Hearts of Iron (2002)

Buildup to war

I've noticed I have a surplus of resources. I suppose I could trade it, but I'm not quite sure how the world market thing works. Another thing I can do is build up my military. Since I have a resource surplus, I might as well get some units garrisoning the islands. I'll also get some fighter cover in the Phillipines if possible. Finally, I remember that torpedo bombers were kinda important in the Battle of Midway, so I should look into researching them, assuming I don't have them already.

Oh and I might send some destroyers over to Spain just to see what's going on.

I believe that infrastructure can increase resource production. I am low on rubber so I might see if I can increase that.

Not much to see here honestly

Jan 1938

Not a particularly eventful year. Nationalist Spain won (much earlier than historically). Japan declared war on China. I lost a submarine fleet due to lack of supply. Strange, but I'll try to prevent it in the future. I am mostly working on expanding research and industry, but I also have garrisoned Guam and a few other islands.

Yep that's Spain

March 1938

Japan has started taking Chinese territory. They've pushed in south-west from Manchukuo, and have also invaded along the coastline. The Shanghai area appears to be almost encircled, with only Nanjing preventing it.

Germany has just annexed Austria, and has immediately made territorial demands against Czechoslovakia.

The invasion has begun

June 1938

China was able to prevent encirclement, but they did lose Shanghai. Communist China still hasn't done anything.

The Nanking Massacre occured, and we gained support for entry into the war. China was able to retake Shanghai.

July 1938

Shanghai has changed hands multiple times. It is currently in Chinese hands, but completely encircled by the Japanese.

September 1938

China only has one remaining coastal territory. Japan owns the rest of the coastline. Japan took Kowloon in September 24.

Germany recieved the Sudetenland in the Treaty of Munich.

November 1938

I browsed the ancient Paradox HOI forum to learn some stuff. It turns out that you can't set up repeating patrols in this game, despite it saying this in the manual. Not too big of a deal because things would be moving around too fast for me to see what's happening anyway. I also learned that the game won't tell you if your offers are being accepted on the world market. You just set a ratio and then hope it's good enough. Right now I'm suffering from a lack of rubber, and it seems that it's also hard to get on the world market. I am dealing with this by researching some industrial tech which will help me create more rubber. I see that Vietnam has a lot of rubber but I can't exactly just go and invade them.

I'm researching computers to improve my research speed. It makes sense to me to try and get this happening as early as possible.

December 1938

I am researching improved synthetic oil and rubber plants. This should significantly help with our rubber problems.

January 1939

1939 is the year where shit starts to go down. Tensions began to build in 1938, but this is the year where the Allies realised they had to do something about Germany. It's gonna be an interesting year. I wonder what my role will be in this.

Despite the interface being old and outdated, I do find that I am still able to adapt to them quite easily. The only real thing I miss is being able to pan with the middle mouse button, and zoom with the mouse wheel.

We finally have P40Bs on most of the islands. However I would like to get at least a couple of squadrons in Hawaii and Midway.

The Chinese have gained a lot of China's coast, however their offensive seems to have stalled for the moment. However they seem to be about to encircle Macao.

I find it strange how linear the tech tree is in this game. There are major technologies and then sub-technologies for each major technology. What is strange is that the major technologies are mostly linear. It's a bit strange that you need to research amphibious tanks in order to research tank destroyers. I am confused that some tank techs disable other tank techs. It seems I have a choice between researching 20mm, 30mm or 40mm light tanks. I have no idea what the implication of this is. I suppose I'll play it safe and go for the middle option. Oh well, tanks aren't gonna be important for a few years. One minor issue I'm having is that when I finish researching a tech, the popup won't tell me what category the tech was in, so I have to try and remember.

February 1939

I got my first torpedo bombers and put them on Midway. I might need to put some on my carriers too.

March 1939

Czhechoslovakia is kaput. Not much longer until war starts.

I have a choice between a tactical offensive or defensive regimen. I have decided to go with offensive. The defensive would probably help better in the Pacific, but I would like to have those tank bonuses for when things get serious in Europe.

Italy is now making a play for Albania. I don't know anything about this, but apparently there's a guy called King Zog, which sounds pretty funny.

April 1939

Poland declined an alliance with the UK, but UK has guaranteed protection.

We finished researching improved electromechanical computers. Italy annexed Albania.

May 1939

Germany made its first attempt to influence Japan.

June 1939

We finally finished our improved synthetic rubber plants. That should alleviate the rubber shortage.

August 1939

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact had a historical outcome. The Soviet Union took Tallinn from Estonia.

On August 30, Germany declared war on Poland. WW2 has begun.

September 1939

The Soviet Union gained 4 territories from Latvia.

We built our first light tank and I put it on Guam. I may need to transport it to Manila later.

