What's good about this game?

[Berrrie]

I recently acquired the Anthology box, and with it came the first Hearts of Iron. I was wondering if it's worth it to try it out? I heard some very negative comments about the game. I do like the second installment of the game very much!

You could say I could just try it out and see for myself, but the space on my harddisk is limited and I would like to hold off on installing it if it's not worth it.

Some quick observations about the game, would be much appreciated!

 

[Dr Rare]

Hello Berrrie
Not quite sure what to say but this is the hoi1 forum so you are likely to hear lots of complaints about hoi2
The difference is vast although if you can play hoi2 you can play hoi1 as they are similar but in many respects the gameplay is different in hoi1 the game is more strategic and has far better standard gfx and many more sprites than hoi2 and no stupid tech teams.
Also the hoi1 game moves faster ,hoi2 is sluggish and slow in comparison to hoi1.
If you really dig hoi2 and love to play it you may find seeing and playing the original historical source of your game interesting but certain things will be different and may annoy you.As did hoi2 for me,my opinion is that hoi2 like many film sequels is not as good as the original.For you it will probably be the other way around.
I am sure you will get some more technical answers to your question though from others.
Although similar they are really both different games ,so you might enjoy giving it a go?

Dr

 

[Berrrie]

Hello Berrrie
Not quite sure what to say but this is the hoi1 forum so you are likely to hear lots of complaints about hoi2
The difference is vast although if you can play hoi2 you can play hoi1 as they are similar but in many respects the gameplay is different in hoi1 the game is more strategic and has far better standard gfx and many more sprites than hoi2 and no stupid tech teams.
Also the hoi1 game moves faster ,hoi2 is sluggish and slow in comparison to hoi1.
If you really dig hoi2 and love to play it you may find seeing and playing the original historical source of your game interesting but certain things will be different and may annoy you.As did hoi2 for me,my opinion is that hoi2 like many film sequels is not as good as the original.For you it will probably be the other way around.
I am sure you will get some more technical answers to your question though from others.
Although similar they are really both different games ,so you might enjoy giving it a go?

Dr

Hey, thanks for the reply.

I see in your sig you're a die hard HoI 1 fan, so should I take your advice seriously? j/k

Looks interesting by what you're telling me. How about stability? I heard rumours that it's somewhat unstable. I also read that the CORE mod is more or less essential. Is that true? Are there any other essential mods?

Maybe I should go look in the HoI 1 AAR forum to get a feel of the game.

Thanks again.

 

[Dr Rare]

Hey, thanks for the reply.

I see in your sig you're a die hard HoI 1 fan, so should I take your advice seriously? j/k

Looks interesting by what you're telling me. How about stability? I heard rumours that it's somewhat unstable. I also read that the CORE mod is more or less essential. Is that true? Are there any other essential mods?

Maybe I should go look in the HoI 1 AAR forum to get a feel of the game.

Thanks again.

well i think its very stable most of the bugs were cleared up years ago if anything its more reliable than hoi2 i think?
I Like the CORE mod very much in my view its the most historical and best mod available for WW2 hoi1 and can be added to hoi1 1.06c without interfering with it.I am a huge fan of the hoi1 TGW WW1 mod also which has to be added to another separate install of hoi1(because it changes so much).
Anyway good luck
Enjoy
Dr

 

[unmerged(49082)]

A good question - this game sucks!!!

After a long time playing various Paradox titles I finally started a game of HoI1, vanilla with air stack removed of course. My country of choice was Italy - I wasn't quite sure whether I will be able to hold all the Allies by myself. It was immense fun to learn a new Paradox game, I was playing a few hours a day for the last two weeks. Despite making a lot of mistakes and being at a severe tech and IC disadvantage (200 compared to UK's 500 and USA's over 1000) I managed to archive my goals one by one. Now in 1943 Africa is at my feet and USSR is at the brink of collapse. I managed to obliterate UK's navy (though it was not easy, naval bombers stationed on shore barelly made the job), I repulse the not always pathetic invasions by the Allies here and there.

But this is where the real problems started. Because of humongous industry UK just gets up every time I beat it. I sink 20 transports reducing Royal Navy to nil and two months later guess what sails into the Medittarean - a brand new 20 transport and 10 destroyer UK fleet. My old fleet can handle that but because of being outteched I lose a ship or two every time so now my navy is dangerously nearing to being crippled. On top of that USA doesn't allow me to rule the seas disrupting convoys with my subs, because even a few DDs kick a full 12 sub stack of mine and force me to spend more time repairing in harbour than hunting. Btw you can simply forget about sending subs individually, uberstacking seems to be the only viable tactic. And I just lost another battleship, during the first 4 hour battle when you cannot escape, fighting DD/sub american fleet while having twice or triple the numbers of BBs and DDs - over a year of constructing went to the bottom.

I can understand the reasons that I am losing on the sea. But air is just ridiculous. Even without air stacking I find that the only way to defeat uber air stack is to attack it with infantry. My fighters cannot really touch it and I am too short on resources to concentrate only on that. And the silly ai doesn't even retreat when I move my land army to capture airfield. The biggest nonsense in my game was a three day long air battle in the middle of the storm. I wonder how the planes managed to stay in air for so long in such conditions. Contrary to what the manual says it is possible to perform air missions in bad weather only that you get a -1000000 modifier so both sides end up at 1% efficiency. This way it could take much longer if org was higher. Also contrary to what manual says strategic bombers don't decrease infrastructure below 33 so they are kinda useless besides raiding industrial heartlands which happen to be heavily fortified. The AA guns seem somewhat bugged too. I have an impression that when my province is attacked and I use bombers to defend it they attack my own airforce even though it is me that controls the province. I don't even mention ai's unlimited range but planes that have already travelled three times around the globe without landing are funny.

On land I have to exercise double numbers advantage to notice and progress which is understandable with my tech level, but why the heck sometimes attacker (me) takes unproportionally big casualties and sometimes not (both cases plain terrain and everyting else the same). Mere luck was never such an issue in any of the Paradox tiles I played. But the biggest annoyance of all happened to me a while ago. Not having anything useful to do with my Near East army I decided to send some reinforcements into the eastern front. All was well, I managed to catch many soviet divisions around Astrakhan ripe for surrounding. There was only one, 20 infrastructure, defended by one division, province left to tighten the garrotte. Knowing that the only strong point about the ai is unit managment in tight situations coupled with attacking time movement penalty I moved 18 divisions. As expected a few days later there was 9 divisions to fight so my calculations were correct. Backed by bombers my army made a short work of the Soviets. After that I left a small garrison to prevent any breakthrough attempts and moved the rest of my units to avoid attrition. A day later I realized that a considerable number of men has vanished. Wtf??? Guess what - attrition ate 20% of each division every day. I barely managed to escape with 7% of my whole army. You can imagine how pissed off I was when I had to use my 18 month manpower quota to reinforce. I dont think real life II WW soldiers would die away within five days even when thrown in the middle of Sahara desert, not with military supply lines behind them. Of course a German corps that was attacking alongside did not suffer at all.

My point is that you cannot compensate for ai incompetencies with idiotic restrictions that affect the player only. Make a better ai instead. This game suck hard because of it. The whole fun playing is taken away by small details that grouped togeter make the game unplayable.

On a related matter. Could you recommend HoI2 because I am considering to buy it and get rid of this awful, terrible mistake of my hard drive.