Happy and relieved to say that I have finally managed to wrangle back the control of the conflict-series domain and properly set it to redirect to the old reliable hosting. Plus 2/3 of the games have been updated to flush out any missing scores, the rest of the apps will be updated to do the same in the coming weeks.
Article: Peleliu Island: Japan to exhume 1,000 WWII soldiers
— In 2013, a memorial group formed by the families and comrades of the soldiers who belonged to the 2nd Regiment of the Mito Infantry, which was stationed on Peleliu, obtained a map of the mass burial site from the U.S. Navy Seabee Museum
Change of Winds! So, okay, in few games the direction of the wind/storms have been completely wrong (when storms are turned ON from settings). It seems that I basically forgot to update the wind-data when creating some campaigns. So, if the rainstorm suddenly does 180, that's why. I'll be straight with you, the metrological data is not usually the upmost top priority when working on the intrigues of a scenario.
1539-42 Coronado Expedition Cannon Discovered in Arizona
— This wall gun is the first gun associated with the Coronado expedition and the oldest firearm found within the continental USA, and perhaps the oldest cannon known on the continent.
— Francisco Vázquez de Coronado mortgaged his wife's possessions and borrowed heavily for the expedition, that included 150 mounted soldiers and 200 infantrymen, to find legendary cities of Cíbola... the local Sobaipuri O'odham people attacked the settlement in the Santa Cruz Valley of Arizona, leading to the Spaniards retreating from the area.
Animation-process: As many have noticed, the AI animation now includes support units like generals and artillery in most games. There is also a status bar (bottom of the screen) text, indicating whether the AI general judges the situation (from his limited knowledge of player's units) to be favorable to attack, or tilted to player's favor, in which case the general focuses on defense. If the AI general can not see huge advantage either way, it settles for a middle-ground tactical actions. In addition, of the visual side, the logic of AI general has been updated. Enemy commanders are a bit more careful to not get overrun while also at the same time trying to avoid (senseless looking) back-and-forth movements, and share extra MPs to the closest unit more (just as the player can do). It goes without saying that when an AI general faces multiple nearby fronts, the priorities may clash, resulting in non-optimal moves. Most evident in games like Spanish Civil War, where it's very challenging to get the AI general to stay focused on one province. I would assume this also changes the gaming experience slightly into a more difficult direction.
Three latest games:
— Bougainville Gambit 1943-1945 (Australians take over)
— Kiev: Largest WW2 Encirclement
— Defending Spanish Republic.
Article: How Coffee Helped the Union Caffeinate Their Way to Victory in the Civil War
— Ten months into the Civil War, the Union was short on a crucial supply, the absence of which threatened to sap the fighting strength of the Northern army: coffee. Luckily for the Union, Stephen Allen Benson, president of the relatively young Republic of Liberia, had a plan. A ship that left the port at Monrovia in August 1862 carried 6,000 pounds of premium African coffee. It was the first major shipment to the Union, and would prove vital in the North’s victory.
In case you haven't noticed, there is a Sortable Table of all Games. You can currently sort the scenarios by release date, historical date, or by map size. I hope to add more data in the coming months if the table sees a lot of usage.
"The German Army which entered Russia wore a very smart uniform. Officers and NCOs carried silver lace on their shoulder straps, there were coloured bayonet knots. General officers wore gold and scarlet, everywhere there was colour on our uniforms... Throughout the last three years of the war our uniforms were being simplified and many units, particularly in the WSS, took to wearing camouflage pattern suits as a mark of distinction. All in all we took on the appearance of mechanics in dungarees and were no longer soldiers in a distinctive and smart uniform."
——— War on the Eastern Front, The German Soldier in Russia 1941-1945 by James Lucas
FB link: "A Junkers 88 aircraft was found at a depth of 51 meters in the foothills of Capo Passero in Syracuse Province. Thanks to the spotting of the serial, was able to identify with precision: a KG 54 (Kampfgeschwader), taken off on March 2, 1943 from Catania to bomb the port of Tripoli... With this recent discovery, the total number of Junkers Ju 88 found in Syracuse waters rises to six." [link to a facebook post with images]
Science article: New Estimates of US Civil War mortality from full-census records. We leverage the recently released full count of individual census returns and a sample of linked records across multiple censuses. Our national estimate is 698,000 Civil War deaths. This is substantially higher than the conventional historical estimate of 618,000 but lower than the most recent estimate of around 750,000 deaths based on a 1% census sample.
POSTPONED, since many still use old Amazon tablets! ——— I will be dropping the support for the Android 5 (API Level 22 nicknamed 'Lollipop') since that was released a decade ago in 2014/2015, and it is getting too hard to maintain compatibility that far back. The cheapest Android tablets/phones start from $40, so, you should seriously consider updating if you're still rocking a decade old device.
HOF/website missing? Hosting Debacle November-2024 explained!
500,000 Japanese WW2 ‘phantom’ ceramic coins discovered. The coins provided a crucial substitute for standard metal currency during WWII, whenmetal was reallocated for munitions, prompting the Japanese government to commission ceramic coins to sustain internal trade. 15 million of these ceramic coins were produced, though most were destroyed after Japan’s surrender. As a result, the 1-sen coins became known as “phantom” coins.
The Yanagi scheme included several famous long submarine voyages that transported essential wartime materials, blueprints, and technical expertise between Japan and Germany. Germans received rubber, quinine, gold, mica, tungsten, you know, if the cargo sub survived the mind boggingly long trip avoiding Allied mines/planes/warships... while Japan received optical glass, blueprints for jet/rocket/radar technology, mercury, plus an entire German Type IXC U-boat (U-511), while a disassembled Me 262 could not be delivered before the war ended. Japanese I-8 traveled 48,000 km in 6 months to carry out one trip. The Germans also converted a handful of large Italian submarines into supply subs after realizing they were much better fit for the epic, long voyages. Japanese submarines and German U-boats also operated together and shared intelligence, especially in the Indian Ocean, in order to cut the Allied trade routes. On oceans filled both German and Japanese submarines, they had to implement a policy to not attack other submarines. After Germany threw in the towel, 6 U-boats remaining in Japanese territory were taken over by the Imperial Japanese Navy.
"After sinking the USS Indianapolis, which we had thought to be an Idaho-class battleship, (Japanese submarine) I-58 made her way north. On August 9 an atom bomb similar to the one dropped at Hiroshima was dropped at Nagasaki. It was reported, too, that the Soviet Union had joined in the fight against Japan. The determination was still there, but there was little we could do. However, the morale on board I-58 was very good. While submerged during the forenoon of August 10, our sound detector picked up an echo. I raised the periscope and found there was a destroyer some way off. I ordered the crews of 5 and 6 Kaitens to stand by... In fact, since the advent of Kaitens, American destroyers had not been quite so confident as before... Kaiten 4 penetrated the American convoy right in front of the destroyer, and with the sound of the explosion the whole convoy was thrown into confusion.... On the evening of August 15, I was suddenly called to the hatch by the senior wireless rating. I thought I had never seen a man so sad: he said, “Look what’s come.” It was a communiqué announcing the end of WWII."
— Sunk, The Story of the Japanese Submarine Fleet 1941-1945 by Mochitsura Hashimoto
"By late 1944, the German military had reassessed the need for Zimmerit because Allied forces were not using magnetic anti-tank mines as much as initially feared and Zimmerit was time-consuming and labor-intensive to apply, requiring special coatings and time to cure properly. Germany faced severe shortages of materials and production disruptions, and Zimmerit was ultimately deemed an unnecessary use of resources"
Virtually every book or article suggest the failure of Market-Garden was caused by an intelligence failure... Not everyone agreed with SHAEF’s overly optimistic assessment. In fact, the closer an analyst was to the front, the less optimistic his reports tended to be. Colonel Koch, the U.S. Third Army G2, stated in his G2 Estimate number 9 on 28 August that: “Despite crippling factors of shattered communications . . . losses in personnel and equipment, the enemy nevertheless has been able to maintain a sufficiently cohesive front to exercise an overall control of his tactical situation. His withdrawal, though continuing, has not been a rout or mass collapse…" Even though Ultra reported on the 6th that the First German Parachute Army was to assume the sector east of Antwerp, there is no mention of this in the text of the summary. On the German order of battle map provided with the summary, the First Parachute Army is written on the margin of the map as unlocated. The same is true for the II SS Panzer Corps and the panzer divisions. All of these units are reported to be unlocated despite the Ultra reports... Ultra continued to feed information to the analysts, but none of it went directly to the fighters.
— Operation Market-Garden: Ultra Intelligence Ignored by Major Joel Jeffson
Bougainbille Gambit version 1.0.1 rolling out. The usual one-month-after-release fixes and tweaks based on all the feedback, plus adding a setting to show orange redeployment circle on the units about to be removed from the play soon.
Professor of history Francis L. Loewenheim: “What we have here, in effect, is the real Ike.”
— In secret parts of a wartime diary Dwight D. Eisenhower characterized Douglas MacArthur as a “baby” and an “uncertain factor” who “likes his boot lickers.” Eisenhower in early 1942 described Adm. Ernest J. King, commander of the US fleet as WW2 began, as an “arbitrary, stubborn type” and a “mental bully.” One way to help win the war was “to get someone to sh**t King.” NY Times Article
"The Brandenburgers would not be the only German commando forces in operation for Case Blue. Soviet POWs who volunteered were either used in their original uniforms or outfitted as civilians and began filtering behind enemy lines as early as May to wreak havoc in Red Army rear areas. On 22 May, Abwehr agents were also parachuted into Voronezh, Stalingrad, Krasnodar and other key areas where they sabotaged railway lines, power stations and pipelines while Operation 'Hannover' was launched by 350 White Russians of Sonderverbänd Graukopf on 22 May around Army Group Centre. Though they inflicted heavy casualties on the Red Army, the savage fighting left only a hundred survivors to return to the German lines. In the Caucasus, the Sonderverbänd Bergmann was formed from 200 Germans and 550 former Soviet POWs or deserters who were ethnically Georgian, Armenian, north Caucasian and Azerbaijani. The Brandenburger troops who were to take part in Case Blue moved east to their respective operational areas during June and July... However, as the Brandenburgers penetrated up to 100km behind enemy lines using the confusion as cover, it was not just the Soviets who frequently mistook them for Red Army troops and Pinkert's men were repeatedly shelled by their own forces, causing needless casualties and affecting morale. ... As resistance faded in the city of Rostov itself, Grabert's company made its way to the river by truck, carrying inflatable boats as part of their equipment and established itself with Stolz, crossing the northern branch of the Don River along with 28 volunteers from the Kradschützen Battalion's engineer platoon. Ferried across the river, they established a command post on the far bank. In sweltering summer heat, heavy machine-gun and mortar fire caused a small number of German casualties, the first half-company of Brandenburgers already making their way across using their inflatables under the command of Oberleutnant Dr Oskar Hüller. Securing a larger bridgehead on the river's south bank, the remainder of the 8th Company soon followed and Grabert planned his assault on the bridge itself. After establishing his position, Grabert awaited darkness before beginning his assault. Covered by supressing fire from the northern bank, the Brandenburgers pushed through intense fire, illuminated by drifting parachute flares and a burning truck on the bridge itself. They stormed the southern end of the bridge and captured it intact. Grabert was grazed in the head by a ricochet and his men were low on ammunition as he planned to continue the attack and take the next bridge downriver. Flares signalled his men to move their heavy weapons forward as his assault group prepared to rush forward, capitalising on their speed to keep pressure on the retreating defenders and keep them off balance. The bridge they held was still swept with heavy machine-gun fire and unusable and the seizure of further crossings would serve to push the defenders away from the river bank that they still held in isolated pockets. Leading from the front, Grabert took his company in a direct assault at 0230hrs as dawn approached, though Soviet machine guns that had previously been concealed opened fire and took them by surprise. Several men were hit, but the momentum of the attack carried the Brandenburgers through and the next bridge was soon secured, though only with a tenuous grip. However, amongst those men that had been seriously wounded was Grabert himself... Casualties were steadily mounting as ammunition and medical supplies began to run out for the remaining Germans. With the heat of the midday sun tormenting the Germans, Unteroffizier Fohrer was despatched to swim back across the river and request aerial and artillery support and it was only the timely intervention of Stukas that allowed the remaining Brandenburgers to hold their position until elements of the 13th Panzer Division crossed the captured bridge."
—— from BRANDENBURGERS: The Third Reich's Elite Special Forces by Lawrence Paterson
Price of Bougainville Gambit 1943 reduced from New Game to normal price!
Kurt Vonnegut’s Lost Board Game Finally for Sale
— After releasing his first novel, Player Piano, in 1952, to positive reviews and poor sales, he needed other streams of income... he was most passionate about designing a board game called General Headquarters... The 40 pages of notes amid Vonnegut’s papers include several revisions of its rules, and pitch letters to board-game companies suggesting that GHQ could “become the third popular checkerboard game” — and even “be used to train cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.”
John Kinsel Sr., one of the last Navajo Code Talkers from WWII, dies at 107
— With Kinsel´s death, only two Navajo Code Talkers are still alive: Former Navajo Chairman Peter MacDonald and Thomas H. Begay.
In one of the biggest updates I have ever put out, the Eastern Front reaches version 7.0. It gets SeaLifts, Gebirgsjägers, option to only rest in West, better AI, more data in Unit Tally, improved animation, un-captured POWs might give 1 HP to Soviet rifle units, etc. If you are in the middle of an epic play-through, maybe finish that first, since this is such a massive update, that better not take chances with it ruining something.
Playing with Chat-GPT to create board-gaming related images...
