Making History: The First World War News

The update this week unlocks the Multiplayer feature. Players can now Host & Join games in using The First World War game lobby. We’ll soon be adding Editor and Steam Workshop support. These two features are best left for the final stages since game changes can easily break mods. That means we are getting closer to a final release. But there is still quite a bit to do before we can say it’s done.

Besides MP, this release has a number of bug fixes. One area we spent time on was trying to improve the historical flow to The Balkan War scenario. A lot of players have seen repetitive non-historical play from some AI nations, namely Bulgaria, Italy and to some degree France. As some here understand, the event code is quite dense and it’s very difficult to trackdown where things might be going wrong. On top of that there are two competing systems at work, the generic AI and the customized, nation specific AI. This forces us to be cautious about making really big changes that are difficult to test. I think we’ve made improvements but even if we fix all the obvious bugs, there are still subjective issues involving balance and how much weight we give to non-historical outcomes.

The recently added mechanism to penalize over taxing has been adjusted. We’ve reduced the ruse of Corruption penalties and added the potential for regional riots. This was our initial plan and we are interested in whether players prefer this method.

Work continues on the next scenario, The Russian Revolution. We are spending a lot of effort dealing with the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Right now it feels more complex than even the Balkan Wars and significantly more in depth than The Red Army DLC for Making History: the Great War. There’s a chance the new scenario might be made available in the next update. That is the goal.

Again, thanks for giving us feedback and pointing out the bugs.


Update #6 Release Notes:

• Turned On Multiplayer feature
  
• Added Defensive strength to Armored Train unit
  
• Increased width of text area for Submarine Range to prevent property display clipping
  
• Revised Mobilization data for nation at game start
  
• Added ability to read Non-Aggression & Neutrality Pacts at game start rather than just events
  
• Added Player condition test to Break Triple Alliance - may have prevented Assassination event from firing
  
• Updated Game Map to fix a few borders not displaying in some regions
  
• Fixed Animation bug in French Heavy Siege Guns
  
• Fixed AirUnit Group Selection UI Graphic that was slightly offset
  
• Modified AI Recruitment Template to reduce building of Armored Trains
  
• Fixed Mountain Infantry Terrain Penalties error
  
• Reduced Over Taxation Penalty and increased chance of revolts if taxes are too high
  
• Added script trigger: TriggerConditionControllerNationIsNot
  
• Added Land Defense Penalties to Infantry units in the Encyclopedia
  
• Assigned WARJUSTIFICATION_AGGRESSION property to Italy against Ottomans
  
• Fixed text errors in various Events
  
• Modified BFW Scripts increase chance of historical decisions
  
• Fix to make Bulgaria more prone to join Central Powers
  
• Bulgaria should no longer automatically form alliances when player is human
  
• Fix to increase chance Italy joins Allies
  
• Remove Ottoman Balkan Claims if defeated in 1912
  

This release does not have many new changes since we are mainly spending our time working on the new scenario The Russian Revolution. There is a new Armored Train unit and this will receive better combat balancing by the next update. Besides fixing small content bugs, feedback on The Balkan Wars has led us to make some modifications to the nation AI to increase adherence to a more historical flow.

Changes to the AI scripts are highly sensitive and can lead to unintended consequences. For that reason we try not to make drastic alterations. Oftentimes, odd AI behavior is caused by seemingly unrelated events. These are increasingly harder to track down as the game gets more content heavy and the deeper they occur in a playthrough. The Early Access community has been very helpful by providing both bug reports and actually saved games that we can investigate.

We’ll continue to release an update every 2-3 weeks or sooner when possible. A list of all the significant changes in the latest version of Making History: The First World War Early are listed below.

Update #5 Release Notes:

• Fixed errors in Italian and Austrian Mountain Infantry models
  
• Added new Armored Train Model and Unit to game
  
• Removed University from Cleveland TJC that prevented upgrades
  
• Revised Soviet Democratic flag set
  
• Modified AI Army Recruitment Templates
  
• Switched Auxiliary Cruisers name source to match Cruisers
  
• Fixed 0% Prospecting chance in TBW regions that had resource deposits
  
• Adjusted French AI to ignore Greek 1914 regions in 1912
  
• Added date constraint to Italian Albanian interference
  
• Fixed string error in Ottoman Naval triggers that made Turk mining fail
  
• Added Alliance Breaks to Balkan nations prior to declaring 2nd Balkan War
  
• Fixed multiple string errors in events
  
• Partial update of Historic Naval unit names
  
• Updated Resource objects in TBW regions
  
• Removed Building restrictions from Factory Outputs, prevented recruitments of units
  
• Fixed Typo in German-Argentina event
  
• Reduced chance of FRA, GER, ITA & RUS having Early war
  
• Stopped AI naval mining when at peace.
  

There is not an update this week since we do not have enough items completed to justify a new release. Our focus has been on content development for the next scenario: The Russian Revolution. This scenario will start players off in September 1918 just after the final German offensive fails and the Allied Hundred Days Offensive is in progress. As German, Bulgarian and Ottoman lines begin to collapse, fresh American forces join the fight. Internal instability further undermines the status of the Central Powers and they are ready to find a way out of the war.

This is where the game gets interesting. The Central Power governments are losing control of their empires. Throughout Europe and the Middle East, long suppressed nationalists-minded populations are preparing to fight for their independence and conflicting claims. All this while Russia is torn asunder by a continent-wide civil war. An emerging Communist ideology is fighting to inherit the lands of the former Tsar against a divided and dysfunctional opposition.

The event scripting for The Russian Revolution scenario is just beginning. We want to have a significant amount of that work done before releasing this to the community. For this scenario we were inspired to add a new unit to the game. It’s an Armored Train based on the rail weapons used by the Czech Legion during their legendary campaign along the trans-Siberian railway. This unit will be in the next update.



Here’s what we are planning to work on for the next few weeks:

• Scripting events for The Russian Revolution scenario
  
• Begin implementing Achievements
  
• Review Territorial Claims for all scenarios
  
• Explore adding an Always Expand/Prospect Order for Resources
  
• Implement an Add Claim mechanism to Nationalities Panel
  
• Stop AI mining Sea Regions when at peace
  
• Discourage France from declaring war on Ottomans to defend Greek Claims
  
• Add military units to The Russian Revolution
  

Partial list of items we will have left to finish before official release:

• Add possible 4th scenario focused on MP play
  
• Balance cities in all scenarios
  
• Rework Fleet and Air Content for TRR
  
• Improve Music
  
• Add Difficulty levels
  
• Turn On Editor
  
• Turn On Multiplayer
  
• Turn On Steam Workshop
  

The above lists are not comprehensive and they exclude a lot of non-feature work. We have wish-list items and features that may still find their way into the game. The next update will likely come out in a week and after that we hope to release The Russian Revolution.

In this release we are introducing a new scenario called The Balkan Wars. The scenario covers the five critical conflicts that dominated the WW1 era. It begins in March of 1912 with the Italo-Turkish War over Libya where a weakened and unstable Ottoman Empire struggles against the expansionist minded Italians. Then the Balkan nations begin the first of two wars over the remnants of the Ottoman domains in Europe. These actions all lead up to the events surrounding the July Crisis. The assasination of the Austrian Archduke, followed by the outbreak of a cataclysmic conflict involving the world's great powers. And finally, war exposes a growing discontent in the Russian Empire causing a government collapse and a bloody civil war.

As with all Making History games, The First World War does not seek to maintain a restrictive historical timeline. The AI is provided incentives to follow a historical path but oftentimes game actions alter AI decisions as the scenario progresses. Most playthroughs of The Balkan Wars should see the regional wars that precede WW1 and the rise of Soviet Russia. But there will be times that an early conflict might arise or maybe a delay in the start of the Great War due to the confrontation in the Balkans.

We’ve added some code to counteract a common financial exploit of maxing out the Tax Rate slider. Previously the consequences of putting your taxes up to 100% was almost nonexistent in many nations. Now when the Tax Rate is too high, there’s an elevated chance of increased Corruption. The threshold for triggering the penalties is different based on Government Ideologies and the harshness of the penalties goes up with the rise of taxation. In general, Socialist nations tolerate higher taxes than others.

There’s a similar modifier tied to Government Support. Now the national populations will gain radicalism if Government Support becomes too low. Again, the point at which the penalties kick in are different according to Government Ideologies. Authoritarian and Democratic governments are more susceptible to low Government Support. Both of these policy penalties should encourage players to be better government managers to avoid chronic instability.

There are a few game balancing changes for this release. For one, we’ve added some build restrictions to hardware units like Artillery, Aircraft and Ships. This means some units are only available when a prerequisite Factory is present in the city where you are recruiting. For instance, if you recruit a Ship that requires a Level 3 Shipyard, you can build that unit in any city that has one. Even if you order the Ship in a Level 1 Shipyard, as long as there’s a Level 3 in the same city, the option to build will be available.

Since the major part of this update is the new scenario, we’ve put most of our focus toward preparing The Balkan Wars for release. Still there are some of the bugs and suggestions from our Early Access users addressed here. We thank everyone for pointing out the misspelling, content errors and general critiques. For a small team like ours, community feedback is a critical part of making the game better.


Update #4 Release Notes:

- New scenario The Balkan Wars made playable
- Added length to delay AI’s desire to cancel Trade & Money Transfers
- Fixed Number Ordering in Research Topics
- Revised Northern Chinese Democratic flag since it was the same as one in the Chinese set
- Added function to remove mines when nations disappear
- Added building restrictions to units based on infrastructure levels
- Implemented constraint on High Tax Rates, increases Corruption penalty
- Low Government Support now generates radicalism in owned regions
- High Tax and Low Government Support penalties tied to Government Ideology
- Increased nMaxRevoltRisk to make revolts a bit more likely
- Expanded Population column width to prevent large values being clipped
- Added more restrictions on seeing enemy Mobilization settings
- Balanced The Balkan Wars nation data
- Fixed West Virginia Demographic data errors
- Changed Desert Movement for Wheeled units to 1 Per Turn from 0
- Fixed misspelled Strings in multiple events
- Fixed incorrect Baghdad location

This article is a 'first look' at an Early Access (EA) version of Factus Games' Making History: The First World War (for this article FWW). Good thing, too, because it didn't take me long to realize that FWW is absolutely a Grognard level wargame and is gonna need a lot of time investment to play right.

Some dozens of hours later I am still learning the ropes, so expect a detailed analysis and review of how this thing works both historically and competitively after it drops for real in about three - four months.

Until then, here is what I have to report.

Basics and Visuals

FWW is a region based grand strategy wargame covering the entire globe, Ireland to Japan and everything in between. By that I mean the game is concerned with running the entire conflict by ministry of war level decision making and managing national level resources to obtain victory. The 'grand' part means that your strategy not only deals with the military part of the equation, but everything else such as the economy, diplomacy, research, and internal social issues.

Read the rest of the story...

RELATED LINKS:


Review: Supreme Ruler: The Great War

The Great War – Mars Intervenes

Review: Command & Colours: The Great War