---> PON official patch 1.03 and readme <---

[Pocus]

Hi all,

Quick update, between 2 vacations days.

There will be a 1.03a, that will be made of two changes:

a) GIN/IND problem is definitively solved, thanks in no small part to Rick (le Ricain).

b) After some discussions with Sir Garnet, the surrender because of breaches rule will be changed. By the way, I'm really sorry about the loss of your army Kensai, I know that sometime a patch can really upset the gameplay and even discourage you from continuing a game. Please don't give up and continue playing your awesome PBEM... Back to the change, the proposal is this one:
Each breach will make the besieged consumes an extra 5% of his normal supply usage. The purpose of this rule is that by upping the supply usage, you'll have more chances to have your supply depleted enough so that the depot (or supply wagon) can't provide its 'surrender protection' to the besieged force. For the rationale, just consider that the breaches are also making depots and stocks explodes or be wasted, as you get shelled pretty heavily, whatever...

[Pocus]

Maybe a little explanation about which order to do the game installation, patching and DLC instalation would be good ?

Even I can not remember exactly...

dlc should only be made of the scenario and the patches don't delete scenarios... So you can do it the order you want... (well you install the game before patching it though ).

[glennbob]

Hi all,

Quick update, between 2 vacations days.

There will be a 1.03a, that will be made of two changes:

a) GIN/IND problem is definitively solved, thanks in no small part to Rick (le Ricain).

b) After some discussions with Sir Garnet, the surrender because of breaches rule will be changed. By the way, I'm really sorry about the loss of your army Kensai, I know that sometime a patch can really upset the gameplay and even discourage you from continuing a game. Please don't give up and continue playing your awesome PBEM... Back to the change, the proposal is this one:
Each breach will make the besieged consumes an extra 5% of his normal supply usage. The purpose of this rule is that by upping the supply usage, you'll have more chances to have your supply depleted enough so that the depot (or supply wagon) can't provide its 'surrender protection' to the besieged force. For the rationale, just consider that the breaches are also making depots and stocks explodes or be wasted, as you get shelled pretty heavily, whatever...

Brilliant! And it was my British army that got lost due to a random surrender roll :P Either way, if you have changed this and fixed the GIN troops for ongoing games, then that is pretty much every detail for a British save on PoN that needed to be fixed, except the Australian miners haha

[Inquisito]

Brilliant! And it was my British army that got lost due to a random surrender roll :P Either way, if you have changed this and fixed the GIN troops for ongoing games, then that is pretty much every detail for a British save on PoN that needed to be fixed, except the Australian miners haha

Workaround for the miners: Refuse helping them ends it. I kept subsidizing them for quite some turns (after all I do have a heart for those hardworking diggers) before I was fed up with this event, so I took the no option, which lead to a few rebellions in this region for a couple of months (years?) which were easily dealt with (garrison the neighbouring regions with cavalry in offensive stance, then attack the rebels in force and play pingpong with them until they're dead). Now I only have well-fed peaceful diggers down under, problem solved.

[James D Burns]

Any chance you can add some replacements to the US replacement pools upon start of the Civil War? I’m almost 2 years into the war and am just now starting to finish up repairs on the navy. My artillery arm is still in pretty bad shape however needing well over 400 hits replaced for all types and it’ll take another 2 years+ to address that.

Very low NM prevents any conscripts from appearing and thus causes massive lack of upkeep casualties to start occurring as soon as the war begins. I had well over 50 infantry replacements and 20 or so cavalry already in the pool at war start, so my infantry and cavalry didn’t die off like my artillery and navy did, but most of the saved up replacements were used up keeping those element types healthy. Had I not had those replacements saved however (most games won’t have many saved), the US basically would have been without an army 1-2 months after the Civil War started.

Another possible fix instead of adding tons of free replacements would be to give the US an event that boosts their national morale up by +40 or something. 30-40 NM was about the level where I began receiving enough conscripts that I stopped taking lack of upkeep hits.

All the loss of territory announcements to the Confederates caused the morale to crash down to 1 I think, but I’m not sure.

I know it’s too late to be of help for my game, but it’d be nice to get this fixed if possible.

