Commander: The Great War is now updated to 1.30

[lordzimoa]

Hi guys,


Commander: The Great War is now updated to 1.30, official announcement will come in next week, but you can update CTGW safely to 1.30.

After updating CTGW to 1.30, ongoing MP games can be continued, as long as both players are updated to 1.30.



Commander: The Great War 1.3.0 ChangeLog:

Features:

- OpenGL requirement to play the game has been reduced from 1.5 to 1.4
- German, French and Italian language translations and options added to main menu
- Loading does not "freeze" UI
- Loading screens added with random gameplay tip

Gameplay changes / balancing:

- Ship defense increased
- Port & home attack bonuses reduced
- 1914 Fleet sizes increased.
- Naval upgrade costs lowered.
- German convoys spawn if Entente naval power is broken (or disbanded)
- DOWs of Entente nations now occur during Entente turn, so they now
get the first moves. France & Belgium are excluded from this change.
- Canadian corps now spawns in a UK port city.
- Higher ammo cost for Bomber & Airship attacks
- Fighters now correctly intercept enemy strategic attacks against empty cities.
- Cities recover faster from damage.
- Disband refund is 100% in home territory (owned by unit's nation),
50% in friendly non-home territory, and none in enemy territory.
- Most nations now surrender quicker rather than fighting to the death.
- Entrenchment no longer stopped when being attacked by enemy (if not
forced to retreat).
- Fighter & Armoured Car LOS increased + cost reduced.
- Changed France's second capital to Bordeaux
- Spread Italian PP to a more even distribution
- Significantly increased Port defensive & offensive bonuses
- All ships LOS reduced by 1 (not including subs)
- Changed the Sinai desert to dunes terrain type to make it harder to cross
- Added Petrograd & Helsinki ports

Bugfixes:

- Bug fix that could crash AI
- Fix for bug which could be achieved by pressed Detach Commander
after repairing a unit
- Improved video decoding
- Better handling of pbem game creation time-outs
- Main-menu scroll crash
- PgUp/Down unit-cycle fix



Cheers,

Tim aka LZ

[stockwellpete]

Thanks very much for this. Some really good improvements here.

[nimblebooks]

Autoupdate is not working for me (suspect firewall issue), can you provide a link to direct download?

[lordzimoa]

Only thing we can do for now as Slith/Matrix are closed for Easter:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3914099/Comman ... e-v130.exe

[Blitz1945]

Thank you!!

[Hammer4000]

still waitin for that hotseat

[Hott]

Thanks very much!!!

[vonOben]

Is the update comprehensive so it will bring all versions of Commander - The Great War to v1.30 or should the older patches be applied first?

Cheers

vonOben

[lordzimoa]

Just install all patches please. Hit Check for updates and follow that order.

[vonOben]

Thanks but my gaming PC has no Internet connection, so I download the patches manually.

I can find the downloads for patches v1.1.4 and 1.30.
Are they the ones I need?
Was 1.20 never released?

[lordzimoa]

1.20 was a Beta build. So you only have to go from 1.14 direct to 1.30

[vonOben]

Ok, thanks for the information!



Cheers

vonOben

[Hammer4000]

Hoe we looking on the next update here? its been fairly dead for awhile.

[lordzimoa]

A new patch for PC will be released when the Mac and iPad ports are finalized, Mac is already done, iPad is in the last phase.

Than we need a few weeks of technical Beta testing on all platforms should be on the same version, so we avoid compatibility problems on the cross-platform PBEM server based MP games.

[Samhain]

Brilliant. Did I mention that this is the best Commander game yet?

[operating]

A new patch for PC will be released when the Mac and iPad ports are finalized, Mac is already done, iPad is in the last phase.

Than we need a few weeks of technical Beta testing on all platforms should be on the same version, so we avoid compatibility problems on the cross-platform PBEM server based MP games.

This is more about what I am talking about, which is good news!

[FOARP]

I think he was talking about a patch for Panzer Corps. No word of a patch for this game.

Personally, I REALLY enjoyed my first 5-6 games, each of which took about a week or for me to play through, but after that game-play began to get samey, even after I started doing things like declaring war on Spain, Portugal, and the US as Germany to add an additional challenge (if you haven't fought a campaign in Spain yet, give it a try - the 1-2 year slog needed to beat the Spanish after the British/US/Portguese re-enforce them is great fun).

Advice for a sequel -

1) Put in a proper diplomacy system. As it is countries just join the war on the historical day regardless of whether this makes any sense, and don't leave until they've been mostly invaded.

2) Get rid of armoured cars - their gamey and ahistorical, same for armoured trains.

3) Give aerial warfare a total re-think.

4) Ditto naval warfare - right now it doesn't really work properly.

5) Ditto amphibious warfare - it doesn't really work because you can't get full supply through ports, but you CAN land a bunch of armoured cars connected to a port and, for example, eviscerate the Ottoman Empire by cutting them to bits.

If I was to point to something that I loved about this game, it would be the entrenchment mechanism. It really made the game a WW1 game and really put a heavy emphasis on advancing FAST. For example, in my invasion of Spain playing as Germany described above, I knew that the entrenchment mechanism meant that if I did not capture Madrid quickly, the Spanish, Portuguese, British and Americans would be able to form defence lines in front of Madrid and victory would become very costly. As it was, my forces managed to dash past Barcelona and get right to the gates of Madrid . . . . only to then spend a year camped in front of the Spanish capital engaged in ceaseless back-and-forth battles before the capital fell to me and the allies were defeated, with battle-lines stretching the length of the Iberian peninsula - I was just a turn or two too slow in my advance on Madrid.

Another thing that really worked - the ammunition mechanism, which encouraged you to save up for big offensives, and which limited how long such offensives could continue. This mechanism could be improved, though, by getting rid of the cap whilst increasing the rate at which ammunition is used (by, e.g., allowing selected artillery units to fire defensive bombardments to support units under attack).

All in all this game was worth the money I paid for it, it's just a pity it lacked the staying power that games like HOI have.