The good bits
So, what’s the game about?
Hearts of Iron (HoI) is fundamentally about the pursuit of three major philosophies at this time in history (1936–1946), the struggle between Democracy, Fascism and Communism ideals. The United Kingdom heads up democracy, the Germans are the leaders of the Axis, and the Soviet Union is the big cheese of Communism.
Other countries can either go under the banner of one of these ideals, or remain in a fourth grouping called ‘neutral’.
This is the key to how the game works, and offers an extremely open-ended style of game play. Countries that don’t head the three philosophies can shift to any allegiance they want (although some often lean into a predefined group by default anyway). France for example could, in theory, join Germany. Poland could join the USSR and attack Germany. The Spanish civil war could end either way, with Fascists or Communists in charge respectively.
The game itself is played in real time, over a top-down clickable map. You can alter the speed the game is played, or pause if you have a lot to organise.
You command everything about your empire, its resources, what you research, what you build in each province you own, what troops you make, where you deploy them, and who your friends and enemies are.
Resources
Resources are split into four; coal, steel, rubber and oil. These all run the industrial capacity (IC) of your empire, but what do you use IC for? This boils down to four disciplines; Goods, Supplies, Research and production.
Goods are what keep your general public happy, without meeting the goods demand your people become unhappy and degrade to dissent.
Supplies are what keep your troops fighting. If they go below the demand level then troops fight at a reduced rate, and could disband and disintegrate. Research and production is self explanatory.
Keeping these disciplines balanced using a slide bar can be difficult, and must be monitored regularly. You can neglect production and research if you don’t need them at the time, but the other two are essential for the smooth running of your empire.
Finally we have diplomacy, which is dealt with using diplomatic points (certain requests require certain amounts of points to perform) and man power which determines how many people from your empire can be drafted in to restore and reinforce units that have taken casualties.
Essentially that is a brief overview on how the game works. There are finer points, but to play the game that’s all you need to understand. Even if you’re a strategy enthusiast this will take time getting used too, for everyone else this will be overly complicated.
The good bits
The first thing you notice about HoI when loading up is the amount of options presented to you on the first screen. Which country do you play as? There is over 50 to choose from!
Being able to play as any country in the world in HoI certainly is an interesting feature (if a limited one, see next page). Games which restrict you to playing as the major forces in conflict games of this nature are annoying, it is like only being able to run the Premiership teams in a football Championship manager game but not the clubs in lower divisions.
Although difficult to get anywhere with the lesser countries, at least this offers different viewpoints on the world conflict from the traditional powers.
This aspect alone leads to the most important feature of HoI, how open ended the game is. HoI is not about following history down to every last detail, if that were the case then playing Germany would be pointless. In this game you pretty much do whatever you like.
If you want to play as America and not help Europe that’s fine, if you want to invade France and England as Germany before they even know what hit them that’s fine, if you want to betray the German alliance as Italy and go it alone that’s fine. There are so many different options you can take, it certainly is refreshing.
There are a few limitations which are irritating, for instance the leaders of the major disciplines cannot change which philosophy they follow (USSR, Germany and the UK can’t ever be allies), and democratic nations must wait a while before they are allowed to declare war with the nations, but generally the game offers huge scope to do things as you see fit.
Under my German campaign for example I declared war with France in 1937, swept across central Europe, conquered Britain, and have engaged the Soviet Union in conflict by 1939. I plan to move across the whole of Russia before finally attacking Japan (who aren’t my allies) and taking their resources! As my American campaign I have conquered Mexico and half of South America, ignoring the onslaught going on in Europe. Interesting alternatives to history?
Research, the best weapon you have?
The amount of strategy options given to the armchair general is, at times, outstanding. With 14 different research topics, each with 30 steps, it again leads to totally open-ended game play. Will you concentrate on getting the most sophisticated Navy on the planet? Or concentrate all your resources on developing the H Bomb first? It’s your choice.
Research therefore means that the amount of different units available to you is also vast, with over 100 units available.
Editing alliances
The game also comes with an editor which is worth mentioning before moving to the next page. While it would take years using this rather cumbersome editor to create a new world from scratch, you can tweak the games current scenarios to suit your needs. For instance, if you want to make Germany a democratic nation with Britain and then make France the leader of the Axis then that is possible within the editor.
These small, manageable changes, don’t require too much of your time to use, and are perfect for creating unique scenarios to face your buddies online, or on your own if you’re the lonely type.
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