scenario.

Partition agreement: all units from Belorussia move to East Poland, all units in Velikye move to Baltic States (previously a fixed number would move, inadequate if more units were placed in these regions than were in the baseline scenarios).

Political events:

• Additional modifiers for political event probabilities.
  
• Configurable whether an event is blocked by a previous event.
  
• Events can be allowed to occur more than once.
  
• Fixed some surrender bugs for mod-able political events.
  
• Event can change amount of resource gift.
  
• Events can be dependent on state of a gift, or the date, or a Player’s VPs.
  

Air penalty at max range: the ability to add a firing and fired-at penalty at max range is added.

Evasion modifier adjustments for suppression: the ability to add an attack roll modifier based on the evasion adjustments of the target is added.

Air move over narrows: mod-ability option allowing air movement over narrows (e.g. 1MP from West France to England).

Research limits after WS+2: the limit is now modable (was hardcoded at limit=tech_level).

Zero-pop factory regions: ability to configure that zero-population regions cannot do research.


6. AI
Minor AI improvements:

• WA AI will not attack neutral units at sea until the USA is at war.
  
• AI will no longer move into sea zones with allied units (bug fix).
  
• The Russian AI may move units into East Poland under some circumstances.
  

Greg Wilcox
Production Assistant