Editing Hearts of Iron (section)

==Hearts of Iron 2==

This is where the fun begins. While the original was mostly an experiment, HoI2 came out as a fully-fledged game on its own, with greatly expanded concepts and details from the first game. For starters, it means there is any point at all in playing as anyone who isn't a major power.

First, the improvements and changes. Technology and research got completely reworked. Now each country has both research slot (based on IC: 1 plus 1 for each 20 IC) and native tech-teams, that come with specialities in various fields, along with level of competence, affecting general pace of research - and all of it hard-coded, based on "importance" in war, rather than reality(a little wiggle room exists: they can gain or lose skills in random events). Once researched, units have to be upgraded, which takes time and IC - and the more obsolete the unit, the cheaper, the lower levels of catching up are. A new production model makes its debut, with gearing bonus - the longer the same thing is produced in a row, the cheaper and faster it is to crank up another unit of it, making it a strategic choice between trying to shit out as many units at once, or a continuous row of progressively cheaper stuff. Logistics start to matter, since local infrastructure and crude counter of "Transport Capacity" affect how much supplies reach your troops and how much supplies can be shipped at all, being a hard-counter on simply building more divisions and throwing them all at the enemy. Air force is worked out to matter and becomes an important part of gameplay. Politics start to play an important role in the game, with ministers, political sliders and general type of government being an important part of running the show and possible choices. This is also the moment when absolute gorillion of real-life politicians and commanders get implemented into the game, something that HoI will remain famous for next decade or so. Money is introduced, as a by-product of running your civilian industry. Infrastructure of all kinds and sorts gets far more nuanced than in the original, too, meaning it's more than just pushing "Build X" button mindlessly.

Combat-wise, the whole thing got overhauled into a much better engine. You no longer pile doom stacks, because first you must make sure you can afford to field so many troops, then co-ordinate them with proper commanders and HQ in the field, which means you have to build your forces accordingly. Airstrikes now matter a lot and while not essential, they can allow punching far beyond your weight on the ground - not to mention having the ability to disable enemy industry by fire-bombing it into pieces. Since your units can't be piled up without any limits, adding support brigades to them now matters more than ever, even if support itself is undercooked mechanics. Except for artillery. You can't go wrong with adding more artillery to your divisions. Special units - marines, paratroopers and mountaineers - start playing a significant role in the game, too. Conquering land is half the success - you then need to police it with garrisons. Sinking convoys now can absolutely butt-fuck your enemies, since their troops will end up starved due to lack of supplies, along with no ammo to effectively fight back, while their industry will be unable to operate thanks to shortages. Oh yeah, and naval combat is a thing now, rather than a best ignored gimmick.

Overall, this is where the series truly picked its own identity and started to spawn mods within quickly growing community.

Hearts of Iron 2 had several expansion packs as well:
* '''Doomsday''' expanded the game into 1960s 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.
*'''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". AI wasn't only "polished" to the point of inhuman ferocity, but also boosted/modified with so many AI specific scripts (when player Germany invests in massive ship tonnage, the Allied AI automatically changes its behavior into a continent wide blockade and fortifies the British Islands, forcing the player to adapt) that it proved to be a serious adversary, particularly late game when all autocracies drifted towards the Axis, and the rest to Allies and Comintern in a planet-wide showdown. 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. Excess manpower also generated taxes, which would reduce the need to allocate IC to the consumer economy if you kept your people alive and out of war.
*'''Darkest Hour''': The Big Kahuna. 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 as "Focus Tree"). Generally speaking, from a modern perspective this is your go-to HoI experience, being the most complete, balanced and in the same time playable without prior experience with the series game that still offers a challenge, rather than treating you like a brain-dead infant (which is what HoI 4 does routinely).