Guest Written by Niall Bird
(Edited by Nathan O’Grady)
“HoI4 is a welcome addition to the little family.”
No matter how you may personally feel about any of their games, as a developer Paradox deserves a lot of respect. They put a huge amount of passion and money behind niche, complicated games that don’t exactly have blockbuster appeal. I mean you’re unlikely to see a dynasty simulator game sharing top tier shelf space with the latest FPS any time soon, but Paradox keeps at it; making weird, difficult, games that are the video game equivalent of cult classics. That trend is one that continues with their latest release; Hearts of Iron IV.
Hearts of Iron IV (HoI4) is the long awaited (seriously guys, seven years?) follow up to Paradox’s Hearts of Iron 3 (HoI3). HoI3 is a grand strategy game in which you can take control of any nation in the world from 1936 to 1948 and try to guide them through, or away from, World War II. You control everything from the armed forces, industrial production and research through to diplomacy and politics. HoI4 is more of the same, but with what might seem like minor changes, at least to the uninitiated.
You’ll spend your time in HoI4 flicking between the map screen and various other production panels and info screens. The map screen is where you’ll do the majority of managing your armed forces. You control the units of your army, air force and navy and can micromanage every single one, or group them into fronts and assign areas as defensive lines or plan grand offensives. Units get buffs or debuffs based on things like air superiority, terrain type and organisation. Then, you’ll tell your people to shoot other people and those people will hopefully fall down, and that’s about all the “action” involved in HoI4. The real interesting stuff is in the economic and diplomatic mechanics.
Paradox have redesigned unit production this time around, and I have to say it’s one of my favourite changes. Whereas in HoI3 you created units using industrial capacity and population, in HoI4 the production of units is more complex. You still have to worry about population to man your units but now the units don’t need industrial capacity to be produced, taking equipment from the stockpile instead. Equipment can be anything from small arms and medical supplies to anti-air guns and tanks. It still takes industrial capacity to create equipment, but you can do it at any time and building up a stockpile doesn’t take manpower. The modular customisation of units is still there too; you can add artillery to infantry companies, logistical support to tanks and so on. This means that adding equipment and support units is a massive economic concern as well as a military one. Not only does it feel more realistic, but the stockpiling of materials, combined with the modification of units means that your military needs require far more planning.
These new production mechanics tie in beautifully with the new tech tree. As you progress down the tech tree you’ll need to retool your factories to produce new, or upgraded, items then push them out to your units. Yes, the upgraded small arms might be of greater benefit, but can you afford to produce 100,000 units of it in the next 12 months to re-equip all your infantry? And if you can, what are you going to do with all those out of date rifles now in your stockpile?
The political and government system has also been somewhat overhauled compared to HoI3. Now Government ministries and cabinets are not full of ministers by default. The individuals, concerns and companies available to fill these roles are country specific and make a real impact on the functionality and efficiency of units, tactics, industry and research. The new political power system means that you have to be smart about assigning ministers and changing policies and diplomatic actions with other countries as you will rarely be able to do everything you want to with the points you can generate.
Some might argue that these systems don’t exactly sound like the most exciting list of things to do, and they wouldn’t fit into the traditional idea of a fun game, and many of you might be asking “what’s the point exactly?” Well, the joy in HoI4 comes from messing with these systems, rather than any objectives directly set by the game.
What if you could turn France communist before Germany invaded? Would that mean that the Soviet Union would rush to their aid while The British Empire would turn their back? What if Italy refused to join the Axis and remained independent? What if China managed to push back the Japanese without aid from the US or USSR? You as a player have the ability to do all of this. Everything you can think of is at least technically possible, even more so if you turn off historical AI as well. If that sounds a little intimidating to you and if you generally lack direction, the new national focus tree mechanic can give you that direction and purpose.
The evolution of systems is probably the only way to safely evaluate HoI4. That’s the reason so many comparisons between HoI3 and HoI4 are needed in order to evaluate the new game. They have the same aim with their systems; to be a complicated strategy game/simulation of WWII. HoI4 has definitely taken the systems and evolved them with a bunch of interesting design decisions, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the systems are better, just different.
However, there are definitely parts of HoI4 that are just plain bad and broken… One of the worst parts of grand strategy games is actually learning how to play them. The depth and breadth of the mechanics is enticing but also quite a barrier to entry. It can be intimidating and frustrating, and although some headway has been made in making it more friendly and comprehensive, the tutorial falls short. Firstly, it’s incredibly boring. You do little more than read some text boxes and click where it tells you to click. Secondly, and worst of all, it does a poor job of orienting you in terms of the mechanics and how they interconnect. So it’s a 20 minute tutorial that doesn’t really teach you how to play the game, which is the point of a tutorial. So unless you’ve played a Paradox grand strategy before, expect to spend the first 3-5 hours not really knowing what’s happening or why.
The tech/research tree has been cut back substantially in comparison with HoI3. There are probably less than half as many research projects, which streamline the tech trees and make them more comprehensive, but it also means that there isn’t really a wrong answer for what you should research when. There are very few ways to make the wrong decision, unless you’re particularly clueless and rush navy research while playing a landlocked nation. Every tech is pretty much a straight buff and the game punishes you for trying to rush tech. So every nation will have the 1940 model fighters until 1942 when every nation will have the 1942 model fighters, and that’s just not interesting.
The UI needs way more polish than it currently has. They’ve taken away the majority of the micro-managerial control that the player had over individual unit’s orders and replaced that with a command UI that feels a few months of development away from being ready. The AI has issues too. Frontlines will break up as you advance, either because you hit a pre-existing border or you split the enemy front. The AI will not exploit this, and instead split your army in half to man the two different fronts. Which sounds like it makes sense, but why have you sent 12 divisions to watch one encircled enemy division where we are massively outnumbered on the other front? The AI will also hesitate to launch attacks it will definitely win if you don’t have high enough intelligence to tell exactly what units are there. The map markers used to give AI commanders orders suck at popping out from the background and the info displayed on them is basically useless on anything but a giant straight-line front.
Notifications seem iffy as well. The game will notify me of every single convoy raid but not when units desperately need manpower. When the game clock is paused, air, land and sea units’ animations still play, meaning that pause doesn’t really look like pause. I could go on for a while still but I think you get the idea.
If you like grand strategy, particularly the Hearts of Iron series, HoI4 is a welcome addition to the little family. HoI4 is leaner and slightly friendlier than its older brothers, but still has that Paradox-ness we all enjoy. It’s more of the same with some new mechanics to play with, some interesting design decisions to ponder, a fresh coat of paint and probably the best multiplayer experience to date. But Paradox grand strategy games have something of a pattern; they release to a relatively warm reception but are full of bugs and clunky UI. Later they release some big patches, start putting out decent DLC, and about 12 months after release you have an incredible game. As a consumer, I’m afraid that might be happening again, and if you aren’t totally hyped for Hearts of Iron IV, maybe hold off for a little while.
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