31st July - Review from a Hearts of Iron Veteran

Scaling chart is based on a 1 – 10 (1 being lowest and 10 being highest)

Rating by Section

Historical/Events --- 8
Tech Tree --------- 10
Intel -------------- 8
Production -------- 9
Diplomacy --------- 9
Strategy
-Land ---------- 10
-Air ------------ 10
-Naval ---------- 9


I. Introduction

Hearts of Iron III contains many aspects that are recognizable to diehard fans that are familiar with Hearts of Iron I/II. The first thing to point out, to these fans, is that although these items may look familiar, make no mistake, they are very different. Hearts of Iron III is an entirely new game and not an enhanced version of the older iterations of the game. Every aspect of the game from the AI to how manpower is handled has been completely rewritten based on experience from the previous two versions and user feedback. Just like the previous versions; the core time line of the game covers the period from 1936 to 1945. The core feature of the game has not deviated from the previous versions either; you still control any country in the world and all decision making, for that country, within the time period.


II. Historical/Events

In previous versions of the game the main driving force for decision making was an event based system where a pop-up would display giving the user choices which would have various effects on the given country or other counties. The event system has not changed; but a new feature has been added to help articulate certain activities differently from the traditional event system.

Decisions are a new feature introduced into the game which has been carried over from the Europa Universalis III system. Various decisions will appear over the course of the game that requires conditions to be met before the decision can be selected. Playing as Germany the major events preceding World War II such as the Annexation of Austria and the Claiming of the Sudetenland have all been migrated into Decisions which give the ability for these actions to take place causing an alternative time line other than the historical one.


III. Tech Tree

One of the features from Hearts of Iron I was to create a massive tech tree with various degrees of options. The interface was designed for it and modification designers especially loved it. This tech tree had various draw backs; in particular the tree could be so large to make it daunting to some fans as they were not able to follow the tree due to the sheer size of it. Hearts of Iron II took the tech tree concept and shrunk each tree to just one screen. This solved the problem of tech trees being to large but it created a new problem as it limited the options that could be provided given the time line was so broad.

Hearts of Iron III took the concept from Hearts of Iron I and merged it with the concept from Hearts of Iron II. The new concept allows sub-techs to be continuously researched with each research increasing various variables. Each time you complete a research a green line will appear, across the researched item, and increases in size. As demonstrated in the armor tech tree screenshot below, you will notice that there are various degrees of tank types and under the type they have several main categories of the tank (armor, engine etc…). As you improve each item your tank type will get better and the improvement will then be applied to all your units as an upgrade.



This new concept has been applied to all unit types (including naval). What it does it gets rid of the specific model type (Panzer, Tiger, T-38, Bismarck etc…) and replaces it with the unit type of your choosing. You are virtually designing your own unit types. If you like your tanks to have more armor you can concentrate on armor but sacrifice the engine, etc…

Naval units are an exception to other unit types in which all aspects can be upgraded. Naval units only upgrade certain items such as Anti-Aircraft guns. Once a ship is in the production queue or on the map it will not upgrade the core features of the ship such as armor, guns and engines.

One major issue under the Hearts of Iron II system was a disassociation between what a country builds and researches. For example it was very plausible (under Hearts of Iron II) for a human German player to build a mass carrier and naval force after defeating Russia (or even prior) despite the fact that Germany has built nothing but land units and a few submarines.

Hearts of Iron III introduces a new concept that shortens build times and cost of units based on research and building of the units themselves. In addition there are research items in the tech tree to help increase research for specific items types to help a country progress faster on specified tech types. You can see the screenshot below of the tech bar and current bonuses.



For example, let’s assume you are playing Germany and have concentrated on land techs and building of land units, because of this concentration, you receive a 5% bonus on the cost for producing the unit and on the time frame for producing the unit, which enable you to create land units at a greater rate than countries who concentrated on strictly naval and air. Then let’s assume you shifted gears into producing nothing but naval units. By doing this you will pay penalties as you have shifted into an area that your current history shows you are not proficient in and in response you will slowly lose your bonuses for land units but gain bonuses for naval units.

One last feature that needs to be mentioned is the new Leadership tools that are provided on the tech screen. In Hearts of Iron II each country had tech teams and received x portion of tech researchable slots based on the amount of IC the country had. The new Leadership system provides you a base of leaders, which can increase by conquest and technological improvements. You then can move sliders to which areas you want to assign leadership to. You have to choose between Diplomats, Spies, Researchers and Officers. Screenshot is present below.



