IT Play

News

The notes of every version that changed something a player sees, newest first. They are the same notes the game shows once after an update.

0.119.19

  • The game has its own address: play.culminating-point.com.

    culminating-point.com is now the game’s site, with the notes of every version, the articles and the field manual. If you installed the game from the old address, install it again from play.culminating-point.com: the old app opens the new address, and the settings you chose in it stay behind.

0.119.18

  • Each side of North Africa starts with a factory.

    A factory of level 2 makes 2 crates a day from the first day: the Axis’ by El Agheila, where its divisions are fed, the British’ seven hexes from Tobruk. Each side starts with 8 more victory points (61 and 81).

0.119.16

  • Each side of North Africa starts with a motor works.

    The Axis has one by Tripoli and the British one by Tobruk, so trucks can be made from the first day (a truck is 2 crates). Each side starts with 4 more victory points.

  • Only structures carry victory points.

    A city no longer carries points of its own: the points are the structures on it and everywhere else, a depot 5 a level, a factory or a motor works 4, an airfield or a barracks 3, an engineer park 2. Taking a city is worth what stands on it.

  • The war is won by the structures, not by the divisions.

    A side wins when the enemy holds no victory point. A side with no division left no longer loses on the spot: it still holds its structures, and the war goes on until the enemy holds none.

  • A structure taken keeps its level and its points.

    The enemy takes a structure whole, at its level and empty (its crates burn), and its points pass to the enemy: a depot of level 3 is 15 points lost and 15 gained. A level 1 structure is no longer destroyed when it is taken. Dismantle what you are about to lose and the enemy gets nothing. A threatened structure’s sheet says the points it would cost.

  • Factories make four times as much.

    A factory makes 1, 2 and 4 crates a day at levels 1, 2 and 3, and pays back in about 15 days instead of 60. What it costs to build and to raise is as it was.

  • Ground that belongs to no one can be walked into.

    A map may have land that is no one’s: a division that enters it takes it, with the ground around it where no enemy stands. A side’s depots stand only on ground it holds.

0.119.15

  • The game says it is in Early Access.

    A stamp on the title screen, a label on the About screen and the site now show that Culminating Point is in Early Access: you can play it, it keeps growing, and what you play today may change.

0.119.13

  • A page to install the game on a phone.

    A phone or a tablet that opens the game in a browser now first sees what it is, with pictures of its panels, and the way to install it: Android’s install dialog, the steps of the Share menu on iPhone and iPad, or a link to copy out of another app’s browser. Installed, the game fills the screen with no browser bar. “Continue in the browser” plays on, and the page is back at the next visit.

0.119.11

  • Victory points are in the structures.

    A depot is worth 5 points a level, a factory or a motor works 4, an airfield or a barracks 3, an engineer park 2. The cities keep a few points, one for most of them. You win when the enemy holds none: no city with points and no structure standing.

  • A structure taken changes the score.

    The enemy takes a structure a level lower, with a level fewer points; a level 1 structure is destroyed, and its points are nobody’s. Dismantle what you are about to lose and the enemy gets nothing. The news of a structure lost or taken says the points.

  • The enemy goes for your depots.

    The enemy command now aims at your structures as well as your cities, and covers its own. It knows of yours what you know of its: every city’s points, the structures it has seen as it last saw them, and your total. A click on the victory points in the top bar lists what you know; the enemy’s structures you never saw are one line, without their places.

0.119.9

  • Move orders take a second tap on a touch screen.

    In Move mode a tap shows the order where it fell, with its arrow and its odds, and the Order button in the banner gives it. A tap elsewhere moves the preview, so an order is never given by a slip of the finger.

  • Press and hold to read what something is.

    A long press on a button, a tile or a bar shows its explanation, which stays up for a moment after you lift your finger.

  • Bigger clock buttons on a phone.

    The pause button and the speed buttons are 40 pixels, still on one row with everything else.

0.119.8

  • The game fits a phone held sideways.

    On a phone in landscape the interface now reads at full size. The bars are shorter, so the map keeps most of the screen. The top bar keeps the clock, the map buttons, the divisions, the crates, the free trucks and the victory points; the other counts, with their alerts, are behind the button with three dots. The selection panel shows its commands without scrolling.

  • The minimap starts closed on a phone.

    The map icon in the bottom bar opens it, and it is closed again at the next start.

  • No more warning about small screens.

    The dialog that said the game was made for a desktop screen is gone. A phone or a tablet in landscape is a supported way to play.

0.119.7

  • A beaten division falls back only onto its own ground.

    A defender that loses its battle retreats to a free hex of its side beside it. If every hex around it is the enemy’s, even an empty one, it is destroyed where it stands.

  • Green trucks from the depot’s panel.

    A depot’s row of actions has Truck − and Truck + in place of New link and Links: they take a green truck off or give one from the reserve, and the keys Z and E do the same for the selected depot. The Link tool is still on R.

  • Fill to, without opening the depot.

    The depot’s panel shows its green trucks and its fill target side by side, with − and + to change the target (and −5, +5 with a mouse), and a notch on the stock’s bar marks it. The reach and the divisions it serves moved to the details. A barracks and a motor works have their fill target in their panel too.

  • The building bar stays where it is.

    Opening a tab at the bottom (Command, Network, Diary) no longer moves the building bar: the tab opens over its left end, and closing the tab uncovers it.

  • A smaller building bar.

    The building bar takes less of the map: Link, Build, Ways and Remove in small slots with their icons only. Pointing at a slot gives its name and its key, the keys work as before, and Build and Ways still open their rows above it. The reserve left the bar, since the top bar already counts your free trucks, and with it the dragging of a truck onto a link: a link’s trucks are given or taken off with Truck − and Truck + in its panel.

  • Crates in and eaten, day by day.

    The Network tab has a second chart under the crates held: the crates that came in from the entries and the factories and those your divisions ate, each day of the last thirty, one line over the other. Its five totals since the start sit on a row of their own, so the head no longer jumps to two lines as the numbers grow.

  • One handle while you drag a link.

    With the Link tool on, the white handles of the other places disappear as soon as you start dragging from one, so the place you drop on is easy to see.

  • Right click to move.

    With divisions selected, a right click on a hex gives them the order to go there, or to attack if the enemy holds it, as a click does in Move mode. In a tool the right click still leaves it.

0.119.6

  • Menus that fit a phone.

    On a short screen the pause menu shows all its entries in two columns, so that Settings and Main menu can be reached. Settings and About fit the window with no scrolling, and the briefing shows the objectives and the first orders beside its text.

0.119.5

  • A tablet reads at full size.

    On a tablet in landscape the interface now fills the screen at 100 %, where it was held to 90 %. The layout fits from 1100 pixels of width.

  • A press answers at once.

    Buttons, tiles and the bars move down a little under your finger or the mouse button. The lighter look of a control under the pointer shows only where there is a mouse, so a touch screen no longer leaves the last thing you tapped lit.

  • The arrow stays an arrow.

    The hand shows over links only. Buttons, tiles and rows keep the arrow, as in any application.

  • A game can be started from a phone.

    On a short screen the campaign list, its map and the choice of side fit the window, with the button that starts the game at the bottom right, and nothing needs scrolling. The block of victory points on the choice of side is gone.

  • Turn your device sideways.

    A phone or a tablet held upright shows a message in place of the game, and the clock waits until you turn it.

0.119.4

  • A new building bar.

    Link, Build, Ways and Remove stand in one bar at the bottom centre of the map, each with its name under it, and the reserve of free trucks beside them. Every tool and structure has a new icon drawn like the sign the map shows for it.

  • One panel for what you select.

    The sheet on the right is gone. What you select, a division, a link, a depot or anything else, appears in one panel at the bottom right of the map, sitting on the bottom bar like the building bar. Closed, it shows the figures that matter and a row of actions: a division has its supply, its strength and its commands with their keys, a link has its trucks, what it carries and Truck −, Truck +, Invert, Center and Remove, a depot has its stock, its green trucks and New link, Links, Level, Port and Remove. The chevron in its header opens the rest of the card upward, the row of actions stays where it was, and the panel remembers whether you left it open for each kind. On a small screen the open panel is a sheet from the top bar to the bottom bar.

  • The building bar stays put.

    It no longer gives way to the division’s commands or to a structure’s actions, which are in the panel. The minimap is at the top right, the legend at the top left and the news at the bottom left.

