No matter where I go to look for mods that add realistic flags (E.G. Swastika), ability to terror bomb, or events like the holocaust or even simple casualty counters. I get shot down and sent hate mail like 'calm down Hitler you don't need those'. Everyone just acts like world war 2 didn't happen and any mention of its events are quickly silenced by the community. I've seen mod makers shut down by the community with tons of mail saying things like 'Only a Nazi would want to download your mod'. The community just seems very anti-history and reminds me a lot of the news programs and mothers that claim playing a shooting game will make you a mass murderer. It's not even like games with those symbols or movies with those events don't get well received. Look at Band of Brothers or Call of Duty: World at War. Two VERY well received pieces of media that don't worry about 'Don't show the Nazi flag even if your country permits it kids. It will turn you into a Himmler loving Nazi!' or 'Shhhh the holocaust NEVER happened'. Hell I remember playing Combat Flight Simulator 3 as a kid and loving the ability to terror bomb London by blowing up city bridges and hitting buildings in exchange for medals by the Luftwaffe. So why is everyone that plays Paradox games so scared of history. You all act like the secret police is holding a Luger to your head threatening to blow your brains out if you so much as mention anything related to THE ACTUAL FUCKING WAR.
Archived
On a side note if anyone knows of some mods that DO add these missing things please link them to me.
Edit: God damn it the post downvotes are already here. See this is what I'm talking about. ANY attempt to bring this up results in the whole community covering it up with either post removals or downvotes.
Edit 2: TL;DR Wanting historical accuracy in a optional mod makes me the 2nd coming of Hitler and a neo-Nazi. World war 2 didn't happen and it's all a fake made to make cool war games. Playing as Germany in game is fine because Germany was totally good and didn't kill people in death camps. Obama made up death camps to push his liberal agenda ect. ect. you're all too sensitive.
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413 comments
Being Hitler is really weird.
I feel a little uncomfortable. I've never been Hitler before and I've never had a particular desire to be Hitler. A quick look at my stats tells me I'm a rather grumpy person, a sore loser, bitter about the First World War, and this has a negative impact on my behaviour.
My attitude is tempered somewhat by my cabinet, a slowly-growing circle of advisors whose skills fill the cracks in my fractured personality. With them, I'm a better leader, the head of a more productive economy and also a happier, smarter army. And that army is growing.
The early build of Hearts of Iron 4 that Paradox Development Studio present at its annual convention has journalists playing through the mid 1930s as an emboldened and ambitious Germany. It makes sense for a preview build, as it puts players in a position that is, shall we say, historically interesting, though in saying that I feel like I'm coughing up the most uncomfortable of euphemisms.
I can distract myself with the thought that Paradox itself is also in a historically interesting position. This niche series of real-time, grand strategy games has long been popular with its dedicated and necessarily diligent fans. Like its sister series, the Victoria, Europa Universalis and Crusader Kings games, Hearts of Iron has always been broad in scope and detailed in both mechanics and moving parts. There's a lot going in in a game that models a world's worth of nations, their politicians, armies and economies. Depending upon your personal taste, Paradox's grand strategy games are somewhere between engrossing, intimidating and borderline unmanageable. Thank God for the pause button.
Nevertheless, their popularity has grown. The medieval, Machiavellian Crusader Kings 2 was considerably more successful than the studio expected, and last year's Europa Universalis 4 received widespread critical acclaim. Paradox attribute much of their success to better presentation and improved interfaces. For all their complexity, they insist, these games really aren't so hard to understand, they've just been opaque.
Tentatively, I agree. I've tried to play previous Hearts of Iron games and I've bounced off them like bullets off a panzer. Once a helpful developer tells me how the industry interface works, I build another trade convoy and start research on the radio, navigating clumsily through the many options-within-options in front of me. This time, it feels at least a little easier, but there's still a tremendous amount of information to digest.
I don't feel particularly warlike and so I'm at a disadvantage. Hearts of Iron 4 is all about guiding a nation of your choice through the period of the Second World War. Events are likely, but not certain, to take a course similar to that of history. I decide one of the better things I can do is form a non-aggression pact with Sweden. As a surprisingly pretty sunset rolls across western Europe, my soldiers stare longingly into France, dreaming of what could be.
Hearts Of Iron 4 Hitler Portrait
Menu after menu, screen after screen asks me to consider how many factories I'm devoting to building which type of tank, or which armies are assigned which battle plans across which fronts. Every region of Germany has its infrastructure modelled. I lose count of how many sub-classes of ship I can build.
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I feel a little like I'm sat at a desk, looking at abstractions of my country, something that I imagine is akin to the role of a real leader. There's a lot to consider, not everything requires my immediate attention and not everything is as easy to understand as I might like. With time and patience I may get better at this, but first I have to see if I even develop a taste for leadership, a taste for being the Führer.
Being Hitler is really weird. I'm trying to make the best of it.
This article is based on a press trip to Stockholm. Paradox Interactive paid for flights and accommodation.
Blood, toil, tears, and sweat.
By Daniel Starkey on
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War is tricky business, and when your conflict stretches to the globe’s far-flung corners, it gets that much tougher. That’s what Hearts of Iron IV is all about. You command one of the world’s many countries (you can play as just about any nation that existed during World War II), and your goal in this grand strategy game is to survive the coming storm . Different players will have different preferences--you can be as dove or hawkish as you like--and Hearts of Iron will support you. It’s easy to muck with the flow of history, and in doing so unearth brain-bending strategic challenges that allow you to tell your own story of an alternate version of World War II.