IV. Intel

The intelligence system has been refined to play a bigger role in the game from previous versions. It was very easy in Hearts of Iron II for players to just ignore the intelligence system and still play a normal game. The effects from anything that was done would not have catastrophic effects on your country so it was just easy to ignore it as it was more cost effective.

Using the Leadership management tool provided on the production screen you have more control over how many spies will be produced. On the intelligence spies can be assigned to various missions who have different types of effects. Some cause pro-government movements and some cause negative movements. Some cause research penalties (instead of just stopping a research project) and some are just simple random sabotages. Counter espionage has also been enhanced so you can do things such as supporting your local political party etc… to help you stay in power. The new system adds an abundance of features and because of the large scale of the effects such as intelligence on the map and slowing down research projects the portion of the game can no longer be ignored. Screenshot of the Spy Menu and Internal Spy Menu below.



V. Production

Production has remained very similar to Hearts of Iron II. You have IC still which represents the build capacity of your country. The resources you have become accustomed to in Hearts of Iron II are still there but one new resource has been added called Fuel. In previous versions versions of the game your fossil fuel equipment would dip its requirements directly from the oil pool. This presented with some an easy way to stockpile oil for the vehicle by doing massive trades with other countries. By converting oil to fuel a new dimension has been added where oil in itself is no good unless it is converted.

Production bars are similar to Hearts of Iron II with a new feature were by you can click on the light bar above each section so the slider auto adjust to the required amount of IC for that section. This feature is very helpful if you want to manually control your production but be warned you do need to check on this every few days and make sure the sliders are in the positions you want them to. Although an AI exists for this section, it is for the entire production section and not just the sliders. This is a feature that perhaps Paradox will re-introduce as a patch or enhancement that was very much appreciated in the Hearts of Iron II series.

When building new units you now need to choose if they are reserve or regular units.


Structure building is almost identical to Hearts of Iron II with some small changes that need to be noted. First when build level 1 airfields and naval bases you can build them directly in the queue and place them in any hex that does not have an airfield or naval base already. Once one of these is present in the hex you must upgrade it via the hex menu and not the production screen. This feature was added to prevent the hording of these structure types and creating instant huge bases on provinces you just conquered.

VI. Diplomacy

The menus for diplomacy are very similar to the ones from Hearts of Iron II but don’t let that fool you. Many of the inner workings on these have changed, some huge some very minor. For example in the previous two iterations of Hearts of Iron when influencing a nation it was a onetime influence that happened immediately. In Hearts of Iron III influencing nations now consists of using diplomatic points consistently on a daily basis and influence is done gradually. You can also help this influence by using spies to try and get a friendly government to you in charge at the same time influencing the country.

One major new option is the ability to invite someone into your faction. In previous iterations of the game it was always impossible to have Japan and Germany ally and have a historical outcome as the second Germany would declare war on Russia then all of its allies would join him, including Japan. The ability to invite countries into your faction allows you to see all of their movements etc… as if you are allied but when declaring wars they are not compelled to join you. So finally the ability for Japan and Germany to unit in the Axis is now possible with ought the commitment. A screenshot of the diplomacy menu is below.



VII. Strategy
i. Land

In previous versions Hearts of Iron was broken down to the division level with an optional brigade attachment. This was, by the core of the engine, the smallest unit possible for land forces. This design did present many difficulties in trying to simulate historical issues within that time period. The most being that each and every country had their own definition of what the size of a division was and that what constitutes a division for one country may actually constitute a brigade to another.

Hearts of Iron III took the old design further down an additional level. The smallest unit level now is the brigade, and brigades are used to form divisions. You can assign a maximum of four brigades per division and can create various templates with different division designs. You can specify which units are reserves or regular units which have a level of maintenance and readiness associated with them during peace time.

Strategic redeployment, which was often the culprit for many issues in previous versions of the game, took a new look. Rather than the unit being removed when being strategically redeployed from position A to position B, the unit now shows a movement arrow, just like regular movement, and moves through each hex as it is being transported from position A to position B. At any point between the two points you can stop the deployment and move the unit as if it is a regular unit. As illustrated on the screenshot to below.



Another major issues from previous versions was the traditional dog-pile event of when you can’t beat them then zerg (Starcraft term for overwhelming your opponent with massive numbers) them. This would cause people, and the AI, to create massive stacks of divisions in a single province to attack from. This tactics was not only historically inaccurate but should have been impossible due to logistics of the area. Paradox, with their experience, tackled this issue using two new features.