[glennbob]

Workaround for the miners: Refuse helping them ends it. I kept subsidizing them for quite some turns (after all I do have a heart for those hardworking diggers) before I was fed up with this event, so I took the no option, which lead to a few rebellions in this region for a couple of months (years?) which were easily dealt with (garrison the neighbouring regions with cavalry in offensive stance, then attack the rebels in force and play pingpong with them until they're dead). Now I only have well-fed peaceful diggers down under, problem solved.

Not really problem solved though, because the loyalty goes to something like 20% rebels, which in turn means you need garrisons and troops to run around after rebels that shouldn't even actually appear. I hate any of my regions having any rebel loyalty as they can spawn in force at any given time, unless permanently garrisoned, I would rather just help the miners :P

[glennbob]

Right, I had a crisis that I won as Britain, on a file I started on this new patch, against the Netherlands. After this crisis, we were put into a war, then after a month or so, I gained sufficient warscore for me to consider peace, I went to offer it, but no colonies have shown up on the colony transfer subsection. Anyone else had this problem?

P.S: It looks as though this is only a problem with games started under 1.03, for some reason in this new patch we have seen old bugs come back to haunt us. I thought this bug was gone?

[Inquisito]

Not really problem solved though, because the loyalty goes to something like 20% rebels, which in turn means you need garrisons and troops to run around after rebels that shouldn't even actually appear. I hate any of my regions having any rebel loyalty as they can spawn in force at any given time, unless permanently garrisoned, I would rather just help the miners :P

Sure I would have preferred to help the minders. Once. Maybe 10 times. Not anymore.

As for rebellion risk: I haven't seen any uprisings in and around Melbourne for at least 3 game years, and the only garrison I have around there is in Melbourne, nothing in surrounding pampas. Keep your pops well fed and you drastically reduce such events around the planet. In Melbourne I have a rebel loyality of 80 right now (1869 late dec), but my F6 screen shows 0 "militantism" and 0 risk of revolt down there.

Edit: Besides plenty of food & commodities for your national and colonial provinces low taxes are a must to prevent your politically grumpy pops taking up arms against your rule of course.

[sagji]

Any chance you can add some replacements to the US replacement pools upon start of the Civil War? I’m almost 2 years into the war and am just now starting to finish up repairs on the navy. My artillery arm is still in pretty bad shape however needing well over 400 hits replaced for all types and it’ll take another 2 years+ to address that.

Very low NM prevents any conscripts from appearing and thus causes massive lack of upkeep casualties to start occurring as soon as the war begins. I had well over 50 infantry replacements and 20 or so cavalry already in the pool at war start, so my infantry and cavalry didn’t die off like my artillery and navy did, but most of the saved up replacements were used up keeping those element types healthy. Had I not had those replacements saved however (most games won’t have many saved), the US basically would have been without an army 1-2 months after the Civil War started.

The problem with morale I think comes from the loss of objectives, the lack of replacements is because they get a huge army but still have their pre-war limited recruitment of conscripts. The triggering event needs to add back in all the morale that is lost for altering the situation and add a faction modifier to boost conscript and officer numbers (removed when peace falls).

There are a number of other problems - the North gets monitors even if the war starts in '59. If you want to build monitors without the war you have to get a '60 invention and then research two consecutive techs (plus a some others that aren't on the critical path) and then build them, you are doing well to do this by '67. They need splitting out to their own event and a later date set.

A major omission is the lack of an event that removes substantial forces after the war - historically most of the forces were disbanded at the end of the war.

[Sir Garnet]

A major omission is the lack of an event that removes substantial forces after the war - historically most of the forces were disbanded at the end of the war.

Quite true - it would have been politically impossible to keep them in arms, and the army scaled back to a relatively miniscule pre-war type of army commencing almost immediately.

If the Second Mexican Empire had played for time by temporizing diplomatically or had the French chosen to support it, I think those forces on the Texas border for initimidation would within a year have diminished or at least proven a non-credible threat due to political resistance in the north.

[Pocus]

UPDATED August 11th:

Patch 1.03 'reloaded'

Taking advantage of a slight delay that happened between some people (clear sentence, right? ), we were able to fix some little things in the official patch, before it is going to Steam. Please understand that unless a crippling bug is found, this version is the official 1.03 patch.

This patch bears the same version number as the 'first 1.03', it can be misleading, but this is a necessity. The link has not changed.

