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The final section of screen is the information window, with a choice of five main themes. First, the technology screen is a major change from its EU origin. One of the criticisms of EU was that the technological development was one-dimensional and linear, with each state eventually treading the same path only at different speeds. No longer. There are FOURTEEN different fields of technological development, each with a truly bewildering myriad of advances both in theory and application. Generally, theoretical advances take much longer (a daily resource investment for 120 days or more is not uncommon) and open up more advanced fields of study while applications allow actual upgrades and construction. Equally, the successful development of specific applications also opens up later fields of study. Simply put, the state that ignores technical development (or invests solely in the short-term rewards of applied tech) will sooner or later find itself prey to the better-organized and better-equipped forces of a more foresighted neighbor. Fortunately this tech screen is extremely well-organized, and at any time you can find what tech you need to develop to get to a specific item, or what things are unlocked by your current research project. Each tech has a couple of paragraphs of very good explanation, both in real life terms (in case you’re not exactly sure what “advanced decimetric radar” does), as well as its game effects.
The next alternative for this window is the construction of military units. Units are built by division, and each require a certain input of raw materials (as well as a minimum level of tech development in all but the simplest cases). For a higher investment cost (and again, if the tech is available), most divisions can be upgraded with the attachment of specialist units such as artillery, AA, AT, or engineer brigades. Like the real world these things take time to develop, and a successful commander will be planning his production queue for a year or more in advance of his needs. There is no “ohmigosh, his invasion fleet is on the way, quick, build some militia!” – and no Zerg rushes.
Multiple divisions can be joined together under a single commander for maximal combined-arms effectiveness. (For an exhaustive explanation of the construction and details of military units, I reference our preview at http://www.sgo.cc/previews/hearts_of_iron/index.shtml which has remained correct and for brevity’s sake need not be repeated here.)
This info window can also be used to manage your country’s government. Every country (even small, peripheral ones) has a list of personalities that are the various political figures of the day. These individuals may be brought into the government in the roles of various ministers – of defense, industry, foreign ministry, as well as Chief of Staffs for the various services. Each individual has a personality and it is up to you to decide – do you want your Minister for State Security to be an obedient but lackluster functionary or an outstanding but amoral psychopath, whose services are invaluable but whose excesses may cause you more trouble than good? In this same note, individual generals command the armies, wings, and fleets of your armed forces. These generals have several traits that you can see, as well as some you can’t. A general’s skill reflects his ability to command multiple formations, and his rank determines if he will be ultimately in charge if the units are merged with others. A general’s experience reflects his amount of time in that position, and can greatly impact the effectiveness of the organization beneath him. According to Paradox, generals also have a loyalty factor which is hidden from the player and negatively impacts the effectiveness of his forces. Low loyaty can in extreme circumstances result in the general defecting to the enemy. I personally never saw this happen, but it’s something that should be extremely rare in any case.
The unit of currency in HoI is the IC (industrial capacity). In the same sense that normal currency is representative of work, the IC in HoI represents a share of the country’s industrial resources. One IC point uses 1/2 rubber, 1 steel, and 2 coal units every day. The industrial information window gives you control of the four sliders prioritizing your industrial production. The first line is consumer products, essentially a throwaway since it can only hurt you if it’s too low. Democracies need a high proportion of consumer products while they are less important (but still necessary) for Facist and Communist states. Supplies are the fuel, ammunition, food, and material on which your forces rely. Run out of supplies and you are truly screwed, so most players will stockpile this number up very high whenever they can. The R&D slider has to do (obviously) with the number of IC’s going toward tech advances, and the Production slider has (again obviously) with production. These sliders are dynamic, since your industrial resources are finite – raise one, and all the others go down. This can be a little confusing at first, but each slider can be locked in place for simpler management.
This screen also lets you manage convoys from your distant colonies, and trading with the world market in case some of your resources are running out. Tip for the new player: any chance you have of controlling rubber and oil early will payoff bigtime as soon as armies start fielding more motorized and mechanized formations.
Last but not least is the diplomatic screen, which most immediately shows your diplomatic alignment. The game’s diplomatic model is based essentially on the battle between Facism (represented by Germany) and Democracy (represented by Great Britain), with the inclusion of a third pole, Communism. Communism (the Soviets) can form alliances with either Facist or Democratic states, or it can follow its own ‘third way’ and form the Comintern. Of course, going into a WW2 game, one might be inclined to think that the alliances and alignments are generally hard-coded but not so. Paradox deliberately built the game to include the immediate prewar period of frantic diplomacy, when things were not so clear. Certainly you can play the 1939 scenario where everything is pretty much polarized into their historical places (including the Soviet Union, which is in a position to flip-flop). But I think most people will enjoy playing the 1936 game that is much more like WiF’s Days of Decision.