  • Front and Logistics beside the clock.

    The two map buttons moved from the right edge to the top bar, next to the date and the clock, with a word on a large screen and the icon alone on a small one. Tab still switches them.

  • No keys on a touch screen.

    On a tablet or a phone the game no longer shows keyboard shortcuts: no letters on the buttons, no key in a tooltip or a banner, and the manual lists the touch gestures instead of the keys. A keyboard attached to a tablet still works.

  • Drag a link, and its trucks.

    Press on a place of yours and drag to another depot: the route forms as you go, and when you let go the link is ordered at once with the trucks that serve it. The Link tool (R) makes every place a grab point, and without it the selected place has a handle. If the two places allow more than one kind of link, a small menu beside the end lists them with the keys 1 to 3, and picking one replaces the link. Drag a truck from the reserve onto a road link to add one, or from the link back to the reserve to take one off. A chip names the link and shows what it carries before and after. A truck taken off while it is on a trip comes home first, and the reserve shows it as +1 until then.

  • Roads and railways by their two ends.

    Click the start and the end and the way between them is drawn with its hexes, its crates and its days. Drag the handle on a leg to send it through a hex you choose, then press Order. Reset takes the waypoints off, and a second press takes the end off.

  • A tap never builds by accident.

    On a touch screen a tap shows the preview and the Order button gives the order. A finger pans the map unless it starts on a handle or on the reserve.

  • One Remove, and Undo.

    T, or the Remove button, takes the selected structure down or removes the selected link at once, with no second press. The last link, truck, structure, way, removal or dismantling you ordered with these tools is offered in a chip above the bar for a few seconds, and Ctrl+Z (⌘Z on a Mac) takes it back; a removed link is made again with as many of its trucks as are free. It works while nothing has been sent for it; after that it says why it cannot.

  • A removed link goes at once.

    When you remove a link it disappears from the map and the lists straight away. Its trucks, trains or ships turn back along the road they are on, carry what they have to the link’s start and unload it there, and join the reserve when they are home. They are drawn on the way back, and the reserve counts them as returning.

0.119.3

  • Audio on install.

    Installing the app now starts the download of the music and sounds at once, so the game plays fully offline sooner.

0.119.2

  • Report a problem or suggest a feature.

    About, in the title menu, now links to the game’s public tracker on GitHub, where you can file a bug, ask for a feature or flag a unit or rule that does not fit the war. English or Italian.

0.119.1

  • A new map: Italy.

    The whole peninsula, from the toe of Calabria to the Alps. The Allies start in Calabria with their crates landing at Reggio; the Axis holds the rest, supplied by rail over the Brenner. Play either side from the campaign menu.

0.119.0

  • Claude, a new step: an opponent.

    You can play against Claude. It plays the other side through Claude Code started on your computer, seeing only what that side sees, and either runs its supply alone or commands its divisions too. Settings → Claude explains how to start it.

  • Claude in the game.

    A small sign at the top right says whether Claude is waiting or thinking, and a click on it shows its last orders with the reason for each. While it thinks the clock runs at speed 1, then goes back to yours.

  • A new depot comes with its trucks.

    A depot your engineers finish now takes its green trucks from the pool at once, as many as its level allows and the pool has free, so it serves its divisions from the first hour. You can still change how many it has.

  • The motor works, a new structure.

    Build it from the Build tool (5): it makes trucks, which join your free trucks. Set how many on its card with − and +: it makes one at a time, taking 2 crates from its storage and then working 24, 12 or 8 hours by its level, and a depot’s trucks bring it the crates. A queue of 0 stops it and gives half the crates it took back.

  • Depot without trucks.

    A new alert on the trucks tile in the top bar, in crimson: a depot that holds crates and has no green truck while one of your divisions is in its reach. A click goes to the depot, the right click opens the vehicles, where you give it a truck.

  • An encircled division surrenders.

    A division cut off from its supply that has gone 7 days in a row without a crate surrenders, yours and the enemy’s alike. Its card counts the days down under Encircled, and so does the Encircled alert: break the ring or get a crate to it, and the count starts over.

  • An enemy division cut off is news.

    An enemy division encircled is now a card in the news even when it is alone (before, only two or more at one place were), so you see the chance to finish it. In North Africa the cards that sum up pockets and losses named the Soviets: they name the British now.

0.118.9

  • A manual for every campaign.

    The manual (F1) now opens on what the game is, and explains how it is played in any campaign: it no longer describes the Eastern Front. It also lists the L key, which shows the map’s legend.

  • Italian from the start.

    In a browser set to Italian the game now opens in Italian, until you choose a language in Settings. The site has pages in Italian too, and two articles on the idea behind the game and on North Africa in 1941.

0.118.4

  • A new name.

    The game is now called Culminating Point, after the moment when an attack outruns its supply. It has a new logo and a new icon. Nothing else in the game changes, but your settings start from their defaults again.

0.118.3

  • The enemy runs its own supply.

    On the Two Banks the side you do not play now runs its network as you run yours: it links its depots, puts trucks and trains where the crates are needed, builds depots behind its front and beside its attacks, and empties a depot the enemy is about to reach.

  • An attack waits for its crates.

    On the Two Banks an army group attacks only when the depots behind each of its corps hold five crates a division. Yours too: the Command tab says it waits for crates, and an intent’s ring shows what is missing.

  • Even sides.

    When two places or two moves are worth the same, a commander now picks the same one on either side of the map, so neither side of the Two Banks starts ahead.

0.118.2

  • On a tablet.

    In landscape, a tablet no longer gets the desktop warning. The interface is larger, its buttons are the size of a finger, the clock has its own touch controls (a pause and a − / + pill), and the page no longer scrolls, bounces or zooms under your touch.

0.118.1

  • Trucks that keep moving.

    The columns of trucks no longer stop for an instant when a game hour takes a moment to arrive, which showed on slow tablets and phones.

  • The map’s frame rate.

    Settings → Display has a new choice: 30 or 60 frames a second for the map while trucks and units move. 60 is smoother and uses more of the processor and the battery; 30, the default, spares them.

  • No more blinking loading icon.

    In the browser the address no longer changes at every game hour while the clock runs, so the loading icon of the tab stays still. The address is updated when you pause or leave the page.

0.118.0

  • The enemy’s quartermaster, a new step.

    This step teaches the enemy to run its own supply network, as you run yours. It starts on the Two Banks.

  • The Two Banks get their supply.

    Each side now has a gate on its edge of the map, a railway from the gate to its capital and on to its forward depot, one train on each leg and an engineer park beside the forward depot. The depots refill, and every division starts within a depot’s reach.

0.117.1

  • A smoother map.

    Scrolling and zooming the map stay smooth on high-resolution screens, the clock no longer stutters at every game hour, and the first click no longer stalls while the sounds are prepared.

0.117.0

  • One strength.

    A division now has one number, its strength from 0 to 100, and fights with exactly that. It wears down a little at rest, more on the march, and in battle by the odds; only its crates bring it back, a crate 20 points and at most 2 an hour. With no crate it moves at a quarter of its speed and, out of battle, falls no lower than 25. Cohesion, fatigue and preparation are gone: no more hasty attacks, and any division may march.

  • The same number everywhere.

    Counters, sheets and lists show the strength, with the five crates beside it. The battle’s box sets how long the battle lasts against how long your crates last, now that the crates give back what the battle takes. The Cohesion rows, the Org column and the grey pause on a counter are gone.

0.116.8

  • The air is set aside.

    The scenarios start with no airfields and no air wings, Build no longer offers the airfield, and the Air tab is gone. The air war comes back after 1.0, designed anew.

0.116.5

  • Roads and railways, point by point.

    Click the start of a road or a railway, then each point of it in turn: the way runs from point to point, each leg the way the trucks would take. Click the last point again, double-click or press Enter to order it; the right button takes the last point off. Dismantle traces a stretch of road or railway the same way.

0.116.4

  • The green collection in a factory’s order.

    A factory that a depot collects from lists the green trucks among its links, a row of its own with ▲ ▼ (Collection · Tolm). It starts at the top, and while its depot has room for crates and a truck, the links below it wait with an hourglass and the factory’s crates pile up for the trucks. Put it below a link and that link loads first, or choose Equal shares to take turns.

  • Links open by themselves.

    The Links section of a depot, a park, a factory or an entry now opens on its own when two or more rows leave it, the collection counted. Close it on one sheet and it stays closed there only.

