OK thanks all. I'll give it a shot on release day.
Do we know what the game complexity will be like? I never played HOI3 but it seemed to be a GIANT step up from HOI2. And HOI2 had a pretty big learning curve to start with.
For me this will be my first HOI game, and previous ones scared me off precisely because of that. Well, to be more precise - the amount of troop management and multitasking seemed a bit too much, since I never had proiblems with the complexity of, say, Victoria's economy.
Looking at the World War Wednesday streams I got the impression, that while diplomacy and internal politics are at a level of complexity below other Paradox titles (but still enjoyable enough) the economy with its' production chains and the division designer seem the most intensive thing to min-max and take care of, which I'm fine with. The addition of automated fronts, executable battle plans not only look beautiful (I mean drawing maps and lines on a map? makes you feel like the one in charge of strategy, not the poor signal guy who has to notify every single troop to move!) but also might streamline troop management wityhout being detrimental to strategy! And you can still manage troops by hand if (or rather 'when') the automated exectution of the plan encounters difficulties.
If you have time to spare,
here are the WWW streams on Youtube, I'll direct you to the Japan single player where Paradox employees explain much of the game:
