Making History II 1.0.16 Release Notes

This one was unexpected!

Nice, updating right now. Ill see the patch fix patch tomorrow ;-)

@Orama - Hope not!

Playing the game now. Very nice "newspaper-like" pop-up window!

BTW, in my game starting 1933 Japan and Manchuria had almost no initial land forces. Is that right? If China just rush into Manchuria, they can take it all in a few turns.

Other thing: you guys need seriously to put some starting transport ships to nations like Japan and UK. Or just listen to my suggestion: make all the bigger ships to have some transport capability. Ships like cruisers where broadly used as troop transport in war.

The idea of having a limited number of slots for Factories is a good one and will encourge the players to upgrade (retool) factories if necessary. This could really help balance the play.

The idea of having a limited number of slots for Factories is a good one and will encourge the players to upgrade (retool) factories if necessary. This could really help balance the play.

I think the number of slots of the city should be based on the population (at the WW2 era). Any other criteria would be very subjective.

Why limit slots? Newer buildings should be more efficent and then stimulate upgrades.

In addition maintenance could be a factor of aging...

Slots are correct for regions.

Perhaps they should make it an option for there to be building slots- to please everyone. As for other buildings for increasing IPU output, it think there should be something like a "Hut Factory" that would only produce 1 IPU. This building would be very useful for small nations and small cities (like those in the Pacific).

Thanks for adding the 'confirm delete' on saves!

Currently, there are some cities that always get way too big, like St Louis in the USA usually grows to about a 500 - 700 city. Having limits, like they did in MH1, would force the AI to spread around the growth, plus give more control and balance to the maximum quickness you can build certain units in the game. I like some of these ideas above and mixing them with some I already have I think I got something. Look for it in Game Suggestions for MH2 under Snapjaw's City Building Limits. Thanks to crazydude and Odanan in advance and anyone else who might have given me ideas.

No one have problems with the economy? Expecially in TGQ - i mean:

the maintenance cost for a "mechanized factory" is 3.500.000$ per turn; for an university is 5M$ per turn; for an "enclosed farm" is 1.5M$ per turn; for a coal mine is 1M$ So, for example, in a city with 2 of these factories (20 IPU), 1 university, 3 coal mines and almost 4 of these farms in the region, we have a balance of -21.000.000$ per turn.

Because of early in the game we need coal to build infrastructure, is not possible to produce textiles or other stuff, so we have to produce goods as the best way to make money. But with goods we reach 20M$, so your city balance is negative. Without mentioning military maintenance, or if you want to build something.

This makes the economy balance impossible, for me. Can anyone explain?

Odanan.. I do agree that Manchuria should start with at least a few troops and that there should be a few Japanese troops in Korea. But, unless China attacks game turn 1, Manchuria will build troops immediately and does build up pretty quick.

marcotrecento... It can be hard, but it will turn around. If you build up your cities a bit, while doing regional projects, you will eventually start making money once your cities are big enough to make enough money with goods. Sure, the maintenance cost can get expensive, but things will be ok once you have cities above 40 IPU's. I usually try to build up, and go negative in the treasury, but later I only leave a few cities building things while all the rest of them build various goods. If you do this you will be fine. I have been - $20 billion and + $40 billion in the same game many times.

They should add in another goods maker that produces the same amount of money as textiles, but only uses metal. This would be useful for nations with little coal but excess metal.

Does this update affect my saved games in any way? I don't want to lose my current game!

so far I haven't noticed it messing up my saved game, so I think you are ok to update.

I do agree that another good that uses only metal is a pretty good idea. Might as well finish the job and give us lots of options.

@snapjaw. Thanks for suggestions, now I try play with japan; in this case maybe I've to ask Manchuria giving me a couple of territories with cities or not?

@marcotrecentro. I have noticed that Manchuria does a pretty good job on making troops and cities on their own now. However, they don't do so well increasing their regional resource production, so if you take over a few of those areas and improve them, then give them back and force them to sell you coal and metals and oil. Also, maybe some defenses couldn't hurt either. Just make sure not to take too many regions at one time or you will pay the price in Stability.

I was at turn 660 and finished my game. Save games work well with this patch.

"Fixed bug that could cause the game to stall when land invasions merged" This has made the game much better!

Very nice patch ML indeed.

great update it works like a dream and the puppet system fix is great well done !!

I like making super cities, maybe slots it could be a thing to turn on and off?

It really doesn't take much strategy when you can build super cities. All you have to do is build to 500 IPU's then make whatever you want every turn. With limits, it would force you to make choices of where to build up and how to spread out building armies.

