We have made a pass at improving the German translation for The Second World War.
All areas of the game are now in German.
We expect some errors but we hope this will be a big step forwards.

Big improvements to Chinese translations through out the UI and events.

We are happy to announce the release of a Chinese language version of The Second World War.
All strings have been translated into Simplified Chinese including UI and events.
Also in the this update, we fixed a few spelling errors and added port to the city of Hobart, Tasmania - the island south of the Australian mainland.
Like with our recent localization for The First World War, we plan to add more languages to this game.
German and Russian will be next with more to follow.

Weve finished another set of aircraft models representing two minor Eastern European powers, Romania and Yugoslavia. There were unfortunately not many domestically designed combat craft to choose from for the Romanians, but the Yugoslavians had a wide range of units that we felt deserved to be added to the game. This is a free content update for all current and future owners of Making History: The Second World War.
We also included in this release a few requests by the community. There are more models and event content we are looking at for the next update. Thanks. Release Notes

• Added new Romanian & Yugoslavian Air units
• Changed Yakut Nationality Mapview color to be different to Russian color
• Gave Communist China control of Shensi in both scenarios
• Added Event to Establish People's Republic of China if Communists take most of China

• Early Fighters - Rogoarski R-100
• Fighters I - Ikarus IK 2
• Fighters III - Rogozarski IK-3
• Fighters V - Ikarus S-49C
• Heavy Fighters I - Icarus Rogoarski IK5
• Light Bombers I - Ikarus Orkan
• Light Bombers II - Rogoarski R-313
• Medium Bombers I - Zmaj R-1
• Seaplane Torpedo Bombers I - Rogoarski SIM-XIV-H

• Fighters III - IAR 80
• Early Bombers - IAR 37

As a small, landlocked nation surrounded by hostile neighbours, Czechoslovakia placed a high priority on developing a modern aviation industry. With no ports or ships, they viewed the air as their sea. Using the large heavy machinery and military industrial factories in Bohemia, Czechoslovakia was able to produce a well respected force in regards to personnel, material and equipment. The Munich Agreement forced the Czechs to surrender without a fight so we can never know how this force would have fared against the German Luftwaffe.
In this release weve added a set of historical models representing the Czechoslovak Air Force of the 1930s. Some units were in the proto-type stage when the German occupation began, ending further development. The models also include the Avia S-99, a Czech Messerschmitt Bf 109 post-war fighter constructed with parts and plans left over from Luftwaffe aircraft production during the war. A portion of these were sold to the new Israeli state forming that nations first fighter squadron. In the next update we'll complete the regional power air unit model additions with entries from the Yugoslavian and Romanian Air Forces. There are plans to add Swedish and Australian aircraft at some point but the priorities will likely shift towards gameplay features. Also, we eventually want to expand the under-represented jet era models, notably Soviet aircraft.
New Czech Unit Models

• Early Fighters - Avia B-34
• Fighters I - Avia B-534
• Fighters II - Avia B-135
• Fighters IV - Avia S-99
• Heavy Fighters I - Praga E.51
• Early Bombers - Aero A.101
• Light Bombers I - Avia B.158
• Medium Bombers I - Aero A.300

The latest update to the game now adds unique models for the Dutch national air force. The infamous Fokker aircraft manufacturer designed and produced several respectable fighter and bomber planes that saw action in the German invasion of the Netherlands. Although many aircraft were destroyed on the ground, the outnumbered Dutch units scored significant victories against the German Luftwaffe. But the costs were high as almost 95% of the Dutch pilots were lost.
Weve also included a Polish Seaplane Torpedo Bomber unit model that was unfinished at the time of this Summers Polish Air Force update. After several comments about the American AIs trigger happy response to Germany taking control of Denmark and as a result, gaining Iceland and Greenland, we have made changes to lower the chance of a war response in this case. The next update we will be releasing unit models for the Czech Air Force. Release Notes:

• Lowered chance of USA going to war against Germany when/if they take control of Greenland from Denmark.
• Updated Dutch Air Force decal Insignia to match the 1939 triangular version
• Fixed propeller animation on Polish Medium Bomber I
• Added Polish Seaplane Torpedo Bomber model

• Early Fighters - Fokker D.XVI
• Fighters I - Fokker D.XVII
• Fighters II - Fokker D.XXI
• Fighters III - Koolhoven F.K.58
• Heavy Fighters I - Fokker G.I
• Early Bombers - Fokker C.V
• Medium Bomber I - Fokker T.V
• Medium Bomber II - Fokker T.IX
• Seaplane Fighters I - Fokker C.XI
• Seaplane Torpedo Bombers I - Fokker T.VIII

The newest version of The Second World War has now been released for Linux and Mac users. This includes the new Polish Aircraft content recently added to the Windows version of the game.
If a Linux or Mac player had their game Betas property set to use Mac or Linux, this should no longer be necessary. The property can be set to None. All future updates will release on the three platforms simultaneously.

In this release weve added a new set of unit models representing the Polish Air Force. These include the unique gull-winged aircraft that Poland developed in the early 1930s, one of the most advanced fighter designs in the world at that time. Many of the Polish planes weve modeled were never produced in significant numbers or were still in the prototyping phase when the Germans invaded.
Next we are looking to add Czech, Dutch, Romanian, Yugoslavianand maybe some Swedish and Australian air units. There are also a number of jet models we would like to include - especially Soviet jets.
This update was specifically focused on the model expansion however we did make a couple of other changes. The Cyprus capital has been designated as the port city of Famagusta so that region is no longer blocked from expanding rail. The Dominican Republic previously did not have a city assigned as a capital in the Last Days of Peace scenario. The next update will have more bug/feature related updates - and hopefully more new unit models.

Now that The First World War has been released weve had time to refocus some attention on The Second World War. This update isnt large but we wanted to get something out quickly. There are a few feature improvements but weve mostly tried to fix bugs. The issue that caused the game to crash when changing the nationality of a colony has been resolved. We also found that disbanded units would return full MPU levels even if the unit was damaged. That too has been fixed. Improvements to UI elements and an optimization to camera zooming may help with some memory crashes. You can also now use the Q & E keys to tilt the camera. More updates are listed in the Release Notes below. Work on the next SWW update has already begun. Please feel free to offer ideas. Update Release Notes:

• Modified Nation AI Character Properties
• Unit Disband now accounts for MPU Damage
• Removed phantom selection UI element
• Artillery units continue attacking despite lack of fuel
• Revised Kazak, Northern Chinese & Xiang Chinese flag
• Increased nuke attack on Strategic Bomber
• Revised Military Army & Group Tab
• Revised Region Status Panel
• Revised Selection Panel Group
• Fixed Austrian Army strings
• Added Airlift Tooltip
• Revised First Vienna Awards Event
• Fixed bug in changing dependent nationality UI that caused a game crash
• Modified camera zoom properties that determine when models are turned on/off
• Replaced Defeat & Victory screens for non-English versions
• Added Icons to map when ship models are dropped during zoom out
• Tilt camera can now be done with the Q & E key
• Repaired script to prevent Vichy from annexing Indochina if Japan owns it when France Falls

Making History: The First World War will be released as an Early Access title in the near future. Visit the The First World War Steam page to get updated game information and participate in the Community Hub here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/959150/Making_History_The_First_World_War/

Factus Games announces the release of a new content expansion for Making History: The Second World War featuring many of the foremost vessels of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Among the models you get are Fubuki-class destroyers, Fus-class dreadnoughts and the largest battleship ever constructed, the Yamato, plus many more.
This is a free DLC enhancement that includes some minor system changes and bug fixes. All current and new owners of Making History: The Second World War will see the Japanese fleet models on Full or Medium Model Set options with the latest update, version 1.0.61701.46. Weve also added in a newly built British Dreadnought model that was constructed for the upcoming Making History: The Great War Gold Edition. Factus Games intends to provide more models, events and scenarios for The Second World War in the near future. Release Notes: - Added new Japanese & British ship models into game - Fixed error in Japanese Northern Route Event to provide Japanese Mech Infantry instead of German - Added region control checks for German Unit expansion events - Put in fix for Japanese Puppet Mengjiang triggering Sino-Japan war - Communist and Fascist governments will not form an alliance unless they are both at war with the same great power - Fixed paging issue on sub group selection panel - Removed some duplicate code that code prevent some events from firing.

A new version of The Second World War is now available. In this release we’ve implemented a Difficulty system to provide a greater challenge to players who are finding the game too easy. As with any new system, we expect there might be further adjustments needed to get the difficulty levels balanced. Another significant change is really a bug fix. Shipping interdiction was not fully working as intended. Sinkings were destroying cargo but not Shipping Capacity. You would lose the coal but keep the ship carrying it. We’ve fixed it so that both are now destroyed when an interdiction event is successful. This change had a massive impact on some nation’s Shipping stockpiles - especially the Axis Powers. Blockades against the enemy should have greater strategic results. In addition to the two big items described above, we’ve also provided some new content items. Players can now attempt to re-establish Austro-Hungary. This event is triggered if the Austrian nation conquers Budapest. The Scandinavian Union events from TGW have been rewritten and added to SWW. This time, the player can found the the Scandinavian Union as Norway in addition to Denmark and Sweden. The Scandinavian events are also tied to some new Steam Achievements. Other new achievements include a Greater Egypt where the Kingdom of Egypt needs to control Sudan, a Lusitanic Empire which is a Greater Portugal challenge, and one if the French conquer Berlin. Future updates should be more content and community driven. In this release we implemented a user request that allows players to edit their nation name and I believe most of the resolved bugs were pointed out to us by the community. Of course we will continue to resolve issues brought to our attention and we have not closed the door on adding new features. Release Notes: - Research success tooltip now correctly shows base research chance. - Update research success chance when changing education program funding when appropriate. - Fixed bad comparison checking for path existence when building transportation improvements - Suppress Relations penalty for lifting embargo against my enemy when joining a war - which automatically overrides embargos. - Reworked Japanese-Siam Event to keep Japan declaring war on Siam even if they agree to military access - Added missing triggers to prevent Greenland from forming an Independent Colony. This is not a supported government type and it broke flag display references. - Added Peace Treaties to Egyptian-Axis Events so Italy and Germany would end war with Egypt. - Removed Mechanized Infantry from French Artillery Group. - Changed Thrace region religion from Sunni to Orthodox. - Fixed bug that prevented shipping capacity being destroyed by interdiction. - Rebalanced Interdiction Power for ships now that they can actually destroy Shipping Capacity - Colonies will now change their readiness to General Mobilization if they border an enemy. - Added a Government Policy action to allow players to change their nation's Name. - Fixed some UX issues with editing text strings in game. - Implemented Difficulty settings that adjust, Combat, Production and Research for AI nations. - Implemented difficulty modifier for National Stability. - Implemented difficulty modifiers for Combat Power - Implemented Resist modifier from difficulty settings. - Reduced the number of difficulties levels to 5 with "Normal" as the default. - Old saves will default to having a difficulty level of “Normal”. - Fixed missing branch string for Artillery in Selection panel tooltip. - Added 3 new Chinese cities to increase Nationalist China viability. - Removed nation names from description strings for the nations that have no descriptions... avoids the name stacking in the lobby - Added 6 new Achievements - New Austria Hungary and Scandinavian Union Events - Updated Austrian Flags - Fixed bug preventing units from leaving former enemy territory after transferring territory.

