Hearts of Iron 3

[Agua]

Anybody play this?

I bought the original HOI way back when, but was ultimately disappointed with it. It had loads of detail but the detail sort of didn't have much affect on the game play - I think leaders, supply, bonuses, etc. were severely undermodled.

Just a few weeks ago I picked up HOI2 and it was quite an improvement. Of course, four years and probably umpteen patches didn't hurt.

Just wondering if anyone's tried HOI3 yet and if so, what their thoughts were?

[Sergei]

I've only played the demo. I did like the new graphics - in HoI 2 the sprite map and graphics kind of annoyed me, because it was so difficult to get a proper view of the events as you would get all sorts of jagged sprites, and also the NATO symbols didn't feel as functional as sprites. In comparison HoI 3 graphics are awesome, as the zoom level can be freely adjusted with mouse wheel and the NATO symbols are far more informative. In Paradox forums people are whining because the world map has all sorts of errors, but who cares if it doesn't look like Google Earth, it's going to be alternative history anyway. Vista users seem to have had trouble running the game at a reasonable speed, so beware.

As far as scenarios go, I don't like the HoI 3 demo so much - it begins 1st September 1939 with Germany, Poland, France and UK as playables, and three months or so of play time. Not much to try out in that timeframe, other than to attempt rescuing the Poles as Britain or France.

I haven't bought it yet, as the feedback in various forums seems to be that there's a lot wrong in the initial version and even though the first patch came quickly, that introduced a new big bug. I will probably have better time to play it by the time the bugs are fixed.

[Michael Emrys]

I bought HoI1 back, oh maybe six years ago and gave up on it immediately. I got HoI2 last year and spent about a month with it, mainly because last fall I didn't have much else to do.

One of the first things I definitely look for in a game of this type is whether it is possible or even better yet likely to replicate the flow of the actual war with it. HoI2 failed utterly on this count. It is not possible to get the game to do even several major events as were done historically. The game played as if the designers had only heard rumors of what WW II was like. Oh, I think they had read lots of books on the subject, but it was as if they really failed to grasp the meaning of what they had read. Major bummer for me.

Okay, so it it fun to play anyway? That depends on your taste in gaming. The game is enormously time consuming, so you really have to love it in order to like it. I gave it my best shot and came away disappointed. Make that very disappointed. On the other hand, several people of my acquaintance that I do not regard as stupid liked it quite a bit. As usual, the best advice is to find out as much as you can about it from as many sources as you can and play the demo before you put your money down.

Michael

[Sergei]

The game played as if the designers had only heard rumors of what WW II was like.

That's quite accurate, as the developers are Swedish.

Although for myself, more interesting than seeing if the game can reproduce an exact replica of real history is to see what kinds of alternate stories it can convey. In HoI 2 when playing as Finland in Winter War I allied myself with Britain and France. Oh, they did send some bombers against USSR, which was nice... but I also got a few German divisions landing in southern Finland as well. Since I was rather preoccupied by Stalin, this was my downfall. But it was a funny "what-if" situation, one of the millions that HoI can offer.

The bugs in HoI 3 mean that eg. Japan is going to get thrown out of China before 1941, and god only knows what other tendencies due to bugs there are. But regardless, HoI can be fun when it's playable.

[Agua]

Yeah, maybe I haven't discovered the exploits resulting from awful modelling yet, but so far I'm enjoying HOI2 - something I could not say about the original.

Just curious what HOI3 was like. I'll definitely wait until it gets a few more patches under its belt before puchasing the thing.

[gunnergoz]

I find it more of the same and ultimately not very satisfying. They are in dire need of a new gaming paradigm over there, since they keep trying to fit 20 pounds of mud into a 10 pound sack.

[Runyan99]

the feedback in various forums seems to be that there's a lot wrong in the initial version

Problems in the release version? Of a Paradox product? SSSsssschocking!!

[Agua]

ACK - installed the Doomsday and Armageddon addons for HOI2 which came with the pack I downloaded.

It added an intelligence system: very, very cheesy. Couldn't uninstall it quick enough.

[Michael Emrys]

I find it more of the same and ultimately not very satisfying. They are in dire need of a new gaming paradigm over there, since they keep trying to fit 20 pounds of mud into a 10 pound sack.

I agree. They did very well with EU2, but then they tried to apply the same gaming system to WW II and it was a lousy fit. That was HoI1. So they have been tinkering with it ever since to try to make it a better fit, when what they really needed to do was to start over with a clean sheet of paper and some designers with real familiarity with what went on during the WW II era.

Michael

[DBaron]

I wouldn't touch it until next year at least. Currently it's at patch 1.2 and it has a long way to go. Maybe after the new year people might get some decent mods out, or they might be able to patch it into something that is playable, but until then save your money.

I wish I would never have bought it.

[Clavicula_Nox]

What about it is "unplayable" ?

[DBaron]

What about it is "unplayable" ?

For me its a lot of little things that add up over time and suck the enjoyment out of it.

