Hearts of Iron

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The grandest of Grand Vidya Gaem of Grand Strategy in Grand World War 2, made by the equally grand Paradox Interactive. Its contribution to /tg/ can be counted as: Expanding the Nazi Equipment page, inspiring Games Workshop and every little Tabletop gaming company about Dieselpunk, Mecha and Cold War ideas, and especially long nights of greasy, soda-drenched Axis and Allies sessions.

Series in a coconut shell(Couldn't fit otherwise)

Once upon a time, Paradox released Europa Universalis 1 and 2. Then they realized that the same grand strategy board can be used for a steamy session of World War 2 armchair generaldom, and Hearts of Iron 1 was born. As usual of Paradox Interactive, the sequel which was made months after the first was received with great approval.

HoI 1 and 2: The map is more or less EU's own, same game engine, not that graphics matter at that point. Played from 1936 to 1949, the faction with the highest victory points (meaning cities held with corresponding values by the faction members) wins when the timer hits new year of '50. Resources, energy, metal, oil, "rare resources"(Tungsten, rubber, molybdenum, gold) are extracted daily and stockpiled, tradeable and exchangable. Mirroring real life, the Axis members need to find some rares and oil *fast*. The games were railroaded more or less, though some policy changes let the players change a few state properties if they kept grinding, up to the point of deposing Hitler or Stalin. Still, the hard-coded scripts kept happening, which became hilarious like a defeated democratic Japan before 1942 STILL re-enacting Pearl Harbor by default and declaring on the USA even when said US conquered her before 1942. Even though modding it was a bitch, the both games have dedicated mods and players even today. The first three games had the following concepts:

Each country has an Industrial Capacity, called IC, which consumes metal, energy and rare minerals to operate. By default, resources are unevenly distributed through the world, making the World War an unavoidable issue. Each country has an unchangable base value plus factories built in its territories. This IC defines virtually everything your country can do, from building up your territories to every military unit, from research capacity to generating consumer goods to calm down your population and earn money for diplomatic actions.

Military units come in a few dozen airplanes called wings, 10000 soldier divisions, tank divisions, and single ships. To add tactical flexibility, divisions and wings can be attached with special brigades much like Wargear or buffs in tabletop gaming, such as artillery/trucks/heavy tank brigades/engineers and military police for land units. Heavy armor(bunch of Tiger tanks) made a division move slower but take more hits and dish out some more damage. Artillery made the division move even slower but hit hard, rocket artillery is more expensive but hits like a truck when fighting(and eats supplies like popcorn), and engineers made the divisions pass rivers and amphibious landings like a breeze. Airplanes can be fitted with smaller escort planes to avoid Anal Circumference when that strategic bomber misses the separately flying fighter wing by one hour and runs smack dab into the maliciously AI-guided Rape coming out of the nearby enemy airbase the moment poor Strato-chan's pantsu is exposed.

Diplomacy is simple, once you declare war, white peace or conquest was pretty much a non-issue, particularly since the offering party needed to choose every single taken town by name.

Hearts of Iron 2 had several expansion packs as well: Doomsday expanded the game into 1960's of the Cold War, miniaturized nukes fit into rockets and more "secret weapon" techs like early helicopters, satellites for easy Victory Points and weather forecasts and a new campaign starting possibility: World War 3. Armageddon brought naval modules similar to brigades, made for ships from calculating computers to torpedo launchers and AA batteries.

AoD, Arsenal of Democracy: HoI 2 sans mods still lacked realism, so a good part of Paradox Interactive and massive fan feedback made this little gem. Basically it's a HoI 2(with all expansions) remake with exact same graphics but massive overhaul sold as a separate game with every small problem and disliked feature in HoI2 solved. It has an even more detailed mod as well, called C.O.R.E which is still unanimously seen as "The most detailed WW2 game mod today".

The difference is now that population, army and research teams have money budgets like a modern state and the IC had an auto-slider to allocate money production per day and spare us the headache as well as avoiding generating useless stacks of cash when an angry population was placated with consumer goods; now the player can pay automatically into "civic spending", avoiding losing IC to unrest if he has stockpiled cash from world trades.

Darkest Hour: This one showed tendencies of brilliancy, yet also was overengineered to the point that it neared Victoria in spreadsheet value. ANOTHER remake of Hearts of Iron 2, its "National choice" tab had immense detail from inflation to public works and the possibility to change history, since now events were triggered by players such as never choosing to give Poland the Danzig Ultimatum.(Which would carry over to HoI 4)

HoI 3: The oddball prototype of the 3D engine, it fizzled out even though a few die-hard fans like it. Radio range and "Neutrality" features were adapted into "Reinforcement speed" and "World Tension" in the last game.

HoI 4: For the Old Guard of Spreadsheet-Masochism, the game came as a shock. No longer bound by real life resource crises with the possibility of changing the worst excesses of WW2, the game was noticeably more Noblebright and extremely streamlined. Now civilian industry is completely upkeep-free and virtually generates economic activity out of thin air, but all military productions consume some resources to build. Countries automatically use up some of their civilian industry value to placate its economy which can be reduced by policies. Political Power now defines all decisions from diplomacy to triggering events, which is influenced by the country's stability.

