Factus Games announces the release of a new content expansion for Making History: The Second World War featuring many of the foremost vessels of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Among the models you get are Fubuki-class destroyers, Fusō-class dreadnoughts and the largest battleship ever constructed, the Yamato, plus many more.
This is a free DLC enhancement that includes some minor system changes and bug fixes. All current and new owners of Making History: The Second World War will see the Japanese fleet models on Full or Medium Model Set options with the latest update, version 1.0.61701.46.
We’ve also added in a newly built British Dreadnought model that was constructed for the upcoming Making History: The Great War Gold Edition. Factus Games intends to provide more models, events and scenarios for The Second World War in the near future.
Release Notes: - Added new Japanese & British ship models into game
- Fixed error in Japanese Northern Route Event to provide Japanese Mech Infantry instead of German
- Added region control checks for German Unit expansion events
- Put in fix for Japanese Puppet Mengjiang triggering Sino-Japan war
- Communist and Fascist governments will not form an alliance unless they are both at war with the same great power
- Fixed paging issue on sub group selection panel
- Removed some duplicate code that code prevent some events from firing.
Post-Release Update #3
A new version of The Second World War is now available. In this release we’ve implemented a Difficulty system to provide a greater challenge to players who are finding the game too easy. As with any new system, we expect there might be further adjustments needed to get the difficulty levels balanced.
Another significant change is really a bug fix. Shipping interdiction was not fully working as intended. Sinkings were destroying cargo but not Shipping Capacity. You would lose the coal but keep the ship carrying it. We’ve fixed it so that both are now destroyed when an interdiction event is successful. This change had a massive impact on some nation’s Shipping stockpiles - especially the Axis Powers. Blockades against the enemy should have greater strategic results.
In addition to the two big items described above, we’ve also provided some new content items. Players can now attempt to re-establish Austro-Hungary. This event is triggered if the Austrian nation conquers Budapest. The Scandinavian Union events from TGW have been rewritten and added to SWW. This time, the player can found the the Scandinavian Union as Norway in addition to Denmark and Sweden.
The Scandinavian events are also tied to some new Steam Achievements. Other new achievements include a Greater Egypt where the Kingdom of Egypt needs to control Sudan, a Lusitanic Empire which is a Greater Portugal challenge, and one if the French conquer Berlin.
Future updates should be more content and community driven. In this release we implemented a user request that allows players to edit their nation name and I believe most of the resolved bugs were pointed out to us by the community. Of course we will continue to resolve issues brought to our attention and we have not closed the door on adding new features.
Release Notes:
- Research success tooltip now correctly shows base research chance.
- Update research success chance when changing education program funding when appropriate.
- Fixed bad comparison checking for path existence when building transportation improvements
- Suppress Relations penalty for lifting embargo against my enemy when joining a war - which automatically overrides embargos.
- Reworked Japanese-Siam Event to keep Japan declaring war on Siam even if they agree to military access
- Added missing triggers to prevent Greenland from forming an Independent Colony. This is not a supported government type and it broke flag display references.
- Added Peace Treaties to Egyptian-Axis Events so Italy and Germany would end war with Egypt.
- Removed Mechanized Infantry from French Artillery Group.
- Changed Thrace region religion from Sunni to Orthodox.
- Fixed bug that prevented shipping capacity being destroyed by interdiction.
- Rebalanced Interdiction Power for ships now that they can actually destroy Shipping Capacity
- Colonies will now change their readiness to General Mobilization if they border an enemy.
- Added a Government Policy action to allow players to change their nation's Name.
- Fixed some UX issues with editing text strings in game.
- Implemented Difficulty settings that adjust, Combat, Production and Research for AI nations.
- Implemented difficulty modifier for National Stability.
- Implemented difficulty modifiers for Combat Power
- Implemented Resist modifier from difficulty settings.
- Reduced the number of difficulties levels to 5 with "Normal" as the default.
- Old saves will default to having a difficulty level of “Normal”.
- Fixed missing branch string for Artillery in Selection panel tooltip.
- Added 3 new Chinese cities to increase Nationalist China viability.
- Removed nation names from description strings for the nations that have no descriptions... avoids the name stacking in the lobby
- Added 6 new Achievements
- New Austria Hungary and Scandinavian Union Events
- Updated Austrian Flags
- Fixed bug preventing units from leaving former enemy territory after transferring territory.
