4.3 Change Log:

-Major restructuring of mod files. Replaced some country flag based systems with variables. simplified/improved a ton of script spaghetti with the new meta script/loop scripts.

-Reworked the scripted variant AI. Mostly it's just a lot simpler to work with, although the cool unique names for each variant are gone so you can't tell the AI's progress from its variant names anymore. Making it work with the new ship design AI required some changes to how the AI uses its army/air xp. Tweaked a number of target variants and priorities for the AI to be more effective.

-Custom difficulty bonus: due to the lack of settings in this mod, I added another level of customisation to the dynamic/country difficulty bonus that lets you decide what modifiers it gives (there are some 20 modifiers open - more could be added) and the exact value. Want a real fight from Japan as USA? Try giving it as much dockyard production and naval fuel consumption reduction as you think you can handle.

-Performance Mode setting that replaces the "Limit S. America Production": production limits aren't only applied to SA, they apply to all less significant minors around the world (essentially everyone except minors that were in the war historically plus countries like Turkey, Portugal, Spain) . As before, they only start producing more divisions when they enter a war. Also, USA builds less divisions unless threatened at home. The mod's scripted AI is updated less frequently.

-Challenging mode reworked a bit. Previously the only difference from normal mode was basically some countries using 40w infantry. However now all AI's will use more min-max type of strategies (to be improved in the future). Countries prefer superior firepower and avoid building fun divisions like motorized that aren't really useful to the AI and instead focus their XP on useful templates and variants. Naval builds are more limited to fewer types. Research is more focused, medium armor preferred etc. This should be the go to mode if you want to squeeze everything out of the AI.

-Reinforcements mode change: spawned units use up the AI's manpower so it doesn't get units forever but the AI is able to spawn units as long as it doesn't exceed its scripted division cap so it can receive more reinforcements than before.

-Added "Puppet Egypt" option (OFF by default). UK puppets Egypt when it is enabled so that Egypt creates its own army and properly guards Cairo for UK. It is scripted to keep its divisions in Egypt as a garrison force and to transfer any conquered lands to UK. Not a great solution for many reasons but it the results look good. Without it, Axis seems to roll over Africa.

-Similarly to Egypt (except this is not optional), Malaysia has been changed to help the Allied AI guard its territories. If it is under AI ENG, its autonomy is raised one level at the start of the game because otherwise UK takes away all its divisions. It will also keep its divisions in its own territory.

-Italian East Africa is gone. The new avoidance zones should be sufficient to prevent the Italian exodus to Ethiopia.

--------AI research:

-Major research balancing to help the AI cope with the new techs.

-Made sure USA gets nukes.

-Overhauled the mod's previous AI logic for naval doctrine research. The AI should try to research doctrine techs that benefit the ships it has/produces. It should be more likely to research escort techs when the enemy has a lot of subs. Since there are a lot of these techs and they are expensive, I limited the AI's naval doctrine research amount to a number based on the current year. E.g if the year is 1940, the AI won't research more than 4-6 naval doctrines total.

-Overhauled the new naval tech tree AI logic to be in line with EAI systems. Goal as usual is to have the AI only research what is actually good, what it wants to use in its designs and what benefits the fleet it currently has (factoring in things like the number of various ship types it has etc). Probably needs tweaks depending on what turns out to be good. Made sure the AI isn't too slow researching new hulls and does produce them.

--------Scripted construction AI:

-Some majors build more dockyards.

-Silos: added scripted AI to handle their construction. Amount the AI builds depends on the number of military factories and oil owned. ITA/♥♥♥/ENG = more silos, SOV/USA = less silos, GER = a **** ton of silos. Made AI trade more for oil to fill up its silos.

-Refineries: AIs that need rubber will build a ton of refineries, such as Germany (obviously) and USA (historical reasons and in case Asia is lost). Fuel gain from these is so low I didn't set the AI to build them for fuel at all for now. Refinery fuel techs are only researched if the AI already happens to have a ton of refineries and it needs more fuel.

