Hearts of Iron III

Combine Europa Universalis with a Gary Grigsby (War in the East/Pacific World @ War etc) game and you get Hearts of Iron 3, the vanilla game is absolutely abysmal relative to persay Hearts of Iron 2/ Darkest Hour, with the game engine and the fact that you can finally properly ally japan and germany being the biggest improvements from the previous installments, at the cost of a ridiculous amount of tech depth loss and decision versatility. NOW come the Men of the Hour, Panzeroo and the Black Ice mod team. They probably put 50x the amount of man hours paradox put into the WHOLE DAMN GAME turning it into a masterpiece that blows the likes of mods like Darkest Hour: World in Flames II out the damn water (except the music.. god i love the army paratrooper song in that) the tech trees are ridiculously in depth and immersive allowing you to play a country a dozen different ways in addition to focuses that you can use to augment this, they added in about 100X more decisions and political versatility than vanilla rivaling that of World in Flames II, the map had hundreds (thousands) of provinces added, completely redrawn and repainted lovingly from scratch to give a real geographic feel for the place as well as added hundreds and hundreds of new provinces to allow for a more realistic and complex invasion/defense, difficulty modifiers of every aspect have been put in place to challenge the Gröfaz (Größest Feldherr Alle Zeiten) [Greatest Field Mashall of All Time] {Nickname Hitler's top Generals mockingly gave Mr. Adolf} and straight out of boot greenhorn alike, the division system has been completely revamped and feels like you truly control the makeup of your army down to the tank rivet, and the list goes on and on... hell now is even the best time to buy since Black Ice came out with 8.0 late August 2015 and the amount of new content added even from 7.53 is staggering and completely taking me aback with the current lack of a changelog! (their working on it) A MUST HAVE!^^!

As a World War Two operations manager this is unmatched. You must be conscious of your weak points and exploiting encirclements, as well as maintain supplies and Command and Control from Brigade to Army Group. Pulling off your planned strategy feels earned: spamming units will be hindered by stacking penalties, terrain, weather, leadership, moral and a host of other penalties. In the long term your research decisions can have long-term repercussions, and naval manufacturing takes years to bare fruit. Where you sit yourself diplomatically amongst nations can also shape the outcome of the war. This is a Paradox title and as such learning the intricate web of (completely unexplained) mechanics is a game in itself. The Wiki and Paradox forums are basically indispensable, and I’ve been discovering new aspects of the game constantly. You can let the A.I take over much of this decision-making, but masochistic micro-managers will thrive on it. The complexity does reach hilarious points when some mechanics are so byzantine that they’ve had to be tested repeatedly by forum members (the supply system in particular) or literally no one understands (some aerial and naval techs). Others have immense depth but can be almost entirely ignored, such as your internal politics and elections. It’s bizarre then that espionage, a crucial aspect of WW2, is glossed over with very few options to perform. Intelligence and reconnaissance are crucial during war, but you’ve no way of tracking it in peace. I’d taken to keeping a spreadsheet of spotted units, particularly the naval units which each all bare their historical names. This leads to another Hearts of Iron extracurricular activity: the history you can glean from the encyclopaedic systems at play. Or at least you can if you’re a passive-autistic grognard like me!

I got this on Steam a while back and it totally consumed me... It has since stopped working but I feel that is due to troubles with steam on my computer, It played fine until steam stopped loading up correctly but I digress. I have over 2000 hours into HOI3. My favorite game was playing as Chzecloslovakia. Somehow successfully brought about the little Entente with France, Romania and Poland. Held off the Axis powers until 1944 by surrendering Slovakia to the Italians and Hungarians. WW2 started almost 2 years early and Germany was ill prepared at this time. Downside being that the Soviet Union didn't get into conflict with the Axis until 1946 and was an absolute Juggernaut by then. All of Europe became a Communist Bloc except my small enclave of Chzech Capitolists. Naval battles can be very frustrating against Carriers Especially U.S. and Japanese fleets. Key words, Speed, Speed, Speed. If the carriers cannot outrun you they will get shot. Amazing game! I tried to go back and play HOI2 Darkest hour... and got extremely confused and didn't enjoy it as much. I guess I got to addicted to the Command structure of 3 efficiently laying out troop locations. As for Strategy games, this is in my top 3 of all time!

Followed up by a laughably dumbed down sequel (+ DLC) this game was eventually shorn of its hairy bugs and made good back in the day. In my opinion the best paradox game released if you grab Podcat's .exe and install over Finest Hour (actually worthwhile as a feature-rich expac). The best feature was, as most players appreciated, was the excellent Chain of Command. Outstandingly good. Beware of the usual volume of cosmetic DLC though: at most zoom levels you won't need any extra nazi tanks or extra extra nazi stukas. There's a good flagmod pack out there which has better representations of Nation's flags of the day and some extra (Azerbaijan Armenia, Israel, Jordan etc etc). I dislike paradox intensely for their poor business practices but this title at least is well worth your time and money.

You get to run all the details to react WW2 especially with the 10.42 black Ice mod. If you fear too much micromanagement then learn how to use the AI button and most of the hard work is done for you. I can get the Germans from 1/36 to the start of polish campaign 9/39 in about two-three hours. This game even allows you to adjust when your troops arrive and allow you to build your own leaders to run your subs, divisions and and luftwaffe gruppe with all the traits, skills and when available. You can build your custom units, focus specific research and conduct smart politics That only scratches the surface of what you can do with this game ... What game can say that.