Large Carrier Buff:
-Carriers buffed to be more in line with Battleships in terms of damage output. heavy attack hit profile increased by 10
- Carriers have twice the deckspace, which allows them to compete with battleships much more evenly. A fleet without carriers will be at a distinct disadvantage compared to one with

If this makes carriers too dominant, it can be reverted, but it is a large buff to encourage people to actually use carriers again

Superior firepower tanks slightly nerfed, -1.5 org and 0.015 recovery rate

Some supply adjustments in africa, to make it more easy for allies to invest in infra and see an actual increase in important supply zones like egypt. Overall it should be less of a supply trap if allies build infra in sudan, meaning egypt will be easier to take

Total war should now properly fire if soviets advance into poland or naval invade germany

+ 3 starting civs for USA

USA dockyard build speed modifier for Giant Stirs increased 10%: 0.40 -> 0.50

A slight overall industry/navy buff for USA since they have been losing quite often to Japan lately, though for the most part that is due to player error by engaging in 41 under tora! tora! tora!. USA will almost never win navy in 41, since a proper Japan will have built dockyards in 37-38, and so had many more years of accumulation time compared to the US. It is advised to only engage them in late 41 early 42 at the earliest, or else you risk losing your entire fleet

Japan has idea to give them very large amount of resources pre-war (5x their actual amount of resources), so they can fully invest in a navy and military without running out of steel. Once it goes away at war, you will be in a race to get more steel from raj/phillipenes/australia to keep up the production of your navy, all while USA continues to boom

USA -> 5 more starting civs (3 more in no asia)
Australia -> 1 more starting civ, and a LOT more manpower
Soviets:
- Many more starting airbases deep in Russia, so that air controlling isnt quite so painful.
- Added more forests and hills around and south of Stalingrad, so as to make the kuban front more interesting and viable, as well as make encircling stalingrad harder.

Purge reduction:
- The attack and defense debuffs given by the purge have been halved, for example, the purge would previously start with -6.4% atk/def, now it is -3.2%, and it of course scales down with the level of purge. The effect of this won't be huge at all, but it is more about the long term. Soviets will hold slightly better in 41, and do more damage to the axis equipment and manpower. With better stats, they may also be able to better engage in mobile warfare during this time, though of course the org penalty still makes this very difficult


Iraq/Syria/Iran front:
- Removed some of the rougher terrain from this area and replaced a lot of the deep desert with normal desert. Iraq will be harder to hold for the axis, and they will instead have to consider holding the syria/jordan line more. Also, with much less deep desert/rough terrain, this area will have faster combat and movement (as well as less attrition), which will mean a more mobile and rapid front, rather than the extremely slow static front it has been.
Italian Fleet designer nerfed:
- The italian fleet designer has been nerfed (15% heavy attack/ 15% speed -> 12.5% heavy attack/7.5% speed) The italian fleet designer was hands down the best in the game, so much so that their fleet would routinely wipe the entire american and uk fleet in the med with ease. If you know how naval hit chance works, where naval speed directly and hugely impacts the hit chance for a ship, it should be obvious why. While other countries like UK had a naval designer that slightly reduced the damage taken (10% armor), italians essentially reduced received ~give or take 15% less damage alltogether (which is even more impactful because missed shots have no chance to crit)

This should still mean the italian fleet is very powerful and can punch heavily above its weight, but it should be less dominating and able to slaughter fleets twice it's size consecutively. It will also hopefully increase the importance of carriers, because you can't rely on ultra fast battleships dodging all the enemy shots while slaughtering them as much anymore.
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AA nerf/fighter buff:
- AA blocks much less air superiority, such that having more fighters in a zone actually makes a tangible difference. If you have more fighters than the enemy, expect them to suffer a medium sized debuff to defense, and if you have much more it can be as high as 10-20%. This should make fighters more viable and important, alongside the cas escort changes. Hopefully this compounds, so lots of fighters are worth it, and as a result you lose less cas because of escort, meaning you can put less mils on cas and more on fighters, leading to a better, more attritional air-war.

Generally, if a side has ~1.3-1.4x as many fighters up in a zone as the enemy, the enemy will start suffering scaling air superiority penalties (Previously AA blocked so much air superiority that having even 1/4th fighters up was enough to block almost all reduction in defense)

Let this also be a reminder that more advance AA techs are very much worth it, as they will now much more visibly reduce the air superiority penalty taken (and like I showed before, air attack scales inversely proportionally to cas damage received, such that there is a very significant amount of damage reduction between 30 and 90 air attack for example)
Example of the air superiority penalty taken if you are outnumbered in the air (Tank has 120 air attack, infantry has 60 air attack and so has -12% defense instead of 8%)

Cas has even lower air defense, which means it gets killed very quickly unless you have fighters up to escort. Doing the math, if you have ~4x as many fighters as cas up (equal to enemy fighters) you lose only about 2/3 the ic as having pure cas up.

Pure cas also doesn't kill the enemy planes, meaning they don't need almost any factories on planes to keep up production. Since fighters and cas are the same ic, 1 fighter should be about as valuable as 1 cas, however, 100 fighters with 100 cas will be much more ic efficient than just building 200 cas, because the 100 fighters will about halve the number of cas shot down or more, while also shooting down enemy fighters and cas. The idea is that 50 Mils on Cas will trade ic purely negatively vs 25 mils on cas and 25 on fighters

This is all to say that building fighters is worth it. On top of this, cas doesn't give air superiority, so if the enemy has even a couple hundred fighters up while you only have cas, you could take upwards of -20% defense on all your divisions in that airzone from air superiority penalty, even with full line aa!

