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Invading Poland Is, In Fact, Very Complex
No, I didn't forget about Poland.
Hearts of Iron 3 may well be the most infuriating game you’ll ever love.
- It’s incredibly buggy (the 0-day patch included a bug that, um, prevented any major power from actually being able to run a military)
- It’s wildly ahistorical (without a walkthrough from Brandon “GreenMarine” Reinhart on how to use some of the new diplomatic/intelligence systems, the entire world will gang up on whatever side you’re not on in short order)
- It’s about as good an example of “holy god, no one will be able to play this game” scope explosion as you can imagine, with the entire global World War 2 modeled on the brigade/regiment scale, and research calling back to Hearts of Iron 1′s researching tank camshafts
- You’ll worry a lot more about TOE, supply and logistics issues than is reasonably sane for a civilian
Oh, and before I forget:
- The AI is really good (in my current game as Germany, the UK blasted through and invaded East Prussia shortly after the invasion of Poland)
- The organization feature teaches you why armies have all those ranks and things (your armies won’t function effectively unless you organize them into corps, armies, and army corps)
- Most crazy levels of detail can be safely offloaded to the AI and it won’t actually suck as badly as you’d think (a working, if not the most effective strategy for invading Poland is putting everything on AI control, right clicking on Warsaw, and saying “Go”)
- It looks creepily like the kind of wargame I owned in the 1980s with tens of thousands of counters. Note: I didn’t say “played”. No one “played” those monsters and remained sane.
- Despite all of the above, it’s actually fairly playable. Go figure.
Should you buy it? If you haven’t already, probably best to wait for the inevitable blizzard of patches and expansions (Europa Universalis 3, for example, didn’t become a really good game until the 2nd expansion). However, given how much of the game logic is exposed to Lua scripting, the manic Hearts of Iron user community may well just make a damn expansion themselves. With sharks and lasers. Well, maybe with PzkpfwIVds.
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about 1 year ago
I fear it. Not due to bugs or killer AI, oh no. I fear it because a game threatens to suck my very life essence into a black hole from which it may never emerge.
about 1 year ago
Yes, but is it better than Doomsday?
about 1 year ago
I feel the need to add:
Because Doomsday put me off of any more Paradox games.
And for the record, I played The Longest Day all the way through. Once. Still waiting for some one to make a PC version of Empires in Arms.
about 1 year ago
Paradox makes wonderfully in depth games, but they are predictably buggy at launch. I love the community, they chip right in and help the devs with bugs, and I’ve never asked a question that went unanswered for very long on their forums.
Should you buy it? I did, because I know by the time I read community guides and play with all the different aspects of the game enough to feel comfortable that I know what I am doing it most likely will be patched up.
Espionage is far more in depth than HoI 2. You really have to work both that and diplomacy. The problem is while the AI is very good it doesn’t tend to work those things at all thus you get ahistorical starts to the war. I’m sure this will be worked out in time.
It’s the type of game that will suck you in for hours upon hours. I recommend it, but if you’d rather not play until the major bugs are sorted out, I would wait a few months. Personally, as I already stated, it doesn’t hurt to buy now and figure out the complexities of the game while waiting for patches.
about 1 year ago
Hah, I won a game of Drang Nach Osten. Okay so winter never came and we won in 41 but still.
I guess I’m going to have to get this and suffer through the buggyness until a gem emerges.
about 1 year ago
The diplomacy bit is a valid complaint, but I disagree with the “ahistorical” part of the complaint. Actually, one of my gripes with HOI2 was that Paradox tried too hard to make it historical.
Especially given that the political situation up to 1940 was the result of a series of glaring blunders by Allied leaders, there’s no reason to believe that history had to, or even was particularly likely, to develop in the way it did. But Paradox uses all kinds of ad hoc measures to ensure that the results come out “right,” the most extreme of which was the enormous global combat penalty the Soviets get until the Great Patriotic War events. To me, forcing outcomes with events defeats the purpose of a “simulator,” so I don’t understand all of this.
about 1 year ago
Ah another HoI3 fan. Paradox games are always a bit raw at launch. They always get better and the developers are pretty open so I give them a pass. I’ve been enjoying the game so far though, even with the problems.