Railroaded Events are almost non-existent save for simple stuff like Atatürk dying around November 1938. The rest is defined by "National Focus", which is a streamlined version of "National Choice" of Darkest Hour. Every 70 days, the played country can complete an action of sorts which triggers an event. For generic countries, this can be a free civilian/military factory or quick infrastructure build, free tech boosts for specific areas, political leanings for specific sides or bonuses. For special nations, these "Focii" can start series of events and start plotlines.

This is where HoI 4 shines; one can immediately decide to depose Hitler in a coup or go as usual OTL. After Hitler is whacked, the next focii open up to a whole new set of possibilities like establishing elections or bringing the Kaiser. If so, the WW1 can be re-enacted (Ach scheisse, jetzt geht's wieder los), or establish a new, benevolent, centrist faction called "Central European Alliance" and resist the incoming Soviets.

From there, sky's the limit. And if you've been reading closely, the focii is the best moddable part of the game and opens the possibility of countless mods, which we will now list.

Notable Mods

At least it is not a Habsburg Family Tree

As with any other Paradox game, modding is a big part of it, to the point that some say that people don't buy HoI4 to play HoI4, they buy HoI4 to play Kaiserreich.

• 1964 Mod - Arsenal of Democracy mod made after a playthrough of the said game post 1964, every major power played by very skilled human players over several weeks. Nazis died out when its human player changed the government to a conservative one simulating erasing the SS and turning it to a technocracy. USSR lost Russia and became USSA, as Lavrenti Beria used the German peace treaty to conquer China and Asia, turning it to a Pan-Asian Communist Empire. Japan shat its pants and buddied up Uncle Sam who itself went through a civil war after New York got nuked by Germans, and every capital city is nuked so hard in the conflagration that 1964 is as expansion prone as 1936 due to the devastation and losses, as well as Germany's many released countries to avoid rebellion and manpower waste. Oi Blyad, eto snova my!
• Kaiserreich - When people think about Hearts of Iron mods, it is most likely that they think about Kaiserreich. Initially starting out as All The Russias, a mod about the Russian Civil War with dozen of sides, it soon evolved into a "What if Germany won WW1?" scenario where USA did not join the Great War, which along with other reasons will lead to the 2nd American Civil War, and where the Bolshevik revolution failed in Russia, but an ideologically similar but different Syndicalist revolutions succeeded in France and Great Britain, with the defeated governments fleeing to North Africa and Canada respectively.
  • Fuhrerreich - There is an event in Kaiserreich which describes a book about "What if Germany lost the Weltkrieg?", which mirrors the OTL but with in-universe's monarchistic bent, and this mod is basically that, meta of a meta.
  • Kalterkrieg - Post 2nd Weltkrieg mod where most of major Syndicalist powers were defeated and the world settled into a Cold War between the Reichspakt and the Entente, with the 2nd American Civil War STILL ongoing.
• Millennium Dawn - A mod set in modern day with 2000 and 2016 start dates. The best thing ever for some, while for others it is an example of the folly of trying to fit Modern Day setup into an engine designed for WW2. Merged with a mechanically very different modern day mod called Modern Day 4 in summer 2019, which received harsh criticism, and several "Classic" mods by different people were created to fill the void.
• Old World Blues - A total overhaul mod set in the Fallout universe relatively shortly before the events of New Vegas.
• Equestria at War - An oddball of the bunch, a My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic HoI4 mod about the post-Season 7, pre-Season 9 Ponies about to experience the horrors of industrialized warfare fighting against the Changeling blitzkrieg on one side of the ocean, while the mass of Gryphon remnant states are trying to restore their Empire in their image on the other side. On one hand: It is actually one of the better mods for HoI4, with the amount of well-designed content off the charts. On the other: Ponies.
• The New Order: Last Days of Europe - Coming 2020, the mod is a remake of HoI4 in a terrifying Grimdark fashion with countless new features. Nazis won, the US nuclear bomb is developed too late, but it's not Man in the High Castle...Only much worse. Imagine Deathworld with a dose of Reality Ensues. US is slowly recovering after the Japanese/German fleet nuked Pearl Harbor, leasing Los Angeles to the Nips a la Hong Kong for peace. Soviet Union is obliterated, degrading into dozens of post-apocalyptic warlord states, from Polish escapees settling in Asia to Mongol warbands, from Neo-Nazi Russians to Lysenko's Big MT expy technocratic city state. Germany? It's fucked too, the Russian war and the need to decentralize balkanizing it to Reichskommissariats outside Germany, such as RK Ostland(Poland) or RK Moskowien(Moscow and surrounding area). Hitler is a senile moron in coma after an assassin's round, Himmler became completely pants-on-head insane and actively plans a worldwide nuclear holocaust. Reinhard Heydrich, the pioneer of actual Holocaust survived this timeline and runs part of Germany. WITH A NUCLEAR ARSENAL ENOUGH TO WIPE OUT MANKIND. Goering doesn't know shit about economics and goes full Ponzi with a healthy bit of plunder, and he is fatter than before. Only Speer feels regret about his past and dreams of reforming the Reich, ending slavery of Untermenschen, but everybody hates him and will kill him the moment Hitler croaks. Spain, Italy and Turkey split from Axis to form Mediterranean Triumvirate because the most retarded idea in the Reich, Atlantropa completely fucked the Mediterrenean Sea and sank the sea levels, destroying the sea trade and economy of southern Europe. Africa is under the Nazi fist and has slave factories, and this is all you need to hear. Fun times.