The Great War Chinese Translation Beta Version
Now available on Steam.
To try it, go to game properties. Under the Betas tab, select the “edge-Bleeding Edge” option.
Use the access code: BleedingEdge
Launch the game and switch the language under Options in the main menu.
The Tutorial is not yet working in the Chinese version. This should be fixed when we do an official Chinese release next week.
Post-Release Update #2
Another minor post-release update is now active. This one resolves a few bugs and user requests like balancing suggestions and UI improvements. We will continue to make updates to the game when new issues arise. New features and content changes are being evaluated for future releases.
Release Notes: - Trade routes are better at avoiding enemy waters
- Can now load onto troopships in cities with port access
- Check for intra-empire access for port icon tooltip in the city selection panel
- Added Turkish to Turkmenistan Nationality
- Raised Combat Strength of Mechanized Infantry
- Fixed misspelling of Ile de France
- Fixed various event text errors
- Added checks to events to prevent nations going to war without player choice
- Reworked Turkish Nationalism Events so playing Turkestan or Ottoman won’t remove troops or Research progress
- Added tooltips to column headers in the economy panel
- Fixed production tooltip to include a factories production factor per turn
- Ensure mod ui data is included in shared data
- Updated "Moscow Falls" notification image
- Fix to prevent skipping upgrade requirements
- Increased build times on most ships
- Changed some AI Naval Recruitment settings to prevent some nations from building carriers
- Update the cost of govt programs for human players each turn in UI
- Include purge corruption in the government programs to be updated
- Fixed a content bug where an infantry unit was being stuck with some artillery
- Added unique icon for Units Destroyed
- Rebalanced Combat properties for Medium and Light Tanks
- Added Coastal Defenses at Truk
- Added MPU requirements for city buildings to the encyclopedia and production tooltips
Post-Release Update #1
A small post-release update is now available. In general, the release was released in good shape. There were a few bugs found by the community but that’s not surprising in a complex game like this. Please report any suspected bugs and we’ll do our best to solve them quickly.
There has also been a few requests by players. Two of these related to modding. We created a scenario that basically blank called Empty World Scenario for those who prefer to build their mods from scratch. It’s only available in the editor.
Several users have posted question about adding custom flags to their mods. It has always been possible. We now made it a little easier and there is some documentation to help guide you through the process, including an example. These can be downloaded from the Factus Games website here: https://factusgames.com/pages/support
Release Notes:
- Fogging Set to Default
- Fixed UI Scrollbar error in Port Panel
- Removed Heavy Siege Artillery from regular Artillery groups - they are rail movers
- Added longer build times for capital ships and large bombers
- Added missing Greek notification image
- Fixed bug in UI that show incorrect resource requirements for carrier air units
- Added new Empty World Scenario - for Editor use only
- Improved ability to add custom flags to mods
- Revised Recruitment Notification images
- Added Global notification when/if Japan attacks Pearl Harbor
- Expanded text space for Artillery properties
The Second World War Officially Released
Factus Games proudly announces the official release of Making History: The Second World War. We wish to extend a special thanks to all the players who assisted the development team through the Early Access period. The feedback and bug reports were extremely helpful to our efforts. We also received many great suggestions and some we were able to add to the game.
Going forward we will continue to support Making History: The Second World War with updates, improvements and any necessary bug fixes.
Early Access Complete Update
Making History: The Second World War
is scheduled to officially release on April 27 2018. An almost complete Pre-Release Final version of the game is now live on Steam.
With the exception of Achievements and Music, this update contains all the system, AI and content for the official final release.
The work for this update was focused on content and game balancing. We’ve added 98 achievements to the game but they will remain off until the final release goes live. Please note, Early Access saved games will not work with achievements. The music soundtrack will be revised in the official release version.
After the game is officially released, we expect there will be a need for improvements and bug fixes. Factus Games will be supporting this game with new updates.
A sincere thank you to the Second World War Early Access Community. The bug reports and feedback were vital to the process.
Release Notes for Early Access Complete Update:
AI Changes: - AI won't rebase planes without fuel.
- AI now increases defensive value of regions with cities.