0.116.3

  • The battle in numbers.

    A division in battle shows the odds big with their trend, how the two powers share, who fights whom (your divisions with their crates, the enemy’s by the band of their strength), the ground, and how long the battle lasts against how long your crates last: the figure goes crimson when the crates run out first. Pointing at the battle’s badge on the map shows the odds, the hours and who fights whom.

  • Break off on I.

    The I key breaks off the attack of the selected divisions in battle, or makes a defender fall back; the battle’s box and the command bar have the same button, off under a small lock for a division its commander commands until you take it (K). Build stays on B.

  • The odds in colour.

    The ring on the battle’s sign and every attack arrow are green from 1.5, brass from 1 and crimson under; from the tactical zoom the odds stand beside the ring. An arrow, and Move mode’s preview, tell the odds of the whole assault on its hex. The odds read the same everywhere: 2.0 : 1, and 10 : 1+ past ten.

  • A day’s march.

    A cyan edge round a selected division shows the hexes it can reach in a day, by its own speed, the ground and the enemy it sees; with several selected, the slowest’s.

  • The command’s card.

    Click a command’s headquarters on the map, or its name on a division’s sheet, for its card: what its intent asks of its depots and what they hold, its strength, its order, the depots of its radius with their crates and its divisions, a row each. An enemy command shows only a band of strength and how many divisions it has.

0.116.2

  • The command bar, redone.

    It opens whenever one of your divisions is selected and shows the division’s kind and its five crates, the orders with their keys (Take K, Hold G, Cancel X, Move M, Center C, Give back K) and, along its foot, its order with the hours it takes and what stops it, as icons and numbers: never the division’s name, never a sentence.

  • Who gives the orders.

    A division its commander commands has the bar too, with its order to read and Take (K); Hold, Cancel and Move are there but off, with a small lock, until you take it. Its sheet shows a lock and its command’s name (click it for the command’s card). With several selected, Take and Give back show how many each is for.

  • Move, on M.

    Move is a button of the bar and the key M. Point at a hex and the route with its hours, or the odds of an assault, follow the pointer; click to give the order, hold Shift to give another, Esc or the right click to leave. The right click gives no order any more, and outside Move no route follows the pointer.

  • The minimap is on Q.

    Its key moved from M, which is Move now.

  • Several divisions.

    The bar shows the group: how many, their crates together and what they use a day, the orders they share. Their card has the crates together, the days they last and a row a division with its kind, its five crates, its strength and its cohesion. A click on a count (no crate, encircled, immobile, in battle) shows only those and Select these keeps them; the Motorized and Ready filters are gone.

  • The enemy division’s card.

    Its strength in a band with the scouts’ eye, how dug in it looks, the battle it is in and the ground it stands on, in rows with icons: no sentences, and never its crates.

  • A tooltip on every hex.

    Point at a hex for a moment to read its terrain, its owner and its road level. The hex under the pointer is no longer outlined: only the tools and Move mark it, where a click will land.

  • Shorter words.

    The refusals are phrases of six words at most (“Out of range · max 20”), the tooltips one definition of twelve, and the chips on the map’s orders an icon and a number: the hours, the odds of an assault, the stack’s 5/4, the cohesion a march needs.

  • Ports without phantom ships.

    The far zooms no longer draw a ship at the pier of a port whose ships are at sea; the ships docked at a pier are seen from the detail zoom.

  • Entries are joined as their links are.

    An entry’s way in now looks like its links out: a short railway with the lilac ribbon beside it for a rail link (Suez), a road with the straw one for a road link, both when it has both, and a thin dashed line while nothing leaves it. On the Front map the railway or road is drawn alone.

0.116.1

  • Front and Logistics.

    The map has two modes now: the Front (who holds what, the commands’ intents, the sides in a light tint) and the Logistics (the depots, links, vehicles and reach). Tab switches them. Terrain, Weather, Command and Sectors are gone from the strip, and North Africa, the Two Banks and the trials open on the Logistics map.

  • The weather on the map.

    A sign stands on each weather zone that is not clear, with its glyph and its name; the weather tile in the top bar still lists the sectors and what the weather does.

  • Suez has its yard beside it.

    The British entry’s yard no longer stands on the map’s east edge, 21 hexes from its hex: it is on the hex beside the entry, on the Delta line, and its crates and rate are there to read.

  • Ports look like ports.

    At the operational and tactical zooms an anchor floats at a port’s pier. The number on a yard is no longer hidden under a division standing on the city, a depot says its name when you point at it or pick it, and an entry shows its name at the tactical zoom.

  • The sea lane runs straight.

    Ships take the straightest of the shortest routes: Italy’s lane to Tripoli has no S-bends and the same length and time as before.

  • The Links list tells the truth.

    A link is short only when the links into its end together carry less than the end uses, and a start counts as empty only when it cannot supply what is asked of it: a train waiting for its five crates at an entry that brings them in a day is no trouble. The Crates tile turns crimson only when an alert is behind it.

  • Intent markers off the structures.

    A command’s marker no longer stands on the hex of a depot, park, barracks, factory or airfield: it moves to the nearest free hex.

0.116.0

  • North Africa, the seventh step of the supply.

    The supply in crates comes to the whole theatre. This release is its first part, the network each side starts with; the rest of its screen follows in a later release.

  • North Africa has its network.

    From the first day each side has what the crates need: the Axis’ sea entry, Italy, on the map’s north edge brings six crates a day by a lane of five ships into Tripoli, and the Via Balbia’s trucks carry them on to El Agheila, Sirte and Nofilia; the British entry, Suez, brings four and a quarter a day by rail into Alexandria and on to Mersa Matruh, from where trucks and the Tobruk ferry carry them on to Tobruk, Benghazi, Mechili and Agedabia. The depots are four for the Axis and six for the British (Buerat, Misurata, Cairo, Msus and Sidi Barrani are gone), each side has 50 trucks, and the Axis’ two trains and eight ships and the British’ six trains and three ships are yours to put on new links.

  • The trunk is the limit.

    The Axis’ road from Tripoli carries less than the entry brings: from about the thirtieth day Tripoli is full, and from about the forty-fifth Italy’s yard starts to lose crates if you do nothing. More trucks on the trunk, a sea link to a port you take, a depot ordered by the front are yours to choose. The British are limited by the lift beyond Matruh and the ferry into Tobruk, not by Suez.

  • Ports, parks and airfields.

    Tripoli, Alexandria, Mersa Matruh, Tobruk and Benghazi are ports on their cities: ships sail to them. Each side has an engineer park, beside El Agheila and beside Tobruk, and an airfield with two wings, the Axis’ beside El Agheila and the British’ at Gazala, all served by the nearest depot’s green trucks.

  • The British hold still.

    Until a later version the British commanders are passive: they fall back to their depots and hold. The Axis take Mersa Brega and Agedabia in the first days, and the British depot at Agedabia burns.

0.115.4

  • The depots’ service.

    A depot’s green trucks now serve your engineer parks, barracks and airfields in their reach as they serve its divisions: each takes a crate to the structure, up to its fill target, counting what is already on its way. They also fetch the crates of your factories in their reach into the depot, while it has room under its own fill target. A structure is served by the nearest depot that has green trucks and reaches it, read again every hour, and waits when that depot is empty. Depots and ports are still fed by links; the links, the yellow trucks, the trains and the ships stay for the long hauls and for whatever you want by hand.

  • The depot’s order.

    Each depot keeps a list of what its green trucks serve: its divisions, each structure it serves, each factory it collects from. An idle truck takes the first row that needs a crate, and a row below waits while one above needs. The divisions come first and a new structure goes last. The Service section of the depot’s sheet moves a row up or down and marks the rows that wait; a name opens that structure’s sheet. Pick a depot and the map draws a dashed green line to each structure it serves; the green trucks drive to them, and to the factories, as they drive to the divisions.

  • Served by, and Unfed.

    A structure’s sheet says which depot serves it, and the Network’s structures list has a column for it. A park with works in line, a barracks forming or an airfield with wings, under its fill target, that no depot serves and no link feeds is Unfed: a crimson ring on the map, a crimson alert in the Crates tile, a crimson label in its sheet and in the list. Feed, on its sheet, shows while you point at it the road link it would make from the nearest depot or factory that holds a crate (the route on the map, its hexes and its hours), and a click orders it with one truck.