The Last Ever US Cavalry Charge Into Combat Occurred in WWII
— On January 16, 1942, Lt. Edwin P. Ramsey led men from E and F Troops into Morong. While their Japanese opponents were equipped with tanks and machine guns, the 27 American and Filipino cavalrymen had only their pistols and the horses upon which they were riding. The Japanese troops stationed in the village were caught off-guard by the sight and scattered as the American and Filipino troops, pistols drawn, galloped toward them at full speed.
NEW GAME: BOUGAINVILLE GAMBIT 1943
WWII Pacific campaign like no other: unique instant Japanese counter-landing on top of the US landing, Japanese counter-attack by the elite 6th Division that genuinely threatens the landing force, can Australians smoothly take over and finish the seizing the island once Americans are redeployed elsewhere.
You are in command of Allied forces in WWII, tasked with leading an amphibious assault on Bougainville. Your first objective is to secure the three airfields marked on the map, using American troops. These airfields are critical to gain air strike capabilities. Once secured, fresh Australian troops will relieve the US forces and take on the task of capturing the rest of the island.
Beware: a massive Japanese naval base nearby may launch a counter-landing. Additionally, you will likely be facing a truly fierce counter-attack by the elite and battle-hardened Japanese 6th Division, which has seen combat since 1937. Air strikes will only be available after the three designated airfields are under your control. On the positive side, the western coast, though swampy, should initially have a lighter Japanese presence, unlike the heavily fortified north, east, and south sectors.
Unique Challenges of the Bougainville Campaign: Bougainville presents a number of unique challenges. Notably, you may face a rapid Japanese counter-landing almost on top of your own ongoing landing. The Japanese will repeatedly attempt to reinforce their troops, though many of these efforts will fail. This campaign also marks the first combat action of African American infantry units, with elements of the 93rd Division seeing action in the Pacific Theater. Additionally, partway through the campaign, US forces will be replaced by Australian units who will need to secure the rest of the island.
This campaign is often overlooked due to its role in the wider passive encirclement of Rabaul, one of Japan's most fortified positions in the South Pacific. Bougainville's active periods of combat were interspersed with long stretches of inactivity, contributing to its lower profile in WWII histories.
Historical Background: After assessing the heavily fortified Japanese base at Rabaul, Allied commanders decided to encircle and cut it of supplies rather than launch a direct, costly assault. A key step in this strategy was seizing Bougainville, where the Allies planned to build several airfields. With the Japanese already having constructed fortifications and airfields on the northern and southern ends of the island, the Americans boldly chose the swampy central region for their own airfields, catching Japanese strategic planners by surprise.
Good luck with the campaign!
⊕ Full paid version on Play Store
⊕ Full paid on Amazon
⊕ Free turn-limited demo version on Amazon
⊕ Free turn-limited as APK file for side-loading on your device
The infamous Japanese counter-landing on top of the present American landing:
"Japanese soldiers slipped ashore in 21 landing craft under the very noses of the American defenders. Patrolling PT boats missed the destroyers, and an antitank platoon on shore saw the landing craft but thought they were American. The enemy soldiers landed so close to the American lines that they actually cut off several marines in an outpost, who were later rescued by two LCM's. The Japanese attacked at once in the vicinity of a lagoon... "
Developer backstory: I have been working on this rarely talked about Pacific War campaign for around five years. The fundamental challenge is that this 2-year long WWII campaign alternates between exciting fairly unique events, and absolutely-nothing-happened periods of several months. After years of trying to keep the time-frame historically accurate and artificially slow down the flow of the game in various ways, both me and test-players all came to the simple conclusion that: okay, let's just skip past all slow periods entirely, and weave the active periods into one continuous experience. Which, I'm relieved to report, actually worked out great!
News article: Masamitsu Yoshioka, last of Japan’s Pearl Harbor attack force, dies at 106. When Pearl Harbor came into view, black smoke was rising from the US ships hit by the first wave of Japan’s surprise attack. The crew of a Nakajima B5N2 torpedo bomber readied for its run. The 23-year-old navigator and bombardier on board, Masamitsu Yoshioka, had practiced his part of the maneuver for months. He was stunned when he was told his carrier group would be part of a massive strike on American territory that included more than 300 Japanese warplanes. “I knew that this meant a gigantic war.”
News article: A Japanese Soldier’s Son Receives the Flag of His Father after nearly eight decades. During World War II, many Japanese soldiers carried good-luck flags, which featured handwritten well wishes from friends and loved ones. They varied in size but were usually small enough for their owners to fold up and wear inside their uniforms. They also happened to be an item that Allied soldiers collected as battlefield souvenirs...
Gut-wrenching bug in every other recently updated game, so more updates rolling out. If the latest play-through seems extra hard around 15-30 turns, wait for the next dot-one etc fix and restart the ongoing game play from the start. Apologies! Sad face.
Market Garden: Hey, you one player who managed to crash the latest version of this particular game. If you see this, could you kindly drop me an email, letting me know what and under which circumstances were you attacking that caused this issue. Thanks.
Okinawa: Version 5.0 sees addition of the surprise parachute landing of Japanese Giretsu Kuteitai airborne commandos (assumed to gone perfectly to make sense on the scale of the map, there is some variation built-in to counter the players stockpiling units at the right hexagon to instantly neutralize this threat). Some scenarios are really, really hard to come up with various unit types. In the most boring cases, it really just was one type of infantry fighting against enemy infantry. And so, if you want to add some 'flavor' to the Order of Battle, you have to dig pretty deep, meaning tiny scale units. And eventually it simply no longer makes any sense to have 10 men unit fighting 10,000 men division. But such is life: Some battles were a Smorgasbord of unit types, and some were plain vanilla all the way through.
Yet another American secret weapon?
"I was one of the lucky ones to go in on the first wave at Leyte," says Bob Seiler. "The night before my platoon sergeant made a racquet, similar to one for tennis, using a piece of cardboard. Because I was the tallest in the platoon, I was to stand up and bat away any hand grenades that the Japs might try to throw into our amtrac."
- Crisis in the Pacific, The Battles or the Philippines Islands
With Panzer Missions version 6.2 it was time to admit that 13 years of adding various rules and tweaks and exceptions and modifications on how the Soviet units and unit types increase with each passed mission had turned it into a mess, and it was time to rewrite that critical piece of code. The latest version offers a much more streamlined logic, so any tweaks in the future won't be half-guesswork because of all the complexities involved. A new weak 'Newly-Raised infantry unit' type was added, this type gets more common as turns of each mission pass by. Soviet replacements initially only happen in the northern third of the map, but with each mission the limit moves southwards. It should be more possible to get past 10 missions now.
The latest FAQ entry: So, here is the challenge: some players visualize the antitank-gun unit as this army-sized mega formation holding cutting-edge battleground changing weapons (that cut through tanks and bunkers at easy) with unlimited aerial support and never-ending supply of armor for the offense and clearly this unit type should always crush any opposition anywhere! Yet, and here comes the trouble. Half of the player visualize the antitank-gun unit as one single weak, out-of-date antitank gun (that can't make a dent even to a cardboard box) with two soldiers, and these players get bent out of shape if this unit ever does anything else than very clearly lose a battle. Maybe, just maybe, there is some middle round, where the antitank-gun unit has some limited means and strength, it's mostly defensive unit, and sometimes it wins, and sometimes it loses, and let's call this super crazy place 'reality'.
Article: America's Oldest Board Game. Travelers' Tour Through the United States, published in 1822 by Frederick and Roe Lockwood, is the earliest known American board game. This geography-centric game, for 2 to 4 players, is based on a map of the United States at the time. It features 24 states, ranging from the Atlantic coast to new Southern ones such as Missouri and Arkansas. The map includes 139 numbered cities and towns, which serve as spots for players to move to.
D-DAY Through German Eyes: "I saw that whole landing craft go up in flames within seconds, and sink very quickly, surrounded by men struggling in the water. I thought, 'If many more try to turn away like that, there won't be enough Americans to replace the perished ones on the beach, and so we will win this dreadful fight.' ... I did see, in the distance, one single tank emerge from the sea. It was a Sherman type, very recognizable. I had the impression that it was coming up from the sea bed, that is how it looked to me. That was an incredible sight. I had no idea it was even possible to make tanks travel under water. I never heard of our forces being able to do such a thing. But this single tank was on its own, and it was fired on and halted by PAK guns further down the beach... After that, I saw a very large landing craft approach several hundred meters away, and as it lowered its ramp I saw a Sherman tank come out and roll down into the shallows. This tank had some kind of screen or tubing around it, and it traveled slowly but effectively through the shallows and onto the sand, and began firing up at the Resistance Points on the cliffs down there. Other tanks came out of the craft behind it, I am not sure how many, but several. At the same time, we began receiving very accurate mortar fire onto our position. So the moment when I thought that we might win was very brief."
Youtube video: What happened to Surcouf: the largest cruiser submarine of WW2
Poland between Germany and USSR: Okay, oops. I found out that some German divisions were still set on the passive defensive mode, so, the version 1.4 might increase the difficulty level a bit. And by 'a bit' I mean I have no idea how much this changes things. So, if the difficulty level happens to skyrocket, let me know.
Operation Barbarossa version 6.4: Axis unit type split into Romanian, Hungarian, Italian unit types. Siberian and Guards Infantry split into two separate unit types. Added German Antitank Gun Units (late 1941 reinforcements). Rewrote the decade-old reinforcements schedule, tweaked and fixed the starting OOB and added a tiny bit of variation. Setting: Axis units can only rest in Berlin, Vienna, Bucharest (default OFF). Call-for-Support resource now works between various tank units. Added strafing by Soviet air force (inactive during the few first months). Plus all the usual upgrades from this round. Hopefully rewriting the reinforcement schedule does not completely break the flow of the campaign. Let me know if it does!
Facebook post with posts: Warships/boats from the German Black Sea fleet recovered from the river Danube
A big update to Kursk too with version 6.6! Notice, if you have lived under the rock the last two years, then a quick heads-up. Kursk, Korea, and First World War Western Front games are no longer available via Play Store, and you can only get them via Amazon App Store. See the older segments of this blog for details about the whole debacle.
Switzerland offers cash prize to get munitions out of lakes
- For years the Swiss military used the lakes as dumping grounds for old munition. In Lake Lucerne there are 3,300 tonnes of munition, and 4,500 tonnes in Neuchatel. Now, the Swiss defence department offers $58,000 in prize money for the best idea to get it out.
AI: Summer 2024 update: The next round of updates (starting from 2024 August 18) will bring forth an AI that has higher priority to tackling the player's dugouts and minefields and supports units like generals, artillery, aifroce, fuel delivery units, etc. In addition, the route selection will have more variety and hopefully better unit-type-based logic. The first game to include this will be Panzers to Leningrad version 3.2 so check it out and let me know if you detect anything going horribly astray.
I'm not claiming that managing the current number of apps/projects in app stores is impossible, but after working ridiculously hard for two months my to-do list is now longer than what it was when I started two months ago :-I So, if you're hoping for a new game, you're out of luck. Also, sincere preliminary apologies to my very likely angry outburst to anyone happily and merrily suggesting adding even more new features and trying to increase my workload even more. All I want is a few hundred hours more per each day, is that really too much to ask for?
Lost wreck of WW1 Royal Navy warship found in 'remarkable' condition off the Aberdeenshire coast
- HMS Hawke was discovered by a team of divers about 70 miles east of Fraserburgh. More than 500 of the ship's crew perished when it was attacked by the German U-boat U-9 in October 1914.
Battle of the Bulge: Version 6.2 updates the German order-of-the-battle and corrects the ancient HPs/strengths/behavior/naming of the German armored unit types. In addition, German replacements/strafing/etc decline at a slightly faster rate. This new setup should be more tolerable to play and more historically accurate. It goes without saying that the Hall of Fame will see bigger cleanups in the future to reflect the fact that the flow of the entire campaign has been tweaked.
Invasion of Norway (version 4.2): Added 3 HP Norwegian King & Government unit that starts north of Oslo and tries to reach one of the still Norwegian-held coastal cities. Capturing it will give small combat bonus plus one +1 MP resource per turn for the rest of the game.
Demyansk Pocket: Total HOF reset will happen soon after 2024 August 12: In the biggest screw-up of the last 20 months, I both messed up the initial location of units on half of the devices and learned that secondary filters of HOF (Hall of Fame) failed. Since I have no way of knowing which score is from a properly functioning scenario, I'm forced to zero the whole Hall of Fame and only play-throughs STARTED with version 6.4.1 will be included in the new HOF for Demyansk Pocket. Apologies!
Battle of Moscow 1941: Massive update with version 6.0 (okay update to 6.0.0.1 on its way), generals can summon security divisions, tripled Soviet cavalry, rewrote a lot of old code like cold weather effects, new icon for Siberian divisions, AI tweaks, etc... Let me know if I managed to completely break something...
Unbelievable numbers, should we believe them or not?
During the Battle of Kursk, the 653rd Heavy Panzerjäger Battalion using Elefant tank destroyers reported knocking out 320 Soviet tanks, for the loss of 13 Elefants.
"For three hours our Ferdinands fought in the cavalcade of enemy fire and proved to be immune to enemy fire! In the evening of the first day, first enemy tanks were destroyed, while others retreated. Crews of field and anti-tank guns run away after firing few uneffective shots against our Ferdinands. In first engagements 656th Panzerjager Regiment destroyed numerous artillery positions, bunkers as well as 120 Soviet tanks"
--- July 19th of 1943 Report by Platoon commander Boehm
After a quick glance at the metrics, I think I'm currently actively maintaining roughly 10 million lines of highly complex code. None of that is auto-generated code, I have manually written every single line, and especially written it to be very dense code. So pardon me if I at times act like a Looney Tunes character.