The depth of it slows it down considerably. By the time they release the next patch, I still won’t be very far in the game.
about 1 year ago
Iconic
“And for the record, I played The Longest Day all the way through. Once. Still waiting for some one to make a PC version of Empires in Arms.”
dude – your wishes have been answered:
http://www.matrixgames.com/products/285/details/Empires.in.Arms
hah! i contribute!
about 1 year ago
also, EU (I, II and III) are..well..there’s at least a few months worth of my life in /played on those bad boys….
about 1 year ago
@ Viz
Let me give you an example of ahistorical.
Using the Espionage part of the game to up the perceived threat of another country can result in odd results if you push it too far. As Green Marine points out in guide, you can pick on a small country like Denmark and launch a propaganda war to increase their threat to the point people hate them. Why do this?
Because it becomes easier to recruit people to your cause if they an extreme amount of threat from a particular nation. This can produce ahistorical results like National China joining the Axis or people declaring war on Denmark. Yes, Denmark.
I agree with you, I like a little historical wiggle room to correct blunders as well, but the problem is you can do quite a bit with diplomacy and espionage AND the AI doesn’t seem to be taking any counter measures. So you can end up with thing like Denmark being the great Evil Empire.
about 1 year ago
Bought it day one, like the mewling Paradox fanboi I am. Skirting the Maginot Line without exposing the soft, industry-rich German underbelly to French retaliation is not the easiest thing to do. I’m not overly pleased that I have to adhere to the German/Soviet agreement of the division of Poland whether or not I like it – HoI2 gave an option if I recall correctly.
Why is it the Paradox games I love and adore all seem to get uglier and uglier as time goes on? Europa Universalis 2 was a beautifully rendered joy. EU3 and HOI3 are hideous, like someone turned down the graphics to “lowest” on a really big Total War battle map. Why can’t we have nice things?
about 1 year ago
“So you can end up with thing like Denmark being the great Evil Empire.”
Those Danes are a sneaky bunch, and not to be trusted.
about 1 year ago
I had figured that there weren’t many updates to this site lately.
Better that it’s because Scott’s got a new crazyass wargame, I guess.
about 1 year ago
This write-up reminds me of a board game I have sitting at home. I never played it (as you say) but lovingly pulled out all of the counters (including the Paris taxi cabs, bicycle couriers, and balloon spotters). The game was called Home before the Leaves Fall, and while it is WWI, it follows this wonderful tradition of taking detail so far as to be nigh-unplayable. Best game I never played!
about 1 year ago
I’ve always been lukewarm on the HoI games, but I love this one because – in spite of the problems – it just feels like WW2. Yes, you can game the diplomacy but that’s hardly unique to this version of the game or any other WW2 game with diplomacy in it (see Making History for an extreme example). And the lags start to annoy after a while.
But so much of the game is so much better that I strongly recommend it. The bugs are nothing that really gets in the way of enjoying how robust the military and research system is. It’s an ugly beast of a game that I can’t help playing.
about 1 year ago
@Pharniel–
Thanks for the link. Any idea if the AI is any good? I doubt any of my current friends would be interested in investing hundreds of hours to play a game via email.
about 1 year ago
“Those Danes are a sneaky bunch, and not to be trusted.”
Quoth the immortal Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced “Bouquet”) of Keeping Up Appearances”: “Danes?! Aren’t they the ones who used to attack us in the dark ages, raping and pillaging?… I insist you stay here and guard me from these Danes, and to keep our spirits up we shall sing, Richard. I’ll lead off and you catch me up: Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves…”
Played the first HOI after picking it up in the bargain bin, late 2007, and I didn’t think much of it (and I remember having problems just launching it because of a missing file or something). Given the love for this franchise around here, maybe I should try it again.
about 1 year ago
I eagerly await the “last days of Hitler” YouTube discussing the points above.
about 1 year ago
I began as a Paradox borderline ‘fanboi’ thanks to HOI 1.