  • Links in order, or by equal shares.

    A depot, a factory or an entry with two or more links out lists them in the order they send, each with ▲ and ▼, and two buttons: In order, where each link sends what it can before the next (a new link goes last), or Equal shares, where the links take turns, a vehicle each. A train’s five or a ship’s ten are waited for: in order the links after it wait, by equal shares it holds the turn. The green trucks still load before any link.

  • Trial 5.

    The factory town: the depot now collects the factory’s crates and brings the front, the barracks, the park and the airfield theirs by itself, so doing nothing no longer starves the front. The goal: keep the front fed and form a new division. The order of the depot’s list is one of your choices, not the only one: put the barracks above the divisions until its division forms, or link the factory and the park to the barracks yourself and the depot’s trucks keep the front.

  • Trial 6.

    The retreat: Tarsa’s green trucks fill the engineer park beside it from its crates, up to the park’s fill target, as they fill any structure in reach.

  • The desert.

    Trial 4, the desert, is a little easier: the four divisions now stand one row nearer the coast road, so the depot you build beside them and its road are shorter.

0.115.3

  • Full screen on tablets and phones.

    The installed app now fills the whole screen on Android, with no status or navigation bar, and keeps clear of notches and the home indicator on iPhone and iPad.

0.115.0

  • The road first.

    A structure you order off the roads now waits for its road: the brown trucks build the spur to it first, and the structure’s first crate leaves the park only when the last step of the spur is laid; its sheet, its row in the works list and its place on the map say Awaiting road meanwhile. Cancel the structure and its spur goes with it, the steps already laid staying; cancel the spur alone and the structure goes on across the country as before. A depot or a park placed away from the road takes longer: the days the tool tells count the road first. The first park, built by a depot when you have none, builds its road first too.

  • Intents on the map.

    Each of your commands that means to attack or to hold has a marker over the place it asks its crates in: swords or a shield on a dark disc, a ring of the crates its depots hold over the five a division it asks, crimson when it is late, its days to go below. From the tactical zoom its radius is dashed, the depots inside count, and an attack has an arrow to its ringed objective; closer in, the crates read 24/40. A click opens its sheet, read only: the depots in its radius and its divisions with their five places. A depot in the radius of two commands is shared between them, by what each asks, so that two commands no longer both count the same crates.

  • Attacks go in on their day.

    An attack goes in on the day it was given, with whatever its divisions and depots hold: the commands no longer wait for the depots to fill. With fewer crates it stops sooner, its divisions running dry. A command whose crates will come after its day is Late; one with a division with no crate, or that no depot’s trucks reach, is In trouble.

  • Attacks in the news.

    The news tells when a command is given an attack, with the days to it and the crates held of those asked, when the attack goes in, and when it is called off before it began. Divisions moving up over your own ground are no attack: an order counts as an attack only on ground you do not hold, or with an enemy near its objective.

  • The lists.

    The drawer has four tabs: Command, Network, Air and Diary. The Network shows your crates (the depots’ held, as the Crates tile says them, and the other structures’ beside them; in, eaten, lost, built, back), a chart of the depots’ crates over thirty days and four tables, the trouble first: structures (filtered by kind), links with their vehicles, works with the line’s up and cancel, and vehicles. The Command tab gives each command its intent and each division its five places. The Diary’s filters are icons.

  • Right click on a tile.

    The right click on a tile in the top bar opens its list: divisions and command the Command tab, crates, works and vehicles (trucks, trains and ships) the Network on their view, wings the Air tab.

0.114.0

  • A structure taken.

    When the enemy takes a structure it passes to him one level lower and empty, and the crates in it burn; a level 1 structure is destroyed, and so is any under scorched earth. The works on it and what it was forming are lost with it.

  • Links and vehicles.

    The links of a structure taken close. A vehicle bound for it turns back with its load and unloads at its start, one going away delivers, and any vehicle on a hex the enemy takes is lost with what it carries.

  • Entries close.

    A land entry whose hex the enemy holds is closed: it receives nothing and its links send nothing. Its yard is crossed in crimson on the map and the crates tile raises a crimson alert while it is closed; it opens again when the hex is retaken.

  • Alerts on the tiles.

    The strip under the top bar is gone. Each alert is a badge on the tile of its family in the top bar (divisions, crates, vehicles, works, wings, command; the weather while it lasts), crimson when it asks for an action now, brass for the rest. The tooltip lists the trouble first, a click goes to the next one, and the right click opens its list. Works and wings have tiles of their own.

  • Structure threatened.

    With an enemy division within two hexes, a structure’s sheet says what losing it would cost: the level it would be left at, or that it would be destroyed, and the crates that would burn.

  • The news.

    The news is a line: an icon, a name, a number and the hour, on a green, crimson or grey stripe. It stays eight seconds while the game runs, then goes to the Log. A structure built, raised, taken, lost or taken down, a division or a wing formed, an entry closed or open again, a link with no way. Its tooltip gives the figures, the place and the date.

  • Trial 6.

    The retreat: three worn divisions on a coast road, the front’s stock behind them and an enemy that will take it in a few days. Save the crates, build a depot behind, link it and pull the divisions back into its reach.

0.113.0

  • Barracks.

    A barracks forms a division out of the crates it holds, one at a time: infantry at level 1 (30 crates), motorized at level 2 (45), armoured at level 3 (60). Its sheet shows the division filling its frame against its cost, what it waits for, and a cancel that gives half the crates back; the division comes out beside it with five crates and your posts command it. A link may start at a barracks too, to send its crates away before you take it down.

  • Factories.

    A factory, only beside a city, makes crates into a small buffer of its own (a quarter, a half or one a day by its level); its links take them away, and a full buffer stops it. Its chimney smokes while it makes.

  • Airfields and wings.

    An airfield bases 1, 2 or 4 wings by its level and forms a new one for 20 crates. A wing has two missions, on a target within 20 hexes of its airfield, picked on the map: interdiction burns the enemy’s crates on the move, on its trucks, trains and ships near the target and else in its structures, each a crimson cross for half a day; support makes your divisions near the target fight stronger. Each day a wing flies costs its airfield a crate (with none it stays on the ground) and wears the wing; on the ground it mends for a crate. An interdiction wing worn below an eighth of its strength is too weak to strike and stays down to mend. The Air tab lists the airfields with their wings, and what the air destroyed yesterday, both ways.

  • The Build list.

    Build now lists the barracks (4 crates), the factory (15) and the airfield (8) under the depot and the engineer park; the keys 1 to 5 pick one. Each has its yard on the map, its sheet, and its row in the legend.

  • North Africa.

    The theatre has two airfields now, the Axis’ near Sirte and the British’ near Tobruk, each with two wings on the ground; the wings pay their day there, so keep it fed.

  • Trial 5.

    The factory town: feed the front from a factory alone and form a new division at the barracks by the tenth day; the airfield’s interdiction is yours to try.

0.112.0

  • Taking down.

    Dismantle, in the bar (T), takes a structure down with a click, or a stretch of road or railway from one hex to another; a depot’s or a park’s sheet dismantles it or lowers its level. Half of what it cost comes back, rounded down, fetched by the brown trucks of another park: a structure first empties through its links, its green trucks or its building, and is taken down, or its level lowered, the moment the last brown truck loads its crate there (the trucks are still on the road home with them). It can be cancelled until the first truck goes to fetch; the sheet says when nothing can carry its crates away. Your last engineer park stays, and so does your only source of supply: any other source can be dismantled.

  • Roads and railways.

    A stretch to take down is dashed crimson over the road as it stands, with what comes back and the links it touches by the pointer. Each hex goes as a brown truck reaches it, a paved one to dirt (the paved roads that meet it go to dirt with it, and the preview counts them) and a dirt one to nothing, a railway’s to nothing; the links that ran on it find another way, or stop.

  • A work cancelled gives half back.

    Cancel a work that has received crates and half of those not yet made into a finished hex or structure come back, fetched from its site by the brown trucks; its sheet says how many.

  • Where a spur joins the road.

    A new structure’s spur now joins the road on the side its crates come from, at the point nearest by road to your nearest depot or entry.

0.111.0

  • Building.

    A bar on the map’s left builds what the supply needs: a depot or an engineer park on your own ground off the roads, with its dirt spur to the nearest road (its cost and the days it takes are told under the pointer before you click), and a road or a railway from one hex to another through the waypoints you click. A depot’s sheet orders its next level and, on the coast, a port. The link tool is in the bar now.

