War Diary (dev log) of Conflict-Series by Joni Nuutinen
Sortable Table of Games :: FAQ, latest: Paris 44: Uprising and Liberation
PINNED TOPICS: Rolling out updates for the navigation bar issue. Patreon is open.
Japan in WW2 patches to version 1.2.1
Juno & Sword at version 2.2.4 with a patch plus latest features that are being rolled out.
Well, I finally caved in and removed a line of code that Google Code Check kept relentlessly claiming was "useless". Now, a week later, I'm seeing two separate crashes because of the lack of that very line. The old Google might have known something about computer programming, but the modern Google does not. Just because something happens to work for an ultra-rich kid working on a hyper-elitist, state-of-the-art computer with trillions of terabytes of disk space using the world's fastest internet connection does not mean it will work in real life for people using their beaten-down, out-of-storage device on a spotty online connection.
Sea Lion version 5.0.4.1 should finally stop the phenomena where some settings flip back to default.
Balkan patches to version 3.5.2 ... except on Amazon App Store, since that particular game is currently in stuck--status there and I'm still waiting for the Amazon to sort it out.
Video: How keeping the Royal Navy at sea kickstarted the Industrial Revolution
Several US states are rolling out new laws; the most outrageous one of them requires you (the user) to prove in a legally binding way you have your mother's permission to use the calculator app, weather app, etc... Every 60 minutes!
Or, alternatively, have derivatives of your most crucial personal ID floated to millions of developers who have no time, resources, know-how, or interest to handle them properly. Plus, obviously, this will create a massive amount of bloated code, needlessly doing these checks nonstop, draining the battery.
But according to politicians, this is, like, totally, you know, reasonable, or whatnot. So, if you wonder why all the developers are quiet, we are just trying to scramble a response to all this nonsense by all the countries and states on top of all the useless nonsense we are already required to do.
Android has a neat feature that automatically tries to drag along apps' data when you upgrade to a new phone. The downside for me is that it allows players to drag along saved games that were started 10 years ago, and those are not compatible with anything on this planet. The amount of time spent sorting messes and confusion those cases cause is infuriating.
Sea Lion add a handful of smaller features with version 5.0.4
Article: Plaques commemorating African American soldiers fighting against Germany removed from a U.S. military cemetery in the Netherlands
— More than 8,200 Americans are buried at the Netherlands American Cemetery in the village of Margraten. Families could chose whether to leave the remains of their loved ones there or have them returned to U.S. soil. The cemetery itself is symbolic of U.S. participation along with Dutch fighters toward the end of the war.
Kursk at version 7.5.0.1 (Fire devices via Amazon App Store).
Pateron post: Weekly history/military news links
Patriotic War at version 2.3, speeding up the industry production of the slowest-to-make units. Only on Fire devices via Amazon App Store.
Free Patreon post: Challenges with list of coming reinforcement units feature
Defending Spanish Republic patches itself to version 1.6.0.1.
Podcast:episode: Renault F17 Tanks
— Robby Houben from the Belgian Royal Military Museum talks about the Renault FT. This small but revolutionary French tank changed armoured warfare, and how it was still seeing action when the Second World War began..
Korean War at version 4.1 (only on Fire devices via Amazon App Store).
Video: Why did France get so much of Africa? (Short Animated Documentary)
— When Africa was Scrambled by the European powers (and Belgium) in the late 19th century, France got a massive chunk of it all to itself. But given that France was seen as the great enemy of Europe and went through long periods of imposed Isolationism, why did it get so much?
Finnish Defense 1944 holding at 4.3.0.2
Brits at El Alamein at version 3.1
"There was greater misfortune for 8th Armoured Brigade on its way forward. Arthur Reddish: As we marshalled our column in the pitch-darkness with lorries in the centre and tanks on the outer, a German plane dropped flares over our positions. Within minutes, the bombers arrived.
The first bomb landed on a lorry containing petrol and blazing fuel spewed over a wide area. Our other lorries caught fire and some exploded. The desert was lit up for kilometres around. The conflagration attracted enemy artillery, mortar and machine-gun fire and more bombers.
We lost our entire transport section and many of its drivers; and some tanks were disabled.
...
Trooper Ian King of 3rd Hussars, was bringing up fuel for the tanks of 9th Armoured Brigade: shells were falling in the surrounding minefields which were erupting with numerous explosions. I felt vulnerable in a vehicle containing hundreds of gallons of high octane fuel.
To our left were the burning remains of the Notts Sherwood Rangers convoy. There were some 15 vehicle wrecks, some still in flames and others smoking, each vehicle having held either fuel or ammunition. They had been caught on a minefield and shelled.
...
This devastation and disorganization prompted Brigadier Custance to ask Gatehouse, who also had grave doubts about the second night’s operations, to call off the attack.
As a consequence, whilst the infantry, engineers and armour continued struggling forward at Miteirya, a crisis conference was held at 0230hrs at Eighth Army’s Tactical Headquarters."
— El Alamein, The Battle That Turned the Tide of the Second World War by Bryn Hammond
Eastern Front OMG! I think I finally found the ultimate reason for the recent imbalances. Now the question is, does fixing this tilt the game too much in the other direction because of all the earlier misguided attempts to balance elements? Version 7.4.4 rolling out.
Suomussalmi (Wanter War) frozen at version 4.4, adds frozen-forest background pattern as the default.
Okinawa at version 5.4.0.1
This new AI fighter jet doesn't need pilots, runways, or GPS
— Remember the AI-controlled F16 jet that the US Air Force tested in a dogfight last year? The same AI pilot has debuted in a fully autonomous stealth drone, though it is being referred to as a fighter jet. The vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) craft can operate not just without humans, but also without runways.
Tech idea: The world needs a compression algorithm that is smart enough to realize that the folder it is packing has 200 pictures all taken in the same room, and therefore, the wall is the major part of every single photo. Why not just save one high-quality sample of the wall pattern and use that for all the 200 pics?
Defending Spanish Republic at version 1.6, mainly tweaking the early turns: slower movement of early Nationalist units, AI artillery attempts to be more cautious, more initial minefields for the player. Plus obviously all the latest features that are being rolled out, like generals' ability to fly from airfield to airfield.
Patreon: List of history/military news I stumbled on this week
Operation Spring Awakening at version 3.0 adding Panzerfausts to help with the very challenging scenario.
US Breakthrough Strike Cobra steps into version 1.0.4
Panzers to Baku at version 1.6. The Hall of Fame now shows whether the fuel system was ON or OFF (might still be unknown for some of the early scores).
WW1 soldiers' messages in a bottle found on Australian beach more than 100 years later
— Messages in a bottle written by two Australian soldiers a few days into their voyage to the WW1 battlefields of France have been found more than a century later on Australia´s coast.
Spanish Civil War (Rebels) steps into version 3.6.0.2
Fall of German Army Group Center at version 2.8.0.1. A handful of small tweaks that make the scenario a bit easier.
"The most striking illustration of the catastrophe of the fall of the German Army Group Center was the fact that out of 47 generals employed at the front as corps commanders or division commanders, 10 perished in action or went missing, and 21 ended up in captivity...
No scroll of honour records the struggle waged by the last survivors of Ninth and Fourth Armies trying to make their way back to the German front. Not many of them got through. 800 altogether. They made their way back to the German front on the Vistula in East Prussia and it took them 7-8 weeks of foot-slogging.
One such group on a hopeless trek was Corporal Johannes Diercks' group of the 20th Panzer Division, that suddenly found itself cut off in the midst of the Bobruysk disaster. During the day they hid out in the swamps. They had skirmishes with Russian patrols and search commandos.
They met other German groups. They came across the crew of a shot-down He-111. They joined up. They parted again. A platoon of 52nd Nebelwerfer Regiment joined Diercks. Its lieutenant placed himself under the corporal. Leadership now went with personality, not with rank...
— Scorched Earth by Paul Carell
Axis Crimean Campaign advances to 3.0.0.1 bringing many noteworthy changes that make the scenario easier: adding the Italian Special Forces unit; some Soviet landing units will have lost HPs during the landing approach; adding back the Romanian general, which at some stage was accidentally disabled, included few Axis defenses along the northern coast.
Video: Inside An Upcoming Restoration of| Rare Japanese Type 95 Ha-Go Light Tank
— The Australian Armour & Artillery Museum: Captured at the end of WWII and long forgotten, this tank still carries original paint, fractured plates, and even remnants of its past life in the Pacific. Daz explores its current condition, points out the unique Japanese design features, and explains how it differs from the German and Soviet armour we’ve worked on before.
Sicily quick patch to 5.2.0.1 as the settings file error might cause crash.
Demyansk Pocket at version 6.7 adding initial minefields, so the top spot should be easier to seize.
Guadalcanal patches to 4.5.0.1
Patreon blog post: Why I Like the Cliff Element and How It Fits into Bigger Future Plans
Allied Invasion of Japan 1945 gets a patch update to 4.2.2
Article: Meta brought AI to rural Colombia. Now students are failing exams
— Teachers report a surge in AI-generated homework and essays, while student performance on exams declines.
Students “simply copy what comes up in the chat, but they’re not capable of analyzing what they’re replicating.”
Some even graduate without mastering how to read and write.
Study: More Articles Are Now Created by AI Than Humans
— We find that in November 2024, the quantity of AI-generated articles being published on the web surpassed the quantity of human-written articles.
And in news that surprises absolutely nobody, SEVERAL consecutive updates to the Union are all in the state of eternal stuck at the Play Store. Grrr...
Leningrad at version 4.0 adding few newly raised local units as their own separate weaker unit type and the Hall of Fame now includes whether FUEL element is ON or OFF.
After a month-long back and forth about the text color used in the logo, I'll yield and from now on start to switch from basic red to orange-yellow for better visibility at a tiny size.
Tinian cruises to version 1.6
Almost seeing the end with the current frantic roll-out, just 10 games to go; sadly, they are the most out-of-date ones, so slow going before the finish line.
Article: King Tiger tank's £1m restoration starts
— The King Tiger tank has been in the collection at The Tank Museum, in Bovington, since the 1950s. But it was incomplete when it arrived, and was stripped of its parts during the 1980s to facilitate another restoration. It will take 4 years to completely rebuild the German tank.
Union marches to version 1.7.0.3 with a bit more color in the menus for easier grouping of various items.
Video: First Disaster Caught on Camera: How the Launch of a British Battleship Turned Deadly - HMS Albion
Third Battle of Kharkov rolls on to version 4.0.0.1 adding more initial minefields, dugouts, visibility. Plus, Generals can now fly from airport to airport. So the initial Soviet offensive should be a bit easier to take on, and the door to top 10 spots in the Hall of Fame open.
Feature starting to roll out: General can take a flight from airport to another nearby airport, MP cost 1-5 favoring lower costs.
Crete at version 5.2
Four WW1 soldiers found during hospital build
— The remains of four privates of 1/5 Bn Lincolnshire Regiment and part of a Lewis gun team, were found during work to construct a hospital near Lens. Ministry of Defence "war detectives" said it was rare to have been able to identify four soldiers and track down each of their families.
Tarawa at version 2.6
Amazon updates are lagging behind today because somebody at Amazon messed up name-server settings and many services are down globally, including the system that allows updating apps on the Amazon App Store.
"In 1940 the Wehrmacht as a whole, the airborne corps in particular, enjoyed one significant intelligence advantage over their opponents. Lufthansa operated flights to all European capitals, and for several years before the war started, the airline's crews had been accumulating photos of the terrain over which the Wehrmacht might have to operate. They also had detailed layout plans of every airfield capable of handling Ju 52s and, by analogy, Luftwaffe bombers and fighters. Abwehr agents masquerading as tourists provided further information. Even after England and France declared war in Sept 1939, Lufthansa maintained scheduled flights to neutral Belgium, Holland, Denmark, and Norway, enabling the Abwehr to build up enormous portfolios on targets that would be assigned to the Luftlandekorps. Not all objectives were equally accessible, especially the key Belgian fortress of Eben Emael. However, the Abwehr still succeeded in providing the paratroopers with highly detailed information culled from disaffected laborers who had been involved in its construction."
— German Airborne Divisions; Blitzkrieg 1940-41 by Bruce Quarrie
Panzer Missions at version 6.5.0.2 -- fixes hangup issue.
German Ardennes Offensive updates to version 5.7 adding few German antitank gun units.
Video: 15 Forgotten 70s War Films That Are Still Incredible Today
— Many of these films flopped on release but later earned cult followings for their authenticity and daring direction.
Japan in WW2 straggles to version 1.2.0.2, bringing forth a ton of tweaks and fixes, not to mention all the latest features. By far the most troublesome issue is trying to explain to the AI the foreplanning required for decent usage of carriers and planes, while the AI also loses carriers from battles but also from earlier damage when they are otherwise safe. Add on top of this all the moving and escaping and limited space in narrow straits, and the soup of "why does this carrier have 8 planes when rules forbid it" is ready.
Eastern Front, okay, let's try version 7.4.3.2 to catch all the current bugs.
I have been laboring on updating the Japan-in-WW2 for a while now. When I started, my to-do list had 1687 items on it (exact number), some of them were simple checks or changes, and some were hour-long tasks.
It's just simply NOT fun working on something this complex, as the chance of screwing something up if you fail to consider all the dimensions and implications is so stressful, as proven by the two-month relentless update cycle after the release.
The good news is that I'm finally starting to see the end of the vast task ocean I have crawled through.
Rolling out: on top of scenario specific changes & dozens of small tweaks not worth listing individually:
— Cliffs behind the ON/OFF switch
— Limiting Dump Fuel/Ammo or Rout special actions to once per turn per unit (enforcement has been lax)
— Various styles to draw the red over enemy-held area (and as always: red shading can be turned off, and there is a lever to control its intensity)
— Grouping and relocating setting-items like fuel/skills together into Options (gear) settings lists to be more organized and because Settings (main menu) has an excessive number of elements
— Disbanding the dugout mostly gives dugout replacements
— Option to control color shading of dialogs
— Four styles to draw water/sea hexagons,
— A switch to leave extra black space at the bottom of the gameplay screen
— Extra Immersive Mode level to force it persistently
— New hexagon-based logo
— Ability to animate an AI unit only if the player controls over N percent of the nearby area,
— Unit Tally lists cities that have changed hands the most times
— Hasten action now works out of supply too
— Show/hide Victory/Start images
— ON/OFF switch for the Fallen Units popup.
Operation Luttich pushes into version 2.5
Video: Rome's Exploration of Sub-Saharan Africa: How Far Did They Reach?
Eastern Front at 7.4.3 fixes the issue of Soviet Rifle formations arriving too close to the front in the south during the first phase of play.
Allied Italian Campaign at 5.7
Article with pics: Inside the new 4-star hotel in Germany that used to be a WW2 bunker
— One of the two 'flak towers' in Hamburg, the St. Pauli Bunker was built in 1942 in just 300 days. The bunker, which was also known as Flakturm IV Hochbunker (literally 'high bunker'), was one of the largest to be built in Hamburg.
Battle of Berlin trying to hold defense lines at version 5.4
Well, the update to Guadalcanal was rejected by the Play Store. Why? Because the server holding the privacy policy HTML file was rebooting just at the moment Google checked its existence, and you know, instead of trying again later or using the knowledge that the file has been there for decades, EVERYTHING in the process was fully and brutally stopped.
Kids at coding camp understand how to write code that does multiple checks in case of failure and use prior data to skip over tiny details that are momentarily failing from derailing the whole process. But can a tech company with a market cap of $2,130,000,000,000.00 do that kind of very rudimentary coding? Of course not!
Invasion of Norway scuttles to version 5.1
Video: The biplane with a jet engine... in 1910
Guadalcanal to version 4.5
Fall in Finland
Bougainville lands on version 1.3.0.1
Article: Ultra rare German cipher machine comes to light in 'untouched' condition
—An ultra rare German cipher machine which was salvaged by a British intelligence officer at the end of WW2 has emerged for sale for £35,000. The Lorenz SZ42 machine was introduced in 1942 after the Bletchley Park codebreakers led by Alan Turing cracked the Enigma.
Utah & Omaha wades ashore with version 2.1.0.2 (fix: unit icons not drawn on some devices)
Falaise Pocket version 2.5 adds a new option to change the texture of the red that marks the enemy-held area.
Invasion of Poland at 6.3
Battle of Moscow 1941 crawls to version 6.3.
Video: Inside the WW1 Sturmpanzerwagen A7V tank
— A 20-man beastie this replica is to be found at the German Panzermuseum.
Fall of Normandy surfs to version 6.3
Panzer Army Africa at El Alamein digs in at 3.1.0.2 -- more replacements (both types and quantitiy).
Patreon: What should we rename Panzer Army Africa's defense at the Second battle of El Alamein to?
Anzio - Monte Cassino climbs to version 5.1. Reorganizing the colors of units and reducing flags on unit icons.
Article: Backyard fireworks of WWII bombs still litter Solomon Islands
— Japanese and Allied forces waged a savage campaign across the Solomon Islands 1942-1945, leaving behind bombs now buried under homes, schools, businesses, football fields and vegetable garden.
Bernadette Miller Wale remembers playing with bombs when she was young .She and her friends would even set them off on purpose: they called them "backyard fireworks".
American Revolutionary War updates to version 6.3
Oh dear lord, even more bureaucracy: even the simplest "hello world" app now needs a clunky system of 900 lawyers/bureaucrats to meet all the billion legal requirements.
"The Texas App Store Accountability Act (Senate Bill 2420) was signed in May 2025, and will be effective January 1, 2026.
Any app store that serves users in Texas must verify the age of every user who creates an account.
The app store must share with the app developer the user’s assigned age bracket and whether consent has been obtained... It applies to all apps."
Invasion of Japan at version 4.2, including many fixes, draws Americal Division's units with the Americal symbol, but the units function as Army Infantry, plus all the latest hoobla that is rolling out.
Kiev thunders to version 1.5.0.2
American Civil War: South critical fix version 7.3.3 also adds few initial forts that the US had constructed along the coast.
ALERT! Do not finish an ongoing game with American Civil War SOUTH version 7.3.2. Working on an update right now. Sadly, the turn count of some scores was messed up beyond repair.
That's the price of trying to frantically update 60+ apps after manufacturers add some funky new navigation bar code. Sigh.
Axis Endgame in Tunisia steps into version 2.1
Article: WWII German Bunker Found Beneath Couple’s Home on Guernsey, in the Channel Islands
— "After living there for a while, we became even more aware from our neighbors that normally it’s not just a massive concrete base for a flak gun. Many seem to have rooms underneath, so the hunt was on."
Poland between Germany & USSR at version 1.6.2.1
Juno & Sword steps ashore with version 2.2.3
Stalingrad at 5.2.2
Luzon to version 2.7.2
Dieppe at version 2.1.2
Sealion sails to version 5.0.2
Article: WW2 Guernsey podcast victorious at awards
— A podcast telling the first-hand stories of Guernsey's last surviving WW2 deportees to the Biberach internment camp in wartime Germany has won two trophies at the British Podcast Awards.
I'll be adding one more "anti-cheat" mechanism, so if the top scores fail to renew over the coming months, we know it was being used.
As I grind out updates, here is a longer explanation of the Navigation bar issue (simple blog post here)
Balkan at version 3.5.1
Patreon blog post (public): The challenges of making Sealion but defending Britain
— Views on why this fairly regularly asked scenario is so tricky to construct well.
Case Blue critical midnight bug fix (version 3.2.1), as certain combo of settings and passage of time could collapse supply for both sides.
Leyte comes ashore with 4.1.2
Peleliu at version 3.2.2
Starting to roll out: Disbanding a dugout will mostly give +1 HP replacements for dugouts. Removing brackets from the names of units as they can be troublesome when trying to parse data later.
Iwo Jima to version 6.4 adds a better flamethrower tank icon and initial bombardments plus a handful of fixes. There is also a fundamental problem with trying to visually showcase how the hills are on three layers: if I make that prominent enough to stand out, other visual cues start to fade out.
Patreon now open!
https://patreon.com/joni_nuutinen
For over 15 years, I’ve kept 60+ strategy games alive and running, even on the most battle-worn budget phones. Divide the price by all those years, and you’re down to pennies. Honestly, you don’t get that kind of support even for your car or house. If you could toss a few pieces of silver into the supply wagon, your support would mean a lot and help keep the frontlines running.
Invasion of France crumbles to version 6.2. This turned out to be a much bigger update than anticipated, as I added French heavy tanks (Char B1), plus an option to multiply them (what-if French had used them in modern manner.
Video: Germany's Forgotten Ally That Bled More Men Than Anyone During WWII
— This is the untold story of Germany’s most underrated ally in World War II a nation that sent over half a million men to the Eastern Front, Romania fought in Odessa, Sevastopol, and Stalingrad, and paid a devastating price.
We are approaching the moment when one third of any history podcast is just ads or promotion.
Babarossa to version 7.0.3.1 and a patch makes it a dot one.
American Civil War: South gallops to version 7.3.2
Video: The Axis Top 5 Mistakes Video Edition with The Warrior Next Door Podcast
— History of WWII Podcast joined by Ryan Fairfield and Tony Lupo from The Warrior Next Door Podcast, each gives their Top 5 reasons why the Axis lost the war.
Market Garden parachutes onto version 6.2.4
Battle of the Bulge fires into version 6.6.2
Saipan takes a small step to version 3.7.1.1. There are four options to draw water hexagons. Thanks for the help, the bug was successfully located.
Road struggles on GUAM:
"The chief problem facing Geiger's troops at this point was supply. The Army and Marine Corps divisions had both moved so rapidly that supply dumps were left far in the rear....
After the 77th Division landed, 302d Engineer Combat Battalion began working on the new road. Te engineers found nature on Guam to be their worst enemy. The soft clay proved an insufficient foundatio, and torrential rains and heavy traffic made it a quagmire.
Because of the consistency of the ground and the need for speed, the engineers could not follow good road-building practice. It was impossible to build roads on a higher level than the surrounding ground, since the soft clay would not support such a route.
Instead, after culverts of coconut logs or oil drums had been emplaced, a 2-lane road was bulldozed out, excess dirt being pushed to either side. This road was BELOW the surrounding ground, and water drained onto rather than off of it.
As heavy traffic rutted the road, the bulldozers pushed off the mud until a firm base was reached farther down...
Eventually, the 302d Engineers was ordered to abandon its attempt to construct a main supply route across the island. "
— Campaign in the Marianas by Philip A Crowl
Pointless Play Store bureaucracy strikes again! This time I'm forced to fill out a ton of forms for EVERY SINGLE app attempt tried a decade ago, abandoned apps, unpublished apps, and pseudo-removed apps. If the Play Store allowed me to actually remove apps and never ever hear from them again, I would do it in a second. SECOND!
On what planet does it make sense that every week you have to visit every place you have lived in your life and do a major proper cleanup of the place? Because that is what this is equivalent to. Why do I have to do maintenance like fill out forms for projects that have not existed anywhere for decades except in the Play Store's demented system?
Article: Ex–Google CEO Eric Schmidt: tech workers must do grueling 12-hour workdays and 72-hour weeks
— “If you’re going to be in tech and you’re going to win, you’re going to have to make some tradeoffs. We’re up against the Chinese; the Chinese work-life balance consists of 996, which is 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week.”