Now available on Steam. To try it, go to game properties. Under the Betas tab, select the “edge-Bleeding Edge” option. Use the access code: BleedingEdge Launch the game and switch the language under Options in the main menu. The Tutorial is not yet working in the Chinese version. This should be fixed when we do an official Chinese release next week.

Another minor post-release update is now active. This one resolves a few bugs and user requests like balancing suggestions and UI improvements. We will continue to make updates to the game when new issues arise. New features and content changes are being evaluated for future releases. Release Notes: - Trade routes are better at avoiding enemy waters - Can now load onto troopships in cities with port access - Check for intra-empire access for port icon tooltip in the city selection panel - Added Turkish to Turkmenistan Nationality - Raised Combat Strength of Mechanized Infantry - Fixed misspelling of Ile de France - Fixed various event text errors - Added checks to events to prevent nations going to war without player choice - Reworked Turkish Nationalism Events so playing Turkestan or Ottoman won’t remove troops or Research progress - Added tooltips to column headers in the economy panel - Fixed production tooltip to include a factories production factor per turn - Ensure mod ui data is included in shared data - Updated "Moscow Falls" notification image - Fix to prevent skipping upgrade requirements - Increased build times on most ships - Changed some AI Naval Recruitment settings to prevent some nations from building carriers - Update the cost of govt programs for human players each turn in UI - Include purge corruption in the government programs to be updated - Fixed a content bug where an infantry unit was being stuck with some artillery - Added unique icon for Units Destroyed - Rebalanced Combat properties for Medium and Light Tanks - Added Coastal Defenses at Truk - Added MPU requirements for city buildings to the encyclopedia and production tooltips

A small post-release update is now available. In general, the release was released in good shape. There were a few bugs found by the community but that’s not surprising in a complex game like this. Please report any suspected bugs and we’ll do our best to solve them quickly. There has also been a few requests by players. Two of these related to modding. We created a scenario that basically blank called Empty World Scenario for those who prefer to build their mods from scratch. It’s only available in the editor. Several users have posted question about adding custom flags to their mods. It has always been possible. We now made it a little easier and there is some documentation to help guide you through the process, including an example. These can be downloaded from the Factus Games website here: https://factusgames.com/pages/support Release Notes: - Fogging Set to Default - Fixed UI Scrollbar error in Port Panel - Removed Heavy Siege Artillery from regular Artillery groups - they are rail movers - Added longer build times for capital ships and large bombers - Added missing Greek notification image - Fixed bug in UI that show incorrect resource requirements for carrier air units - Added new Empty World Scenario - for Editor use only - Improved ability to add custom flags to mods - Revised Recruitment Notification images - Added Global notification when/if Japan attacks Pearl Harbor - Expanded text space for Artillery properties

Factus Games proudly announces the official release of Making History: The Second World War. We wish to extend a special thanks to all the players who assisted the development team through the Early Access period. The feedback and bug reports were extremely helpful to our efforts. We also received many great suggestions and some we were able to add to the game. Going forward we will continue to support Making History: The Second World War with updates, improvements and any necessary bug fixes.

Making History: The Second World War

Release Notes for Early Access Complete Update:

Making History: The Second World War is scheduled to release on April 27 2018.

A new version of the Second World War is now available. Update #10 is intended to be our final Early Access Update. The plan is to have the game ready for an official release sometime next month. Many of the previous updates were focused on the AI. In this release we begin to turn our attention again towards features and UI clean up. Submarine detection behavior has been significantly improved. Now ships and aircraft with sub detection capability only have a % chance to see a sub on a given turn. This allows us to give higher level units improved sub sighting ability and expand the stealth gameplay of the submarine units. Enemy subs can more easily sneak up on a fleet, engage and retreat. The naval AI received some further attention. Nations will no longer send their fleets to bombard land forces while ignoring Coastal Defense attacks against it. This was leading to some unwise shipping losses in the English Channel. The AI will now prioritize target coastal batteries but generally avoid dangerous sea regions - except when enemy transports appear. We also made changes to encourage naval AI to provide escorts for their capital ships. A couple of features suggested by a Steam Forum user were added. Aircraft, Missiles and Artillery units can now directly target enemy Artillery groups. Before the attack order applied damages to all land units in a region. And the Strafing Order was changed from only running a single turn to being continuous until canceled. Both these ideas seemed good enough to squeeze in, even though were not really in an add new features phase. The UI has been getting small fixes, mostly tasks like adding missing properties in the Encyclopedia and improving labeling consistency. The Encyclopedia is still missing a lot of description information, as is the lobby. Many of these items have been written but not yet put into the game. They will all be filled in for the final release. In version 10 we have introduced an in-game, light tutorial for new users. This will mostly present information about the UI and also be some introductory gameplay hints. We are looking at adding a Glossary to the Encyclopedia that will also include more howto information. The Second World War is almost complete. And while there is a lot of work ahead, the remaining items on our must-have list are dwindling fast. Its been a long haul getting the game to this point - much longer than we planned for. Im going to save the excuses for the post release recap. In the meantime, thank you to all the current users out there who have offered us feedback and bug reports. This process would have taking us even longer without your support.

Release Notes for Early Access Update #10

A new version of the Second World War is now available. Update #10 is intended to be our final Early Access Update. The plan is to have the game ready for an official release sometime next month. Many of the previous updates were focused on the AI. In this release we begin to turn our attention again towards features and UI clean up. Submarine detection behavior has been significantly improved. Now ships and aircraft with sub detection capability only have a % chance to see a sub on a given turn. This allows us to give higher level units improved sub sighting ability and expand the stealth gameplay of the submarine units. Enemy subs can more easily sneak up on a fleet, engage and retreat. The naval AI received some further attention. Nations will no longer send their fleets to bombard land forces while ignoring Coastal Defense attacks against it. This was leading to some unwise shipping losses in the English Channel. The AI will now prioritize target coastal batteries but generally avoid dangerous sea regions - except when enemy transports appear. We also made changes to encourage naval AI to provide escorts for their capital ships. A couple of features suggested by a Steam Forum user were added. Aircraft, Missiles and Artillery units can now directly target enemy Artillery groups. Before the attack order applied damages to all land units in a region. And the Strafing Order was changed from only running a single turn to being continuous until canceled. Both these ideas seemed good enough to squeeze in, even though we’re not really in an add new features phase. The UI has been getting small fixes, mostly tasks like adding missing properties in the Encyclopedia and improving labeling consistency. The Encyclopedia is still missing a lot of description information, as is the lobby. Many of these items have been written but not yet put into the game. They will all be filled in for the final release. In version 10 we have introduced an in-game, light tutorial for new users. This will mostly present information about the UI and also be some introductory gameplay hints. We are looking at adding a Glossary to the Encyclopedia that will also include more howto information. The Second World War is almost complete. And while there is a lot of work ahead, the remaining items on our must-have list are dwindling fast. It’s been a long haul getting the game to this point - much longer than we planned for. I’m going to save the excuses for the post release recap. In the meantime, thank you to all the current users out there who have offered us feedback and bug reports. This process would have taking us even longer without your support.

Release Notes for Early Access Update #10

We were not expecting to offer a new pre-release update this week. The plan was to push through most of the remaining outstanding bugs and feature revisions in preparation for a February official release. Then more of those frustrating memory crash reports popped up. This inspired us to set aside all immediate goals and take one more serious crack at reducing a problem that has plagued the game throughout the Early Access period. It was clear The Second World War would not be ready for final release without finding someway to make these crashes a rarity. The team had already implemented numerous optimizations across the game engine and art in order to minimize the memory spikes that triggered the crashes. These solutions often reduced the frequency. But as we continued making improvements to the game, we eventually overwhelmed any savings previously gained. And while reducing the number of models definitely helped, it was an unsatisfactory trade-off. This memory issue is associated with the application not the machine. So no matter how great your PC is, the game could still run out of memory and crash. Fortunately, our lead engineer had one final idea that hed estimated might give us some relief - more head room so to speak. As it turns out, the solution was rather easy to implement, especially in comparison to the other things we were considering. None of which could have delivered more than a fraction of savings we ended up with. Essentially the game is no longer rendering every unit in the game on every frame. The camera now defines the viewport and only renders objects within view. This has a huge impact on game memory. So much that we feel these type of memory crashes should no longer occur during a normal game. It may sound like an obvious modification, and of course I wish wed done this a year ago. The team inherited this engine and it has taken some time for us to tear through it and make changes. There could have been a good reason for setting the camera up as it was but ultimately, it did not work for the Second World War. There are many other new fixes and additions with pre-release #9, but this memory solution is just such a big deal, I felt I needed to focus my update on that. Much of the work weve done beside optimization has been targeted at finishing the task list and responding to user requests and bug reports. While the production schedule was slowed down last week, a massive hurdle appears to have been overcome. Like any application, it could still crash but it will unlikely be a game memory crash. We are interested in hearing about issues players may have. Its always possible we missed something. The next update will likely be the final one before the official release. We are a little behind schedule. Notes for Early Access Update #9 AI Changes: - Air missions no longer suspended for hard-coded number of turns when Fuel is low - Reworked air patrol and bombing planning for splitting off groups for missions - AI will now stop repairing ships if there are no ships to repair - Production AI focuses on reducing overall demand rather than meeting specific demands - Improved Production AI to be smarter about key production inputs like Steel. - Increased DesiredBomberPower to encourage larger bomber stacks - Increased the desired power for AI Sea Invasions - AI no longer has turn restrictions for limiting nuke targets Game System Changes: - MPU growth rate is now based on Population rather than MPUs - Fixed MPU growth rate calculation error - Re-balanced MPU growth modifier after change to population based growth - MPU Recruitment now uses random region culling - Apply HP reduction penalty to Anti-Air fire - Bombardment hit generation of cities now more closely matches naval combat - Shore bombardment of units and coastal defenses now using consistent algorithm - Upgrading units maintain same health fraction after upgrading - Fixed projected revenue being less than 0 in the UI - Ship breakdown now spreads itself across shipyards Memory Optimization: - No longer render off-screen unit models (major memory savings) - Reworked model culling for smooth transitions over x = 0 - Set lower y FOV offset to avoid near camera clipping - Load models in before showing them when zooming in - Fixed bug where units located at some air bases would not be shown UI Changes: - Fixed Graphic distortion in French Flag - Added now Strafe Icon to Encyclopedia entries - Altered string for Health Infrastructure bonus from MPU to Pop. to reflect actual value - Relabeled "MPU Growth Bonus" to "Pop. Growth Bonus" - Moved Panama City to correct side of Isthmus - New Terrain modifier tooltips and Icons - Updated terrain modifier icons for engagement tooltips - Added terrain modifiers to the encyclopedia - Defender resistances tooltip now uses defense bonus from terrain modifiers - Revised trade and supply access mapviews - Fixed Supply (battery) icon on group selection panel for air, army, and artillery units - Added some Treaty background images Content Changes: - Lowered Research bonus of Research Buildings - Reduced requirements for Research to speed up - Added new D-Day trigger & revised others - Increased Possible Research Points Per Turn from 4 to 5 - New American Deployment Events - Revised Altitude values for Aircraft - Modified (Lowered) Research requirements for some projects - Fixed misspelling of Gulf of Tonkin