  • One click, one order.

    A tool leaves itself once its order is given and the map goes back to the mode you were viewing; hold Shift to give more orders in a row.

  • Engineer parks.

    A park is a depot that builds: its brown trucks take its crates, one each, to the works, in the order they stand in line, and each work is as far along as the crates that have arrived: a road or a railway hex by hex. Its sheet sets how many brown trucks it keeps from the free trucks and moves a work up the line; a work’s sheet shows its crates, its share and the trucks on their way, and cancels it while none of its crates has left.

  • Works on the map.

    A way to build is a brown ribbon with its places along it, the crates arrived in them, and the crane and its share at its head; a depot’s or a park’s site is a dashed square. A work no park can reach is faded with a crimson 0. A click on a site or a ribbon opens its sheet.

  • Trucks keep to the roads.

    Driving off the road now costs 5 for every truck, up from 3: a link takes the road more often, even when it is the longer way round, and a depot’s green trucks reach less far across open country.

  • Fourth trial: the desert.

    Four divisions in the open desert, out of every depot’s reach, and an engineer park by the road: build a depot beside them and link it before they run dry.

0.110.0

  • Railways and the sea.

    Links by rail and by sea: a train carries five crates along your own track, leaving only full and only when its end has room for them; a ship carries ten from a port or a sea entry to a port, sails as soon as it is loaded, and waits offshore when the port is full. Trains and ships have pools of their own, on the top bar.

  • Ports.

    A port is a depot on the coast with its pier: its sheet shows its ships at the pier, offshore, arriving and leaving. Ground fed by sea is not cut off.

  • Trains and ships wait too.

    A rail or sea link’s line is a pale ribbon of its own colour, lavender or sky blue as the road’s is straw, with darker arrowheads inside it; the trains and ships keep their strong colours on it. From the detail zoom a train that has to wait stands on a siding under its depot’s yard, a ship at the port’s pier. No train or ship drives through a depot: the route goes round it.

  • Lines follow the railway and the sea.

    A rail link’s line runs along the railway’s own curve, bend for bend, and the trains drive on it; a sea link’s line is a smooth curve over the water, from the entry’s gate to the pier’s tip, and the ships sail along it.

  • Third trial: the port.

    Ships bring the crates to the port; the divisions are far inland: run the railway before they run dry.

0.109.0

  • Crates from off the map.

    An entry on the map’s edge receives crates every day, as many as your army uses at rest and a fifth more; what its yard of 40 cannot hold is lost, counted on the top bar.

  • Links and yellow trucks.

    With Link (R) pick a depot or an entry, then a depot: yellow trucks from your pool carry a crate each along the road, and come back for more while the start has crates and the end has room up to its Fill to. A link’s sheet shows its trucks, its flow against what its end uses, and inverts or removes it.

  • Lines follow the road.

    A link’s line runs along the road’s own curve, bend for bend, in the lane beside it, and the trucks drive on it; where a way leaves the road it curves smoothly across country, with no corners.

  • Trucks wait in the yard.

    Green and yellow trucks share the roads and never overlap: a truck that has to wait parks in the yard of the depot or entry it is at, until its lane is free or there is room. Yellow trucks have their places on the left of the yard, the green ones on the right, from the detail zoom; on the road a truck drives up to the yard’s edge and out of it again.

  • Second trial: the road.

    A depot by the front, beyond the reach of the one behind it: link them before its divisions run dry.

0.108.0

  • Supply in crates.

    Supply is now crates instead of tons and fuel. A depot holds crates (10, 20 or 40 by its level) and sends its green trucks, one crate each, to the divisions within its reach, shown green in the supply mode; a truck follows its division as it moves, and brings the crate back if the division leaves the reach. A division carries five crates and uses half a crate a day at rest, one marching, two in battle; with none left it fights and moves at a quarter. The depot’s card sets its green trucks, from your pool shown in the top bar.

  • Win by holding every victory point.

    A scenario no longer ends on a date: a side wins when it holds every city with victory points, and loses when it has no division left. There is no draw; you play as long as you like.

  • What went with the old supply.

    The Logistics and Industry tabs, supply by rail and by sea, production, the reinforcements’ timetable, the engineers and the partisans are gone; ports, railways and building come back with the crates in the next releases. Until then a depot does not refill: in North Africa and the Two Banks the crates run out within three weeks.

  • The Academy is gone for now.

    It will come back, rebuilt, in a later release.

0.107.0

  • Figures, not sentences.

    Cards, tabs, request cards, the hover cards and the build preview show a word, numbers and icons instead of sentences, and no longer tell you what to do: a shaken division reads “Shaken 18% / 20%”, an order its mission with its odds, stock and date. A tooltip says what a thing is. The briefing, the manual and the log keep their words.

  • Logistics and Industry instead of Economy and Network.

    The Network tab is now Logistics: its line starts from the sources, with your nation’s production and reserve, and runs through the ports, each with its shipping share, landing and losses on its row; the sea’s capacity, losses, threats and the arrivals’ share sit on one strip. Economy is now Industry: the allocation, recruitment with the arrivals waiting for a ship, and the policies a theatre has.

  • The supply reach is in or out.

    The supply mode shows where a division can be served and where it cannot, and the limit between; the reduced-reach band is gone, as a column delivers whole however far it drives.

  • No start checklist.

    The checklist of first orders is gone from the bottom bar; the briefing still names them.

0.106.0

  • One colour for trouble.

    Green and amber no longer mark a state anywhere, in the game or the Academy. Crimson is what is wrong: solid when critical, hollow when a warning. What is fine has no colour, what is idle is grey and dashed.

  • The same pieces everywhere.

    Tiles, bars, chips and the hours a depot or a division lasts look and read the same on every card, list, tab and map label, and in the Academy.

  • Fixed: the Command tab’s request card.

    A request card in the Command tab was squeezed into one narrow column, a word a line. It has its width back.

0.105.0

  • One reading for divisions and depots: how long they last.

    A division now reads like a depot: the hours its stock and basic load last at what it uses now, the lower of supplies and fuel. Under 12 hours it is critical (solid crimson), under 2 days a warning (hollow). The unit card, the counter, the hover card, the lists and the depot card all show the same number. A drop beside it means the fuel runs out first.

  • The top bar counts the divisions in trouble.

    The old supply percentage is gone. The top bar’s Autonomy tile shows how many divisions are critical and how many are in a warning, and the alert strip, the Network badge and the minimap count the same ones.

  • Strength is what a division fights with.

    Every strength you read, on the counter, in the command bar, the Command tab and the lists, is the one the unit card shows: its men and guns times what its basic load allows.

  • One command for every army: your commanders.

    The generals are gone. In every campaign and on the test map both sides’ divisions are commanded by their commanders: the theatre command, the army groups, the armies and the corps, as in North Africa. A formation that gets its first division later in the game gets its commander too.

  • Take a division, give it back.

    Select one of your divisions and take command of it: its commanders leave it to you, and you order it as you like. Give it back and its corps takes it up at its next review. A game opened with the commanders off gives you all your divisions from the start.

  • Barbarossa is resting.

    Barbarossa is out of the menu for now: its commanders are too slow for a front of four hundred divisions. It comes back once they are fast enough.

  • One logistics everywhere: every column and train on the map.

    The test map, Barbarossa and the Two Banks now run their logistics as North Africa does: each truck column drives its road and each train its line, hour by hour, and every count you read is the last 24 hours. The daily convoys, the arrows of yesterday’s flows and the straight supply lines are gone.

  • A division is judged on what it was owed.

    A division its depot does not need to serve yet, nearly full and with no room for a whole column, no longer reads short of supplies because nothing was sent to it.

  • Trains measured by the hours they run.

    The trains’ load is the share of the fleet out of its yard over the last 24 hours. The enemy sizes its train fleet on it, and no longer dismantles a depot that others load at by train.

  • No more priorities.

    Depots, requests and fronts no longer have a priority: in North Africa a depot’s priority changed nothing, and the requests’ one only reordered the convoys. The trains and the columns serve the depots by what each needs.

  • A commander’s request raises its depots’ Riempi by itself.

    When a commander asks for stock somewhere, the automatic Riempi of the depots that count for it rises by what it asks, shared by their room, on your side as on the enemy’s. A Riempi you set by hand stays yours. The request card shows the request and how far it is met.