On September 25, the Allies declated war on Germany, Hungary, Slovakia and Bulgaria.

October 1939

Germany annexed Poland, they then split Poland with the USSR as they did historically.

The Japanese war in China is still stalled for now

November 1939

Germany has begun its push through Belgium. Interestingly, at this point of the war, the Allies had a numerical advantage over the Germans. If the Allies attacked at this time (especially when the Germans were distracted with Poland), they may have prevented the rest of WW2. The Allies still hold a comfortable lead in victory points, however this will likely not last for much longer.

I have increased military production, mostly expanding our air power.

Saved and quit.

While browsing the old forums, I found a community manual. I will have to have a look through that. I am also going to see if there are any "must-have" mods for this game. I know that the original EU does.

Soviet Union declared war on Finland.

December 1939

Germany has taken Belgium.

Germany has begun to advance into France, and is in a position to take Paris. The situation in China is still stable.

Japan has consolidated its hold on the Chinese coast

That's all for now. WW2 has officially started, but so far we haven't had an opportunity for military action. This will most likely continue until late 1941. Until then there's not much to do but continue to build our military and research.

I will take a break from gameplay to do some more research. I also have been reading a lot of information from the old Paradox forum. There are tons of things to learn which aren't covered in the manual.

Starting out

Okay so I'm starting a campaign as USA. Let's have a look around at the initial situation...

It's a relief to see that there are only 5 map overlays: Terrain, Political, Weather, Economic and Supply. There are 16 map overlays in HOI 3... I'm not knocking the complexity of that game, I love complexity, but I think this game will be a great entry point into learning the HOI games. I don't see any government stuff except choosing ministers. The tech tree is also simpler... You just pick techs and that's it. It looks like logistics is still a thing, so I'll have to keep an eye on that.

There are quite a few territories to manage. It is interesting to see that we don't really have much of a military. I suppose this makes sense, considering the USA was still emerging from the Great Depression. It's interesting to see how far they developed over the course of the war.

We have a handful of colonial possessions. There's Panama. We took this territory for ourselves in 1903. I don't think the USA actually owned the place, but the game has given us full control over it. I imagine this territory will be critical for moving our navies between the east and west coasts. It'll be interesting to see if we can manage to hold on to it. Puerto Rico was obtained in 1898 during a war with Spain. It doesn't seem it will be too important for the war effort. We have troops in Monrovia in West Africa. I don't think this place will be of much use to us. Africa is mostly divided between the Western powers. The only issue is Italian North Africa. The USA had a significant hand in the North African campaign, but we landed in Casablanca, so I doubt Monrovia will help us here.

Off the West Coast we have some real interesting stuff. We have Hawaii, site of Pearl Harbour. I plan to reinforce this area for obvious reasons. After Hawaii comes Midway, the site of the critical Battle of Midway. Midway is an important naval and airbase. Baker, Palmyra and Johnston are not too strategically important. They are very small islands and mostly function as fixed aircraft carriers. However they could be useful for some bombing runs.

Closer to Japan is Wake Island. This island was captured early on by the Japanese, however the USA bypassed it on their journey toward Japan. Finally we have Guam. This was attacked the day after Pearl Harbour, and was captured after a few days. It remained in enemy hands for three years. Another important location is the Phillipines. We have forces stationed in Manila. For some reason we do not own the province, but it is effectively a colony of the USA in this time period.

We have the overlooked Aleutian Islands. The Japanese invaded these islands, and it would be a pain in the ass to retake them if that happens. Attu has some strategic value as an airbase from which to bomb the Japanese mainland.

Anyway, now we choose a strategy to go for. The obvious thing to do is build up our industry, but there is also important research to be done. I have decided I'll try to get some decent fighter aircraft in the air, and perhaps increase our anti-aircraft defenses. Then comes construction. I have no idea what cost there is regarding improving our industry, so I generally improved industry along both coasts. I improved AA in Hawaii, and coastal fortifications in the other islands. I'm not sure if that's the right thing to do but I'll learn soon enough I guess. I have no diplomats available this month.

My ministers seem to be good enough, however Leroy Grumman seems like somebody I could use, as he has some air bonuses. I might put him into armements to boost our air research, but for now I'll boost IC. For intelligence I put Kaiser in to boost my IC, and because I am seeking to be non-interventionist.

Now I unpause and wait.

The first year

June 01 - 1936

Nothing has happened lol. Well, a bunch of countries are influencing other countries, and Germany is upset with Austria or something. This is fine, WW2 didn't start until September 1939. The only real thing to watch is the civil war in China. Fighter technology has progressed, and fortifications are being built on the islands. We have 8 diplomatic influence, but I'm not sure what to do with it so I'll leave it for now.

