No Compromise, No Surrender | Patch 1.17.3

With the year drawing to a close, this is our final patch note of the year — what a year it’s been. We’ll keep releasing fixes and updates after the holidays: part of the team will begin work on the next major project while the remainder continues to refine Thunder at Our Gates. For a peek at high-level ideas we may explore, see the post Arheo published earlier this year. Read Arheo’s overview here.

Before I go, here’s a summary of our player telemetry on Doctrine selections (note: these figures reflect real players only, not AI).

Grand Doctrines

Below is the distribution of Grand Doctrine choices across nations.

Sub-Doctrines

When we examine army Sub-Doctrines, preference is broadly balanced across options, with the main exception being a stronger tilt toward Fire Concentration. Overall this aligns with our design intent: doctrines cater to different play styles and provide meaningful choices.

We’ll be back in the new year — may your encirclements be decisive.

— Gorion

Generals, listen up

Our amphibious landings are secure and a beachhead established. Allied Headquarters is setting up supply lines to support upcoming operations tied to Patch 1.17.3. Please review the Balance, Gameplay, AI, Modding, and Bug Fix notes below carefully.

Balance

• Slightly reduced initiative and maximum organization for the “Tank Destroyer Force” subdoctrine.

• Slight reduction to the maximum organization bonus from the “Grand Assault” subdoctrine.

• Applied more moderate initiative bonuses to Tank Destroyer Force and People’s Militia subdoctrines to prevent excessive stacking.

• Adjusted doctrine mastery gain modifiers in several national focus trees.

• Increased battalion requirements for factions to complete the “Establish a Marine Corps” and “Expand Our Armored Forces” goals.

• Updated the artillery width-reduction effect from the Fire Concentration subdoctrine so it also affects line rocket artillery.

• Lowered Sun Li Jen’s rank to level 3.

• Made “Draw Support from the Big Families” a 35-day focus.

• Owning By Blood Alone now grants China a few additional starting air technologies.

• Reduced China’s base war support from 50% to 32%.

• The four Defense Areas now provide their state modifier for 210 days (up from 120) and the effect applies to subjects and faction members.

• A Shield Towards the Sky now grants two research bonuses (50% for Anti-Air) and state AA benefits now apply to subjects as well.

• A Wall into the Sea is now a 35-day focus.

• Made Operation Ichi-go more expensive to initiate and increased penalties for failing to complete it on time.

• Lowered winter attrition from 50% to 40%.

• Increased the accident rate for low-experience air wings.

• Added additional coal to three pre-NCNS focuses related to coal mining, and added a small amount of starting coal in southern Congo.

• The Nationalist Chinese and post-warlord focus “60-Divisions Plan” now displays the effect of the unlocked decision and takes 35 days.

• Reduced close air support (CAS) damage to strength from 0.08 to 0.05.

• Gave the Soviet Union a negative to mastery gain that can be removed by replacing “Politicized Military”.

Gameplay

• Added Ranger divisional name lists for several countries.

• Yang Sen and Jamphel Yeshe Gyaltsen now start with country leader traits; leader swaps for Qinghai Ma and the Sichuan Clique preserve traits and roles across ideology variants.

• Reworked the “Establish a Marine Corps” Goal to accept any amphibious battalions and now requires them to be >90% equipped.

• Adjusted the “Expand Our Armored Forces” short-term Goal so armored battalions must be >90% equipped.

• Added a prerequisite requiring control of 50% of Austronesian-claimed states before the Philippines can take the “Masters of the Pacific” focus.

• Made Sun Li Jen available from game start.

• Added a decision to invest in officer training to increase recruitable population growth.

• Introduced medium-term Goals to “Establish an Airborne Corps” and “Establish a Mountaineer Corps.”

• Introduced the “Production Quotas” short-term Goal.

• Introduced the “Convoy Sufficiency” short-term Goal.

• Updated and cleaned up the East Asian country trigger used by faction rules.

AI

• Fixed an issue where AI task forces would sometimes abort movement and return to base without cause.

• Naval AI will no longer attempt to protect the coast when the enemy has no navy — this prevents wasted fuel even when not at war.

• Naval AI will preemptively protect the home-area coast if there are incoming war goals or world tension exceeds 50%.

• Fixed an issue where very few countries built sufficient dominance for naval blockades to function properly.

• Resolved a bug where the AI created new fleets every day, causing frequent color and name changes.

