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Lt.-Colonel of Guerillas
Jul 14, 2003
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Exclusive AARlander Hearts Of Iron 3 Review


Introduction
When I first set out to write this review I intended it to be different. I would not follow the path so common amongst reviewer these days: writing down some of the background information provided in the press-information, add in some of my experiences from playing the game for an hour, spiced up with a few screenshots, and voila. No, instead I would return to the games I played for the Beta-AARs I have written; '41 Barbarossa as the Soviets and the same scenario as the Finns as well as the first set-up of the '44 "Gotterdamerung" scenario. The annalysis of these scenarios will tell us a lot about the gameplay of the finished game, tell us what has been changed and which edges have been sharpened or blunted. All in all this would give me enough information to present you a thorough review of the game you will be playing in a few hours or days. Of course I won't be able to cover every aspect of HOI3 as I have hardly more then 24 hours to play and write. It will thus be a somewhat rushed afar. But, I hope I will ease the burden of waiting for the GG download or the delivery of the hardcopy a bit.



It's the little things......
What has changed since the beta? The first thing apparent is the loading time. The Beta took ages while the review version only takes half that time. It is still a long load but no more an annoying long one. The main menu shows an extra tab: "Buy Bonus Items" which caught my eye straight away. Nice, I can get those cool sprite packs straight away, no need to install them by hand and still this game wouldn't cost as much as a regular (EA for example) game.


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Apart from this there are some very nice and subtle cosmetic changes in the game. The entire look and feel is bit more crisp and fresh. I like the interactive mousepointer and the slight changes to buttons and icons. New urban areas have been added but why is Eindhoven one but are big cities like Kiev, Sebastopole or Minsk not?
I also loved the highlighting of subordinate units when clicking on a corps or army. The lack of this system in the Beta made controlling large forces rather difficult.

While playing I was delighted to discover the snow got 'deeper' and the winter harsher further east instead of the strange white 'ringbeard' around the Baltic in the Beta. I didn't experience it myself though but I didn't see the Germans get halted in the mud and slowed down in the snow. I certainly hope this quagmire is going to give us the problems and the headache it gave the Germans.

Now, for some analysis, let us first take a look at the scenario set-up as a whole before I give a summary AAR of the two games I (re-)played and analyze it.​


Axis army comparison
Apart from Bulgarian army gaining four divisions not much change. The Germans even lose four divisions while their adversary was overpowered and owned them in the BETA. of course this doesn't tell anything about the actual strength of both antagonists. Perhaps the Soviet army is now at low strength. The Axis have to do with 225 divisions; Germany, Romania and Finnish combined.

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Commitern army comparison
The number of divisions is the same from the Beta to the release version, just one division more. Still a whopping 400 divisions!
Browsing through the Soviet army I see many units in the rear, it seems like all reserves, at 36% strength. Of course those were there in the BETA as well but then it was roughly half of the reserves which were at low strength, the number of the reserves is thus halved. So, here we find a new weakness of the SU perhaps just a minor one, only time and experience will tell. Apart from this it doesn't look like there is anything edited to the OOB to strengthen the Germans or weaken the SU, the officers ratio is still at 75% as well. Will we see the same results as we saw during the two Barbarossa AAR's?

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The Finnish campaign
Starting of on the morning of June 22nd the Soviets no longer marched away from the border to deal with the Germans like they did in the Beta. No, instead they came after me this time and attacked me straight away. The first minor battles took place more to the north in the Karlian area but soon, on the 24th battles raged on the southern border and I had to relent, giving ground and withdraw. This story continued for months with only a minor counteroffensive now and then, the occasional tenacious defense after having dug in only having to fall back when a part of my line was broken and turned. By early December I had fallen back from my early defenses on the Saimaa lakes to a line stretching from Savaa on the Baltic coast to the Paijanne lakes and Helsinki in the south.
By then it was simple, "die here or lose all". My troops did the first but I held, the occasional newly trained divisions strengthening my defenses and my resolve.