Please download again the patch, and apply it, again, if you download already 1.03 before this day (August 11)

List of changes:

Fixed for good the replacements problems like no replacement for GIN
Changed the surrender rule to something less 'hazardous'
Fixed a few data in the game areas, as per the current 20-players PBEM.

And that's it...

[glennbob]

Will a list of colonies appear on the colony transfer screen now? Whilst trying to get peace with Netherlands on a 1.03 start, I couldn't ask for colonies in the peace, this is an old bug that seems to have come back... It only used to happened with the existance of vassals and negotiating peace with China, but never seen it with Holland before now.

[Kensai]

After some discussions with Sir Garnet, the surrender because of breaches rule will be changed. By the way, I'm really sorry about the loss of your army Kensai, I know that sometime a patch can really upset the gameplay and even discourage you from continuing a game. Please don't give up and continue playing your awesome PBEM...

I have no problem, it was a moment of in-game frustration but forgotten the very next turns, as my occupied Greek lands revolted against the aggressors! Nobody is abandoning the game, Pocus, stay assured I will personally continue playing this and publish online turns even if I remain the last player to upload turns.

Back to the change, the proposal is this one:
Each breach will make the besieged consumes an extra 5% of his normal supply usage. The purpose of this rule is that by upping the supply usage, you'll have more chances to have your supply depleted enough so that the depot (or supply wagon) can't provide its 'surrender protection' to the besieged force. For the rationale, just consider that the breaches are also making depots and stocks explodes or be wasted, as you get shelled pretty heavily, whatever...

Brilliant!

[Pocus]

Will a list of colonies appear on the colony transfer screen now? Whilst trying to get peace with Netherlands on a 1.03 start, I couldn't ask for colonies in the peace, this is an old bug that seems to have come back... It only used to happened with the existance of vassals and negotiating peace with China, but never seen it with Holland before now.

That would be a major bug, but this is weird it did not surface between RC1 and RC3. I only have up to Sunday evening (Europe time) to send another patch and then we are done... So if people can confirm, infirm and send a save (if there is a bug), this will be rather appreciated.

[glennbob]

That would be a major bug, but this is weird it did not surface between RC1 and RC3. I only have up to Sunday evening (Europe time) to send another patch and then we are done... So if people can confirm, infirm and send a save (if there is a bug), this will be rather appreciated.

Where would you like me to send my save to?

[Pocus]

phmalacher@ageod.net

[Metalist]

Do i have to reinstall the game for new 1.03 patch? And i think you should sticky this thread.
Edit: OK i am now looking to first post and it does not say anything about reinstall.

[glennbob]

phmalacher@ageod.net

I'll send my file to you ASAP, plus the backup as well.

[Pocus]

This was a feature, but one that can be removed probably, you could not ask for colonies in negative SOI.

The latest EXE (download a third time the patch) has the feature removed. All the files have been sent to Steam now, so 1.03 is fixed in stone for quite a while, thanks all for your input!

[Pocus]

Patch 1.03 has been uploaded a third time, as of August 13th. Please download and apply again if you downloaded it before this day.

Patch is now set, as all files were sent to Steam.

[Le Ricain]

Tilde key top left on keyboard to the left of the 1 key.

I finally found it!!

Please note that on a British keyboard, the Tilde is found on the '#', which is in the third row to the right of the 'shift@ key.

[Le Ricain]

Tilde key top left on keyboard to the left of the 1 key.

I finally found it!!

Please note that on a British keyboard, the Tilde is found on the '#', which is in the third row to the right of the 'shift@ key.

[Pocus]

By British keyboard you mean 'only British', not also American, right?

[Le Ricain]

By British keyboard you mean 'only British', not also American, right?

British keyboard

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KB_United_Kingdom.svg

I can not seem to open the console

[Moriety]

I'm playing my first PON game as Russia.

I'm having huge cohesion problems.
Each 15 day move is taking away almost 50% cohesion from a force. One example; Leader, two Inf Brigades no force penalty with a 16 day move.
End of day 15/Start of day 1 next turn cohesion had gone from 67/67 down to 36/67 (A 46% cohesion hit). This was desert movement.

Moving two Cavalry brigades with a leader from Western Russia to East Siberia took THREE YEARS.

This awful new siege rule wiped out 30 elements of a 600 pwr army as the 3 supply caravans were clearly inadequate.
Please, please separate bug fixing patches from game changes so that players have a choice. I ceased playing RUS because a wacky wind that still further decimated troop elements was tacked onto an official patch. Please, don't do it!

