Greetings! In the twilight's shadow dawn, we have the distinguished pleasure to announce today the latest upgrade to all terminals by the engineering department containing the following features:

• NEW Single Player Campaign - with a dynamic starting guide
• NEW in-game Encyclopedia - the MIRVIN button
• Improved game rules
• Updated and improved AI
• and last but not least, the Ranked Play and ranking system implemented and unlocked for play - for details see the past week's development diary here.

NEW Single Player Campaign

The Cold War is a historically rich era, and what particularly stands out are the impacts of the bravery of single individuals with enormous responsibility on their shoulders. What we wanted, is to share their story while creating a new type of Grand Campaign not found in many strategy games. Instead of facing just facing the traditional series of point and click scenarios (which we have created outside of the Grand Campaign and that explaining the very basics), we decided on a novel approach. The new Grand Campaign: The Big Picture is not a scenario or linear tutorial; instead what we have created is a system where you are playing the regular single player game and anchored to it are story elements that you can trigger as you play to win the Cold War.
This kind of storytelling is more difficult to design, but we felt it would be a lot more rewarding. Train as you fight - Fight like you train. Once you pass your mandatory presidential assessment, your terminal starts presenting you with information depending on what you select and as you encounter game elements for the first time. Selecting Mainland Spain for the first time, for example, will bring up information about Regional Influence, and about Straits. The former for you selecting a region and encountering Influence for the first time and the latter as Mainland Spain has a Strait, and that is unique information tied to that region. You can thus focus on the strategy and MIRVIN can focus on teaching you how to play to your fullest.

NEW in-game Encyclopedia

Just like presidents and general secretaries of the era, all the game information you will find as you explore The Big Picture and unlock all the features of your terminal you can find through your trusted companion MIRVIN. Access his knowledge through this memory bank by selecting the MIRVIN button and knowledge is at your fingertips. Structured and divided the same way as the game manual you can browse through the in-game Encyclopedia.
Covering the entire game, note that, any part you ask MIRVIN about in the Encyclopedia while playing the Big Picture he also automatically unlocks for you, preventing it from popping up again when selected. For example, should you read up on straits in the Encyclopedia before having selected a region with a strait for the first time in the grand campaign, he will not bother you again with that information when you finally do select Mainland Spain. Improved game rules There have been various minor changes, but the big change in this field is the streamlining of Arms Race posture. Previously Arms Race only allowed for declaration of War Zones in your Focus theater. Though this meant that action would be limited to one theater at a time, this was also creating an unfair drawback for certain styles of play in particular for the United States, feedback that the community also voiced. Analyzing the data and crunching the numbers; we have rebalanced the game and both Arms Race and Disarmament postures are now global instead of local to the selected focus theater. If you discover a large buildup of Soviet Bombers in Iran but the Pacific is the Focus? Well, its time to visit Teheran and we love to see you do so.

Updated and improved AI

MIRVIN not only provides better information, but he has also gotten an upgrade when considering unit deployment and uses Intelligence much better to gage where he puts out units on the map. Though still possible, it will be much more difficult to Ambush his units going forward. Not that you would do that to a friend? Right?

Ranked Play

In closing, we have unlocked the Ranked Play ahead of time. Mentioned in last week's development diary, the feature has been fully play-tested during months of production and as we saw that we have gotten so good stability; we rolled it out for you to play. Its our way of giving back to the quickly growing almost 1100 individuals strong Early Access community for supporting our project and development. You, the unnamed and unsung heroes who make this happen and whom we meet through Discord messages, posts in Steam forums and not to mention all the emails, Facebook posts, and tweets sent to us. We are very grateful, and very privileged, to have such a fantastic community. A big thanks to you all! Mighty Cheers Gellert Keresztes, Lennart Berg and Davide Benedetti ******************************************************

Upcoming Development

I) 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 final BETA testing and receiving its finalized graphical assets. II) Policies are getting rolled out with each new patch. III) CONTRAS: TOP SECRET!

CHANGELOG

AI

• AI much better in judging unit deployment
• Further improvements made on how AI handles Ambushes
• Fixed an issue where the MRIVIN state would not play the sound
• Fixed AI simulation not being correctly stopped by Mirvin's skip turn

GAME

• Ranked Play enabled - First-ever Ranked Play Season started
• Updated Ranked Play ranks
• Implemented shared decision system and imagery for Encyclopedia
• Implemented a state machine for the Encyclopedia
• China Card now also works with Encyclopedia
• MIRVIN button enabled in non-scripted wargames
• Mirvin conversation now with proper transitions
• Tutorial Fixes and the start of Lore
• Disembark order in non-focus theater can now be issued.
• Fighter Commands and Bombers Command now allow non-focus action
• Fixed ability to launch apocalypse when not in focus
• Updated all the Theaters descriptions for Policies and Allies menus
• Fixed test game faction overrides not being cleared on normal games
• Fixed UI lagging behind logic when starting wargame
• Fixed a typo that would cause an error message to be given when launching Balance of Power
• Removed a file that was no longer used
• JSON error notification reported has been fixed
• Wargames can select to load the main game's decisions/policies as well
• Fixed an issue where the game would display a series of 9s instead of the turn counter

FOCUSES

• Exception fix in focus management

POLICIES

• Fixed an issue where policy description coloring would be incorrect
• Updated three Policies for Grand Campaign: The Big Picture
• Reconnect the West Wing: Increase DOOMSDAY to 5 to gain 3 VICTORY POINTS. Enables new policy 'Reconnect Congress'. HINT: Use MIRVIN's ENCYCLOPEDIA to unlock and learn more about the concepts related to the DOOMSDAY clock.
• Reconnect Congress: It will be a challenge but increase either your GOVERNMENT or your ELITES' interest ALIGNMENT to 2 to gain 9 VICTORY POINTS. Might take several timelines. Enables new policy 'Reconnect the National Security Council'. HINT: Use MIRVIN's ENCYCLOPEDIA to unlock and learn more about the concepts related to the INTERESTS.
• Reconnect the National Security Council: Land on the MOON before the USSR does so to gain 12 VICTORY POINTS. HINT: Use MIRVIN's ENCYCLOPEDIA to unlock and learn more about the concepts related to the SPACE RACE.
• Encyclopedia decisions enable UI elements
• Fixed an issue where the policy menu scroller was cutting off 3rd row's names
• Wargames now have StartingPolicies - all other policies deactivated on startup

NUCLEAR WAR

• Fixed an issue where Nuclear Apocalypse would crash due to UI order change
• New border traces for nuclear world wrap around
• Fixed an issue there the Apocalypse would cause the screen to fill with hostile nuclear icons

DECISIONS

• Fixed image references in SCN1
• Added missing image for A Swift Response
• China Card possible breakdown fix
• Decisions grammar fixes
• Duplicate ID fix

MAP

• Updated Naming and Notifications for Global Maps
• Updated an issue where Spain had an incorrectly sized overlay

CHARACS

• Characs now correctly lose 1 POWER each timeline
• Favoring characs hurt mutually exclusive characs by 1 power

MULTIPLAYER

• Fixed cross-OS OOS due to Directory.GetFiles() retrieving files in different order between *nix and Windows implementations

OTHER

• Updated name displaying the UI to COMMAND USER INTERFACE
• Updated the definition the TRANSIT unit ability
• Updated definition for cross theater maneuvers
• Fixed small UI bug with space race research dialog
• Added missing audio and updated sound clip for Theater map buttons
• Added tooltip notification for Focus Objective
• Fixed footer bar not resizing in the world overview