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Falling back, fighting, falling back and more fighting​

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After five weeks it has come to this, a good deal of the homeland lost and my divisions were a shadow of their former selves​

The battle had been a great afar so far but now it turned out to be awesome. Seesaw battles raged all across the front, breaking out and being pushed back again. Reforming corps', resting division and bringing new unit to the field for a renewed offensive, attempting an encirclement but being foiled and caught in return by the AI. I am commanding an army, Yeah baby Yeah! (got carried away there a bit I guess)

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An encirclement attempted and failed. Soviet divisions rush to the aid of their comrades

There were some small things I noticed however, some things I did not like, bad winter weather or mud didn't seriously slow down the combat or the retreat, not as much as I had expected at least. It annoyed me I couldn't see which units were in a stack by hovering my mouse over it. In HOI2 and in the BETA the tool tip showed the names of the units, where they were moving and when they would arrive. I seriously missed this and although it is interesting to know how many brigades of each type there are in a stack I would prefer the old information.
Next I would love to have auto sliders as I just don't want to pay attention to them every single day.​

The AI, Barbarossa AI vs. AI

Those who have read the AARs I wrote based on the beta can remember the serious punnishment the German AI recieved by the hands of the Soviets. As we have already seen not very much has changed on the number of divisions, their strengths or the percentage of officers. Perhaps a difference in tech will win the day for the Germans.
Two months into the game I was worried, while there was a slight difference with the Beta game the German AI didn't push the Soviets hard. Some provinces were won and yet again the Soviets proved strong in the south. Luckily the combined Romanian and German armies didn't allow them to advance very deep into Romanian territory and were able to hold them in check just a little beyond the border.


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It was by early October the tide started to turn and a profound difference could be seen with the Beta were the Soviets only but utterly collapsed in March '42. This time around Kiev fell on October 28th and the Dnjepr was crossed a few weeks later. By February nothing could stop the German onslaught from taking Moscow and even though the Soviets still put up a tough fight reinforcements from the East didn't arrive in time to stem the tide. The savage battles around Narva and Pskov strangely promoted the AI to renew the offensive against me and once more Helsinki was saved at the very last moment. Leningrad nor the Crimea had fallen in April when I saved and closed the game to write this.

Now, it is my turn to take control of the Soviet forces and see if I can hold the German onslaught or if I will lose Moscow by the end of the year just like the AI.


Barbarossa, holding the German horde

The first things I noted in this scenario after having loaded the game as the Soviets is the low IC, only 172 which does not enable you to do anything else but invest in resources. Even if you invest all your IC there won't be enough and you will eventually run out of supplies by late '41. As there is no one willing to trade you are in deep shit. Or perhaps not as the chances are better then even there won't be much of an army left by that time. Of course, this leaves with little to play around with. So, no production of new divisions or air-wings. No upgrades either, even though the Soviet army needs a lot of those. And worst of all, no, or hardly any, reinforcements. Whichever way you chose this IC and supply problem will in the end kill or seriously cripple your massive 400 division army.
As I wanted things a bit differently this time and I didn't have all the time in the world I set out to give the AI orders at Army and Corps level instead of playing Barbarossa HOI2 style like I had done in the Beta-AAR. My plan was simple however, defend on the Eastern front (or Western front as the Soviets might have called it) and attack in the North; take out the Finns as soon as possible and transfer these forces south to stem the tide and plug the gaps.
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The big plan.....

The plan seemed to work out well at first as my troops on the immediate front scrambled to the rear to set up their first line of defense. I suppose this is where I made my first mistake as it allowed the Germans to move in amongst them and pocket slow moving troops. A long story short, my planned frontline wasn't able to hold back the onslaught for longer then two months. By late august it had all but disintegrated, Kiev was about to fall, Riga was defended to the last and in the center the enemy was driving on the Dnjepr. Bad business.
Move in the reserves......well, they haven't been reinforced with fresh troops so there isn't much of a reserve actually. Even more bad business. Damned, I am beaten again by the AI!
By mid September a massive five province breach was created in the center of the front, there was nothing I could do to plug the gap or counter the offensive. It was clear their aim was Moscow and the first of them had already crossed the river Dnjepr. Here is the difference with the earlier games of Barbarossa I have seen. So far the main drive was aimed at Kiev and Leningrad. This time the AI chose Moscow as its target.​