One bug I've noticed: I ordered a steamer transport unit in a colonial coastal province in Siberia. It stated a 150 day build time. A few months later the build time was 370 days, and it has been stuck at that ever since. (A 240 gold purchase- major money that has been thrown away it seems).

I noticed that generals can only be redeployed by railway, is this WAD? A major problem for Russia if yes. My railway and river movement points have been stuck at the same values since game start, is this also WAD?
Thanks,
Toby

I've got to edit this, as this cohesion issue is a game breaker.

The 96 pwr ubit described above (leader, two Inf Brigades).
They were simply moving to an adjacent province. A 16 day move. At the start of the second turn the remaining 1 day was now 13 days. It arrived almost without any cohesion, a pwr of 19, and got trashed by the opposing force (Khiva- who I seemed to have ended up in a war with without one being declared).
The Khiva force had also moved from an adjacent province over two turns. It's cohesion remained at 100% throughout the two turns.
This is a game breaker.

[czert2]

I'm playing my first PON game as Russia.

I'm having huge cohesion problems.
Each 15 day move is taking away almost 50% cohesion from a force. One example; Leader, two Inf Brigades no force penalty with a 16 day move.
End of day 15/Start of day 1 next turn cohesion had gone from 67/67 down to 36/67 (A 46% cohesion hit). This was desert movement.

Moving two Cavalry brigades with a leader from Western Russia to East Siberia took THREE YEARS.

This awful new siege rule wiped out 30 elements of a 600 pwr army as the 3 supply caravans were clearly inadequate.
Please, please separate bug fixing patches from game changes so that players have a choice. I ceased playing RUS because a wacky wind that still further decimated troop elements was tacked onto an official patch. Please, don't do it!

One bug I've noticed: I ordered a steamer transport unit in a colonial coastal province in Siberia. It stated a 150 day build time. A few months later the build time was 370 days, and it has been stuck at that ever since. (A 240 gold purchase- major money that has been thrown away it seems).

I noticed that generals can only be redeployed by railway, is this WAD? A major problem for Russia if yes. My railway and river movement points have been stuck at the same values since game start, is this also WAD?
Thanks,
Toby

I've got to edit this, as this cohesion issue is a game breaker.

The 96 pwr ubit described above (leader, two Inf Brigades).
They were simply moving to an adjacent province. A 16 day move. At the start of the second turn the remaining 1 day was now 13 days. It arrived almost without any cohesion, a pwr of 19, and got trashed by the opposing force (Khiva- who I seemed to have ended up in a war with without one being declared).
The Khiva force had also moved from an adjacent province over two turns. It's cohesion remained at 100% throughout the two turns.
This is a game breaker.

1. to improve rail/river pool you need to nuild more rail/ports or improve thier level (up to 20 for ports and double rail line for RR).
2. every unit can be moved by RR you only need enough pool to transport it, you wikll see unit weight when you hoover cursor over unit name for short time
3. yes, big coheresion losses are totaly normal, mainly if moving in harsh climate or hars terrain (deserts), the more province is developed and have better traportation,, the less coheresion lose, coheresion lose is improved with techology too.
4. if you move units over very long distances and dont have RR/water to reah it relative fast, move them via jumps , move them just 2-3 provs away, wait for oheresion recovery and contiue. Unit with some coheresion mve much faster than with 0.
5. use long way travels via foot ONLY if you dont care about reaching time.
6. use latest patch for new siges in latest revision of 1.03 they tonned down sige defenders hard time.
7. for tranport - what happended ? did productivity go down here ? population happines is impoortant for all buildings - not only for production (totaly sure) but building of units too (i think).

[Moriety]

In which case cohesion needs to be drastically toned down.
As it stands I cannot attack an enemy force in an adjacent province, that is just plain stupid.

Russia has just one short railway between St. Petersburg and Moscow, which makes it strategically useless for troop travel, never mind General's strategic redeployment.

No idea why the ships aren't being built, except it is a colonial province without a harbour or port. It does have a coaling station, which was there at game start.

I have the current patch btw.

I've discovered another serious problem.