July 19 - 1936

The Spanish Civil War has begun. Italy, Germany and the Soviet Union sent support. I have spare diplomatic influence so I decided to share some technology with Republican Spain. The Spanish Civil War is a kind of sideshow to the events of WW2, and generally Nationalist Spain is going to win. Nonetheless I thought I would throw some chips in and see what happens. I shared some light fighter and anti aircraft tech.

January 4 - 1937

I went with Roosevelt for President. I'm not sure what the difference would be if I went for the alternative. Republican Spain was holding out for a little while but now seems to be losing ground. Apart from that I haven't noticed much change in the world so far. I have researched quite a lot of tech, and am continuing mostly with aircraft, radar and industry.

March - 1937

The Spanish Civil War is mostly stable at the moment, but I'm sure eventually Republican Spain will lose more ground. Communist China is still just chilling in Xianyang and Yanan. I haven't noticed Japan doing anything. Oh and the Soviet Union purged its officers.

Anyway, I'm at March 9 1937. I've simulated over a year of the 12 years of the campaign. Very little happens in the first year. It's mostly a time for deciding on what your long-term strategy is going to be. Hopefully I've made reasonable decisions, and I also hope I'm not missing anything which will be critical later on. I've mostly been sitting back and just letting events play out normally. There's still like 5 years before we get involved in much of anything, so I'll keep developing the country as best I can.

You know that feeling when you maybe read an article, or hear someone talk about a game, and you're all like "damn, I wanna play this game"? Well here we are. Time for some Hearts of Iron. Besides, I need something to break up all the KSP I'm playing.

Background

Released in 2002, I believe this was the first computer-based grand strategy WW2 game to allow you to simulate all theaters at once (correct me if I'm wrong). WW2 is a popular topic for grand strategy games, but many of them focus on Europe only. Even some notorious board games such as "The Campaign for North Africa" only focus on a particular theatre. However, "World in Flames" does appear to cover the entire scope of WW2, making Hearts of Iron not the first such game, but certainly among the first.

One question to address is "why play the first one?". There isn't normally a good reason for this if you are a regular gamer. There is some contention between HOI 2, 3 and 4, but nobody is gonna recommend the original. However as an amateur developer (albeit a shitty one who hasn't actually released anything) I like to get a bit deeper into things and learn how certain features came about, and learn how games changed over time. That's what I tell myself anyway. So, HOI it is.

Install and config

So, how does one acquire HOI in the year 2018? Well, gog.com is a lifesaver. I just installed their GOG Galaxy, and got HOI installed in about 10 minutes. The game is a bit expensive for a relic: 14 Australian dollarydoos. Oh well, it's not that bad. Step 2 is configuration. Fortunately DXWnd plays extremely well with HOI and EU. The only things you need to do are:

DXWnd
Video->Window style->Modal (for borderless window)
input->cursor clipper ON
cursor visibility: Hide.

And my settings.cfg:

2
1
0
"SCREEN_SIZE_X 1280"
"SCREEN_SIZE_Y 1024"
"MUSIC_OFF"
"europa.valkyrienet.com"

Oh, and the magic resolution is 1280x1024. I have no idea why, but setting the resolution to 1280x960 will cause some missing scanlines. It took me a while to figure this one out. Make sure you set W:1280, H:1024 in DXWnd. I'll have to add that to the PC Gaming Wiki later. It looks good once you set it up properly. If you don't get the resolution right, the text clipping is infuriating.

The game

Anyways I started the game, and we come to one major issue with Paradox games. Goddamn they make terrible interfaces. Fixed resolutions, no options menu, no mousewheel or mouse panning, sweet Jesus. I haven't played their latest games, so I hope they have improved things since then. But anyone who plays old PC games must learn how to survive without these modern conveniences.

To achieve happiness, you must free yourself from the desire for more pixels

Time period is obvious enough, I'm gonna play the full 1936-1948. But what country should I pick? For me it's a tossup between USA, Japan and Soviet Union. UK is excluded because there are too many theatres to juggle. I imagine Germany is for people who actually know what they're doing. Japan is probably a challenge to play, because of the whole "war with USA" thing. I'd love to play them, but that'll have to wait. Soviet Union would be fun, but you end up on the pointy end of Operation Barbarossa. USA it is then. All I gotta do is keep my navy away from Hawaii, right?

At least the older games have a bit less analysis paralysis. Well, I still have a feeling I'm still gonna have 100 Wikipedia tabs open in short order.

All game settings are at default, except I set the autosave to monthly. I'm guessing it was disabled because computers were slower back then. I'm confused that AI aggressiveness is set to weakling by default. Apparently that's how it should be?

Here's our game running at a crispy 1280x1024.

Anyway, everything is set up and working nicely. I'll go have a look at the manual and then get this party started.