@marcotrecento did you try Italy? I can confirm economy is the major factor in the 1933 scenario.

About slots: there should be a limit but something like 10 for factories and unlimited for special buildings.

consider adding more government programs like 'food rationing' (all government types) and 'oppression' (for authoritarian and fascist).

I like the idea of being able to idle buildings. I would like to be able to idle resource producers like coal mines and farms as well.

@Odanan

Both Japan and UK have transports to start. Japan has some in Nagaski and Toyko. While UK has some in home fleet, Mediterranean and China Sea.

Hey, this fixed my 'saves starting on the wrong turn' business. Nice work.

I think the problem is that when you have all your cities industrializing, the game doesn't rotate to decide which project gets the resources or manpower, some citties get it over and over again while others stay weak.

@ariete

No, I haven't try a Europe nation yet, except Spain for a few turns. I think Europe is too concentrated for me; i like to expand my borders so Japan is a good choice; in the past I played with Argentina - who makes a lot of food. Food also is a very big problem for me now, chinese regions are too populated, so after the conquest of China I make a giant puppet state, sure without northern regions. Building slowly at the beginning makes my nation veeeeeery rich :D thanks to @snapjaw

I agree with the slot limit for the cities; another suggestion may be to make a building like "food conservation plant" to build in cities, that doubles the food done by the region of the city (best for China and India).

i think a limit would be good but i think that if you could make it an optoin when starting the game from the countrys menu it would be goood for everyone cause some people might like the large cities.

@ Snarl,

Why only Authoritarian and Facsists? use it for the Democrats and the Communists as well.

Every kind of Political types use oppression.

Communism = Soviet on Poland after it's downfall and the baltics, ( and most of the USSR Area )

Democrats "cough" USA "cough" = On every "non-democratic" country in the world.

@uthos

yes, and also one called "economical/financial system to hide oppression", that grows stability - but you need a building like "propaganda station" or "radio station" in the capital, that grows the percentage of a government type. :D

Obviously in Italy the system works well in 1922-42 but also 1994-2010, with a builiding named "tv station" built in Milan - and a similar garden gnome for president.

I think city slots should be there as an option. I can see why some people want to have forced limits. For myself, I prefer no limits on the city slots, since the cost of maintenance, supply of raw materials and time implications of building factories is to a large extent self limiting. It soon becomes apparent that it is very inefficient to maintain large numbers of the smaller factories/resources, so that acts as an incentive to destroy and replace older buildings as the newer ones become available. It would be nice, though, to be able to recoup some of the build cost of older buildings - or better still allow an upgrade as with some of the resource types.

I guess that having city slots as an option would be unpractical because the AI should have 2 sets of rules/behaviours.

@ariete I'm not sure why that should have to be the case, since the number of slots will automatically act as a brake on development. If the AI is set to make the most efficient use of resources given the technology available then the AI should be optimising construction within its ability. The number of slots should not affect this behaviour.

IF we MUST have a limited number of slots per city to prvent overly gamey behaviour, then I'd suggest it be on the generous side to accomodate those of us who don't want to be overly restricted - say 30 slots for factories, and no restrictions for special buildingsetc.. That way you don't get the mega, mega production cities, but you remain generally free to develop to a relatively powerful manufacturing base if you really want to and are prepared to modernise older factories.

I think it makes no sense at all to have unlimited production. With this type of thinking you could have Malta up to 700+ IPU's. You claim that paying maintenance costs and resources enough to counterbalance having super cities, but come on, how could the population of Malta ever support a 700 city? Also, like I have pointed out in other forums, having no limits at all makes for almost no strategy. The obvious thing to do is to just build a few huge cities, doing almost nothing with the other cities, and produce all of your units in the big ones. That way, you can build tanks and planes in 1 to 2 turns. However, if it took 5 - 10 turns to build a tank, you have to plan things out and spread the production around so that you can have tanks available every few turns. Beyond the fact that MH2 would be similar to MH1 production, and most people really liked playing MH1 and Gold, and other games use similar "one thing at a time" production like Civilization games.

@snapjaw You make a fair point with your Malta example - especially with their starting population and the fact that they are a small island. But consider this - even in game terms it would take Malta forever and a day to get to a 700+ IPU status - as you rightly say, they don't have the population to expend in the factory creation. The only way they could do it is with colonists from the UK manpower pool - certainly not on their own. However, your example does highlight the logic in restricting city size where practical building terrain is very restricted like islands, mountain and desert terrain. What did you think of the 30 slot limit otherwise which gives a 750 IPU maximum for the largest cities - and that would require a lot of time and investment to achieve especially if you have a war to fight - and that's without constructing specialist or research buildings either?