But over the years I have watched Paradox go downhill.
What made Paradox special IMHO was that the Devs (Johan) had a passion for the games he made because those were the games he played.
That all changed when WoW came out. Methinks his passion became WoW and the games appeared (at least to me) to suffer.
Paradox went from being a friendly Developer that seemed to actually care to a Business Unit that now churns out more of the same…. EUIII, HoI III…roll on Viccy II (or is that III?)
As for ‘historical’ vs ‘ahistorical’ argument: Part of the joy for me in HoI 1 (and II to some degree) is to try the ‘what ifs’ of WWII.
I have read most of Liddell-Hart’s work on WWII and like to try the alternative route(s).
What if Germany concentrated purely on a submarine navy? What if mechanization had been earlier? What if Barbarossa had been an invasion of Turkey en-route to the Middle East?
What if France had invaded Germany early in September 1939 while the bulk of German Forces were tied up in Poland?
But to make that work… the game has to respond in a ‘realistic’ way – which HoI does not always do… but I guess AI is still more “A” than “I”. That problem is not unique to Paradox.
Then again, I purchased Diplomacy, and despite a wealth of resources available on the net…(which they could have used and referred to without copyright complications) Paradox completely dropped the ball there.
The AI was a joke. The game was fundamentally flawed at release and despite a previous ‘good’ record Paradox only patched to make the game function… then dropped it.
My advice is wait for 6 months. Buy then the game will be about half price AND the community will have modded and ‘fixed’ what can be fixed.
Sadly, that is now the sensible way to approach games by this developer.
Or wait 2 years for HoI 4 (Since any innovation {new titles} from Paradox seems to be out of the question now)
about 1 year ago
Hey, I played those wargames in the 80′s with thousands of counters and I’m perfectly sane! Objective Moscow, War and Peace, Guns of August.. I played them all! Hee hee ho ho ha ha! Sane, I tell you!
Granted, if I see any small square piece of cardboard or paper on a floor anywhere, I stop dead in my tracks thinking it’s a lost counter.. but still!
about 1 year ago
Rich, you are anything but sane…
The real test though is: did you play World in Flame? With the expansions..? If so… my respect for you will increase ten-fold…
about 1 year ago
Thomas, I’m happy to report that my old room-mate and I had all the expansions and the maps mounted on plexiglass taking up a whole wall of the apartment.
about 1 year ago
I haven’t bought it yet, but will. My reticence is one part patience and one part AGEod’s American Civil War which somehow escaped my attention for half a decade or so. The only thing I like better than a WW2 Grand Strategy game is an American Civil War grand strategy game. AACW has the concept of Army hierarchy of Army-Corps-Division as well. Glad to hear that HOI3 has that as well.
about 1 year ago
Despite the bugs and problems, I’m absolutely loving this game. Best purchase of 2009 so far.
about 1 year ago
Ah, Brandon Reinhart.
I wonder where I heard that name
about 1 year ago
@Jeff:
See, I consider that a problem with the diplomacy system proper. The problem with the Denmark thing is not so much that it is ahistorical as that it doesn’t make sense by any stretch. There’s simply no conceivable smear campaign that could cause people to perceive Denmark as the greatest threat. As for the China thing… well, Saburo Ienaga claimed that Chiang hated the communists much more than the Japanese, and that if the Japanese had given him an opportunity to save face, they could’ve made a truce. So it’s at least conceivable…
about 1 year ago
I’m still waiting on Vicky II. Ricky is my favorite paradox game by far. EU3:IN being a close second.
Never was big on HOI, I think I’ll wait for a few expansions to pick this one up.