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I have let this game pass me by, but now coming late to the party and impressed to see the development work you are achieving.

This is looking better and better, thanks very much for a must get game.

An update of sorts, to let folks know what I've been up to for the past couple of weeks. I did start playing as Austria in 1812 scenario and got into autumn 1813. The war in Russia between AI France and AI Russia was interesting to watch. Some French forces survived to spring 1813 and battles lingered in western Russia and Poland. AI Prussia did not DOW France until late summer 1813. Austria got into a nuisance war with Turkey and I held them off until we resolved an informal peace. That allowed me to focus on reclaiming Tyrol and Carinthia, as well as pressing forward toward the Rhine. However, a couple of issues forced me to stop. Tyrol, being ceded to France and made part of Confederation of the Rhine, did not return to Austrian control. This required several days to track down and resolve conquest of ceded provinces held by a Kingdom, not the same as a minor country. Another Kingdom issue was that French minors that became COR were not building reinforcements. I had code for Free State minors to do this, so just added Kingdoms to it. The good news is that I think I resolved these issues and a few others, but the bad news is that along the way I introduced something to cause Access Violations and other errors. These will take a little while to track down and resolve, as the debug code just locks up and doesn't show where and why. It's frustrating.

I will also say that once AI Spain surrendered to France, AI Great Britain forces basically holed up in Portugal. This is going to be an item for v1.24 later, to look at naval transport for strategic reinforcements and withdrawals, as well as redeployments. I can only shake my head for now. My focus is on getting v1.23.08 wrapped up and released. Hopefully this month but maybe March. We'll see.

Another update. It's been about 3 weeks. As I got back into 1812 playtesting, more adjustments were needed for advances, retreats, and redeployments. It looks pretty stable now and I'm not as annoyed with the AI as I was. Playing as Austria, I got to July 1813 and DOWd France when I could, and then moved to retake Bavaria, Tyrol, Carinthia, and Dalmatia. Tyrol I already fixed for a ceded province controlled by a kingdom, COR. Carinthia was still a problem with evacuating my units, but I fixed that too for the case of retaking a ceded province controlled by a major, France. Both work now and Austria has control of its provinces again.

On the other fronts, Spain surrendered to France a while back and Great Britain was forced off the peninsula. In Russia, France did not make it to Moscow but the back-and-forth battles took a toll on both sides. There is STILL fighting in Vitebsk, Smolensk, and Kiev, and it's now September. The Battle of Leipzig should be happening next month but Russia is still struggling to kick France out. Oh well. Anyways, I want to continue this game a bit more to see how 1813 ends and get into 1814 for a bit before shifting gears back to playtesting 1805 some. And then release. That's the plan.

On a personal note, good news is that I retired in December but bad news is my priority now is taking care of my wife with some serious medical issues. Wargaming provides some respite but there are days I cannot focus on code development. I do what I can. We'll get there. We're close.

The 1812 playtest saga continues. But this is good, because as I continue to play through the endgame I see things that need adjustments and can make those adjustments. Like why is France continuing to redeploy units to Russia when it's in Instability? Fixed. Why isn't Russia attacking COR minor corps? Fixed. Why is Tyrol showing Conquered political shading instead of home nation? I haven't been able to fix that one. Oh well.

Two success stories to report. One. As I continued to watch AI Great Britain do nothing, I finally dug into the amphibious invasion code to see what could be done. The code works pretty well early on with minor DOWs and invasions, so what is the holdup later? A few adjustments later and I've seen AI Great Britain move fleets to Sweden and then invade Denmark with Swedish corps, besieging Copenhagen. This is a positive development. Two. I noticed new AI corps with minimal factors starting to move and wondered why not transfer some garrison factors to corps if applicable? So some more code and a new transfer function later and I've seen Prussia transfer factors from Berlin to a corps. This is another positive development.

