Wheter to get HOI or... something else

[kurt88]

I'm waiting for Hearts of Iron to be released in Belgium (probably early march).Personally I liked Europa Universalis 2 a lot but after spending some time on the HOI forum I began having doubts:"It's Grand Strategy,but the AI sucks.SC is so great,even against the AI"

I'm sure some of you play HOI,so what do you think?Are their other grand strategy games concerning WWII that are worth the effort and that are relatively new?

I would greatly appreciate some advice.

[Steve C]

Kurt,

I have both games. I also have Europa Univsalis, which I like. I don't think the EU engine is entirely successful in making the leap to the 20th century. Overseeing fortification building, manpower allocation, etc. at the province level, things which seem to work okay for Early Modern Europe seem less appropriate to the centralized 20th Century state where a number of other things are added to the game which you also need to keep track of.

There is a lot of micro-management in HoI that you needn't bother with in SC. Then, at least for me, the combat in HoI is way too unclear and simplistic relative to all the tedium which preceeds it. Imagine that you own a fast car which you meticulously tune and prepare for the track, and then only take it out of the garage to polish it or drive 1km to the grocery store. Weak analogy maybe, but that's what it feels like to me- the reward fails to justify the effort.

As for the AI in HoI, I kind of threw up my hands in disgust after doing the tutorial and playing some initial moves and took the game off my hard drive. Honestly, I don't know how good it is compared to SC. I have heard that the game has been extensively improved with patches since the initial release.