This work obsession is making its way to Silicon Valley: An increasing number of startups in the Bay Area now expect employees to put in 72-hour weeks.
Rommel & Afrika Korps dusts itself off at version 7.4.4
Well, Amazon has decided to "modernize" the app submission process, and by that I mean that things that I could previously easily do with a single quick click on a huge target, now require several clicks, conveniently located at the opposite edge of the display, and those are tiny 4-letter links.
Case Blue advances to version 3.2 The Hall of Fame now uses "F" marker to show whether the FUEL system was enabled or not.
Article: Lt. Col. George E. Hardy, youngest Tuskegee Airman, passes at 100
— Hardy was commissioned as a second lieutenant at 19 and flew his first combat mission before he had ever driven a car. He ultimately completed 21 WWII missions and also served in the Korean War and Vietnam War.
Article: F-Droid Warns Google’s Strict New Rules Could Kill Third-Party Android App Stores
— Google's upcoming requirements to verify app developers who have nothing to do with Play Store threaten to "end the F-Droid project and other free/open-source app distribution. We do not believe that developer registration is motivated by security. We believe it is about consolidating power and tightening control over a formerly open ecosystem."
Post by Ex-Android team member Jean-Baptiste "Quéru: Open Android ecosystem seems to have all died
— I used to be part of the Android team. All the tidbits of news about Android make me sad. When I worked there, making the application ecosystem as open as the web was a goal. Releasing the Android source code as soon as something hit end-user devices was a goal. Being able to run your own build on actual consumer hardware was a goal... But, now this seems to have all died [as Google continues to close down Android].
Paris 44: Uprising and Liberation sneaks into version 1.1
Eastern Front grinds to version 7.4.2. Hunting down a persistent hard-to-find bug, giving some attention to the old railway building system, plus all the latest features being rolled out.
Cobra: US Breakthrough Strike drives on to version 1.0.2. If you want to test all the latest settings and graphics changes, this full game is available for free (no ads, no in-app purchases, no nothing).
Video: U-530: The U-Boat That Escaped to Argentina
— In July 1945, two months after Germany’s surrender, submarine U-530 appeared in Argentina. Its long, mysterious voyage across the Atlantic sparked rumours of secret missions...
D-Day steps to version 7.6.2.
Good news, I finally have two confirmed fixes for the taskbar/navigation bar excessively covering elements at the bottom of the display.
— Firstly, the improved Immersive Mode setting offers a special option number 2, which basically regularly forces the desired hide-bars choices in place.
— Secondly, there will be a setting below Immersive Mode to add a chosen amount of extra void black space at the bottom of the gameplay screen that can be safely covered by various system bars. This option is in case you don't want to alter the immersive mode.
Guam updated to version 2.7.1.1 and renamed to US Retakes GUAM.
Changes starting to roll out from now on: New hexagon-shaped logo, status line extended to two lines if there is too much stuff to show, relieve action renamed to revive, slight color shading on dialogs to indice things like won/lost battles, Unit Tally lists cities which have changed hands most times, setting: animate AI unit only if player controls over N percent of area within range of two, initial bombardments (marked with sabotage marker, which is now expanded to cover both...
Thinking and tinkering about completely changing the design of the logo used in the Play Store. The key point is that the first impression of the icon is shown at a very small scale, and discovery being the core challenge, it only makes sense to sacrifice everything else for trying to show critical aspects clearly on the logo.
So, in my case, I'm thinking of making the shape of the icon a hexagon, for obvious tabletop board game reasons. Then using two elements, the NATO infantry marker on top and a very short, brutally short, text below it to identify the campaign/scenario. Some longer names need to be, err, dealt with.
Everything else, the campaign graphic, my name, etc. will be included in a much smaller, much more toned-down manner, with the idea that these lesser components fade out when a smaller-scale version of the logo is used.
For unification, it would make sense to make app icons look the same, but I'm still hesitant about that. The current design works, and it's a helluva lot of work to redo the handful of required graphics per project and optimize them with the large number of apps I'm trying to manage.
Axis Balkan Campaign stumbles on version 3.5.0.3. Redid the color grouping to separate Yugoslav/Greek/British units better.
Eastern Front patches v7.4.1.0
SeaLion version 5.0.0.7 fixes a crash case plus supply ships can now land on bombardment/sabotage hexagon.
Dieppe Raid lands on version 2.1. Adds a new setting to only animate any AI unit if the player controls over N percent of map within the range of two. So, it gives a way to only animate the frontline AI units.
Video: Germans Stunned by Eisenhower’s ‘Weapon of Victory’ – The Bazooka: from improvised beginnings at Aberdeen Proving Ground to mass production
— When American troops landed in North Africa in 1942, few knew that the simple steel tube in their crates would soon rewrite the rules of armored warfare. Cheap, portable, and devastating against tanks, the bazooka transformed U.S. infantry from victims into tank hunters.
Argh! I just realized the new font that I like to use does NOT survive well in the YCbCr/Trellis/Optimize process I prefer to put things through. So, if you see a super fuzzy text in a few rare places, those will be redone with the next round of updates.
American Civil War (South) marches to version 7.3. Alright, make it 7.3.0.1 that restores the original grey-blue color theme that has been slowly lost as the defaults of the underlying game engine override old exceptions.
Hurrah! Sealion made it through the long review. I was mentally preparing for yet another random ban for something like using the color red or word combo "the United Kingdom." This is precisely what kills developers' motivation to update their apps. We don't need the nonstop relentless fear for doing something good like keeping apps up-to-date.
Article: Google will restore Youtube channels banned in mass censorship, blames the administration
— I don't care on what side of what view you are: you should be able to defend your view with facts and in an open equal debate. Using censorship to force your view, whatever it is, always heavily implies "losing the argument due to lack of truth" to me.
For me, a good week is when I change my mind, because it means I have learned something new. Is it always a pleasant experience to go through? Heck no. But that's growth: you have to put in the effort and struggle, whether studying or going to the gym.
Article: Search begins in Dorset for ‘the Mother of all tanks’
— Lost for over a century, discovery of wartime letter has rekindled interest in unlocking the secret of the world’s first prototype tank. Mother was the prototype for the world’s first battlefield tank, the Mark 1, surrendered to the scrappers to be melted down and recycled.
Or was she? One letter reveals that: Maj Bill Brannon organised a towing tank and pulled four of the oldest tanks and buried them in the driving area.
Peleliu small update to v3.2.1.0... I swear these Pacific island names use the exact opposite syllable logic than that on which the Finnish language is built. Trying to type several of these names makes my brain scream, "THAT'S INCORRECT ORDER OF LETTERS!"
And you might think that my brain will adjust over time, but NOPE, I have been researching and typing some of these names for well over a decade, and I'm still regularly shocked out of my flow-state whenever I actually have to type one out. Pelileu? Peliliu? Pel...
Nothing is quite as "pleasant" as when a 5-minute quick fix turns into 5 hours of hard thinking. As much as I love coding, this was a horrid day, nothing went smoothly or as planned. One "I have never seen this problem before" might be refreshing, but when they do pile up, argh, you know you just lost all the hours in that day.
Plus Sealion is still stuck in review.
I follow a lot of history news, and it has been a little bit sad to see how comprehensively the First World War has dropped from the major news coverage once the last living veterans passed away. Sure if you actively follow WW1, it is a different story, but I can't remember when was the last time I saw a new exciting Great War headline without looking for them.
Operation Sea Lion gets a MASSIVE update to version 5.0.0.6. New harbor, new Canadian unit type, rewritten British naval logic, separate replacements for panzers and antitank units, British naval strafing depends on who controls the closest city and its size, half of the supply depot can be re-embarked, destroyers can dump gear to gain fuel, supply ships can dump supplies to gain MPs, destroyers have names, ships spawn in safe locations only, and dozens and dozens of other additions. Check it out and let me know if something fundamentally breaks.
Leyte airdrops into version 4.1.0.2, adding few bridges. And yes, one of them seems to be on a dry land after I typed the extra river data directly into the ocean of bits.
As one battalion historian fighting on Leyte later wrote:
"The greatest single factor that hampered employment of tanks in this operation was terrain. In nearly every instance of tank employment, because of impassable terrain on both sides of the road, the tanks were road bound, and their front limited to the width of the road..."
"Colonel May planned to send his First Battalion up the southern end of the hill mass while the Second and Third Battalions would attack along the northern axis. A battalion of tanks, under Lieutenant Colonel Harmon L. Edmonson, would support the attack.
When the 763rd Tank Battalion became mired in the swamp a key part of the plan was already discarded. There were no roads leading into the interior and not only the tanks, but every other vehicle was stopped cold by the swamps.
The infantry had to carry what they needed on their backs through the hip deep swamps to simply approach their first objective..."
— Leyte 1944, The Soldiers' Battle by Nathan N Prefer
Luzon lands on the beaches with version 2.7.0.1. A handful of fixes.
Article: Inside the remote Alaskan town where almost all residents live in one ex-military building
— The town of Whittier, located on the edge of Prince William Sound near Anchorage, may finally no longer be so cut off from the rest of the world. Currently the only way into the town is a 2.5-mile single-lane tunnel or a single dock, but the plan is to to add another cruise ship dock.
Almost all of its 275 residents live in Begich Towers, a military structure that was converted into housing. The Begich Towers is made from former military barracks (Camp Sullivan) that served as a 'secret' military facility for the US Army during and after WWII.
Eastern Front v7.4.0.6 settles the dugout issue. Also, game series wide note: It seems that if a general or air force does not move during the first turn, it will be considered a new unit when the selection priorities are set for the next turn. This minor flaw will be corrected in the next round of updates across the series.
Saipan updates to version 3.7.
Video: Historical Artefacts We Still Haven't Found
Rommel & Afrika Korps small crash patch.
Guam fights on to reach version 2.7 and brings with it more U.S. replacements. For those saying the start of the scenario is too hard: That's precisely the point, if you want to follow military history. This was one of the toughest landings the U.S. carried out in WWII.
Prolonged other U.S. campaigns had reduced logistic support to this one, and reefs wrecked what limited supplies were available. The Japanese commanders knew the landing was coming, and there weren't that many places to land, and thanks to the small size of the island, Imperial forces could react quickly. This was the one U.S. landing the Japanese troops had a chance to push Americans back into the ocean.
Starting to roll out a new feature: initial bombardments of the campaign marked on the map (sabotage graphics). Gives brief control of those revealed hexagons to model the crush of the beginning of the planned offensive.
Luzon lands on the beaches with version 2.7.
Video: Most Spectacular Warship Design Fails
— Throughout history there have been some truly incredible warships - but there has also been a pretty decent share of awful warship designs too.
Article: Thousands evacuated in Berlin over 2 WWII bombs
— 10,000 people in central Berlin were ordered to evacuate after an unexploded WWII bomb was discovered in the Spree River. A security perimeter of 500 meters was set up in a densely populated area in the center of the German capital.
Eastern Front stumbles to version 7.4.0.5. Knocking on the steel that this finally settles all the current issues: one of the latest ones was just a foolish paste-error in the middle of the night, and mysteriously one player seems to be missing a core image (might be a system totally out of space).
Rommel & Afrika Korps zigzags into version 6.4.2: fewer flags on unit icons, better unit highlighting when assigning resources, and the option to disable the Fallen dialog and Victory Graphic.
Video: Top "Drill Sergeant Monologue" Reactions
— How various people experienced this classic scene.
Kursk parades into version 7.4. Only on the Amazon App Store due to random bans by over-automated Google.
Article: Michelangelo’s sketches for fortifications
— Michelangelo served as “Governor General of Fortifications” for this massive military project, undertaken in the late 1520s to protect the city of Florence from an eventual 11-month siege.
How to reach quicker scores:
Here is a fun little exercise to do with Operation Barbarossa. The next time you play it, see how many turns you can play it without moving a unit back (west, northwest, or southwest).
And when you are in the unfavorable position of having to waste such a huge amount of movement and momentum by going backwards, ask yourself, what did you do wrong to end up in this regrettable situation, and how can you prevent it the next time?
With clever enough forethought, you can avoid backwards movement for a shockingly long time. Which means that every single unit is either gaining new ground or holding its own. This is highly effective. Every single gained hex is less space for the opponent and more operating space for the bad times.
Well, this is turning into a "let's fix all the issues in the recently updated games" day. Surely there must be an acronym for that?
Stalingrad gets a support package with version 5.2.1.1: more withdrawal under pressure (there was an overactive system that blocked endless retreat), few bunkers with varied HP in the Stalingrad area, railway bridge blocks river crossing cost (I was so sure I had already handled this, but noooo).
Juno & Sword small patches pushing version to 2.2.1.1. Option to disable Fallen-dialog (list of units lost in the previous turn).
Fallen dialog (list of fallen units). Sorry for the uncharacteristically messy back and forth on this one. I rolled the first version (separate pop-up per unit) out to some devices, then restructured all those dialogs into one page with more options and continued to roll that change out, partly overlapping the previous effort.
Then I realized that the whole underlying system will be rewritten soon as the game engine progresses, allowing much easier and organized access to lost unit info, so all this recent "Fallen" scrimmage was half-pointless.
Anyway, the new List-of-Fallen-Units dialog version, starting to roll out now, will have an option to turn it ON/OFF (located at the bottom of the Settings page), remove repeating words, and offer more info per unit and includes more unit types (some support units were previously excluded). Fingers crossed that this is the one.
Since this strategy game series supports closer to 20,000 different Android devices and offers countless settings and strategies, it’s impossible to test every combination after changes. If you spot anything off, just simgly tap my pic on the main screen to send me an email (it should open your default email app with pre-filled headline).
Book excerpt: "It is perhaps ironic that the German Army, which in 1940 stunned the world with its blitzkrieg method of mobile warfare, was the least mobile major army in Europe in 1944. This truth is not due to the fact that the German Army had retrogressed; the others had caught up with and then surpassed Germans in every area of mobility.
American methods of mass production had irrevocably tilted the balance of power. The German panzer and panzer grenadier branches constituted only 10.8% of the German Army in 1944. The vast majority of the German divisions were made up of horse-drawn units.
The Red Army, on the other hand, had been so liberally supplied with American Lend-Lease equipment (especially 2.5-ton trucks) that it was one of the most mobile armies in the world by 1944.
Once the Soviets got behind a German infantry division, the German foot soldiers had little chance of catching up. They could only hope to escape, and even this depended on their comrades’ stabilizing the front, so that they themselves would not have too far to travel.
— The German Defeat In The East, 1944-45 by Samuel W. Mitcham
Cobra: US Breakthrough Strike gets a small update to version 1.0.1 refining OOB and improving the way the overlay taskbars are handled on some devices.
(note: this is a small scale entirely free campaign)
Edit: Seems to have stuck in eternal Play Store review... If only flat-broke Google could somehow afford to hire another outsourced dude to do these. *sigh*
Video (Tank Museum) Birth of the TANK - Armoured Warfare In WWI
— The Tank was born of the uniquely brutal battlefield conditions of WW1. This video looks at the different tanks developed during the Great War, examines how they were used and assesses how they performed.
Developer life: One of the tormenting aspects of being a developer who does everything from AI logic to combat formulas to OOB research to graphics is that I simply CANNOT just take a focused glance at one single thing in the game I just opened. NOPE! My mind automatically and frenziedly began analyzing it all:
Is the relative size of elements okay? Why is the AI opponent moving that way? Does the gameplay move forward too slowly? That menu text must be under 40 characters, but is it now incomprehensible? Should I draw a flag over the cliff, over the road, or over the terrain, or do they cover each other in a poor way?
Because of this nonstop barrage of observations from wildly varying fields, I can occasionally miss something obvious. And at times, I kind of semi-notice something. It's like having a quarter of a thought, not quite strong enough to trigger mindful realization and action...
Until two months later, that thing - KABOOM - enters my consciousness, and I realize that the blue color scheme is incorrect in that one view. And then I realize that I kind of, sort of, have been knowing that for two months already. But not quite. It's hard to articulate.
I guess information overload can cause less important stuff to float at the periphery of the mind. Spooky.
Juno & Sword jumps ashore, and in version 2.2, sabotage action (via General) is now more powerful, unifying the unit-icons into the old standard, static units marked with the letter V. New German commander icon.
Article: Huge piles of rusty WWII ammunition are poisoning the Baltic Sea. Germany is trying to recover them
— 1.6 million tons of old ammunition are lying on the bottom of the North Sea and Baltic Sea, posing a considerable danger.
Most was sunk in the ocean after the war because the Allies ordered Germany destroy all ordnance. At the time the easiest way to do so seemed to be to dump everything into the sea.
Trains from all over Germany were sent to the coasts in 1946, and fishermen were commissioned to take the material to designated disposal areas in the Baltic and North Seas.
Article: Developer survey shows trust in AI coding tools is falling as usage rises
— The latest survey of 49,000 professional developers found that four in five developers use AI tools in their workflow in 2025, yet trust in the accuracy of AI has fallen from 40% in previous years to just 29% this year.
The single largest reported problem: 45 percent of respondents said they struggled with "AI solutions that are almost right, but not quite".
More than a third report that some of their visits to Stack Overflow are a result of AI-related issues.
Battle of Bulge rolls on to version 6.6, more American replacements, added cliffs to a lesser degree, unified the icons to the old standard.
"Major Albin Irzyk was convinced that Chaumont was finally under American control. For several hours, GIs had wrestled with the German defenders, clawing for possession of the town. The fallschirmjägers who had remained had contested every inch...
However, it was the Germans’ turn to strike back, and they hit the American forces at the worst time. GIs were finishing up an assault, and as a result, the men were tired and disorganized. They had not established any prepared fighting positions, and were not ready for a counterstroke.
Moreover, though the GIs now owned Chaumont, they did not control the high ground to the north. As a result, the German Tiger tanks had perfect attack-by-fire positions, which their tank commanders exploited.
The German infantry rode in on the tanks and dismounted as they approached the village. Reports varied as to the size of the German force. Some claimed that the Wehrmacht assaulted with 22 Panzers. In reality, there were 4 Tiger tanks and few StuGs.
Major Irzyk was on the radio, communicating with his commanders when the first 8.8cm rounds hit. “It was the frightening, demoralizing, intimidating, unreal sounds, screeches, and screams of high velocity tank gun rounds hitting, exploding, and ricocheting all around them.”
— Patton at the Battle of the Bulge, How the General's Tanks Turned the Tide at Bastogne by Leo Barron
Peleliu thunders to version 3.2.0.2 bringing along new icon for the Japanese commander, bug fixes, and restoration of the solid REAL icon style.
Video: The Battle of Los Angeles
— Decent coverage of the "mysterious" battle of Los Angeles. It's an interesting YT channel, dude basically drops one video per year, but gets millions of views due to the level of his research.
If you follow WW2-news at all, there recently have been several headlines about "lost" paintings:
— Two paintings valued at $1 million each stolen during WWII found in Ohio
— Argentina recovers long-lost looted Italian painting after it was spotted in a real estate listing by a daughter of a German officer
Congratulations to whoever managed to crash Peleliu, it was such a freak thing that I actually did the math and calculated that the chance of that happening is one per 2,430,000 play-throughs. If I were you, I might consider buying a lottery ticket at this point.
Stalingrad stealthily reaches version 5.2.0.1. A massive HOF reset plus making the scenario a bit easier (more replacements, more resources, less slowing down), so reaching a top 10 score shoud not be an impossible task.
Article: An AI-generated fake image of a WWII nurse is circulating online
— An image is circulating widely on social media claiming to show an Allied forces WWII nurse taking the names of soldiers who died during the D-Day landings in Normandy in France.
In reality, the Allies established 8 military cemeteries within four days of the D Day landings on 6 June 1944, with the first American and British nurses arriving on 10 and 12 June.
In the picture, the alleged nurse is not wearing an accurate uniform. Official archives show that army nurses serving in Normandy wore much different attire from what is depicted in the social media posts.
Coding: 10 months ago I began a megalomaniac process of updating the way the underlying game engine handles adding units into the map/scenario with variation while considering that the enemy might now hold the area that was supposed to get the reinforcement, etc. It gets complex very quickly.
I'm happy to say the initial rollout has finally been finished, the next round of updates just finetunes any possible issues (industry, fuel rewards, etc special elements on hostile area might have some hiccups due to special rules (spread around the hundreds of thousands of lines of code) that I might have missed ).
The old system was very random, in hindsight, excessively random for the bigger maps, more complex terrain, new more robust unit types, and the ever increasing number of units. This means, the update/fix cycle should pick up speed now, after the massive code-change has been carried out.
Article: Up to 450,000 Poles served in the Wehrmacht during WWII
— Anyone entering the first room of the exhibition "Our Boys" in the Museum of Gdansk is greeted by dozens of photos showing men in the German uniform. But these photos are unusual because they show citizens of occupied Poland... Almost 90,000 Polish Wehrmacht soldiers defected to the British and American armed forces on the western front.
Tech/Article: 18 Popular Code Packages Hacked, Rigged to Steal
— At least 18 popular JavaScript code packages that are downloaded more than two billion times each week compromised with malicious software, after a developer involved in maintaining the projects was phished.
— And this is why all software projects that rely on dozens of libraries (maintained by random people), each of which relies on dozens of libraries (maintained by random people), will always be troublesome. Many code libraries included in the projects by the U.S. military are maintained by...some Russian dude.
— This is why my games use ZERO outside libraries. More work for me, but at least I don't have to blindly hope and assume that a library made out of 20 libraries maintained by various random persons might be safe this time and all the future times I use it. Too many layers, too much outsourcing.
Poland between Germany & USSR parades into version 1.6, and I'm still confused how some players can actually win this scenario. I can hold a sector or two with the help of terrain and throwing a lot of resources, replacements, and reinforcements there, but then some other sector collapses like a house of cardboard cards.
"In 1925 the Polish Army began general discussions with the French about an ambitious military rebuilding plan to better satisfy strategic commitments in the event of an eventual war with Germany. The plan envisioned raising Polish strength to a total of 60 infantry divisions, 9 cavalry divisions, 30 tank battalions, and 180-200 aircraft squadrons. This plan presumed extensive French support for the effort. The aim of the rebuilding plan was to permit the commitment of 20 divisions to the German front, 20 to the Soviet front, and 20 in High Command Reserve. In 1926 a new scheme, a more realistic Plan S, envisioned raising Polish Army strength over the next ten years to 30 infantry divisions, 9 reserve divisions, and 3 cavalry divisions but only 3 tank battalions. 1935-1938 strategic defense plans were modernized, and just as they were submitted, events overtook them: Germany seized the remainder of Czechoslovakia, which was disastrous for the current plan. So, yet another plan was needed to consider the likelihood of German attacks all along the southern periphery of Poland. French suggested a plan to defend behind river lines, but this was rejected as it assumed that the Polish Army would be fully mobilized and concentrated (an act that the French resisted as provocation). Unfortunately, a sizable proportion of the Polish population lived in areas that would have been readily surrendered to the Germans, thereby depriving the Polish Army of many of the reservists, not to mention key industrial areas, so this plan was politically unacceptable. The river strategy also overlooked the fact that many of the rivers dried up in the summer. So a different plan was adopted: spreading the frontier Polish forces forward to wage a fighting withdrawal while the rest of the army was mobilized, all the while knowing that the French had promised to launch a full-scale counteroffensive two weeks later. This plan seriously misunderstood the pace of the fighting by underestimating the speed of German mechanized units. "
— The Polish Campaign by Steven Zaloga & Victor Madej
Operation Barbarossa: Minor update to version 7.0.1
Video: Where Every Roman Emperor was Buried
— The burial place of every Roman and Byzantine emperor, from Augustus to Constantine XI.
