Hearts of Iron III

[quadalpha]

I've always thought of the HoI series as the gold standard in the modern period of the kind of game that has a similar scope to the TW series. There is a new one coming out in a few months, and while I haven't been following its progress, it is starting to look surprisingly promising, judging by its development diaries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearts_of_Iron_III

[Jolt]

Yeah, it appears to be introducing a lot of new concepts which help to make its game more real and practical, as well as more complex.

[Fixiwee]

Too bad there will be no doomsday scenario in it.

[CountArach]

The game looks promising, but I just don't see why HoI needs a third game when Vicky so clearly needs a second.

[naut]

The game looks promising, but I just don't see why HoI needs a third game when Vicky so clearly needs a second.

Exactly.

[Jolt]

The game looks promising, but I just don't see why HoI needs a third game when Vicky so clearly needs a second.

After the laughter that was EU: Rome, PI needs money and return of prestige of actually making good complex games.

[I of the Storm]

Indeed. And the HoI (1+2+addons) brand sold far more copies than Vicky ever did. Plus the WW2 setting reaches a broader audience than the empire-building of the 19th century in Vicky.

As much as I prefer the Vicky setting myself for more strategic openness, I don't see a Vicky 2 coming in the near future...

[Melvish]

After the laughter that was EU: Rome, PI needs money and return of prestige of actually making good complex games.

Try Vae Victis expansion it redeem the game greatly (if you like character and senate management). Still not as grand as EUIII but i did enjoy this expansion, i even rank it better than R:TW.

I'm looking forward to HoI3 as i've skipped HoI2 and remained to HoI1. A Vicky2 would have been more welcomed although.

[Andres]

One of our junior members, Necceh, asked me to post this here on his behalf (he's not allowed to post in the Arena yet).

Hey,

I have just started playing Hearts of Iron 2 (never played the first), had a few games on normal difficulty and keep getting my kicked, was wondering if anyone knows of any good strategy forums for it, maybe a beginners guide or anything of the likes.

I've tried googling but so far have only been able to obtain the paradox interactive forum and that doesn't have a strategy section and have so far only found bits and pieces of general strategy.

Many thanks.

I'm sure he'll appreciate any help you can offer him.

[Jolt]

One of our junior members, Necceh, asked me to post this here on his behalf (he's not allowed to post in the Arena yet).



I'm sure he'll appreciate any help you can offer him.

http://www.paradoxian.org/hoi2wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Honestly, the best is to read the Paradox forums, and to play HoI 2 as Germany on Easy or Very Easy.

Anyways, Necceh, provided that you have vanilla HoI 2 (Without any expansions), there is a 100% chance of winning as the Soviet Union strategy, which consists on the following:

-Move slider to Interventionism

- Join together all the troops you can under "Logistics Wizards" officers (Doesn't matter which rank they are). These reduce the ammount of resources divisions consume.

- Take care of all the initial Dissent by adjusting the production sliders to Consumer Goods. Don't build anything else before you reduce the dissent to 0. Try to make deals that give you supplies, in exchange for your resrouces (That way you free IC from Supplies)

- Afterwards build as many factories as you can (Build them firstly in provinces with the highest Infrastructure, as the factories built there are built faster) (Use as much IC as you can, don't upgrade or reinforce units) until Feb 1939 (By then you should have more than 500 IC.)

- Afterwards start building loads and loads Infantry and Artillery, as well as planes (Either Tactical Bombers and/or CAS) start to reinforce and upgrade your current armies, by then you can break up your huge aglomerates of divisions under a Logistics Wizard, to many 12 divisions armies (What I did) and position all your Western armies (Leave the Far Eastern ones in the Far East) along the Finland borders. Afterwards keep forming 12 div armies along the Finland border as time passes. In due time you'll get Molotov Agreement, and settle for the historical one. In the Winter War, attack with your full army. Your army should be so overwhelming that in Easy difficulty, the war should last a month. Afterwards just decide whether you want to fully annex Finland (You'll need to build garrisons to keep their partizan levels down), or settle for the historical agreement. Then demand the territory of the Baltic States. If they refuse, use your troops to attack them and annex them. Accept Bessarabia event and position your army in the German borders, and keep building Infantry and Artillery (You might want to build some Motorized/Mechanized/Armored Divisions and give them to a "Panzer General" so they can perform better and help your army to attack some provinces which are being heavily defended by the Germans.

- Once you think your army is ready and Germany is busy fighting elsewhere, declare war to Germany and send your entire army to attack them.


Here is what happened to me with this strategy. I attacked Germany (July 1941) when they were attacking Yugoslavia (I had already had a gigantic army), because they were busy invading an enemy country and had relatively few troops on my borders. My army completely crushed the border troops of Germany, and Germany had to pull loads of troops from Yugoslavia and France to stem my avalanche. The first defeat came in mid-Poland. In August, Poland was already fully occupied, in September, Romania and Bulgaria surrendered and Berlin was overrun. They did put up a hell of a fight in the Gottingen province (They had dozens and dozens of provinces there), by November Northern Italy had been occupied and in France (France didn't surrender in that game, but kept fighting, thus the Germans had occupied the entire France) the last German forces tried to slow down my advance. By the beginning of December, with the capture of Oslo, I annexed Germany. Late December saw Italy annexed as well (Brittain occupied Libya, Tunisia and the Algerian coast, while the Italian mainland was mine.) Thus the Second World War ended in 6 months for the Soviet Union behemoth. Of course I continued playing, and eventually built another gigantic army to crush Japan, and later China (Which I did, though much more slowly than I crushed Germany). I stopped playing when I was fighting the allies already.