"One of the last remaining operational WWII-era liberty ships is at risk of falling into disrepair and losing its certification from the US Coast Guard. The SS John W. Brown, docked in Baltimore, Maryland, is slated to head to dry-dock for repairs, and the volunteer team charged with her upkeep is requesting the public's help to fund $500,000 of the over $1 million price tag." (Article)
Features rolling out: Selecting a unit will once pop-up any possible defensive battle results from the AI movement phase. Marked with red B1, B2, etc tags with black background on units. This feature is disabled if the whole combat pop-up dialog is turned OFF. The latter part of the roll-out will also include a setting to enable/disable this. A setting will be added to ask for a confirmation when trying to move a unit that is actively resting at the moment to prevent accidentally ruining the rest and refit process. Set minefield icon to REAL, (triangle) NATO, default (this option can override the default icon set). Unit graphics will undergo a contrast increase. Provinces will be calculated in a new improved way, that might change the province borders a tiny big mid-game as the system switches to the new method.
The first encounters of Siberian troops as Germans push towards Moscow
"At Borodino the regiments of the 2nd WSS Division and the "Hauenschild Brigade" of 10th Panzer Division with the 7th Panzer Regiment, as well as a battalion of 90th Motorized Artillery Regiment and the motor-cycle battalion of 10th Division, had their first encounter with the Siberians: tall, burly fellows in long great-coats, with fur caps on their heads and high fur boots. They were most generously equipped with anti-aircraft and anti-tank guns, and even more so with the dangerous 7.62cm multipurpose gun nicknamed by the German troopers the "Crash Boom." They fought impassively. There was never any panic. They stood fast and held on. They killed and let themselves be killed. It was an appalling battle... In spite of the soft roads the 98th Infantry Division had come up by forced marches. At Detchino it had fought its way through cunningly devised field positions and pillbox lines arranged in deep echelon and manned by Siberians. These men took no prisoners. For five days the furious fighting raged. The battalions suffered heavy casualties. The 282nd, 289th, and 290th Infantry Regiments were greatly reduced in number; most of the battalion and company commanders had been killed or wounded. The sapper battalion lost 100 men. But Moscow, the great objective, spurred the men on..."
Guadalcanal: A big update that added separate Tokyo Express units (low strength Japanese ships trying to land reinforcements near the current front line).
Youtube series: The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Article: Bud Anderson, America's last WW2I 'triple ace,' dies at 102. Brig. Gen. Clarence "Bud" Anderson, the last American fighter pilot known as a "triple ace" for downing 16 German planes during WW2, passed away in California at the age of 102.
Price of Kiev: Largest WW2 Encirclement dropped to normal (from 'new').
There are no words to describe how much I miss the early days of Internet when I could get hold of a grown adult human being from any company if there was an issue. These days, I'll just face 999 layers of poorly automated trash bots spewing out totally unrelated automated replies. I guess I'm turning into an old man yelling at kids staying off his AI generated lawn unless they do in-app purchases and watch 80 hours of forced ads.
Article: How a captured Luftwaffe Fw 190 led to the development of the Spitfire Mk IX, the best close-in fighter of WWII. The capture of an Fw 190A belonging to JG26 on Jun. 23, 1942 led to the production of the Type 361 Mk IX Spitfire. This had a strengthened airframe, a four-bladed propeller and a 6o-series Merlin engine...
I have added a SeaLift feature (moving troops between a few selected cities) to Defending Spanish Republic, and I'm hoping to add it to other scenarios too. It won't necessarily be super useful, unless the front lines happen to be at a certain way, but I think the feature still adds a bit of that famous 'something else', AKA new dimensions. Interesting to see in how many games this can be meaningfully implemented, and it goes without saying that in some games I'm starting slow with only a few routes, and then expand once the initial issues have been addressed. The basic logic is that the player can transport one unit per turn, both cities and area around them must be controlled, and there is a tiny chance (depending on the game) of losing HPs during the transport. The sealifts are indicated by anchor symbols adjacent to cities with text label indicating it is a sealift ('sealift to Valencia').
Google Play Store had started a more rigorous developer-account verification process. This is good news overall, as the brand-new accounts publishing trash will have a much harder time to do their usual hit-and-run tactics. Unfortunately, the verification process is turning out to be stressful for me, since documentation from the various Finnish systems and global databases just doesn't fit well with the requirements built on USA-logic and Google'e US-only out-of-date data. And to make matters worse, I have had accounts in various Google departments literally forever, and as a result, my info inevitably has tiny dot-comma-level differences ('address' vs 'address.' spot the critical difference that makes these totally different addresses) that the nitpicking automated processes get hung up on. Sigh, operating in global world is painful at times... EDIT: Well, it took a ridiculous amount of back and forth emailing before Google finally admitted their data is out-of-date and escalated the support case upwards enough times that my issues finally got solved. You would think that Google could handle basic tech, basic data, basic software, basic engineering but, no, nope, no they can't. How many of these cases I have been forced to go through over the last 14 years of doing business with Google. I can't even keep tract anymore. And most of the time Google has been in the end forced to admit that their policies made no sense, algorithms were erroneous, reviewers made mistakes, or Google simply had bad data. Okay, I'll admit that one time it actually was my fault, since I had forgotten to update my info in one particular registry.
Forgotten D-Day cameramen
-- The world's collective memory of D-Day is often summarized by the work of Robert Capa. Amazing yet blurry photos of Omaha Beach have become legendary. But, under German fire, Richard Taylor was also documenting history. His unit was meant to take images of the landings, but he was the only one to bring home video footage of American troops that day in Colleville-sur-Mer.
News story
Footage
How 'effortless' was the legendary 1941 Kiev Encirclement that resulted in the largest capture of enemy soldiers in history:
"Although organized Soviet resistance varied from haphazard to almost non-existent, a more formidable obstacle slowed Guderian's forces. According to German war diaries, the Soviet 'roads' south of Roslavl could barely be dignified by such a distinction. Typically they consisted of little more than sandy farm tracks, more accustomed to the light traffic of small horses and peasant carts. The advent of dozens of tanks and hundreds of heavily loaded trucks soon turned them into quagmires, even in the absence of rain. In the 4th Panzer Division's sector south of Unscha the trucks were constantly getting bogged down and those that could not be dug out had to be pulled out with tractors. The war diary of Lemelsen's XXXXVII Panzer Corps noted that movement was 'exceedingly slow and difficult'. Indeed, the many small streams that crisscrossed the area and could not be skirted were even more of a problem than the dire state of the roads. Their bridges had to be reinforced or rebuilt as they were too weak to support the traffic, and in the worst affected areas even the deployment of all the available engineering units could not avert hours of delay. Even Guderian, who was traveling in the area, got stuck so badly that he had to signal for replacement armored command vehicles, personnel trucks and motorcycles. As he noted in his memoir, the experience 'was a grim omen for the future'...
As Model's 3rd Panzer Division fought its way towards the town of Novgorod-Severskii on the Desna, it received reports that its great bridge spanning the river had been destroyed. These reports, however, proved incorrect and through a combination of Soviet ineptitude, good luck and swift action on the part of two German lieutenants, the bridge was seized intact on the morning of 26 August. The importance of this achievement was summed up in the 3rd Panzer Division's war diary: 'Given the wide riverbed and swampy banks the bridge, with a length of 800 metres, spanned an otherwise almost impassable obstacle.' As Model remarked to one of the two lieutenants involved in its capture, 'This bridge is as good as a whole division.' Guderian recalled that the news was 'surprising and most gratifying'...
Yet the sunken roads plagued the long motorized columns of Panzer Group 2, which even in the best of circumstances tended to grind small roads out of existence. On 5 September Bock noted that Guderian's only success was seizing the small town of Sosnitsa, and two days later he added that the panzer group's advance was 'only mediocre'. By contrast, the typically less mobile infantry of the Second and Sixth Armies was managing to force multiple bridgeheads across the Desna. The implications of the changing conditions, as well as the fatigue of the German motorized units and the fanatical Soviet resistance, discredit the references to Guderian's oft-lauded, seamless blitzkrieg into the Ukraine in August and September 1941. Aided by Weichs's Second Army, Guderian's panzer group fought a tough, grinding and sluggish campaign, advancing on a broad front with a long, thinly defended left flank. Meanwhile, Kleist's Panzer Group 1 and Stulpnagel's Seventeenth Army made no progress, aside from the costly house-to-house fighting in Dnepropetrovsk and the more recent bridgehead across the Dnepr near Kremenchug. This is not to say that the offensive in the Ukraine did not enjoy a measure of success - and the potential rewards multiplied at an almost exponential rate the longer Stalin insisted on holding Kiev - but the German advance was by no means rapid, trouble free or inexpensive in blood and materiel."
NEW GAME: KIEV 1941: LARGEST WW2 ENCIRCLEMENT
You are in command of the German armed forces planning to create the largest encirclement in the military history by using two fast-moving panzer pincers, one from the north and one from the south, to encircle the huge number of Red Army formations located at and behind the city of Kiev. Historical background: Due to the economic importance of the southern USSR, the most and best Soviet units were placed here. This meant, that when the Germans invaded in 1941, the southern group advanced most slowly. Eventually, Germans postponed the middle group's advance towards Moscow that was evacuated and empty, and decided to turn the panzer divisions led by General Guderian southwards towards the rear area of Kiev. And if the southern group's own panzer army could get their act together (they were also tasked with seizing the industrial city of Dnepropetrovsk) and advance north to link up with the Guderian's panzers, a million Red Army soldiers could be cut off. In spite of his generals' pleas, Stalin refused to empty the Kiev area until it was too late, and instead kept on sending more Red Army reserve troops towards Guderian's armored pincer in order to stop the German encirclement movement and hold on to the industrially key area. The result was a gigantic battle that pulled in more and more divisions from both sides as overstretched Germans simply struggled to cut off and contain such an unprecedented number of Soviet Armies. Do you have the nerves and maneuvering finess to drive two narrow panzer wedges deep in the USSR to pull off the historic encirclement in a timely manner, or do you cave in and choose a wider yet slower attack? Or maybe your panzer pincers themselves will cut off...
⊕ Full paid version on Play Store
⊕ Full paid on Amazon
⊕ Free turn-limited demo version on Amazon
⊕ Free turn-limited as APK file for side-loading on your device
The encirclement of Kiev in 1941 inflicted devastating losses on the Soviet Red Army. Here's a breakdown of the estimated figures: Soldiers: Estimates in Soviet sources range from 452,700 to over 616,304 killed, captured, or missing. Armies: 5th, 37th, 26th, 21st, and 38th armies, totaling 43 divisions, were almost entirely wiped out. The 40th Army also suffered significant losses. Equipment: 2,642 guns and mortars, and 64 tanks were lost. German period sources mention the losses as 665,000 prisoners, 3718 guns, 884 armoured fighting vehicles.
"The battle and encirclement of Kiev was the Wehrmacht's greatest triumph of the war in the East and the Red Army's greatest single disaster." --- Historian Evan Mawdsley
Version 1.0.0.3 the latest.
Maps: It is time for my annual whining about maps. You might think that a city-name is a fairly solid thing. Wrong! WW2-era German maps use completely different city-names than period Soviet maps, and the USSR had a funny tendency to rename cities later on. Plus, Finnish and Western maps might use a third and a fourth totally different city-name. For example, one map has Wroclaw, other maps show Breslau, the next Vratislavia, another shows Boroszló, and the list goes on and on, and they are all referring to the same city. And at least for the bigger cities there is proper info available if you dig, but for the smaller ones, there is nothing online. So, does this bend of a river have nine different towns or are all the wildly different names referring to the same place? Who knows...
Kursk and Korea updated, obviously only applies to Amazon App Store, as both games are still outlawed in the Google Play Store. Thanks for all the messages telling me that you have filed a complaint in the Play Store, it's annoying to keep on eye on an app for years, see that it's valid and regularly updated, and buy it, and then have it randomly and suddenly removed due to a random Friday night outsourced-kid drank-too-much and needed to meet his ban-performance goals. I do miss the old days when actual grown-up humans managed app stores and had enough time to consider all the angles, instead of out of control algorithms and outsourced kids hastily whooshing around wiping out decade old businesses.
Emails, released as part of the Department of Justice's antitrust case against Google, tell a dramatic story about how Google's finance and advertising teams, led by Raghavan with the blessing of CEO Sundar Pichai, actively worked to make Google search WORSE to make the company more money. source/
Underwater Panzer tanks on WWII Eastern Front
"An interesting new secret weapon was employed here for the first time-underwater tanks, also known as diving tanks. They were to cross the river under water, just like submarines. Then, on the far bank, they were to go into action as ordinary tanks, smashing enemy positions along the river and intercepting any counter-attacks. It was an amazing plan. In fact, it was over a year old and had originally been intended for a different purpose-forwith Operation Sea Lion, the invasion of England. The idea was that they would be unloaded well off the south coast of England, in about 25 feet of water, to advance over the sea-floor to the flat beaches. There they were to have emerged from the waves, like Neptune, to have fought down the British coastal defences on both sides of Hastings, to have formed bridgeheads for the first German landing craft, and eventually to have advanced inland, causing havoc and panic in the coastal hinterland.
The idea was immediately put into effect. In July 1940 four diving-tank sections were formed from eight experienced Panzer regiments, and posted to Putlos on the German Baltic coast for special training. It was a strange course for the tank crews. In their Mark III and IV tanks they virtually turned into U-boat men. The operational task required manoeuvrability in water of twenty-five to thirty feet. That meant that the tanks had to withstand a water pressure of about two atmospheres and had to be appropriately sealed. This was achieved by a special adhesive. Sealing the joint between turret and tank body was done very simply by means of an extended bicycle inner tube which could be inflated by the gun-loader inside the tank. The gun itself was fitted with a rubber muzzle cap which could be blasted off from the turret within a second.