I am getting to the end of my list for 1812. I will soon start a 1805 playtest to verify how all this stuff works through the early game. I'd like to caveat my thoughts about AI to emphasize that this is not just about being able to play better solo games but to improve the computer opponent enough so that it's reasonably competent to the point that small playgroups of 3-4 players might try faster PBEM games with some computer players.

As I got into 1815, Russia and Prussia failed to impress me. I think something wasn't right with determining enemy in an area if the enemy was kingdom units, so I addressed that. Russia is now going after Warsaw finally, and Prussia sent a couple corps out of Berlin to prep for an attack on the French in Posen. Prussia is also advancing towards Amsterdam and redeploying towards Paris, with two corps ending in Nassau and besieging that city. The AI code I have written to determine a nation's overall strategic situation and its postures to advance or retreat gets complicated. In this case I fixed one logic error and made another adjustment to restrict the retreat posture if the strategic situation is 2:1 or more. This was holding Prussia back; it appears fully energized now.

Another thing here is that Great Britain has invaded Holland and is besieging Amsterdam, which is good. I want to adjust the amphibious code just a bit to also allow some reinforcement invasions to move more troops from London to Amsterdam. At this point I want to get something to work decently for v1.23.08 release; refinements will have to wait for a future version. Another adjustment I want to make is to provide sea supply to support these actions. Again, the old game code was OK for some DOWs on distant minors and making an amphibious invasion. I just want it to do more for possibly invading other minors already at war. Risky invasions against majors may also have to wait for a future version.

I previously mentioned getting the AI transfer function to work for moving factors from garrisons to corps. Considering the AI often has corps away from depots and ineligible to receive reinforcements, as I sometimes forget about, I added a check for the AI to see if it has unplaced reinforcements and to convert unplaced factors to infantry, and then cycle through the reinforcement functions again. Little things like this help the AI behave more and more like a real player.

Last comment. This is taking so long because I really need to "play" the game myself to see what works and what doesn't, and make adjustments accordingly. This game is now into spring of 1815, but with the adjustments I have made I expect Great Britain, Prussia, and Russia would have performed much better in 1813 and 1814 and we'd be in a better position. As Austria, I have held my forces back at the French border to allow my AI allies to do what they do. It has been quite tedious and frustrating to run and re-run my game saves over and over again to zero in on problems and fix them. Slowly and surely it is all coming together. Next goal is the reinforcing amphibious invasion and sea supply. Then wrap up the 1812 scenario and play 1805 some. I hope some players are keeping up with my comments and find this stuff interesting and informative. Onward!

Yes, I'm following along and finding it interesting. Grateful you are keeping up the work.

And here we go. AI Great Britain has completed a reinforcing amphibious invasion, landing Wellington and a second corps at Amsterdam. I had to find and fix a logic error in my strategic ratio function that was including depot and garrison forces in range of the previously landed corps at Amsterdam. The odds were too high to support a reinforcement, my thought being a trivial combat situation is a lost cause. So now the odds are better and the landing proceeded; sea supply is also supporting the landing. Of course, this correction to the strategic ratio will affect all other situations checking for retreats and advances, hopefully for the better. I'll watch how it goes when I playtest 1805 next.

Continuing on into June 1815. Yes, not quite Waterloo, but the playtest goes on. Two things here. First, a second reinforcing amphibious invasion to Amsterdam was not being executed, so I resolved that. Here, Great Britain has landed two additional corps for a total of four on the mainland now. The Amsterdam garrison continues to hold on, but the Brits will soon be free to march south to Paris. Also, the Prussians are in Holland at Breda, and the total allied force is causing the two French corps to retreat.

Second, during June reinforcements I noticed AI France trying to place minor corps in Hanover, Hesse, and Saxony but failing. Again, this had to do with the complicated kingdom unit status so I had to add some checks for kingdoms (Confederation of the Rhine) so the original nation for the corps matched the original nation for placement. Here we see the Hanover and Saxony corps were placed and moved. When the corps could not be placed, the cavalry factors could not be placed and the new code was converting those factors to infantry. So that's working.

I am seeing light at the end of the tunnel...