- AI will no longer ask nations for an alliance when they have a trade embargo.
- Total War nations extend their target region list to allies in war when considering peace.
- Improve military units versus capacity production logic.
- Skip Total War check when considering peace if nation has been nuked.
- AI will try to meet minimum military strength with regards to land, sea, or air.
- Reworked conditions on deciding whether or not to build military units.
- Regions that have aircraft factories are considered good for airbases.
- Great powers and superpowers consider other like powers when determining desired power.
- Overseas target logic revised.
- Improved convoy pathfinding.
- Nations are more likely to consider peace after being nuked.
- Nations are willing to leave an alliance if they have been nuked.
- Implemented new REGIME_CHANGE treaty term in response to being nuked.
- Fixed bug where subordinates would try to change military access.
- Masters will now ask for money from their puppets.
- Subordinates auto accept money transfers from their masters.
- No longer stop the lowering of tax rates if the nation is in debt.
- Nations now adjust corruption spending whether they have negative stability or not.
- Increased chances of war support for nations with matching ideology.
- Reworked choose sides modifiers for diplomatic status templates.
- Establish relations if new alliance members do not have diplomatic relations,
- AI will only surrender unconditionally if they have a "home" region nuked.
- AI are less likely to consider peace if a "non-home" region is nuked.
- AI won't reduce taxes if they have too much debt instability.
- Added a power divisor for en route groups in the offensive AI.
- Modified AI properties to encourage more successful invasions
- Reduced Unrestricted Sub Warfare Chance from 5 to 3
Game System Changes: - Implemented new combat stacking restraint system - limits number of units that can be engaged.
- Disabled frontage penalty - replaced with new system.
- Artillery are no longer involved in engagements - ranged attacks only.
- Added infrastructure for scripting Achievements
- Added server attribute to turn Achievements on and off
- Added new Achievements system
- Reworked GetTurnsRemaining query for move orders for accuracy.
- Fixed MPU check for non-MPU units when the number of available MPUs is less than 0.
- Strafing in water now uses Sea Surface Power.
- Clear strafe orders if they are no more valid targets.
- Added a set of triggers that allow for scripting of Convoy targets.
- Added the ability for TriggerCreateNotification to target alliances.
- Decreased stability benefits of a large treasury.
- Increased Tax rate penalties.
- Purge corruption costs now scale by world power points.
- New TriggerConditionAny runs all conditions.
- New TriggerConditionNot and TriggerConditionAll.
- Added "bHideNotice" property to TriggerBreakAlliance tosuppress the popup notification.
- Merged Fighters and Jet Fighters unit categories with respect to AI recruitment.
- Colliers and Oilers now have their own naming class.
- Use actual tax rate stability when determining tax rate.
- Modified Capacity production to complete in single turn cycles.
- Nations at war will have the AtWar status even if they have cut ties.
- Units in nuked regions have a chance to take damage over time.
- Nukes now reduce population in a region based on the number of MPUs killed.
- Linux compiler fixes
- Fix for odd crash in tooltip for supply access mapview.
- Optimization fix for transportation pathfinding.
- Fix for stale pointer crash in return home AI.
UI Changes: - Updated engagement selection panel to show Total Units & Units in Reserve.
- Added new icons for Total Units & Reserves for Combat Reports.
- Top info bar will dynamically resize based on screen size.
- increased text spacing for unit group stats.
- Added Prospecting Chance to region select resources popup.
- Fixed cost per MPU tooltips to more closely match actual values.
- Added group details to the units popup on the engagement panel.
- Added group health to engagement panel forces popup.
- Revised Political view so dependencies now have their own nation colors.
- Moved Master nation colored subordinates mapview to Empire Mapviews.
- Mapview slideout is now toggleable.
- Removed % from MPU Replacement Rate tooltip.
- Added tooltips to show Government systems.
- Fixed sorting on trade agreement buy/sell in the world market tab.
- Added a "Previous" button to the Tutorial panels.
- Show tax revenue for city buildings in the encyclopedia.
- Changed labels on In-Game Menu buttons.
- Updated labels on UI Panels to make consistent and more accurate.
- Reduced opacity of Continent Map View.
- Implemented Tutorial options menu.