These observations were taken from playing as Italy in 1.2

1. The AI is not very good, for the most part each country does their own thing regardless of whether or not they are in an alliance. For example greece and romania had formed an alliance, but in name only. I attacked Romania and Greece did nothing. Rep Spain was in the allies, and didn't move at all to help France until after France was defeated. Had spain decided to send some divisions to help out in southern france it would have made it much harder for me. Playing as France in 1.1 Germany couldn't care less about what happens to Italy, until you show up on their borders, which made for an easy game as France. Playing as poland in 1.1 I fought for 8 months and none of the rest of the allies even bothered to do anything to help me. (1/2 the world was in the allies including the USA). Britian did some strategic bombing, USA just built division after division, Finland sent me one division, and France was struggling for its life after getting mauled by Italy (common problem in 1.1).

There is no real way to co-ordinate their activities, so its a free for all.

2. The intelligence system isn't very good, and currently I am stuck with unkillable spies disrupting my research. Very frustrating.

3. Playing as Italy I cannot declare war on Iraq which has brought my middle east campaign to a halt.

4. Also, Italy gets robbed by the Vichy event. I lost all my gains in Southern France thanks to it. I was pushing on Paris when it fired. I had to declare war on the Vichy government to get some of them back, but one lone german tank division made a bee line for Marsielle and grabbed it for Germany before I could, splitting my empire in two. Since there is no way to trade provinces (that I know of), it makes managing my empire that much harder (supplies, moving troops back and forth, etc).

Things like that which keep adding up making it either a headache to play, or just not fun.

[Agua]

Well,

After playing HOI2 for close to 3 weeks, I have had the same experience I had with HOI1. It is addictive for a few weeks until you pretty much figure the game out, then every game is the same and boring.

[Edited to include the following:] That said, if someone wants something to screw around with for a few weeks, you can pick up HOI2 pretty cheap.

[Michael Emrys]

I haven't played HoI3 and don't intend to, but last year I spent over a month with HoI2 and one of the things that bugged me was the assortment of huge compromises that were made with history in order to make it an interesting multiplayer game. A for instance:

The Brits are able to drive the Italians out of Africa handily enough, but then apparently nobody can launch an amphibious invasion of either Sicily or the Italian mainland because the Italians are able to build up an ahistorically strong army and position a huge force on every beach hex. I suppose one could wait for the A-bomb and then nuke a beach hex or two, but I got pissed off and quit the game before that happened.

That's fairly typical of the things that go on in that game. They wanted to make Italy an attractive position to play, so they gave it wildly unrealistic capabilities. I call BS.

Michael

[Clavicula_Nox]

I don't like the way the specialized attacks: Sea and Parachute are handled. The penalties are so dramatic that they are just too likely to fail. I've had fully supplied armies of 18 divisions with veteran commanders fail their sea invasion against 1 garrison, 1 infantry, and 1 coastal defense.

The Airborne Assault attack is so worthless that I rarely bother with it. I usually consider each parachute "division" to be a regiment and name them accordingly.

Overall, I enjoy the game, but there are some things that irritate me. It is either way too easy, or way too difficult and when it is difficult, it doesn't seem to be the AI that is difficult, rather strange game mechanics that don't make very much sense.

[Michael Emrys]

...strange game mechanics that don't make very much sense.

Amen. Again and again I get the feeling that the designers for all their research and study just don't seem to have a very clear mental picture of what went on in WW II. And whatever they might have has to be cut and trimmed and reshaped to fit into a game system that is very awkward for depicting that era.

Michael

[gunnergoz]

And every country in the world at the same time? Come on! Given the amount of detail required to run a satisfying simulation, you are asking for a CPU-stopper. The game tries to do too much and be all things to all people. What's more, it is so heavily biased towards land warfare that it barely is able to encompass air and especially sea warfare. One gets the feeling that the designers don't really get the latter in particular - certainly not WW2 in the Pacific and the role of carriers and carrier air power. I had high hopes for this one but it turned out to be more of the same. Time for a new paradigm but they seem stubbornly wedded to their game engine and concept.

[Runyan99]

Yeah but you suckers keep buying 'em, so get ready for HOI4.

[hoolaman]

I spent quite a bit of time on HOI1 but have never been tempted back to the sequels that looked more like a patched version of the same game.

By far the biggest dissappointment of the original was sea combat, making playing the US or Japan really tedious. The province system works really well for land battles but not for sea battles. It's a shame since the system where a capital ship is one unit but anything smaller is a flotilla seems like it had huge potential.

There were also bizarre things like being unable to transport air units as cargo by sea, unless you put them on a carrier, where you had to put a whole air fleet on the ship (how many hundred of aircraft does that represent?).

There were also a bunch of crazy things with supply, where you would find garrisons starve to death and disband when they are in established colonial posessions. This made playing the British Empire really tedious.

So it came down being to a European land war sim anyway.

The concept is right up my alley but it just did not work.

[Apocal]

I like that the HQ system is capable of pushing my mundane stacks around while I can control the real breakthrough corps' and armies'. I like the toned down airpower from late patch HoI2, having eight CAS stacks destroy an entire German panzer army in weeks was just BS.

I dislike the new supply system. I dislike the new combined arms bonus modifier, because it leads to combinations that make no damned sense having it. Two armor brigades and a mech brigade don't, but two light armor and an armored car brigade do? Are you ****ing serious? I like that you the AI is capable of fighting a decent attrition or maneuver campaign. My first playthrough as Germany, I was bled-white by Britain and France, managed to conquer France and get Vichy on my side, but was so roasted by the campaign (16 months) when Poland attacked (alt his) my divisions just kind of melted away for want of leadership.