-AI can replace other factories with refineries when it can't get more slots and it needs more rubber.

--------Ship designs:

Rewrote all of the new vanilla ship design AI scripts to fit in with EAI systems similar to AI templates. I don't know what all the good designs and fleet compositions are going to be so these are my best guess for now. There's room for adding design variations and such if needed. Don't expect any more historical detail than with armies. AI can build these ship types:

-CV: fleet carrier and light carrier designs
-BB: super heavy and heavy designs
-BC, CA
-CL: surface combat and anti-sub hybrid (some depth charges added when the enemy has lots of subs)
-ASW CL: dedicated sub hunter with airplane launchers, sonar and depth charges
-DD: surface combat and anti-sub hybrid
-ASW DD: dedicated sub hunter with depth charges and sonar
-Mine layer DD: cheap design and low production prio
-Mine sweeper DD: cheap design and low production prio unless the enemy has mined its shores in which case it significantly ramps up the production (and if the enemy has tons of mines on its coasts it will rush degaussing tech as well)
-SS: torpedo types only (from what I've seen the AI doesn't use mine laying subs for mines)

Japan builds super heavies and I made sure it gets them out before the war. Since AI only convoy raids with subs from what I've seen, majors will build subs (and it's a low tech investment anyways). Countries with trade interdiction put a lot more emphasis on subs.

--------Naval Combat/Fleet AI:

Don't expect it to be much different from vanilla. I mean it. 95% of what the AI does is out of my hands. If something can't be fixed by adjusting naval research, production or designs, it may not even be worth bringing up. However...

-I added some scripts that may affect very specific cases such as making the Allies avoid assigning fleets to the Baltic sea.

-Naval strategies added for AI's naval avoidance zones to try to fix severe division loss issues with both Allies and Axis around the Atlantic and Mediterranean.

-Number of strategies added controlling which naval missions the AI uses based on fuel situation in order to conserve fuel.

--------Military Coordination Decisions:

-stockpile display and production coordination are now proper diplomacy actions instead of decisions. Couldn't resist as there are some useful new variables available so now you can see for each equipment type the fielded % str ratio (so you know what equipment the AI actually needs) as well as the exact stockpile.

-added diplomacy action for denying specific countries from your borders (a decision for denying all allies is still there)

--------Misc:

Tweaked government in exile decision logic for the AI to make sure it steals all sizable GIE fleets so on.

Made sure Japan and Italy abandon the naval treaty early on historical.

Made some war declarations more historically timed and added some others that I'll leave as a surprise.

Some tweaks to AIs admiral trait picks.

UK assigns more units to garrison (won't fix the core issues). However combined with the Puppet Egypt option and various naval avoidance zone strategies, it will be at least less likely
that it has no defenses in England.

Reworked USA and UK focus tree historical AI logic/order. Stopped Mexico from joining Allies through focuses on historical (Mexico may need more tweaks, let me know if it does something strange on historical, same with Netherlands).

AI is hopefully less suicidal when using the aggressive battleplan mode.

Armor templates: AI makes a basic armor template with just ARM/MOT for example if it doesn't have SPAA and SPART techs it wants to use so that it doesn't end up with strange widths in the early game.

--------Gameplay changes:

Added a new decision to handle the joint invasion of Iran (either UK or USSR) aka Operation Countenance.The reason is that their oil fields are far too important to be left open to trade with the Axis now and vanilla's focuses don't handle this as well as I'd like.

Combat bonus from entrenchment reduced to half. There's too much of it, it's easily abuseable against the AI's attacks while the AI makes poor use of it so I think it is only fair.

Added equipment variant creation for transport planes.

Moved from the Expanded Techs addon to the main mod: cavalry suppression value reduced to 1. Military police level 1 adds 100% suppression. You can make any units have 2 suppression by adding MP support.

Last stand/force attack nerf (CHI/♥♥♥ abilities excluded): org damage reduction from -100% to -80%.