• Improved AI task force selection and re-enabled convoy escort missions for AI.

• Japanese AI now delays popping Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia as subjects in Indochina for a short period.

• AI will no longer build energy and resource infrastructure prematurely.

Modding

• Added support for setting equipment ratios for land units and unit categories within the count_in_collection effect.

• Count_in_collection now supports sub-unit categories and sub-unit definitions.

• Count_in_collections can now search for equipment in the stockpile.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an exploit where switching a division to a template with disabled or missing equipment could still grant mastery gain.

• Naval gun hit chance bonuses from MIOs are now applied correctly.

• Added icons for Submarine Nuclear Strike Raids and clarified their raid type by renaming them appropriately.

• Fixed missing class definitions on 1939 Japanese starting ships that produced empty ships with no modules.

• Fixed incorrect special project prefix checks in ITA — King of the Skies, Modern Musculus, Caligula’s Pride.

• Adjusted Tohoku population to be more historically accurate, lowering Japan’s core population by ~3 million.

• Fixed a bug where the anti_air_4 module was not recognized as the parent of anti_air_3.

• Corrected Graf Zeppelin’s naming from “Graf Zeppelin Class Klasse”.

• Invalid faction theaters are now automatically removed from the faction.

• Resolved an out-of-sync (OOS) issue occurring when a client had played single-player before joining an MP game.

• Fixed several issues including improper peaceful reunification triggers, Chen Mingshu not becoming democratic leader correctly, and incorrect triggers for Subjugate Korea and Dare to Win focuses.

• Fixed a crash when attempting to use recon planes without owning La Résistance.

• Resolved an issue where the PRC decision to oust the Yulin Garrison persisted after removing the related state modifier.

• Prevented replacement of the “defeat communism” goal after it has been completed.

• Fixed an issue where democratic Japan could core non-Asian states when annexing subjects with cores outside Asia but with a capital inside.

• To end the Peru–Ecuador war by decision, both nations must now be independent and the war must have originated from that decision.

• Converted stability penalty effects for “Guarantee Tension Reduction 15/40%” and “Justify Wargoal Reduction 20/40%” faction rules into modifiers.

• Renamed “Justify Wargoal Reduction 20/40%” faction rules to the more accurate “Justify Wargoal Tension Reduction 20/40%”.

• Fixed incorrect Chinese localization strings.

• Resolved an issue where faction rule enable effects could run multiple times.

• Fixed broken localization strings when the UK rejects the Raj offer from the “Colonial Cadet Exchange” focus.

• The PRC Carrier MIO now grants a refitting bonus rather than an unusable equipment conversion bonus.

• Fixed missing achievements (Pand-monium and Make a Man out of You) for players using newly added warlords.

• Fixed an issue that allowed Japan to prospect for oil in North Sakhalin indefinitely.

• Fixed Interior Borneo having building slots despite being impassable.

• Turan now gains a core on Tomsk when formed.

• Fixed a broken localization string in the autonomy system when allocating lend-lease.

• Organize the 200th Division now receives functional tanks when No Step Back is owned.

• Fixed a bug where Battle Royale would not trigger correctly if war was declared on both China and Japan in the same tick.

• Converted desert tiles in the Philippines into lush jungle (1× southern Central Islands, 1× northern Eastern Visayas).

• Replaced two desert tiles in the Moluccas with jungle.

• Set a readable HP bonus for the Individual Excellence subdoctrine.

• Fixed an issue that prevented Ethiopia from becoming exiled in the UK unless NCNS was enabled.

• Fixed an issue where Chinese guerrillas could be rooted out by anyone rather than only the controller or the controller’s overlord.

• Fixed an issue where State Shintoism stability improvements were not applied correctly when enacted by Manchukuo or the Reorganized Government.

• Added missing Hispanic countries to the Philippines’ “Hispanic Overtures” focus.

• Fixed AFG’s “Reintroduce War Elephants” focus granting the Proper Heritage spirit then immediately replacing it as invalid due to doctrine requirements introduced with NCNS.

• Declare Military Emergency no longer breaks the Philippines.

• Updated the tooltip to correctly display clamped spotting speed.

• Fixed broken sun reflection in DX9.

• Fixed a rare CTD related to faction theaters.

• Fixed an issue where a co-op player rejoining after being kicked could result in multiple main controllers.

Please continue to file bug reports — they help us greatly. Read our Bug Report Guidelines here.