TRM 0.9 for AoD 1.06B1
Ho Ho Ho! Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!
I updated the Third Reich Mod to run on the AoD 1.06 beta 1 hotfix patch.
Note that the 1.06 beta 1 hotfix patch just got released yesterday and therefore it has NOT been tested. That being said, I loaded up as Dominican Republic and ran several handsoff playtests using TRM 0.9 over 1.06B1 and I got no errors or CTD’s.
You can download the Mod at:
Filefront
http://www.filefront.com/17699226/TRM_090_for_AoD_106B1.rar
Rapidshare
http://rapidshare.com/files/439115871/TRM_090_for_AoD_106B1.rar
My checksum path:
1.05 CNRO ==> 1.06B1 hotfix LKPW => TRM 0.90
RHAY
You may have a different checksum depending on whether you bought AoD from Gamers Gate or Steam, and you may also get a different checksum depending on which 1.06 beta version you are using.
Change control log from v0.84 to v0.90
First of all, thanks to everybody who provided feedback on the Forum, via PM, and via email
Events
• Bismark, Tirpitz, Yamato, Mushashi, and Shinano now arrive with attached naval brigades
• Four more “free” units for Germany:
o Spanish Blue infantry division
o 1st Ukranian infantry division (14th Waffen SS Galician)
o RONA infantry division (Russian National Army of Liberation)
o Prinz Eugen heavy cruiser
• You may choose whether to launch Fall Weserubung early or to wait until April 1940 (historic)
• Several new events cause partisan uprisings in occupied Soviet provinces.
• Hiwis will volunteer to serve the Germans (free manpower events)
• The Vichy Navy gets properly scuttled after the Vichy France event fires. The VIC navy is reduced to six destroyers and six troop transport ships.
• New event whereby you can invite Turkey to join the Axis if you are holding western Europe and if you successfully capture part of the Caucasus region from the Soviets. When the event fires, you have the option to let Turkey remain neutral, just in case you want to play historically (and also because convincing Turkey to join the Axis might not be worth the huge cost of 2,890 Reichsmarks).
• New event path whereby you can puppet Ukraine and Belarus after you occupy them. Of course, you also have the option to play historically and not puppet them. These events were inspired by TRP 0.94 for HOI2DDArma by Lothos.
• JAP and SOV will sign a nonaggression pact in April 1941 (historic)
• Nationalist Spain gets two free infantry divisions once the Spanish Civil War begins because it needs help to beat SPR. In handsoff playtests in AoD 1.06 for some reason SPA usually lost to SPR, which is ahistoric and seldom happened in AoD 1.04.
• Nationalist China gets up to nine free infantry divisions if it starts losing badly to the Japanese. This prevents JAP from beating CHI too easily, which would be ahistorical. Similar to the SPA bullet, above, this did not seem to happen much in previous versions of AoD.
• You will receive the blueprint for the 1941 land doctrine tech Kampfgruppe if you meet certain conditions
• The General Winter event fires in mid-November 1941 rather than in mid-October 1941.
Other
• Updated AI switch files for USA, SOV, GER. Regarding the Soviets, they should use more defense in depth, making them harder to encircle. Also, they will spam fewer infantry divisions in favor of producing more armored divisions and aircraft wings. The Soviets will also devote more IC to upgrades and reinforcements. With these revised settings, SOV did not run out of manpower in playtests.
• Minister Goebels is available in 1940 rather than 1942. This might help Germany’s manpower situation somewhat….
• The land doctrine techs desert, jungle, and arctic combat provide a small attrition bonus
• The map has more “roads” through the Soviet Union because many Soviet soldiers were dying from attrition when all provincial infrastructure was reduced to 20
• Subs can carry naval mines but cannot carry spotter planes. Note that the convoy attack of naval mine brigades was drastically reduced so subs would not become overpowered.
• Difficulty: human combat penalty 0 ==> -1 to help balance the new 1.06 feature whereby manually promoted leaders do not lose a skill level.
• Difficulty: human resource penalty -13 ==> -14 because GER could still accumulate too much oil and rare materials.
• Made minor tweaks to misc file after reviewing the changes in the 1.06B1 misc file.
** Stacking Penalty **
•
Lowered the stacking penalty for land combat. The result is that other combat modifiers become relatively more important, where ‘other combat modifiers’ means terrain, weather, forts, dig-in, river-crossing, combined arms, experience, leadership, technologies, etc.
• Specifically, I changed the db/misc file like this:
# _CV_LAND_OVERSTACKING_MOD_, severity of overstacking
0.6 # was 1.0
So what exactly does this mean? Well, here is an example....
Under vanilla settings, if 24 divisions attacked 9 divisions, then the attacker would suffer a -73.1% stacking penalty and the defender would suffer a -58.1% stacking penalty. After adjusting for the stacking penalty, the battle odds are like having 6.4 fully effective divisions attacking 3.8 fully effective divisions. Note that because of the stacking penalty, the odds are only 1.7-to-1 in favor of the attacker rather than 24-to-9 (which would be 2.7-to-1). In other words, you get penalized for sending lots divisions into combat simultaneously; you will see diminishing returns for each additional division tossed into the fray. This concept has been discussed extensively elsewhere on the Arsenal of Democracy Forums and is a fundamental improvement of AoD over HOI2.
I sincerely like the idea behind the stacking penalty. However, I believe that it is way too harsh when compared to the impact of the ‘other combat modifiers’. Take the example above where the attacker with 24 divisions got a -73.1% stacking penalty. Say the attacker used a skill level 3 (+15% bonus) offensive trait (+5% bonus) field marshal to command his units, all of which had the maximum combined arms bonus (+10%) and was attacking a hill province (-20% penalty) against defenders who were fully dug in (+20% defense bonus). Look at how tiny each of those numbers is compared to the massive -73.1% stacking penalty. It is almost a waste of time to use good leaders or to even look at the map….
With the newly revised settings in the Third Reich AoD Mod, if those same 24 divisions attack those same 9 divisions, the attacker will “only” suffer a -55.2% stacking penalty (rather than -73.1%) and the defender will “only” suffer a -30.1% stacking penalty (rather than -58.1%). The net impact is like having 10.7 fully effective divisions attacking 6.3 fully effective divisions. The odds are 1.7-to-1.
Note that the odds did NOT change from their original value even though the stacking penalty is quite a bit lower! Neither the attacker nor the defender got any advantage whatsoever from the change to the stacking penalty. However, given that the stacking penalty percent is far lower, all of the ‘other combat modifiers’ are suddenly much more important in deciding the outcome of the battle.
Despite my PhD dissertation above, I expect that this stacking penalty modification will be quite controversial. If you do not like it, it is easy to change back. Just edit the Arsenal of Democracy/db/misc.txt file to read 1.0 instead of 0.6 in the line that is indicated in bold, above.
Dedication
I am dedicating this 0.9 release to Panzer Generals who as far as I know is the only person to actually achieve Bitter Peace after selecting the ‘Bring ‘em on’ Barbarossa option. I tried doing it myself, but the Red Army kicked my ass.