A special problem, however, was the supply of fresh air to the engine and the crew. Here the principle of the later U-boat snorkel was anticipated. A special hose about fifty feet long was fitted by a special suction device to a floating buoy, which, at the same time, carried an aerial. The tanks were steered with the aid of a gyro-compass. Towards the end of July 1940 the four detachments practised in strictest secrecy at Hörnum on the Island of Sylt. An ancient ferry of the Rügen service would take them well out to sea; there they would slither down a hinged ramp to the sea-floor, and make their own way back to the coast. The unevenness of the seabed did not seem to worry the monsters. The experiments were highly successful. But then, in mid-October 1940, Operation Sea Lion was called off for good. The dream of the U-boat tanks had ended. Of the special detachments three were united into a plain tank regiment, 18th Panzer Regiment, while the remaining detachment was assigned to 6th Panzer Regiment, 3rd Panzer Division.
In the spring of 1941, when the High Command of the Army was discussing the crossing of the Bug north of Brest, in connection with the planning of Operation Barbarossa, somebody on the General Staff remembered the diving tanks. "Surely we had those things . . ." Inquiries were made. Questions were asked at 18th Panzer Regiment. "Oh, yes, we still have those old diving tanks." An order came for diving basins to be built near Prague. 18th Panzer Regiment tested the diving capacity of the old tanks. Since they were no longer required to move under the sea, but merely to cross a river, the fifty-foot-long rubber snorkel was replaced by a ten-foot steel pipe. The exhaust pipes were fitted with one-way valves. Within a short time the U-boat tanks were again in perfect condition. On 22nd June 1941 they passed their ordeal by fire.
In the sector of 18th Panzer Division fifty batteries of all calibres opened fire at 0315 in order to clear the way to the other bank for the diving tanks. General Nehring, the divisional commander, has since described this as "a magnificent spectacle, but rather pointless since the Russians had been clever enough to withdraw their troops from the border area, leaving behind only weak frontier detachments, which subsequently fought very bravely."
At 0445 hours Sergeant Wierschin advanced into the Bug with diving tank No. 1. The infantrymen watched him in amazement. The water closed over the tank. "Playing at U-boats!" Only the slim steel tube which supplied fresh air to the crews and engine showed above the surface, indicating Wierschin's progress under water. There were also the exhaust bubbles, but these were quickly obliterated by the current. Tank after tank-the whole of 1st Battalion, 18th Panzer Regiment, under the battalion commander, Manfred Graf Strachwitz-dived into the river. And now the first ones were crawling up the far bank like mysterious amphibians. A soft plop and the rubber caps were blown off the gun muzzles. The gun-loaders let the air out of the bicycle inner tubes round the turrets. Turret hatches were flung open and the skippers wriggled out. An arm thrust into the air three times: the signal "Tanks forward."
Eighty tanks had crossed the frontier river under water. Eighty tanks were moving into action. Their presence was more than welcome in the bridgehead. Enemy armoured scout-cars were approaching. At once came the firing orders for the leading tanks: "Turret-one o'clock -armour-piercing-800 yards-group of armoured scout-cars -fire at will." The monsters fired. Several armoured scout-cars were burning. The rest retreated hurriedly. The armoured spearheads of Army Group Centre moved on in the direction of Minsk and Smolensk."
-- from Moves East by Paul Carell
What Happened To The WWII German Saboteurs Who Tried To Blow Up America? -- As early as 1940, Nazi spies had been scouting and mapping the U.S. for potential targets should America enter the war, and although that group was busted in 1941, the precedent was established... to send in teams to start blowing things up, the planning fell first to Wilhelm Canaris, the head of the Abwehr, Germany's military intelligence outfit... Chief among the assigned targets were facilities belonging to the Aluminum Company of America, which would have devastated the U.S.'s war machine... Walter Kappe and a longtime New York resident George Dasch chose 11 others who would attend a sabotage school together... The saboteurs split into two teams when they left France, with one group heading to New York and the other to Florida. Unfortunately for the New York team, they hit a sandbar and had to walk the last 100 yards, which got the attention of a Coast Guard officer named John C. Cullen...
Hello you one player who updated Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and Norway and had crashes. The saved games on your device are several years old and in format no longer supported, so I recommend starting a new game. You can either uninstall and reinstall the app, clear the data of the game in question via system settings, or change your username to 'forcenewgame' to bypass trying to load the saved game. Sorry, for the inconvenience.
I'm rolling out tweaks to the City-Defense-Bonus system, if you would like to give early feedback, check out the latest 5.0.2 version of Ardennes Offensive (Battle of the Bulge will be also getting it soon). And yes, in this particular campaign, the city bonus is less effective during the first 10 turns (surprise attack). Tweaking combat in city: Factors for bonuses: distance to own city (applies to both sides, the point being, the defender obviously gets a bigger bonus the closer to the own city it is located, and the attacker will be penalized the more far away it is from an own city), size of the city (defense), setting (ramp the bonus up from weakest to strongest), penalty for motorized/armored attack, penalty for attacking with a weak/small/low-quality unit, extra bonus if defending own supply city, being encircled nulls some defense bonuses in addition of delivering its own combat penalty, possible special early/late campaign effects, etc. And to clarify, no city-bonus mention in combat dialog as this would be too much to parse into words.
News Article: Lt. Cmdr. Lou Conter, the last living survivor of the USS Arizona battleship that exploded and sank during the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, died at 102. Mr. Conter was a quartermaster, standing on the main deck of the Arizona as Japanese planes flew overhead at 7:55 a.m. on Dec. 7 that year. The battleship's dead account for nearly half of those killed in the surprise attack.
History Hit Podcast The British WW1 Hero-pilot Frederick Rutland Helped Japan Attack Pearl Harbor
Pricing: Defending the Spanish Republic (the latest game) is now priced the same as all the games.
Once a year I run into a note I have written to myself in the middle of the night about a particular scenario, but now, three months later, it does not make any sense to me at all. To do what, where, why? Was it a response to an email feedback, did I promise I would do this, whatever the heck it is. I can only take solace in the fact that I do get tens of thousands of notes right... but sometimes, there just is too little information to make any sense out of it later.
Changes rolling out: I happened to notice a bug in the underlying game engine that gave the AI generals and AI artillery an extra MP between turns from time to time. A fix to that will be rolled out starting late March. I'm also slowly starting to unify the rear-area-extra-MPs across the series, as it has been massively different in certain scenarios, this will be a fairly long roll-out, as there will likely be tweaks to making the campaign both easier (most of the time) and harder. The old 'getting extra MPs in rear-area' rule was absolutely, the new one tolerates one or two enemy held hexagons within the big range that is used to calculate the likelihood of getting extra MPs. I'm also looking into blocking unnatural combos of various movements methods, i.e. in the future it will not be possible to combine railway movement and operational movement to dash across the map.
Grandchildren's Longevity and Their Grandfathers' POW Trauma in the US Civil War
- An association exists between a grandfather's ex-POW status and the longevity after age 45 of his sons and male-line grandsons but not of his daughters, granddaughters... Male-line grandsons lost a year of life at age 45 (4% of remaining life expectancy) if descended from ex-POWs who suffered severe captivity conditions.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38393987/
RIP Android on Windows: Microsoft will kill Windows Subsystem for Android on Windows-11 next year. Amazon has since sent out an email clarifying that Amazon Appstore on Windows-11 will no longer be available starting March 6, 2024. news article
Panzer Missions has finally reached a point that I'm slowly starting to make it easier, for some time it tended to be easy enough for the great players to simply keep on grinding almost forever, which precisely wasn't the point, as after 10th mission they were supposed to be close to impossible, but over the years all the extra resources and features gave the player too much oomph. And yes, I still tend to write out everything that I have one topic, in one huge 'sentence'.
News article: "The Air Force has decided to retire an F-35A stealth jet as it was seriously damaged by a bird strike. A comprehensive analysis with its U.S. manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, showed that the F-35A suffered damage in 300 components..." source
NEW GAME: DEFENDING SPANISH REPUBLIC 1936
The still loyal remnants of the armed forces of the Spanish Republic army find themselves in control of various disconnected areas inside Spain after a semi-failed coup by Nationalists. After the first small-scale militia struggles settle down, in the middle of August 1936, you are given full control of the Republican armed forces just as the rebels start to gather their forces for the attempt to take Madrid. While most countries choose a non-interventionist policy in the Spanish Civil War, you'll receive help in the form of sympathetic International Brigades, plus tanks and planes from the USSR. Meanwhile Germany, Italy and Portugal give support for the rebels in the form of troops and planes, not to forget that the battle-hardened Army of Africa also chooses to align with the Nationalists. Can you outmaneuver General Franco's wide array of quality forces intelligently enough, both in defense and attack, to turn the dispersed setup to your full control of the Iberian Peninsula to guarantee the continuation of the Second Spanish Republic?
⊕ Full paid version on Play Store
⊕ Full paid on Amazon
⊕ Free turn-limited demo version on Amazon
⊕ Free turn-limited as APK file for side-loading on your device
"You don't know what you have done because you don't know Franco as do I, given that he was under my command in the African Army… If you give him Spain, he is going to believe that it is his and he will not allow anyone to replace him in the war or after it, until his death." -- Miguel Cabanellas Ferrer warning his fellow rebel generals at the start of the Spanish Civil War
AI: So, the good and bad news is that during the testing of the latest campaign, I have managed to find a way to coordinate the AI's efforts in a more grouped-together manner without causing a noticeable increase in processing. This is great news for scenarios that are too easy and potentially troublesome for the already very challenging campaigns, which might need some tweaking after the next round of updates. While crunching numbers for the Defending Spanish Republic, I also happened to spot a flaw in the movement-priority system that has caused the AI to excessively group together support units (generals, artillery, etc.). This flaw is in the underlying game engine, so it is affecting all games as of February 2024.
Mike Sadler, Intrepid Desert Navigator in World War II, Dies at 103. Maj. Mike Sadler, a WWII navigator on the trackless Sahara of North Africa, who guided Britain's first special forces across sand seas on daring behind-the-lines night raids that blew up enemy aircraft on the ground and troops in their billets, was one of the first recruits and the last surviving member of the S.A.S. from the year of its founding, 1941
News: US To Restore Tinian Airfield Once Home To Largest B-29 Bomber Fleet During WWII. Tinian currently houses one international airfield, while Tinian North Airfield, once the most extensive B-29 base during World War II, lies largely concealed by jungle growth. However, the runways and taxiways remain intact.
Utah & Omaha: Hospital fix rolling out.
Article: 8 Strange Tank Prototypes That Never Made It To Battle... Including Vezdekhod, CLB 75, Kugelpanzer, Lebedenko...
Changes currently rolling out: INFO/STRENGTH-MAP button on general's menu varies a bit, but will usually show three separate things (unless there is space in the menu to show these things separately): (1) Unit Type Info pop-up dialog, (2) Unit History pop-up dialog, (3) shade the mini-map in the upper-right corner with the current strength estimate of the forces based on known or recently known units. Certain actions in the menu of generals will alternate, most commonly requesting Sabotage and Call-for-Support, or building Hospital and Airfield. Fuel carrying trucks or depot units had some inconsistencies in their MP cost and likelihood of getting reward MPs for dumping fuel, these should now be uniform across the games. There are some new 'hardware' related settings in the options (dice) menu, including turning rounded display ON/OFF (pad the text at the bottom status line to avoid it being cut off in the corners) and allowing to turn making of the failsafe copy of the current going game ON/OFF (turn this OFF if you're playing on a decade old device which is totally running out of space and storage).
News: A senior American diplomat spied for Cuba for 42 years
- Victor Manuel Rocha, advisor to the highest executive decision-making body of the US government, the National Security Council and the US Southern Command, arrested
- Meeting with an undercover agent, Rocha spoke with a pride about his espionage for the Cubans over several decades
Pricing: Tinian changed to normal price!
Video: Two Vietnamese girls react as they watch Full Metal Jacket, a Vietnam War film by Stanley Kubrick, for the first time.
BATTLE OF TINIAN 1944
You command the American WWII Marine forces tasked with carrying out an amphibious assault on the island of Tinian in order to turn it into one of the biggest airbases in the world.
⊕ Full paid version on Play Store
⊕ Full paid on Amazon
⊕ Free turn-limited demo version on Amazon
⊕ Free turn-limited as APK file for side-loading on your device
To surprise the Japanese defenders, the American commanders decided, after some feisty arguments, to roll the dice and land on the ridiculously narrow northern beach. It's width was only a fraction of what WWII-era amphibious military doctrine considered reasonable. And while this surprise move guaranteed an easier first day for the American troops, the narrow beach also limited the speed of the future reinforcements and made the logistics vulnerable to storms or other disruptions. Commanders on both sides waited to see if the US Marines could block the inevitable Japanese counter-attack during the first night, to keep the landing beaches open to allow successful continuation of the attack.
Features: Flamethrower tanks as a separate unit to take out enemy dugouts and landing ramp units which turn a few hexagons into a road as they disembark. The 30x40 size of the map and the non-excessive number of units allows the turns progress quickly and keeps the front line fluid enough to always have something exciting going on.
"In war as in every other phase of activity, there are enterprises so skillfully conceived and successfully executed, that they become models of their kind. Our capture of Tinian belongs in this category. If such a tactical superlative can be used to describe a military maneuver, where the result brilliantly consummated the planning and performance, Tinian was the perfect amphibious operation in the Pacific war." -- General Holland Smith
Pic: Left-side: Sometimes an encirclement works flawlessly and you manage keep both your speed and coherent front-line while cutting off more than a handful of enemy units. Right-side: And sometimes your troops simply comprehensively run out of movement, and you know the next turns will be chaotic side-way spurts as you are forced to react in a way that creates a chain reaction that weakens the front-line one small sector at a time.
Article: A German armored counterattack of 21st Panzer Division actually reached Normandy beaches. The panzers on the beach certainly had the greatest armor and firepower of assets on the beach. But they had a huge problem: The Brits had naval artillery right offshore and air support overhead...