- In-Game Options now uses toggle buttons for shadows and compressed terrain.
- Conformed naval groups & ships icons.
- Added tooltip to naval groups button on the sea region selection panel
- Added spacing to naval units list in the Port popup panel.
- Added DEFAULT Achievement Icon
Content Changes: - Revised Bomb Region Order string to cover both units and defenses.
- Updated and added to Tutorial content.
- Reduced MPU Replacement Rates by Food Infrastructure.
- Increased Fuel Output per turn.
- Added unique colors to dependent states for new Political Map View.
- Increased Hit points to ship units.
- Altered Movement Table entry for Track - now allows Road use.
- Reduced purge corruption cost to 1 gold per WPP per percent.
- Shortened scenario game length for Last Days of Peace.
- General factory balancing.
- Increased accuracy of planes by about 20%.
- Decreased air infrastructure power.
- Reduced sea surface power for planes by about 20%.
- Increased coastal defense power by 20%.
- Increased Militia hitpoints and defense power.
- Added missing Encyclopedia descriptions.
- Added primary nation lobby description strings.
- Fixed string error in Research Projects - Machine Guns.
- Added ROC recruitment facilities in Last Days of Peace.
- Gave more starting troops to ROC n Last Days of Peace.
- Added oil resources to Dutch East Indies.
- Fixed Indonesian region Oil resource data error.
- New city in Chile Antofagasta.
- Fixed region display name from Tonking to "Tonkin"
- Added Access agreement Denmark/Iceland.
- Fixed region locations for Visaya seas.
- Added Chinese units in Last Days of Peace.
- Added city renaming events for Istanbul/Constantinople.
- New Operation Torch event.
- New British 8th Army event.
- Expanded Afrika Korps event.
- Revised American AI War events.
- Added American nuclear events to Building for War.
- New Japanese and American Pacific War events.
- New Argentine & German Task Force event.
- New Germany Mexico events.
- New Sweden events.
- Fixed bug in Free France events.-
- Fixed Brazil war event loop.
- Fix to D-Day event.
- Fixed some data errors in Argentine events.
- Fixed Hungarian & Romanian Axis events.
- Fixed Greenland Loop trigger error
- Fix to Iraqi Axis event.
- Fix to Egyptian Axis event.
- Fixed bug in Nordic Invasion event.
- Fixed typo "KindomOfItaly" to "KingdomOfItaly" in Italiain Irredentism achievement
- Lowered region control threshold in Soviet-Poland event to have Russians join war sooner.
Editor: - Don't double-draw units in the editor (can still make subs visible by checking bEditMode)
- Draw airbases in the editor
- Added UI to edit previously un-editable properties on unit templates
- Only show relevant unit props in the unit template editor
Official Release Date Set
Making History: The Second World War is scheduled to release on April 27 2018.
Early Access Game Update #10
A new version of the Second World War is now available. Update #10 is intended to be our final Early Access Update. The plan is to have the game ready for an official release sometime next month. Many of the previous updates were focused on the AI. In this release we begin to turn our attention again towards features and UI clean up.
Submarine detection behavior has been significantly improved. Now ships and aircraft with sub detection capability only have a % chance to see a sub on a given turn. This allows us to give higher level units improved sub sighting ability and expand the stealth gameplay of the submarine units. Enemy subs can more easily sneak up on a fleet, engage and retreat.
The naval AI received some further attention. Nations will no longer send their fleets to bombard land forces while ignoring Coastal Defense attacks against it. This was leading to some unwise shipping losses in the English Channel. The AI will now prioritize target coastal batteries but generally avoid dangerous sea regions - except when enemy transports appear. We also made changes to encourage naval AI to provide escorts for their capital ships.
A couple of features suggested by a Steam Forum user were added. Aircraft, Missiles and Artillery units can now directly target enemy Artillery groups. Before the attack order applied damages to all land units in a region. And the Strafing Order was changed from only running a single turn to being continuous until canceled. Both these ideas seemed good enough to squeeze in, even though we’re not really in an add new features phase.
The UI has been getting small fixes, mostly tasks like adding missing properties in the Encyclopedia and improving labeling consistency. The Encyclopedia is still missing a lot of description information, as is the lobby. Many of these items have been written but not yet put into the game. They will all be filled in for the final release.