First a full logistical system, was introduced, that traces from the units back to its supply source. This system is affected by the infrastructure present in each hex and limits the amount of units you could have in a hex with a viable supply limit.

Second they introduced a unit max front size and an algorithm that measures the border distance between two provinces and determines the size of the front that can be attacked on. This is then applied to both the attacking and defending units. So even if you attacked with 20 divisions, but the front really only has room for 5 divisions, the other 15 will be placed in reserve. The only exception to this rule are Paratroopers as they will add an extra unit to the attack regardless of you having the full front covered or not since it is assumed they are dropped behind lines. You can see a screenshot of a battle on below with the units in combat at the top and units in reserve placed on the bottom.



One more thing to note is officers. Every combat unit represented on the map needs officers. The amounts of officers you produce every day are controlled through various tools such as the Leadership sliders, technological research and educational goals of the government. If you have more units than the required officers this has an effect on command and control which affects your abilities in combat.

ii. Air

Hearts of Iron I air system consisted of direct control of each air stack and assigning those missions to a specific location. For some people this was a great system and for others it felt overly cumbersome. Under Hearts of Iron II an area based system was introduced where you assigned missions to a geographic area. This simplified air mission handling but left a degree of un-certainty on how things where run and also allowed some planes to exceed their true distance limits.

Hearts of Iron III took both systems and combined them with some additional features that each player can control on a per air wing basis. You have the ability to assign missions to a single province, area, and a new feature with a radius. The radius feature is particularly useful because you can now assign air missions within a circle (or oval shape) area and as you are creating the air mission the provinces that will be targeted by your radius will highlight in a different color. This feature alone satisfies both the hardcore player (which likes to control every feature) and the casual player (which wants to have things simplified and just issue quick orders. The screenshot on below displays the command screen for air missions. It should look very familiar to Hearts of Iron II fans as it has many identical controls to the previous screen with the additional features.



iii. Naval
a) Carriers

Hearts of Iron I had a very abstract carrier system where almost any plane type could fly on to carriers and launch attacks from them. This feature was not very well enhanced and made carriers more like movable airfields rather than what they represented historically.

Hearts of Iron II introduced a CAG (Carrier Air Group) concept as a brigade attachment instead of being able to fly planes on them. This feature was far superior to the concept from Hearts of Iron I but it presented new issues. Some examples are, some carriers can hold more planes than others which could not be reflected. When attacking the CAG and carrier both took damage and repairing them was extremely expensive.

Hearts of Iron III has re-introduced a portion of the concept of Hearts of Iron I whereby you can now fly planes on carriers and carry more than one plane unit per carrier. The CAG unit still exists and is the only plane type that can be placed on a carrier but it has new features now. A CAG can be flown to airbases and launch missions just like a regular plane unit as well as fly on a carrier.

b) Convoy System

Hearts of Iron II convoy system was very simplistic by nature. The positive side to the system is that it was appealing to the average user so they do not have to spend countless time trading and managing resources but to the more hardcore user the system in its simplicity lacked a balance with an event called the Battle for the Atlantic. During this time period Germany had unleashed a wave of submarines in the Atlantic to try and starve the United Kingdom into submission. Using the old Hearts of Iron II system it was not possible (if you started in the 1936 campaign) to starve the United Kingdom of natural resources as you were only able to hit resources being transported from their own territories and anything trade on the open market was untouchable.

Hearts of Iron III took the old system and added a new twist. All trades are now done for money. You can no longer trade resource A for resource C (Unless part of the Comintern Alliance). The country that provides the money must transport the resources and must apply convoy points to do the transportation. These convoys are attackable by your enemies.

VIII. Conclusion

Hearts of Iron III is an incredible achievement over its predecessor. The game has some very huge ambitions and in almost all cases succeeds in implementing them. The potential for growth through patches and enhancements is virtually unlimited. In pushing for those ambitions some things were overlooked such as the auto slider feature and alerts for information as events happen but it is important to keep in mind these features do not hinder the game and how well it plays out. With all these new systems and features and the amount of detail that was given to each portion is simply amazing and sets a new bar for future war games by not only Paradox but for competing companies in this portion of the market. No other company has been able to make a global World War II game that not only provides a challenging AI (that does not cheat) and a system that simulates so many aspects of what was possible during that time period. This game will definitely become one of the all time classics for future generations and will be an excellent addition to any World War II gaming fan.

One last note, this review only covers a handful of the new features available in Hearts of Iron III. If I was to cover every new improvement and feature this review would span over 50 pages. I simply tried to cover the ones that people are primarily looking for.