Greetings! Below is a history of the patches to the game, and what each has fixed, in addition to the previous fixes. V 1.31 - Fixed problem with game recognizing DOW and attack on Poland. It was caused by a general problem in the game in which attacks that came ONLY from the Northwest were not being recognized correctly. - Now loads games that crash on loading because of Vichy Airbase problem. - AI will now take Eastern Europe in one turn as it should, no matter what the difficulty level. V1.3 - A German Airbase counter is no longer sufficient to garrison the minor countries. - A problem that would occur after Vichy was deactivated. The dialog box to roll for Vichy deactivation would continue to appear in every construction phase for the rest of the game, even after it was already deactivated. - Fixed a problem wherein Italy would try to take different Front options from the Germans. - Will now let you select Airborne units to attack a hex, even if over-stacked. - Beefs up the US AI quite a bit. Previously, they would not attempt ANY invasion attempt unless they could get at least 2-1 odds. They will now make attempts at 1-1 odds, if they can't get anything better. - Occassionally, the human player would be given control of the Brp grant phase for the computer player, being asked whether to abort the grant or not. - Added 2 additional difficulty levels, Hard and Master. Hard level gives the AI 2 times the force pools, and doubles the added brp levels and growth rate from Difficult level. So, if at difficult level the AI was given 1.2 times the brps, at Hard they will get 1.4. Master level gives the AI double the Brps. The non-favored side has normal Brp level and Force Pool, but gets zero growth rate. The AI is also given 4 times the Force pool, with the following exceptions for Britain and Italy: -2 times the Naval factors. -8 times the Air and ground factors - Added hotkeys that would make a PBEM game possible. Shift-Q controls the Allied AI, and Shift-W controls the Axis AI. To play an email game, you start the game normally, setting it up for 2 human players. When the phasing player gets to the Voluntary Destruction phase, he hits the appropriate key to turn on the AI for the other side. When he gets to his SR phase, he hits the same key to toggle the AI off. Save the game, then send the saved game file to the other player. When they get to their voluntary Destruction phase, he hits the appropriate key to turn on the AI for the other side, then hits the same key during his SR phase to turn it off, then sends the save to the other player. V1.22 - The lockup during the computer SR phase when running in Win95 - Loading saved games when there is only 1 save available. - A problem that would occur during Vichy unit setup if no ground units were available to be placed in the Capital. - The problem that occurred when France conquers any minor country, then falls, the hexes went to Germany(as they should) but Germany did not get the country, or the brps. (they now do). - The British defense of England was beefed up a bit. - At the Challenging and Difficult level will have more Allied units defending against Axis units in Finland. - In the last turn of the '39 scenario, the AI cannot launch invasions. The Ai now understands this, and will not attempt to do so. - Anglo-French Cooperation for Supply purposes will now work correctly. - The Allies, as per the rules, must have a unit in mainland Italy for Italy to surrender(it was counting Sardinia as part of mainland Italy incorrectly). When Italy does surrender, hexes controlled by the Allies will no longer become German controlled. - The Allied AI will now take Eastern Europe in one turn (as it should). - The Allied AI will no longer try to move the Belgian units out of Belgium when France Intervenes. - Fixes a crash that would occur when Germany fell if Italy was still in the war, the game would crash with the message that it could not find a file with garbage characters for name. - Fixed a problem where Russia would sometimes try to declare different front options from the other Allies. - Fixes various problems with the AI getting stuck in a loop trying to supply units in minor countries when no valid route was available. - Fixes a problem where France would try to attack hexes not adjacent to Paris when Paris was Axis-occupied. - A problem with the British AI trying to select additional fleets for a sea invasion force when there are no additional fleets at the starting port. - Fixed the loop that would occur when a German Ai opponent went to setup Vichy units the turn after France fell. Also, to clarify the readme file concerning Vichy units: Once Vichy units are setup, the German player is NOT allowed to move or select them until Vichy has been activated. They can, however, be SR'ed, and German units may stack with Vichy units. - The "deselect unit" loop that occurred when Russia was moving it's units in Rumania. - Fixes a supply loop problem when Britain tried to supply out-of-supply units in Spain, with no valid path due to ZOC of Axis Armor. - Fixed a problem that would cause the game to crash when loading saved games that occurred after the fall of France. The game was incorrectly flagging Bridgeheads and Airbases that were on the map as Vichy units. NOTE - This fix requires that you start a new game, or load a save BEFORE Vichy has been setup. - Fixed a problem where the human player would be prompted to answer the question about supplying additional Axis units in North Africa - Corrected the problem where Axis units in North Africa east of the Suez would be out of supply, even when they could trace a land route back to a source of supply. Some have found the AI to be a fairly easy opponent to take on. For a tougher opponent, play the Difficult level, as that is the hardest level to play against. Expert level is not the most difficult level; it just allows you to modify the BRP levels and Growth Rates at the start of the game. Other people have reported problems with the AI. We will be fixing those as we can get to them, tweaking the AI. This is process that can take some time, so please be patient. Send any suggestions to Ahdavid@aol.com. Loading Smartdrive will speed up the operation of the game by as much as three-fold. Many of you have experienced problems in doing exploitation movement and chaining. Section 5.46J of the Operations manual explains it, but below is a more detailed explanation. For this example assume we have 3 exploiting armored units, and we want to create a 6-hex chain. We'll assume for this example a line of hexes 1-7, with the exploiting armor units starting at hex 1. -Move the first exploiting armor(we'll call it A) it's 2 hex exploitation movement.(taking it to hex 3). -Select the 2nd exploiting armor(B), then select hex currently occupied by the previously moved unit(A). So, if A moved from hex 1 to hex 3, select B and click on hex 3. That will "jump" unit B to Hex 3, then you move it it's 2 exploitation hexes, creating a 4-hex chain, with it ending up at hex 5. -Select the 3rd and final armor(C), and again, select the hex currently occupied by the previously moved unit(in this case, unit B at hex 5). Click on Hex 5, and after C "jumps" to Hex 5, move C it's 2 hex movement, ending up at Hex 7, thus creating the 6-hex chain. If anyone experiences "infinite loop" problems, such as the AI trying to constantly do an illegal move, please send the saved game for the beginning of that turn, along with an explanation of what the AI tried to do, to AHDWALKER@aol.com, so we can check into and correct the problem in a future update. If you have any comments/suggestions for the AI itself, please send them to AHdavid@aol.com. Dan Walker 3R Playtest Coordinator TAHGC