The arch of every single social media platform (from the point of view of fans and content creators):
• Phase-1: Thousands of engineers work hard to connect content creators with their fans. Fans want to see everything from their favorite content creators. Content creators want their fans to see everything they post. Engineers try hard to deliver that. It's magical.
• Phase-2: Literally everything gets filled with ads to keep on increasing the ad sales eternally, until the placement of the ads no longer even makes any sense whatsoever. The latest example of this is Google Play Store system notifications now often have a red dot when you open the Play Store app, and when you click that notification marker on the play store app to see the critical system message, it's often just a spammy ad promoting an app. Why would anyone ever again check why the play store app notification dot is on? Then Google will, of course, whine that nobody checks their critical yet ad-filled notifications, and begins to force every new change and update to users.
• Phase-3: Thousands of engineers work hard to prevent fans ever seeing anything from the content creator they love. Unless that content creator pays a gigantic amount of money to 'boost' their post. In essence: Engineer try really, really mightily to prevent those two willing participants from having any interaction whatsoever, unless money is extracted from that social interaction. This is the exact opposite of a 'social media connecting people'.
• Phase-4: Everyone moves to the latest new shiny social media that seems magical since it still connects fans with the content they really want to see... and so the cycle begins once again from the start.
• Content creators often whine about being shadowbanned, in reality, that's rare. It's just social media companies going through their usual arch of actually helping to create social interactions to excess ads to blackmailing content creators if they want to be seen at all by the people who really want to see their content. It's sad. It's sick. It's a fundamentally broken model. This is why even the mightiest social media sites have always fallen, so far. Maybe one day a social media will emerge that alters that pattern. Or maybe the old crumbling social media sites manage to lobby for so much bureaucratic regulation that it makes it too costly for any new social media sites to rise ever again.
Researching archives for the next game, and light-heartedly arguing with a military library whether one particular reserve formation was committed to combat or not. Might be one of those cases that part-of/gear-from-it it was, and the rest was not committed.
The movement arrows (indicating the past movement of the ground combat units) system, which can be turned ON/OFF from the settings, does not scale properly under certain conditions. The fix will be rolled out with the next round of updates. Also, these movement arrows might not appear for the multi-MP units that are deep in the quiet rear area, to prevent the arrows from fillng up the entire map.
There was a line of forts defining the eastern Roman frontier. This article presents the results of a regional-scale remote sensing-based survey utilizing declassified CORONA and HEXAGON spy satellite imagery from the 1960s and 1970s, which demonstrate there are far more forts than previously recognized...
Google Play Store has removed Korean War, WW1-Western Front, and Kursk. So, if you ever want to update those apps or install them to a new device, simply re-buy them from Amazon App Store, which does not go around randomly removing apps that have been around up to 10 years and passed 978987987 previous reviews without problems. Frustrated. The core issue is this: In the past I have offered free no-ads no-tracking turn-limited demo versions as separate apps because the players kept asking for them. I can't delete those old free demo apps from the Play Store, that's not allowed. I did make them unpublished, BUT, if I don't update them I will get penalized (YES, Google in its infinite wisdom forces developers to update a decade ago abandoned apps). But if I DO update the old demos, they will get republished, and I get penalized for having duplicate content (the demo app is too similar to the paid app). It's a guaranteed lose-lose situation for a developer like me, who has a lot of stuff on the play store since I have been active over a decade (in the past all the rules were different, in apps were not around or initially only worked in a few countries). And yes, I have appealed these decisions 98798897 times, in the past I have won, but these days there is very, very, very little human consideration left in the Play Store processes. And even if you get a human, he/she has one nanosecond to make a decision to meet his/her quota of decisions for that week. It's utterly hopeless, all human common sense and taking context in consideration is forever lost. It is also noteworthy, that these random blurs of bans often happen on Friday nights. My apps are high enough quality that everyone can browse through the Facebook page and see that many have publicly stated my Android-only apps have kept them from switching to Apple ecosystem. This is freaking reward I get for trying to increase trust in the play store by offering free demo versions the players can test, even for a year if they please.
It is hard to put it into words, how massively different experience it is to make business with Amazon vs Google. Play Store keeps regularly coming up with random or illogical decisions, in the past I have succeeded in getting most of them overturned, but in recent years the appeal process has sadly turned from thoughtful humans to even more automated/outsourced brainless rule staring without any common sense considerations. In a total opposite to Google: The Amazon App Store has contacted me precisely twice over all these years, and both times I have agreed that they were making a solid point, and I happily made a minor change in the game. Feedback from Amazon has so far been very thoughtful and useful, and I have had zero disagreement with their suggestions based on consistent, predictable logic. Over the years, Amazon has earned my trust, while dealing with the Play Store is like being in an abusive relationship you can't (afford to) quit. Every time they contact me, I'm instantly stressed and fearful: what thing that was fine the previous 979879878 times is now raising their anger. It is pretty obvious why most android developers have either shifted to solely creating apps for iPhones, or quit the software field entirely, or just simply committed sui***e after Google's conflicting policy rules have decimated the business they have worked their best years on.
And we developers are not alone noticing and saying Google has gone utterly awry: App founder quits Google, says company doesn't serve users anymore: A scathing blog post details dysfunctional life inside Google: "The company is trapped in a maze of approvals, launch processes, legal reviews, performance reviews, exec reviews, and other bureaucratic processes, and while the employees are capable, they get very little done quarter over quarter, year over year. I have left Google understanding how a once-great company has slowly ceased to function."
Article: Rusting Panzer tank (Bergepanther) is discovered in a Polish river
-- Similar model fetched 15 million euros in Germany two years ago
Some of the defaults settings will change (only affects new installs), for example, moving the unselected unit by swiping from it to the adjacent hexagon and automatic focusing of the map into the direction of the multi-hexagon travel will be turned OFF by default in the future to make the user interface simpler for the new players.
If you like history/WWII pics, I'm once again active on the game series Facebook Page. If you have followed me for a long time, you know that one year I'm posting daily and then go into anti-social-media mode, and barely post anything in a year.
Archaeologists Unearth WWII-Era Air Catapult System In UK. Developed 1938-1940, the RAE Mark III Catapult was designed to launch fully fueled and loaded bombers from runways as short as 270 feet long.
Some of you really like to place a lot of minefields on the map, so I have been deploying a double solution of increasing the amount of memory reserved for the resources and making the mines a bit more expensive to make sure the system can handle that. And I get it, especially on the harder difficulty levels you might need to dig in pretty deep on some sectors to survive.
News article: Undersea video of lost WWII aircraft carriers provides new clues about their dramatic last moments. Video of the first detailed look at the USS Yorktown and two Japanese aircraft carriers Akagi and Kaga that were sunk during the Battle of Midway.
Well, I just panic-rushed to my laptop to fix a crash-causing bug in one of the games, only to realize 5 minutes later that the version number of the crashing app is actually over two years old. The resistance to (auto) updating apps never ceases to surprise me.
News article: Ellsworth Johnson, Last Survivor of a Secret Army Unit, Dies at 100. -- During World War II, he parachuted into France and China as part of a special operations group (that spawned today's Green Berets) on missions for the Office of Strategic Services, precursor of the C.I.A.
Always fun updating WW1: Western Front, as it has both decade+ old code and a lot of exceptions from the mainstream WWII games.
Yeremenko's account of the first appearance of Katyushas (Soviet rocket launchers)
About mid-July I received a telephone message from headquarters: "It is intended to employ 'yeresa' in the battle against the fascists, A detachment armed with this new weapon will be assigned to you. Test the weapon and let us have your report on it."
'Yeresa' was the name for the first rocket-mortar batteries. Not even Yeremenko had known about them. We tested the new weapon near Rudnya. The rockets streaked through the air with a terrifying whine. They, soared up like comets with a red tail and then exploded with a crash like thunder. The effect of the bursts of 320 rockets within a span of 26 seconds in a very limited area exceeded all expectations. The Germans ran away in panic and terror. Admittedly, our own troops withdrew likewise. For security reasons we had not informed them beforehand about the use of the new weapon.
The victims of this surprise were parts of Hoth's 12th Panzer Division. At first the effect on the troops was really terrifying. The German troops nicknamed the rocket mortar "Stalin's organ-pipes." The Russians called it "Katyusha"- Little Kate. Luckily, Yeremenko had only one unit. Thus the appearance of the howling Katyusha at Rudnya did not turn the tide of the battle, but it was another reminder of the technological capacity of the Soviets. It convinced the optimists in the German High Command of the need for caution --or, to put it differently, for haste.
That confusing moment when you find out that one of your updates 3 months ago never actually went out in one of the app stores. Maybe I didn't click the final button, maybe the Internet had a hiccup, maybe the partizan movement got to it. It's a mystery. Well, better much later with even newer update than never.
Let me tell you, updating the campaigns with fuel and ammo logistics requires intensive concentration to not break up anything.
"T-34s! Now it was the turn of the German Central Front to experience that wonder-weapon which had made its appearance on the southern sector during the first 48 hours of the war, spreading terror and fear wherever it moved. Six miles east of Borisov, near the village of Lipki, Nehring's and Kreyzer's armoured spearheads made contact. The 18th Panzer Division clashed with a crack unit from the centre of Karl Marx's world revolution. When it first hove into sight the T-34 struck a good deal of terror among the German armoured spearheads and Panzerjägers. But abreast of it, at a distance of about 100 feet, came an even bigger monster-a KV-2, weighing 52 tons. The light T-26 and BT tanks between the two giants were soon set on fire by the German Mark Ills. But their 5-cm. shells made no impression whatever on the two giants. The first Mark III received a direct hit and went up in flames. The other German tanks scuttled out of the way. The two Soviet monsters continued to advance.
Three German Mark IVs, nicknamed "the stubs," hastened to the scene, with their 7-5-cm. short-barrel cannon. But the heaviest German tanks then in existence were still some three tons lighter than the T-34, and the range of their guns was considerably less. However, the German commanders discovered that the crew of the T-34 were unsure of themselves and very slow in their fire. The German tanks underran its fire, weaved round it, and dodged its shells. They got the giant between them. They shot up its tracks. machine-gun fire from a Mark III. Meanwhile the huge 52-ton KV-2 with its 15-2-cm. cannon was still shooting it out with two German Mark Ills. The German shells penetrated into the Russian tank's plating as far as their driving bands, and then got stuck. Nevertheless the Russians suddenly abandoned their vehicle-probably because of engine trouble.
This incident reveals the cardinal mistake of the Russians. They employed their T-34s and super-heavy KVs not in formation, but individually among light and medium tanks, and as support for the infantry. Those were very outdated tank tactics. The result was that these vastly superior Soviet tanks were smashed up one by one by the German tank companies, in spite of the terror they originally struck among them. In this way General Kreyzer's counter-attack near Lipki collapsed."
Book exceprt from Moves East by Carell
So, I asked two different chat AI platforms the question: What were the most significant Allied victories during the WWII?
Panzers to Baku: Version 1.0.2.5 rolling out, including even more fixes and refinements.
Argh, I rolled out corrupt escape-withdraw-process trigger to a handful of games, which explains the recent flurry of double updates.
Video: All The Times We Nearly Blew Up The World (Veritasium YT channel). The crash of nuclear-armed B-52 near Thule was not an isolated incident. Two years earlier, another B-52 carrying 4 hydrogen bombs crashed near the Spanish town of Palomares. One of the four bombs was recovered virtually intact, but two others released plutonium when their explosive triggers detonated. A fourth bomb fell into the sea, it was eventually recovered, but radiation released by the damaged weapons required a U.S.-led effort to decontaminate 640 acres of topsoil...
Price of Baku dropped to normal price.
Article: Stuka pilot Hans-Ulrich Rudel recalls what it's like to fly the Ju 87G, the tank busting Ju 87 fitted with 37 mm Cannons that allowed him to destroy 12 T-34s in one day... results with the BK 3.7cm-equipped Junkers did vary, and some units found the weapon to be unsatisfactory. Thus, they removed the cannon and returned to carrying bombs. But those crews which prevailed began to devise effective short-dive or shallow glide, low-level attack tactics in which an enemy tank was approached in a long, straight run, and fire opened at the closest possible range. Proof of the success of this method came in July 1943 when, despite his earlier reservations, Hauptmann Rudel of StG 2 destroyed 12 T-34s in one day, each one being recorded by a photograph...
Patriotic War got 'geo-blocked' in the Russian Play Store. I don't know why.
Auto-move (moving the selected unit multiple hexagons at once in the quiet rear area) is getting more settings which allow you to turn the entire thing off, or set the range it is active. There is also a setting to allow predicatively moving the map view forwards into the direction of travel, this way you don't have to constantly scroll the map as you auto-move the unit in the vast rear areas.
I just can't believe how troublesome events the enemy amphibious landings can be. Placing AI units on the map mid-game on a spot where the player might already have units makes the whole question of who controls what so confusing to the underlying code. For example, in some cases the city might have been controlled by the AI, but the hexagon (land) under the city was controlled by the player, and you can imagine how that conflict screws up various reality checks. Not to mention that players approach the area in various ways, with various timetables, with varying tactics (dugouts, mines, etc), so it doesn't really matter if I use time or area based triggers, things can always go wrong. And since the amphibious AI landings rely on a vast number of underlying code calls, any change in them will potentially throw calculations off balance. I guess what I'm trying to say is, apologies for the diverse array of issues with the landings.
Video: America's Wars 1754-1945: Animated Battle Map. The American Battlefield Trust presents to you "America's Wars" Animated Battle Map, detailing all major U.S. military conflicts from the French and Indian War to the conclusion of World War Two.