Each neutral (including the USA, for example) is given a ‘war entry’ scale. As aggressive acts are taken by various states whose ‘alignment’ is different than one’s own, the public’s clamor for war entry increases. As far as I could tell, aggressive acts by allies seem to decrease your public’s appetite for war. It seems that a states position on the political alignment outright determines some of the actions available: the staunchly democratic USA cannot declare war on similarly democratic Canada for example (at least at all the levels of war entry and diplomatic influence I explored).
This can be used to your advantage. A gutsy German play is to goad the French and British into a war before they’re ready. I thought I was being particularly clever by figuring this out, but the AI knows it too (and actually used it against one of the programmers at Paradox in a earlier beta version).
You gain a wide variety of actions depending on your current diplomatic influence. Each state accumulates diplomatic influence regularly (major states faster than smaller ones), as well as gaining it from winning battles, occupying capitals, and generally vanquishing enemies. Low diplomatic influence means you are limited in your options to the grosser acts: declaration of war, call for peace, etc. A higher diplomatic influence gives you many more subtle alternatives, such as influencing the target more toward your point of view, demanding military access, couping the government (replacing it with a more cooperative regime), or even demanding the cession of pre-existing territorial claims ala the Capitulation at Munich.
A great deal of diplomacy is based on the event engine, present in EU2 but used to extremely good effect in HoI. A number of events all can happen, from the Spanish Civil War to the regularly-held elections in democratic countries – all of these can have far-reaching impacts on your policies and strategy. Join the Civil War on one side or the other, and your opponents have a boost to their war-entry. Ignore the civil war and the cries of moral outrage from your citizens cause dissent. I experienced the US elections of 1936, and I think the dissent level had something to do with the Republican candidate getting more votes than FDR. Now, I had a choice which candidate would be president - I don't know if this was a 'fantasy' choice, meaning I could choose either, or if I'd gone with FDR (the loser in the election) I'd have declared some sort of revolt against the government (it CAN happen in HoI if your dissent gets too high - civil war eventually). But each candidate had his plusses and minuses. FDR was a bonus to war entry, and +25 points toward communism (LOL that), the Republican (Alf Landon) was a minus to war entry, minus to dissent, and plus to productivity.
Speaking of productivity (i.e. your own going down the tubes), if EU was any measure you will also soon see a wave of scenarios and custom modifications on the game’s websites. This time Paradox is including a scenario editor and leaving all of the configuration files open .txt documents, meaning that this is a modder’s dream. As usual, the commentary in the HoI forums is cogent and generally well-informed. I love the Internet, and one of the things I like the most is that really smart people out there seem to have the time to make the most massive scenarios/mods given the simplest of tools. It won’t be long before HoI mods start pouring out of the community.
As I said at the very beginning, HoI runs in real time. Like the EU series, HoI disdains the use of artificial turns in favor of a constantly-running clock. Fortunately, the clock scale is totally flexible. I’m a turn-based guy personally, so I found myself running at ‘average’ speed most of the time (about 1 minute per month), but pausing frequently to issue orders. I’d say that, during a major conflict with dozens of units needing orders, etc. it was taking roughly 15-30 minutes to run through a single game month. I found the lack of ‘turn-breaks’ kept events flowing very naturally, and it probably contributed a great deal to the immersiveness of the game. I truly didn’t find the lack of turns to be a problem at all, but this leaves an open question about multiplayer.
Well, Paradox thought of that too. Firstly, the messaging system is (like EU) really very good. Popups arrive for just about everything that happens (which is annoying at first) but they are very customizable. If you want a popup every time a naval unit arrives somewhere, leave it as a popup. Messages about diplomatic advances by your enemies might be less important, so you can relegate them to the text bar at the bottom of the page, which is still useful but less imperative. Messages that you’ve beaten an enemy in battle (you do win all your combats, don’t you?) might be tedious, so you might just tell the system to quit mentioning them altogether. This is also freely configurable later, as your needs change.
Further, in multiplayer games any one of the 8 players can pause the game BUT after 30 seconds, any of the other players can UN-pause it. This will allow players with far-flung forces just enough time to check their status and get back to the main cauldron of events, without being obtrusive for the other players. In a friendly game, people can let others pause as long as they need to. This limited pause adds to the realism of the game. There is such a thing as strategic focus and task-saturation, even for governments in the real world. If a player is mentally (and in the interface) focused on the developments in the Pacific, his or her allies and opponents will have an advantage to acting elsewhere. Likewise, a clever player can use the unit-timing feature to have multiple attacks or events happen simultaneously, presenting their opponent with too many crises at once. I can’t think of any other game that presents this very realistic situation to the player so effectively.
All of these things – diplomacy, resources, military action, even the lack of turns – blend together in Hearts of Iron in a unique mélange. You can find plenty of AAR’s on the Paradox website, but I think it’s worth showing you one of my own, to illustrate the choreography (for lack of a better term) of how all these different pieces mesh so smoothly together.
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Reviewed by Steve Lieb.