  • No more lending between depots.

    A depot over its Riempi no longer lends its excess to the depots around it: the stock stays where it is until you lower its Riempi. The dashed ring still marks a stock 100 t or more over Riempi.

  • Columns sized on what a division really uses, and trucks replaced.

    A division that marched or fought gets the columns for what it used that day, not for a day at rest. The enemy’s logistics now build trucks for the runs to its divisions too, so its fleet no longer melts away.

0.102.0

  • Trucks and trains are solid blocks moving along the road.

    Every truck on the map is a block of the same size that turns on a bend as a whole, instead of bending with the road or stretching when columns bunch up; each car of a train turns on its own. Where columns run closer than a truck, the truck ahead stands for the ones behind it.

  • The vehicles in detail.

    Zoomed in, a loaded truck shows its wheels, its tarp and its windscreen, an engine its boiler and chimney, a wagon its axles, a ship its deck, hatches and funnel, an aircraft its glazing and propellers; each casts a shadow. Their colours are the ones you know.

0.101.0

  • A division fights with what it has in hand.

    The first third of what a division carries is its basic load, what it fights with; the rest is its stock. Deliveries fill the basic load first and use takes it last, so it stays full while the stock lasts. Once the stock is gone the division’s strength falls with every ton it uses, within hours in battle, down to a quarter, and the next delivery brings it straight back. Efficiency and its two-day lag are gone.

  • Eating decides recovery; supplies decide replacements.

    Cohesion comes back and fatigue goes while a division has anything to eat, whatever was delivered yesterday; with nothing left it starves, losing a fifth of its cohesion and a fiftieth of its strength a day. Its supplies (what its depot sent against what it asked over the last three days: arriving, short or cut off) decide only its replacements and the repair of its damaged.

  • Fatigue caps cohesion, and quality is gone.

    A tired division no longer fires less: its fatigue only caps the cohesion it can recover to, so it holds out less long. Divisions no longer have a quality: all of them count alike, the Italian divisions of North Africa too.

  • The unit card, the counters and the hover card read the same.

    The card shows three bars: Strength (what it fights with; hatched, what comes back by itself with the next delivery and repairs), Cohesion (its fatigue’s cap hatched) and Stock, or Basic load once the stock is gone, with how long it lasts, in red when it runs short. Attack and defence are large, the factors that move them as chips below. Supplies has its depot, its state and the last 72 hours. A counter in trouble carries how long its supply lasts, solid red when its basic load is going.

0.100.0

  • The Network tab as a line.

    The Depots view draws your depots in the order the supply runs, from the ports and the sources down to the front, the branches beside the depot they leave: a road leg as thick as what it brought in a day, a railway as track, each depot’s dot crimson when it is short. Every row is its card in small: what comes in, the stock bar with ▼ Riempi and ▲ Trattieni to drag, how long it lasts, its divisions, its columns to scale between the depots with their handles, the queue and the air’s hits, the priority. On top, your columns by job and the ones lost, your trains, the stock above Riempi, the decay. Urgency puts the depots that last least first.

  • Where it binds, instead of the staff’s advice.

    Flows lists what holds your supply back, each with its count, its place and a Show button: divisions out of reach or encircled, depots in crisis or cut off, columns hit from the air or held in a queue, a port’s damage, track cut, trains held or waiting. A new chart shows your columns day by day, by job, under the fleet; the other charts open with a click. In Works the queue reads in chips: what a job gives, who takes it and when, what it waits for.

0.99.0

  • Trains on the railway, hour by hour.

    A depot on the railway now loads at the first depot up the line, as a depot on the road loads at its parent: its trains, 450 t each, run empty to that depot, load there for three hours, run back and unload. Mersa Matruh loads at Alexandria, and a depot you build on a railway laid west of it loads at Mersa Matruh. The trains run one behind the other each way, a spacing apart, and wait where the track is cut or the enemy stands on it; the enemy’s air damages the track, not the trains. On the map they are in the columns’ yellow, the empty ones in outline. The depot card shows where its trains load and what they brought in a day, and a Trains bar sets how many, the lock giving them back to the dispatcher. A railway being laid gets its material by train.

  • The bars say what their colours are.

    Pointing at the stock, columns or trains bar of a depot card shows what each colour, stripe and handle means, with its number.

0.98.0

  • The depots on the map say how long they last.

    A depot’s ring now fills up to its ▼ Riempi, not to its capacity, with a dashed ring around it when it holds 100 t or more above it. A depot with under two days of stock carries a red label with how long it lasts and which way it goes, solid red under 12 hours; the others show theirs when you point at them. A red chip marks where a depot’s columns stand in a queue, and a red cross with a count where the enemy’s air hit your columns in the last day. Pointing at your depot shows a small card: its stock and how long it lasts, its divisions, its columns on the leg and to the divisions, the queue and the air’s hits.

0.97.0

  • A new depot card: read at a glance, set with sliders.

    The card goes from what comes in to what goes out. In: where its columns load, what arrived a day, what is on its way and what the enemy’s air hit; a port its share of the shipping, as a slider, and the sea’s losses. Stock: how long it lasts at the last three days’ out, and which way it goes, red when it runs short. Drag ▼ Riempi to set up to where the convoys fill it, and ▲ Trattieni to hold stock back for its own divisions: the depots that load there take only what is above. Out: its divisions and the worst supplied, what it handed out against what was asked, what is on its way to them, a queue of columns and where. Columns: drag the diamond to split them between the leg and the divisions and the bar to set how many; the lock gives them back to the dispatcher. The road, the cost and the level are in the details, closed. No more sentences telling you what to do.

0.96.0

  • The map’s colours: each mode its own.

    Two signs mean the same in every mode: red for what is wrong, solid when it is critical and hollow (or lighter) when it is a warning, and white for what is yours, the selection and the orders, no longer yellow. Green and amber no longer mark a state. The roads are brown, not red. The truck columns and ships keep their yellow, green and blue in the Supply mode, where the sides fade to the paper and the counters soften; in the other modes your columns and ships are in ink. A column carrying to a division has a small white dot, so it reads in any mode. The depots’ stock rings are in ink tones, and the depot card and the Network tab drop the green and amber too.

0.95.0

  • A depot over its stock target lends the excess.

    A depot holding at least 100 t more than its stock target lends what is above it to the depots within a leg that are short of theirs: their columns load there first, then go back to their own depot once the excess is gone. It never lends to the depots that feed it or that it feeds, and never goes below its own target. The depot that borrows shows where its columns load. Under the hood, for the controls that come next: a depot can hold stock back for its own divisions, and split its columns between its leg and its divisions.

0.94.0

  • The depot card says what is true.

    A port reads as a port, not as rail-fed at 0 hexes, and shows the depot its trucks load at, with that road’s limit. What a port landed is what its ships docked in the last 24 hours, beside what sailed today and how much of it will land: a ship sails for one to three days. A depot supplies the divisions drawing from it and those its columns are carrying to, so a depot run dry no longer reads “no units” while its columns are on the road. When all its columns are out it says where: on its leg, on the divisions’ runs. A full road is blamed only when its own leg’s columns are held in the jam. The staff advice counts the columns kept in reserve.

0.93.0

  • A command bar for the selected unit.

    The orders of the selected unit are in a console at the bottom of the map, each with its key: Hold (G), Cancel (X) and Center (C) for every unit, and for an engineer Repair (R), Road (E), Railway (T) and To a job (Q). The order in hand is lit, and a unit your generals command shows its orders off, with the reason. The unit card on the right keeps the information.

  • No more box over every hex.

    Moving the mouse over the map no longer opens a box on each hex: click a hex to see what is there. Units, battles and the hex you are picking for an order keep theirs.

0.92.0

  • Roads beside the railway.

    Where a road runs along a railway, it is drawn beside the track instead of under it, and comes back to it in the towns: you see the paved road you move on, and the lorries drive on the road, no longer on the rails. From afar the two lines stay apart.

0.91.0

  • A new campaign: The Two Banks.

    The first of the never fought campaigns, in an invented world: Kessia and Varenland face each other across the river Lenta, a month of summer, with the same divisions, railways, roads and towns on both banks. Each side is strong on one wing and weak on the other, so both attack and the war is a race. Choose it in Campaign, under Never fought, and play either side.

0.90.0

  • A cheat menu, to look under the hood.

