Greetings! This is the 1.37 update to Third Reich PC. To install this update, at the A: prompt, type "install" and hit RETURN. Answer yes to the questions about overwriting. NOTE: If you installed the game to a drive/directory other than the default(C:\3R), you will need to edit the install.bat file to reflect the proper drive and/or directory. Below is a history of the updates to the game, and what each has fixed. v1.37 - France was not properly falling in version 1.36. Fixed. - Germany and Italy were not being allowed to Dow Sweden. - If Gibraltar was in Axis hands, the program would not allow the Allied player to use the Suez route. v1.36 - Russian units in Eastern Europe were being eliminated if Germany recaptured Eastern Europe. - AI Improvement: The nations of Turkey, Lebanon-Syria, Palestine, and Spain have had their priority increased for the Allies when there are Axis units present in them, or at war with them. - Greek units in the hex directly West of Athens were incorrectly being marked as out of supply if in an enemy ZOC. - German air units sent to the Murmansk box were being eliminated, with the program stating that they were not in an Airbase. - Enemy units adjacent to Gibraltar were incorrectly preventing SR's through Gibraltar. - Hex A66 was improperly designated as a city hex, allowing Russian air to relocate there when overrun. - When The Ai had to remove more ground units lost to attrition than it had on that front, the program would turn control over to the human player. - Minor country fleets(Sweden, Spain, Turkey), were not able to be moved during the minor country turn, once they had been placed. v1.35 - The AI tried to make an empty hex armor attack, and then exploit from it, even though it was adjacent to an enemy unit, causing it to get stuck in a loop. Fixed. - The program was allowing Replacement units in ports with fleets to be selected as units for Sea Transport. Fixed. - If the Axis conquered Russia before Minor Ally activation, and Germany had units in the minor allies, they would incorrectly be eliminated at the end of the Spring 41 turn, before Minor Ally activation. - If Britain and France were conquered, and the Axis Dow'ed Russia, the Russian brps were not being properly added into the Allied total, causing the turn order to be incorrectly determined. - Rule 31.5(Airborne units don't count towards stacking limits), is now working properly. - A two-front SR with fleets through Gibraltar that was aborted would free up the fleet in the originating port, but the fleet in Gibraltar was not being unmarked. This has been fixed. - The mouse cursor will no longer erase a square on the Choose a Setup menu. - A lockup would occur if multiple air factors were designated as DAS in the same hex that they were based in, after the combat phase. This would occur for both the human player and the AI. Fixed. - If you lent Italian units to Germany during the SR phase, then when Italy has 0 SR's left, if you aborted one of those Lent unit SR's, Italian SR's would go negative, giving Italy unlimited Sr's. Fixed. - If a Lent Italian unit was used in battle, it would lose it's LENT status. Fixed. - Russo-Allied Cooperation rules were not implemented in the game, so that British units could stack with Russian units. Unfortunately, US units could not. That has been fixed. This fixes the problem a few people had who would get the message about Russo-Allied cooperation, which would crash the game. - Units in a port that participated in an attrition, would be able to be used in a sea invasion force incorrectly. Fixed. - If you had air units designated to attack a fleet in a port hex, that you also attacked during normal combat with ground units, if the outcome was attacker eliminated, the program would incorrectly eliminated those air units along with the other attacking factors. - Occassionally, you could designate an attack, either during normal or exploitation combat, on a hex containing DAS. If you selected units to attack, then deselected them and hit Done to cancel the attack, the DAS would fly back, then you could re-attack the hex, without having to deal with the DAS. - A BH in Paris after France fell would inadvertently be marked as a Vichy unit, preventing the Axis player from removing it. Fixed. - A unit in a Pass option front adjacent to an enemy unit can now be moved into an Offensive or Attrition front properly. - Germany will no longer be penalized for falling below the 45-factor garrison in Russia multiple times per turn; only once per turn, per the rules. - Germany will now no longer be given Eastern Europe without taking Tallinn. This was causing Russian air