Editing Hearts of Iron (section)

==Hearts of Iron 3==
Logistics Autism: The Game. You'll either love it from the first second, or you will hate it for the rest of your life. And even if you hate it, HoI3 is still considered to be the last competent, fully finished game released by Paradox under their old company policies of "let's make a decent base game and then keep improving it with expansions based on community feedback", rather than post-[[Crusader_Kings| CK2]] policy of "shit out as many overpriced DLCs as we can before anyone notices we are charging for cosmetics and a new button to click". Comes with an oddball prototype of the 3D engine, but thankfully you can still stick to military tokens instead of watching poorly rendered soldiers.

This game decided to double-down on everything introduced in HoI2. Smaller, more numerous provinces? They went from regions and even state-sized things to ''county''-sized, so you're fighting town by town, rather than region by region. Logistics? Forget the TC counter, now you have to account distance, infrastructure level of each province on the way, the fact the transport trains and trucks don't run on air, so they will eat up supplies along the way. Oil? What are you, an idiot? Refine that shit into fuel first. Divisions having support brigades? Now you are assembling them from up to 5 brigades whole, and what you put inside of it will greatly alter their on-field performance. And it's not that you can just get bunch of tanks together, because without proper support, they will be torn apart by bunch of rusticks with oversized artillery. Politics? Have you considered how cohesive your government is and how united your general populance behind your leaders is? Upgrades and technology? Now you don't even research "new division tech", you need to research every piece of their equipment separately, along with support stuff, then upgrade each of those elements separately, too, so simply rushing the tech isn't going to do you any favours if you are in the middle of already fighting a war. HQ unit and command? You now have entire theatres to arrange, going from corps level all the way to theatre HQ, adding units - and better hope they are within radio range of nearby HQ, or the pile of bonuses from various commanders won't even apply to you. Because you remembered to research and equip radios, right? Tech-teams are gone, replaced with ubiquitous "Leadership" counter you have, which you spend on research (along with diplomacy, espionage and officers training), which grants you theoretical knowledge as by-product, making future research easier, while decaying slowly back to zero. Same with gearing bonus, which is replaced by practical knowledge, affecting all future production. Your divisions not only require raw manpower for rank and file, but you also need trained officers to command them, so make sure you dedicated enough of brains to leading people in the field, or you will see why the Great Purge was so bad for Soviets first-hand. Country got defeated? They are now government in exile, because their alliance is still around and kicking, making occupation far harder than before. Alliances and allies? Send them some of your IC as lend-lease, along with a loicense for new, shiny tanks and planes.

Generally speaking, the game became one fuck-huge spreadsheet to manage, with variety of factors to consider and expansions adding further details to it. AI became far more competent, to the point where if you arrange your divisions properly and set up the command chain for your units with right people in right places, you could set things to auto-pilot and your army would win the war by itself (why would you want for AI to fight the war for you in a strategic warfare game is another question). You could also redistribute things like industry or research to AI, if it's too much for you to handle and just focus on commanding troops - and the AI will easily manage. This of course means the AI you are facing is significantly more challenging, especially when you aren't fighting about some fourth-rate pushover with barely any troops to field. The logistics and anything related with them meant you had both tactical and strategic choices in the game of great importance. Can't or don't want to invade the UK? Bomb the fuckers to the ground and sink every convoy even gets close to the Island, until they will simply collapse from war-wearness and lack of industry to keep their war machine going. Japanese trying to invade China? Blow the fuck up Chinese ports and watch as IJA gets butt-fucked by lack of supplies flowing to the continent. Planning to take over Siberia? Well, it would be a really bad thing for Soviets if their Trans-Siberial Railroad got obliterated in few important choke-points.

The fanbase became divided. The game was fuck-huge and this wasn't exactly to everyone's liking that you have gorillion of provinces to conquer, while the logistics system wasn't everyone's favourite either. Especially since in the same time HoI2 was receiving it's final expansions, so there was a direct comparison with more toned-down system for doing the same shit. Considering where you are, chances are you are autistic just enough to get the appeal of HoI3 without seeing it as a bad thing, but feel warmed that the game was divisive on how autistic one must be to play it.

Just like HoI2, it received bunch of expansions:
* '''Semper Fi''':  Generally speaking, a quality of life expansion, focusing on making the game more playable and easier to manage, rather than some big sweeping changes in the gameplay. Most notably for rewiting AI scripts to make sure it knows how to play the game in all extent
* '''For the Motherland''': War goals and strategic resources (separate from resources used by your industry and granting general bonuses) get introduced. Also included: partisan and governments in exile spamming commandos in their former territories.
* '''Their Finest Hour''': Completely reworked division assembly aspect of the game, pretty much forcing players to mix various units, rather than just building mono-stack divisions, to get combat bonuses. Leaders with correct traits are far more important, too.