Operation Barbarossa version 6.2 adds new ways of marking/drawing scattered units, battle markers, and movement arrows. The goal is that hopefully the movement arrows and battle markers can be drawn over each other without making a horrible mess. Naturally, there are a couple of settings to alter their appearance: The transparency/strength of the movement arrows can be tweaked or turned off, and various symbols can be selected to mark the locations in which units have scattered in. You might want to check how it all looks to send me feedback before these changes roll out to every possible game.
Book excerpt:
13th Panzer Division on 20th September succeeded in crossing the Terek south-west of Mozdok. On 25th September General von Mackensen launched an attack with the whole of HI Panzer Corps against Ordzhonikidze, on the road to Tiflis. While 23rd Panzer Division was slowly advancing with units of 111 th Infantry Division, the SS Panzer Grenadier Division "Viking," brought up from the Western Caucasus, pushed through farther south against the Georgian Military Highway. The ancient road to Tiflis was reached.
The combat group of the WSS Panzer Grenadier Regiment "Nordland" arrived on the battlefield from the lower, wooded part of the Caucasus, and with it the "Viking" Division was able to force its way into the northern part of the Grozny oilfields, and to block the Georgian Military Highway at two points. The keypoint known as Hill 711 was stormed, at heavy cost, by a battalion of Finnish volunteers fighting within the "Viking" Division, and was held against all enemy counterattacks. But would the troops have any strength left for the final push, for the last 60 miles?
Four weeks passed before III Panzer Corps had accumulated the necessary reserves in manpower, fuel, and replacements to launch a new-and as they hoped the final-attack.
On 25th and 26th October the Corps moved forward from its bridgehead on the western bank of the Terek in order to break through towards the south-east. The battalions fought stubbornly. An enemy force of four divisions was smashed and about 7000 prisoners were taken. Rumanian mountain troops blocked the valleys leading to the south. The 13th and 23rd Panzer Divisions drove on to the south-east, and by a vigorous attack on 1st November took Alagir and cut the Ossetian Military Highway on both sides of the town. Major-General Herr's 13th Panzer Division, following up this bold armoured thrust, reached a point three miles west of Ordzhonikidze on 5th November.
By then the last remnants of strength were spent. Soviet counter-attacks from the north cut off the divisions from their rearward communications...
from ...Moves East by Carell
NEW GAME: PANZERS TO BAKU 1942 is out!
Operation Edelweiss: The ambitious attempt by the Axis forces to launch an attack across the Kalmyk Steppe and deep into the Caucasus region to seize the critical and vast oil reserves in the faraway Baku. Fuel and ammo logistics, horrible terrain, and Soviet landings on the flank all combine to make this a harrowing attempt. On the plus side, rebels hiding in the mountains are ready to start an anti-Soviet insurgency.
⊕ Play Store (full paid) ⊕
⊕ local free turn-limited APK to sideload ⊕
⊕ Free turn-limited version at Amazon ⊕
⊕ Full at Amazon App Store ⊕
If you liked Axis Endgame in Tunisia (Kasserine Pass), you'll like this one too, as the overall basic setup is similar.
Major features and updates currently in the process of being rolled out:
+ Setting: Make support units to be at higher or lower initial selection priority when using NEXT button
+ Setting: Automove (moving several hexagons at once) can focus the map into direction of travel (less need to move map around)
+ Units that will get a combat bonus from the selected General marked with black-and-white edges instead of the previous solid color
+ Building hospital/airfield requires at least 90% of the province to be under your control (varies by difficulty level)
+ Slightly bigger Status Line at the bottom of the screen (useful on tablets)
Podcast: The Fall of Mussolini. History Hit podcast.
Of Heroes and Traitors - Seven Great Generals Who Switched Sides in Wartime. For some who change sides, it is a shrewd political move that puts them on the path to hero status. Others find that they have squandered any hope of esteem and a glorious reputation.
Over 700 Civil War-Era Gold Coins Found Buried on a Kentucky Farm. A Civil War-era treasure of more than 700 gold coins was unearthed in a Kentucky cornfield, a find that has at least partly vindicated legends of lost Civil War gold that have driven American treasure hunters for more than 150 years. It is possible the hoard was buried ahead of a destructive Confederate raid carried out by Brig. Gen. John H. Morgan in the summer of 1863.
New features that are currently in process of rolling out: Automove (moving the selected rear-area unit multiple hexagons at once by tapping far-away is now a settings that limits the range of this feature), bombardment by the player has been made more effective in severeal campaigns, If a unit covers a tactical route, narrow green line drawn over the unit to indicate the route, Dugout can be placed on a border hexagon of a province if enemy control at most around 10% of it, Settings: Less initial HP to reflect the fact that units were still in the process of being mobilized (only a handful of games).
Videos:
Why the Japanese were the most DYSFUNCTIONAL Force in WW2 (The Front Youtube channel)
D-Day - The Forgotten SAS Operation called TITANIC
The Secret Box that Was Snuck Out of the UK to Completely Change WW2
The forgotten Japanese attack against the U.S. before Pearl Harbor
Director of The Tank Museum, Richard Smith, shares his choice of what he considers to be the worst 5 tanks at the Bovington Tank Museum
Did a German Pilot Break the Sound Barrier 2 Years Before Chuck Yeager?
Tankgewehr M1918 - The World's First Anti-Tank Rifle. Nine months after British and French forces rolled their tanks onto the Western Front in World War I, Germany readied a wholly new kind of counter-weapon. Driven by the shocking and surprise appearance of a new mechanized foe, German generals contracted Waffenfabrik Mauser AG to build the first anti-tank rifle of its kind in history...
Changes rolling out: coloring of the minimap is changing on some games; loss/victory texts have been rewritten, instead of ON/OFF setting for all generals, it is now possible to set a percent chance for each general being in play; if a unit covers a tactical route, a narrow green line is drawn over the unit (just like with the rivers); a turn cannot be ended if resources that would expire between turns are still available, a dugout can be placed on a border hexagon of a province if the enemy controls few hexagons of that province (difficulty level also affects this calculation), more UNDO actions, simplified and size-wise smaller icons (dugouts, shield city, some NATO symbols), and much more.
Podcast episode: The Battle of Leyte Gulf [WW2 Podcast]. The battle of Leyte Gulf was the largest naval battle of WWII, it consisted of four separate actions near the Philippines between the US Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy. The Japanese plan was to disrupt the American landings on the island of Leyte. In one respect, the plan was a success, the Japanese did draw off Admiral Halsey's 3rd Fleet...
Game: Operation Sea Lion: Big updates: added a British landing on a coastal town by British special forces, setting to inflict HP losses on German ground combat units while being transported over the channels.
Video: Territories Under German Control Till The End of WWII - The Very Last Battles of WW2 in Europe ... Discussing the last battle lines of WW2 in Europe and talk about the last WWII battles that were fought, like the Georgian Revolt of Texel, the battle for Itter Castle, the final WW2 battle: the battle of Odzak. (History Hustle Youtube Channel)
D-Day version 7.0. A big rewrite of the whole campaign in order to bring back the long-lost balance in this particular scenario (some winning it too quickly before German reinforcements even arrive while others got stuck in battle of attrition. If you have played this game for years, let me know how this latest version feels to you.
The Red Army Used Camels to Fight the Germans at the Battle of Stalingrad. It appears Camels were first implemented by soldiers fighting around the Kalmyk Steppe, as the animals were better able to navigate the difficult terrain than military vehicles and could carry more than a horse. Many of the camels belonged to the 120th Guards Rifle Division and served at the Battle of Stalingrad.
The Spy Behind the Iron Curtain. This episode of History Hit podcast contains high-speed chases, modified cars and a mission to uncover secret enemy technology. It's everything you'd find in a James Bond movie, but also on a Cold War BRIXMIS mission- one that today's guest Dave Butler was part of, gathering intelligence on Soviet firepower as Britain prepared for World War 3.
Rolling out: A sabotage feature is coming to most campaigns. The generals can, via the action menu, request guerilla sabotage acts in nearby enemy-controlled areas, some of which will turn into player control for the duration of that turn. Cost: usually 1 TMP and 2 MPs. If you feel that this is too much of a fantastical feature, simply do not use it.
Rolling out: As I'm dropping support for the decade-old versions of Android, I will be able to update the design of the pop-up dialogs, which have been relying on the very primitive default code, to be as combatible and as small in size as possible.
A big update to Operation Market Garden, which includes more actions for generals and, hopefully, a fix for the flaw that caused paratroopers to be thrown over enemy dugouts during variation/initialization.
New game: UNION (American Civil War 1861-1865)
Note: Version 1.0.1.2 rolling out (refined the Victory Point distribution in cities)...
Imagine for a moment that you are the commander of the Union armies during the most pivotal moment in American history - the Civil War. Your mission is clear: conquer the cities held by the rebellious Confederacy and reunite a nation torn apart by strife.
As you survey the vast front line stretching from the eastern coastline to the wild west, you are faced with critical decisions at every turn. Do you prioritize raising new infantry corps to bolster your forces? Do you rely more heavily on the power of gunboats and artillery to strike fear into the hearts of your enemies? Or do you take a more strategic approach, constructing a comprehensive transportation network with railways, locomotives, and riverboats to optimize the logistics of your military machine?
Though the road ahead may be long and treacherous, you have the strength, the will, and the determination to see this through. The fate of a nation hangs in the balance, and it is up to you to make the tough choices that will shape the course of history.
- Play Store
- Amazon App Store
- Free Turn-limited version at Amazon
- Local free-APK for sideloading
If you have followed my incoherent ramblings for a decade, you know that the Union side of the American Civil War has been one of those campaigns I have tried to make a couple of times before over the years, but I have never managed to get anything satisfying or worth releasing until now. The difficulties of crafting a challenging scenario from the Union side are many. Union had much more industrial strength and manpower (in some sources, the Union produced 95% of iron; good luck creating a balanced multi-year war from that initial setup), and the capitols are right next to each other, only a few hexagons apart, so how do you make the flow of the game such that one side does not seize the capital instantly? The Union carried out several landings; how do you sensibly model that without getting too complicated? Not to forget that when the war started, both sides had fairly small, militia-styled formations that only later evolved into massive corps and armies. And how do you add enough unit types to keep the game from being just pure monotous regular infantry? So, to even out the playing field at least a little, one has to dig up pretty much everything from logistics to riots and uprisings and native raids from tribes that tried to use the situation in their favor to gain more independence or autonomy. Unbelievably many moving parts have to fit well enough to create an engaging yet challenging game-play without drifting into ridiculous territory. But I'm happy and proud to say that I think I have finally managed to bring all these elements together in a way that creates that "I NEED to play ONE MORE TURN!" feeling.
Video: Japan's Secret Supercarrier Only Seen Twice in WW2. Shinano was an aircraft carrier built by the Imperial Japanese Navy and the largest such ship built up to that time. She remains the largest warship ever sunk by a submarine.
DISCOUNT: Fall of Normandy 1944 (German side of the D-Day) is available at the lower price for a couple of weeks at Play Store (in the selected countries that cover 99% of my sales). It's a smaller scale scenario, basically the reversal of the D-Day. But be warned: it's a challenging campaign as the Allied ground and aerial superiority grinds away your forces as they get closer to the beachheads, that regularly receive new fresh divisions.
WW2-Podcast: Desert Armour: Tank Warfare in North Africa... Was Italy the only country that was prepared for the desert warfare?
Article: The isolated Thule Air Base in Greenland is the only U.S. outpost that can monitor all of Russia's missiles, but thawing permafrost is undermining the station. The American military is belatedly scrambling to address the base's deterioration, particularly the possibility that an infrastructure failure could disable Thule's radar tracking... Near Thule Air Base, over 35,000 cubic meters of ice are breaking off from the Sermeq Kujalleq Glacier each year. 'You can sit there and you can just listen to the icebergs break off the glacier.'
On the last stages of testing a new game...
Video: Castle Expert's top ten medieval castles (Shadiversity Youtube channel)
A handful of rare bugs will be fixed during the next round of updates. These bugs include various landing issues where a certain type of supporting non-combat unit might block the landing because combat does not occur. Plus, some initial variations might occasionally throw units where they should not be. Thanks for all the feedback; it is much appreciated. Some of these bugs require a fairly strange combination of events to occur.
Article: A WWII bomb found in Great Yarmouth has detonated while work was being done to defuse it, causing a huge blast that was heard for miles. People on social media said they heard a loud bang and felt buildings shake 15 miles (24km) away.
Video: 12 Abandoned Submarines In The World (LightningTop12 Youtube channel)
Treasure map that 'shows where Germans hid their looted riches worth MILLIONS during WWII' is revealed to the public for the first time by the National Archives of the Netherlands
Aftermath: Now, throughout Ommeren there is evidence of unauthorised excavations. Exasperated residents have appealed to treasure-hunters to stay away after they descended on the Dutch village of Ommeren searching for riches potentially worth millions, allegedly hidden by German soldiers during World War Two.
Poland between Germany and USSR: Version 1.0.0.3 rolling out with a handful of fixes and tweaks.
NEW GAME: POLAND between GERMANY AND USSR!
Rarely in military history has a country been attacked from all four cardinal directions. In September 1939, the Polish armed forces, still in the middle of the process of mobilizing, faced that grim reality. It's like a real-life tower defense scenario in which you are attacked from every possible angle. You command the Polish WWII armed forces, which are hopelessly defending Poland from attacks from three separate directions-or from four directions if the USSR decides to attack as well. The official plan, called Plan West (the September campaign), relies on defending all land areas, but it might be smarter to use the defensive fortifications, rivers, and local militia to your advantage to slow down the German advance enough to mobilize all the regular divisions and brigades into a concentrated defense. Every day of fighting increases the likelihood of receiving Western assistance, or at the very least strengthens the case for the rebirth of the Polish nation after the war!
o Play Store (full paid)
o Local free APK to sideload
o Free turn-limited at Amazon
o Full at Amazon
Article: Could WWII-era Panzer VIII Maus (128mm gun) Stood A Chance Against modern M1A1 Abrams (small 120mm gun with lower number of rounds)?
