The Vainglory of Grogheads - Pride of Nations PBEM AAR

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

Hmmmm....I got the red fonted text message and accompanying newspaper telling my my Czar had died the turn after the new Czar was crowned.  I knew my country was backward but this is ridiculous.

[JasonPratt]

Yeah, those guys are just as Tsarry as the day is long (as we say here in West TN).

[JasonPratt]

Huh. Kinda expected more updates from the extended weekend than that. Hope the bug hasn't been too bad (either for the game or on humans! -- lots of head colds going around.)

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

I had to work nights all weekend and have another couple O/T shifts tonight and tomorrow so I've only been able to process & email a turn a day.

[Tuna]

hmm should I downgrade too? What did you have to do, install fresh and only go to 0.3

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

I just downloaded the 1.03e patch and installed it directly to the game folder.  Seems to work fine so far.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

A new beta patch (1.04 RC3) was released today.  I'm going to upgrade and see how it goes.

http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?38402-PON-1-04-public-beta-patch

EDIT:  The installer is really slow.  It seems like it's doing nothing for about 5-6 minutes before it actually starts up so if you install it, just wait it out and it'll work.

2nd EDIT:  The unit art work is still not displaying.  (UCG, Tuna.  Don't install it as it breaks our current game.)

[undercovergeek]

No worries - I'm surprised were allowed to play different versions to this point but cool ill leave it as it is

S-P currently has a missionary and a tradepost from just south of egypt all the way round the coast of africa to mombassa - the highest conquest percentage with these I can reach is 35 percent but it outstrips my competitors in this region, namely prussia and the ottamans

I have an opium farm and coffee farm in ethiopia but can't man them without taking the provinces - although I'm wondering if I set up commercial agreements it will open the way, something to try

Have found out if I keep private capital above 1400 traders bring in all kinds of exotic goodies to boost the economy - in the next 6 months ill also open 3 more luxury good factories so that's more money, and the north of the boot fully industrialised - just waiting for the unification stuff to fire

[JasonPratt]

See? I said you were probably winning. :) WAR! -- WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, HUH, SING IT AGAIN I SAID...

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

Good news!  I posted a rant about the immortal Khivan army on the AGEOD forum and Pocus, their developer replied that this indeed was a mistake and tribal armies should never regenerate like this. The only forces meant to do this are the rabble during a rebellion.

[Tuna]

Phew. .when will it be fixed? When will we start up again?

Edit: Nevermind.. see I just got a new turn.

[JasonPratt]

I'm amazed and grateful that the new life on Steam has come with needed patches and dev support!

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

Changelog is up

Patch 1.04 RC3
Release Date: December 6th, 2014
How to update your game:
This patch is a comprehensive patch. It can upgrade to latest version any previous version of PON.
This patch is save-compatible.



LIST OF CHANGES


Gameplay
Improved ammos distribution in supply phase
Improved naval supply distribution
Revised and improved retreat logic for stacks
Stack in retreat or doing MTSG can't cross blockaded river or pass through 'front' because of ZOC.
Traffic rule (in work)
Leaders will only lose seniority on January 1st and July 1st, this should help for promotion potential.
Neutral Tribal are now passive, should stop them from besieging or interfering others units.
There is a 25% chance that artillery manages to counter fire enemy artillery instead of firing on a frontline element.
Evasion value for stacks with leaders was erroneous in some cases
Impossible retreat because of too strong enemy in combat region fixed.
Besieged group can't escape besiegers with evade roll.
Hidden activation feature implementation slightly improved.
Naval resupply from special sea zones can be reduced by enemy ships.
Troops under river move are much much easier to hit now.
You can't use units under construction to build a depot.
Land Stacks residing in an harbor only will be expelled (can happens if fort is destroyed)
Development level reduction done by regional decisions was not working.
Messages on decisions with tests and conditions reworked so they are easier to understand when not successful.
Ability sending command points modifier to subordinate stacks had a bug resulting in double modifiers sometime.
New option added in Menu\Options to play with 'hidden activation'.
Fixed: Occupier ability. Changed: Patriot ability.
If Helper option 'Let AI buy replacements' is activated, AI will buy more replacements than in previous patch.
If enemy capital is occupied, National Resilience rolls are skipped.
Captured equipment can now be incorporated in divisions.
Development level increases moderately movement cost (-20% speed in wild region, -10% in cleared, no change above)
Weather will be more variable depending of the grand weather zones.
Neutral units can't pillage your regions.
Strategic redeployment now requires a continuous rail line from start to end. In addition, if your redeploy outside the theater (filter 6) you pay 10% of the weight (minimum 1) from wear and tear in rail pool.
XP kept when training decreased from 50% to 10%, to prevent veteran militia becoming elite regular infantry.


Engine
Turn Loading time reduced by 40%. Turn processing time reduced by 10-15%.


