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flame7926

Benevolent Imperialist
11 Badges
Mar 26, 2011
2.202
4
  • Cities in Motion
  • Crusader Kings II
  • Deus Vult
  • Europa Universalis III: Chronicles
  • For the Motherland
  • Hearts of Iron III
  • Semper Fi
  • Victoria 2: A House Divided
  • Victoria 2
  • 500k Club
  • Crusader Kings II: Holy Knight (pre-order)
Whats the best hearts of iron game? hoi 2, 3, darkest hour, AoD, any others??
 
Whats the best hearts of iron game? hoi 2, 3, darkest hour, AoD, any others??

You forgot HOI1 and IC(HOI2).. :D

I guess it is about "taste/liking"?

So what do you like?

Best regards,
Chromos
 
I dont know, i havent played any of them and dont know the differences.
 
Whats the best hearts of iron game? hoi 2, 3, darkest hour, AoD, any others??

Until FTM (or perhaps until Semper Fi was patched up), I still thought HOI2 better that HOI3, however now HOI3 is a clear winner. The complexity and flexibility offered by the sheer size of the maps is just one small advantage, let alone the unit hierarchy, more choice over events and numerous other features. I haven't played any of the other games so can't comment.

I dont know, i havent played any of them and dont know the differences.

Not the most helpful answer ever.
 
For each major release, HOIs 1-2-3, the best "version" was the last one released. But they were all somewhat different.

HoI-1 was probably the "weakest" as an official release, as it had some key issues that were never fixed, particularly regarding air and naval combat. It had a fair bit of micromanagement, but not too bad. For its time, however, it was an industry changing game, raising the grand strategy computer genre to new heights.

HoI-2 dumbed down the research trees considerably, which some didn't like but most did, and it greatly improved the naval combat system. It also made numerous incremental improvements to the UI and zoomed in the scale a little bit (smaller provinces, and therefore more of them). Many people think that HoI2 struck the best balance between depth/complexity on one hand and learning curve/playability on the other. But it still had little in the way of automation in the UI, and therefore the player had to manually handle all unit moves, builds and combats. But at the scale involved this didn't result in too much micromanagement, or at least such was the general, if not universal, consensus. The vanilla game was good, and each expansion added nice features; but all versions from vanilla to Armageddon were complete, balanced games. IOW you didn't NEED to upgrade to any particular expansion in order to have a good, well-rounded game.

HoI-3 was the most ambitious, zooming the scale in much more, resulting in MANY more smaller provinces and therefore potentially much more micromanagement. It compensates for this, however, by introducing the ability to delegate operations to the AI at any level from corps up to entire theaters. Obviously manual control still provides the most opportunity for a human player to leverage his better brain power to advantage, but all things considered the AI does pretty darned well in most general situations once you realize its quirks and how to avoid/manage them. For obvious reasons HoI-3 is the most complex and therefore has the steepest learning curve. Many less-than-hardcore strategy gamers were not pleased by just how steep that learning curve was. Also, HoI-3 did not become a well balanced, complete offering until you added the Semper Fi expansion; and it did not reach its full potential until For the Motherland. In short, the vanilla release was heavily gimped and had some major bugs/handicaps which were not fixed except in the expansions. That said, the Semper Fi version is very nice, and the FtM version is, IMHO, the best grand strategy WWII game ever released.

Not the most helpful answer ever.

Hehe. Dude, he is the OP, so he is the one asking the question in the first place. ;-)
 
the things I still miss in For The Motherland, though, are small things, really. For some reason, I got a real kick out of giving Supermarine (the guys who designed the Spitfire) a research order to come up with a new type of fighter, for instance. or the ability to see at a glance which of your gazillion airbases in the pacific was still vacant. I still measure my armies in terms of divisions, while the game now does it in terms of brigades. I miss being able to control the French army when I was playing UK during the attack on the low countries. for it's time, HOI2 had the best possible interface for this kind of game. still better than HOI3.
HOI3, on the other hand, has tons more strategic depth. gone are the days (for the most part) when you could just drag a box around a bunch of divisions and throw them at the enemy. with the introduction of hull size you have to think about your naval deployment (no more 30-ship warfleets).
For me, FtM wins out. I find myself having to think about what I'm doing more often than before instead of just going through the motions. and for a guy who's been playing both sets virtually nonstop for about 5 to 6 years, that's saying something.
 
I will add that I like and play both.

HoI2 series is my beer and pretzel game. I is easy to learn, fast to play and does not require a lot of attention. Think checkers.

HoI3 is my serious thinking game. You must plan years ahead to get the most out of your research and production. (Not every little thing but the big overall plan). It requires more attention and thought. Think chess.

Both are good but give you a different experience now.

If you don't have any get the Hearts of Iron Complete set. It contains most of the HoI3 expansions along with the full HoI2 and HoI1 game and expansions. It does not have the HoI2 based games like AoD or DH, nor does it have latest expansion for HoI3 (Fort The Mother Land). Still a good buy to start with.
 
Currently playing HOI3 + SF + ICE 334.

Will make the switch to FTM as soon as ICE 4.0 is out.

ICE adds a bunch of flavor.
 
I played all of them and I have two candidates :

Darkest Hour Full = Excellent AI, high speed performance, new wonderful map, balanced gameplay, decisions and many more things.