Trying to understand why my 33,000 dug-in men were getting attacked by a force of Khivan tribesmen half the size but losing 17-19,000 of them against 200-2,000 Khivan losses I noticed in a battle report that the attack and defence values of all units on both sides were exactly 1. (offence and defence).
I also noticed that despite several battles and no means of resupply (I control the town of Khiva), the Khiva army is always fully supplied with both GS and ammo, and has been for at least 6 turns now. I know the AI cheats, but I've never seen this blatant level of cheating in an AGEOD game before. It still doesn't solve why my losses are so huge though!

PS: The Cavalry units taking three years to reach Siberia included stops to recover cohesion- roughly a stop at every province or every second province.
The single railway line gives 29 Rail travel points, I can add a province to the rail network about every 4 turns if I built nothing else....

[Jim-NC]

The small unorganized forces (such as the Khiva) do not consume supply as the major or minor powers do. Thus they don't have a problem with supply. Also, they refill their ranks every turn, but can't rebuild lost elements. So to kill them, you have to destroy the elements. You can destroy 90% of the troops, but if you don't kill any elements, they just pop up next turn at full power/health. I admit it annoying at times.

It is incumbent on the player to build the rail lines that they need.

As to attacking nearby enemies, you may not be able to. The game takes into account the distances, terrain, military control and a host of factors to determine how long it takes to move, and where you can get to. Your regular troops are not meant for combat with tribesmen in deserts. You can overcome this problem with technology, or by using troops that can move/fight on the terrain.

Good Luck with Russia, it has lots of potential, but takes a long time to do anything due to a lack of money.

[Moriety]

The small unorganized forces (such as the Khiva) do not consume supply as the major or minor powers do. Thus they don't have a problem with supply. Also, they refill their ranks every turn, but can't rebuild lost elements. So to kill them, you have to destroy the elements. You can destroy 90% of the troops, but if you don't kill any elements, they just pop up next turn at full power/health. I admit it annoying at times.

It is incumbent on the player to build the rail lines that they need.

As to attacking nearby enemies, you may not be able to. The game takes into account the distances, terrain, military control and a host of factors to determine how long it takes to move, and where you can get to. Your regular troops are not meant for combat with tribesmen in deserts. You can overcome this problem with technology, or by using troops that can move/fight on the terrain.

Good Luck with Russia, it has lots of potential, but takes a long time to do anything due to a lack of money.

Thanks Jim!
Your reply has just removed a lot of my frustration with the Khivan tribesmen, at least I now know that's it's just poor game design.
It doesn't explain the combat ratings or the huge losses though.
I picked Russia to try to get the hang of development and the colonial aspect, as you say, Russia is pretty skint though. 25-50 gold 'aint a lot per turn....
I'm still wondering how I got into a war with Khiva, none was declared and in the end I actually formally declared war. I hope I'll be able to annex them once the other province is taken.

Edit: Khiva is also getting free units every 4th turn- on provinces I control, 7 units the last time. They also retreat into provinces that are 100% under Russia's control, are unaffected by zones of control and almost never suffer cohesion losses. In short they are pretty well unbeatable and my losses are now 97,000......From a two-province nation of tribesmen. Balance?

AGEOD:
Did you pick up on the combat problem I reported?
All units in every battle have attack and defence ratings of just ONE. Discipline is displaying normally.
I wanted to take a screenshot to show you but I can't see what key to use in the manual and I don't have Paintshop.

[Jim-NC]

To make screenshots, I use the Printscreen button. Then I paste into MS Paint. Then I save this as a .jpg file for uploading.

Tribal nations declare "war" on you if the relations are bad enough (basically below 0). Its not a declared war, and you can't take over their country. To stop their rampage, you can get relations above 0. You can try state visits, but they can refuse. You could offer promise local support, which they can't refuse, but if anyone goes to war with them, you must declare war on that person. You could play other diplomatic options like offering passage rights or supply rights. Both will give a small boost to relations.

If you have declared war, then try to ask for peace. You can annex tribal nations through colonial cards (the peaceful way), or you can try to fight them. The fighting side takes forever unless you are much stronger than them (like breech loading rifles vs. spears).

I can sympathize about that. I am playing Spain, and I have a 500+ power stack sitting in Cuba thumbing it's nose at me. I am having trouble defeating them as they get 100% replacements each turn. I get them from power 500+ to power 20, but as I don't destroy any elements, they are 500+ next turn. Meanwhile, my troops are losing cohesion and strength each turn.