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Hearts of Iron


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Don't know how many of you may have picked this one up... it's a WW2 strategy game made with the Europa Universalis Engine. It handles most everything you'd want in the period of WW2, you can play as ANY country in the world during the time period of 1936 - 1948, and handle everything technologically, politically, etc.

Strategy First made it... Computer Games gave it a low review score, but I thought it was somewhat unfair. Their only complaints were that it was hard to learn, and yeah, the manual is long and it's hard to figure out at first, but it's addictive, and after a couple days, and practice reading history books you'll be well on your way.

It's multiplayer as well, I and a friend are currently playing a campaign, me as Germany, he as Japan. We've been playing off the save file, so we complete roughly 1 year of game time every night, so it'll take us about 12 days of playing to play out the war (about 3 hours per day). It's currently 1940, Operation Barbarossa went off without a hitch, and now the USSR, France, Belgium, Luxeomburg, etc. are all at my feet. In Asia, my friend has taken down both the Nationalists and Communists in China, Siam, etc. the only thing he hasn't taken is Australia. Italy of course is getting it's butt whipped in Africa, but I decided to stay out of it until the English got too powerful down there... not like it matters since my troop transports are lined up to cross the English channel...

And America won't enter the war, because due to some political pushing, Roosevelt lost the election of 1936 and the depression never ended... 'whoops'.

Anyway, that's just a sampling of what's in the game... check it out online - I definitely recommend this if you like ANY WW2 strategy games - this is the one to get. I would give this wargame of the year 2002 if I could.

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Guest Grayfox

now this sounds interesting... i loved west front, but after that, all the other ww2 TBS games were bleh...

whats the price on it? and whered you get it?

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Yep, been playing it since it came out. But like MoO3 it has major flaws, including an AI that is much too easy even on the hardest settings. The more you play the more the flaws become apparent.

Thankfully Paradox Entertainment (Strategy First did NOT make it) are great at supporting their games and each patch has made a significant improvement with literally hundreds of fixes. It still has a long way to go though.

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The latest patch (103 I think) has fixed most of the original problems I had with it. The AI isn't necessarily to blame - when you think you see all those troop movements AWAY from your lines like it's a stupid maneuver, it's really your forces losing sight of some units or those units never really being there in the first place. Their "fog of war" so to speak. Understanding that, and with most of the issues now fixed, the AI goes on the offensive if you are in a stupid position, and defend if they are on a better position.

It's around $39 at Gogamer.com right now, and it kicks the hell out of MOo3 in my opinion. I've been playing it since it came out, Moo3 I played for like a day.

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quote:

The AI isn't necessarily to blame - when you think you see all those troop movements AWAY from your lines like it's a stupid maneuver, it's really your forces losing sight of some units or those units never really being there in the first place.

It's not any one particular thing, the AI is just very ineffective and easy to defeat. One of the big reasons behind it is that AI handles supplies very poorly and can't build a big enough army to compete, this is not helped by the flaw that AI alliances cannot send supplies to each other.

There are numerous oddities and balance issues causing the problem as well. The way research is done is another one, too easy to research everything you will ever need... It's kinda screwed up when playing as the Soviets and by 1940 you have 30 divisions of T-34s ready to roll through Germany and they have nothing that compares. It just loses the fun when you can take any major nation and conquer most of the world every game without difficulty, you know? This is currently the same problem I've discovered with MoO3

I also have issues with the whole diplomacy model in the game, there is not a great deal of use for it. Many alliances can only be formed after specific historical triggers (eg no matter how much work you put into influencing Italy as a German player, they wont ally with you until you take France), it's all very rigid and I miss the more dynamic relations system from EU2. Still, the game is understandably more focused on war. So I can deal with that.

As I said, the game certainly does get better with every patch. I would agree that it is in a better state than MoO3 after the 1.03b patch, but when first released HoI was horribly unplayable for most people - it got even more flames than MoO3 has received.

Despite all this keep in mind that I am a huge Paradox Entertainment fanboy, don't assume that the negatives I list here mean I hate the game or anything

[ 03-05-2003, 06:45 PM: Message edited by: Elenkis ]

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This game shines in multiplayer if you have the time....

When I went on vacation I played multiplayer with my father and a friend....all axis....

We were nuking the Soviets in 1942. Invaded America in 1945....freakin awesome...

It did take about six days...ave six hours every day.....

Next game we are all enemies.....that should be even better....

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The reason Italy won't join you until later is because of one of the patches limiting their joining because of the amount of territory they control... if you ask them to join you on the first turn of the game, they accept however. Me and my friend are sharing most of our research, he's already removed the British from Asia, I've defeated the Soviet Union (who had to go invade Tokyo Japan before I could bail my friend out). I basically just followed the concept of Operation Barbarossa with 3 armored spearheads of 12 divisions each driving towards major cities, while about 40 divisions of infantry moved in behind to cut off supplies and garrison key cities. When it was all over, they surrenderd everything west of the center of the Soviet Union to me. Right now I'm bailing Italy out in North Africa, though I conquered Turkey along the way. My German high seas fleet is off the coast of the UK sinking about 30 transports per game day. German and Japanese forces are only a few months from meeting each other in the Central Asian territories. Italy is making me mad because they are taking territory that I conquer and annexing it while I'm in the middle of fighting out the last defenders. In fact, I've got German troops in Asia fighting with the Japanese (moved there before the war started). Once we've knocked the UK out of Africa, and wiped out South Africa, my invasion of Great Britain should take place, hopefully concluded by the beginning of 1942, at which time Australia should also be invaded by my Japanese allies. Once that is completed, South America, and Canada will be invaded. The only free countries left will probably be the Switzerland, the USA and USSR(or what's left of it). Everyone else will fall in line under the Axis. As long as the USA doesn't declare war on the Axis, I will respect their sovereignty. Just as I have respected Switzerlands neutrality. Nationalist Spain lost their war, so I'll have to take out Republican Spain and ally with Portugal.

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quote:

now this sounds interesting... i loved west front, but after that, all the other ww2 TBS games were bleh...

Have you ever played Combat Mission? It's not the grand strategy that Hearts of Iron is, but it's one of the best damn WW2 TBS games ever created. Unfortunately for us in the U.S. - you have to special order it from Battlefront.com. Get the CM1&2 bundle pack - it's positively wonderful!

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Haven't tried it but I will check into it... there are a couple new WW2 games coming out in the future that are outlined in the newest PC Gamer...

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quote:


Have you ever played Combat Mission? It's not the grand strategy that Hearts of Iron is, but it's one of the best damn WW2 TBS games ever created. Unfortunately for us in the U.S. - you have to special order it from Battlefront.com. Get the CM1&2 bundle pack - it's positively wonderful!

I got the Combat Mission bundle back in December...very good wargames. Been having some serious pbem games with them. I also have HOI..haven't really gotten into it much yet. May have to spend a weekend with it sometime to understand it better.

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