Article: Pricy age-verification requirements drive small sites to quit or withdraw from states/countries
— Lawmakers sell age-verification mandates as a silver bullet for Big Tech’s harms, but in practice, these laws do nothing to rein in the tech giants. Instead, they crush smaller platforms that can’t absorb the costs.
If you live in Mississippi, you are no longer able to log into Bluesky or Dreamwidth accounts because both social platforms decided to block all users in Mississippi from their services rather than risk hefty fines under the state’s age verification mandate.
Panzer Army Afrika (Germans defending at 2nd El Alamein) steps into version 3004.
This is the first attempt at making the new Samsung devices not hover stuff over the bottom part of the screen, so if you have that issue, check this out. Also, related to before, also tinker with the Immersive Mode setting, which has been rewritten to be more compatible with the drastically changing logic that system uses over various versions of Android.
Article: Details unearthed: Britain's plot to nuke Russia in wake of WWII... using bombs dropped from wooden planes
— As many as 400 Mosquito fighter-bombers, which were famously made of plywood, would have been equipped with atomic bombs. The file outlining the claimed plot was discovered in the National Archives at Kew in West London.
Importantly, the document is distinct to the May 1945 plan 'Operation Unthinkable', in which Britain envisaged a surprise attack on Russia immediately after Germany's defeat.
Eastern Front HOF seems to failed to list all the scores, the oldest scores were removed ahead of schedule (=update) to resolve the issue.
Video: Why Medieval Coins Look So Primitive Compared to Ancient Coins (Rome etc)
— Yet another example of Rome's industrial power.
Anzio & Monte Cassino updated to version 5.0.2 which includes a big bunch of patches. Apologies for the slow reaction to the crash, the source of it was an odd one.
Battle of Moscow 1941 crawls to version 6.2.0.1 adding a faster new game initialization, a handful of Soviet reserve divisions have been removed after OOB arguments (what zones were included in the game vs reinforcements), plus all the latest improvements to the underlying game engine.
Video: 10 Secrets Behind TV’s Most Chaotic War Comedy 'Allo 'Allo!
— BBC lived in nonstop fear of a diplomatic incident for daring to make fun of the occupation of France and the French Resistance, but it turns out mocking every side equally made the series extremely popular, even among the real members of the French Resistance.
Article: Tanks at a crossroads: dead end or evolving labyrinth?
— The role of tanks is now reduced to direct support of infantry units: the attacking vehicle rapidly moves to a firing position, strikes pre-detected targets and then retreats swiftly...
A tactic has emerged involving the preliminary disabling of a tank’s running gear by a “leader drone,” after which the immobilized tank is sequentially destroyed by a swarm of drones...
Drones controlled via fiber-optic lines make radio frequency jammers useless.
New Game: Simple fully-free campaign: Cobra: US Breakthrough Strike out now!
— Play Store
— Amazon App Store
— The Motorized Infantry setting gives Allied infantry 2 MPs per turn, and whether that is used will be shown in the Hall of Fame.
Article: D-Day maps bought as part of £10 job lot sell for £23,000
— The collection, giving detail of the five landing beaches codenamed Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword during the 1944 invasion of Normandy, was first bought for just £10 from a local auction. The hoard had been in the possession of Royal Naval sub-lieutenant Walter Page, who served on Landing Craft Tank (LCT) 2138.
Video: Japan's plan to bomb USA with the plane Fugaku G10N
— The Nakajima G10N Fugaku was a planned Japanese ultra-long-range heavy bomber conceived as a method for mounting aerial attacks from Japan against industrial targets along the American west coast.
Axis Endgame in Tunisia rolls on to version 2! Plenty of tweaks to make the campaigns a bit easier: more extra MPs and replacements, Allied air superiority loses oomph sooner.
Also, this begins a rollout of a new change: disbanding dugouts will generate some random lower-end replacements of each scenario to reduce misusing this feature.
NOTICE: I can't at the moment update anything in the Amazon App Store, as Amazon just endlessly asks me to identify which images are "hats" and then the Amazon site dies of "internal errors."
Ah, what can you do? 9-year-old kids code these types of things in a coding camp, but a big tech company with a market cap of 2.4 trillion USD doesn't have a chance in heck of getting any basics correct. I'll go and try to swim in an increasingly colder lake. Cheers.
Video: German POWs Were Shocked By America’s Industrial Might After Arriving In The United States
— When Afrika Korps veterans arrived in the United States in 1943, expecting to find a weak, divided nation, they instead encountered an industrial colossus...
Invasion of Poland 1939 updated to version 6.2, tweaking the Slovak timetable, changing the Polish tank icon to tankette one and adding the latest upgrades.
Article: Inside the collapse of Builder.ai: Workers tell how they did coding, not AI
— Although Builder.ai did use AI for basic tasks, former employees said, it relied on staff and outsourced developers in countries including India and Ukraine to do the vast majority of its work.
The senior software engineer said “I think Sachin was a very good marketer and had a vision of how he expected things to be. Unfortunately, his vision didn’t match the reality a lot of the time.”
Article: Google loses app store antitrust appeal
— One billion dollar level penalty/fine at a time, we'll grind Google to dust unless it starts to treat developers with respect. A million angry developers contacting 2-3 politicians/authorities per day for 3 years straight is a billion lobbying efforts against Google.
The clueless Google could, of course, have all this developer effort protecting Google, but nope, they do not care about developers hit by random bans and a defunct appeal system.
Podcast episode: The Rise and Fall of Carthage (History Hit)
— A good one hour summary of the Punic Wars.
I deeply dislike how bloated and massive modern software is. Depending on what data sets you use, the size of my games is 1/50th or 1/100th of the average game size in the Play Store. That in spite of me offering two icon sets for units.
The tiny size explains why even 10-year-old devices can still run them. All the code is mine, no third-party libraries, which themselves are often made out of fourth-party libraries. No dozens of layers of abstractions from "smart" code-generating platforms.
This also explains why most (outsourced) customer support knows less than the user having troubles: there are dozens of layers of code from unknown sources, and the publishers of an app may be vaguely controlling the last layer. Too much unknown.
And the same is happening in the physical world: you buy a chair, and the materials come from 20 countries, parts are made in 20 countries, assembly is done in 2 countries, and the company selling the chair has no idea about the chair or how it was made. Nothing is personal anymore.
When that chair was made by a local craftsman or a small local company, they had to face, in the real world, the people who used their chairs. Not only could they answer every question, but unless they wanted to be ridiculed to their face about low quality, they had motivation to do as well as possible.
With 40 layers of abstraction, nobody is in charge, nobody has control, nobody takes responsibility. I know I'm one of the last devs having total control, both for the good and the bad. And I own my mistakes, and achievements.
I watched somebody read a bunch of random Pacific "WW2" letters from 1946, and they included a surprising amount of combat: Americans vs Chinese communists, Brits vs Indonesian nationalists, French/Brits vs. Indochinese warlords... There is surprisingly little coverage about that postwar aspect. I guess people were tired of war news.
Rommel & Afrika Korps marches on to version 6.4.0.1, in the process adding cliffs, switching to a new tactical routes system, RECAM being its own unit type with 3 HPs and 2 MPs, assigning motorized-resource will highlight the proper units, and a few British dugouts and artillery units. You have NO IDEA how much work it was to get all the new stuff working on this decade-and-a-half-old code base.
I will simply never understand the logic behind why I sometimes get 20 feedback messages about one single visual bug, yet sometimes a bad visual bug exists for 5 months and literally nobody bothers to report it and then I have trouble believing my own sad eyes that this issue has existed all this time. Please report jarring things.
Article: Google will block sideloading of unverified Android apps in a year or two
— Google intends to verify developer identities no matter where they offer their content, and apps without verification won't work on most Android devices in the coming years.
— Great news if you're in the foolish habit of blindly downloading questionable apps from unknown sources. Horribly bureaucratic Kafka-esque news for any developer like me who wants on the side to offer new projects, baselessly banned games, and free demo versions (AFTER GOOGLE BEGGED ME TO CREATE THEM AND THEN BANNED THEM YEARS LATER). How can I verify a game that is much wanted by Google and later not wanted by Google? It's an example #49586749986 of Google's policies violently clashing with Google's policies. They just never bother to plan even one step forward, not to mention that their left hand doesn't have the foggiest idea who their right hand is smacking. Fortunately, this is years away from actually rolling out in the West, plus big corporations have now joined the rank of displeased as this would add SOOOOO much pointless overhead, so we'll see what actually happens when
Article: America's last surviving WWII ace passes at 103
— A WWII veteran from Nebraska believed to be America's last surviving 'ace' pilot who shot down five enemy planes has passed away at age 103. Donald McPherson served as a Navy fighter pilot aboard the aircraft carrier USS Essex, which battled Japanese forces during the final years of the war. He earned the Congressional Gold Medal and three Distinguished Flying Crosses. He was listed as the conflict's last living US ace by both the American Fighter Aces Association and the Fagen Fighters WWII Museum.
Fall of Normandy version 6.2.1.2 fixes the HOF entry not ending game-play on some devices.
Operation Luttich minor patch-filled update to version 2.4.1. This should fix all the leaks in the new Cliff system, so updates from now on should have that settled.
Article: Research to begin into WW2 RAF losses in far east
— While Bomber Command did not serve in the region during the war, its aircraft and crews were assigned to a new unit called Tiger Force to provide long-range bombing support in the Allied advance against Japan...
Once the research on the far eastern theatre is complete, Losses Database will have recorded every life lost in any of the Second World War bombing commands.
The database will provide an additional resource, not only for military historians and visitors to our site, but also for family history websites.
This was a rough summer, as two people I befriended over my games sadly did pass away. "Time waits for no one" is such a true yet ruthless saying. I will miss those passionate chats about random pieces of history that occasionally took place over the decade.
It's unsettling how hard it is to truly appreciate something until you lose it. Even the smallest moments can carry so much weight when you realize there won't ever be more. RIP.
Article: Woman loses 5lb in a week after switching to WWII rations
— Hannah Hall, from Nottingham, who fell in love with the 1940s after watching wartime films with her late grandfather, shares nostalgic and educational YouTube videos of life during wartime Britain. In one of the latest clips she did an experiment and followed a WWII-style rationed diet for a week.
Armed with a 1940s ration book replica, Hannah was surprised by the small portion sizes. She had not only lost 5Ib in weight, with zero exercise, but she also got used to feeling hungry again, she started to enjoy cooking again, and became conscious of what she was eating.
"The air attack on 25 July started with strafing runs by P47s along the northern edge of the bomb zone... The effect on the German defenses was devastating. The German communications network, which depended heavily on field telephones, was completely disrupted. However, the 25 July air attack repeated the problems of the previous day, with bombs again fallign short into American lines, causing significant problems in launching the initial attacks... Overall, the first day's attack had been disappointing. Instead of gaining 3 miles, Collins' VII Corps had only penetrated a mile. Collins decided to commit the mechanized forces early. This paid off, as the usual coordinates German counterattacks were missing. Bayerlein reported to Hausser that his division was on the verge of evaporating."
— Operation Cobra 1944: Breakout from Normandy
Article: The last WWII recipient of the Victoria Cross passes
— Despite anti-aircraft fire from a German U-boat, Flight Lieutenant John Cruickshank manoeuvred his aircraft to drop depth charges from a height of only 50ft above the water, but the charges failed to release.
Cruickshank knew he had lost the element of surprise and that the gunners aboard the submarine were now prepared.
Yet he resolved to approach the U-boat a once again. As Cruickshank and his crew came in for a second time, they were hit by intense and accurate enemy fire. Cruickshank received 72 separate injuries.
Despite his serious injuries, Cruickshank pressed home the attack and released the depth charges himself...
Falaise Pocket (Allied Side) version 2.4.4 fixes the Unit Tally issue that might cause crash.
Operation Barbarossa critical fix version 7.0.0.2! HOF might have misfired on some devices!
At least I can skip the coffee to get my heart rate up on those days I wake up to a serious bug. From the bottom of my heart, thank you to those who make the effort to report the rare edge case issues. A bug affecting 2% of devices might seem like nothing, relatively speaking, but if it is your very own playthrough that gets ruined, it's everything. And as always, I can only fix the troubles I'm aware of. And I truly want this series to be as good as it can, so I don't mind spending my Sunday morning getting a critical fix out.
First World War: Western Front gets a bunch of fixes with version 6.2.1.
Article: A sniper claims world record 4,000-metre shot
— The record was set using a 14.5mm Snipex Alligator rifle. The historic shot was fired on August 14 and was guided by artificial intelligence working with a drone reconnaissance complex. The regular breaking of records is testament to how rapidly sniper technology has been advancing in recent years.
Operation Barbarossa rolls on to the version 7.0! Timescale is faster during January-February, industry list on War Status, King Tiger and IS2 units later in the game...
Article: Two survivors reveal what it was really like to fight WWII in Asia
— Captain Yavar Abbas is 104 years old, but seems decades younger. He joined the 11th Sikh regiment after the fall of Burma in mid 1942, and applied to be a combat cameraman. Yavar was filming at the siege of Imphal and Battle of Kohima in 1944 in north eastern India – pivotal battles which saw intense hand-to-hand fighting. Japanese forces were successfully repelled, and the looming invasion of British India was thwarted.
There is unbelievably fierce competition between the Play Store and the Amazon App Store about which one can make updating the screenshots more needlessly convoluted and bewildering.
Amazon features buttons smaller than half an atom, and if your mouse shakes even a little bit the whole screenshot arrangement explodes. Also, everything is so tiny I don't really know what I'm even rearranging.
Meanwhile, the Play Store has replaced zero-click instant drag-and-drop with a 943588567-click side-loading bar that has 9687469 similarly named buttons, some of which affect the entire environment and some just the local sidebar, and they all roll and jump to show old stuff that has nothing to do with anything.
Imagine that every time you went to a grocery store, you had to go through three bad circus shows, because that is what it feels like to do a quick screenshot update. Uploading images was solved in 1995, the big tech is just making everything to fancy that it is less effective.
Brits at El Alamein updated to version 3, more British replacements and all the latest updates that are in the process of rolling out.
Article: Film studios releasing films with AI-altered scenes
— The studio re-released one of its major hits, Raanjhanaa, a 2013 romantic drama, in cinemas but has used artificial intelligence to change its tragic end, in which the male lead dies.
8 decades after bombing of Hiroshima, search for missing continues on nearby island
— Decades later, people in the area are looking for the missing. Rebun Kayo, a Hiroshima University researcher, regularly visits Ninoshima to search for remains.
Take II: Guadancanal version 4.4.1.2 fixes handful of issues and adds ability to re-embark half of the supply depot
Podcast: Feeding the Bear: Lend Lease to the USSR
— The usual narrative often paints Lend-Lease as the lifeline that saved the Soviet Union. But, as with most things in history, the reality is far more complex. While Lend-Lease undeniably made a difference, its impact, timing, and strategic value are worth examining more closely. We dig into what was actually sent, when it arrived, how it was used, and whether or not it really was decisive in turning the tide on the Eastern Front.
Article: By whining few times to payment processers VISA/Mastercard, activists of Collective Shout manage to ban thousands of games
— Many of the games and digital artworks caught in the sweep were unnecessarily censored from storefronts Steam and Itch.io , developers say
— Basically, having enough skin-colored pixels might result in a ban by a bot for being too adult, games where people held hands got banned
— Canadian developers and artists are frustrated that an Australian lobby group and U.S.-based payment processors have ruined their income
— Affected developers and supporters have started phone campaigns and petitions to pressure payment processors to reverse their actions.
Rear Admiral Raizo Tanaka Tanaka’s superiors told him to proceed with his nighttime reinforcement and resupply efforts (known by the Americans as the “Tokyo Express.”) On August 31 and September 1 Tanaka’s destroyers landed a thousand troops on Guadalcanal.
But then the army forced the navy to revert to using transports and landing barges during the daytime so more men could be landed at one time. Tanaka was recalled to destroyer duty. The change had disastrous consequences for the Japanese. On September 3 Henderson scout planes on dawn patrol up the Slot spotted more than a dozen barges loaded with troops. Sixteen dive bombers took off from Guadalcanal and bombed them in the open sea, sinking several of them...
The Japanese resumed nighttime destroyer landings...
The Americal pilots operating from the Henderson field grew accustomed to a daily routine of going out on morning and afternoon searches for Japanese ships and then withstanding noontime Japanese raids and nightly bombings and shellings. It was “like a broken record… day after day with little variance.”
— Midnight in the Pacific, The Battle of Guadalcanal by Joseph Wheelan
Attempt II: Tinkering with a new idea for a fully free, small, simple scenario to help with discovery. Let's see if I actually learned anything at all from the first attempt, and this time I avoid turning it all into a complex, large campaign.
Article: U.S. Space Force prepares next X-37B spaceplane launch
— The infrared laser communications system onboard OTV-8 will operate in conjunction with proliferated commercial satellite networks in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). The effort aims to demonstrate higher-capacity data links and enhanced security compared to traditional radio-frequency transmissions.
Before digital maps... Many kids no longer can read analog clocks, will the same happen to paper maps?
Utah & Omaha steps forward to version 2.0.1 adding cliffs due to popular demand (imagine them as bocage), and changes/updates handful of the icons.
Article: As rusting war-era ships decay on the seafloor, their toxic cargoes pose a risk
— 8,500 ships with fuel in them lie beneath the waves, most dating back to WW1 and WW2. Limited data means the actual number is much higher. The rate at which wrecks have been breaking down has started to accelerate.
The wrecks can be great for local marine life, for fishermen or even for diving - and so the local tourism industry. They may also be the last resting places for the crew. Some are regarded as war graves and “cultural heritage” - a status which comes with lots of legislation. So, who exactly is responsible for cleaning up these wrecks?
Article: Weak password allowed hackers to bankrupt a 158-year-old company with 700 workers
— The hackers managed to gain entry to the computer system by guessing an employee's password, after which they encrypted the company's data and locked its internal systems. Director Paul Abbott says he hasn't told the one employee that their compromised password led to the destruction of the company. "Would you want to know if it was you?"
Kiev 1941 thunders into version 1.4. If you have played this game a lot recently, let me know if the Soviet dugouts are placed poorly.
The way I had done it previously did not work at all with the way the new underlying game engine handles it, so I had to change a lot of things, and I'm not sure how well, after all the variation, the intended fortification lines held up.
Article (book review): Victory ´45: The End of the War in Eight Surrenders by James Holland and Al Murray
— The first significant capitulation began weeks before the fall of Berlin when two backstabbing rivals in the German high command in Northern Italy separately schemed to save their own postwar skins.
The greatest defense fortification line in history - that barely even existed! The myth of the Mannerheim Line: When the Finnish Winter War began, for the most part the work on the line was not even started, and if it was started, soon the work ended due to lack of funds and lack of reinforced concrete.
However, the Finnish government needed an argument both to calm down Finns and assure foreign countries considering helping that, in spite of naively choosing not to buy weapons in any meaningful amount, Finland had a chance against the immensely bigger USSR.
Solution: The Finnish government talked about the Mannerheim Line like it was a 3-story modern marvel of weaponry. In reality, it was mostly a tiny water-directing ditch in which men stood, as actual digging had not begun outside few key sectors.
On the other side, the USSR needed an excuse why its gigantic Red Army had failed to march over a tiny country that hadn't even purchased modern weapons - while Germany steamrolled over more prepared countries in the blink of an eye.
Then the USSR got it: their army was not bad, corrupt, and inefficient. No, no, no! The slow progress was simply because of the sky-high, impenetrable defenses of the space-age Mannerheim Line.
So, in a rare case in military history, both sides of a fight were praising this barely existing mud line between two countries as if it was better than the Maginot Line.
Miserable Finnish soldiers standing in a muddy ditch reading a newspaper article glorifying the unbreakable Mannerheim Line were outraged!
And they also raised the valid point: if Finns have to pull back, then how the heck the Finnish government is going to explain the fact that even this super-amazing top-notch fortification could not stop the Red Army.
One of my least favorite things is how Google's Android Studio development environment always crashes, especially after they began using AI code, and then Google's crash reporter crashes while trying to report those crashes, and after manually submitting the meta-crash for half a year, it still has not been fixed...
Meanwhile, Google is penalizing small developers for not instantly fixing everything...
The problem with the Google's "Industry Standard" coding practises, that it tries to force on us developers, is that it only works if you're having the latest phone and strikingly fast Internet. Too many too-rich people making decisions, the standards have no touch with any reality.
Operation Luttich (German Drive into Falaise Gap) rolls on to the version 2.4.
Article (links to videos) How Disney Fought with Cartoons During WWII & Averted Financial Collapse
— Walt Disney himself re-invested the company’s profits into ever more ambitious animated films. This practice took an unfortunate turn as Fantasia and Pinocchio underperformed. Disney found itself at the edge of bankruptcy.
Then came the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which resulted in the U.S. Army’s 8-month-long occupation of Walt Disney Studios. The idea was to protect a nearby Lockheed plant, but Disney, who’d already made inquiries about producing war films, used an opportunity to make a deal that saved his company.
About Norway:
"Not only were the Germans aware of the vital importance of maintaining the year-round supply of Swedish ore, and of the role of Narvik and the Inner Leads in the maintenance of the winter supply, but they were also fully alive to the strategic importance of Norway’s long coastline and sheltering fjords. As early in the war as 23 October 1939, Grand Admiral Raeder had sent a memo to the German High Command arguing the need for bases in northern Norway for their surface raiders and U-boats... Cut off from all communication with his Army headquarters, with troops suffering badly from air attacks by Luftwaffe, not knowing what was happening or what the Government policy was, Norwegian General Erichson and 3,000 men crossed over into Sweden rather than surrender and were interned... In Narvik, the Norwegian Senior Naval Officer, Cdr Askim, had received instructions from his Government in Oslo, literally minutes before the sighting of the British destroyers as they approached Narvik, that British forces were not to be opposed... News of the German occupation threw the Allied War Cabinet into total disarray. Ad hoc decisions were made, often without consulting or informing each other, by the Admiralty and War Office. Commanders-in-Chief were bypassed, or told belatedly of decisions. The Admiralty decided to concentrate the naval effort upon the parts of Norway, such as Narvik, which appeared to have most strategic importance."
— Norway 1940 Chronicle of a Chaotic Campaign by Harry Plevy
If you have sent feedback about Japan in WW2, don't worry; every single piece has been read and put on the to-do list. I'm simply just, quite frankly, still finding myself having a bit of aversion to exceedingly replying about that game. Firstly, making it took forever and drained me, and because it is so perpetually complex, the fix cycle of dealing with each edge case just kept on going on week after week after week, burning through whatever reserves I had. After one player stopped screaming that "the US/USSR would NEVER declare war this easily," a second started yelling that "the US/USSR would ALWAYS declare the war earlier to defend its allies." Okay, how do you fix that?
If you care about your privacy or have a painfully slow old computer, I would recommend LibreWolf browser. It's a clean Firefox fork that removes a ton of telemetry/data collection that Firefox/Mozilla gathers about you, and in the process makes the browser more lightweight.
It also has uBlock Origin built-in, which can block ads, pointless cookie pop-ups, social media buttons, etc if you bother to tweak it a bit. If you don't know, uBlock Origin is the best ad blocker around; the guy running it is just as annoying purist as me.
On the downside, you will need to install a separate updater if you want LibreWolf to automatically update itself, and the bug fixes take few moments longer to be available compared to the mothership (Firefox), plus obviously there is no built-in cloud sync of bookmarks because privacy is taken seriously.
I have been using it for a while and so far (knock knock) haven't run in any noteworthy issues, but it is possible that one day one site will not work because of the effective privacy measures.
Battle of Guadalcanal sails into version 4.4 which brings in cliffs, Americal Division marked with a different icon (but otherwise functions as all US Army Infantry units), and Japanese units try to operationally comprehend that the island can be cut into multiple parts.
Let's retry this.... Invasion of Norway version 5010 rewrites the whole warship part of the Allied landings, plus changes the icon for the commander, and fixes misbehaving northern air-dropped supply depot.
Video: 1942 German nuclear reactor failure
— On the 23rd of June 1942, the Leipzig L-iv Nuclear reactor experienced the world's first reactor disaster.
Bougainville Gambit updated to version 1.2.
Video: Why Did WW1 End So Suddenly? The Unexpected Armistice of 1918
— This lecture will re-examine how the First World War ended. It will discuss both why Germany requested a ceasefire, and why the Allies and America granted one... the Allies had good reasons not to press on to Berlin.
Sad to say I never did personally raise a WW2 plane from the bottom of a lake as a kid ;-)
Article: WWII SB2C Helldiver found underwater by teens in the ‘80s takes flight
— The National Museum of World War II Aviation in Colorado Springs, Colo., restored and flew a Navy Curtiss-Wright SB2C Helldiver that two teenagers found at the bottom of Lake Washington.
As teenagers, Matt McCauley and Jeff Hummel found the wreck of the SB2C Helldiver WWII warplane and raised it with lift bags from the bottom of Lake Washington in 1984.
McCauley said seeing the plane take flight was the realization of a 41-year-old dream.
Suddenly the northern, mostly diversional attack finds a weak point in the German front line and gets within touching distance of Paris. Sadly, this is too late for the western pocket of French Resistance in Paris that failed to hold on to enough space to not get squeezed from all sides simultaneously.
Article: WWII Japanese Navy destroyer Teruzuki found 83 years after it sank
— Teruzuki was sunk in Dec 1942 by US torpedoes while transporting food for soldiers in Guadalcanal. Measuring over 134m (440ft) long, Teruzuki was the Imperial Japanese Navy’s second Akizuki-class destroyer built with air-search radar. Since Japan’s naval vessel plans were a tightly held secret, there are no historical images of Teruzuki and the latest survey is the first ever to get a glimpse of the vessel for this generation.
That delightful season when any attempt to do deep work is interrupted by a fly.
NOOOO! Play Store plans to remove handy pricing templates, which allowed switching between "discount" to "normal" to "new game" prices in a second. Changing prices for almost 200 countries manually for every project will be a nightmare, as that's well over 10,000 fields to fiddle with. Mercy.
Video: Euler's Work on Ballistics: mathematics in war
— Artilleymen might find this interesting... 2018 lecture about artillery "calculations" over the centuries by Dr June Barrow-Green, Professor of Mathematics
What's the worst mistake your country did during WWII in your opinion? I'll do mine.
Finland was a very young and naive country, so the pre-war consensus was that "we are a tiny peaceful nation; no need to put any oomph into our military." When the USSR attacked, there was a MAD rush to train replacements.
But then, instead of sending these quickly and poorly trained men into existing units where combat-experienced soldiers would have shown them relevant up-to-date skills, Finland kept raising new regiments.
These new units were so utterly clueless that when several of them were ordered to take part in a counterattack (which would have decimated them), they could not even make it to the staging area before the whole counterattack was over.
These new regiments quickly gained the nickname 'porcelain regiments" for their ability to scatter at the slightest contact with the enemy. I realize it looks prestigious to be able to say that "we have 6 new regiments" but if their combat value is close to zero, why do this when the nation is fighting for its existence?
Germany reported the same issue: a large chunk of tanks went to new units that did not know how to do effective modern camo, and most of those tanks were taken out by ground combat planes before they got near the front line.
Was there a belief that training together created such a strong cohesion that it trumped real-world experience? Or was it a WW1-era artifact that mobilizing the max number of units for a war that was assumed to be short was a priority?
In any case, rashly formed Finnish regiments were horrible; all that effort and equipment was for nothing.
Clothes used to be skillfully made by tailors with decades of accumulated knowledge of fits and fabrics and the local environment. When factories cloned their process and knowledge, people happily switched to cheap, bad, soulless clothes. Millions of jobs lost.
Food used to be lovingly made by familiar chefs from fresh local ingredients with decades of collected wisdom and skill, considering the local tastes. When factories cloned their process and knowledge, people happily switched to bland, cheap, factory-made processed food. Millions of jobs lost.
Do you think the art will survive the machine cloning of processes, techniques, and knowledge any better? Having a meal used to take hours; now there is a penalty for the company if food does not appear in the blink of an eye. Instant meh seems to be crushing slow quality in most fields most of the time.
I'm sad because I think the train to stop all this automation left the station a long time ago. The time to protest was when the industrial revolution started. Protests might have helped to include other values in the decision-making process that is now based on faceless layered efficiency, performance, and profit.
Article/Video: Commercially available, general-purpose humanoid robot goes bezerk
— A viral video showing a Unitree H1 humanoid robot violently thrashing mid-test has stirred fresh concerns about the risks of advanced robotics. Standing 5.9 feet tall and weighing 104 pounds (47 kg), each joint of Unitree H1 robot is able to produce up to 365 pound-feet of torque.
Panzer Missions version 6.4 rolling out. Relocating the troops closer to the front line at the start, adding cliffs, big HOF cleanup, continuing tweaking the campaign after the previous redo of the whole mission-structure.
PRICING: Paris 44: Uprising & Liberation dropping to the normal price level (might take a moment for the change to roll out across the globe).
Well, I just deleted two of my social media accounts. First one because I used to it to talk to historians and military veterans, and it regularly got locked because according to tech-bros: "it's suspicious to talk to seniors or people over 50, it can only be scam." Sigh. I guess it's the latest big-tech law: people are only allowed to interact with people born in the same year. I removed the second account because the platform showed me a must-watch non-skippable ad. Yeah, nope, if you FORCE me to watch ads I will never be using that platform as long as I live.
"The issue of the French participation in the battle of Berlin in late April-early May 1945... Historians of the "last battle," such as Anthony Beevor, Erich Kuby, Tony Le Tissier, Anthony Read and David Fisher, Pierre Rocolle, and Cornelius Ryan, all acknowledge the role of the 33rd WSS Division Charlemagne in defending the German capital. And, they generally tell the same story.
Carried in the chaotic retreat of the German army from Pomerania in February-March 1945, the Charlemagne regrouped in the Neustrelitz area, 80 miles north of Berlin; of the 7,000 men who had trained in Wildflecken during the winter 1944-45, about 1,000 were left. Up to 350 volunteers, led by the Brigadefuhrer Krukenberg, were trucked to Berlin on April 24. The rest of the men were assigned to construction work.
After briefly resting in a wooded area in the southwestern part of the city, the 350 French soldiers moved east to the Neukolln neighborhood on April 25, where they joined the Scandinavian 11th WSS Division Nordland and some Tiger II tanks. Slowly pulling north, they successively defended the Neukolln city hall, the Hermannplatz, the Belle-Alliance Platz, and a series of positions along the centrally located Wilhelmstrasse and Friedrichstrasse.
On May 2, when General Weidling announced the capitulation of Berlin, 30 French soldiers were still holding the intersection Wilhelmstrasse-Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, two blocks from the Chancellery they were in charge of protecting. Some managed to escape Berlin, whereas others were taken POW by the Russians."
— The French Who Fought for H: Memories from the Outcasts by Philippe Carrard
So, everyone is making tiny miniature military drones capable of taking images. Might be a slight privacy killer once it enters the hands of the public...
I wish I had one lifetime to waste to code a better social media platform. Actual settings to switch between chronological and algorithmic best-of feeds. Actual levers to control how much friends/family/news/hobbies/local info you would see. Modes for "I'm tired, show me only comfy stuff" and "I'm energetic, explore new out-of-comfort-zone topics." Busy switch when you have 30 seconds in that whole day to browse social and you only want to see the absolute core posts. Bored mode to see 1000 striking posts. Shopping mode when you actually want/need to buy something. Forcing/enticing users to rate random posts so the system could not be gamed by those trying to sell stuff. There are literally hundreds of ways to make a better social platform than what any of the current ones are. Would it make billions? No. But it would make a few million, which is enough, and maybe make the world a better place. Look at the richest people on the planet donating away all their money when they realize they wasted their entire lives getting more and more and more money that has no value after a certain point. Chuck Feeney donated away 100% of his 8 billion. Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, etc., are on the same track. Why miss 99% of what life is about by frantically collecting something if you are then going to 100% dump it away?
Almost everything in the modern world is pushing against making a great product. Here is the latest example.
A biohacking acquaintance made a very clean supplement: lab tested source materials, lab tested final product, and actually meaningful bioavailability in human physiology.
It got such a high Amazon rating that AI bots removed the product because "only a product with made-up reviews can get that high of a rating."
This is the same issue I have if I write detailed and organized release notes to app updates in the Play Store. AI flags it as "AI", and it goes into days-long review.
The only way to get anything out to the world, is to purposefully, with great effort, make it worse than what it is, to work hard to include typos and nonsense.
I know I sound like a cranky old man, but as a techie, how is this modern world supposed to make any sense?
AI is a tool. And like with any tool, there is a right way to use it and a wrong one. The world is literally punishing for excellence or any deviation from the mindlessly boring average.
I do not want to spend my one unique life on this planet making my creations worse to get pass ill-considered AI checks.
Imagine 8 billion people trying their mightiest to work less and less well in a desperate attempt to nosedive towards the ever-decreasing level of average to avoid getting flagged by the AI.
Podcast episode: Bruce Lockhart and the Political Warfare Executive
— Professor James Crossland discusses the extraordinary life of Robert Bruce Lockhart, who was a key figure behind the scenes of 20th-century history. His career began before WW1 and took him from revolutionary Russia to wartime Britain, often placing him near the centre of power and influence.
During WW2, he served as Director-General of the Political Warfare Executive, the organisation responsible for British propaganda efforts against the Axis powers.
Every small content creator is saying the same: "I wish there was a way to explain to AI-haters that 99.9% of creative people would LOVE to indeed have such a huge pile of money that they could hire artists."
But in reality, vast majority of creative people are struggling, and if they can't drive a Maserati, they will walk; if they can't eat caviar, they will eat macaroni or fast; if they can't hire other creatives, they will use free AI tools for a moment to at least get something created.
If you want content creators to use less AI, buy their works instead of boycotting them. Driving the 90% of the poorest creative people out, you are guaranteeing that only rich people create content.
We are close to the point that the #1 reason for creative people to stop working for their dreams is out-of-proportion anti-AI hysteria by the people using AI-text-prediction, AI-grammar fix, AI-enhanced GPS to navigate, taking AI-enhanced photos with their phones...
Hey: If you're truly anti-AI, you will never touch a phone again as long as you live.
Article: RIP D-Day Omaha-beach veteran 'Papa Jake' Larson
— D-Day veteran ´´Papa Jake´´ Larson, who survived German gunfire on Normandy's bluffs in 1944 and then garnered 1.2 million followers on TikTok late in life by sharing stories to commemorate WWII and his fallen comrades, has passed away at 102. "We are the lucky ones. We are their family. We have the responsibility to honor these guys who gave us a chance to be alive."
American Revolutionary War version 6.2 tries to bring the old, exception-filled code into better alignment with the game-engine. Let's see how many things break...
Joining the German Army in late 1944 might not be the smartest move... especially if you're a French person, yet...
"Lambert and Le Marec estimate 40,000 Frenchmen joined German Army, while 46,000 integrated into the Free French Forces on the side of the Allies... In the case of the French volunteers, why some of them enlisted in German Army, especially in 1944 after D-Day?
Jacques Auvray explains he was rejected by the French Resistance, so he joined the WSS in his frenzy to serve at any price.
Several memoirs argue that the real enemy was the USSR that aimed to wipe out religion and private ownership, and the French who took arms against Soviet Communism in German Military were not traitors, but pioneers... the alleged vanguard of the European Army... that was battling for Western Civilization.
Christian de La Maziere, compromised because of his collaborationist activities, uses metaphoric language: it is precisely when the house is on fire, and when one could escape from it taking advantage of the catastrophe, that it must be defended with even more energy."
— The French Who Fought for H: Memories from the Outcasts by Philippe Carrard
More and more people have applied for over 10,000 jobs and have nothing to show for it. It is troubling to observe humans around the world all independently arriving at the same grim conclusion:
"Any reset of the current system, no matter how violent, is likely to improve my situation." And so, an increasing number of voters choose the craziest or angriest party, not because they share values with them, but because it's the quickest way to null the current structure.
Societies stand because of trust. By ruthlessly optimizing performance until every remaining job is soul-crushingly exhausting while others have no work, will undermine the whole social contraption.
Video: AKHENATEN - the reign of Egypt’s most radical Pharaoh
— If you like a channel where an archeologist passionately speaks about various topics without pointless excess thrills, you might like to check this one out
Fall of Normandy updated to 6.2.1 to fix a critical issue. This also marks the start of a roll out of making the units which have dug-in to withdraw much less (that effect was too small). Well, that did not work at all, let's try v6.2.1.1
WW1 sketchbook reveals Tommy's view of life in the trenches in the year of the Battle of the Somme
— A sketchbook from a Tommy in the trenches has been discovered in a storage locker 109 years later. Lieutenant Frederick Holmes was an accomplished artist before the start of the First World War. He was sent to the Western Front in 1916 - the year of the bloody Battle of the Somme - and fought with the London Regiment. During his time there he produced 45 colour sketches depicting wartime views
I'm increasingly flooded with two types of messages:
1) Out-of-work graphic artists looking for work. The worst one is threatening to endlessly spam me until I fill out his long form that includes filling out my personal information to unsubscribe from his job applications! Like, dude, semi-blackmailing and threatening is not how you get hired anywhere.
2) Criminals outright paying for either to control my old, well-verified account or to publish their scam apps. It's relentless on all my personal and business channels. And the offered sums just keep on going up. I hate to say it, but I would be suspicious of any developer account that was silent for 4 years and now suddenly activates.
Finnish Defense 1944 rolls on to the version 4.2.
Good news, Anzio & Monta Cassino is back on the update schedule on the Play Store.
Video: Texas Coast Natives Who Fought Colonization for 300 Years
— After contact with Europeans the Karankawa maintained control of the coast for centuries through the skillful defense of their lands.
They first fought the Spanish and then the French, pirates, and finally Anglo American settlers.
The Karankawa’s struggles even intersected with the Texas Revolution which gave birth to the Republic of Texas.
"In the weeks following the Liberation, Paris experienced an Anglo-Saxon influx which far surpassed the days of the Versailles peace conference... One of the first British officers to enter Paris was Lieutenant-Colonel Lord Rothschild, who had been seconded to the US army after D-Day to train its officers in the arts of sabotage and counter-sabotage. Victor Rothschild was a man of many parts and many paradoxes: Scientist, academic, and government adviser by profession, he was also a socialist, a millionaire, a jazz pianist and a peer who both hated privilege and enjoyed it... Few of the journalists starting to pour in knew Paris better than Lee Miller. In her US war correspondent’s uniform, she went straight to the Place de l’Odéon. There she found the painter and theatre designer Christian Bérard and Boris Kochno. They took her to see Picasso in his studio... Almost everyone in London with a good excuse made sure of a trip to Paris as soon as possible after the Liberation. Like many from the OSS office in London, Evangeline Bruce hiked a pillion ride on the back of an OSS motorbicycle for a tour of central Paris. One of the sights to be seen at the Ritz was Ernest Hemingway..."
— Paris After the Liberation 1944 by Antony Beevor
Battle of Suomussalmi (Winter War) slides to the version 4.2 adding Skis resource (chance of extra MP between turns) and the cliff-system. The extra movement should enable seizing top spots in the Hall of Fame.
First World War: Western Front updated to version 6.2. As the months pass, some Allied units will be in 'mutiny' (marked with magenta edge). These units are likely to withdraw without a fight. New action by General: Assign infiltration tactics to the closest combat unit. More bonus vs trenches, cancels out Allied trench bonus, the unit is more likely to seize the trench intact Big graphics update. Only available on the Amazon App Store, since nonsensical bots of the Google's Play Store decimate apps that are regularly updated.
Article: The Last Secret Agent by Pippa Latour
— In May 1944 a 23-year-old British girl called Pippa Latour parachuted into occupied Normandy with nothing more than a sten gun, a compass, and a lethal pill to swallow in the event that she was caught. She poased as a French teenage who cycled around the Normandy countryside selling goats’ milk soap.
"I was not a James Bond-style spy. I was a secret agent whose job it was to blend into the background and cause quiet chaos."
Then, using a sets hidden in bombed-out buildings around the countryside, she would transmit the information back to her handlers in London. Within hours, a deadly attack by the Allies from the skies would remove the German soldiers.
UK's oldest WWII veteran, Donald Rose, passes at 110
— Rose joined the army aged 23 and served in North Africa, Italy and France, participating in the D-Day landings on June 6, 1944.
Ardennes Offensive thundering to version 5.6 adding cliffs, few German Neberwerfer units and all the latest hoopla.
"Dietrich von Choltitz, the German commander of Paris was frank in his assessment: ‘The situation in Paris is untenable. All authorities and officials have left the city. The outbreak of a rebellion might take place at any time. Individual shootings are the daily order, individual vehicles are being attacked, looted and crews taken prisoner...
Whatever he might have thought in private, in public von Choltitz was determined to bluff the Resistance into submission. In a discussion with the Swiss legate, René Naville, von Choltitz threatened that he would deploy ‘150 Tiger tanks’ against the Resistance strongholds...
Journalist Claude Roy saw the two remote-controlled Goliath tanks being manoeuvred around on the lawn in front of the Grand Palais and then sent in. At least one Goliath was blown up, setting fire to the building...
At 22:15, von Choltitz had a telephone conversation with Army Group B in which he explained that the situation in the capital was spiralling out of control. Von Choltitz’s superiors were well aware of this: General Blumentritt, Model’s chief of staff, had been unable to get into the city because of the barricades."
— 11 Days in August, The Liberation of Paris in 1944 by Matthew Cobb
Video: Shenzhen Has Fallen: China's Richest City Is Now a Ghost Town
— Shenzhen was once the crown jewel of China's rise: the Silicon Valley of the East, the city of innovation, tech, and boundless opportunity. But in 2025, the lights are dimming. This video takes you deep into the economic meltdown unfolding in China’s most iconic city. In this deep exposé, we reveal the truth behind the headlines: Why teachers can’t get paid. Why factories are shutting down in waves...
Article: Google confirms it will roll out an update that makes Pixel 6a phones unsable
— After nerfing the Pixel 4a's battery capacity earlier this year, Google has confirmed a similar update is rolling out to the Pixel 6a after units started to catch fire. Pixel 6a owners can get measly $100 in cash or $150 in store credit but that process is filled with fees and caveats. This is particularly galling because the Pixel 6a is still an officially supported phone, with its final guaranteed update coming in 2027.
Okay, I'll admit it. The latest version of Android Studio that force-feeds AI tools, GIT tools and automated suggestions is unusable even if you turn OFF absolutely everything Google allows one to turn off. So I'm moving back to the old version before all the AI bloatware. When I try to do a simple, previously nanosecond-long operation like using control-C to copy a simple line of text, my whole machine crawls to a halt. The AI goes into overdrive to search the entire world to overanalyze this action. Geez, I just want to do a simple copy-and-paste. There is no need to use $900 worth of processing power to hyper-calculate what's happening.
The first proper summer day in Finland, so I sprinted 10k to a beach to alternate between freezing in the water and sunshine-reading Soviet war interpreter Elena Rzhevskaya's memoirs from the Battle of Berlin. Her unit was a part of the Vasily Kuznetsov's 3rd Army, tasked with taking the Reichstag. Elena was one of the key people searching for top Germans in Berlin bunkers and the Chancellery.
"Between July and December 1941 a total of Soviet 1,523 enterprises, the great bulk of them iron, steel and engineering plants, were moved to the Urals, to the Volga region, to Kazakhstan in central Asia, and to eastern Siberia. One and a half million wagon-loads were carried eastwards on the Soviet rail network.
16 million Soviet citizens escaped the German net, many of them factory workers, engineers, plant managers, all needed to keep the uprooted industries going. The whole process was a messy, improvised affair. Workers arrived without their machines; equipment without its workforce.
So short of rolling-stock was the rail system that car-loads of machinery were dumped beside the track in the Russian interior so that trains could return to the battlefront in the west to pick up further cargoes. The transplanted enterprises were destined for the most inhospitable regions of the vast Soviet Union.
Workers struggled to assemble their new premises in temperatures 40 below, while the machines, thick with hoar frost, had to be revived with braziers...
German armies swept through the rich iron, coal and steel regions of western Russia and the Ukraine, depriving Soviet industry of two-thirds of its coal and steel. In the year leading to the siege of Stalingrad Germany produced four times as much steel as the Soviet Union."
— Why the Allies Won by Richard Overy
Randomized controlled trial: When experienced developers use AI tools, they take 19% longer than without. In other words: AI makes them slower
— Even after experiencing the slowdown, developers still believed AI had sped them up by 20%. The slowdown persists across different outcome measures, estimator methodologies, and many other subsets/analyses of our data.
I'm just happy we didn't willy-nilly, without any facts, data, or planning, force-deploy AI across every industry... oh wait a second, that's precisely what we did. Why are long-term planning, looking at science, and critical thinking in such short supply?
Patriotic War marches on to reach version 2.2, which sees a slight fall in the MP cost of evacuating factories, some terrain and dugout edits, plus adding IS-2 tanks to the player/Soviet side. Oh, almost forgot: Green checkboxes indicate valid sideways movement options during the early phase when withdrawal is blocked. It goes without saying that this game contains letters from the alphabet, so out of control Google bots banned it, but you can reliably get it via the Amazon App Store.
Have you ever considered what it actually takes to relocate an entire factory...
D-Day version 7.6 rolling out. I can't believe I published this game 14 years ago. And wouldn't you know it, after 14 years of adding new features to this tiny-scale-map scenario, it is squeaking from the corners at times.
Article: Crazy maritime story, I can already imagine comments in the style of the Monty Python's Black Knight.