Hopefully this should at least make 90 on cas 10 on fighters builds be worse, and ideally be replaced by something more realistic like 50 on fighters 40 on cas (although even that could use adjusting).

Kuibyshev becomes 60 vp after move industry to urals, so it doesn't stop being your capital if you accidently lose and retake moscow for example

Faster 4 speed (0.04->0.03, I believe this is horst speed. If there are issues with desyncs or lagging, this can be reverted)

Pre selecting some traits for Soviet Generals, as people seem to forget, especially when it is swapping to new upgraded generals. Also slightly buffed some soviet generals/field marshals so they are actually as advertised (for example, Shaposhnikov has 15%! less defence than kulik, so I gave him 5% more, and Rokossovsky did not have ranger, while lelyushenko did, meaning lelyushenko could actually have better stats)

Soviet Supply Fixes
Automatically change capital to Kuibyshev and retool infra at move industry to urals. This should make it so that Soviets don't instantly lose supply as soon as the front reaches moscow. Additional supply regions have been added to russia, and the existing ones have been reshaped to be more convenient and have less massive zones that prevent having proper defense in depth.

Some Supply Rigging for Libya, Egypt, and the Levant, like GDU

Purge only increases if a big city is lost during non winter months

Raj gets a few more factories from focus.

Everyone gets a 50% bonus for medium 1's, so that they don't waste their 100% bonus on it. Should also make people more likely to be combat ready in 39

Some additional starting tech and equipment for various nations. To streamline the gameplay

Nerfed air defense of CAS, so no fighter builds are less viable, and you properly need fighters to escort cas. Also reduced the air superiority given by cas, so you will have completely red air unless you have fighters up. Keep in mind that while the color of the air does not matter in theory, if you are not contesting it at all (e.g. only cas) you can get as much as ~20% air superior penalty to your defense, even with proper aa. Hopefully this will make air more necessary, and reduce the massive tank spam low air builds people have been doing.

Soviets start with field hospital + maintenance + logistics, because they already had them in their templates.
Slightly more defensive forts for soviets way back.
Deep battle gets better supply grace when encircled, slightly lower encirclement penalty, removed the negative org on AT, and gave katyushas 2.5 more hp, so it hurts slightly less to replace motorized. 0.5 More entrenchment cap as well.

Raj 2 more starting civs and 1 more mil. Added some airbases towards Iran

Total War:
Soviets can trigger Axis total war by pushing into poland or meme naval invading Germany. Invading berlin with pure motorized is cancer, it will now give axis a huge buff, so it is ill-advised.

Purge Fixes:
Purge correctly only goes down when it is not winter (to make early 42 less likely to be instant soviet battleplan into victory). Also a reminder that the lower levels of purge decrease much more slowly, so while it is only 10 ticks (100 days) from -32% org to -12%, it is also 10 ticks (100 days) to go from -10% to 0% (but -10% org is less impactful than -20% obviously, and with the better Generals Soviets should still be fighting pretty well post winter 41, they just wont be at full strength just yet)

Armaments miracle focus 30-> 60 days.

Shortened some less used soviet focuses

Slightly more tungsten in Germany

1% recruitable pop for Germany on general staff, since manpower has been a bit desperate for Germany in recent games

Removed some cities from increasing purge, because soviets have been dying in 41 too much recently. If its too weak it can be reverted, as the intention behind these additional cities was to make it so that there was a penalty for holding super far back, but people have been holding far up and still dying, so I will err on the side of caution and just remove them for now
Removed:
- Dnipropetrovsk
- Minsk
- Kharkov

Added edge case for Germany annexing Hungary, when splitting the balkans Germany also gets vojvodina instead of italy

Noobproofing:
- removed a lot of suboptimal high command, advisors, etc from all nations
- added more text recommending which generals/field marshals to use
- Removed Soviet fort focuses because nobody would take them, despite their huge benefits. Now all the forts are just added by default 😮‍💨

Raj can get an 8% research speed idea
Added Caspian Sea Crossings for soviets, so that even if you are fighting there and Germans cut to the caspian sea, you dont get a bunch of divisions encircled in baku, and can have troops cross over to central asia. Only Soviets can take this crossing, sort of like the spanish crossings that teleport them to berlin, and obviously you need to own both sides to use them

Reduced the free mils USA gets from focus, to delay efficiency growth so they aren't so powerful as early as 41 (Before they got around 40 free mils before war, now it is around ~25) Keep in mind they just received a buff of 8 starting civs, so this should mostly just serve to reduce how quickly USA can get a huge army going

Increased plane gangbang from 1.5->1.6, and reduced escort factor from 7 t0 2.5. This basically means that keeping air parity with your opponent is more important, or else you will take higher plane losses. This also should mean that very low fighter builds are less viable, because you need a larger amount of fighters to properly escort your cas, otherwise it will be shredded by enemy fighters

Total war is given to the entire axis, readjusted its stats so it is more powerful -> more reco rate, more attack, gain veterancy faster, etc. Germany gets 10% more core def/attack from general staff, to make it harder to push directly into Germany

Germans get total war in march 43 automatically, rather than january

Purge lasts longer as it doesnt go down during winter, so Soviets are still debuffed in early 42, because they could easily battleplan Germany at this point. Added additional lower levels of purge, but with much more granular debuffs, last 10 levels of purge only decrease purge debuff from -10% to -1%, so it shouldn't be huge, but it should make early 42 more dangerous for Soviets. Ideally it will be gone or nearly gone by Blau, however. To counteract this, the danger to heartland buff soviets get if they lose moscow has been extended such that it now lasts all the way until may 1st 42, right up until blau, so if soviets are truly collapsing, they will have that buff to help them.

-2.5% consumer goods on Japan on Guide the Zaibatsus