First World War Campaigns 4.04 Updates & the ’24 Summer Sale is Live!

Hi All,

With the advent of the WDS Summer Sale, we celebrate by revisiting the First World War!

This week we move our focus to the beginning of the climactic fighting in Europe in 1914. Following on from the recent Modern Campaigns and Panzer Campaigns upgrades we are releasing the updates for the three First World War Campaigns titles with the new 4.04 version. This is the same version as the recently released title, Panzer Campaigns: Spring Awakening ’45 and our recent games of the week, Panzer Campaigns: Sealion ‘40, the Asia titles the Western Front games, and last week’s North Africa titles.

The three titles updated today are First World War Campaigns: France ‘14, First World War Campaigns: East Prussia ’14, and First World War Campaigns: Serbia ’14.

Please note, these are full installation builds. The reason for this is to align to the upgrades we started to release back in March here. There is no patch from the prior version available. If you already have a copy of any of these three titles, the latest game build should be available now in your store account on the WDS website. You will have to uninstall any existing versions and then install the latest to be up to date.

With the move to version 4.04, here are the following changes beyond version 4.03:

First World War Campaigns version 4.04 Changelog

Full Release

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a crash due to registry setting for the classic toolbar (which no longer exists).
• Prevent Windows 11 CTD by replacing MCI audio with DirectSound on the Splash Screen.
• Fixed a crash to desktop and game corruption when playing Network Direct Play.
• Fixed a rare crash to desktop when Auto-Save was not selected.

Enhancements

• Units are not penalised with night fatigue when moving by rail.
• New Unit box Back image to improve legibility of text.
• Slopes are included with the default 2D map graphics. These can be toggled on and off using the ] key.
• Panzer Campaigns 2D graphics are available in the folder \Map\PzC Graphics. If a player wants to use these, copy the contents of the folder into the \Map directory and overwrite. To restore the default 2D graphics, copy the contents of the \Map\FWWC Graphics into the \Map folder and overwrite.

Content Changes (France ’14)

• Adjusted the BEF arrival options in the #Grand_Campaign_F14-A scenario. Originally the BEF has an option to show up at Mons, at the historical date that they arrived at that location. This was done to help shape the campaign in a historical way, and to cut down on a lot of strategic movement. However, in this Grand Campaign, the Germans may execute the 1904 Schlieffen Plan, causing them to accelerate their advance rate (moving through Luxemburg) at a cost. This allowed the Germans to arrive at Mons earlier than was historically the case, then when the BEF 'dropped in' a mess of a situation would result. The change now is that the BEF arrival options are now split into two choices: to arrive by sea at Ostende (like before), in Belgium, or to arrive by rail from Le Havre.  In the case of the latter, it wasn't known exactly when every single division arrived by rail, as the official history states that this happened "on the 14th and following days". Because of this, a randomized arrival is present for the BEF during this time, which is appropriate since the Grand Campaign scenario allows for a wide degree of a-historical exploration.
• Added a label to the France '14 map edge, in the direction of Le Havre from Amiens rail network (because of the change of the BEF arrival in the #Grand_Campaign_F14-A scenario).
• Improved the arrival location of the BEF 4th Division and III Corps (HQ) in the #1914_0822_01s_Campaign_Early scenario, to make it more obvious that they were coming from Le Havre.
• Updated the notes document to reflect the above changes.

Content Changes (East Prussia ’14)

• Corrected the #1914_0820_01sA_Campaign_East_Prussia scenario ("von Prittwitz's Problem") so that neither the Russian 2nd Army's HQ (Samsonov) nor the Northwest Front's HQ (Zhilinski) are withdrawn - both of these withdrawals were mistakenly carried over from the historical scenario. Updated the scenario notes accordingly.

We expect to follow-up with further updated games very soon.

Here are a few sample screen shots:

First World War Campaigns: France ‘14

First World War Campaigns: East Prussia ’14

First World War Campaigns: Serbia ’14 

We plan to continue to migrate the remaining Panzer Campaigns series across to version 4.04 over the next month or so. We also are working on a range of additional enhancements that we will share with you all very soon, expect some interesting features in version 4.04.1.

We also want to mention that the Wargame Design Studio Summer Sale is now live. The sale will start today, Friday, June 14^th and run till Thursday, July 4^th. You can read more details in our blog post here.

Please keep visiting the WDS site for the latest news, or make certain you are subscribed to our email updates for the latest.