The bow of of the USS New Orleans, blown off by a Japanese torpedo in 1942, relocated
— In the November 1942 a fleet of 9 ships, including the USS New Orleans, intercepted 8 Japanese destroyers trying to deliver food to their forces on the island of Guadalcanal. The Japanese gained the upper hand, sinking one US heavy cruiser and damaging 3 more. The USS New Orleans was hit by a 'Long Lance' torpedo, tearing off nearly a third of the ship. Miraculously, the crew managed to get the ship to a nearby harbor, where they stabilized it by creating a makeshift bow of coconut logs, which allowed them to sail backwards all the way across the Pacific Ocean back to the U.S. so the ship could be repaired.
That satisfactory feeling when you almost over-heat your test device into a fireball, but finally manage to pinpoint the location of a bug that happens once every roughly 25,000 turns (turned out to be various layers of variation maxing out in one direction).
Korean War: Massive update to v4.0.0.2. Crossing the border-river to Chinese territory will escalate SINO-UN war and double Chinese units. Shuffling the cities and Victory Points around. Cost on moving via railways depends on the unit type. Obviously only available via the Amazon App Store since Google randomly blackballs apps with words or colors in it.
Article (gotta love real estate agents and their positive spins): Two WW2 bunkers on sale in Kent, UK
—"The bunkers, 60 feet below ground, were once home to the Royal Corps of Signals who used them for 12 months before it became clear there was a flooding problem. The land off Broadwater Down encompasses 4.7 acres and is located in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. According to estate agents, it has two bunkers which add up to 7,000 square feet of space. It could make the perfect development opportunity for a new 'prepper'."
Fall of Normandy: I would appreciate feedback and play-through on the version 6.2 that is now rolling out as it changes some fundamental elements (the player's HOF alias show with the score is now entered when the game ends, etc) due to the Google's ban-happy AI bots.
TAKING PARIS:
"Throughout the afternoon, Billotte’s leading elements fought to drive the German anti-tank gunners from the crossroads at Croix de Berny and by 7 p.m. had it in their hands. But Fresnes, from which fire swept the Paris road, still held out. It was garrisoned by the German military defaulters who had the day before been confined in its cells, supported by several anti-tank guns; an 88 mm was ensconced in the sepulchral gateway of the prison itself. At a range of three hundred yards along the sweep of the avenue de la République, a duel opened between the anti-tank gunners and three French tanks. One was manned by a native of Fresnes who had crossed the Zone libre and Spain to join de Gaulle, another by an escaped 'guest' of the Gestapo who had been held in the prison. The Germans’ first shot set the leading Sherman ablaze; its commander perished in sight of the church where he had been married. The second tank destroyed the 88 mm with its return of fire. The third, driven by the former internee, crashed through the gateway, tossing the wreck of the gun aside, and took possession of the central courtyard. But the battle had taken an hour and had cost four more Shermans, caught in enfilade from guns sited at other points around the prison perimeter. Billotte reckoned that he must regroup..."
— Six Armies in Normandy: From D-Day to the Liberation of Paris by John Keegan
Article: Google Play Store removes millions of apps
It's upsetting to see many niche, life-saving medical apps getting removed just because the developer did not happen to have cabinets filled with appropriate diplomas. One of the apps allowed estimating blood sugar crashes based on exercise, but I guess those patients are expendable to Google. Not to mention tens of thousands of sensitive creative developers losing their hand-to-mouth income that paid for their rent or meds. People in this type of field often are introverted and socially awkward and therefore lack social safety networks to fall back on. So, how many just ended up jobless, ending their business? How many switched their careers away from automated big tech randomly dictating matters? How many ended up leveling up to the heaven to code there? Nobody knows. Tragic. They are not just numbers on big tech's faceless data sheets.
People do NOT appreciate getting falsely accused. Report: At least 13 people took their own ***** as a result of Britain's Post Office scandal, in which almost 1,000 postal employees were wrongly prosecuted or convicted because of a faulty computer system.
WWII Podcast: The First US Army Rangers of WWII
— Author Mir Bahmanyar covers early US Rangers, from being trained by British Commandos using live rounds, all the way to their fateful engagement at Cisterna in 1944, a battle that ended in disaster for two Ranger battalions.
Still demotivated as **** from the below:
Play Store rejected the update v5001 for Anzio and Monte Cassino since I did not provide them passwords to log in to this app that SIMPLY HAS NO passwords! The ONLY WAY I can update this app is by giving Google credentials to log in in the app, even though there is no login at all. In other words, I will NEVER ever be able to update this app because there is no passwords to give neither does any password field exists for Google to enter this imaginery password into.
I have filed an appeal, but considering all my 98796987698 previous appeals about these type of ridiculous quagmires are totally, utterly, and completely ignored and never answered or settled by Google, I do not have high hopes.
So what now? Do I remove the text-string Hall-of-Fame username feature entirely from the rest of the games, since Google literally cannot understand it at all anymore (dumber every week) and will likely block every single future updates for all apps for the same reason? Or do I risk it and try to rename it to something like "nickname", "gamer tag", or "what horoscope sign should the 13th one called" to avoid AI going waywire.
This is yet another lose-lose situation where:
1) In the past, human reviewers have rejected the app updates unless I plainly (like to a 5-year-old) explain that there are "no accounts, no passwords." Basically, an outsourced person in a different culture has 5 seconds to understand the case about an app they have never used and dictate the future of that business, oh joy.
2) But zero-logic AI bots, also dictating the fate of decades-old companies, then go and reject the same app after seeing keywords like "(no) account, (no) password" without me providing those nonexistent passwords for those nonexistent "enter-password" fields for the review process.
We developers are once again left with the reality that unless we do two opposite things at the same time, horrible things happen. There are dozens of Play Store policies that contradict each other, guaranteeing nobody will ever be able to satisfy them all and there will always be technical grounds for disqualification. And without a working appeal process (I personally haven't received a reply/decision in two years) there will be relentless fear that your life's work can be wiped out at any moment.
There are truly no combination of words for me to express how much I disdain big tech's dystopian, unhuman, and anti-common-sense approach. Imagine getting fired from your job for randomly using the word "security" in some sentense because an AI bot noticed that some bad actor also used the word "security" in their texts, and then you could not even ever speak to your bosses to plead your case. The level of unfairness makes me scream. What's the point of working for a year on a project if this level of stupid can wipe it out in a nanosecond without any recourse? So many sensitive creative personalities have given up and ended, either their career or life, after getting unfairly flattened by the doofus AI/outsourced decision.
I recently stopped adding full, detailed change logs into Play Store updates since AI review bots instantly penalized me for using logical, engineer-minded, cohesive lists. Only AI can write logical lists, claims the AI, and so all my updates ended up in the days-long review. Then I began adding errors and casual, thoroughly pointless chit-chat into the What's New section, and BOOM, all updates once again went through smoothly. We now live in a reality where I have to use a lot of my energy to pretend to be stupid, chaotic, and to make mistakes intentionally to be able to post updates. That's how upside-down a world you have to live in if you operate with the bit tech.
NEW GAME! PARIS 44: UPRISING & LIBERATION out now!
The uprising has begun. Drive your armored spearheads into Paris, eliminate enemy strongholds, and secure the capital before German forces moving along the south and the north flank re-enter the fight.
Historical Background: After the Falaise Gap closed, the Americans and British made the firm decision to bypass Paris, fearing a drawn-out urban battle like Stalingrad. Paris also demanded 4,000 tons of supplies daily, capturing it could stall the Allied advance toward the Rhine. However, on August 19th, an insurrection erupted in Paris. For days, chaotic negotiations and fleeting ceasefires unfolded as both sides tested each other’s strength. The Germans struggled to determine whether the resistance had weapons for 1,000 fighters or 100,000. The French, in turn, feared the Germans might still be able to deploy front-line reinforcements into the city. On the 22nd, both sides reached a grim consensus: there would be no truce. As the Resistance built hundreds of barricades, German forces entrenched themselves in a handful of strongholds, waiting for Panzergrenadier reinforcements to crush the uprising. The Resistance hoped their defiance would force Eisenhower’s hand, and with de Gaulle applying political pressure, the Allies finally relented. On August 23rd, French and American tanks began a frantic push toward the capital.
Now, the race is on: Can Germany deploy armored reinforcements in time to crush the insurrection? Or will the Allies break through first, liberating Paris before the uprising collapses or the fight bogs down into a months-long battle of urban attrition?
⊕ Play Store (full paid)
⊕ Amazon App Store (full paid)
⊕ Amazon Free version
⊕ Local free 20-turn-limit demo version APK (for sideloading, no ads)
"A new French revolution raged in the streets of Paris today... They fought like their forefathers did under Danton and Robespierre."
— UP dispatch by correspondent James McGlincy (Aug 25, 1944)
Thousands take part in re-enactment of the Battle of Waterloo
— 210 years after the French were defeated at the Battle of Waterloo, marking the final defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte, the decisive clash is re-enacted. The event brought together more than 2,600 history enthusiasts from around the world.
Norway is sailing towards version 5.0.0.4... Okay, hoping that now all the clashes between the new fail-safe system of units' locations and various landings and air drops and convoys are settled.
One of the signs that I'm mentally exhausted is that I really want to start to watch the Allo Allo series.
Allied Invasion of Italy version 5.6 on its way, adds cliffs on top of all the latest features rolling out.
Article: Tiger Tanks United for the First Time at TANKFEST 2025
— Thousands witnessed two rare WW2-era German Tiger tanks running together for the first time ever at a special display as part of TANKFEST 2025, at the Tank Museum in Bovington, Dorset.
— Video footage: Running Tiger and King Tiger in 4K
Sicily version 5001 rolling out, adds cliffs and all the latest doohickeys.
Union version 1.6.2.3 out, fixing the available gold vs what items are enabled in generals' menu mismatch...
Operation Market Garden version 6210 fixes the issue of some British parachute units ending up with the main push.
Video: The Only Country That Celebrates WW2 1940-1945 Occupation
"FFI fighters from the 17th arrondissement, including Georges Dukson, went to the SOMUA tank factory in the northern suburbs, found a newly produced S35 light tank, and, to the acclamation of the crowd, drove it to the Mairie of the 17th arrondissement. Shortly after 13:00, journalist Claude Roy accompanied Dukson and a group of FFI fighters who marched in single file behind the tank, which now had ‘FFI’ and a Gaullist cross of Lorraine painted on its sides, as it went out to attack a nest of German soldiers on the boulevard des Batignolles. They were filmed by a newsreel cameraman who was one of the group of cinematographers who followed the insurrection. As the tank manoeuvred near the Citroën garage on the rue de Rome, Dukson was shot in the arm and hastily evacuated."
— Eleven Days in August, The Liberation of Paris in 1944 by Matthew Cobb
Iwo Jima sees a setting to double Japanese troops in the cave systems and a ton of Cave-visibility fixes with the version 6.2.
Article: Top 10 most influential military news sites
— Drawing on both editorial influence and digital performance, these ten platforms have become primary sources for decision-makers, analysts, and defense enthusiasts.
1) The War Zone
2) Military.com
3) Army Recognition
Okinawa version 5.2.0.2 on the way...
Utah & Omaha Beaches 1944 updated to version 2.0 with the addition of M10 tank destroyer units.
If you have reset issue after hitting "END TURN" and you are expecting to lose several units, this MIGHT be bypassed by turning OFF option of showing "FALLEN dialogs".
Operation Spring Awakening version 2.6.3.2 rolling out...
Article: Korean War recalled by British veterans
— As the world marks the 75th anniversary of the start of the Korean War, MailOnline has tracked down 3 British veterans. All in their 90s, their stories shed light on a conflict seldom taught in schools... Brian Parritt highlights his superiors, 3 of whom had served in WW2: "There was great respect for them, there is no nonsense when you know your Sergeant Major had fought his way from El-Alamein, up through Italy and on to Monte Cassino." ... As Ken Keld, then 19, looked up from his position, he could see wave upon wave of Chinese soldiers coming towards him. Ken, while holding them off, was running out of ammunition. Within moments, the Chinese had stormed his trench. Ken was pushed back into the tunnels which had been dug by the Black Watch. We were in there when they blew the ends in. With Ken and his comrades buried alive in the tunnel with just a Sten gun and one grenade, the Duke's outside launched a heroic counter offensive on the Chinese trenches...
The next round of updates will remove the "intelligence" segment from the War Status Report (displayed at the start of each turn). Instead, all intelligence information will now be shown directly on the map in the following ways:
— 'Intel' tags on revealed enemy units,
— Labels indicating 'Strong Enemy Presence' etc text,
— Red movement arrows (some accurate, others based on faulty intelligence).
90-min video: Godfather of AI: I Tried to Warn Them, But We’ve Already Lost Control
— Geoffrey Hinton, recognised as the ‘Godfather of AI’ for his pioneering work on neural networks, received the 2018 Turing Award (Nobel Prize of computing). In 2023, he left Google to warn people about the dangers of AI. Paraphrasing: "One guy with a grudge who knows a little bit about molecular biology and a lot about AI can now relatively cheaply create new viruses... People generalize from other smaller innovations that humans don't lose their jobs, they just move up in the value change, but I think this is different. If a trench has been dug or a reply letter written in a fraction of the time, fewer people are needed... The industrial revolution replaced muscle, now AI replaces brain and intelligence... It's going to be a long time before it's as good at physical manupulation as us, so a good choice would be to be a plumber... I haven't come to terms with what the development of super intelligence could do to my children's future..." Anything you look back on and say 'with the hindsight I have now, I should have taken a different approach at that juncture'? "I wish I had spent more time with my wife, who passed away from cancer... Urgent short-term threat to human happiness: if you make a lot of people unemployed, even if they get uniserval basic income, they're not going to be happy because they need purpose. They need to feel they are contributing something."
"Operation Market Garden was a bus with a great many hands on the steering wheel but, in the poisonous atmosphere of SHAEF, no-one was allowed to emerge as the designated driver. With no consensus on how it should be driven or at what speed, a crash was arguably inevitable. Of the Allied commanders directly involved, only General Taylor of the 101st had previous command experience at the level asked of him. Browning had no airborne combat experience at all. Brereton had come from an air force command and had assumed control of the Airborne Army just a few weeks before. Although Gavin had seen combat with the 82nd he had only taken over the Division in August (in the process becoming, at 37 years old, the youngest Major General since Custer) and was leading his first operation. Horrocks, too, had only recently assumed command of XXX Corps after 14 months recuperation from wounds received in North Africa and had been seriously ill during August. Urquhart, as we have seen, was also new and inexperienced. All had yet to make their mark on their commands, as Horrocks’ furious attempts to instil a sense of urgency on the Guards Armoured Division demonstrated... Poor to non-existent forward planning was also a feature of XXX Corps’ performance, as shown by the fact that it does not appear to have occurred to anyone to have the corps and divisional allotment of assault boats on hand until US and Polish airborne commanders asked for them. "
— Operation Market Garden, The Legend of the Waal Crossing by Tim Lynch
Operation Market Garden updated to version 6201. In addition to a huge list of updates to the game engine, I also finally managed to rewrite the well-over-decade old code handling the airfield that brings in reinforcements. Obviously a big Hall-of-Fame update too. Let me know if something is fundamentally broken.
The mud of the eastern front fully stopped the Germans, but mostly in ways people do not realize. If anything wet got between interlocked parts of complex suspension/track systems, freezing then wrecked the whole vehicle. Only the wonder weapon of the highest caliber could get the armies moving again. Meet Raupenschlepper Ost. When troops got their hands on this simple-enough wonder-weapon to actually work in the harsh conditions, the orders instantly maxed out all production capacity. It was pretty much the only German vehicle that remained operational in the East throughout the year, so it ended up doing just about every job you can think of.
Article: Okinawa marks 80 years since end of one of harshest WWII battles
— Okinawa was sacrificed by Japan´s Imperial Army to defend the mainland, historians say. The island group remained under U.S. occupation until its reversion in 1972. Nearly 2,000 tons of unexploded U.S. bombs remain in Okinawa. A recent explosion at a storage site at a U.S. military base caused minor injuries to 4 Japanese soldiers.
Database servers were down for few hours.
Operation Spring Awakening: Line-of-Sight fix with version 2.6.3. The Amazon Developer Console is under maintenance, so Amazon gets updated whenever they might return online one day.
So, I planned to publish a fully free game, "Paris 44: Uprising and Liberation," to increase discovery... but it turned into a too complex game due to the uprising to be a proper and simple “starter” game. As a result of so many test-players saying that, I'm releasing it as a normal paid game, and later try to make another simpler game for promotion. All this reminds me of how the Battle of Kasserine Pass project ballooned into the Axis Endgame in Tunisia as the map kept expanding, and new unit types got added.
Article: Inside the secret tunnels under London where 'Ian Fleming dreamed up James Bond in WWII'
— The complex, officially the Kingsway Exchange Tunnels, was built 1940-1942. Had they been used as a shelter, the tunnels could have housed 8,000 people. Instead, the Special Operations Executive (SOE) - created by Churchill to 'set Europe ablaze' - moved in. The complex was later turned into a telecommunications hub, and 4 more tunnels were built in a north-south direction. Now The London Tunnels Company hope to raise £150million to re-develop the site as a tourist attraction.
The latest episode of Expedition Unknown (S16-E01) explores some (previously unseen) German WW2-era tunnel systems in Poland. Not for the claustrophobic.
WW2 Podcast: Robert Capa’s D-Day Photographs. Drawing on official military records, eyewitness testimony, and detailed photo analysis, Charles Herrick offers a new and controversial perspective.
So, basically, Capa didn't know how cameras or film work or how to take a decent photo. He faked a fair chunk of his war photos (in unpublished pics, the 'dead' walk around after faking a scene). And if you have seen a great Capa-pic it's likely because another photojournalist who actually understood how photography works and who actually was with the first-wave troops took that photo, but it's widely miscredited to Capa due to his relentless self-promotion.
Hooray, finally located the source of the MISCLICK issue. So that will be getting better with the next round of updates.
I'll probably soon post on this page a link to a very early beta of the new, fully-free campaign for sideloading. Background: The plan here is to increase visibility in app stores via an easy, quick, completely free game.
Video (new channel, check it out, maybe you like it): The Last Days of Austria-Hungary
— In November 1918, a 650-year-old empire simply vanished. When 29-year-old Emperor Karl inherited the Habsburg throne in 1916, he inherited an impossible situation: war on 3 fronts, 50 million subjects speaking 8 languages, a starving population. An empire older than America itself dissolved as completely as if it had never existed, leaving 50 million people to reinvent their identities.
Article: Google Is Shutting Down Android Instant Apps
— Google has officially confirmed that it will be sunsetting Android Instant Apps in December 2025
After semi-violently trying to force developers to go all-in with the Instant App idea, Google is now like "hahaa, just joking, sorry for once again burying profitable entrepreneurs by tricking them into investing time and money into a half-baked contrapsion we cancel". According to the website "Killed by Google", over 250 Google offerings have gotten the boot so far, which means there is well over 50% chance of Google soon canceling whatever it proudly and loudly announces. Try building a business on top of that out of control minefield.
I'm pondering about releasing a simple, easy, and smaller-scale WWII campaign for free to reach new players in the Play Store (discovery getting worse each year). Fully free, no ads, no in-app purchases, no tracking, no turn-limitations. Maybe just strip away quotations and a few settings, etc which could be an issue with the masses (somebody always finds a way to get offended), and streamline maintenance. If nothing comes out of it, so be it: I wasted a few weeks. However, if the freebie, over the years, pulls a few more players into the orbit of the series, nice.
Science/Research: Military experience predicts military multitasking better than laboratory measures in officer cadets
— In contrast to our expectations, the associations between lab and military multitasking and working memory were weak. Furthermore, the participants did not display multitasking decrements but improvements as a function of time on task in the military setting. Moreover, we found a positive association between the time officer cadets had already served in the military and military performance. In conclusion, it appears unlikely that one can simply predict military performance by means of lab measures. Hence, personnel selection procedures might need to consider cognitive capabilities as less important and rely more on training achievements.
Almost like real-world experience is invaluable, who could have possibly ever guessed that *sarcasm*
Article: What British children are taught about history in school (report by Policy Exchange)
— Sitting at the bottom of the list was the Battles of Trafalgar and Waterloo with only 11% of students studying the topic. They were followed by the Battle of Agincourt (18%), the Boer War (25%). The top five most studied topics are now the Transatlantic Slave Trade (99%), Britain in WW1 (99%), the Norman Conquest (98%), the Abolition of Slavery (96%) and Reformation (95%). Elsewhere, 53% of people say their knowledge on British history has been informed by film and TV. 15% learn about history through social media. 12% say their knowledge comes from newspaper and news media outlets.
Falaise Gap (Allied Side) version 2.4.2 is on its way.
Video: 15 Controversial War Films Hollywod Buried
— This list is packed with banned war movies, blacklisted anti-war films, and controversial military dramas that studios buried, censored, or disowned.
Tarawa 2.4.0.1 out to fix strangeness caused by the reef-system interfering with the logic of who controls water hexagons.
Luzon version 2.6 on its way... Restores the replacement rate back to the expected and supply-related icons redone to better fit the theme of unit-icons.
I thought about sharing an interesting video from YouTube, but I'm stuck between "every history buff already follows the famous high-quality channels" and "darn, most of the other content is just content farming and semi-auto-generated generalities without any actual research and knowledge."
Designer: "Make it more boxy, I'm taking a stand against all these rounded and sloped surfaces!"
"At the German listening post at the Dutch plant of Phillips Electric outside Einhoven, agents were listening to the radio traffic on the main cable between Britain and the USA. One time, experts hit the jackpot; they overheard a conversation on the scrambler phone between Churchill and Roosevelt... There was an attempt to undermine the British economy with the mass production of fake British 5 pound notes. One German agent had the audacity to ask a Swiss bank to check whether the notes were real or not. He said he suspected they were not. The Swiss gave the notes a clean bill of health. However, the plan to drop notes by the ton into Britain was never carried out. Instead the money was mostly used to buy the weapons the Allied had dropped to the various resistance groups... Operation North Pole was an unqualified success. Nearly 50 Dutch agents from SOE went into the bag. The booty dropped by the RAF was an eye-opener. For the first time the Germans were able to obtain British secret weapons, almost straight from the factory. And what weapons they were: coal filled with plastic explosive, Chianti bottles with explosives in the base, folding motorbikes, armoured canoes for attacking shipping, even dead rats filled with plastic explosive and rusty bolts which were, in reality, limpet mines for destroying railway bridges... Americans planned to stop Swiss banks from handling German gold, but Admiral Canaris pushed a whole stream of Germans from the fake ‘resistance’ to contact John Foster Dulles to block this blocking. In the end Canaris succeeded. People are arguing about the missing Melmer gold to this day, with the current German and US Governments at loggerheads over what happened to the stolen assets and which firms should pay compensation to whom... Canaris had dreamed up ‘strategic sabotage’. This entailed the sabotage of US plants which would have a far-ranging impact. Abwehr agents were to blow up a cryo-lite factory in Philadelphia, which manufactured the essential materials for the production of aluminium. The plan failed as one of the agents, an ex-waiter, figured out he could keep the whole flush-fund if he betrayed his comrades to the FBI... After the war the Allies found a dossier of some 250 individual reports in the German Admiralty archives, all dealing with the time and place of the Allied invasion. ‘Of these only one, from a French colonel in Algiers, was correct. But this had been filed away unheeded with the dross. The majority opinion gave July 1944 as the month and the Pas de Calais as the place."