We were not expecting to offer a new pre-release update this week. The plan was to push through most of the remaining outstanding bugs and feature revisions in preparation for a February official release. Then more of those frustrating memory crash reports popped up. This inspired us to set aside all immediate goals and take one more serious crack at reducing a problem that has plagued the game throughout the Early Access period. It was clear The Second World War would not be ready for final release without finding someway to make these crashes a rarity. The team had already implemented numerous optimizations across the game engine and art in order to minimize the memory spikes that triggered the crashes. These solutions often reduced the frequency. But as we continued making improvements to the game, we eventually overwhelmed any savings previously gained. And while reducing the number of models definitely helped, it was an unsatisfactory trade-off. This memory issue is associated with the application not the machine. So no matter how great your PC is, the game could still run out of memory and crash. Fortunately, our lead engineer had one final idea that he’d estimated might give us some relief - more head room so to speak. As it turns out, the solution was rather easy to implement, especially in comparison to the other things we were considering. None of which could have delivered more than a fraction of savings we ended up with. Essentially the game is no longer rendering every unit in the game on every frame. The camera now defines the viewport and only renders objects within view. This has a huge impact on game memory. So much that we feel these type of memory crashes should no longer occur during a normal game. It may sound like an obvious modification, and of course I wish we’d done this a year ago. The team inherited this engine and it has taken some time for us to tear through it and make changes. There could have been a good reason for setting the camera up as it was but ultimately, it did not work for the Second World War. There are many other new fixes and additions with pre-release #9, but this memory solution is just such a big deal, I felt I needed to focus my update on that. Much of the work we’ve done beside optimization has been targeted at finishing the task list and responding to user requests and bug reports. While the production schedule was slowed down last week, a massive hurdle appears to have been overcome. Like any application, it could still crash but it will unlikely be a game memory crash. We are interested in hearing about issues players may have. It’s always possible we missed something. The next update will likely be the final one before the official release. We are a little behind schedule. Notes for Early Access Update #9 AI Changes: - Air missions no longer suspended for hard-coded number of turns when Fuel is low - Reworked air patrol and bombing planning for splitting off groups for missions - AI will now stop repairing ships if there are no ships to repair - Production AI focuses on reducing overall demand rather than meeting specific demands - Improved Production AI to be smarter about key production inputs like Steel. - Increased DesiredBomberPower to encourage larger bomber stacks - Increased the desired power for AI Sea Invasions - AI no longer has turn restrictions for limiting nuke targets Game System Changes: - MPU growth rate is now based on Population rather than MPUs - Fixed MPU growth rate calculation error - Re-balanced MPU growth modifier after change to population based growth - MPU Recruitment now uses random region culling - Apply HP reduction penalty to Anti-Air fire - Bombardment hit generation of cities now more closely matches naval combat - Shore bombardment of units and coastal defenses now using consistent algorithm - Upgrading units maintain same health fraction after upgrading - Fixed projected revenue being less than 0 in the UI - Ship breakdown now spreads itself across shipyards Memory Optimization: - No longer render off-screen unit models (major memory savings) - Reworked model culling for smooth transitions over x = 0 - Set lower y FOV offset to avoid near camera clipping - Load models in before showing them when zooming in - Fixed bug where units located at some air bases would not be shown UI Changes: - Fixed Graphic distortion in French Flag - Added now Strafe Icon to Encyclopedia entries - Altered string for Health Infrastructure bonus from MPU to Pop. to reflect actual value - Relabeled "MPU Growth Bonus" to "Pop. Growth Bonus" - Moved Panama City to correct side of Isthmus - New Terrain modifier tooltips and Icons - Updated terrain modifier icons for engagement tooltips - Added terrain modifiers to the encyclopedia - Defender resistances tooltip now uses defense bonus from terrain modifiers - Revised trade and supply access mapviews - Fixed Supply (battery) icon on group selection panel for air, army, and artillery units - Added some Treaty background images Content Changes: - Lowered Research bonus of Research Buildings - Reduced requirements for Research to speed up - Added new D-Day trigger & revised others - Increased Possible Research Points Per Turn from 4 to 5 - New American Deployment Events - Revised Altitude values for Aircraft - Modified (Lowered) Research requirements for some projects - Fixed misspelling of Gulf of Tonkin

In the prior three months, work on The Second World War was dedicated almost entirely to land-based Offensive and Defensive military AI. This process consumed most of our efforts and kept us from moving into other areas. For this release weve turned our attention to improving the Air and Sea gameplay. Bombing your enemys cities has become more consequential with the new factory hitpoint system weve added in Update #8. When your air units target city industries, the attacks can damage factories and potentially wipe out the buildings. Damaged factories do not run their production but they do automatically heal. While its not meant to be easy to destroy factories, sustained bombing can keep them idled while chipping away at the infrastructure hitpoints. A new air unit property called Accuracy has been added to give us a better way of distinguishing technically superior units. The combat routine uses this factor to modify the % chance to achieve a successful hit on the target. Before this feature, bombing results were mostly differentiated by Attack Power which determines how much damage a successful hit might inflict. Accuracy will be applied to both bombing and strafing attacks. The air Ai is being encouraged to aggressively carryout bombing campaigns on enemy cities. This will require players to take measures to defend their industries from production interruptions. AI fighters are ordered to escort the bombers to the extent of their own range. Beyond that distance, bombers will be at the mercy of enemy fighters and AA guns. Theres upcoming work needed to improve AI air defense priorities, engaging enemy air attacks and air group size management. This should all be completed for Update #9. Weve also worked on improving how the AI manages troop transport convoys. Too many of these units were being sent off without escorts. Now the AI will wait and try to find combat vessels to pair with. If a naval group escorting troop transports is intercepted by an enemy force, the AI is now more likely to attempt to retreat in order to save the convoy. Both these measures should make troop transports less vulnerable and reduce the MPU losses at sea. On the system side, we did another round of memory optimizations that should help minimize issues with game crashes. Going forward, well continue looking for more ways to improve stability and performance. Some players have pointed out that city building demolishing took too long. Weve alter the time to be 5 turns for all buildings. And finally, because of the changes that added hitpoints to factories, Mods created before this release will not work properly. There is file you can download from the Factus Games Support page that will fix the issue. Next week the team is scheduled to continue finishing up Air and Naval AI. Some further focus will be given on the American entry and impact on the war. This should involve gameplay improvements associated with invasions and nuclear warfare. We are also beginning to work through the overall list of remaining must-have items needed for release. Theres still plenty to do, features to polish, bugs to fix and remaining content to balance. Still, with the majority of AI rewrites completed, the final release of the game should be a matter of weeks rather than months. Notes for Early Access Update #8 AI Changes: - Revised air AI so that fighters no longer accompany bomber groups - Fighters will defend bomber groups to the extent of their range - Bombers will not limit their bombing targets to fighter ranges - Prioritize Air defense over offensive missions - Fixed AI bug that improperly handled canceling projects - Improved accuracy of AI Stockpile evaluation - AI splits off unsupplied units from groups when wanting to move - Reworked troop transport AI to use escort ships - Naval groups more likely to retreat from combat when escorting transports - Changed Super Power nation status definition to 30% of World Power Points. UI Changes: - Added Unit Icons in game for all nations - UI now shows correct dismantle time and costs - Predicted time display for construction is fixed - Summary panel now uses the 'Demolish' text when showing active projects - Added icon for Carrier Conversion - Updated Strafing icon in encyclopedia - Updated factory related UI to show damaged factories - Added factory Hitpoints and Repair Rate to encyclopedia Game System Changes: - Added Hitpoint system for factories to stop production, damage and destroy - Added Accuracy property to air unit - Modified Air Combat algorithm to use the Accuracy property - Air units no longer applies the Morale Modifier to combat power. - Upgrading city buildings no longer fails if system can't find the old building - Dismantle for buildings time is now fixed at 5 turns - More accurate group fuel calculations - Fixed Research power points calculation - Fixed bug in event function TriggerInheritResearch - Removed TriggerInheritResearchFromString Memory Optimization: - Fixed bug where AI could research the same topic multiple times - Revised research data storage - Removed redundant TriggerConditionMinimumTurn event function - New Model Options to lower memory impact

In the prior three months, work on The Second World War was dedicated almost entirely to land-based Offensive and Defensive military AI. This process consumed most of our efforts and kept us from moving into other areas. For this release we’ve turned our attention to improving the Air and Sea gameplay. Bombing your enemy’s cities has become more consequential with the new factory hitpoint system we’ve added in Update #8. When your air units target city industries, the attacks can damage factories and potentially wipe out the buildings. Damaged factories do not run their production but they do automatically heal. While it’s not meant to be easy to destroy factories, sustained bombing can keep them idled while chipping away at the infrastructure hitpoints. A new air unit property called “Accuracy” has been added to give us a better way of distinguishing technically superior units. The combat routine uses this factor to modify the % chance to achieve a successful hit on the target. Before this feature, bombing results were mostly differentiated by Attack Power which determines how much damage a successful hit might inflict. Accuracy will be applied to both bombing and strafing attacks. The air Ai is being encouraged to aggressively carryout bombing campaigns on enemy cities. This will require players to take measures to defend their industries from production interruptions. AI fighters are ordered to escort the bombers to the extent of their own range. Beyond that distance, bombers will be at the mercy of enemy fighters and AA guns. There’s upcoming work needed to improve AI air defense priorities, engaging enemy air attacks and air group size management. This should all be completed for Update #9. We’ve also worked on improving how the AI that manages troop transport convoys. Too many of these unit were being sent off without escorts. Now the AI will wait and try to find combat vessels to pair with. If a naval group escorting troop transports is intercepted by an enemy force, the AI is now more likely to attempt to retreat to save the convoy. Both these measures should make troop transports less vulnerable and reduce the MPU losses at sea. On the system side, we did another round of memory optimizations that should help minimize issues with game crashes. Going forward, we’ll continue looking for more ways to improve stability and performance. Some players have pointed out that city building demolishing took too long. We’ve alter the time to be 5 turns for all buildings. And finally, because of the changes that added hitpoints to factories, Mods created before this release will not work properly. There is file you can download from the Factus Games Support page that will fix the issue. Next week the team is scheduled to continue finishing up Air and Naval AI. Some further focus will be given on the American entry and impact on the war. This should involve gameplay improvements associated with invasions and nuclear warfare. We are also beginning to work through the overall list of remaining must-have items needed for release. There’s still plenty to do, features to polish, bugs to fix and remaining content to balance. Still, with the majority of AI rewrites completed, the final release of the game should be a matter of weeks rather than months. Notes for Early Access Update #8 AI Changes: - Revised air AI so that fighters no longer accompany bomber groups - Fighters will defend bomber groups to the extent of their range - Bombers will not limit their bombing targets to fighter ranges - Prioritize Air defense over offensive missions - Fixed AI bug that improperly handled canceling projects - Improved accuracy of AI Stockpile evaluation - AI splits off unsupplied units from groups when wanting to move - Reworked troop transport AI to use escort ships - Naval groups more likely to retreat from combat when escorting transports UI Changes: - Added Unit Icons in game for all nations - UI now shows correct dismantle time and costs - Predicted time display for construction is fixed - Summary panel now uses the 'Demolish' text when showing active projects - Added icon for Carrier Conversion - Updated Strafing icon in encyclopedia - Updated factory related UI to show damaged factories - Added factory Hitpoints and Repair Rate to encyclopedia Game System Changes: - Added Hitpoint system for factories to stop production, damage and destroy - Added Accuracy property to air unit - Modified Air Combat algorithm to use the Accuracy property - Air units no longer applies the Morale Modifier to combat power. - Upgrading city buildings no longer fails if system can't find the old building - Dismantle for buildings time is now fixed at 5 turns - More accurate group fuel calculations - Fixed Research power points calculation - Fixed bug in event function TriggerInheritResearch - Removed TriggerInheritResearchFromString Memory Optimization: - Fixed bug where AI could research the same topic multiple times - Revised research data storage - Removed redundant TriggerConditionMinimumTurn event function

A newly updated version of The Second World War is now available. The team lost a week or so to the holidays and there were a few sick days to overcome. Even with those obstacles, we executed a long list of improvements to the game. Again, most of our efforts have been AI related but we are continuing to add new content, events, feature improvements and of course bug fixes. In this release we are introducing a new scenario called Last Days of Peace. It begins a few weeks before the Invasion of Poland. This allows players to skip the buildup years and get right into the war. Neither scenario is 100% complete so expect to see further balancing and content as we work towards release. A new big addition to the AI has been to give it motivation to create and maintain contiguous fronts against enemies and potential threats. The implementation for this system took us through several variations. Initially the AI tended to become too narrowly focused on specific regions due to strength evaluations. Rather than spreading the units out along a front, we ended up with big stacks that led to gaps in front. Eventually the big stacks became pockets, often surrounded by Heavy Artillery that pounded them to extinction. It was kind of fun to see but not the gameplay we were looking for. There were many factors to consider beside just having an enemy on the border. There is the opposing nations strength to consider but also the relationship status. We do not want Canada to think they need troops on the US border and vice versa. Some nations like the Soviet Union are so large that their defensive needs are always greater than what they have available. So the defense priority evaluations are especially challenging for the Soviet AI. They became our ultimate test case while we worked out the rough edges. The AI is also considering potential invasion threats by sea or through bordering buffer states. Support Allies improvements allows the AI to better defend on Allied fronts and fill the fronts throughout their empire. Additionally, weve introduced the concept of Secondary Fronts so the AI will now try to create lines of reserves. All the Major nations now have unique Unit Icon images. So you no longer will see a British soldier or Tank in a Japanese unit panel. Well soon have all the images in to match the unit you see on the map. Next week the team will be shifting attention over to Air and Sea gameplay. One goal is to significantly increase the impact of strategic bombing against industrial targets. This will include changes to the way cities receive damage and the presentation of bombing results. Nations should be compelled to focus attention on defending the homeland against attacks by patrolling fighters and constructing air defense infrastructure. The AI is already doing a lot of air operations. But wed like to increase the activity and add greater emphasis to air weapon systems that truly came of age during WWII. With the Naval Ai well be looking at improving survivability decisions like convoy grouping for troop transports, knowing when to run away from a fight and avoiding unnecessary engagements with coastal defenses. Carriers are currently good at air attacks but they need to get better at using their fighters to defend the task force. Thanks again to all the current users out there that take the time to post messages about issues and ideas. This process would be taking us even longer to get through without your support.

Notes for Early Access Update #7

A newly updated version of The Second World War is now available. The team lost a week or so to the holidays and there were a few sick days to overcome. Even with those obstacles, we executed a long list of improvements to the game. Again, most of our efforts have been AI related but we are continuing to add new content, events, feature improvements and of course bug fixes. In this release we are introducing a new scenario called Last Days of Peace. It begins a few weeks before the Invasion of Poland. This allows players to skip the buildup years and get right into the war. Neither scenario is 100% complete so expect to see further balancing and content as we work towards release. A new big addition to the AI has been to give it motivation to create and maintain contiguous fronts against enemies and potential threats. The implementation for this system took us through several variations. Initially the AI tended to become too narrowly focused on specific regions due to strength evaluations. Rather than spreading the units out along a front, we ended up with big stacks that led to gaps in front. Eventually the big stacks became pockets, often surrounded by Heavy Artillery that pounded them to extinction. It was kind of fun to see but not the gameplay we were looking for. There were many factors to consider beside just having an enemy on the border. There is the opposing nation’s strength to consider but also the relationship status. We do not want Canada to think they need troops on the US border and vice versa. Some nations like the Soviet Union are so large that their defensive needs are always greater than what they have available. So the defense priority evaluations are especially challenging for the Soviet AI. They became our ultimate test case while we worked out the rough edges. The AI is also considering potential invasion threats by sea or through bordering buffer states. Support Allies improvements allows the AI to better defend on Allied fronts and fill the fronts throughout their empire. Additionally, we’ve introduced the concept of Secondary Fronts so the AI will now try to create lines of reserves. All the Major nations now have unique Unit Icon images. So you no longer will see a British soldier or Tank in a Japanese unit panel. We’ll soon have all the images in to match the unit you see on the map. Thanks again to all the current users out there that take the time to post messages about issues and ideas. This process would be taking us even longer to get through without your support.

Notes for Early Access Update #7

The latest version of The Second World War is now live. There's a lot of new AI improvements, fixes and some new content additions. To begin with, weve about finished our comprehensive rewrite of the Land Offensive/Defensive AI. For the most part, the changes may not be very noticable. But over the course of a full game, players should experience an AI making wiser large and small scale decisions that will alter outcomes of battles and ultimately wars. A major effort has gone into making the AI significantly more aware of its defensive needs both at home and abroad. They will also now attempt to gather reserves so front line collapses should not always lead to a total collapse. To get the AI to this level of functionality, new logic was required for how they move, split, reinforce unit groups and when to join a battle or consider it a lost cause. We have a few more elements to complete in the Land Offensive/Defensive AI, including Improving Empire Defense, even better Allied support evaluations and ensuring the US is properly focused on defeating the Axis. The later issue encompasses bolder amphibious attacks and island to island campaigns. The last update we introduced the new unit hitpoints. This had a fundamental impact on all systems related to the military. Some combat properties became overly powerful like Air to Sea attacks. These have been rebalanced along with other game areas like production times for all ships and the shipping capacity resource. We felt that although in reality a carrier can take a long time to build, reality does not always translate into entertaining. Well remain open minded about how best to balance the game and try to settle on a consensus position where possible. Further adjustments to the overall game have been made to bring the systems in line with the new unit hitpoint mechanics. This is an area we intend to expand on, especially in the UI as we discover better ways to present new combat information. In general, if there something in the UI you feel needs attention, please let us know. Community feedback on this would be appreciated. There are many new historical and some alternative history events in this update. We are close to finishing the required minimum events specd for release on the first scenario, but I keep adding to the wishlist and expect to go well beyond the minimum. The new Ottoman and Turkestan Revival for Turkey fall into that category. They are both in game now and we plan to later incorporate them into the Steam Achievement system. Other events are to be added for most nations that will function in a similar fashion. As some may have noticed, weve shifted from an every week scheduled update to one every 2 weeks. This is primarily due to the type of changes weve been working on. AI improvements can take quite a bit of time and results often require additional refinement passes. A week does not give us enough time to properly implement, test and rebalance. Even with a second week, the changes in this update are so comprehensive that some issues are still lingering. The next update is planned for after the December Holidays and New Year. Well be looking to refine and polish Air & Naval AI and begin checking off items from our large but manageable list of smaller tasks that will take us to release. And theres still Tutorial, Encyclopedia, Achievements and a new scenario to finish. Ill be starting a 1939 pre-Poland Invasion scenario over the holidays. If things go as planned, it might make the next update. Please feel free to inquire about changes, offer ideas and provide feedback. If you have a crash, think youve found a bug or maybe just noticed one of my spelling errors, post a note on Steam or email us at techsupport@factusgames.com. Visit our website to read how to get us debugging information: https://factusgames.com/pages/support. Notes for Early Access Update #6 AI Changes: - Major rewrite of Land Defense AI - Reworked defense requirement calculations - Improved AI ability to identify regions that need defending - Revised AI group splitting for better unit to region allocations - AI defends against units belonging to non-enemy but unfriendly nations - Moved defensive AI balance numbers to the xml for modding - Revised defense AI to distribute groups to defense regions while at war - Incentivize AI to hold reserve troops adjacent to defense regions and engagements - Reworked Offensive AI land targeting evaluations - Changed definition of Obvious target to be undefended Artillery/Air units or undefended City - Don't consider defense when Obvious target is in range - Fixed overseas AI from constantly picking the same overseas target - Reworked engagement AI to avoid piling on or sending troops to a "lost cause" - Fixed bug in AI evaluation of enemy coastal defenses in opportunity attack - Revised offensive AI to consider defense needs when moving troops - Reworked Support Allies AI to consider allied defense during peacetime - Improved power calculation in Support Allies AI - Fix for rare bug in offensive AI searching for region that a group is already in - AI turn processing now processes independent nations first - Reordered AI processing to prioritize military plans and ensure specific order - Turned on Subordinate Nation recruitment AI Game System Changes: - Changed rule on Military Access agreements to be Empire wide - Fixed bug so AI no longer considers landlocked Gulf of Ob a Coastal Region - Units stuck behind in peace deals can now get supplies to exit - Tanks no longer limited to moving 1 region a turn - Movement table now shows MAX movement for transportation level 0 - Updated Movement Table - Added strict pathfinding rules to Convoy targets and Artillery units - Fixed calculations on Ranged attack hits to use Power instead of rolling to hit Content Changes: - Added more Soviet forces on the Siberian front - Fixed Decal on British Light Tank II - Fixed Animation Glitch in Railway Gun shoot - Swapped Democratic and Fascist flag - Swapped Nuclear Labs and Jet Labs levels - Lowered Power of Coastal Defense - Reduced time for producing Shipping and Airlift Capacity - Reduced Production Time for all Ships - Increased Defensive Power of Militia - Modified Multiple Unit Properties For Combat Balancing - Significantly Reduced Air to Sea Attack Power - New City Added in Caroline Islands call Moen for Truk naval base - Changed China and Japan nation colors - Added German Unit Icon Images - Updated HP tooltips: Replaced Health with Strength & Casualties with Reinforcements - Relabeled UI Auto Trade Title from Trade Amount to Stockpile Target - Fixed land engagement UI popup showing the same unit multiple times - Implemented Annex Nation and All Subordinates function for Event scripts - Implemented Neutrality Pact function for Event scripts - Increased AI desire to go after regions referenced as target regions in Events - An Event failure no longer stops execution of all subsequent Events. - New Events for American takeover of Greenland and Iceland - New German Atlantic Wall Events - New Neutrality Pact Events (Keeps USSR & Japan from fighting & Phoney War) - New Soviet Factory Relocation Events - New Thailand Events (Franco-Thai War, Alliance with Japan) - New Turkish Events (Axis or Allies, Hatay, Ottoman or Turkestan Revival) - New Vichy French Colonial Revolts Events - New Japan Events (Vietnam, Thailand Invasion) - New USA Events: Pacific and North African Campaigns - New Irish Events (Axis or Allies, Blueshirts) - New Spain Events (Join Axis, Italy, Germany Attack Republican Spain) - New Italy Event for Invasion of Malta

The latest version of The Second World War is now live. There's a lot of new AI improvements, fixes and some new content additions. To begin with, we’ve about finished our comprehensive rewrite of the Land Offensive/Defensive AI. For the most part, the changes may not be very noticable. But over the course of a full game, players should experience an AI making wiser large and small scale decisions that will alter outcomes of battles and ultimately wars. A major effort has gone into making the AI significantly more aware of it’s defensive needs both at home and abroad. They will also now attempt to gather reserves so front line collapses should not always lead to a total collapse. To get the AI to this level of functionality, new logic was required for how they move, split, reinforce unit groups and when to join a battle or consider it a lost cause. We have a few more elements to complete in the Land Offensive/Defensive AI, including Improving Empire Defense, even better Allied support evaluations and ensuring the US is properly focused on defeating the Axis. The later issue encompasses bolder amphibious attacks and island to island campaigns. The last update we introduced the new unit hitpoints. This had a fundamental impact on all systems related to the military. Some combat properties became overly powerful like Air to Sea attacks. These have been rebalanced along with other game areas like production times for all ships and the shipping capacity resource. We felt that although in reality a carrier can take a long time to build, reality does not always translate into entertaining. We’ll remain open minded about how best to balance the game and try to settle on a consensus position where possible. Further adjustments to the overall game have been made to bring the systems in line with the new unit hitpoint mechanics. This is an area we intend to expand on, especially in the UI as we discover better ways to present new combat information. In general, if there something in the UI you feel needs attention, please let us know. Community feedback on this would be appreciated. There are many new historical and some alternative history events in this update. We are close to finishing the required minimum events spec’d for release on the first scenario, but I keep adding to the wishlist and expect to go well beyond the minimum. The new Ottoman and Turkestan Revival for Turkey fall into that category. They are both in game now and we plan to later incorporate them into the Steam Achievement system. Other events are to be added for most nations that will function in a similar fashion. As some may have noticed, we’ve shifted from an every week scheduled update to one every 2 weeks. This is primarily due to the type of changes we’ve been working on. AI improvements can take quite a bit of time and results often require additional refinement passes. A week does not give us enough time to properly implement, test and rebalance. Even with a second week, the changes in this update are so comprehensive that some issues are still lingering. The next update is planned for after the December Holidays and New Year. We’ll be looking to refine and polish Air & Naval AI and begin checking off items from our large but manageable list of smaller tasks that will take us to release. And there’s still Tutorial, Encyclopedia, Achievements and a new scenario to finish. I’ll be starting a 1939 pre-Poland Invasion scenario over the holidays. If things go as planned, it might make the next update. Please feel free to inquire about changes, offer ideas and provide feedback. If you have a crash, think you’ve found a bug or maybe just noticed one of my spelling errors, post a note on Steam or email us at techsupport@factusgames.com. Visit our website to read how to get us debugging information: https://factusgames.com/pages/support. Notes for Early Access Update #6 AI Changes: - Major rewrite of Land Defense AI - Reworked defense requirement calculations - Improved AI ability to identify regions that need defending - Revised AI group splitting for better unit to region allocations - AI defends against units belonging to non-enemy but unfriendly nations - Moved defensive AI balance numbers to the xml for modding - Revised defense AI to distribute groups to defense regions while at war - Incentivize AI to hold reserve troops adjacent to defense regions and engagements - Reworked Offensive AI land targeting evaluations - Changed definition of Obvious target to be undefended Artillery/Air units or undefended City - Don't consider defense when Obvious target is in range - Fixed overseas AI from constantly picking the same overseas target - Reworked engagement AI to avoid “piling on” or sending troops to a "lost cause" - Fixed bug in AI evaluation of enemy coastal defenses in opportunity attack - Revised offensive AI to consider defense needs when moving troops - Reworked Support Allies AI to consider allied defense during peacetime - Improved power calculation in Support Allies AI - Fix for rare bug in offensive AI searching for region that a group is already in - AI turn processing now processes independent nations first - Reordered AI processing to prioritize military plans and ensure specific order - Turned on Subordinate Nation recruitment AI Game System Changes: - Changed rule on Military Access agreements to be Empire wide - Fixed bug so AI no longer considers landlocked Gulf of Ob a Coastal Region - Units stuck behind in peace deals can now get supplies to exit - Tanks no longer limited to moving 1 region a turn - Movement table now shows MAX movement for transportation level 0 - Updated Movement Table - Added strict pathfinding rules to Convoy targets and Artillery units - Fixed calculations on Ranged attack hits to use Power instead of rolling to hit Content Changes: - Added more Soviet forces on the Siberian front - Fixed Decal on British Light Tank II - Fixed Animation Glitch in Railway Gun shoot - Swapped Democratic and Fascist flag - Swapped Nuclear Labs and Jet Labs levels - Lowered Power of Coastal Defense - Reduced time for producing Shipping and Airlift Capacity - Reduced Production Time for all Ships - Increased Defensive Power of Militia - Modified Multiple Unit Properties For Combat Balancing - Significantly Reduced Air to Sea Attack Power - New City Added in Caroline Islands call Moen for Truk naval base - Changed China and Japan nation colors - Added German Unit Icon Images - Updated HP tooltips: Replaced Health with Strength & Casualties with Reinforcements - Relabeled UI Auto Trade Title from Trade Amount to Stockpile Target - Fixed land engagement UI popup showing the same unit multiple times - Implemented Annex Nation and All Subordinates function for Event scripts - Implemented Neutrality Pact function for Event scripts - Increased AI desire to go after regions referenced as target regions in Events - An Event failure no longer stops execution of all subsequent Events. - New Events for American takeover of Greenland and Iceland - New German Atlantic Wall Events - New Neutrality Pact Events (Keeps USSR & Japan from fighting & Phoney War) - New Soviet Factory Relocation Events - New Thailand Events (Franco-Thai War, Alliance with Japan) - New Turkish Events (Axis or Allies, Hatay, Ottoman or Turkestan Revival) - New Vichy French Colonial Revolts Events - New Japan Events (Vietnam, Thailand Invasion) - New USA Events: Pacific and North African Campaigns - New Irish Events (Axis or Allies, Blueshirts) - New Spain Events (Join Axis, Italy, Germany Attack Republican Spain) - New Italy Event for Invasion of Malta

We spent the last two weeks implementing a brand new combat resolution system. In the process, a lot of code needed to be ripped out and replaced. It was really too much to complete in a single week so we chose to delay update. These changes will have a large impact on the military gameplay and especially the AI. The work is not done but we wanted to get the new system in the hands of the Community as we make refinements. The biggest feature improvement in this release is the inclusion of Hit Points on all military units. We moved away from a single hit system that resulted in too much randomness to something that relies more on unit combat properties. This means for example, Infantry can incur casualties and Armor can be damaged without necessarily destroying the unit. This system should give us greater tactical advantages from one unit type to the next. Reinforcements happen automatically using MPUs and Steel. You can also turn reinforcement off at the group level. More UI conveniences will be added as we proceed and theres still a lot of balancing to fully exploit the potential of this feature. New events have been added for the United States and Japan that focus on the Pacific War. Most of these modify AI behavior like getting Japan to attack US & UK Colonies, and the US island hopping campaign. Several nations have new Infantry models since there were some uniform distinction we wanted to provide. Like the USA goes from Infantry I doughboy helmets to the traditional M1. Some key AI revisions are on the schedule for the coming weeks. Defensive tactics will be getting more attention. Well be directing the AI to better defend their borders including dependent nations like Puppets and Colonies - something they dont currently do well enough. And as we progress, the Offensive AI will require adjustments to take advantage of all the Defensive changes. This work will likely be the last major system revision and it will take time to finish and get balanced. There are plenty of items left on our todo list. And while we want to get to a finished release soon, we fully intend to maintain focus and make The Second World War something we can be proud of. With the assistance of the Early Access community, were confident we can get there soon. Please feel free to inquire about features and changes. If you have a crash, think youve found a bug or maybe just noticed one of my spelling errors, post a note on Steam or email us at techsupport@factusgames.com. Visit our website to read how to get us debugging information: https://factusgames.com/pages/support. Notes for Early Access Update #5 - Fixed some unit model nation decal errors - Assigned higher-res Horse textures on Artillery units - Added new Infantry models for Infantry II: American, Italian. Soviet Japanese, Bulgarian. Spanish Nationalist, Polish, Portuguese, Hungarian, South African, Canadian, Yemeni, Ethiopian, Polynesian, Melanesian, Indian - Increased MPU replacement rates for higher Food tech levels - Balanced military units to work with new hit-point system - New Events for American Neutrality, the Pacific War, and Invasion of North Africa - Many updates to existing events, especially Barbarossa and Japanese Expansion - Revised Defensive AI evaluations on coastal defense requirements - Use Master Nations relations when calculating defense needs on dependent borders - Enemy threat assessment in the defensive AI is now Empire based - AI prioritizes building trenchworks when is an engagement in the region - Fixed bug trying to get last region of port related move orders - Added new Event trigger: TriggerRemoveNFactories - Added "bEmpire" property to TriggerConditionNationControlsRegions to change check from direct Nation to Intra-Empire - Increased AI priority on Event fed targeted regions - AI no longer skips non-sphere regions over water if that region is a target region or controlled by a target nation - Revised Propose Alliance AI scoring and to consider current enemies - End AI creating invalid convoy targets - Updated Combat Resolution routine to reflect new Hit Point system - Combat Power for land engagements now favors higher combat values - Damaged land and air units will now regenerate health while not in combat - Hit Point Reinforcement now charges MPUs and Steel - Allow players to turn off Hit Point Reinforcement by group - Updated Group UI panels to show Hit Points, Damages and Casualties - Group UI List area combines all unit types together despite nationality - Group UI List area shows nationality in the expanded rows - Updated Split panel to show Hit Point information - Adjusted nation power ratio check to lower threshold for nuking an enemy - Added available MPU check back to AI recruitment - Fixed math for charging steel and MPUs for Hit Point Reinforcement - Balanced Factory Output profits and build times - Increased output for Capacities - New Icons for Unit Panels - Fixed bug in Check Subordinate Revolt event - Changed assumption that kept Humans from getting many Events - Fixed bug in Total Casualties on the military panel - Fixed some sorting in the military panel

We spent the last two weeks implementing a brand new combat resolution system. In the process, a lot of code needed to be ripped out and replaced. It was really too much to complete in a single week so we chose to delay update. These changes will have a large impact on the military gameplay and especially the AI. The work is not done but we wanted to get the new system in the hands of the Community as we make refinements. The biggest feature improvement in this release is the inclusion of Hit Points on all military units. We moved away from a single hit system that resulted in too much randomness to something that relies more on unit combat properties This means for example, Infantry can incur casualties and Armor can be damaged without necessarily destroying the unit. This system should give us greater tactical advantages from one unit type to the next. Reinforcements happen automatically using MPUs and Steel. You can also turn reinforcement off at the group level. More UI conveniences will be added as we proceed and there’s still a lot of balancing to fully exploit the potential of this feature. New events have been added for the United States and Japan that focus on the Pacific War. Most of these modify AI behavior like getting Japan to attack US & UK Colonies, and the US island hopping campaign. Several nations have new Infantry models since there were some uniform distinction we wanted to provide. Like the USA goes from Infantry I doughboy helmets to the traditional M1. Some key AI revisions are on the schedule for the coming weeks. Defensive tactics will be getting more attention. We’ll be directing the AI to better defend their borders including dependent nations like Puppets and Colonies - something they don’t currently do well enough. And as we progress, the Offensive AI will require adjustments to take advantage of all the Defensive changes. This work will likely be the last major system revision and it will take time to finish and get balanced. There are plenty of items left on our todo list. And while we want to get to a finished release soon, we fully intend to maintain focus and make The Second World War something we can be proud of. With the assistance of the Early Access community, we’re confident we can get there soon. Please feel free to inquire about features and changes. If you have a crash, think you’ve found a bug or maybe just noticed one of my spelling errors, post a note on Steam or email us at techsupport@factusgames.com. Visit our website to read how to get us debugging information: https://factusgames.com/pages/support. Notes for Early Access Update #5 - Fixed some unit model nation decal errors - Assigned higher-res Horse textures on Artillery units - Added new Infantry models for Infantry II: American, Italian. Soviet Japanese, Bulgarian. Spanish Nationalist, Polish, Portuguese, Hungarian, South African, Canadian, Yemeni, Ethiopian, Polynesian, Melanesian, Indian - Increased MPU replacement rates for higher Food tech levels - Balanced military units to work with new hit-point system - New Events for American Neutrality, the Pacific War, and Invasion of North Africa - Many updates to existing events, especially Barbarossa and Japanese Expansion - Revised Defensive AI evaluations on coastal defense requirements - Use Master Nations relations when calculating defense needs on dependent borders - Enemy threat assessment in the defensive AI is now Empire based - AI prioritizes building trenchworks when is an engagement in the region - Fixed bug trying to get last region of port related move orders - Added new Event trigger: TriggerRemoveNFactories - Added "bEmpire" property to TriggerConditionNationControlsRegions to change check from direct Nation to Intra-Empire - Increased AI priority on Event fed targeted regions - AI no longer skips non-sphere regions over water if that region is a target region or controlled by a target nation - Revised Propose Alliance AI scoring and to consider current enemies - End AI creating invalid convoy targets - Updated Combat Resolution routine to reflect new Hit Point system - Combat Power for land engagements now favors higher combat values - Damaged land and air units will now regenerate health while not in combat - Hit Point Reinforcement now charges MPUs and Steel - Allow players to turn off Hit Point Reinforcement by group - Updated Group UI panels to show Hit Points, Damages and Casualties - Group UI List area combines all unit types together despite nationality - Group UI List area shows nationality in the expanded rows - Updated Split panel to show Hit Point information - Adjusted nation power ratio check to lower threshold for nuking an enemy - Added available MPU check back to AI recruitment - Fixed math for charging steel and MPUs for Hit Point Reinforcement - Balanced Factory Output profits and build times - Increased output for Capacities - New Icons for Unit Panels - Fixed bug in Check Subordinate Revolt event - Changed assumption that kept Humans from getting many Events - Fixed bug in Total Casualties on the military panel - Fixed some sorting in the military panel

We’ve finished rewriting the Military Defense AI. This work covered several areas important to making the AI nations tougher opponents. Nations will use their Sphere of Interests combined with the AI Character property Militarism Policy to influence the core of their defensive decisions. Recruitment goals are based on the strength and relationships the other nations within their Sphere. Militarism tells the AI how important it is to match or exceed a rival's military strength level. This has the effect of stimulating an arms race mentality between the Great Powers. The unit placement logic does a much better job defending borders by more effectively distinguishing friendly versus hostile neighbors. Higher Coastal Defense properties combined with increased Amphibious Assault penalties should add more risk and challenge to sea invasions. The Military Readiness system we borrowed from The Great War has been replaced with something simpler but generally similar. Readiness no longer penalizes based on a supportable number. In the new system, a Low Readiness will lower the cost and combat strength of all units. The Mobilization Rate determines how quickly your Readiness will increase each turn when you set it higher. Upgrading Transportation Infrastructure will speed up the Rate. I’ve put some effort into getting Food to be more plentiful by removing the requirement from Arms production. This change should also make Arms easier to come by. As I’ve mentioned previously in one place or another, the game balance will be a continuing process up to and likely beyond release. Please give us your feedback. A few new Events made it into the game, namely Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union. We have not finished all the Events associated with the attack, but we do have the Germans creating their Reichskommissariat occupation governments as they conquer Russia. Our focus will next turn to the Pacific War since the Japanese and Americans need attention. But we will eventually get back to Europe and other areas in the World. For those who use paratroopers you might notice we’ve added little parachutes dropping out of the back of the Air Transports when you deploy Airborne Infantry. More graphical enhancements are scheduled but the priority is still on the Military systems, AI and Events. Each week we will try to include some UI or art improvements in addition to the larger goals. Our work on the Military will continue through next week but will be primarily focused on combat resolution. Like other systems in the game, we borrowed code from The Great War to get The Second World War up and running as fast as possible. In the last year we’ve replaced almost all the stand-in code and now the combat system is one of the last significant tasks. The changes could be dramatic. At the very least, we plan to greatly reduce the length of overly lopsided battles and enhance the qualitative factors in combat results. If everything goes as planned, the next update should have the basic implementation. As always, please feel free to inquire about features and changes you have questions about. The feedback from the community continues to be a huge help. We appreciate those who have taken the time to send in saved games and log reports. If you have a crash, think you’ve found a bug or maybe just noticed one of my spelling errors, post a note on Steam or email us at techsupport@factusgames.com. Visit our website to read how to get us debugging information: https://factusgames.com/pages/support. Notes for Early Access Update #4 - Added Parachute Animation to Air Transports - Increased Food Outputs for City Food Production Buildings - Removed Food Requirement from Arms & Add Metals - Increased Mechanized Farm Food Output Rate - Lowered Cost of Arms from 8 to 7 Gold Per Unit - Added new City called Ravine capital of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine - Removed Soviet Relations with Yugoslavia at start of game - Gave USA Motored Boats research project - Adjusted starting AI Character properties for Military Policy - Increased several region Farm Levels in USA and Canada - Lowered chance USA will enter war if France is invaded - Fixed Military Access triggers that had nation's Giving and Receiving reversed - Added German Claims to Poland - Added missing Bulgarian Axis Event checks - Added Control conditions to Vichy Events to make Free France more likely to fire - Improved issue where Free France was not allying with the Allies - Gave Free France Total War Military Policy - New Barbarossa Event - New German Reichskommissariat Events - New Continuation War Event - Added some conditional checks to improve German Eastern European Events - Fixed missing check in Italian Albanian Event - Reverted Civil War definition to be based just on region Nationality - AI will now choose between Oilers and Colliers based on naval supply needs - New Assault Penalty for Amphibious Assaults into regions with Coastal Defenses - Added new property to the encyclopedia for Coastal Defenses - Improved AI performance tracking Region Defenses - Fixed evaluation that could cause nations to devalue defense in certain regions - Fixed erroneous error placing embargos - region select panel now shows only available region mpus - AI no longer tries to unload troops involved in combat - Added current military readiness to the readiness tooltip - Added a tooltip to explain the sources of mobilization rate - Redefined "significant war" for AI soft goal - Militarism low and medium now consider military budgets during recruitment - Removed dependence of AI recruitment on "supportable units" - AI Readiness choice is now determined by War and Militarism - Redefined "too many units" penalty to be based directly off of Readiness - Added the concept of “desired military power” - AI will ignore invasion triggers from allies if they are also AI - Fixed sign error in defend nation AI

Last week we took most of the restraints off military recruitment. This was done mostly because nations were being too reserved about spending money to support units. Now you may find that certain Nations build too many units. A new restraint system is coming soon along with a lot more Military AI improvements. The AI work is currently focussed on border security, coastal sea zone defense and amphibious assaults. There are improvements to the sea invasion targeting. The AI should be applying more rational criteria when ordering an amphibious assault. For one thing, they no longer look to invade regions outside their Sphere of Interest except when defending an Ally. This should result in more sustainable operations. Nations now place a higher priority on defending their land and coastal borders. Although there are a few layers of decisions not yet implemented, you should see a difference. The naval AI that manages coastal sea zone defense needs some attention. We find the AI is wisely putting ships into port for repairs but they sometimes leave sea zones undefended in the process. Sometimes it makes sense to stay at sea even when a ship is crippled. We modified some of the game data to improve balancing. Some of this was in response to feedback from the community, other changes were made as a result of internal testing. For example, I have again sped up Research to make sure nations get through the tree in an expected timeframe. My goal is to get the US to drop an atomic bomb on someone. Getting this to playout at a semi-historical rate could add a nice urgency and suspense to the overall game. In other words, we’d like the nuclear gameplay to be more than an afterthought. There will be more to say about this topic later. Work on military AI will continue to be our priority for the next release. It’s also time to implement some Operation Barbarossa events. Much of this rests on Germany’s ability to defeat the French in a timely fashion. This key strategic aim is another challenge that is driving our military AI decisions. We did not expect to complete a full revision of the military AI system in a single week and this process could last several more. At this stage in development, we must keep the game playable, so major code changes will need to be carefully added. Sometimes portions will be kept back until we feel the impact won't undermine the player experience. Every update will have many changes listed, too many to describe. Please feel free to inquire about features and changes you have questions about. The feedback from the community has been a very big help. Thanks. Notes for Early Access Update #3 - Balanced AI Army Recruitment Templates - Reduced Food Cost for Arms from 2 to 1 - Reduced MPU Growth Rates for Higher Food Infrastructure - Balance Construction Requirements for Transportation Level 6 - Increased Regional Tax Income for Resources (Modified by Transportation Level) - Removed Setups for Some kinds of Artillery due to UX issues - Relabeled Army Columns from Mechanized Infantry to Mobile Infantry - Implemented new Nation Target triggers for some Events - Revisions and bug fixes in several existing events - New events for Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Yugoslavia joining Axis or not - New Italo-Greek War, Tripartite Pact Events - Fixed Decal on German Rocket Artillery Model - Added New Infrastructure Icons for Transportation and Food - Updated Default Motorized Infantry Unit Render - Updated Mechanized Infantry Unit Icon to Mobilized - Added Attack Power to Coastal Guns - Balanced Region Infrastructure properties, Transportation, Movement - Increased Speed of Research - Fixed bug in City content that prevented Boston from upgrading Research buildings - Removed some Cavalry units from a few modern armies - Modified Opportunity Attack AI - Improved AI Sea Invasion criteria - AI will not order Sea Invasions when target Regions are not in the Nation's sphere. - Include enemy navies and coastal defense when looking for an overseas target. - Only consider Sphere Infractions when nation or region is directly in sphere. - Fix a rare Unit display bug. - Removed map edges for the Amazon Channels so that ships can't path there. - Added Mobile Infantry category to the military panel. - Include Airbases in Fogged map objects. - Added a "Target Nation" operation to the Event scripting routines. - Fixed bug in AI evaluation that made nearby over water regions as valuable as Claims. - Changed building reqs for research to work with higher level buildings. - Added MPU to extract cost for resource capacities. - Fixed AI MPU checks for expanding resource caps. - Fixed some issues with transportation display in the encyclopedia and region select panel. - Updated AI strength estimates for non-equipment units when determining units to recruit - AI will no longer recruit units that they have no desire for. - Fixed broken encyclopedia link for research in the gov panel.

A new version of The Second World War is now live. This week we’ve made some big changes to the AI military recruitment system. We noticed a lack of unit recruitment by nations that were in the midst of war. Turns out the AI was being stingy about spending money. We relaxed or removed many of these restrictions. You should see a lot more aggressive recruitment and a more challenging AI as a result. The aggressive recruitment strategy might have unforeseen impact on the game balance. We’ll make modifications as needed. There were also some incorrect assumptions in data that blocked certain units from ever being built by the AI. With that addressed, a greater variety of units and 3D models should populate the map. Pretty much all the units have had their combat properties tweaked. Getting this right will take time and we definitely want to hear from the community on what feels right and what doesn’t. On that note, we were able to get in a few of the suggestions from the forums like fixing a fight model with the wrong propeller. That was an easy one. Other ideas and bug finds have been catalogued to address right away or consider for later. One user pointed out some oddities in the Sphere of Influence system. Our analysis led us to schedule changes that will make the AI less trigger happy in regions they have no real interest. For next week we plan to continue with military AI. We’re working on getting nations to be smarter about deciding when and where to fight. There’s also a long list of features and bugs that we must whittle away at. Since our goal is to update the game on a weekly basis, this means we only have 4 days of work between each release. On Friday - as long as everything goes well, we begin a code build in the morning that takes several hours to finish. While that is churning. The team meets to discuss game design and implementation goals for the next update. Hopefully by 5PM EST a new release will be ready to go live. Notes for Early Access Update #2: - AI considers “in production” units when using AI recruitment templates. - No long limits military recruitment versus Food Labor concerns. - Removed MPU check when AI looks to recruit equipment units. - AI will recruit beyond their ability to support the units to ensure enough troops. - Remove budgetary considerations for AI recruitment. - AI will always choose a unit to build if they want to build one. - No longer move to readiness None when out of money. - Balanced AI Recruitment Templates for Army, Air and Navy. - Revised combat properties for most units. - Update AI region/city control caching before determining AI military % issue. - Human subordinates are allowed to auto accept trade proposals from their masters. - Colony trade orders can now be set up from the global production tab. - Global production tab trade buttons now say "Trade Order" for player colonies and protectorates. - Colonies and protectorates now show their master's gov type in the ideology score mapview. - Fixed formatting issue with ethnicity display in establish new nation panel. - Fixed stack overflow crash when rendering ethnicity list in the region transfer panel. - Fixed issue limiting artillery recruitment. - Color code auto trade buttons based on auto trade state. - AI will consider giving unclaimed regions to nearby colonies. - Fixed rare error when a cached pathfinder can reference a dead nation. - If a transport is in port, unload the troops onto the land region and remove the ferry target. - AI no longer requests regions from an ally of an enemy. - Include dependencies in white peace. - Fixed American Fighters III model that was missing 3rd propeller. - Revised Quebecois Fascists Flag Set. - Balanced AI Recruitment Templates for Army, Air and Navy. - Swapped Corvette and Frigate in the Tech Tree. - Fixed some errors in data causing Fortification III to become available too early. - Further easing on Research Point requirements . - Increased price of Arms. - New event for Japanese Invasion of Indochina - New event for British Occupation of Faroe Islands and Iceland - Added time based Military Access & Non-Aggression Pacts - Added mechanized infantry to new unit class so AI will build - Fixed mechanized infantry not showing up in the encyclopedia - Fixed missing oiler and collier Unit Icons - Removed food maintenance for field artillery

It’s been a week since we released The Second World War and began the Early Access pre-release phase. Overall, the launch went very well. Some players did experience a memory crash but this issue can be addressed through game settings. We’ve changed some of the default settings to minimize future problems. Along with the remaining feature work we will also be doing optimization and performance improvements wherever we can. This week we spent a lot of effort on improving the way the AI manages the production of factory outputs like Steel and Rail Capacity. We’re trying to get them to produce more and trade more. It may take a few rounds to get the balance right. Please let us know if you think the AI is doing a better job with this. We continue to make adjustments to the Annex logic so nations will liberate their friends and replace the governments of their enemies. The AI is directed to establish governance based on a character property we call International Policy. There are 4 settings: Imperialist, Expansionist, Ideologue and Neutral. The decisions are also influenced by technology dominance and governing ideology. We want the AI to form coherent states based on the mindset of nations during this era. A few oddball cases will still exist and sometimes that makes for good gameplay. As with most systems in Early Access, we will not declare it done until we release. The Workshop will be officially turned on with this release. Many of our users like to create mods and we want to support their efforts. The Editor is being kept up to date as new features are added to the game. This might cause mods to incompatible so beware. You may want to wait before investing a lot of time into a large scale project. We decided not to expose the Event editing section since these are still being changed and new Triggers will be added in the next couple of weeks. It will be including at some point in the next few weeks. And finally, I’ve received a few comments about the choice of music in the game. I understand the Spaghetti Western style is not accurate to the period. But there’s something about those old Sergio Leone movies that I aesthetically associate with WW2. Maybe it’s because the majority of movies I've watched about the war were made back in the 60's. Since this is Early Access I figured I could try something a bit different. And I do intend to add in some moody ambient tracks to soften things up. If it’s super annoying to most people, I'll swap them out when we release. Until the, every gun makes its own tune. Next week we have a stack of things to work on, we are hoping our main focus will shift away from the Economy and on to the Military AI. I’ll be on the forums answering questions and making comments when I feel I can be useful.

Notes for Early Access Update #1:

Making History: The Second World War is officially for sale on Steam as an Early Access title. The game is mostly feature complete and stable. The Early Access process allows us to finish the game with input from the community. For a small independent company like Factus Games, this has many advantages. We do not have the staff for intensive testing so the community does help us find issues that might take longer to find in house. More importantly, the end phase is typically dominated by AI and game balancing. These are areas where players can provide valuable feedback and influence the final product. There’s still a lot of work ahead for some areas of the game and still more we want to improve before the final release. We plan to get new game updates to the community on a weekly basis. During the pre-release period it’s possible saved games could become incompatible after an update. However, we will try hard to avoid that from happening. It’s difficult to say exactly how long the pre-release period will last. We expect it to be no more than 2 months. This is the first of what we hope to be many games developed at Factus Games. Thanks for your support.

Hello everyone, hope you all had a less busy week than I did. ;) I do apologize for the wait, but life happens, and we are all this much closer to the Early Access release of The Second World War. Petain is given leave to form the Vichy state in southern France, while the Wehrmacht takes control of northern and coastal regions pending the end of the war. The army finds itself occupied with mopping up straggling brigades and partisans.
As the year turns to 1940, the Empire of Japan is all but defeated on the mainland. The Soviets are surprisingly merciful and accept a request for peace from Tokyo – after establishing the Japanese People's Republic in Hokkaido.
Lithuania decides to throw its (pitiful) weight around and severs diplomatic ties to the Reich.
As the winter comes to a close in early 1940, Germany finds itself fresh out of fuel. With its tanks halted, repeling the British is suddenly an arduous task. From across the channel, Churchill's troops make a second landing and cut off Brittany. In Vichy, armed conflict erupts between Petain's governing and those desiring to resume the war with the Reich.
In old Francia, it is hard to say who has a worse spring: In the north, the trench warfare of The Great War re-emerges as the Germans desperately try to cut off and assault British forces led by tanks, resulting in the mobile brilliance of Rommel and Guderian rendered useless and the virtual destruction of the Luftwaffe. In the south, Commander-in-Chief Charles Nogues proclaims a French Fourth Republic that he is destined to lead to glory much as Napoleon did over a century earlier. It is civil war in the Vichy State.
Farther south, Italy is in all-out war with the British Empire themselves with both sides vying for control of the Suez Canal at all costs.
By the end of April, the WehrMacht manages to persevere and unexpected naval victories result in His Majesty's Army being driven out of France and Flanders. Sighs of relief echo from one end of the Reichstag to the other as oil starts to trickle back in. However, not everything is well; Charles Nogues is winning the civil war for the Vichy State, and Greece has decided to complicate matters in the Mediterranean. Adolf Hitler finds himself in a precarious position: If he intervenes, Nogues will join the allies and create yet another melee he may not be able to win with such low oil reserves. On the other hand, if he does not, Petain will likely lose and Nogues may join the Allies anyway.
Smaller factions disrupt the balance of power and chaos erupts in Occitania, which is starting to bear an uncanny resemblance to Spain.
In the summer of 1940, Adolf Hitler and his administration believe themselves to be trapped, with the Soviet menace on one end at the defiant British Empire on the other. Unable to effectively utilize his mobile divisions, the decision is made to bring Sealion before Barbarossa, that is, to knock the British out of the war via invasion before turning to the Soviets. This begins by vying for control of the Straits of Dover.
In the second week of August, Sealion begins. Temporary superiority in the channel (even if under duress by the Royal Air Force) results in troops being sent on a perilous mission to capture London and win the war. A fresh invasion comes to the mainland from British and Canadian forces, catching the Reich off-guard, and anarchy from the French Civil War spills north.
The Royal Navy and Air Force assault and badly damage the Kriegsmarine, sending what remains of it in full retreat. Still, the Sussex Landings overwhelm the token British garrison and the Wehrmacht marches north and into London. They find the royal family evacuated along with the government. General Johannes Blaskowitz and a cohort of officers enter the vacated Westminster and, in the Lords Chamber, declare Winston Churchill an enemy of the English people and his government exiled. The German Heer march through the streets in parades joined by British Fascists before beginning their campaign into East Anglia and Lincoln... and there this story ends.

What history will you make in The Second World War?

Hello everyone, I am so excited to bring you Part II of Making History: The Second World War BetAAR. Part III will also be along Monday, September 25. Where we rejoin the action, the Republic of China has formally annexed Manchukuo, though Japanese forces continue to resist in the region. Emperor Puyi is taken into custody.
In August, the cry for reunification with the Greater German Reich continues in the Sudetenland, with Czechslovak authorities losing control of the situation and crying foul.
Showing sympathy to the plight of the Czechslovakian government and altogether frustrated with the expansionism of the National Socialists, France issues a formal condemnation of their actions.
Talks in Berlin are inconclusive, and as Autumn of 1938 sets in, reports of violence against German nationals in the Sudetenland have Adolf Hitler losing his patience.
The Czechslovaks dare to issue a general mobilization, and the Reich is eager to respond in kind. Naturally, Italy comes out in support of German claims to the Sudetenland. Stormclouds gather over Europe.
The Soviets request to join negotiations but the British are quick to rebuff them, and for that, Germany agrees to talk a little longer before wiping Czechslovakia off the map.
In the Raj, a rebellion in Bengal has swollen to a full-blown war of independence, a further example of the strained relations between the crown and its subjects.
The Czechslovakian government finally caves in November. The Sudetenland is returned to the German State with a suspension of discussions pertaining to all other territorial claims.
In Memelland there has also been a crackdown on pro-Nazi activists trying to get the strategic strip of land returned to Germany. In response, the Reich embargoes Lithuania. The embargo stings enough to convince the Lithuanians to release the territory back to Germany.
Hungary – a state badly depleted following the dissolution of Austria-Hungary, is next to make claims on Czechslovakia but without German support, their demands are ignored. This ultimately does Czechslovakia no good, however, as Hungary orders a general mobilization in the first week of 1939 and Catholic priest Josef Tiso immediately proclaims a Slovakian state. Suddenly, Czechslovakia is nothing more than Czechia. Rather than launching a token invasion to annex the territory, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia forms under the German Reich. France and the United Kingdom are aghast.
In February Italy makes its move on Albania, a little nation with a grossly inadequate military to resist the ambitions of Mussolini.
Germany shifts soldiers to the Polish border, where tensions in the Danzig Corridor are starting to rise. Great Britain and France quickly offer an alliance to Poland as means to deter any further German expansion.
All eyes quickly turn eastward, however, as the Soviet Union jumps in the Second Sino-Japanese War meaning to deal a deathblow to Emperor Showa, whose forces are being driven down the Korean Peninsula anyway.
Demands for the return of the Danzig Corridor fall on deaf ears as the Poles are emboldened by their western allies. Eventually, Germany and the Soviet Union begin discussions as to how eastern Europe might be conquered and divided between the two of them, but the Soviet intervention in the east stops the Reich from committing to a pact with them. Finally the ultimatum is issued: surrender the Danzig Corridor or face war. The Poles refuse to comply. On the 10th of August the Wehrmacht crosses the border and the Second Weltkrieg begins.
German soldiers and armored units surge in to Poland, who are completely unprepared for a war with the Reich.
By the first of September less than half of Poland remains in the hands of its government, while a sudden French offensive over the Maginot Line pushes the German forces out of the Palatinate.
The French offensive scares the Reich, who scramble soldiers from the southern border with Yugoslavia and orders a counterattack through the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg. Nobody can figure out why the Maginot Line wasn't expanded along the French-Belgian border, as that was the exact route the ReichWehr took the last time, but, hey.
The Baltic states declare neutrality in the Polish-German war – and for good reason, as by October 1 Polish resistance has nearly been wiped out.
As if things could get no worse for Japan, a failed coup results in Civil War. In the Low Countries Germany has punched a hole right through Belgium.
France soon finds itself in dire straights with the Wehrmacht closing in on Paris by October 17. Holland hangs on by a thread.
France seemed doomed, but a landing of British soldiers enables the struggle there to persist in to November. The German forces are briefly cut off, and chaos ensues as they fight to break the thin encirclement.
With the full might of Germany and Italy bearing down, the French Republic cannot contend. Philippe Petain signs the armistice in the exact train car that the Treaty of Versailles was signed in two decades prior, and with that, the Battle of France ends. Petain is given leave to form a government in Aquitaine that would become known as Vichy France while the northern and coastal regions remained under control of the Wehrmacht pending the end of the war.
Seeing Japan as essentially defeated, the Soviets offer them a peace treaty that is readily accepted. With the British being beaten back from their little foothold in Belgium, the Reich now extends across the continent. French forces have retreated back to Africa and across the Channel to Britain, and some Poles settle in to being a part of another German State while others vow to resist. As of Christmas 1939, the shame of the first Weltkrieg has been more than vindicated, and no force in the world seems capable of defeating the Greater German Reich – but nobody tells Moscow...

The following interview of Ralph Gerth (RG), founder of Factus Games was conducted by Patrick Flynn (PF) (PF) What is your personal background in the industry? (RG) I started working in the games industry at LucasArts back in 1993. They hired me to create 3D art for games which at the time, were still all 2D. I stayed 6 years, learned a ton and made contributions to some classic Star Wars and adventure games. Then in 2000 I moved to Europe to work for a Swedish developer UDS. There I led a team of talented artist making a Futurama console game. Unfortunately the company went out of business after 3 years. I returned to the US to take a position as the Art Director of Muzzy Lane Software, the original developers of the Making History series. My role eventually evolved and I became the designer on all the Making History commercial games. (PF) How did you go about acquiring Factus Games? (RG) I founded Factus Games in 2017 when Muzzy Lane became interested in selling the publishing and development rights to the Making History games. As an educational focused business, Muzzy Lane was never fully committed to commercial gaming and that’s what I wanted to return to. It was an amicable split. (PF) Compared to contemporary World-War-era, Grand Strategy games, what sets Making History: The Second World War apart? (RG) The original Making History game began as an educational product designed for classroom use. In that environment, the game needed to deliver a true historical experience for a wide range of users - most with no strategy gaming background. From that initial effort we created the commercial version of Making History. As the lead designer, my goal was to retain the simplicity of the original gameplay while adding systems to increase the entertainment value. Namely, I wanted the game to be unrestrained by strict historical paths and allow users to carve out their own narratives. History is the theme and the setting. Players navigate the world and change outcomes based on how they behave against a collection of AI nations that also react to the varying activity. Two games will never be the same. As long as the AI makes believable choices, the diversion away from actual history is accepted by the player. With Making History: The Second World War we’ve added many historical events but at each juncture, the player can choose an alternative historical option. (PF) How does Making History: The Second World War differ from Making History: The Great War? (RG) The Second World War was built on the same engine as The Great War so the game will feel familiar to TGW users. We retained the basic structure and gameplay style but most of the AI and systems code was either rewritten or improved. There are also some key strategic and political differences between the two wars that we needed to differentiate in the AI and game systems. For instance in SWW, ideology has greater influence on AI decisions and the combat is more offensive minded. On the graphics side, we’ve doubled the detail level for the hundreds of new WW2 era unit models. Our aesthetic aim is still to present a simple, uncluttered gameboard experience. The game map has been regenerated and improved over the TGW version. There are a lot of new features and loads of historical and alternative historical events. (PF) What do Factus Games have planned following its third World War 2 game? (RG) Our main focus will be on creating a new engine for our future Strategy Games. It’s possible we'll produce a DLC for The Second World War focused on the Korean War, but that has not been officially decided. I’ve also been thinking about ways to make Multiplayer more accessible and easier to play. We'd like to produce some scenarios dedicated to MP play. And after release the game will continue to receive updates and new free content. (PF) What effort is given to exploring alternate history in Making History: The Second World War? (RG) Alternative history as gameplay is a core element to the Making history game design. Not only do we allow players to diverge from the path, we encourage it and craft the content and AI to expect it. In The Second World War, Germany left alone will usually go about their business attacking their neighbors as the Germans did in WW2. But the results will never be the same. (PF) What support for the modding community can we expect going forward? (RG) Making History: The Second World War will launch with Steam Workshop and a full-featured editor. Beyond that I feel it will be up to the community to let us know what they need. Modding is obviously a good way to extend the viability of a product and expand the user base. So it will be in our interests to continue supporting the modding and the game itself long after release.

Hey MH fans, I'm Kanzler and I am pleased to bring you the official Making History: The Second World War Beta AAR (BetAAR). Factus Games has been hard-at-work on the title and are ready to present it to you in Early Access for your feedback and suggestions ahead of full release. I am thrilled to get to demonstrate one of many immersive experiences this title can deliver. This story shall be told from the perspective of the Greater German Reich, or simply Germany.
The Europe of March 1, 1936 is a significantly different landscape than that of March 1, 1914. The German Empire is gone; a Polish state has been restored, Czechia and Slovakia have been merged in to one state, Austria-Hungary has been shattered, France has regained Alsace-Lorraine, and Russian hegemony of the Baltics has ended. The effective monarchies of old have been replaced with both democratic officials and revolutionaries across the spectrum. After a blighted 13 year democracy known as the Weimar Republic, Germany is only now regaining its dignity under the authoritarian rule of the National Socialist German Worker's Party and their Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler. The Germans are now on the brink of Operation Winter Exercise, the remilitarization of the Rhineland.
The French choose to stay their hand, and celebrations erupted across Germany as the most pressing threat to their autonomy is removed. The British offer little condemnation with prominent politician Philip Kerr remarking that it amounted to little more than Germans “walking in their own backyard.”
Even with the triumph, not all are content. Catholics in Westphalia, a demographic that has never been a friend to Adolf Hitler, are making noise and Socialists cause confrontation with the Nazis wherever they dare. The unrest would quickly dissipate, however, as another Great War seems just as far away as ever in the following weeks and months.
In foreign affairs, the situation in Spain continues to deteriorate. By the end of March a Socialist revolt causes the fragile government problems in the south, and in the north the Navarrese declare their own republic.
In April, something of a food shortage (likely spurned by swelling militaries) sweeps the global community. After seeing no opportunity to establish trade for foodstuffs with another country, the Reich sets about infrastructure products in several regions to boost output through mechanized farming initiatives.
Diplomatic relations in the Far East soon come to a fork in the road. Germany has traditionally maintained strong relations with China and even has a military advisor assisting the Repubic of China. However, Mao Zedong's communist rebels have weakened the Chinese state past the point of vulnerability in relation to the expanding Empire of Japan. With the likelihood of a Rising Sun over China increasing by the week, Germany chooses to recall its advisors and establish warmer relations with Emperor Showa.
By late spring Mussolini's conquest of Abyssinia is complete, and Il Duce seizes a rather wicked sum of gold in the process...
The conquest of Abyssinia is divisive, to say the least. The British feel threatened at the growing colonial power of Italy. With Benito Mussolini’s protection policy of Austria the only significant roadblock towards Anschluss, Germany capitalizes on the invasion to butter up Mussolini so that the dream of reunification may become a more plausible reality. The French stay out of the matter as best they can.
Spain restores its rule in Navarra after a spring and summer of warring, but nobody believes their problems are anywhere near being solved.
With the strength of Japan swelling and the Nazis keeping their eye on the real ball, the Anti-Communist International (Comintern) Pact is completed in October, formally signaling the desire of both nations to halt the spread of Marxism. The Soviet Union catches the hint and are none too amused.
1936 ends with officials from Germany and Italy meeting to discuss a formal alliance and permanent deterrent to the global influence of Great Britain and France.
Aside from damaging revolts in Spain, the first half of 1937 is, at the surface, peaceful, though German factories capitalize on the economic boom to skyrocket production, from tanks to consumer goods to research facilities. Germany's industrial capacity has never been better.
In late July, a skirmish along Marco Polo Bridge leads the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan (with its vassal-states) to the Second Sino-Japanese War.
To create a unified state capable of resisting the Rising Sun of Japan, the various Chinese warlords begin consolidating under Chiang Kai-shek, who even issues a joint statement with Mao Zedong declaring an end to all hostilities until the invasion is dealt with.
By the onset of winter the Chinese counteroffensive has shocked the world by overpowering the Japanese invaders and a push into Manchuria begins.
As 1938 begins, the large quantity of motor vehicles both consumer and military put a strain on Germany's oil reserves. Reaching out, the Reich finds a trade partner in the Kingdom of Romania who has ridiculous quantities of it.
In early spring of 1938 Germany begins turning up the pressure on Austria, demanding its government make decisions that pander to the sizable portion of people that desire for the country to be annexed by the Fatherland. In the Far East, a beleaguered Japan finds itself facing a rebellion in Korea.
Tensions in Austria continue to rise. The Austrian SS orchestrates resistance to anti-National Socialist measures by the government. With conflicting reports over the general sentiment towards the prospect of Anschluss, the government calls for a referendum to supposedly settle the matter once and for all. All eyes are on Austria in March.
Instead of seeing the referendum through, however, the German government protests the move as nothing more than a rigged tactic to deny the will of the greater German community. An ultimatum is sent to Austrian officials demanding the referendum be called off and the Anschluss allowed to proceed as planned.
Seeking to avoid a forceful invasion at all costs, Austria submits to Germany and the generational dream of reunification is completed. The Wehrmacht marches in parades through Vienna to the adoration of many. Political opponents now have to contend with the resolution of German authorities directly, and tolerance for Marxism is non-existent.
With the annexation of Austria, morale in Germany is at an all-time high. Elsewhere, however, France and Great Britain simply wonder how things have gotten so out of hand in such a short period of time. Though the larger scale civil war many foresaw for Spain has not yet come to pass, insurrection continues to rock the peninsula. The death toll in northern China and Manchuria continues to mount. The relationship between Great Britain and their Egyptian puppet state grow strained while Germany and Italy's Axis begins to spin. As it turns out, nationalists in the Sudetenland want to return to the Fatherland too, and Czechslovakian authorities are not quick enough to suppress the tide...

Making History: The Second World War is preparing to release as an Early Access title. This offers many advantages to both our development team and the SWW community. For us it's an opportunity to get the game in front of a wider sample of users and systems. The feedback we receive during this phase will help us identify potential issues. This is also a chance for the community to offer ideas on existing features and make requests for additional ones. At present, the game is feature complete. There's still some content to add and game balancing to complete. We believe an Early Access version should be ready sometime in the next few weeks. I'll post announcements once we have a reliable target date.