units to stay there, even if German units were moved into Tallinn. - A problem when USA entered the war, where the US would be at war with Germany, but Germany would not be at war with the US on the DOW list. Fixed. - The AI would try to use British and French sea invasion fleets to the same invasion hex in violation of Anglo-French rules, causing an loop. - Armor units assigned to sea invasion would incorrectly be allowed to be used as exploiting units in other armor attacks other than the invasion hex. - Fixed a problem where the AI would attempt to to use naval units in a sea invasion in an attempt to retake Paris. - Removed the "Waiting for User Input" message in a game with no computer player. - AI Improvement. British units will deploy to defend in front of Paris in Fall 1939. - AI Improvement. Restricted when British air is allowed in France. Fixes a problem with the AI wasting sea escort to move air units from Britain to France. v1.34 - Fixed a problem that would occur with hex control of hexes occupied by units of a conquered country. (For instance, if France had units in Italy, and was conquered by Germany, the hexes in Italy occupied by French units would revert to German control, not to Italian control). - Fixed the "There are air units not in an airbase or city" bug. This would occur if you intercepted an invading fleet in it's port hex, and there were air units in the same hex. The air units would be incorrectly transported to the invasion hex, and if the invasion hex did not contain a city, you would get the message. Clicking No on the dialog box would revert control of the Computers' units to the non-phasing player. v1.33 - If Russia was conquered, the Allies would choose a Hold Objectives strategy, causing the AI to not make any invasion attempts of France. - A problem wherein the US and Britain would be out of sync in their front options on the Western front, preventing invasions. - British infantry will now be allocated to invasion factors instead of to minimum defense factors. - The British AI would place replacement units in ports; this would cause Britain not to invade, since there were insufficient ground units in ports to attempt invasions with. The AI will now SR the replacement units elsewhere, leaving room in the port hexes for ground units to use in invasion attempts. - Vichy Airbases may now be SR'ed. - Several problems with the Overland Lend-Lease route have been fixed. This caused various problems, including crashes during or immediately after the SR phase. - All German Subs in the Murmansk box will return to Germany during the YSS. This will prevent them from being stuck there. They will need to be reassigned back to the Murmansk box each year if you wish to keep them there. - BRP losses that have to be divided between Britain and the US are now done in BRPS, instead of subs(it said brps but the number was 1/3 what it should have been was multiplied by 3 afterwards). The resulting losses are no longer quartered a second time. V1.32 - During Fleet movement, if you selected a fleet in a 2-front port, selected a destination port, then clicked on a hex in the other front, the game would crash. - If the human German player DOW'ed and attacked the Minor Ally countries, (Bulgaria, Hungary, Rumania), the hexes occupied by German units would not change control, and if the Minor ally capital was taken, it was not being recognized as conquered. - Fixed a problem with Intervention. If Russia did not take Eastern Europe in one turn, Germany was able to move units into Eastern Europe and intervene without Declaring war on Russia. - The Axis AI would occassionally try to move minor-ally units in violation of the Minor-Ally restrictions, causing an infinite loop. - Fixed a rare problem with the AI selecting ground units for sea invasion, when the port hex and the invasion hex were adjacent. - Fixed a supply problem with French units in Lebanon. - Fixed a problem where the Allied AI, after re-taking Paris, tries to make additional attacks that are illegal according to the rules, and gets stuck in a loop. - Fixed a minor Ally setup problem. - Fixed Allied AI at Hard level, so that now, US will SR to Britain or France, and attempt invasions at 1-1 odds if it is unable to get attacks at 2-1(previously, if it could not get 2-1 odds for an invasion, it just wouldn't attempt any at all). V1.31 - Fixed problem with game recognizing DOW and attack on Poland. It was caused by a general problem in the game where attacks that came ONLY from the Northwest were not begin 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. V1.30 - 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