    F9, or Cheats… in the pause menu, opens a panel with four tabs. See: through the fog of war, the enemy’s plans (each of its commands’ orders and why) and where your own logistics is held back. Time: jump a day, a week or a month ahead, or run until the next battle, city taken, division destroyed or encircled. Logistics: multiply either side’s truck columns, shipping, production, stocks or losses at sea, and fill or empty a depot. Units and AI: restore or drain the selected divisions, change a side’s quality or strength, switch the enemy’s AI off, hand your logistics to the AI, ground the enemy’s aircraft or your own, make a theatre command bolder or warier. A game where cheats were used says so.

  • Copy for Claude.

    The pause menu copies or downloads your game as a small file: its seed, your orders and cheats, a check of every day, and your depots and divisions as you see them now. Pasted in a chat with Claude, it plays your game again, so that what went wrong can be found.

  • North Africa: every truck column is real, and you see it.

    Each depot has its truck columns, 50 t on about 17 lorries each, and every one is on the map in the Supply mode. A column drives empty to the depot it loads at, loads there (that depot’s stock goes down at once, with the fuel for the trip), drives back full and unloads: a day and a half from El Agheila to Benghazi. The same columns carry your divisions’ supplies, to the ones short of supply first; a column follows its division if it moves and turns back if it is cut off. A road carries one file of columns each way, 2.5 km apart: a column waits at its depot until there is room, and where a road gets slower the file queues behind it; off the road, in the desert, three files drive abreast, slowly. The enemy’s aircraft hit columns on the road, driving or held in a jam: the column, its load and its trucks are lost, and the log says where. A port’s day of landing sails as four ships, one entering the map every 6 hours at a convoy’s speed, so what is shipped today docks two or three days later. The colours: yellow for the columns between depots, green for the ones to your divisions, outlined when empty, blue for the ships; the enemy’s are in its colour. From afar a longer truck is several columns close together: a continuous file is a full road. Each depot’s stock sits beside it, going up as a column unloads and down as one loads, the stretches of road under the enemy’s air are marked, and a flash shows where columns are hit. The depot’s card shows where its columns are and the ones held in a jam; a division’s card shows the columns on their way to it. Every count you read, on the cards and in the bar at the top, is the last 24 hours, moving with the clock, never since midnight.

  • Air raids slow your convoys; they no longer cut the road.

    A depot loads where the road reaches, whatever the weather and the enemy’s aircraft: raids and bad weather make its trucks slower and break more of them, but no longer cut it off for a day, which used to turn the whole truck network over and stop everything beyond. The depot’s card says what really happened: how many columns were there when the convoys left, what they brought, and how many more would bring what it needs.

  • North Africa: fuel and the front.

    Moving burns the fuel it was meant to: an armoured division’s tank lasts about 350 km, not 800, so an advance needs far more fuel brought up. A port lands the fuel its depot lacks even when it is full of supplies, and the computer ships first to the port nearest the front: Benghazi now feeds the depots beyond it. The computer’s commanders send their corps at one objective at the same hour, wait next to it until then, ask for the stock an attack needs instead of waiting for it, and need a day and a half of battle in the depots, not three. Reinforcements reach their corps instead of waiting where they landed. The computer no longer takes down a depot that still holds stock.

0.89.0

  • Terms of use.

    About links to the terms of use, a new page that says what you may do with the game (play it, install it, share it, film and stream it) and what needs the author’s permission, and shows the copyright line.

0.88.0

  • The map follows your fingers.

    On a touch screen, a phone or a tablet showing the desktop site, one finger drags the map and two fingers pinch to zoom it, around the point between them, instead of zooming the page; a tap selects as a click does. Orders still need a mouse.

0.87.0

  • Your shipping is split among your ports.

    In North Africa the ships carry a fixed tonnage a day (2,000 t for the Axis), and the Convoys section of the Economy tab says where it goes. Each port you hold has a slider for its share of the shipping: drag one and the others share the rest. Under it you read what the port can land, its damage, what the sea took of what was shipped to it (the convoy route’s losses, the enemy’s air and Malta, apart) and what it landed yesterday. A port lands only what its depot has room for, so a large share of a small port is passed on to the others. The chain gains a Convoys link, and a port’s card has a From the sea block.

  • Malta, and a wing against it.

    Malta’s threat to your convoys rises a little every day and, at full strength, sinks a quarter of everything you ship, on every route. The Convoys section shows its level and what it costs; in the Air tab it is a mission of its own beside Support and Interdiction. A wing on Malta has no target on the map: it flies from its airfields, costs wear and losses like any mission, and brings the level down. A chip warns you when Malta is above half strength with no wing on it.

  • Ports you take are damaged.

    A port taken from the enemy lands only a part of its capacity, and nothing at all while it is wrecked; it repairs by itself over weeks, and twice as fast while engineers work on it. A port its owner destroyed the depot of just before it fell is worse still. Repair port, on the port’s card, in Convoys and in Works › New job, queues the engineers’ repair as a job. A chip says when a port you hold is closed.

  • Reinforcements cross the sea.

    Divisions, brigades and the truck columns your factories make are shipped from a share of the shipping that you choose, 5, 15 or 30%, before the ports get the rest: a division weighs about ten thousand tons and lands when all of it is shipped, at the port with the largest share. The Convoys section lists what waits, what is shipped and when it is expected to land.

0.86.0

  • Roads and railways are the engineers’ jobs.

    In the Works view, Road and Railway ask where a line starts and where it ends. The preview draws the path it would take and says the kilometres, the points, the days of work and, for a road, what it does to the trucks’ cost along it. The engineers build it hex by hex, from the queue like a depot: the queue shows how far each is built, a click on a row shows its path on the map, and a job in progress is drawn solid as far as it is built and dashed beyond. An engineer’s card has Build road… and Lay rail…, which give it the job at once. The railway engineers are now simply Engineers.

  • The rates are the record’s.

    An engineer lays about 1.7 km of new railway a day (about 9 before: the Western Desert Railway took 265 days for 250 miles), makes a dirt road at 4 km a day and paves one at 2, or at 1 on a bare track. A dirt road costs 0.45 construction points a km, a paved one 2; a railway keeps its cost per hex.

  • The railway carries the material.

    New track needs about 425 t a day of material, carried by rail from your sources and ports to the head of the line while it is laid. The trains take it first, so the depots on that railway get less; where the railway cannot carry it, the work slows with it. A line laid far from your railway goes slowly or not at all.

0.85.0

  • See how a new depot would be linked.

    Placing a depot, the first line says how the network would feed it: by rail, by sea, or by truck from a named depot, with the route drawn and its cost. When no truck leg reaches it, it says it would stay empty, names the nearest fed depot and marks where a relay would link it.

  • Longer truck legs.

    A truck leg now reaches about 315 km of paved road (200 of dirt road), where it reached 210: fewer relays along a good road.

0.84.0

  • A beaten division falls back.

    A defender that is losing no longer stays to be wiped out: when its organisation is about to run out it falls back one hex by itself, in order, in disorder or routed, depending on how much of it is left. It pays for the retreat, more when its pursuers are faster than it (infantry caught by armour in the open). A division with nowhere to go surrenders. One held at any cost stays, and bleeds.

  • Battles are less certain.

    Every battle has its own luck, drawn when it starts, and a twist every twelve hours: even odds are a real gamble, and two to one is no longer a sure thing against a prepared defence. The battle’s balance shows the real odds as it goes.

  • Fatigue and preparation.

    Marching and fighting tire a division and take up to half of its power until it rests in supply; marching no longer costs organisation. An attack made straight off the march is hasty and worth three quarters of one prepared for half a day next to the enemy. The unit card shows both.

  • Damaged equipment comes back.

    Part of what a division loses in battle is only damaged: it is repaired a little every day at rest in supply, and lost if the division leaves the field.

  • Ordering a defender away breaks off.

    A move order given to a division defending in a battle now pulls it out of the hex first, paying its rearguard, instead of leaving it there.

0.83.0

  • Depots cost to keep.

    A depot now costs construction points every day, by level (half a point, one, one and a half), and loses a little of its stock: a tenth of a percent of its supplies and three tenths of its fuel a day. Ports and the national sources are free. The construction tile in the top bar shows the points, what comes in, what the depots cost and what is left; an alert says when the points do not cover the upkeep.

  • The engineers build, in a queue.