@Boggit I see what you are saying, but cities over 500 IPU's are already too much. Keep in mind that a city of 250 IPU's can build a Main Battle Tank in 3-4 turns. Also, the game does allow you to use your MPU's wherever you want, which is how you can build up island cities in the first place, but I still don't think you could ever get the production of Tokyo out of an island like Malta. One other thing that bothers me is that ships can be built so fast right now, but with a 500 IPU city you could build a Battleship in almost 1 turn. I still think that basing maximum growth on total population just makes sense, plus, it gives an incentive to keep your food supply and stability high. Right now, other people are complaining about how easy the game is on level 10 because they just go into massive debt and don't care about anything except for building units. Sure, you can just squash rebellions with your massive troops, but something seems wrong here. I think that MH2 should not just penalize your pop growth, but actually allow for shrinking populations too. If this could happen, then you would not want to have your food supply and stability low because your population would shrink and possibly reduce your total potential IPU's (because you would lose slots if your pop goes below certain thresholds). However, if you treat your people great and they are well fed, your population would increase and possibly even allow for more factory slots. Once again, this makes you use STRATEGY, not just game rule abuses.

I would like to see limited city slots in the game. Right now city's are unbalanced in the late game with the ability of having two or three super city's and making your main income off them. Then using some medium ones to pump out units at great speed. This gets worse for people like myself who like to play past the normal end game. Income is meant to get better late game to support bigger army's ect but it can get extreme with such big city's depending on what nation you play. MHI had a 200 IPU limit and that was good, I would like to see 200-300 IPU limit on MHII.

I do like your idea snapjaw of how food could play a part. I am not sure about having a IPU limit based on population because it limits game play for smaller country's.

I like crazydude idea for the Hut factory for the small 1 IPU citys, super idea that!

@Snapjaw

I agree with your comment about the time it takes to build naval units. The Bismarck for example had its keel laid down in July 1936 and was only commissioned in August 1940. However, the game only allows a city to build one item at a time and clearly the good citizens of Hamburg did lots of other activities other than build one ship (even if it was a big one!). The conundrum is with the production system as it is we are saying that the production centre puts it's all into creating one item, rather than devote a proportion of its industrial capacity to multiple items, which would then allow you a more realistic production scenario.

For the above reasons, unless the production system is to be radically overhauled, I don't see a way round this.

As to the limits on production slots: I agree with you that there should be some restriction based on available manpower in a region, but this should also take into account a proportion of the manpower pool, representing those workers willing to migrate for work within the empire. This then translates into whether a region has sufficient manpower to build a particular factory type. The current game rules prevent you from building factories if you have insufficient manpower ("supplies needed"), so that bit is taken care of.

If you do it this way there is really no reason to cap the number of buildings because linking expansion to the region 's available manpower and a % of the national pool - say 10% per turn willing to travel (as a subgroup of the pool available each turn willing to relocate outside of their region) will act as a limiting factor to industrial expansion. I think that would be a happy compromise between express limitation of what a player is restricted in doing and at the same time makes industrial expansion at will in areas of lower population very much harder.

I do agree with the idea of limiting production centres on islands, mountain and desert regions. I think production centures should only be allowed where there is evidence of some manufacturing or serious naval support centres, shipyards, repair docks and the like. So on that basis islands like Truk, Hawaii and Malta would be candidates and should have relatively few slots to reflect the limited building land available say 1-3 slots maximum

You should be able to attract immigrants, like setting up a building for immigrants, or a propaganda campaign, or something like that

Yargh, I was playing as Germany in LDOP, by turn 35 save fails. I also noted that my units weren't healing at the time- perhaps related to the save fail.

My suggestion is migration of populations e.g. more between alliances, less or none between enemies, migrations can cause instability or even culture or religion changes... Also in the nation itself migrations from regions were there are enough MPU's to region with need of MPU's.

I don't agree with Odanan about population and industry because I don't understand why make slots if you are limited by the manpower of your nation... I suggest to remove the slot-system...

Also the militia production isn't actually like in the game, it's just turing MPU's into conscripts... Also infantry training starts with making conscripts and then train them in barracks or militairy bases...

What if you could just have the optoin in the game on wether or not you want to have a limit to the amount of slots. If its possible to do that atleast.