In version 10 we have introduced an in-game, light tutorial for new users. This will mostly present information about the UI and also be some introductory gameplay hints. We are looking at adding a Glossary to the Encyclopedia that will also include more howto information.
The Second World War is almost complete. And while there is a lot of work ahead, the remaining items on our must-have list are dwindling fast. It’s been a long haul getting the game to this point - much longer than we planned for. I’m going to save the excuses for the post release recap. In the meantime, thank you to all the current users out there who have offered us feedback and bug reports. This process would have taking us even longer without your support.
Release Notes for Early Access Update #10
AI Changes: - Reworked AI rebase logic to be more offense minded
- AI no longer targets undetected subs as bombing targets
- AI will now prioritize targeting Coastal Defenses for shore bombardment
- Updated naval AI to try and maintain group composure
- AI will try to keep Carriers and Battleships with support vessels
- Coastal Defenses only fire upon visible subs
- AI will avoid sending ships to sea regions with enemy Coastal Defense
- AI will always try to send ships to stop enemy Troop Ships from unloading
Game System Changes: - Can now directly target Artillery through bombing and strafing
- Can now specifically target Artillery using Missiles and Artillery
- Aircraft factory types now require an airbase in region to be able to build Air units
- Units and buildings no longer heal the turn they are damaged
- Fixed issue with Cruiser to Carrier Conversion preventing game saves while active
- Improved ordering and results logic for 3 way engagements
- Check for sub detection before showing subs in the sea region selection panel
- Fixed sea engagements to respect new sub detection rules
- Improved sub detection system, no longer automatic, units have different abilities
- Fixed issue that could remove some escort groups before units could load onto them
- Revised capacity costs to either use all rail or all road, but preferring rail
- Reworked capacity costs for road and shipping capacities
- The air unit Altitude property no longer caps vulnerability to attacks, it now declines
- Strafe attacks now repeat instead running once
- Patrolling naval or air units can now detect subs along patrol path
- Set frame rate to 60
- Fixed bug preventing trade on first turn of a new nation created by a player
UI Changes: - Fixed UI bug when revising a proposed trade agreement
- UI structure and system for in-game tips/light tutorial mode
- Added persistent game option to enable or disable in game tips
- Added toggle to the options menu to turn on or off tips
- Added button on start screen to enter with tips on
- Disabled keyboard shortcuts while game tips are being shown
- Added Offense and Defense values to terrain tooltips in Land unit Encyclopedia
- No longer show unused Land Unit properties in Encyclopedia
- Added Glider Assault Range to Light Gliders in the Encyclopedia
- Added Airborne Assault Ranges to Air Transports in the Encyclopedia
- Added Firing Range to Ships in the Encyclopedia
- Added Fuel and Coal Carry to Ships in the Encyclopedia
- Added Bombardment Strength to Coastal Defense in the Encyclopedia
- Added Shots to Air Defense infrastructure in the Encyclopedia
- Added new Unit property Icons for Encyclopedia
- Changed Assault Penalty icon for Coastal Defense
- UI now shows correct capacity costs for trade agreements
- Updated labels and icons on Military panels to make more consistent
- Added tooltip information to help explain factory output stoppages
- Revised Mapview labels and Tooltips for consistency
Content Changes: - Renamed Research Project String from Air To Air Rockets to Air To Surface Rockets
- Fighter Strafe and Bombing properties now reflect Air To Surface Rocket capabilities
- Added Sub Detection capability to most Air units
- Modified Recruitment Building limits for top level Infantry units
- Made Seaplane Tenders use Coal instead of Fuel
Early Access Game Update #9
We were not expecting to offer a new pre-release update this week. The plan was to push through most of the remaining outstanding bugs and feature revisions in preparation for a February official release. Then more of those frustrating memory crash reports popped up. This inspired us to set aside all immediate goals and take one more serious crack at reducing a problem that has plagued the game throughout the Early Access period. It was clear The Second World War would not be ready for final release without finding someway to make these crashes a rarity.
The team had already implemented numerous optimizations across the game engine and art in order to minimize the memory spikes that triggered the crashes. These solutions often reduced the frequency. But as we continued making improvements to the game, we eventually overwhelmed any savings previously gained. And while reducing the number of models definitely helped, it was an unsatisfactory trade-off.