Interface
Faction history improvements
Can rename units with more characters than before
Music sound volume can now be tweaked (inoMusicVolume in .opt file)
can't enter anymore (and erroneously) in structures not designed to handle sieges
Innate supply production of a region is now shown in the first structure tooltip when checking structures.
Also corrected supply and assets production not taking into account loyalty/alignment
better AB display in Forces & Units list, leaders sorted properly by name. Units ID sorted as expected (5th before 11st)
In Forces, Units, Regions listing, can scroll one page at a time with key up/down. Tooltip added to the scrollbar also.
Hitting Enter when renaming an unit closes the window
Attrition Loss stored for each stack and displayed as a single message at end of turn (includes weather and wear&tear)
Filters in the unit construction panel are preserved when closing it.
Titles of historical options can now display in two lines.
Units under construction appear fixed in the appropriate warmap filter or with the ctrl-F1 filter.
Combat power for friendly units is no more aggregated in a single value.
Shift key can now be used both for lands and waters regions, allows seeing the links between regions.
Recruitable units are sorted by ascending money cost. Filters and buttons maintained when panel closed.
Fixed : Leaders won't hide enemy troops in region tooltip.
Weak counters on map (strength under 100) have less emphasis. Strong counters have more.
Adjacent travel rays display (shift key) improved.
Combat Power and the 3 gauges (hits, cohesion, Supply) only appear on enemy counters if there is at least 2 extra detection points toward the enemy stack.
Calling decisions or recruitments panels will mask ledger.
The variable governing the delay when 'Focus On Move' is used is now available for tweaking in PON\Settings\UserInterface.opt. Default entry is: inoFocusDelayInc = 1500 // in milliseconds
In the Unit List (F1, then switch to Units), units with promotable leaders will be shown in red. Reminder: if you filter out units without leaders, you get the list of generals of your nation.
Number of auto-saved turns can now be changed with an in-game option. Access it with the System tab, in the Options window of the Main Menu.
Load game window can now cope with 0-byte game files. If this happen, the previous turn will be restored, but you'll have to quit the application entirely to have the previous file appears.
Mouse-zooming (not keyboard-zooming) will now focus on the mouse position.
Scrolling is now done 3 messages at a time in message panel (half of message panel height).
Very slow or under recruitments units get a brown ribbon.
Shortcuts added to some special orders. Shortcuts added to postures and ROEs. Check the buttons to learn about them.
Promotable leaders get their name pulsating with a + after their name.


AI
AI: Improved Split Large Stacks
Ai fix on blockade run estimation
Support gift reviewed further.
Bug fixing in scripted interest for naval regions.
Fixed a rare bug in AI algorithm 'give supports'.
Generic AI significantly improved on most algorithms, thanks to a chirurgical yet powerful modification (expect a +10-15% improved Athena nastiness!)
Dislikes much more to be trapped in cities
AI assaults more frequently besieged structures
Admirals are more often send to secondary's fleets
AI faster in sending ships in naval special boxes. (to combine with extra ships attributes)
AI better at shuffling around supply wagons and services units.
AI has been improved on sending supply wagons and artilleries.
AI has been improved on resupplying algorithm.
AI less prone to stay within a structure, if in (at least) partial superiority.
AI will be more vigilant in defending its capital.
High ranked leaders will be much more reluctant to command small forces.
Idle leaders in enemy land will seek to get back to 'headquarter region'.
Transports will have a quite low buying priority if the AI is bested in naval power and situation is not great.
AI will get a slightly higher bonus for railroad autorepair (which is based on the development level of the region)
AI will defend the capital city more easily if threatened
Recon&Raid max distance from 5 to 2 regions
Optimized slightly AI recruitments


Modding / Script engine
Console can reliably be put back at the forefront
A log appears in the splash screen while you parse a script. Useful to see where you are in the parsing process. Plus, it looks cool! The periodicity of this log is controlled by sysScriptMemoPeriodicity in system.opt.
Regional decisions: Condition on number and type of units can now have a range greater than 1 (max is now capped to 6, but this is very CPU intensive, use with caution).
Added an extra field for decisions: NeedThisStrucAttribAdjSelf. Used in CW2 to tweak mines and sub decision.
Added 4 scripting commands (re)Store faction/region. See wiki for details.
Added parameters Group and NoSelectorUpd to SelectSubUnits command. See wiki for details.
Map aleas now support scripted events.

[Martok]

So are the "immortal" tribal armies fixed then?  It's hard to tell from reading the changelog. 

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

I don't think so.  Pocus said he's still working on fixing the missing unit card graphics and he also said this concerning tribals:

Well this is probably an oversight, tribals were not meant to recover men anywhere under any condition. I have added a simple one, they need 25% MC at least. This will help rationalize things.

The way I read this is that if a tribal army is forced to retreat into an area where they have less than 25% military control, they will disappear.  I don't see anything about this in the changelog so I'm not sure if it was included.  Our current PBEM game is not using the new patch because it breaks our game.