— Espionage Campaign Against the Allies by Charles Whiting
Will the future wars be about water? Some households spend up to 30% of their income on water
— Almost half of the Kabul’s boreholes (the primary source of drinking water) have dried out. If trends continue, all of Kabul’s aquifers will run dry as early as 2030, an existential threat to the 7 million inhabitants.
Overused rivers leave little or nothing for downstream nations, creating critical challenges for agriculture and livelihoods. For example, extensive water usage by China and Laos on the Mekong River jeopardizes Vietnam's vital rice-growing regions. Similarly, the Colorado River is so heavily tapped that it no longer consistently reaches the sea, devastating Mexico's delta and farming communities. India's hydroelectric projects along the Indus River are crippling agriculture in Pakistan. In the Middle East, Turkey's extensive irrigation systems significantly deplete the Tigris-Euphrates Rivers, causing severe water shortages in downstream countries like Syria and Iraq. Furthermore, as Ethiopia and Sudan increase their use of the Nile River, less water reaches Egypt, a nation heavily reliant on its flow.
These aren't theoretical concerns; water scarcity is already leading to deadly conflicts. In April 2021 and again in 2022, border clashes erupted in the Batken region between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan over access to the Golovnoy water intake facility on the Isfara River. These confrontations tragically resulted in over 55 deaths and hundreds injured, with both sides resorting to mortars and heavy weapons. More recently, in May 2023, Iranian and Taliban border guards exchanged fire at a disputed canal point along the Helmand River. This conflict, triggered by reduced water flow from Afghan dams, left at least three Iranian soldiers and two Afghans dead, highlighting the severe human cost of water disputes.
Tinian version 1.4.0.3 on the way. Lieutenant General Holland M. Smith considered Tinian "the perfect amphibious operation in the Pacific war."
A reminder to all who are new here: there exists a free, turn-limited version of almost all the games available if you know how to sideload an app. No ads, no tracking, just a turn-limit, usually at 20. Try any game as long as you like. See "local APK" download link on the main page.
Tarawa v2.4 rolling out...
If you wish to feel old, try explaining the concept of "WIRED headphones" to a member of the latest generation. "It goes INTO the phone?" I think it's safe to say the very latest tech kids have grown almost solely around wireless charging and wireless headphones, and the ancient Sumerian-era concept of "wire" greatly mystifies them. Also, what happens when these new incoming generations are supposed to take care of the basic infastructure?
Article: D-Day soldier who helped capture Pegasus Bridge passes at 102
— Trooper Roy Cadman was a member of 1st Special Service Brigade which landed at Sword Beach at Normandy on June 6 1944 and helped capture Pegasus Bridge. Trooper Cadman, of 3 Commando, 1st Special Service Brigade, later recalled: “The beach was a mass of flame and smoke, and I thought nobody could survive that. We went ashore with green berets. We battled our way through three or four big concrete bunkers with slits in it and guns sticking out. Our objective was to meet the 6th Airborne Division who captured Pegasus Bridge. We were in such a state that we couldn’t go any further – we had not got enough men. The commandos regrouped and made the eight-mile journey to Pegasus Bridge before sealing the perimeter.
Battle of Leyte Island rushes to version 4.0 after somebody spotted that, ahem, minefields don't really work. Obviously, that also includes a major Hall of Fame clearance. .
Book excerpt:
"The only questions that the Japanese had in 1944 was where and when would the Americans attack. They knew that the Philippines would be attacked, but which island and when? While garrison forces were established on all major Philippine Islands, an attempt was made to retain a mobile reserve which could be rushed to the point of the most danger once the Americans showed their intentions. General Kuroda was left with the choice of where to station his reserves and how to plan for an effective defense. His tenure was short-lived, however. Early in October 1944, General Kuroda had accepted the reality of facts in evidence that his superiors chose to ignore. He advised the chief of army intelligence in the Imperial General HQ that it would be better for Japan to negotiate a peace now than await the destruction of the nation at the hands of the victorious Allies. He advised a concentration of all available ground forces on Luzon, mentioning in his reasoning that the Americans, with their superiority in air and naval power, could take the Philippines whenever they chose. He detailed the superiority of American air power and remarked that the building of airfields on Leyte was of no benefit to the Japanese since they could not staff or equip those fields. He concluded that in effect, they had been built for the American's to use. Quickly labeled a “defeatist” he was removed from his command."
— Leyte 1944, The Soldiers' Battle by Nathan N Prefer
How German tank commander evaded FBI for 40 years by building new life as all-American ski instructor after escaping PoW camp at end of WWII
— Having been sent to fight with Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps in North Africa, Georg Gaertner was captured by British troops in Tunis in 1943. By September 1945, after WW2 had come to an end, Gaertner had decided that he did not want to grapple with the possible fate that awaited him back home as his hometown Swidnica was now controlled by the Soviet regime. Gaertner slipped under the fence of Camp Deming and boarded a freight train to California. He had nothing but the clothes he was wearing...
Invasion of Japan version 4.0 out! Faster pace of replacements and resources, plus plenty of other tweaks plus a proper refresh of the REAL-icon-set, few icons are entirely new.
Well, Defending Spanish Republic has unfortunately entered the spiral of "fix one thing and another one pops up". We are already at at the version 1406. I had to re-reset few MP-cost-counters.
Article: Major evacuation in Cologne after WWII bombs discovered
- The biggest evacuation (20,000 people) in Cologne since WWII is under way after the discovery of 3 unexploded bombs (two of 20 tons and one of 10 tons) dropped by allied forces. Three bridges over the Rhine have been closed and rail traffic has been halted or diverted.
Operation Spring Awakening is reaching towards version 2.6. The handful of the best scores are ridiculous; I'm saying this after my own risky attempt saw those risks realized at full.
Site: Old Maps Online
— Choose an area and use slide-timer to see how borders have changed over time
Saipan: fix on its way (v3602).
Podcast episode: British Tanks of the Red Army : WW2 Podcast
— While most British tanks did not fare well in Soviet conditions, the Red Army appreciated Valentine tanks that were shipped over in thousands, so that it actually made a two-digit percentage of all the tanks at one time. Sadly, since no country wants to remember their losses or draws, this huge contribution during the early critical years has not gained a foothold in the headlines, and most glory goes to domestic T34.
Okay, I'll admit it. After a week of watching photorealistic videos of newscasters, standup-comedians and re-imagined film trailers made via a simple text prompt by a kid who knows nothing about videos and audio, I'm enjoying online videos less. Instead of relaxing, my mind is working overtime trying to figure out if this is real or not. It's basically a standard joke now that video content creators make AI versions of themselves talking about AI, and most viewers can't tell the difference as the footage flips between the real and the AI creator.
And flagging AI-videos as "AI" will only make it worse, since only law-abiding entities will comply, and for example, a state wanting to push propaganda will obviously not tag their videos. Therefore, people relying on AI-tags, instead of learning to identify fake footage themselves, will be fooled more.
Dreadfully, I have already watched many people working in the audiovisual field talking about their very recent firing. The inescapable reality is that, if you're running an ad agency, will you risk $200,000 to shoot a single ad with real, finicky, injury-prone humans when the end result might not even be satisfactory? Or do you spend $200 to have AI generate 100 ads of the same quality and then choose the best one out of those? Since most are struggling financially, the AI videos will take over. Can you recall a time in history when a 1000X cheaper product of similar quality lost to the more expensive one?
Comically, even online creators raging against AI-generated videos are regularly caught liking AI-generated videos because even pros in the field can't tell the difference half of the time. Tip: At this early stage, the skin is still too flawlessly smooth, and the background might be too much/little out of focus vs main object. And this is only the crude, first widespread version.
On the plus side, if you have ever dreamed of making a film, you pretty much now can, with only a few hundred dollars, get both film-studio quality audio and video with only text prompts. And we are not too far from the point where one can just ask AI to generate more episodes on the fly. "Okay, AI, make me 10 more episodes of Friends, but include fewer jokes about Monica cleaning stuff and more Ross overreacting and Chandler making jokes."
Remember when we had 2 TV channels, and pretty much every human being saw the same thing? We had shared experiences we could talk about. Okay, admittably we had a horribly one-sided view of everything, but arguably that felt safe and comforting, since that one-sided presentation kind of made sense. Having shared experiences is getting more rare by the month. Even when watching a sporting event, you can now choose different camera angles, etc.
Our mindset should recalibrate into approaching Internet (videos) as we would approach a magician doing a street show. The magician will pull a pink elephant out of our ears, but we don't take that as the reality on which we build our worldview. But how do we deal with the inevitable apathy when nothing can be trusted or everything requires an excessive amount of work to verify? It's the classic issue: a lie takes a second, but properly disproving it with sources consumes days of intense work. Many athletes doing amazing feats after years of disciplined training are already getting brutally attacked in comments because people don't believe what they are seeing is real. There is one tall woman sharing people's reactions as she walks through malls: now her comments are just people screaming; it's all AI. Anything deviating from the norm will be doubted relentlessly. Did you buy a shirt that looks perfect on you? It must be AI! Trust will be in short supply.
And let's zoom out ten more steps to look at the ultimate level: What is the point of improving yourself and your skills as a human if the AI will be 100,000X better in seconds? What's the endgame.
PDF: WWII shipwrecks and submarine attacks in New South Wales waters 1940-1944
— Wartime secrecy meant that the public knew little of the impact on merchant vessels by enemy submarines during WWII. But Japanese submarines, even a German U-boat and to a lesser extent minelayers, had significant successes operating along the east coast of Australia. Here is a detailed list of 19 merchant ships were sunk by torpedoes, gunfire or mines off the NSW coast during 1941-1944.
Random rumination: Is there any practical way to include and showcase the massive effect of code-breaking into the game play? Is it such an underappreciated part of the WWII, that sometimes I want to include it in its full effect just to drive home the point. And if you don't believe the importance of code breaking, here is a handy test: Challenge your friend to a chess match, but always loudly explain all your plans to your friend before each move. How can you win under such conditions? Unless your friend is a deep friend potato, he will win.
The mind of an AI player: One of the conundrums I have wrestled with for two decades is how to balance tactical and strategic priorities when AI makes decisions. If an AI unit, on the way to massive attack, doesn't take the empty city nearby, the AI will look dumber than a doorknob. However, if most AI units on the way to attack get distracted with small local tactical tasks, that massive attack takes place with one or two units. In that case the AI feels like a harmless kid running after every shiny thing it sees. For a smart person, crunching all those countless aspects to make a smart decision is almost effortless. But trying to give a sensible numerical value to everything in a way that reflects the current tactical and strategic situation is a fool's errand. The number of variations is infinite. And worse yet, you can't really use any fixed weighted values, since that would eventually make the AI predictable. And if that priority system is already such a complex formula that your head hurts from understanding what happens and why, adding "varying variation" into it will make later analysis such a Herculean effort.
Let's take a quick case study of how humans make decisions: Your unit could take an empty AI-held city, but nearby your unit is about to be encircled. You factor in the importance of the city, is the city threatened, are you likely to be able to hold it later, do you have resources to fortify the taken city? How much will this slow down the unit taking it, etc. And on the other side of the equation: how likely is the other unit cut off, can other units nearby help it, is it a key unit, can air force supply in if it get cut off, maybe that unit can afford to be cut off for one turn, etc. Each of these factors in turn requires thinking about a handful of other factors. Once you start to break down human decision-making, you realize how tricky modeling it even a little bit is. As a human you instantly merge info from dozens of hexagons and factor in dozeons of units in 2D map where time is the 3rd dimension. This is why so AI is useless in most games. If the AI unit super simply and mindlessly always goes towards the closest city there really isn't much challenge in that game. And even the seemingly obvious decisions can get fuzzy quickly in real life. Let's say you can move a unit south to cut off an AI unit. Okay, on the theoretical surface level, that move should always be done, because trying to help a cut-off unit is such a disruption. But what if that means weakening your line defending supply city while the AI will most likely push your unit away with tank units flooding towards that hexagon? Is it still an obvious move to make? How do you put that scenario in numbers, formulas, and math in multiple dimensions of map and time?
It's tragi-comic, but once the number of AI-player tasks per unit grows too high, the best and most practical answer to this AI-priority-challenge actually is... adding more AI units. If the AI unit marching to the mass attack can tag an adjacent unit to take the empty city a turn ot two later, the problem is for the most part solved. This 'too many tasks' issue is why games with fragmented control of the map, like Spanish Civil War games, are such a perplexing undertaking for the AI. There might be tactical tasks both in the north and south of the unit, plus the front line cohesion should be held, and there are strategic things to group towards in the East. In the worst case, there are 20 tasks pulling the AI in every direction, and sometimes the AI unit moves south and sees a never-before-seen player's unit. This new information tilts the priorities of those 20 tasks in different order. Oh no, now the AI unit moves back, which looks like a silly waste of move points. But, after a certain level of improvements, the processing required and the data needed to be kept in memory to make the AI smarter are now no longer worth the cost. This also partially explains why pushing a risky spearhead deep into the AI front line works better than what you might expect. As the number of front-line hexagons and enemy units near the AI unit in different directions increases, the number of tasks fighting for the top priority in the AI's logic goes up drastically. And this in turn increases the chance that the best move might get narrowly beaten-in-priority in the middle of the sea of various tactical, operational, and strategic moves the AI ponders. This also explains why the last 10% of the campaign might not be an epic final battle: Supply is out, AI is crushed under too many tactical tasks. Taking a wider view: Maybe the big epic final battles died with modern warfare that require supply and logistics. In WW2, Japan and Germany did not rise to the one last epic battle, but simply whithered away, running out of fuel and ammo.
Defending Spanish Republic version 1.4 marching out... Let's see if this take finally restores the balance for everyone. Also trying to get a singular fix out for the Union.
Science: Aging with board games: fostering well-being in the older population
— This study investigated the role of board games as a viable tool to promote the well-being of older people and, consequently, to promote positive aging... The results showed that the level of well-being experienced while playing was significantly higher than that observed in daily life, F(1,131)=14.604, p=0.000, particularly with board games with a low or medium level of difficulty, F(2,126)=10.982, p=0.001... The results are particularly important because board games can be a low-cost intervention to promote the well-being of older people. They can be easily adopted by social community centers, and playing board games can become a routine practice.
Site: Oculi Mundi is the online home of The Sunderland Collection of world maps, celestial maps, atlases, and globes
— Various maps basically from 1470s and onwards
I remember when in the early days of Facebook you could post to your group of 10,000 people, and 10,000 people saw that post. Then it fell to 1,000 seeing the post, and Facebook once asked money to 'boost' the post. Then only 100 out of 10,000 saw a new post, and there were several popups about paying Facebook so they might graciously show your post to the group of people who wanted to see that post. Now, if you're lucky, 10 people out of 10,000 will see a new post, and for one week I'll be beaten to exhaustion with Facebook's gangster extortion to 'pay for any visibility whatsoever'. By now, almost all platforms and search engines work the exact reverse way to their early days. Imagine if the weight of the average food portion went down 1000X, or the price of a new car went up 1000X. Why do we tolerate certain things worsening 1000X when we would riot if other companies did that to their products? Remember how magical the Internet was when Google hired 10,000 engineers who found and highlighted the best content there was? Then somebody at Google realized that "wait a second, if those 10,000 engineers prevent anyone from ever finding anything, the content creators have to pay to us to be discovered." I'm sure kids who have known nothing else than this model find this normal. But, let me tell you, if you experienced the time when social media and search engines showed you content, it has been a painful downfall to live through. If I had one extra lifetime, I would do a search engine or social platform my way, not ruthlessly optimizing it to make money. How about we optimize it for discovery and happiness, and make enough money to keep the thing going? I have an odd respect for Craigslist because it has not changed much over decades: it's still hyper simple, with very few ads and data collection. Almost every other giant of the web has fallen to the greed.
Russian GPS interference is so exceptionally heavy that Finnish ocean-research ship Aranda struggles to carry out meaningfully accurate work on Gulf of Finland. Somebody might ask when low-intensity warfare against a NATO member is too much...
Experience report by XXXXVIII Panzer corps about its deployment on eastern front late-1943/early-1944
"Infantry divisions in the present form are no longer up to date. The assignment of an assault gun battalion can fundamentally remedy this... Blocking units. The German side could for the most part only throw alarm units against Russian tank formations that rapidly penetrated in depth. Their combat value was low. ATG regiments seem necessary... In its present organization, the artillery is very difficult to move (apparatus of staffs and supply units, which is constructed around the few barrels is too extensive and complicated.) To achieve a mass effect and a destructive effect at the decisive point, an increase of mortars and rocket launchers at the expense of the barrel artillery is necessary. The Russian has moved in this direction for more than a year."
— The German Army on the Eastern Front: An Inner View of the Ostheer's Experiences of War
At first glance I thought this was a fake photo, but its' just colossal semi-transparent German WW1 biplane Linke-Hofmann RI
Marcel Ophuls, Oscar-winning filmmaker who forced France to face its WWII past, passes away at 97
— His landmark 1969 documentary "The Sorrow and the Pity" shattered the comforting myth that most of France had resisted the occupiers during WWII. Deemed too provocative, too divisive, it was banned from French TV for over a decade. French broadcast executives said it "destroyed the myths the French still need." The film's devastating message: France´s wartime story was not one of widespread resistance, but of ordinary compromise - driven by fear, self-preservation, opportunism, and, at times, quiet complicity.
Version 1.4 rolling out for Panzers to Baku.
"The oil question was becoming crucial for both Germany and the USSR. To emphasize his intention, at a meeting of Heeresgruppe Süd’s senior officers at Poltava on 1 June 1942, German leader stated that ‘If I do not get the oil of Maikop and Grozny then I must end this war.’ Nearly two weeks later, General Halder reported that based on a land forces quartermaster’s assessment, fuel for the upcoming summer offensive was only expected to last until mid-September... Brandenburgers were tasked with infiltrating enemy lines to Maikop, where they were to ease the way for the anticipated arrival of 13th Panzer Division, as well as securing the area’s oil assets until conventional forces arrived. After dark a 62-man fake-NKVD contingent marched through friendly lines around Novoalexandrovsk and into the Soviet territory... As Brandenburgers approached the Armavir–Tuapse Railway, which comprised several parallel tracks at the city’s main train station, they were stopped by actual NKVD personnel attempting to regulate military vehicles through the overwhelming chaos. When asked who he was, the Brandenburger commander responded that he was a ‘Major Truchin’ from 124th NKVD Rifle Brigade on special assignment. The checkpoint commander moved them through."
— Behind Soviet Lines, Brandenburgers Capture the Maikop Oilfields 1942
Spanish Civil War version 3.4 marching out. This should finally settle the overactive AI generals issue that has been bugging this particular campaign so badly (due to the fragmented initial setup putting so many generals near the front line).
"On June 8 1944 General Spaatz issued an order that remained in force until the war ended - the primary aim of the Eighth and Fifteenth Air Forces would be to deny oil to Germany. Following that order, Ploesti and other oil refineries were the major targets. How could the Germans take such punishment? How could they defend their country? Where did they get the fighters? The pilots? The antiaircraft guns? These questions were difficult for the AAF to answer, since the feeling had been that just one more blow - or two, or three - would do it and the Germans would pack it up. Nothing like that happened. The Germans made vast efforts to disperse their aircraft factories and at the end of 1943 were producing twice the number of fighters estimated by the Allies. At that stage of the war, German fighter pilots were among the best in the world. German technical knowledge and skill were equally outstanding. They were bringing a rocket-propelled fighter, the ME 163, and a jet-propelled fighter, the ME 262, on line. Despite many attacks on aircraft-producing factories, the Germans built 2,177 single-engine fighters in June 1944 (compared to 1,016 in February 1943) and more than 3,000 in September. The jet aircraft were the most serious threat and the Fifteenth went after the jet factories in Friederichshafen in a series of July raids. A postwar assessment determined that these missions destroyed 950 jet aircraft, fewer than the estimates at the time but still an impressive result. The raids on ball bearing plants had caused much physical damage but had hardly interrupted the flow of ball bearings to the factories where they were needed. In July 1944, the Fifteenth lost 318 heavy bombers in its many missions against refineries scattered across southern Europe. It was the worst month of the war for the Fifteenth."
— The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys who Flew the B-24s over Germany
I come bearing both good and bad news. After days of diving deeper and deeper into how the AI figures out things with its fuzzy logic, I ultimately located the logic error that made some Partizan, etc units oddly passive at times. Bad news: Partizan and Polish Home-Army units will now be more active. You can see the first fixed logic working in the Fall of the German Army Group Center as the version 2603 rolls out. It's maddening to hyper-focus on one issue that long and relentlessly; I need an episode of a lighthearted and empty-headed TV show to unwind.
Axis Crimean Campaign is inching towards version 2.6 and there is a minor update to Japan-in-WW2 with version 1.1.0.7 (never-ending balancing of elements and fixing the Australian graphic issue).
Article: Royal Navy launches first 12-meter uncrewed submarine
— The 19-tonne sub is categorized as an Extra-Large Uncrewed Underwater Vehicle (XLUUV). Name Excalibur, it will operate under the newly formed Fleet Experimentation Squadron, which falls within the Royal Navy’s Disruptive Capabilities and Technologies Office.
"Records from Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs verify that Japanese officials contacted non-Japanese journalists as early as December 1932... Following Japan’s military invasion of China in the summer of 1937, Japan had faced harsh international criticism. The Japanese government sought to discredit what it considered exaggerated accounts foreign missionaries provided to the outside world. One American in particular, journalist Frederick Vincent Williams, worked for Japan by producing in 1938 a book called Behind the News in China, suggesting that the behavior of the Japanese military was beyond reproach and that Japan had no role in the instigation of any problems in China... Tourism plans in 1930s Japan surpassed the wildest dreams of even its staunchest supporters. Japanese travel brochures touted Xinjing, the new capital of Manchukuo, as a planned utopian city of the future to demonstrate to the world the modernity Japan was bringing to Asia... When news of Tokyo as the future site for the 1940 Olympics was broadcast, Japan went into a delirium. However, the 1940 Olympics never took place. Japan cancelled its Olympic plans in the middle of 1938 amidst worries over steel production and whether the government would be able to requisition from tightfisted military leaders the necessary funds."
— The thought war: Japanese imperial propaganda
Last resident of WWII 'ghost village' that was cleared for D-Day troops passes away at 100
— The 'village that died for England' was evacuated in 1943 so soldiers could practice house-to-house combat manoeuvres ahead of D-Day. Peter Wellman, the last surviving former resident, made a final visit last year to see the abandoned coastal village of Tyneham in Dorset where he was born and brought up. Although MoD promised citizens could return after the war, they were never allowed back.
Updated Demyansk Pocket 1942 to version 6.6. That took ridiculously long, since there are so many exceptions to normal rule sets. Also, every time I type the word 'Demyansk' anywhere, all the spell checkers kick in and start to scream that 'this here is a super obvious error'.
