Slitherine

I have played two games through (as the Axis) from 1939 to 1943-44 where North Africa was conquered by the Axis during 1940-42 (including all of Iraq and Persia). The only remaining Allied possessions in the Mediterranean were Gibraltar and Malta. In one game Greece was conquered in 1940, with it being left neutral in the other. By 1943-44 Germany has conquered Russia and then Turkey enters the war on the Axis side.

What I have found is that once Turkey joins the Axis in the above scenarios (whether Greece is conquered before or after the Russian surrender), after two additional turns, an event fires which says that Egypt, Iraq and Persia join the allies, and reinforcements are sent to the Middle East. This is despite the Axis controlling every hex of those countries, including the capital cities and ports. In Egypt two Allied infantry corps will spawn and sit outside the garrisoned Egyptian cities. In the following Axis turn all three countries will immediately 'surrender' (again) but the Allied units will remain on the map. Even stranger, the process will repeat itself for a second time the following Allied turn, leaving four infantry corps (duplicates) on the map. There are even two Malaya battle ships in the Red Sea. I have not played on to see if it will repeat this process turn after turn.

Is there a way to edit the game files to manually disable this event from repeatedly firing? It is clearly an unintended bug in the above scenarios.

I did come across the thread that first discussed this issue, entitled "Crazy glitch in current PBEM game using 4.02".

However, I am using the latest version 4.030, and the link in that thread to the 'fix' is no longer available. Can anyone please provide a new link to the file and instructions on how to stop this bug?

The alternative is that I will never be able to invade Greece as the Axis ever again. Mussolini will not be pleased.

Who are you playing against? We've never seen the Axis being able to conquer everything in a fight against a human opponent.

There might be strange things happening when you fight against the AI since we haven't tested that.

There is a spawn issue when the Axis player controls Cairo and Kuwait. However, that was fixed in some patch files created after release. Maybe there is something similar going on regarding Turkey joining the Axis. It's very hard to get Turkey to join the Axis. You need to have Axis units close to Baku and presence in Iraq and Persia if I recall correctly.

Do you have the patch files I'm speaking about?

No, I am not ready to play a human yet, so I am training myself against the AI. Since I am playing on standard difficulty and default settings, it is not very hard to beat Russia and I found it a good way to learn about the mechanics of the game, and play-test different scenarios.

On that note, I guess it is a different manifestation of the spawn bug you mentioned - the Axis controls the entirety of the middle east, so when Baku is captured (on Russian surrender), it triggers the entry of Turkey, and then the bug as I initially described. I did notice that I can avoid the bug entirely by not conquering Greece, as that will prevent Turkey from joining the Axis.

I would prefer to use the patch, so that is what I am requesting, since the link to this patch in the other threads is no longer working. Do you know where I can obtain the patch files?

I found out that the same problem occurs if Sweden is attacked by Germany. Even before it is conquered, the spawning bug in the middle east starts to occur. This is while Greece and Turkey are still neutral. Given the objectives of GS I can understand why not much testing was conducted for scenarios where the USSR is conquered. That being said, I would be exceptionally grateful if anyone on this forum still has access to the aforementioned patch, and is able to direct me to where I can find it.

So I figured out the cause of this issue, and it is simply that you cannot place German units in Libya, in a situation where Russia has surrendered. As long as a German unit is present in Libya, Egypt will activate every turn. Italian units will not trigger this problem. Neither will German units in Vichy territory. At least I can now play-test without any further complications.