Video: An International Legionnaire's Guide to Useful and Useless Kit. A British volunteer back from Ukraine (LindyBeige Youtube Channel).
Over the entire course of the second world war only one Axis prisoner managed to escape Canadian Allied captivity and make it all the way back home to Germany. This is the extraordinary story of Lieutenant Franz von Werra. In von Werra's case it had become clear that the British Isles could no longer contain the slippery pilot, so on January 10, 1941 von Werra and a thousand other German prisoners were placed aboard the ocean liner SS Duchess of York to be sent to internment camps in Canada.
Podcast: The Last Dambuster: Johnny Johnson (An episode of History Hit podcast).
Article: The Young War Gamers Who Changed the Course of WWII. In January 1942 Admiral Cecil Usborne formed the Western Approaches Tactical Unit or WATU, a dedicated war gaming and analysis organization under the command of Commander Gilbert Roberts.
Podcast: US Navy Demolition Divers (WW2 Podcast). The Combat Demolition Unit would land on D-Day with the first wave of troops. It was their job to clear coastal defences that might get in the way of landing craft. In the Pacific, Underwater Demolition Teams were carrying out similar tasks on islands such as Iwo Jima and Okinawa
Site: The Medal of Honor Valor Trail™ connects you to the places most deeply linked with Medal of Honor recipients from the Civil War through the 21st century - battlefields, birth and burial places, namesake sites, monuments and museums. Its goal is to connect powerful stories to tangible places, creating meaningful connections to the past.
Video: Stalingrad Private Footage and a war diary from a member of the 71st German Infantry Division.
Article: How One French Tank Destroyed an Entire Panzer Company. Some French tanks managed to be used to their fullest potential by foolhardy commanders such as Captain Pierre Billotte, making up for the lack of a general defense plan through the use of wit and innovative tactics. As the German Panzer column entered the village of Stonne, they did not expect any resistance, this expectation would be shattered when the lead tank of the Panzer column would see Billotte's Char B1 bis turn onto the street the Panzer column was on. After disabling the leading and last Panzer within the column, the remaining Panzers started showering the Char B1 bis with shells. This would be a problem for any other tank, but as the Char B1 bis were built with very heavy frontal armor...
Video: The Forgotten FIRST 'Doolittle Raid' 1938! (Mark Felton Youtube channel). Four years before Jimmy Doolittle led his daring raid on Tokyo someone else attacked Japan by air, using American-built aircraft.
The Battle of Moscow had a bug that reduced the probability of attacks by the AI. Fixed in version 4702. This is a strong contender for the worst bug of 2022.
Video: The Largest US Surrender In Europe in WW2 - The Infantryman's Perspective
And yet another patch of APKs added on the site (free turn-limited versoins): Guam, Spanish Civil War, Rommel & Afrika Korps, German Defense: Second Battle of El Alamein, British Offensive: Second Battle of El Alamein, Invasion of Sicily, Allied Italian Campaign, Anzio & Monte Cassino, German Airborne Invasion of Crete, D-Day, Moscow
Article: German tank with three turrets confused Allied spies during WWII: Though it was designed to be Germany's state-of-the-art medium tank, the Neubaufahrzeug suffered from drivetrain problems...
Added more APKs on the site (free turn-limited versoins): Operation Luttich (German drive to Falaise Gap), Fall of Stalingrad, Falaise Gap (Allied), First World War: Western Front, American Civil War, American Revolutionary War, Axis Crimean Campaign
Video: Craziest Soviet Machines You Won't Believe Exist Part-1 (By Amazed Youtube channel)
Added more APKs on the site (free turn-limited versoins): Ardennes Offensive (German side), Battle of Bulge (Allied side), Invasion of France, Operation Market Garden, Axis Balkan Campaign, Juno & Sword Beaches, Utah & Omaha Beaches, Dieppe Raid, Battle of Berlin, Fall of Army Group Center, Drive to Caucasus
Video: Who Was the First Person to Drop a Bomb From an Aeroplane (Highlight History Youtube Channel)
Article: The US military doesn't know where 6 of its nuclear weapons are. The U.S. military had 32 nuclear accidents, also called "Broken Arrow" incidents, during the Cold War, and several nuclear weapons remain unaccounted for. The Soviet Union lost far more during the Cold War, often due to submarines sinking with a dozen or more nuclear missiles on board.
Added more APKs on site (free turn-limited versions): Operation Spring Awakening, Drive to Leningrad, Invasion of Poland, Finnish Defense 1944, Battle of Suomussalmi, Operation Sealion, Invasion of Norway.
Article: Low water levels on Danube reveal sunken WW2 German warships. The vessels were among hundreds scuttled along the Danube by German Germany's Black Sea fleet in 1944 as they retreated from advancing Soviet forces.
In addition of showing yellow edge on units which can receive +1 HP replacements, this yellow edge feature will be extended to extra MPs.
Podcast episode: Author Ian W. Toll who has written extensively on the Pacific Theater in the Second World War joins Dan to put the finishing touches on the Supernova in the East subject matter. (Dan Carlin's Hardcore History addentum
Video: hy The Allies Couldn't Overcome German Trenches in Spring 1917 (The Great War Youtube channel)
As a test, I have begun to slowly add the free turn-limited versions of games as local APKs on this website. The listings on the main page now include Operation Barbarossa, Iwo Jima, Korean War, and, naturally, Axis Endgame in Tunisia.
Features rolling out: When replacement resources are selected, unit types able to receive +1 HP will have yellow edges (if not max HP already). Set 0-3 random units from both sides to be heroes or cowards, with a combat bonus or penalty of up to 50% (if you want more paranoia in your game play). The icons of units will be updated to include less gradient, which both makes the icons clearer on small screens and reduces their size. Campaigns with fuel delivery on land will include new options to have circles around out-of-fuel units to spot them more easily.
Video: Forgotten 1943 Battle Between America and Canada (Mark Felton Youtube channel).
Video: World War II in Europe with Flags: Every Day (Geography and Space channel).
NEW GAME: AXIS ENDGAME IN TUNISIA (Kasserine Pass)
The Allies are rebuilding and regrouping after the failed run to Tunis, the British 8th Army is still far away, and the Allied stranglehold on the Axis supply routes from Europe to Tunisia is only just starting to severely reduce the flow of resources. This is the perfect chance for the Axis units concentrating in Tunis to try to flank and encircle a handful of the most advanced Allied divisions by attacking via the Kasserine Pass to take on the inexperienced Americans, seizing the Allied fuel depots located behind the city of Tebessa, and using that extra fuel to drive Panzer Divisions all the way to the city of Bone (northwest corner). If successfully carried out, this difficult maneuver might, once again, turn the tide of war in North Africa, and maybe even prevent the notorious collapse of the Axis armed forces in Tunisia. Not only will you face tough decisions about the motorized attack - how many spearheads to use, when to turn North, how to make the meager fuel last to the targets - but also about the wider strategic situation in Tunisia: Will you take an offensive or a defensive posture vs the eventually coming attack by the British 8th Army, and how will you handle the northern Tunisia where more and more infantry and some special units will eventually became available as the desperate last reinforcements from Europe arrive before the Allied stranglehold of the Mediterranean supply routes starts to reduce the amount of fuel and resources available. Fuel and ammo trucks plus fuel depots can be refilled from any Axis supply city (marked with the letter 'S' and a yellow circle around them).
o Play Store (full paid)
o Local free APK
o Free turn-limited version at Amazon
o Paid Amazon App Store
The real difficulty, IMHO, is a multiple layered thing. Low unit density makes for loss sensitivity. Fuel limit creates a movement sensitivity. The key to limiting this is planning. All in caps too. I've had to plan out some major attacks that took 5-6 turns to stock the fuel. Plus the use of weapons and planning what units are in a supporting role.
Paul C.
I have NEVER changed the map scale and details so many times as I did during the crafting of Axis Endgame in Tunisia. The whole project started as a limited Kasserine Pass scenario, but since all the moving pieces in Tunisia inevitably affect each other, I piece by piece, ended up adding more land area to the map, which led to adding more armies, which forced a total re-do of AI, rear area movement, fuel and ammo resources, and everything. The campaign starts after the failed Allied run for Tunis, when both sides are regrouping and concentrating their forces, which opens up a chance for a flanking attack for the Rommel-led Axis side. If you manage to push through the French and inexperienced American forces and turn your motorized offensive north, you will learn that the fuel logistics is such that you're mostly relying on seizing the Allied depots located between Tebessa and Bone to finish the attack. Since the Allies are building up forces both in the upper-left and bottom-right corners of the map, it's essential to hurry up and cut off the most advanced Allied forces plus Allied supply cities before the notorious collapse Axis forces in Tunisia gets under way via the combination of Allied stranglehold on Axis supply lines from Europe and sheer Allied numeric superiority.
The U-Boat War: A Global History 1939-45. An episode of WW2 Podcast.
A Deep Dive into the Tiger I, by the Chieftain (Youtube video)
Science: Effects of Tabletop Games on Cognition in Older Adults: 11-study Systematic Review and 10-study Meta-Analysis.
In older adults with intact cognition, tabletop games had positive effects on their global cognition (standardized mean differences [SMD]=1.36, 95% confidence intervals [CI]: 0.37-2.34, P < 0.001) and executive function (SMD=0.47, 95% CI: 0.12-0.83, P<0.001). In older adults with cognitive impairment, significant differences were found in global cognition (SMD=0.53, 95% CI: 0.09-0.98, P=0.02). pub-med source
Troop movement animation of WWII in Estonia by Eastory Youtube channel
Juno & Sword game seems to be, once again, mysteriously, available on the Play Store. You know, after being removed for almost a year for 'being an exact clone of Utah & Omaha' due to having completely different units, map, AI, etc. I just simply love love love trying to run a serious business on top of such a blindingly random platform. Obviously, I never heard back from Google about most of my appeals.
The next round of updates, after getting a new game out, will bring forth a handful of AI fixes, reducing the 'getting stuck over a hospital' type issues caused by priorities interlocking the unit at one spot.
Landing in The First Wave on Omaha Beach on D-Day, A Regiment's Last Survivor Remembers (American Veterans Center channel on Youtube)
Yes, I'm working on new games, nope, it's not progressing very quickly.
Hall of Fame bug: After receiving a report of a score not showing in the HOF, and after doing a lot of digging, I finally managed to find an edge case which might prevent the score from being included in the database. Fortunately, a hash of these 'unaccepted' scores was made, so if you lost an epic score, email me the details, and I can confirm that from the hash, and add it manually. Apologies.
First Time Watching: Full Metal Jacket (Brandon). Here is something a little bit less stressing, I have recently watched some 'First Time Watching' videos on Youtube, it's interesting to see how wildly differently various people react to war films, and on what aspects they chose to focus on.
It's a tough time to be an independent developer located in the Eastern part of Europe at the moment, so I would appreciate any help, from purchasing a game to any likes, ratings, or shares possible. Simply trying to get into a productive frame of mind for a longer periods of time is challening, when people I personally know have volunteered to serve and are seeing action, and there exists so many aspects of life to worry about and get distracted by. Not just my own, but my elderly parent, who is also located near the border to Russia. Strange times we live in.
Features rolling out: Adding options to (1) turn sending your scores to the online database ON/OFF (2) turn developer alerts of major events ON/OFF. Both of these can be found from the Settings View (Main=Dice) once they have been added.
Zeppelin Warfare. At the start of hostilities, the German military had two airship fleets: one for the navy and one for the army. As the war progressed it was the navy Zeppelins that pursued the air war against Britain with the greatest conviction. Throughout 1915, German airships encountered little in the way of serious opposition when they appeared over Britain. The nation had trailed in aviation development prior to the outbreak of war and had also given little consideration to creating an aerial defense plan.
Russian Invasion of Finland - The Winter War 1939-40 video by Mark Felton
Apologies for the lower-than-usual rate of updates on this log, but since I'm located adjacent to a country involved in a major land war in Europe, I have been a little bit pre-occupied with refugees, preparations, and watching readings in gamma-radiation meters increase as heavy combat vehicles rumble the ground and rise Chernobyl-dust into the air from the shaking soil... It's still hard to truly comprehend that a major land war is once again ongoing in Europe - and we might be heading into the Cold War II. Hoping for the best - preparing for the worst.
Features rolling out: Minefields won't be arriving automatically, but need to be requested by Generals (assuming minefields are not requested from Depots/Battleships/Engineers), HP replacements can be assigned to a unit which has up to 3 enemy controlled hexagons adjacent to it (on normal Difficulty Level), HOF located to web, AI artillery may escape just like AI generals do, unit resting in hospital won't be interrupted by storms/enemy-artillery/strafing/cold/fatigue, add more military history quotations.
Tank Angling: Historical or Stupid Game Mechanic? video on Military History not Visualized Youtube channel.
'Lost' blueprint discovered for world's first tank built by the Brits to win WWI
The fascinating design document is the only known blueprint for the British-made Mark I tank that exists. The highly-detailed, large scale technical plan is like an 'X-ray' for the tracked vehicle that helped change the course of the First World War. The 44ins by 28ins blueprint, that is dated May 1916, has come from a private vendor whose family have owned it for some considerable time.
DIEPPE: HOF had excess test-conditions filtereing out many scores, fixed now. Also, seems that at least one player has found to way to 'beat' the game and conquer the whole map, so a lot of tweaks coming in the next update. I'm also considering adding a rule which would LIMIT the number of the evacuated units to one per evacuation location per turn.
Eastern Front: Version 6261 rolling out, fixes the resource assignment issue on some devices.