    A depot ordered, a level raised and a depot taken down are now jobs in the Works view of the Network tab. The nearest free engineer takes the first job it can pay, drives there and works: three days for a depot, five for a level, two to take one down. The points are paid when an engineer takes the job. You can move a job up or down, cancel it (the points come back, in full if no work was done), or send a given engineer to it from its card. Engineers are few: North Africa starts each side with one.

  • Dismantling empties the depot first.

    Dismantle… stops what is sent to the depot, lets the depots that ask for its stock load it by truck, and only then do the engineers take it down and give half the points back. Abandon at once, no refund, removes it with its stock: the way out for a depot nobody empties or when you have no engineer. A port’s depot is not dismantled.

  • The previews say who and when.

    The build preview names the engineer that would take the job, when it gets there and when the depot would work, the cost and the upkeep, and the request the depot would count for. A depot’s card shows what it costs a day and how it decays, and the engineer’s card shows its job and its place in the queue.

0.82.0

  • The commanders ask for stock.

    In North Africa each army group now publishes a request to its quartermaster, in tons: the stock of the attack it prepares at its jump-off, a depot within reach of its supply, the stock of a defence, or help for divisions short of supply. It keeps its aim until the request is met, expires, becomes impossible or is overtaken, and says why; a clearly better aim changes it.

  • The attack waits for its stock only when the odds are tight.

    An army group that outnumbers what is in its way three to one, or sees nobody, attacks as soon as its divisions are rested and supplied: it asks for no build-up. Between one and a half and three to one it prepares first: it attacks when the depots around its jump-off hold what three days of battle need, no longer after a week of waiting. Nothing fills the depots for you: you raise their targets and build the depots, or the request expires and the commander asks again.

  • Cards in the Command tab.

    Under each army group, its request: the tons, where, by when, how far it is met, when it will be at yesterday’s flow, the depots that count, the missing depot with an Order depot… button, and a Normal / High priority that serves those depots first. Below, the closed requests. Hovering a card or Show on map draws the jump-off, the depots that count and the bound on the map.

  • A request at risk.

    The alert strip names the request the depots will not meet in time, with the tons held; a click opens it in the Command tab. A depot’s card says which request it counts for.

0.81.0

  • The trucks work by themselves.

    Every day the truck columns are shared out among the depots beyond the railheads by what each one needs, for you and for the enemy alike: nothing to assign by hand, and no more idle-trucks alert. You can still lock one depot’s columns at a number of your own.

  • A stock target for every depot.

    Set in tons on the depot’s card and in the Network tab: the railway, the ports and the convoys fill a depot to its target and stop there, not to the brim. It follows what the depot’s units ask until you set it. The Depots view shows the stock against the target, the columns in use and in reserve, and the stock held above the targets.

  • Waiting trucks burn nothing.

    A convoy burns fuel for the loads it carries: the columns waiting at a depot that is full to its target use no fuel and do not break down.

  • One Network tab.

    Depots and Network are now one tab, Network, with two views: Depots and Flows. Alerts and links open the right one.

  • Build previews beside relays and ports.

    A depot you are about to build next to a depot fed by trucks, or a port, no longer reads “it would stay empty”: it shows the trucks that would serve it.

  • Ports no longer look cut off.

    A port fed by sea is drawn like any fed depot, not with the cut-off slash.

  • Every port has its own name.

    A port is called after its own sea (Baltic, Black Sea or Mediterranean) and no longer “Black Sea port” by default.

  • Losses at sea shown.

    What sinks on the way to the ports counts in the “Lost on the way” readout of the Network tab and of the top bar, with a line of its own.

0.80.0

  • Side panels alike.

    The selection panel on the right now looks like the drawer on the left: the same header with an icon, opaque, full height. The sandbox’s panel became one too.

0.79.0

  • Ground held, not just crossed.

    A division entering a hex also takes the empty ground around it that no enemy covers: a column keeps a corridor behind it, and its supply with it.

  • Owning the desert is not watching it.

    Your side sees around its divisions (armour and motorised ones farther in open ground), its depots and cities, and its aircraft: an enemy column in an empty stretch of your ground goes unseen. The commanders remember an enemy they lost sight of for three days, as they last saw it.

  • Air reconnaissance.

    A new air mission, Scout: a wing watches 175 km around its target and fights nothing.

0.78.0

  • A faster North Africa.

    The commanders plan two to three times faster: a campaign day passes sooner at the highest speeds.

0.77.0

  • Pin a readout to the top bar.

    A pin on every readout of the Economy tab’s supply chain (production, reserve, by rail, by truck, delivered) and of the Network tab puts it in the top bar, or takes it off.

  • The fog keeps what you saw.

    Under the fog of war you see roads and railways as they were when you last saw them: a line laid or wrecked out of your sight shows only when you see it again.

  • Initial orders, out of the way.

    The initial orders no longer push the map buttons aside, and the checklist icon in the bottom bar brings them back once hidden.

0.75.0

  • Your own top bar.

    Right-click the readouts in the top bar, or the pencil at their end, to choose them: drag them into order, remove them, and add new ones (deliveries, units short of supply, encircled, divisions, air wings, engineers, weather). Each campaign keeps its own bar; North Africa now starts without rail and industry.

0.74.0

  • New commanders in North Africa.

    A theatre command and its army groups now lead the campaign on both sides: they advance by bounds as far as the supply reaches, halt to build up, rest tired divisions and fall back when exposed.

  • Every order explained.

    The Command tab says why each formation attacks, builds up, rests or holds, with the odds it reckons.

0.73.0

  • Weather on the Weather map.

    The weather chips are gone from the top bar: the Weather map button lists every sector and what its weather does, and shows a dot while a sector is not clear.

  • The minimap beside the map modes.

    The minimap opens to the left of the map modes, and the bottom bar’s map button opens and closes it.

  • Every detail in the map tooltip.

    Pointing at a hex shows its victory points, fortifications, railway and depot at once: no more Alt key.

  • Headquarters in the Command map.

    The headquarters show in the Command map only (and the one you select), so they no longer crowd the divisions; North Africa’s go by their own short names: DAK, Sup. AS, Cyrcom, WDF.

  • What the fog hides.

    Under the fog of war roads and railways are faint, as on an old map, and you see only the cities worth victory points: no small towns, no fortifications.

  • The objective in plain words.

    The victory meter reads your points out of victory’s, says where the draw starts, and its tooltip names the cities to take.

  • No one holds the sand seas.

    In North Africa the impassable sand seas belong to neither side, so the front line and the weather sectors’ borders stop where the ground can be crossed.

0.72.0

  • A slower, steadier clock.

    The five speeds are now fixed rates, from half a game hour a second to two: at speed 5 a day takes 12 seconds, the same on any computer, and the old jump from speed 4 to “as fast as the computer allows” is gone. Max stays in the sandbox.

0.71.0

  • “Restart now” works.

    On a page where the game had been opened for the first time, the button beside the version did nothing; it now starts the new version.

0.70.0

  • Choose the campaign first.

    Campaign opens a list of the campaigns, historical and never fought, with a preview of the one chosen; the ones coming are shown but cannot be chosen yet. Then you choose your side.

0.69.0

  • A wider North Africa.

    The map now shows the central Mediterranean round the campaign: Tunisia, Sicily, Malta, Greece, Crete and Sinai in grey, out of play, and the Sahara to the south.

  • Lighter neutral land.

    Neutral countries are a lighter grey on every map, so their coasts stand out against the sea.

0.67.0

  • Lighter updates.

    The trained models are downloaded on their own, and again only when one changes: an update of the game’s code is about a sixth of what it was.

  • Updates never interrupt a game.

    A new version downloads in the background and starts the next time you open the game; the pause menu no longer offers a restart that would end your campaign.

  • What’s new.

    After each update this card says what changed.

0.66.0

  • The desert’s logistics.

    Trucks relay supplies from depot to depot where no railway reaches, and convoys short of fuel make fewer trips.

  • Ports.

    A port lands what its capacity allows; convoys lose a share at sea, more under the enemy’s air.

  • Lay track.

    Engineers can build a railway line: the preview shows its cost and the days it takes.

0.65.0

  • North Africa 1941.

    A new campaign, 24 March to 30 June 1941, played from either side and chosen in the new game menu.

  • MAPLE.

    The division’s new graduate in the Academy: it passes courses 1 to 11 and is the sandbox’s default model for a division.