I agree that immmigration buildings along with propaganda buildings would be cool aswell

I think that there should be the option to (after annexing a region) to slowly integrate it into your nation. For example, it would take like 400 turns to transform a region with Polish ethnicity to German.

Why go to all that trouble? How does annexing really differ?

Perhaps this integration would be an option like political support, the more you spend, the faster the ethnicity/nationality/culture cahnges.

@commander I know it seems that small countries would suffer but that would be even more reason for them to expand by taking more territory. Also, to some extent, it should be hard for small countries, because that is why small countries don't have massive empires now. Another thing is that we don't want to have Muzzy make the production of everything take longer because we all make super cities. This would make it even more impossible for small countries to get anything going. Other than ships being way too easy to build, I think that most units take the proper time or need to be just slightly downgraded if they put population limits to factories (mabye tanks should produce just slightly faster).

@nickbeker If you see my thread in MH2 Game Suggestions, it explains my system better. I think it address population migration, because I suggest the option of populations actually shrinking. And, if you grow your population you are rewarded with more slots and potential, but if you shrink (because of starvation or low stability) you might even lose slots.

I have an idea: like political ideologies on the national scale, there should be nationality/culture/ethnicity/religion on the regional scale. What I mean by this is that these things could be changed like political ideologies. There would be options for supporting your national nationality/culture/ethnicity/religion in a region like supporting you national ideology on the bigger scale. Ex: Germany invades France and annexes Alsace. Alsace has (just in this example) 50% German and 50% French ethnicity, then Germany could choose the option "Support Ethnicity", then choose which one to support. Germany would choose to spend a certain amount of money per turn to achieve this, the more money spent, the faster the change.

With this system one could have many minorities that are not majorities in any region. Ex: Jewish/Israeli nationality/culture/ethnicity/religion. If they achieved majority, like the Israelis in Palestine, they might become a nation. This system would also help national claims on a region: all regions with ANY population of that nationality would be part of their territorial claims.

@crazydude I like the idea overall, but it is kind of scary to think about. Basically, it would be promoting ethnic cleansing in regions in order to spread your ethnicithy. It could work as a game mechanic to give more strategy, but, I wonder it is just wrong to mimic the worst parts of humanity like that. Then again, I guess war in general is another horrible part of humanity.

You wouldn't necessarily be killing off non national populations, you might just be promoting national populations to reproduce on a massive scale. Ex: most non Han-Chinese have disappeared, mainly because the government supports Han-Chinese. China has not mass-murdered any non-Han-Chinese.

Well, I hear what you are saying. I suppose if we can having changing ethnicity that we would also have to allow for changing nationality, which I think you suggested as well. It would seem that spreading German, American or other nationalities would be interesting to accomplish. To some extent, this does actually happen, since the national culture can be spread through propaganda, music, food, and politics, or most often just time and exposure.

Ex: After WWI when France annexed the Alsace-Lorraine, the German language and culture was suppressed, and the French was forced upon the locals. This effectively made the region have french culture and nationality, but not ethnicity.

After 1.16 the game shuts down after selecting a country. Reinstalling the game wasn't successfull.

Any ideas?

I agree crazydude. I think that there is already a foundation in the game for allowing a difference between a regions ethnicity, culture and nationality. That is what makes it so great. If there was a way to have them change over time by pressure or time it would awesome, but I am not sure if it can be done.

Yes only 4 days until Multiplayer service is launched. :D

@snapjaw Well their something to ask the developers at ML to think about adding to the game.

Does anyone think that immigration would be a good idea to add to the game? Like if the Nazi's took over the USSR that a large number of Slavic people would emigrate or flee the country to other countries to escape the possible mass murduring that would have happened. Also if their should be more internal affairs to choose from to promote stability and increase your ideologies influence in the country; perhaps even propoganda to boost morale and production when your at war.

@scorpion2651 I think there should be immigration, but since that might be tough to come up with something completely new, I had suggested that MPU growth be able to go down, not just up. That way, if you manage your stability and food poorly, your regional and total population could actually go down. Obviously, if other countries are doing well, then their populations are growing while yours is going down.

Scorpion2651 I think it would be a good idea and u make a good point about the people fleeing from the mass murderings that would have happened

I agree with crazydude. There should definitely be those options...