HOF (Hall of Fame): Trying to make the visual appearance of the HOF pages both more dense, so the lines don't go 'over' with long names, but also add a dash of color. And, since there are two entirely different ways to handle the style of HTML pages, you either have to support the old or the new standard. I try to support both to make sure everything is covered, but the challenge with running both standards is that even the tiniest mistake with the placing of 'empty space' can break some obscure parsers, resulting in colors being off. So, if you still are seeing white-text on white-background, drop me an email. The current code should, in theory, work on pretty much every possible combo, but there is that nasty thing called 'reality' that always seems to find some device that interprets standards a bit uniquely.
Dieppe version 2 is making its way through the app store processes. I'm testing writing some hollow freehand text to the update-text field on the Play Store to see if that would reduce the chance of getting stuck in eternal review. My theory being that if Google's ultra-simplistic AI sees logical text (=could be AI) or text that repeats elsewhere, it flags the update, so maybe that can be avoided by being non-strict, non-logical, and non-useful in the what's new field. I used to regularly post to various social media pages, and since I was REGULAR in my actions, I nonstop got flagged for being an automated/AI poster. It tells so much about how dysfunctional modern times are. If I want to submit a simple post online, I have to think hard about how to appear as a chaotic humanlike poster instead of a disciplined, engineer-minded person. That has over time effectively killed my desire to post anything anywhere: I just want to merrily and in a carefree manner post something for the joy of it, not do a 60-minute analysis of current policy/censorship/posting-schedule trends. Also, if you do not follow big tech, many big firms have now given an order that a new human person can ONLY be hired if the manager can prove that that particular job cannot be done by an AI. UPDATE: the new version went through the Play Store security in seconds, either it's a random coincidence, or Google's 'improved security check' truly relies on infant-level-thinking and all text appearing like a drunked random chaotic human wrote it.
Video: Sinking of HMS Glorious: German Film Reel 1940
— Original film reel showing the sinking of the HMS Glorious aircraft carrier by German battleships.
Let me tell you about the most devastating historical letdown I’ve ever encountered: the Knights Templar’s unshakable obsession with the stuff that gave them their power. Some years ago, I had the privilege to read translated documents about one of the biggest Nights Templar bases and how they operated. After lifetime exposure to the lore of their wealth, secrets, relics, and military prowess, I was not ready for what 85% of their inner writings were actually discussing about. Obviously they needed to be in top fighting shape and mental state, so they required nutritious food, which meant manure. Document after document, week after week: Where to get manure, which was the best kind, etc. To be the shining example to the whole neighboring area on how to flourish, everyone needed to be healthy and strong, meaning reliable, solid food to give energy to build things and guard routes. This could only be provided if Templars had a steady flow of fertilizer. To strike the fear to the heart of rulers, Templars needed, you know, a chain of stuff that all ultimately relied on getting that mulch. The glamour went from 100 to zero. Imagine these legendary warrior-monks, sworn to secrecy and clad in iconic white mantles, spending their days debating cow vs horse dung like medieval agricultural influencers. And yes, seriously speaking, it makes sense. In medieval times, it was hard to rely on others delivering food to you during tough times. So the more critical and fought-over the location, the more fractured the environment was, the more the focus went to securing your own crops in limited spaces, meaning you were inevitably preoccupied with manure or you were dead. To this day, every single time a documentary breathlessly announces, ‘We are about to dig up a secret Templar vault!’ I can't help but to think, ‘Forget gold: test that soil for 700-year-old fertilizer potency'!”
Japan-in-WW2 assign-resource-freeze might happen when trying to assign a resource to a stack of units. Version 1.1.0.6 rolling out, fixing this.
When RAF dropped 200,000 incendiary devices and cheap pistols to Germany
— On September 25, 1944, a squadron of Lancaster bombers dropped 200,000 packages containing small incendiary devices and American-made single-shot Liberator pistols above Frankrut. It was hoped that the weapons would land behind the barbed wire fences of various camps and cause a wave of mass sabotage.
Okay, Japan-in-WW2 is starting to push against the limits it can safely run on, so version 1.1.0.5 will try to keep less data in memory and 'trim the fat' so to speak.
Argh, a couple of the campaigns have a bug that activates AI units too early.
Updated FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions). Added a list of settings to tweak to make moving the units easier and thereby help to pass the turns in a quicker manner.
"During WW2, the US Army resisted most efforts to place a heavy tank into operation. The difficult encounters with the heavy King Tiger and Panther medium tanks in Europe changed some of this policy, but the Army Ground Forces tended to oppose any tank approaching the 50–70 ton range. The Ordnance Department, however, saw a need for a special assault tank capable of dealing with fortifications. In September 1943, concept and design work began on a vehicle designed to deal with the expected works of the West Wall and other conceivable German strongholds. Early concepts called for use of the new T5E1 105mm cannon that performed very well against armor and reinforced concrete. With frontal armor 203mm thick, the resulting vehicle would require the electric drive installed in the T1E1 heavy tank and T23 medium tank... In March 1944, the design was approved for five pilot vehicles of the special assault tank, designated heavy tank T28. Among many departures from conventional designs, this tank was designed without a turret in order to lower the height of an otherwise huge vehicle. In order to reduce the ground pressure, a second set of tracks was provided... Then the chief of research and development of the Ordnance Department, advised the head of the department that the “startling performance of the new tungsten-carbide ammunition” now in use by the German Army left the T28 too vulnerable. He recommended increasing the frontal armor to 305mm."
— Super-Heavy Tanks of World War II
Lucky me, I seem to have developed a new typo: Whenever I'm typing at a high speed, there is a danger of 'London' turning into 'Longon'.
Well, a few millennia have passed by, and most updates are still stuck in the eternal Play Store review. So I guess I'll need to stop posting "version X is rolling out" stuff or post them with time delay. In the worse case, those messages are only creating confusion when players don't see the announced updates. Sadly, there is now less point in quickly reacting to any issues in the games, since nothing can be updated within a reasonable/relieable/knowable time frame. Plus, it's taking mental gymnastics to realize that "ah, this feedback email is about the new latest version on the Amazon App Store and this another comment is about the old old old version at the Play Store, and that issue was already fixed a few versions ago".
It feels like that every day, a new Google product or service takes a step closer to being outright useless. After weeks of missing Gmail notifications, I was forced to install another email app simply to get notifications working. It's Google's own app on Google's own Operating System, for crying out loud. Basics should work! I do not care if the fancy AI garbled replies work, but I truly need the fundamentals to work without fail; otherwise, there is zero point to even using that product. Google's market cap is almost 2,000,000,000,000.00. One might think they could afford to hire one guy to work on fundamentals instead of all focus going to new exiting, exploding, market-disrupting innovative speculative vaporware.
Oh, and why did installing the new email app feel like walking through a minefield? After typing the precise name of the app I wanted to install into the search field of the Play Store, I got a ton of ads and misleading images. I guess those screen-filling images also directed to the apps mentioned in the ads. After scrolling down and managing to tap the tiny, narrow space allocated to the actual real true search result showing the only app that matches the searched name, I got greeted with... pointless data safety info. Please show me something useful like the version number, last update, feature list, and how long the developer account has been active, or user reviews. Data safety info is a joke. Let me demonstrate, since I have to fill out billions of those bureaucratic forms. Since I do not collect device-released user-account data at all, should I answer that "I sell user-account data to third parties" or that "user-account data is only sent to my servers"? Either of those has anything to do with what happens in my apps, but I'm only given the bureaucratic, pre-made, poorly thought out options to choose from.
Well, what a screeching day. Every single app update, big or tiny fix, is firmly stuck in an eternal yet pointless Play Store review. I dropped my favorite coffee mug on the floor, and it shattered into tiny pieces. I missed several critical emails, and so I had to install a SECOND email app on my phone to simply get notifications of new emails. Gmail never shows notifications, and some of its notification-related settings crash if I try to alter them. And yes, trust me, I have flipped on the 9889 layers of settings that could be blocking notifications. And to add to the misery. I tried to send a package to a friend to cheer him up but decided not to send the book after realizing that postage fees would be more than there is currently money on this planet. The prices don't make any sense to me anymore. I think it's much cheaper if I study to become an aircraft engineer, build a plane, and fly the book over to its destination. I can't wait for this day to be done and dusted. Oh, I'll just need to find a way to unwind enough to be able to get into sleep.
The major elements left out of the Japan-in-WW2 game:
— US bombing raids: excluded for balance reasons.
— Japanese submarines: too many units to move/process already.
— Atomic bombs: few players like sudden game enders, plus it's a sensitive topic.
One might sum most of that up as 'too many dimensions'... Basically, the underlying 2D game engine would need to be properly morphed into a 3D one to allow aerial and submerged units to exist in their own dimension without causing mayhem. Just imagine a busy channel between islands filled with surface units, submarines, and planes.
I might have to find a super-tiny scenario to one day try running the game-play in air/ground/surfare-water/under-water levels.
Article: How America’s Mexico Campaigns Shaped the Civil War’s Top Generals
— On April APRIL 9, 1865 Generals Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee met at Appomattox to formalize the end of the bloodiest war in American history. After a few seconds of awkward silence Grant spoke first, reminding Lee that they had met 18 years earlier in Mexico. It was during General Winfield Scott’s 1847 Mexico City Campaign... In 1848, the young army officers believed that they had just been through the great epic event of their lives; none could imagine that it was just a prelude to something much bigger and far bloodier that would overshadow the two-year conflict below the Rio Grande.
Japan-in-WW2 version 1.1 rolling out, assuming it does not once again get stuck in the Play Store review. I'm starting to think it's some foolish AI that sees the word 'dive bomber' and goes haywire. At this stage, I'm just so mentally tired of coming up with'safe' words to replace anything history- or military-related. I guess we could call them something like 'sea planes', which would also differentiate from land-based ground attack planes.
Main Change Log:
— AI-controlled cities left uncaptured may now experience local insurgencies
— MP markers now include a white or black dot for easier visibility (Options: Off, Default Transparency, Max)
— AI battleships may now conduct bombardments against land targets
— Japanese main units parked within 2–3 hexes of U.S. cities on the east side of the map will increase tensions
— Ground attack planes are now less effective against warships and may suffer extra MP loss (especially when overused)
— Uprisings are now more likely (previous strict rules made them rare)
— Unit Size toggle [U] now cycles through a 'hide all units' mode
— Tension levels escalate faster during the 1940s
— Warships at full HP will begin to refuel automatically when idle in a friendly harbor
— Option added to hide oilfield/mine/industry capture images
— Ground units can no longer rest while on harbor hexagons
— Bases can now refuel from a truck located on the same hex (via 'Take Fuel' button)
— When a Dive Bomber unit moves to a hex with both carriers and bases, total aircraft capacity is now correctly calculated
— AI: Expanding and varying the target selection for AI landing fleets. Trying to choreograph the edge-warship-pile-up with more robust refuel/task/repair priorities
— Fix: Piling up over 16 units per hexagon caused graphics issues
— Crash fix: Cost counter overflow when too many units of one type are in play
If you guys had ANY idea how much energy and time it takes to change anything in a system this complex. Just doing the above took me 8 hours of high-intensity concentration and thinking, and it's all taken from my Sunday. And I left a couple of the bigger things for the future major updates. Plus there is the fairly hard to avoid fear of screwing up the whole pandemonium.
Guam slides to version 2.6.
As evening of 20 July closed in, Admiral Conolly and those around him who were responsible for the invasion of Guam looked forward with high optimism to the success of their enterprise. Reports indicated that "all known major defensive installations in position to interfere with the transports approach and the landing have been destroyed and the assault beaches cleared of obstructions and searched for mines with negative results."
Ashore, the Japanese command was not to be outmatched, at least in outward show of confidence. To the men of the 48th Independent Mixed Brigade, General Shigematsu announced encouragingly: "The enemy, overconfident because of his successful landing on Saipan, is planning a reckless and insufficiently prepared landing on Guam. We have an excellent opportunity to annihilate him upon the beaches. We are dedicated to the task of destroying this enemy, and are confident that we shall comply with the Imperial wish."
— Campaign In the Marianas: U.S. Army Center of Military History
Panzers to Leningrad version 3.6 is rolli ng out with all the latest doohickeys.
Remember that time when the Union army marched to New York to fight... the draft rioters?
Thanks to its status as America's business capital, New York City stood deeply divided at the start of the Civil War. The passage of the nation’s first military draft act, in March 1863, only worsened the situation. Not only did it allow the wealthy to buy their way out of military service but it also exempted African Americans from the draft. As the initial lists of the conscripted began to spread, a large-scale armed protest movement got underway. After a night of heavy rain, rioters returned to the streets early on Tuesday, July 14, looting and destroying businesses in the downtown area. Among the dead was Col. Henry O’Brien, the commander of a local regiment. The mob also began constructing barricades around the city. As the violence continued to spread, the city’s mayor formally asked the War Department to send federal troops. By the fourth day of the uproar, more than 4,000 federal troops, including battle-hardened veterans fresh from the horrors of Gettysburg, had arrived in the city to face off against rioters. Estimates vary greatly as to the number of people killed in the Draft Riots. Local reports initially cited 1200 perished, but modern historians believe (only) up to 120 people lost their lives.
the main source for the above
Somebody asked why the way the storms are drawn has changed twice in a year. So, one day I realized that there exists a fairly good 'rain' symbol in one of the Unicode sets. No need to carry around an image file; just use that pre-set symbol. Since that particular Unicode set has been around for well over a decade and it was not an edge-case character set, I foolishly thought that every single manufacturer would be implementing it by now. Halfway through rolling it out, it turned out to have two problems. One, some manufacturers did not support it, and the result was that some type of messy placeholder symbol was used instead. Second, I found out that one of my many code editors did not support that character set either, and when I rarely opened up the code in that one editor, it turned that great rain symbol into an incoherent mumble. And that's why, in the middle of rolling that first way to draw the storms, I was forced to flip into a simpler, second system. One of the issues of any complicated way to indicate 'rain' is that it can cover too much of the underlying information/units/etc., especially if other big changes happen to the map (like winter in some scenarios). In some cases, there simply are too many layers of information to show. Terrain, rivers, units, roads, markers on units, weather, etc can pile up on top of each other. And on a budget phone, when zoomed out, it's just outright impossible to show dozens of different things with few available pixels.
Article: 598-coin cache hidden in the 1940s found in Czech Republic
— Hikers came across the 15.4lb (7kg) hoard worth over £250,000 after taking a short cut on the wooded slopes of the Czech Republic's northeastern Podkrkonosí Mountains. The metal box contained a total of sixteen snuff boxes, ten bracelets, gold coins...
CRETE now at version 5.0. After 9 years of putting patch after patch over the chaos created by dozens of parachute units randomly ending up over each other, I finally bit the bullet. I rewrote all the code handling the unit scattering during initial/early major landings. It's so much clearer now: let me tell you, looking at your own code from a decade ago is not always pleasant. On top of the that, I added two weak British light tank units to give the scenario some variety, plus introduced random impassable cliffs (the same system used in Bougainville). With the REAL unit icon set rebuilt from originals, it feels like a different game now. I was also a bit sad to find that on some devices there was a ghost text drawn on the screen. Geez, had somebody told me, I would have fixed that months ago.
Video: What Happened to All the Flak Fired During WWII?
— In some edge cases, the falling debris from Flak-fire and unexploded shells caused more damage than the bombing raid itself.
Article: Black female WWII unit, 'Six Triple Eight,' to receive U.S. congressional honor
— The only Black, all-female unit to serve in Europe during World War II, commonly known as the "Six Triple Eight," will be presented with the Congressional Gold Medal
The Third Battle of Kharkov marching towards the version 3.6
The greatest naval battle in history
"The American combined chiefs-of-staff had long before agreed the policy for defeating the Japanese at sea and recovering all the many islands they had occupied... The first move was a thrust from the Solomon Islands and Guadalcanal north to the Gilbert and Marshall Islands. The island of Tarawa proved the hardest nut to crack, but thanks to the control of the air by the Americans, Tarawa was captured by the courageous Marines...
The Marianas were a different matter. The Japanese High Command was now alarmed and gathered together the remnants of its Navy into one giant task force. The supreme commander was Admiral Soemu Toyoda. The Japanese had managed to scrape together no fewer than 9 carriers. In all they could launch 500 planes...
The Battle for the Philippines was the greatest naval battle in history, judged in terms of the number of ships taking part, the number of ships sunk, and the importance of its outcome. It included every form of naval warfare of the twentieth century: gunnery duels between battleships; destroyer battles at night and by day, as ferocious and sustained as any at the Battle of Jutland; submarines that stalked the depths, sinking many ships; and, finally, carrier warfare on a scale never dreamed of even by the most ardent enthusiasts of air warfare at sea."
— Naval Battles of the Twentieth Century
I have been traveling near the Russia-Finland border, and it's horrifying how a couple of times my GPS has been 1 km off for hours. After some small Finnish airports near the border unsuccessfully tried new fancy ways to block the 'mysterious' GPS disruption, they have now been installing the old-style radio navigation equipment to facilitate aircraft landings. Modern solutions are unreliable if somebody puts any effort into messing them up. Official numbers: There were a total of 2,800 GPS disturbances affecting aviation in Finland in 2024, compared to just 200 incidents in 2023. So, I can't help but to wonder: Now that Finland is in NATO, how will their troops with excessively fancy gear manage here?
You would not believe me if I told you the amount of feedback I get that basically begins with "you should follow my advice since I'm the inventor of board games and served in most armies and special forces around the world, and I know everything about business, and I personally know every name in this field, and I ace every game." Sigh, okay, so why in the past 20 years, every publisher and developer that has tried your suggestion went bankrupt? Although, to be fair, one should never judge a message by its style. In the early days, I once received an ALL CAPS SCREAMING message written in a childish style, and in hindsight, to my shock, I ended up at least half-implementing most of those points. A good idea does not need merits or coherent style, and a bad idea does not get better even if it is backed by the emperor of dice. Also, there should be a different folder for feedback received on Friday or Saturday night after maybe emptying a few barrels too many.
Supplying Rommel
"The senior quartermaster officer for Africa was Oberstleutnant Graf Klinkowström. He organized his logistics support forces into 3 supply columnss, each with a lift capacity of 360 tons. With the shift of the front to the area around Tobruk/Bardia, the distances to the front from the main port of supply climbed to 1,500 km... The first blow to the German supply effort was delivered by Force “K” on the evening of 16 April. All 4 freighters of a convoy were sunk and 3,000 DAK soldiers swam in the waters of the Mediterranean for their lives...
The Italian freighter Birminia had reached Tripoli safely. In the bowels of the 10,000-ton ship was ammunition for the DAK, including 10-kilogram bombs, which were crated in bundles of 10. During the offloading, one of the crates was dropped and it went off. As a result of sympathetic explosions, all of the remaining ammunition went up, ripping off the deck of the ship...
Of the 37,000 tons that were loaded on ships in November, only 23% reached their ports of call. Despite the almost superhuman efforts of the German and Italian sailors and the coastal waterway traffic, the needs of the DAK for its attack on Tobruk were only 40% met."
— Das Afrika Korps: Erwin Rommel and the Germans in Africa, 1941-43
Video: How the US Brazenly Stole the Soviet Union’s Best Helicopter
It seems that many updates and fixes are once again stuck on the Play Store. Sigh. I think Google's automated technology doesn't any more work on weekends, you know, just like your toaster, TV and game console do not work on weekends because it's way too impossible to do technically. Why is so much tech going backwards?
On the road, so limited replies...
Case Blue: Version 3 rolling out.
"General Hasso von Manteuffel had no choice but to order the Panzer Lehr and 2nd Panzer to bypass Bastogne. Instead, he left the 26th Volksgrenadier to perform siege warfare... After the war von Manteuffel became irritated by the focus on Bastogne. ‘It’s surprising to me that Bastogne has an honourable place in American military history,’ he observed, ‘and St Vith is hardly mentioned! The Battle of the Bulge was not fought solely at Bastogne.’
Field Marshal von Rundstedt: too much reliance had been placed on Dietrich’s 6th Panzer Army. This meant that the emphasis of the attack was not in the central Ardennes, where the roads were better. 'This decision was a fundamental mistake that unbalanced the whole offensive.' German HQ then made matters worse by reinforcing Dietrich and not von Manteuffel, even though the latter had created the opportunity for a breakout...
The grand plan had all been for nothing. Nevertheless, the Ardennes offensive had proved to be a remarkable battle. Germans had thrown 3 armies at 6 US divisions over a 50-mile front achieving complete surprise. This resulted in an embarrassing breakthrough that brought the Americans and the British to loggerheads. Despite some American units being thrown into a state of utter confusion, Von Manteuffel and Model, though, never came close to getting to Antwerp, which had became the holy grail for the Allies, as it answered to all their supply problems. The Allies were only able to land just over 35,000 tons of supplies a day using the liberated Channel ports. Antwerp’s docks were capable of handling up to 3X this amount.
Germans severely underestimated the speed of the Allied response: Within the space of just four days the Allies reacted by redeploying half a million men to the Ardennes."
— H’s Winter: The German Battle of the Bulge
It literally does not matter how much memory I reserve for resources in any given campaign, there will always be a handful of players building and placing and stockpiling so much that the underlying game engine runs out of memory. At least in some games, I can slowly increase the price/cost of resources if there already exists a board-filling amount of them. Another issue is speed. Sometimes you have to loop an index against itself. And looping 100 on 100 is only 10,000 checks… but try giving 1000 × 1000 a try, and suddenly we are at a million checks level of magnitude. The jump from 100 to 1000 is 10X, but the checks in a loop checking against itself: the jump is 10,000 to 1,000,000 that is 100X times more processing. The requirements simply spiral out of control if you're not putting in some limits, even if the resources might cycle at the higher and stranger rate for a player or two.
Berlin version 5200 rolling out. Okay, make it 5203 that should fix most issues.
Overworked and underforked. I literally don't know where all my forks are, I can currently locate one.
Video: When One StuG III Crushed 24 T-34s in a Day. Ace Commander Hugo Primozic’s Hour of Glory.
"Outstanding early successes only concealed Japan’s grave structural weakness. The army was already overextended in China, and each new conquest in Asia or the Pacific seemed to demand still another troop commitment to protect the recently acquired territory. Thus the navy needed Rabaul to protect Truk’s southern flank, but then needed Port Moresby to protect Rabaul’s flank, and then needed northern Australia to protect Moresby. It needed the Solomons as advance bases for operations against Port Moresby and Australia. And Fiji and Samoa became essential in order to sever the line of communication between Australia and the United States. In China, generals clamored for offensives against Chongqing; in Burma they wanted to drive to India; and in the southern region, admirals dreamed of invading Australia and India.
The imperial navy approved the F-S (Fiji-Samoa) and the Midway operations on April 5. The former would sever the line of communication between the United States and Australia (and thereby deny Australia’s use as a forward staging base for the Allied counteroffensive), and the latter would provoke the decisive naval engagement and destruction of the American fleet. It was further decided to occupy the Aleutian Islands to prevent air attacks on Japan from that direction. The Midway operation came as a total surprise to the army, which went along because it was solely a navy operation and there was nothing the army could do about it... The Doolittle raid embarrassed the army, which was responsible for air defense of the home islands and was thus persuaded to join the Midway operation to thwart future carrier-based air attacks. Around the same time, the North China Area Army tried to broker regional truces by bribing warlords."
— Japan's Imperial Army, Its Rise and Fall, 1853-1945
Let's see if version 3.4.0.5 finally settles everything in the Balkan game.