This memory issue is associated with the application not the machine. So no matter how great your PC is, the game could still run out of memory and crash. Fortunately, our lead engineer had one final idea that he’d estimated might give us some relief - more head room so to speak. As it turns out, the solution was rather easy to implement, especially in comparison to the other things we were considering. None of which could have delivered more than a fraction of savings we ended up with.
Essentially the game is no longer rendering every unit in the game on every frame. The camera now defines the viewport and only renders objects within view. This has a huge impact on game memory. So much that we feel these type of memory crashes should no longer occur during a normal game.
It may sound like an obvious modification, and of course I wish we’d done this a year ago. The team inherited this engine and it has taken some time for us to tear through it and make changes. There could have been a good reason for setting the camera up as it was but ultimately, it did not work for the Second World War.
There are many other new fixes and additions with pre-release #9, but this memory solution is just such a big deal, I felt I needed to focus my update on that. Much of the work we’ve done beside optimization has been targeted at finishing the task list and responding to user requests and bug reports.
While the production schedule was slowed down last week, a massive hurdle appears to have been overcome. Like any application, it could still crash but it will unlikely be a game memory crash. We are interested in hearing about issues players may have. It’s always possible we missed something.
The next update will likely be the final one before the official release. We are a little behind schedule.
Notes for Early Access Update #9
AI Changes:
- Air missions no longer suspended for hard-coded number of turns when Fuel is low
- Reworked air patrol and bombing planning for splitting off groups for missions
- AI will now stop repairing ships if there are no ships to repair
- Production AI focuses on reducing overall demand rather than meeting specific demands
- Improved Production AI to be smarter about key production inputs like Steel.
- Increased DesiredBomberPower to encourage larger bomber stacks
- Increased the desired power for AI Sea Invasions
- AI no longer has turn restrictions for limiting nuke targets
Game System Changes:
- MPU growth rate is now based on Population rather than MPUs
- Fixed MPU growth rate calculation error
- Re-balanced MPU growth modifier after change to population based growth
- MPU Recruitment now uses random region culling
- Apply HP reduction penalty to Anti-Air fire
- Bombardment hit generation of cities now more closely matches naval combat
- Shore bombardment of units and coastal defenses now using consistent algorithm
- Upgrading units maintain same health fraction after upgrading
- Fixed projected revenue being less than 0 in the UI
- Ship breakdown now spreads itself across shipyards
Memory Optimization:
- No longer render off-screen unit models (major memory savings)
- Reworked model culling for smooth transitions over x = 0
- Set lower y FOV offset to avoid near camera clipping
- Load models in before showing them when zooming in
- Fixed bug where units located at some air bases would not be shown
UI Changes:
- Fixed Graphic distortion in French Flag
- Added now Strafe Icon to Encyclopedia entries
- Altered string for Health Infrastructure bonus from MPU to Pop. to reflect actual value
- Relabeled "MPU Growth Bonus" to "Pop. Growth Bonus"
- Moved Panama City to correct side of Isthmus
- New Terrain modifier tooltips and Icons
- Updated terrain modifier icons for engagement tooltips
- Added terrain modifiers to the encyclopedia
- Defender resistances tooltip now uses defense bonus from terrain modifiers
- Revised trade and supply access mapviews
- Fixed Supply (battery) icon on group selection panel for air, army, and artillery units
- Added some Treaty background images
Content Changes:
- Lowered Research bonus of Research Buildings
- Reduced requirements for Research to speed up
- Added new D-Day trigger & revised others
- Increased Possible Research Points Per Turn from 4 to 5
- New American Deployment Events
- Revised Altitude values for Aircraft
- Modified (Lowered) Research requirements for some projects
- Fixed misspelling of Gulf of Tonkin
Factus Games announces the release of a new content expansion for Making History: The Second World War featuring many of the foremost vessels of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Among the models you get are Fubuki-class destroyers, Fusō-class dreadnoughts and the largest battleship ever constructed, the Yamato, plus many more.
Another minor post-release update is now active. This one resolves a few bugs and user requests like balancing suggestions and UI improvements. We will continue to make updates to the game when new issues arise. New features and content changes are being evaluated for future releases.
