Patch 5.1.4 Released!

[King Sama]

Dear fans,

We're happy to announce the release of our 5.1.4 hotfix. While the changes were originally intended for 5.2, we felt that some of these improvements were too significant for us to needlessly hold on to it. Please note that not every bug reported has been fixed in this patch.

Click here to download.


A few notes:

1) If you're having trouble unzipping the download folder, try this mirror.

2) If you have B-DizL's mini-mod installed, uninstall it. It may conflict with some of our new changes.

3) While a campaign restart probably isn't required to see most improvements, the patch will not take full effect unless you start a new game.


Major changes:

The key change in this update is that autoresolve imbalances are fixed: artillery and machineguns no longer have ridiculous autoresolve advantages. This bug has plagued TGW since some of its earliest updates, and long-time fans will surely be pleased to say "good riddance" - myself included.

This change appears to have some significant propagative effects on the mod in general. In battles, we see an AI which now targets all of your units, rather than just artillery, and possibly better AI tactics overall. We also expect that the issue of spontaneous routing has been fixed.

In the campaign, several campaigns have shown a much stronger Germany (see teaser), which typically holds its own against France and Russia. Austria-Hungary has seen similar improvements, and, along with Russia, appears to be more active than before. This effect may transfer to other nations that may have been hampered by unfair AI vs AI battle resolution.

Finally, we've tried to locate and address some of the campaign crash bugs. One of these has been definitively fixed, and campaign play-throughs by the team have not resulted in any crashes. However, some of the areas where users have identified problems, such as the improved field gun technology, don't appear to have any problems associated with them. We're therefore not sure to what extent campaign crashes have been reduced, but please let us know if you used to have problems and no longer do.


Full changelog:

• autoresolve imbalance fixed
• unit voice bug fixed
• greater AI emphasis on artillery
• trench warfare doctrine research time reduced
• tachanka machinegun unit disabled
• autonomy building disabled
• airports now buildable in fort slots
• farms and airports separated
• fixed tactical mode building distortions
• highlanders and new zealanders made recruitable
• Ottoman campaign map models no longer vanilla
• tactical and classic scales brought up to date

We hope you enjoy, and let us know if you see any improvements!

~The Great War Dev Team

[Earl Dibbles Jr]

Awesome mod, keep the great work up! Happy to see a patch, I can finally autoresolve in peace.

[Mr.Jester]

This doesn't require the previous patches does it? 5.1 and 5.4 are good enough?

[King Sama]

Yes, 5.1 and 5.1.4 are sufficient.

[PrussianGuard]

Hi and thanks for the Patch,

excuse my question but i have downloaded it yesterday at moddb and it wasnt zipped at all. I have now a files folder with 5-6 files (not sure) should i just copy those files to the files folder within my steam ?

Thanks in advance

[TheRomanRuler]

Do i need to start new campaign?

[16kadams]

My game crashes a lot after I win a huge battle, will this fix it?

Also, thanks for fixing the other bugs.

[The Hedge Knight]

Nobody on the team can reproduce that bug 16kadams, It strikes me the cause is probably either an installation error or your pc not being powerfull enough to handle the settings you have applied during huge battles. Whatever the case try it and see, you never know.

[16kadams]

Its probably installation because my PC runs even weird Rome 2 extreme (it is just loud).

[ZeEmperor]

Yay,now lets hope my A-H new campaign wont crash as the rest of them did!

[Aleksandr Vasilyevich Suvorov]

Stop France from severing its alliance with Belgium in the first few turns while on "enforce loyal factions" mode. It's utterly stupid, counterproductive and fairly easy to fix compared to other issues.

[The Hedge Knight]

Actually it probably isn't fairly easy to fix. It should be impossible so that's a bit of a mystery. Will look into it though.

[B-DizL]

Everythings fairly easy to fix right?

[.Mitch.]

Everythings fairly easy to fix right?

Totally.
Have you added fighter jets yet ffs?

[Aleksandr Vasilyevich Suvorov]

So tweaking a CAI issue is just as hard as implementing a new unit model...not really.

There are a few other problems, mainly involving the way units behave on the battlefield.

1. Utter fearlessness of soldiers involved. Men climbing over breastworks for a better shot and dying, when they should be cowering behind it. Units being cut down from 800 to 200 men, then reforming and attacking again. Gunners charging the enemy. Men marching through shelling as if nothing had happened and their ears were ringing for no reason. World War 1 armies were not suicidal like this.

2. Killing the general still has too large an effect (easily changed, I did it). The death of an artillery officer should not cause all artillery to flee, and the gunners to then reform and charge. In the tumult of battle, most men would not know the general was dead until long after he died. This is a basic issue with all Total War games.

3. Spotting is still wrong. Artillery and generals should not be nearly as visible as they are, and infantry a little more visible. "General sniping" is still much too easy.

4. Rout the enemy, capture their guns, and their guns have respawned for the next battle because 50 gunners escaped. And they snipe the general.