HOF: The service provider tightened database-related security settings, and that prevented one part of my code from running as normal. So, just to be safe, I flushed the database-'pipes' to force any scores stuck on my end.
France 1940 version 6.0 rolling out! The Belgian divisions were split into active (normal) and weaker reserve unit types. Graphics reconstructed from originals. There might have been some unit-icon confusion between French motorized, mechanized, and armored.
You know it has been a good week when, in spite of hectic updates, almost every single crash on record from the last 7 days has been caused by me testing various things.
Japan's Indian troops attack Gurkhas defending India
"Some argued that with the Indian National Army (INA) in the vanguard of the Japanese offensive into India it might even topple the Raj... For months the Indian National Army had been awash with the propaganda that when confronted by their kith and kin the Indian troops of the British Army would refuse to fire, and joyfully join in the revolution. For the men of B Company, 4/10th Gurkha Rifles, however, nothing could have been further from the truth. Five miles south of Palel, dug in along a ridge, the Gurkhas watched the Indians approaching in an extraordinarily lackadaisical manner. The sustained and disciplined firepower of the waiting Gurkhas, unmoved by the thought that they might be firing on their erstwhile colleagues, scattered the startled Indians. For the loss of two Gurkha, the INA lost two officers and many soldiers, together with the surrender of 35. A few miles to the rear the INA Regimental HQ was attacked, and the following morning was hit by a strike by RAF Hurricanes coordinated with an artillery bombardment. The attacking force was largely decimated by these actions. The greatest effect of these disasters, however, was on INA morale which, combined with repeated Japanese failure to supply the division with either food or ammunition precipitated a series of crises in Indian National Army ranks. Many men deserted, while others shot themselves through the foot or hand in an attempt to escape the battlefield. Of the 3,000 men of the 2nd Gandhi Regiment who marched into the hills at the end of March only 1,000 remained by 15 June, and then only 750 two weeks later."
— Japan's Last Bid for Victory, The Invasion of India 1944
If you need to get those pesky colonial Brits out of India, who is the one fiery Indian woman you will call to raise all-female regiments to attack and liberate India? It's captain Lakshmi Swaminathan of course. Rani of Jhansi Regiment was one of the first all-female combat regiments in modern military history, and in spring of 1944 it was one of the Indian National Army (INA) units that attacked from Burma to India... Although after the Allied-side Gurkhas wiped out few INA regiments, Japanese decided to keep captain Lakshmi's female regiment in the rear handling the resulting chaos from the failed attack and retreat.
Japan-in-WW2Version 1.0.7 starting to roll out.
— AI Unit Animation setting: AI units now animate only if there are at least X player-controlled hexagons within range 2.
— Carrier Deployment: The 5 initial Japanese carriers and their planes can now be time-released at the start of Year X so they only enter play later to speed up play
— Japanese airforce units block more of the AI strafing and with high tech-level withing range 2. Reduced strafing in China during early years; strafing heavily depends on wars against the UK/US.
— Ships can only rest/repair in harbors if no adjacent enemy city or unit is present.
— Updated new US battleship names for accuracy. During the transition, new names use underscores to avoid duplication issues
— Fixes: Fixed an issue where the USSR war-status counter failed to escalate to full war. Addressed AI over-cautiousness with amphibious landings. Resolved an issue where planes with full movement points (MPs) but low HP could become stuck among AI units, blocking turn progression.Fixed "river-on-ocean" graphical glitches. MP cost for constructing dugouts now scales more sharply with the number of existing dugouts. If the game engine runs out of memory, it prioritizes removing dugouts farthest from enemy units (excluding those on the west/north edges of the map and in Home Islands).
If you're trying to install an app manually (also known as side-loading) on an older device and it doesn't work the first time, don't worry, it might just be a timing issue. Sometimes, even if everything is done correctly, the device may show a message like "install failed" at the end. In many cases, simply trying the installation a second time will succeed. This happens because newer software is often tested on the latest high-end phones, and may not always account for how slowly things work on older devices. So the app is not necessarily prevented from installing, your device might just need a second attempt to catch up.
Once again, I'm shocked and bewildered to discover that the 'trial and error' of life includes actual 'errors'—and, truth be told, I'm not especially fond of the 'trials' either.
Axis Balkan Campaign updates itself to version 3.4.0.2 (make it version 3.4.0.3) and that includes rebuilding most of the icons. On top of the ongoing list of additions, changes include new unit type for the Greek Tankette unit, less HPs for the not yet fully mobilized units, new icon for the Italian commander, if Engineers are turned OFF generals can request airfields and hospitals.
I would like to meet the devious person at Amazon who replaced the one hyper-quick “remove all screenshots” button with excruciatingly slow one-by-one removal of screenshots via an incredibly ultra-tiny x-marker. I could previously do that task literally, no exaggeration, in under one second. It was one button. Now it's like this: Do one super-focused click on one tiny 'x' marker in the corner of one tiny thumb of a screenshot. Then wait, wait, wait, processing, wait, wait, oh wow, YES, the page is responsive again for the next action. Try very hard to click on the next miniscule 'x' button without boiling over from frustration. Then wait, wait, wait... Repeat until all the countless old screenshots are removed. Sigh! Who walked into a meeting and said, 'I got a great idea, guys!' This is a strong contender for the most bewildering tech change I experienced in the last 12 months.
I wonder how much happier and unique game-makers were in the 1990s, when you basically never received feedback unless somebody wrote you a letter or your game got reviewed. And since you had very few games to compare your idea to, you were much more inclined to follow your own, utterly non-standard vision. Now there is a nonstop flood of feedback in every direction, and since almost everybody copies almost every (good) feature and practice, we are marching towards a clone city, where everything just resembles everything else more and more. Don't get me wrong, feedback allows 20X faster fixes and corrections, but it's also very challenging on many layers. Even if you do 999 out of the 1,000 things right, the majority of the feedback will be negative. And players will loudly demand the game be taken in a direction they happen to like. It's hard to maintain a positive drive and a clear vision of your own when there is booming, nonstop screaming to make things differently. What was the last game that made you go: “Huh? WTF is this?”
Features rolling out:
— Setting: Each turn store full-screen map as a screenshot. These can be viewed turn by turn later. Tap to 2x zoom. Default OFF. Note: eats up to 300k storage per pic on 1920x1080 display. [please note that these are on the app's own storage so not visible on image galleries of the device, and all these will be removed when you finish the game]
— Stars indicating the most battles changed: Now the unit with the most battles of its unit type has 2 star-markers
— ROUT: Out-of-supply unit can once per turn ROUT, lose roughly half of its HPs to gain 1 MP
— Setting: Make unit-icons harsh/gritty as they lose HPs (less saturation, more contrast) [similar to 'darken the damaged units']
— WAYPOINT: Select a unit with MPs, tap further than the unit can travel to during this turn, and the unit will automatically continue the travel at the start of the next turn. Or select no-MP unit, long press the hexagon where it should go. Options: OFF or ONLY if target tap >= 1/2/3/4 hexagons away. [the newer version will be get triggered by scrolling on the map]
— If unit has multiple negative MPs at the start of a turn and it has no other text-tags set, -X MPs tag will be set. If nothing else is happening, focus will be on the unit with most negative MPs at the start of the turn.
Since the lowest-end budget phones no longer crash after I add slightly higher-quality icons, I'm also tempted to start adding new unit types into older campaigns. Or use that untapped capacity to include some basic variation, like using different REAL icons for German vs Italian commanders on the same side. Sadly, there still are some campaigns that outright lack unit types. For example, some Pacific islands were basically attacked by American Marines and defended by the Japanese Army. There might have been a few tanks and some random Japanese construction or Navy unit, but that doesn't change the fact that without adding some miniscule, insignificant unit types, it's tough to even get to 10 different unit types. Or should I take advantage of that unused potential to make the image of every general unique in those campaigns? Although if I do that in only a few games, then there will be nonstop questions of why this isn't the case in every game. And maybe in those extreme cases, new unit types should not be forced into play just to add variety. Maybe war was sometimes gray and monotonous. On the opposite end of the spectrum is Eastern Front: "Please add all the Axis separately, Italians, Romanians, Hungarians, Finns; plus also keep all the auxiliary units separate by type: oh, and add light tanks and late-war heavy tanks, and Stugs and split antitank guns into early weak ones and later strong ones." One unit type at a time, please.
Oh, this riles up me: I have new 'friends' on several social media platforms. Why? Because most apps have switched to a new, sneaky design that shows the 'add as a friend' button precisely where you press when you are quickly flipping through multiple posts. We have reached a point where we need an acronym for “sorry, I didn't mean to add you as a friend; the borderline illegal setup misled me into tapping that action.”
German Security Divisions vs Soviet Partizans
From as early as the summer of 1941 demands for troops at the front had stripped the German Security Divisions of considerable manpower. The Security Divisions lost not only personnel from their initial complements on invasion but also horses and hence mobility. On 2 June 1941 the 281st Security Division had 1,876 horses, by 11 September there were only 760. Replacements were considered inadequate for the task expected of them. The 281st Security Division reported that "the bulk of the personnel are too old, more than 80% more than 30 years old"...
In a partisan diary captured by 281st Security Division, it was reported for 14 September 1941 that "our reception in the villages has become consistently worse; the Germans warn the civilian population of the consequences of assisting us". Consequently the diary went on to state that "the population of the villages is intimidated by the Germans. They barter with us and assist us only with great trepidation, lest the German troops harm them". Certainly the partisans were not seen in the same positive light as the Red Army in part as a result of the repercussions of a partisan presence in the locality. The above partisan diary reports that on 29 September 1941 the partisans arrived in a village to be told: "We are German subjects – move on! We don’t have any bread ourselves. Many of your sort come through here. Better that you were at the front with the Army!"
— The War Behind the Eastern Front, Soviet Partisans in North-West Russia 1941-1944
Updates. Big update to Union (version 1.6)! Amazingly enough, I changed everything, yet it went through the Play Store update process in seconds. Thankfully, after several days, the latest update to Japan-in-WW2 is finally out, that's version 1.0.6. Also, below are a couple of longer pieces of writing about AI and graphics, I guess after the all the coding I was looking for something else to do for a change. There is actual military-history/game posts below all the sudden verbalization.
Graphics chat by non-artsy developer. I have been testing a bit higher image quality for a while now in several games, and unlike in the past, I have not seen any out-of-memory crashes. I guess the worst budget phones have all retired by now. So, this allows me to move forward with upgrading the unit-icons (please don't get too excited). Some games will see bigger graphics updates than others. In a handful of scenarios, the icons are effectively based on the decade-old base images and will be replaced with icons based on newer, entirely different image-sets that are a bit more board-game/drawing inspired. Yes, the good news is that I have had a decade to try to secure some image sets. I feel like they might work on these games. And while some images continue to look and be the same, they will be higher quality versions, reworked from the original HQ sources. It's strange to see something you have stared at for 10-years change; at times it's jarring, and in some cases it feels like jumping from cave-art to space-art. And yes, some old graphics were, how to put it nicely, 'not great'. Understandably so, after some images had been re-edited dozens of times, resized and rescaled to be smaller, driven through various image-optimizers, simplified to be recognizable at very low pixel densities, etc. You do that to an image year after year, not always with the greatest of care in the middle of the night, tired and monitor adjusting color-space without me realizing it. In the end, the 20th edit of the image is a broken mess. In some icons, the original base-color has half-vanished for various reasons, so at least the visuals should be more color-striking moving forward. One thing that has caused many wars inside my mind is 'gradient'. Yes, I admit, using a color gradient in the image looks great, but you basically instantly 4X the size for an eye candy. Plus, there is the argument that it's harder to get a solid quick-glance overview of the map if instead of unified simple colors, you are looking at the gliding and ever-changing color shades.
And since I don't have an artistic/visual bone in me, my fashion sense is 'beige cargo pants, please', I'm sure some changes will horribly misfire and mismatch the overall style of the campaign in question. I can't really draw from scratch, but I'm fluent enough with GIMP (image editor) that I can edit, mix, bend, and twist. And the world is filled with talented people to buy/hire source images from. Hopefully this stepping-up-of-graphics will happen at a four-steps-forward, one-step-back speed. The factor that is making this very challenging, is that all the options allow changing the style so much: NATO/REAL icons, background style/image, intensity of colors and markers, and shadows. What I'm trying to say: The changes should look tolerable on the default and most common visual options, but I'm afraid that some setting-combinations inevitably result in an ugly, chaotic, or cluttered map. For example, the new movement-arrow color fits pleasantly with the default background color, but is an eye-sore on some background patterns. Those types of things can't be solved so that everything always works and looks fine. And this leads to the question: Should some visual settings be removed? I'm split on this: On the other hand, I want there to be plenty of options to tweak the elements, but the maintenance of such a tangled web is overwhelming. I would like to cut down the time it takes to secure that the 100 options interacting with 100 options do not fundamentally clash. I'm strongly on both sides of the argument.
Victory Cards: I will slowly continue to add the various 'victory', etc cards. As an eye candy that has nothing to do with the actual game play, they will always be a low priority for me. Thankfully there are a lot of big old photo/poster/art collections freely available online these days, so I can always try to throw/merge together a handful of retro pics/drawings on GIMP. Add some military symbols to see if the end result would make a usable image. Most of the time it is not, but the process is something different, so it's actually relaxing if I don't take it too seriously or try to force it. I do appreciate the gentle feedback about the fact that some of those cards 'visually do not work at all within the theme of this game'. I agree. I'll replace the worst ones as the updates circle back, so basically the same process will take place as with the 'doodle flags'. Throw 30 things at the wall, repeat replacing the worst 3, and things will slowly get better. Obviously, I'm keeping the size of the victory cards tiny to avoid bloat, so that sets strict limits on how 'glorious' the entire graphic can be. But, at least they set the tone when they succeed in fitting the vibe of the campaign. And if one image is shown multiple times, I will try to include a setting to turn it ON/OFF. I'm not an arts guy, but looking at all the stunning old oriental drawings and posters made me want to create victory cards for all the big islands on the Pacific Ocean. Even as a coder, I get it: if I had one extra lifetime, trying to create something visual by mixing and editing would be a thrilling way to spend that one extra lifetime. But I'm still a coder: logic, numbers, algorithms. So, realistically, the level of graphics will always be between 'WTF is that smudge supposed to be' and 'good enough'. Like I have been consistently saying from the start: the selling point of my games is a certain hopefully unique mix of patterns and variation, easy to play but hard to master! No endless menus or micromanagement, just chasing that feeling when the player goes: 'JUST ONE MORE TURN'! To me, a game is a success if it makes me think: 'ooh, I'll play one more turn to see how that situation evolves as I maneuver my troops.'
"With the invention of photography in the 1830s, the possibility of capturing the events of war was first explored... (from Wikipedia/War-photography)
— The Mexican-American War was the first one to be captured by a camera. A number of daguerreotypes were taken of the occupation of Saltillo during the Mexican–American War, in 1847 by an unknown photographer
— John McCosh, a surgeon in the Bengal Army, is the first war photographer known by name. He produced a series of photos documenting the Second Anglo-Sikh War 1848-1849
— The Hungarian–Romanian Károly Szathmáry Papp took photographs of officers in 1853 and of war scenes near Oltenita and Silistra in 1854, during the Crimean War
— Stefano Lecchi took photos of the battle locations of the Roman Republic using the Calotype process (1849-1859)
— The first official attempts at war photography were made by the British at the start of the Crimean War. In March 1854, Gilbert Elliott was commissioned to photograph views of the Russian fortifications along the coast of the Baltic Sea."
How close was Japan to destroying the Panama Canal in WWII?
"Many in the Imperial Japanese Navy considered attacking the Panama Canal with huge I-400 subs—which could launch several planes—a top priority... There was tremendous complexity in launching the planes from the sub. While the sub was still submerged, the crew climbed up an access tube that led into the hangar. Once inside, mechanics pumped coolant and heated lubricating oil into the plane’s engine... After the planes destroyed the lock gates of Panama Canal, they were to rendezvous with subs in the Gulf of Panama. Ditching their planes in the ocean, the aircrews would swim to their subs... The I-400 left Maizuru Naval Base on July 21, 1945—the Panama Canal was about to be destroyed! However, while moving along Hokkaido, a Japanese shore battery spotted the sub’s silhouette and opened fire.. It was a close call... The attack plan was straightforward. The I-400, I-401 plus 2 other subs would travel independently and only meet up before the attack. However, when the I-400 waited at the final rendezvous point before the attack, none of the other subs showed up. They must all have been sunk. The transmissions coming out of Sydney claimed that Russia had declared war on Japan and a special bomb had been used. Many of the I-400’s officers doubted what they heard. One of the men even reported hearing that Japan had won the war. Unexplainably, the I-401 was actually fine, but it waited near a different faraway island - something had gone horribly wrong at some stage of planning or communication. The post-surrender orders subs received were contradictory. No order explicitly canceled the attack, let alone told to stand down. In fact, one of the orders said 'submarines should execute their missions'. Both subs separately continued with their attack plans.. I-401 was too far from Panama and just as it instead prepared to strike a nearby atoll, it received orders to cease all combat activity as the attack by the Soviet Union made continuing the war impossible. One officer suggested they hide out on a Pacific island... I-400 received its order to dispose of weapons when it was over a hundred miles away from the point from which it could strike the Panama Canal. Both I-400 and I-401 were later captured by the U.S. Navy, which scuttled both subs to prevent Soviet inspection."
— Operation Storm: Japan's Top Secret Submarines and Its Plan to Change the Course of WWII
Post-note: The locks of the Panama Canal were obviously heavily defended by the U.S. due to their ability to cause a nasty cascade of failures, both in the canal system itself if the man-made lakes broke free and to the global flow of U.S. military logistics. So, even if Japan had carried out the attacks, the outcome would have been unknown. Attack during daylight would have made bombing accurate but counter-measures would have been fully active. While night-time attack most likely would have failed to cause enough damage. And, even if successfull, the strike would have not made any difference in 1945 when everything else was collapsing for Japan. But it is a curious piece of history what-if and technology.
Pic (above): Already in 1927, Brits had HMS M2, a Royal Navy submarine aircraft carrier. As the West scrapped the idea over time, Japan ended up being the only country taking this weapon system seriously (I400 was classified for 'decisive long-range attacks') with the plans to make 18 huge submarines. However, during WW2 Japan only managed to manufacture 2 huge submarine aircraft carriers (pics below) and 1 huge submarine tanker (I-402). In addition, Japan had the smaller submarine aircraft carriers like I-13 and I-14 (Modified A2-type), plus some submarines that could launch a single recon aircraft.
Video: 15 Most Historically Accurate WWII Movies Ever Made
— One recreated the inside of a German U-boat down to the grease stains. Another used actual code that was once a government secret.
Latest 5 games that were updated in the past week or two: Juno-Sword, American Civil War (South), Battle of the Bulge, Japan-in-WW2, Kursk.
Joys of weather on Eastern Front
"In April the weather broke for good. Snow and ice melted. The water was knee-deep on the roads. The men waded waist-deep through the icy swamps and marshes. Rafts had to be built for the heavy machine-guns from branches of trees and bushes, or otherwise they would disappear in the mud. The wounded had to be laid on stretchers made of branches, or else they would have drowned. Anything that weighed anything (rifles, horses, men) sank into the swamp. The uniforms were sodden... Bale after bale of straw was collected by the grenadiers from the villages and flung down in the mud. Even the infantry got stuck with their vehicles and made only very slow progress... Entire companies were pulling bogged-down lorries out of the mud of the roads. The motor-cyclists made wooden skids for their machines from boards and planks and pulled them along behind them. Major Vogt, commanding the support units of 18th Panzer Division, was in despair. How did the Russians manage with these muddy roads year after year? He hit on the answer. He got hold of the small tough horses he had seen the local peasants use, as well as their light farm carts, and used them for sending his divisions' supplies forward. It worked. The motorized convoys were stuck in the mud, but the small peasant carts got through."
— Moves East 1941-1943
Yes, I'm aware of the issue in the American Civil War, version 7.0.2.1 has already been pushed out and should fix it. At this stage the best tool to predict if an app update gets through the Play Store quickly is to throw a dice. Sometimes it takes 2 minutes, or 2 hours, or maybe 2 days. Major update might be out in 2 minutes, and some hyper-tiny fix-update that barely changes anything is stuck in review for 2 days.
Battle of Bulge version 7.4 is rolling out, and should balance the flow of the campaign better. Plus the HOF has been cleared from the oldest scores, so there is a nice opening to seize the top spot.
User Interface: I think I’ve finally figured out the cause of the annoyance some players have experienced—excessive triggering of various features while scrolling the map. The bad news is that I still need to roll out this improvement to all the games, so it will take time. However, if you’re one of the players who scrolls the map frequently, the next round of updates will drastically reduce accidental triggers of other actions.
Logistics during the Pacific War
"Almost every human and mechanical need had to be met by shipment across thousands of miles of ocean. The south-west Pacific was known as the “goat and cabbage circuit,” because so much unwelcome food came from Australia. The scale of logistics was staggering. In the five months from 1 September 1944 fleet tankers delivered to the fast carrier force 8.25 million barrels of fuel oil, 12.25 million gallons of aviation gas. In addition, they shifted thousands of drums of lubricating oil in 14 grades, compressed gases, oxygen, spare belly tanks, mail, personnel and food. Fresh water was a constant issue. The heat caused tanks to become contaminated, which necessitated draining them for cleaning. So desperate were some seamen for a serious drink that they built stills or drained alcohol from torpedo propulsion systems. The latter practice may have raised morale, but drastically shortened the torpedoes’ range."
— Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45
Japan-in-WW2 Monday News: Later today, I’ll drop the price from "new" to "normal" (edit: done now). Over the weekend, heavy usage uncovered two critical bugs, so another update — version 1.0.5 — is coming as you read this, along with two handfuls of tweaks, plus the addition of a harbor adjacent to Singapore (whether to keep it or not was heavily debated during development). I’m not gonna lie: It’s humbling to see this complex app running and to daily discover a new "yeah, that absolutely needs changing" aspect. Change log is mostly: fix, fix, fix... But I have to believe that if I keep hammering the nails, eventually everything gets nailed down. One player even managed to land on the American mainland in a way that exposed a big bug nobody encountered during testing. The other way to look at it? Not enough testers ever made it that far with enough force to expose a flaw in full scale combat on the 'edge of the world' across the Pacific. Nail, meet hammer.
Future of Removed Play Store Games: I’m still unsure how to proceed with the games removed from the Play Store (thanks to Google’s overly aggressive bots). Compounding the issue, these games won’t remain available for purchase on the Amazon App Store for non-Kindle Fire devices indefinitely—Amazon is restricting their app store to Kindle Fire devices only. Here are the options I’m considering:
— Direct sales via PayPal, etc. (Great: No big tech ruining everything. Bad: Manual process, slow updates, tax/accounting hassles.)
— Third-party digital storefront (Reduces some hassles but depends on platform quality.)
— Alternative Android app stores (Most remaining stores are subpar.)
— Rework, rebrand, and re-release on Play Store (Risky and labor-intensive—would require maintaining two separate versions for Amazon and Play Store.)
Each option presents significant challenges. Feedback is welcome!
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