Watching the CRT screen flickering with a long list of log messages, we were desperately trying to make sense of them. Codes, coordinates, trajectories, names of distant places, some of them we have never heard of before. Computer terminals are a blessing, of course, but watching all that information flowing on the screen, we had a chilling sensation of helplessness and paranoia. It didn't strike us until the East Coast of the United States appeared on the screen. Then we understood the machine had begun to think by itself. And decided we would be a target.

The Cold War Terminal AI

The Cold War zeitgeist is strongly connected with the computer culture and the first tries at artificial intelligence. We are convinced that no strategy game about the Cold War would be complete without an efficient AI, one that can, not only correctly interpret what is happening on the global scale, but also be able to build strategies, and act upon it. Perhaps even in ways that may possibly offset even the most advanced human player. AIs are always destined to and are being built with a twin soul. On one hand a friend, someone that sticks with you loyally helping you in your cutthroat two duels for power and influence. On the other, a mighty powerful adversary challenging you in single-player combat holding the fate of humankind itself. Human self-admiration and fallibility has its limitations the computers do not share. Terminal Conflict's MIRVIN was but one of the first.

Improved AI

Work on the AI has been going on relentlessly from the start of development, but lately, we have had an important breakthrough. The first iterations of the AI were aiming at maximizing results in the short term: analyzing the present situation and make a decision that would make sense in the snapshot which the game was at that moment in time. It was working excluding the worst options immediately and picking from what was left. Now it works in a completely different way. If we had to summarize it in one word wed say planning. Thats what the AI is doing now, creating alternatives that span into the future instead of just the present. Timelines, scenarios, the AI is now picking from the most fruitful alternatives for the future. This is a challenging task as the calculations involved are numerous, to put it lightly and so we've been working hard with optimization. Fun fact: the first iteration of this new AI took more than six seconds to complete each calculation before making a move. Now, after a lot of coding work by Lennart Berg, optimizing with Davide Benedetti, QA from Alfred 'Zeress' Frendo-Cumbo, William "Thiking_waffle" Bois d'Enghien and your feedback on forums and Discord, that number has been reduced to 0.15 to 0.20 seconds. In a nutshell, the AI is way smarter, and a lot faster.

MIRVIN AI play

Lets look at an example of how MIRVIN the AI makes use of all the resources it has in its possession: We are in Timeline 1961-1965 and the AI chooses 'Anti Imperial Alliance' in South America as focus, a challenge to take control of Argentina.
The AI disarms and I, feeling confident, opt for Arms Race in the hopes of landing a punch with my imperialist fist! MIRVIN places the influence gathered from its one-sided Disarmament which brings Argentina in balance. During my turn, I choose to act, so I deploy an Army Command to Chile and march it right into Argentina. So long AI ambition! Until I get this
MIRVIN strikes back, recruits Peron, who contests and eliminates my US Army Command on the field and proceeds then to spend his power to get Argentina back on USSRs side. And there is now no time for me to get more troops there, Argentina is about to go full-on socialist.

Policies System Update

Another update we want to mention in this development diary is the improvement of Ai's use of Policies as well as updates to the system itself. Being able to create plans, the AI is improving its strategic use of Policies. The system itself has received updates as we wanted to give you less restricted access to the policies while reducing unnecessary clogging in the interface. Dotted lines for buttons also mark selections containing further choices. Policies are now also freely accessible and we removed the restriction on the amount you can hold to allow even better strategic use.
We hope you will enjoy the updates and continue to keep us posted! Best Regards, Davide Pessach ********************************************************* Upcoming Development I) NEW tutorials are in productions and the official MANUAL is in print! Expect the first rollout in the coming weeks! II) KIM IL-SUNG: A Communist Ideologue and Supreme Leader will rise to power like the living Sun to establish a People's Republic like never seen before and the first Communist dynasty. Or will his life be cut short and his reign curtailed by US regional power? The rise of North Korea is in BETA testing. III) Cooperation to be announced with a famous modding team!

CHANGELOG

AI

• AI will now simulate ahead and behave even more strategically
• AI will now be a lot more vigilant in creating plans
• Policies are better planned and used
• AI now handles Intelligence and understands cooldowns
• Further optimization of the AI calculations

GAME

• Fixed an issue where the profile selected might give an error message
• Fighters should be engaged when attacking surface fleets
• Updated combat preview logic to match actual combat rules
• Updated notification for Non-focus theater war declaration
• Combat preview prioritizes units that can defend
• Combat preview notification should correctly target defending units first

INTELLIGENCE

• NEW You can now see how your Intelligence success chance is calculated. Select an intel operation and PRESS + HOLD for 2 seconds in a region with an intelligence success marker
• Updated names for US intel Operations
• Fixed an issue where the recon notification was incorrect
• Fixed an issue where Espionage and Infiltrate intel mission had the wrong sprite in the log
• Perform narrative check after performing intel mission attempt

DECISIONS

• Updated cooldown and PerTimeline policies descriptions
• Updated an issue where Mao's name would not be lit in Red Dragon Rising
• Updated an issue where Peng needs to have his flag set

WARGAMES

• SCN 7 GRAND CAMPAIGN now properly awards GOVERNMENT interests
• Fixed an issue in SCN 7 GRAND CAMPAIGN that would make it impossible to complete the scenario
• Fixed an issue in SCN 8 The China Card that was preventing the scenario from being played fully

EDITOR

• Intel deployment rules centralized
• Intelligence rules can now be set individually for each mission and bonuses can be defined separately for each faction

OTHER

• Committed sound effects for focuses
• VSync on all quality levels
• Fixed wrong color in the options menu button
• Updated the Options menu
• Updated Sprites for Intel Operations USA