Battles still feel stupid and easily exploitable - just like in any Total War game, but mods should try to help this. Some issues may be hard coded, but I doubt all of them are.

[The Hedge Knight]

So tweaking a CAI issue is just as hard as implementing a new unit model...not really.

For a bug like that, yes really.

Models have been being added for over a year now, nobody has ever, I mean ever changed the BDI of the ai.

[King Sama]

There are a few other problems, mainly involving the way units behave on the battlefield.

1. Utter fearlessness of soldiers involved. Men climbing over breastworks for a better shot and dying, when they should be cowering behind it. Units being cut down from 800 to 200 men, then reforming and attacking again. Gunners charging the enemy. Men marching through shelling as if nothing had happened and their ears were ringing for no reason. World War 1 armies were not suicidal like this.

We can't control the AI of individual soldiers. Otherwise, the morale in general seems well-balanced to me, but if this is a common concern, we can always adjust.

2. Killing the general still has too large an effect (easily changed, I did it). The death of an artillery officer should not cause all artillery to flee, and the gunners to then reform and charge. In the tumult of battle, most men would not know the general was dead until long after he died. This is a basic issue with all Total War games.

It may have been reduced for 5.1.4, but I can't recall if my edits ended up in the final release. The artillery officer complaint - if that's even a feature of the game - is out of our control.

3. Spotting is still wrong. Artillery and generals should not be nearly as visible as they are, and infantry a little more visible. "General sniping" is still much too easy.

It's difficult to call a game design choice "wrong", but perhaps it could use some adjustment. Generals are always visible, that's a feature of the game. We've played around with less visible artillery, but decided it didn't add much to the game (especially since the 5.1.4 AI should be less focused on targeting enemy artillery than before).

4. Rout the enemy, capture their guns, and their guns have respawned for the next battle because 50 gunners escaped. And they snipe the general.

We can't change this.

Battles still feel stupid and easily exploitable - just like in any Total War game, but mods should try to help this. Some issues may be hard coded, but I doubt all of them are.

In general, it seems your doubt is somewhat misplaced - most of the issues you mention are hardcoded. Two final comments:
1) Mods should and do try to improve upon the battles, but ultimately we're working off the base that CA provided us. They, a professional gaming company, have much more at stake in trying to create a decent AI. If it were possible to do so based off the largely surface-level changes we modders are able to make, I'm sure they would have patched it in already. Or at least, used the decent patched-up AI instead of whatever they made for R2.
2) The problem is worsened by the setting of TGW. We're not even trying to patch up the CA AI to a decent napoleonic AI. We're trying to make it do what it was never intended to do, and that does make a difference.

[B-DizL]

World War 1 armies were not suicidal like this.

Uh, yeah they were, for the most part.

Read about the battles of Isonzo. 12 battles, hundreds of thousands of troops lost, barely any land gained. Examples of this can be found throughout the war.

Plus like Sama said we cant change that anyway.

[CanadianReject]

The Somme. Your logic is invalid.

[Aleksandr Vasilyevich Suvorov]

Uh, yeah they were, for the most part.

Read about the battles of Isonzo. 12 battles, hundreds of thousands of troops lost, barely any land gained. Examples of this can be found throughout the war.

Plus like Sama said we cant change that anyway.

While thousands of troops died during these battles, the individual soldiers did not act as recklessly as in the game. They were stricken with terror and only advancing because they felt they had to for various reasons - obligation to their comrades, fear of punishment or being called a coward. If shell-holes and other cover was available, they used it, especially when the shooting started. Soldiers did not stand on breastworks to get a better shot at the enemy unless they were severely shell-shocked and crazy. Suppression fire would keep most men down. The formation-shattering, morale-shattering effect of shelling was also far greater than it is in-game. Many soldiers died, but they did not act in the suicidal way of the game. Vanilla NTW had the same problem. Units often fled after receiving a single volley and a bayonet charge; in the game, they would stand and fight in close combat, which BARELY EVER HAPPENED. The huge casualties of these battles were also inflicted over larger fronts and longer times than in-game. The front of the first day of the Somme was many kilometres long, and the first day lasted...1 day, not 20 minutes.

The suicidal behaviour is more on the defending side than on the attacking side. While attackers lost entire units of men, defenders did not leave their trenches and defensive postions to get a better shot at the enemy. Gunners did NOT charge the enemy lines with knives.

The main problem here is that World War 1 infantry, especially in the later period, operated in many smaller squads, not huge, dense units. Any scale but "tactical" feels very awkward to play. In the end, NTW is a game for a different period (100 years before!), and even for that period, it was a fairly c rappy effort. Your work has been admirable, but it will never become a good World War 1 game because it was, at the base level, still made by CA.

I've actually had all TW games uninstalled for several days, and I doubt that I will ever play them again, except possibly Europa Barbarorum for nostalgia's sake.