NEW GAME: DIEPPE RAID 1942 is starting to roll out. The harrowing Canadian-British Commando raid on the port town of Dieppe in 1942 to practice the D-Day landings. Play Store or Amazon or Free at Amazon. Exceptionally your final score will be cumulative Victory Points multiplied by the number of combat units evacuated.
HOF: Viewing the Hall of Fame will be relocated from the app to the server. The app will simply include a link to the HOF webpage (opened in your default browser). The online HOF will not make an effort to remove multiple scores by the same username (as the app did). There are multiple reasons for the change: (1) Older budget devices are are often short on space and processing power, which creates various issues. (2) Downloading and processing and sorting and viewing thousands of entries made of various data types is error prone. (3) The web listing will always be up-to-date. (4) The smaller application size never hurt anyone. (5) High score data is just once transferred to the server, the end of story - instead of moving the new scores back and forth between the device and the server and the other devices updating their Hall of Fame.
What changes and features are generally being rolled out (early 2022): Assigning replacements (+1 HP) to a unit will be a bit easier (3 adjacent enemy hexagons allowed, but the severity of enemy-blocks-replacements depends on the Difficulty Level. AI artillery might escape capture (just like the AI generals do). AI will be better at holding a coherent front line (instead of accidentally sending all the units in one specific area away to carry out various tactical/strategic acts). The Hall of Fame (HOF) will be updated (see the separate segment about HOF on this page).
Privacy Policy. It is now a little bit more detailed.
Airships of the American Civil War: The Bizarre Story of the Union Army's Experimental Balloon Corps. It was because of the daring accomplishments of men like Lowe and La Mountain that the brief, but spectacular experiment known as the Union Army Balloon Corps came to exist.
The oldest Android API to be supported in the latest versions of the apps will be 19 (4.4 Kitkat).
The Absurd Rules-of-Engagement GIs Had to Follow During the Vietnam War. One of the more curious locations fought over during Vietnam was Michelin's rubber tree plantation - yes, Michelin the tire company. This plantation was a major headache for US troops, as they were forbidden from calling in artillery on enemies inside of it.
Working on the Hall-of-Fame databases, which have not been properly updated in ages...
Obscure Military Ranks That No Longer Exist And What They Meant
If the zoom in/out buttons stop responding, reduce the size of the minimap on the upper left corner, as the cause very likely is some type of rounding issue where the minimap is assumed to cover the zoom buttons.
Melting Alpine glacier reveals hidden WW1 tunnels and bunker. Military historian Giovanni Cadioli wriggles in backwards, his head torch revealing an extraordinary scene that has literally been frozen in time. It is a First World War bunker constructed from timber, scattered with the possessions of its past inhabitants - rusted tins of food, bullet casings and metal cooking implements.
Battle of the Bulge fix: HOF database was stuck after the latest update.
Mark Felton has an interesting theory about an 'unknown' Japanese torpedo attack on San Francisco in 1941 : Golden Gate Torpedo Attack - Japanese Assault on San Francisco 1941
Renaming First World War: Western Front to World War I: Western Front since Google Play Store no longer allows words like 'first' or 'great'.
Operation Barbarossa: The Lost Diaries of Lt. Friedrich Sander (History Hit Podcast) what was it really like to serve on the front lines of the Eastern Front? The historian Rob Schäfer has given History Hit exclusive access to the diaries of Lt. Friedrich Sander, a Panzer officer and one of the 3 million German troops involved in Operation Barbarossa. The diaries are brutal in their honesty
New super """"""""""brilliant"""""""""" Google Play Store policy, no more numbers in the title or app name, so which Battle of Berlin is my app, who knows, because I can't use the year... *sigh*
The Kettering Bug: America's First Foray Into Unmanned Drone Technology Started During WWI. The development of such a machine began in WWI, when the US Army asked American inventor Charles Kettering to design a flying bomb, one that could fly without a pilot. Kettering was tasked with designing a flying bomb capable of hitting a target 40 miles away. Orville Wright, the man credited with taking to the skies for the first time, was a consultant for the project. The Kettering Bug looks like a relatively conventional aircraft, but it's actually a flying bomb, a precursor to the modern-day cruise missile.
George Patton bought supplies from Sears because the US was so unprepared for WWII. Petton was born into an affluent family and married the daughter of an extremely wealthy businessman, whose family was also worth a fortune. With these funds, Patton was able to personally finance the equipping of an armored division.
Air force unit can land on out-of-supply airfields from now on. The during-the-tap check for supply route has been too much work for the old budget devices.
That thing when you start to make a quick 8 minute fix and are still figuring that app out 8 hours later...
Battle of Medina Ridge 1991: One of the Largest Tank Battles in US History. By the 27th of February, the Gulf War coalition had already made huge progress through Iraq... the US 1st Armored Division arrived at the seven-mile-long Medina Ridge. Unbeknownst to them, the ridge was hiding an enormous force from the elite Medina Republican Guard Division, that had a mix of T-72 and T-62 tanks...
In order to reduce the massive amount of processing the creation of a new game takes, I have started a long-term process to relocate creation of some of the (non-front-line) units from new game creation to the turn number two. This should not change anything at all, but if you start a new game and suddenly an ememy unit emerges over your unit at the start of the turn 2, let me know, this is theoretically possible with when a higher amount of variation is turned on from the settings.
The First Air Raid Happened When Austria Dropped Bombs on Venice from Pilotless Hot-Air Balloons (1849). It was possible to launch a fleet of hot air balloons loaded with explosives from a ship and send them in the general direction of a target. That's what the Austrian army did - twice - over Venice, in a campaign to recapture the city when its citizens rebelled against imperial rule and built their own republic.
History Hit Podcast: The Unheard Tapes of Bomber Command
Little Willie: The World's Oldest Preserved Tank Prototype
Seems like WWII bunkers are the latest thing:
1) Unique Islington flat with refurbished WW2 bunker goes on the market
2) Bunker L479: World War II bunker turned into an Airbnb in France
After re-capturing the city of Vyborg in August 1941, the Finns discovered time-ignited and radio-triggered mines left by the Russians. The mines exploded after a certain part of their machinery resonated with a certain radio frequency. A group of pioneers led by Lieutenant Lauri Sutela found special launch devices in Antrea from an explosive placed under the bridge. The equipment was studied and the frequency reserved for blasting was blocked by playing the song Säkkijärven Polkka nonstop on the radio for 6 months until the batteries of the mine-launchers were calculated to be exhausted.
WW2 Podcast: Luftwaffe Special Weapons (aviation historian Robert Forsyth). As the course of the second world war turned against the Third Reich some radical proposals and inventive designs, were put forward by armaments manufacturers, scientists, technicians, aircrew and even private individuals to the German Air Ministry for consideration as weapons to be utilised by the Luftwaffe. Some proposals were destined never to leave the drawing board, while others not only underwent trials but were issued to operational units and used in action.
Slowly updating the "Italian Trilogy": Sicily, Anzio-Cassino, Italian Campaign...
This episode the History Hit podcast changed my views on Gallipoli campaign Gallipoli: What Led to Britain's WW1 Disaster?.
Article: Little Willie: The World's Oldest Preserved Tank Prototype. Britain's Little Willie claims the title of the world's oldest tank, being assembled and driven over a century ago. It is a prototype that was pivotal in the eventual creation of the famous rhomboid tanks that rolled across WWI battlefields.
Article: The Bovington Tank Museum has hosted its first wedding after one couple said their vows in front of a World War Two tank.
Article: Submarine USS R-14 (SS-91) Made it Home with a Sail Made of Blankets
I will be renaming "Second Battle of El Alamein: German Defense" to "Panzer Army Africa: 2nd El Alamein" or something similar to avoid crazy bans based on apps sharing a word or two in the title.
Video: Secret Allied Panther Tank Factory
Inflatable 3-ton dummy lorry
Video link: Blackadder answers: How did World War I Begin?
Background image-pattern setting will be turned OFF (using yellow-green-color) by default on new installations from now on.
News: An elderly German man is facing a suspended prison sentence for storing a WWII tank in his basement. According to man's lawyer, a US museum is keen to buy the 1943 Panther tank. Central to the case is whether the man broke Germany's War Weapons Control Act by holding the tank as the legislation controls the manufacture, sale, and transport of weapons of war.
Oh, how I love to hate settings and options... Yes, it's great as a user to be able to tweak everything so that everything works and looks pleasant on your particular display technology and brightness settings. However, as a developer, it's so much work to keep all the various settings from conflicting with each other, at least tragically. Some city icons are transparent, some are not, so some cover adjacent rivers, some do not. Add on top of this the changes in the size of the icons for units, and now everything starts to be drawn over each other a lot with certain combinations of settings. Now multiply this with hundreds of settings, each with a handful of possible values. As a developer, you might check all those 50,000 combinations when you're creating the very first game or game engine, but checking everything after each and every tiny change and addition is not humanly possible if you want to keep progressing. Let's say 50,000 combinations of various settings and options exist per app; some are quick to test, some are not (for example, if you need to create a specific stack of various types of units); let's say it takes on average 5 minutes to see if something creates problems or not. If you spent 12 hours per day carrying out those checks, you'd be finished in a year. If you want to check everything, a year of checks after every new change would completely kill all progress. This is why (even the biggest) companies either avoid settings like poison or keep simplifying the options they offer, or they simply check the new changes and the most popular combinations and hope for the best for the rare combinations. Over the years, you will of course inevitably create setting combinations that will screw something up; all you can do is rely on players taking their time to report them or using common sense to not get stuck using that particular combination out of the tens of thousands possible. You can automate some checks, but drawing 20 things on top of each other is not one of them.
I have been asked what Youtube channels I recommend for WWII related content. I definitely praise these three channels mentioned below. Both are awe-inspiring because of their in-depth coverage of a topic is based on countless different books/sources, instead of just one or two. If you're a history buff, I'm certain you are aware how distorted and varying sources are in each country vs the next, and the view of WWII changes per decade, add on top of that the tensions of the Cold War, nationalistic pride, translation errors, etc, and it's no wonder some topics might be outright incorrect even in some eminent WWII books.
(1) Mark Felton Productions - Pretty much the only channel I have came across that didn't get confused by the shady politically motivated documentation East Germany produced about some post-war events, you gotta respect that.
(2) TIK History - His detailed mega-series on the battle of Stalingrad is relying in-depth Soviet and Western sources, even laying out the most likely answers to some of the decades long arguments about what happened at place Z on day X.
(3) World War Two week by week in realtime by Indy Neidell & Spartacus Olsson
Article: Operation Unthinkable - Churchill's Plan to Drive the Red Army From Eastern Europe in 1945 ... Churchill had long held that Stalin represented the greatest threat to the security of post-war Europe... The strategic architect of his proposed land offensive was Brigadier Geoffrey Thompson... Operation Unthinkable was to involve more than 8,000 tanks and would use 47 American, British, Canadian and Polish forces push the Red Army back to the Oder and Neisse rivers...
Added six Play-through documents by various players with screenshots and commentary (shared from Google Drive) to the FAQ-page.
Excerpt from the book 'Moves East' by Paul Carell:
The Soviets tried to break through the barrier again to restore communications with their 9 cut-off divisions which had made the penetration. That had to be prevented. For this task Model chose the best man. "Hold on at all costs," had been Model's order to Obersturmbannführer Otto Kumm and his 650-strong regiment from the 2nd WSS Division. "At all costs," the general had repeated emphatically.
The Russians attacked ceaselessly. Day after day their formations grew more numerous. They were intent on getting through, on restoring contact with the cut-off divisions. It was at that point that the battle of Rzhev was being decided. The Russians kept up their charge ceaselessly - by day and by night, throughout 3 weeks. They flung in battalion after battalion, then regiment after regiment, and eventually brigade after brigade.
On the sixth day the Russians appeared in front of 10th Company with 30 light tanks. They advanced to within 50 yards of the positions. They halted. And then the whole armada opened fire at the infantry dug-outs and machine-gun posts. They continued blasting them from all barrels for a full 30 minutes. Then they drove back into the forest. Silence and brittle cold hung over the plain. Two hours later a man crawled out of the shattered position of 10th Company back to battalion HQs. He was helped in. He was Rottenführer Wagner. Seriously wounded, with frost-bitten hands, he tried to stand up in front of Bollert, the battalion commander, to make his report. But he collapsed, and reported lying on the floor: "Hauptsturmführer, I'm the only one left from the company." A tremor ran through him. A moment later there was no survivor of 10th Company.
There was now a gap in the front two-thirds of a mile wide. The VI Army Corps rushed 120 men into the line-drivers, cooks, bootmakers, and tailors. Paymasters were in charge of platoons. Fine men, but wholly inexperienced in this kind of fighting. They moved into the positions of 10th Company.
When dusk fell the Soviets were within 50 yards of Kumm's regimental HQ at Klepenino. The small village had 30 houses, but only 8 were left. Hauptsturmführer Holzer, the regiment's adjutant, had cut deep holes under the floor and sawn firing slits into the lower beams which formed the wall. From the regimental commander down to the drivers each man stood in his firing-pit, with carbine, machine-pistol or machine-gun. No matter how often they attacked, the Soviets never got closer than 15 yards. Kumm's front on the northern edge of the great pocket held firmly. Relief brigades of the Soviet 39th Army did not succeed.
German casualties, too, had been heavy. On 18th February, when Kumm reported at his divisional HQ, Model happened to be there. He said to Kumm, "I know what your regiment has been through - but I still can't do without it. What is its present strength?"
Kumm gestured towards the window. "Herr Generaloberst, my regiment is on parade outside." Model glanced through the window: there were 35 men left standing of the 650.
The difficulty level is slowly affecting more and more elements (tiny things like getting certain types of resources a bit earlier on easy level, etc.).
Conflict-Series by Joni Nuutinen :: Sortable Table of Games :: FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions