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