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Being thrown back
The offensive AI is very good, it creates pockets and knows when he has to break your stranglehold on one or even when you are threatening of encircling his troops. In this way I lost 4 corps' in a single massive pocket. All these things do not only count for the enemy AI but also for the AI aiding fighting for you on the army and corps level. Then there is of course the tactical AI. I love it! It is unpredictable (so far) capable and surprises you time and again. We were all afraid it would only attack the weakest places and walk into a trap blindfolded. Well, it does not.​

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The four corps' pocket


Lag and a 'glitch'
On the forums I read a lot about lag. If there would be one scenario which caused a lot of lag it would be Barbarossa, almost a thousand units running around at the same time. I experienced some minor lag at the higher speeds but apart from that the game was smooth (high res., good machine).
The preview copy which is like a normal copy of HOI came with the 1.1 patch. There was however a little, somewhat annoying glitch. As you might have seen in the screenies the map is not as smooth as it was in the demo; the borders are rough and the point of convergence of several is altogether missing. I have asked Johan about it and it seems this problem hasn't been seen before so let's just hope I am the only one experiencing it and the problem will be solved by reinstalling.

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The German Onslaught

Conclusion
HOI3 for me is the game I wanted it to be. However; I love the size of it but have to admit it can be quite overwhelming sometimes and you most certainly have to be prepared for it or won't like it one bit. If that is the case perhaps playing a minor will give you the gameplay you liked from HOI2 but is it worth to buy a game which you don't use to its full potential? Perhaps only if you might get into the scale of it later on. On this front there is some sort of a learning curve and as I experienced with my game as the Soviets you can feel quite lost at times, not knowing what to do. Now lets only hope for Paradox newbies and those of us who are not born a 'Grofaz' bite through it and discover the glory underneath.
Whatever the case, the game delivers and is a worthy successor to Hearts Of Iron 2. Not only have most parts of the gameplay been improved, it is the 'supersized' version of its predecessor 90% of you wanted it to be. True wargamers will but the casual gamer........
As said before; not everything is perfect. HOI3 needs a lot of polishing to shine and I guess we will see this in the form of patches as well as some outstanding mods. Which ever it will be, the base to build on is just perfect. We will dearly miss some bits of the HOI2 gameplay, for some this might even be gamebreakers. The map needs to be improved on certain parts; cosmetics and province names and placements but for that we have the afforementioned modding community which will solve the problem quickly.

As I don't aim to convince any reader to buy they game if they wouldn't want to I did not intend to include ratings as is apparently normal with a preview. But there are a few last things which define HOI3 I will repeat once more:


- Massive scale
- Complete immersion, you are the dictator!
- Great AI, on strategic and tactical level
- Too much to do (can positive or negative?)
- But the AI will help you out
- Easily moddable

I can only finish this review by wishing you all a great time with HOI3! I am looking forward to spend a lot of time on it when I return from vacation.
 
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Very nice, long read. Really appreciate this :eek:
 
Thanks Singleton, this has def. made my buying solid. The immersion amazes me; excited to get my hands on it.
 
THAT was well worth reading. thanks to SM for all he's done for us with his AARs and this review. definitely way better then anything else out there.
 
Great to see that the game is overall much harder than it was in the beta version!
 
Great to see that the game is overall much harder than it was in the beta version!

I didn't play the '39 scenario yet so I can't comment on that one. But Barbarossa and Gotterdamerung will present you with a solid challenge.
 
Niice
 
Great review !
Things are looking good, too bad that i cant start playing as soon my download is complete. But when Friday evening comes :D
 
Good job, Singleton. It's been a pleasure to read your AAR's throughout the past few weeks!
 
Correct me if I am wrong, Singleton, but I didn't see you mention which difficulty setting you had for this AAR. Did you use Normal or some other setting? Have you experimented with the various difficulties?
 
Thanks for the review and the comparisons between your press copy and the 1.1 release. Your time is much appreciated!

That being said I hope the Soviets aren't always pushovers
 
Thanks for this wellwritten review Singleton.:)