The main improvement for this version is the introduction of an event chain to handle the UK surrendering to Germany and cleaning up the borders in Europe after an Axis victory. This event chain is not complete, as I need to deal with the smaller European nations Germany may have annexed and deal with colonies in Asia. At the moment it functions, but it's not very polished yet. Other non-AI improvements deal with CTD fixes, broken events, and balance issues. The main thing from the AI fixes is that the production AI has been greatly improved and the 2nd Sino-Japanese War should play out better.
The limits to the special forces actually work now and are 4 brigades minimum and 2% of your total brigades at a maximum. Special Forces are, well, special, and by definition there aren't many soldiers who can qualify, so it makes perfect sense to use the base game's elite unit limits on the special forces brigades, because otherwise you could build an entire (expensive) army of paratroopers if you wanted. Note that some countries exceed the max limit at the start of the game, and we may or may not change this.
If you have 4GB of RAM or more, have a 64-bit OS, and are getting CTDs, then you need to download Podcat's LAA .exe from the official Paradox Tech Support Forum! The game as-is can only use 1 GB of RAM, so the CTDs you're seeing come from the game running out of memory!
The mod is now in a beta state and we expect there to be some bugs, but no crashes. If you follow the install instructions to the letter then it will start up without any problems; I'm testing with the exact same download you guys will get and I follow the instructions I wrote down in the download section and can start up the mod with no problems, so if you're getting startup issues then go double-check the install instructions. Once the game starts though, there may be buggy AI behavior due to TFH changes to the AI system from the FTM expansion. If you get a crash or see the AI fall asleep or build/research something silly then please comment here, in the ModDB forum for the HPP (check out the forum link to the upper-right, next to images), or the mod's main forum (official page in the mod's profile to the right) telling us what happened. The more detail you can provide the faster we can fix the bug or crash.
For AI-related bugs, it would help tremendously if after you quit the game you would go to the folder Documents\Paradox Interactive\Hearts of Iron III\HPP\logs, open the file system.log in notepad or some other editor, and check the bottom of the file for errors. This file is deleted every time you start the game, so please look at it and report any errors at the bottom before you start the game up again if you saw the AI fall asleep. If you do see any errors please report them, because the errors will point us to the files we need to fix.
Also, please keep in mind that generating the map cache can take a long time and hog up a bunch of memory. If you have an older computer, you may want to go to Documents\Paradox Interactive\Hearts of Iron III\map and copy your vanilla cache folder to Documents\Paradox Interactive\Hearts of Iron III\HPP\map (make this folder if it doesn't exist). This will bypass the map cache generation. You'll lose out on the visual region changes (the thick black borders on the map), but nothing else.
Known issues:
*Game will crash if you try to view strategic resources in the statistics screen.
*unit-limiting strategic resources not implemented
*leader tactics not affected by doctrines
*I think lend-lease, licensed builds, and the new spy system aren't fully implemented yet. SSmith can correct me if I'm wrong
NOT bugs:
*Anything you also see in the base game is obviously a base game problem. I'm talking about stuff like the music stops playing, the interface disappears, supply system is stupid, allied nations do nothing, etc. Things like missing cores, AI not researching infantry techs, and events not working are mod-related bugs. Basically, if you see an issue related to the interface not looking right, music/sounds not playing correctly, or what the AI does on the map, it has nothing to do with the mod since those areas are hard-coded.
*If pictures are missing or wrong, then you didn't install the graphics pack from the addons section.
*If the mod doesn't start up, then you didn't follow the install instruction
*France has been coded to declare war on Germany once Germany's threat gets too high. This can happen as early as 1938 if Germany is too aggressive or allows spies to raise its threat.
I have a request, and btw great job so far.
After you annex Austria as germany and you get all their armies.
How about the armies are fully organized and named so we don't have to reorganize the army everytime we play.
Or I can edit it myself and send a copy your way.
The command to randomly transfer armies doesn't allow us to do that. If we load an OOB file we can organize and name it there, but that won't take into account new units Austria would build. The current method makes sure you get everything, both what Austria started with and what it built as the game progressed.
Noticed now after a new play, thanks for the reply ;)
Been working on making a full German OOB, that means all of the units and divisions that were already built to 1945, I'm almost done :)