Arsenal of Democracy + SMEP mod = national ideas, artillery bombardment, new logistics and many more improvements and excellent SMEP mod.


As for HoI3;

Hearts of Iron 3 and all of its expansions = lack of quality mods compared to HoI2 mods, highly unhistorical outcomes, lack of post-war events, a lot of micromanagement, stupid AI that doesn't understand your orders.
 
I dont know, i havent played any of them and dont know the differences.

You could check out the reviews about them or just browse through some AAR's to get "a feeling" about them.
Also the Dev Diaries are somekind of a good source to get an overview about the features.

I for myself can't go back to HOI2 after "getting involved" with HOI3. :)
See my signature for my attemp to improve the game in my way.

But the "Fan made spin offs" AoD, IC and DH are far better then Original HOI2 as many say. Also they are cheaper as HOI3 and its Add-ons.

DH is only ~10€ and AoD also only ~14€.
Both have their fans because of new features/gameplay.
Both have different Mods ported their work to them.
If you like some of them, maybe that would give you direction.
(F.e. CORE for AoD or Kaiserreich for DH..)

I think also HOI3 has already great Mods if someone is not satisfied with the "std-game". And I guess it will not take long until all bigger Mods have a version out for FTM.

In the end they are all time consuming games that have a learing curve as you may know from Vicky2 etc.
HOI3 has a Demo, but that is nowhere near the actual gameplay with the latest Add.on..

So it is up to you. If you would give us direction what is important to you, you would for sure get more detailed answers. ;)

Best regards,
Chromos
 
HOI3+SF+DI:G on Very Hard. Took until 1942 to break the russians but it was fun while it lasted.

In MP any HOI3 game is good with the right group of players.
 
I will add that I like and play both.

HoI2 series is my beer and pretzel game. I is easy to learn, fast to play and does not require a lot of attention. Think checkers.

HoI3 is my serious thinking game. You must plan years ahead to get the most out of your research and production. (Not every little thing but the big overall plan). It requires more attention and thought. Think chess.

Both are good but give you a different experience now.

If you don't have any get the Hearts of Iron Complete set. It contains most of the HoI3 expansions along with the full HoI2 and HoI1 game and expansions. It does not have the HoI2 based games like AoD or DH, nor does it have latest expansion for HoI3 (Fort The Mother Land). Still a good buy to start with.

With HoI2 a lot of the difficulty is inherent to what you are trying to do. Are you trying to win the game as the USA (either most VP or some goal like defeat Germany)? Definitely beer and pretzel, checkers like (within the context of Paradox games, of course). On the other hand, if you are trying to take Brazil and intervene in the early 40s in a measurable and profound way then it takes quite a bit more planning and thought.
 
With HoI2 a lot of the difficulty is inherent to what you are trying to do. Are you trying to win the game as the USA (either most VP or some goal like defeat Germany)? Definitely beer and pretzel, checkers like (within the context of Paradox games, of course). On the other hand, if you are trying to take Brazil and intervene in the early 40s in a measurable and profound way then it takes quite a bit more planning and thought.
:D

Now try that with Brazil in HoI3.:p

Also, my comparisons are only valid when comparing the two games. I mean really who here thinks that Axis and Allies is a complex game? Yet I have meet several that say the original Risk is very complex. :confused:
 
:D

Now try that with Brazil in HoI3.:p

Also, my comparisons are only valid when comparing the two games. I mean really who here thinks that Axis and Allies is a complex game? Yet I have meet several that say the original Risk is very complex. :confused:

True, very true, especially the part about Risk. When people tell me they think is Risk is complex I'm honestly confused, what's so confusing about rolling some dice?
 
I played all of them and I have two candidates :

Darkest Hour Full = Excellent AI, high speed performance, new wonderful map, balanced gameplay, decisions and many more things.

Arsenal of Democracy + SMEP mod = national ideas, artillery bombardment, new logistics and many more improvements and excellent SMEP mod.


As for HoI3;

Hearts of Iron 3 and all of its expansions = lack of quality mods compared to HoI2 mods, highly unhistorical outcomes, lack of post-war events, a lot of micromanagement, stupid AI that doesn't understand your orders.
Black I.C.E or HPP are quality mods p)
(and AS probably but never played it.)
 
HOI3 if it had DHs map and AODs AI

DH if it had HOI3s tech and AODs AI

AOD if it had DHs map and HOI3s tech

Its just absurd
 
AOD... best hoi game in my oppinion

hoi 1 and 3 have excellent research with each their specialty and flavor, hoi 3 just isn't my cup of tea (and too many things in it annoys be to hell) and the hoi series have evolved past hoi 1 with better ai and pretty much every thing else

didn't play DH much more than a few times, but it has a ww1 scenario
 
Played HoI3 on its release and hated it and continued with HoI2, later with Arsenal of Democracy and even late Iron Cross. At the time, those games surpassed my experience with HoI3 tenfold, however I had no idea how much Semper Fi improved the game.

I tried Semper Fi when it was bundled dirt cheap in a sale with the original, played it for a shot while and soon lost interest, namely because I was more in to VickyII/EUIII at the time.

FTM, however, has surpassed all expectation. I could never go back to HoI2 with expansions now as the HoI3 experience is just so much superior. In short, HoI3 by a mile.