I have a lot of ideas to add to the game and some critic's. First: A good idea and more realistic is add an option in production panel to buy producer license to other country. I mean, for example, i'm Italy at 1936, my industry is poor and my technology too, but i have money and i want to buy a PanzerKampfWagen III, so i pay and you in some factory of your country make me a Pzkfw III and when it's done send me at some location on my country. Other thing, if have a war with you and i want to make your government to communist (terms to make peace) this options most appear. Now comes the critics, I really hate the slowly of this game because this game can be so fast and small, more optimized, but i think the technology than you choice to make it is disgust... (SO SLOWLY). For example, you use some PNG to the artwork... Okey, i know this format have transparency and support layers, but... come on, stills weighed and slow at the hour to see... JPEG is more small and have some codecs free to use! I think all of your job can be maked more fast and more profitable if you use the correct technology (for example: C++, Delphi, etc.).

I have had problems with sea battles where I cannot pull my fleet out of the fight and the get destroyed. I am China and my fleet got into an engagement with the Japanese. It looked like I would win but then reinforcements arrived and I am getting overwhelmed as I speak. After my fleet is wiped out I will be totally defenseless against the Imperial Navy until my fleet will recover in mabye 50-60 turns.

Also I like EmaX's idea. It's like the Lend Lease Act.

@Scorpion You can have your fleet flee a battle. You have to select the battle, then click the arrow at the bottom of the battle summary to bring up the seperate fleets. Then you select your fleet from the list and once you have your fleet showing as the selected target, you can retreat by clicking on an adjacent friendly sea region, much like you would to move a fleet normally. The key is that you have to select your fleet first to be able to move it or flee or change its orders.

@snapjaw I cannot retreat to other regions only move into ports

Hmmm... I think you are correct. First off, I noticed that when you select the battle, then press the arrow to show the fleets, that in order to select your fleet you need to click on the hourglass, not just select the fleet by clicking on it like you would in a port or merging or spliting a group. Secondly, you are correct that it does not give me the option to flee to a sea region. I could swear it did at some point, but, clearly it doesn't work now. Using the method I talked about earlier, you should be able to flee a land battle, but it appears that you cannot flee from sea battles, unless you tell your fleet to go all the way to a port city. Very strange... I hope someone at Muzzy can check this out.

But... As I think... AI isn't good yet... I play Germany - in 1934 Soviet Union declared war on me - AI sent only a few ships with land units which have been destroyed by my Kriegsmarine... I have conquered Luxembourg, Danzig, Austria and Denmark and there are no countries which would declare war on me... Strategy of AI is weak, so is their economy - the strongest city of any other country have 50 IP, my capital - Berlin for now has 140 and most of my cities has 50. What's wrong? (I play on hard level (10)). Any suggestions? I quicked game in 1937 and i think I'll play next game with Japan or Poland. BTW - Best wishes from Poland 4 all players of MH. :) And sorry for my bad English...

You people and your level 10 complaints crack me up. Stop playing on that level!! How many times do we have to tell you it is BROKEN! I played the TGQ scenario on Normal and the USA had two cities over 500 IPU's. You said in your game that nobody had cities over 50. Therefore, something is WRONG! Try attacking a real country like the USA if you are so great at this game. I bet you take a few territories for about 50 turns, then they kick your butt back to Berlin! Play on freakin Normal next time, too! If you get to 1940 in TGQ scenario and no AI has a city above 100 I will sell my house and live on the street. By the way, unless you have FOG off, you can't always tell how big a city is by just clicking around the map.

Will their be a point when you can upgrade Factories so I dont have to tear them down when I reach the limit? Oh and also, WOOT!! Only 1 day until the multiplayer is suppose to come out!

The AI in this version is vastly superior to that of previous versions; it has a much better way of handling warfare. Unfortunately, it seems even crazier when it comes to deciding who to invade. Greece has declared war on Liberia, Yugoslavia has declared war on Yemen, Siam has declared war on Danzig, Italy has declared war on Germany, etc...
The AI is quite an amazing general though, once Yugoslavia declared war on Germany in LDOP, they took all of the German territories except for E. Prussia and occupied Denmark! (WIN LOL XD) Then Hungary (me) and Fascist Poland ended the Yugoslav reign of terror.
The AI does seem to be quite odd when deciding what to do with conquered territories. Germany has establish puppet Fascist Danziger and Polish states, and the AI NEVER colonizes regions/nations. Yugoslavia made Yemen a puppet state, not a colony.

@crazydude Yeah all of these random wars are just annoying. I am annoyed by the wars with Siam. Oh but come to think of it do you think they could just want to become colonial powers or somethink like that? I mean they might just want to gain more power quickly and the only way they see of getting it is by conquest.