Hearts of Iron IV (2016)

I love World War II historically there hasn't been anything like it. The second world war set a global standard for the human condition and paved the way for a mostly free world. When I first played Hearts of Iron 1 almost 20 years ago I was allured by the global map and the distinctiveness of being able to be any power that was around during the years of 36-48. Mods popped up within a few years covering the cold war and even modern times. Hearts of Iron 2 improved on the theme, changed the industrial and research aspects and made some massive changes to the ai, had more events and provinces making for a more detailed game. Hearts Iron 3 changed too but it changed in so many ways that I lost interest in it. Hearts Iron has always had the problem of running multiplayer games not so smoothly, crashes, connection issues and compatibility due to users having different patches and mods made multiplayer nearly impossible. Hearts of Iron 4 lost my attention too, its good, its pretty to look at that map, and for those who like alternate histories this is where HOI 4 shines, you can go into Nazi Germany and convert it into a Democracy siding with the allies erasing real history altogether, you could do this in previous versions but it took tremendous effort or even cheating to do so. You can turn America into a communist state and conquer North America with little effort. This is all interesting and cool but again theres little things that hurt the overall experience. My marines always jump back on the boat when tasked with more then one invasion point and even when not instructed to invade turn back to safe shores. Again I've yet to get a multiplayer game together. The naval combat seems to improved alot over previous versions. Some of the games inaccuracies, and flaws make this version of HOI harder then previous versions. The Nazis historically topped out at about 250 divisions the AI seems to be able to put out nearly 800 divisions making Fortress Europe a true fortress. As the US trying to play historically I found these little issues like my marines jumping back on the boat and other complications almost impossible. By the time I launched overlord in 44' Germany was able to hold me back in France dug in for a whole year without any advances. Nuking them too still had them standing because no matter how low that national unity is I still have to grab the capital to have them surrender. The treaty events that pop up irregularly divide your territory unfairly, "Hey that was my conquest UK not yours!" and again there were so many frustrations at some point that I /ragequit because nothing I attempted to do was happening like I wanted it to. Some of the other foreign AIs like Japan are laughable. One things for sure with this edition of Hearts of Iron you will never play the same game twice, stuff happens, things change and so many expectations go unexpected. I gave it a three for looking nice but playing hard.