I started as the United States in 1936, and I decided that I wanted to doggedly pursue nuclear weapons. I set my sights on having a stable of city-busting bombs ready to go by 1942--three years before their real-world deployment. With careful choices--namely an eye for research, and carefully hiring top scientists like Robert Oppenheimer (a noted historical nuclear physicist), I pulled it off. But, in so doing, Italy went largely unopposed in its campaign in Africa. I hadn’t given much thought to the development of the world’s stage or the early theatres of war and as a result, some things got a little out of hand.
With Italy pulling resources from Africa, it managed to shore up the largest army in the world, which the emerging Mediterranean superpower used to bolster Hitler’s advance into France and Russia. France collapsed under the pressure, but the USSR made some stunning choices. Joseph Stalin started a smattering of other wars across the globe, making and breaking alliances to keep global pressure up on Germany. In so doing, they managed to reverse the results of the Spanish Civil War, push heavily into the Pacific and ultimately got into a tussle with the UK and myself.
That’s the power of Hearts of Iron IV. This isn’t just an alternative perspective on history-- it gives you the agency and tools to influence one of the world's most turbulent eras in any way you’d like. Each move, every military press, has ripple effects that cascade outward for years. Hold a garrison in one place, and you could cause the world to tremble down the line. This is the butterfly effect made manifest, but there’s a catch: you’re not the only one making choices. The AI responds based on your threat, and who they’re working with.
How to mod the sims 2. In the real world, the Alliance between Western and Eastern Europe against Hitler was the most tenuous of friendships, as evidenced by the Cold War just a bit later. And that comes down to a fundamental difference in ideology--England and its capitalist friends fundamentally disagreed with the Soviets on everything except that Hitler had to be stopped. So if Germany doesn’t present the same existential danger, why shack up with the Allies at all?
As was the case in the actual mid-20th century, Hearts of Iron IV pulls the perspective on war all the way out. There are no individuals here, only numbers. The stories of individual soldiers--with rare exceptions for skilled combatants--get lost in the spreadsheets. The challenge of shifting millions of men and their gearacross the world to battle ideas and their followers is all that matters. Germany, England, Ethiopia, and everyone else cease to be collections of people. They are goals, they are potential boons, and they are obstacles.
This is war at its highest levels. This is the essence of what it means to dedicate a nation--everything about its economy, infrastructure, government, and ideology--to the cause of conflict.
It’s a callous perspective, but it’s one that keeps Hearts of Iron IV focused amidst such complexity and variability. This is war at its highest levels. This is the essence of what it means to dedicate a nation--everything about its economy, infrastructure, government, and ideology--to the cause of conflict. That’s a lot to manage, but Hearts of Iron IV helps you direct the chaos. Production, research, and deployment of forces are all straightforward. You can queue up the equipment you’ll need to supply your campaigns and these lines grow more efficient with time. Most of the smaller stuff will end up in a nebulous “stockpile.” As you conscript and train new soldiers or armored divisions, your gear will be automatically shifted to where it’s needed most. You can adjust supply priority, however, so if you’re trying to fulfill America’s role as the arsenal of democracy, you can prioritize delivery to England and France over your own warriors stationed at home.
Bigger weapons like planes and ships are a bit more hands-on, as you can’t very well keep a nebulous stockpile of battlecruisers and bombers. Instead, they’re attached to airports and naval bases. Each of which has a maximum capacity. From there you can direct your fleets and wings on myriad missions, safeguarding supply vessels or intercepting enemy bombers.
Hearts of Iron IV embodies the hard truths about all-consuming war and the international politics that guide it. Even under the best conditions, sending a detachment of soldiers across the world can take months. Aircraft carriers and the flotillas they rely on--packed with destroyers, support crews, battleships, and submarines --take years to build. Your plans have to match that timescale. You can’t just spam marines and call it a day. Instead, Hearts of Iron IV asks you to formulate strategies and stick them through to the end.
Your factories spool up their output very slowly, becoming more and more efficient the longer you keep them running. As you start to roll out your gear and mobilize your nation, you face a constant stream challenges you couldn’t have expected months or years prior. If your foes have been steadily outfitting their soldiers with armor-busting anti-tank weapons right as your new Tiger tanks hit their borders, you’ll face some tough decisions about how to adapt. Shifting your production doesn’t come without cost, so which pieces of your plan do you shuck and which do you hold?
These questions are the foundation of Hearts of Iron IV. They can strain the most Machiavellian of tacticians, highlighting the disconnect between planning, action, and results to keep the game consistently engaging. No two games will ever work the same way. In some, you might find the Soviet Union holding Germany at Warsaw--for years. In others, Poland’s plan to unite Eastern Europe will work and they will grow to be one of the war’s biggest players. When you look back at it all, you will be able to understand how you got to that point and how things might have gone differently.
Even if you’re used to this sort of romp, it can take a dozen hours or more to get the hang of it.
Heart of Iron’s only weak point is its tutorial. With so much to manage and so many moving pieces to keep track of, it does a poor job of getting new players ready. To be clear, it’s much more friendly than its predecessors, but this is a game with daunting depth. You can organize everything from division templates to government officials and your war cabinet. Plus, you can play from the perspective of just about any country--each with their own goals and needs--the US, as the world’s industrial powerhouse, is a far different beast to Switzerland. Hearts of Iron IV keeps both interesting and engaging, throwing plenty of important decisions at its players regardless of nation or faction, but digging into the guts of it takes time--a lot of time. Even if you’re used to this sort of romp, it can take a dozen hours or more to get the hang of it.
For the dedicated, Hearts of Iron IV could end up being the best grand strategy game in some time. It’s many disparate pieces harmonize, and your decisions, and the responses of foes and allies, are different each and every time. While human drama might get lost in the spreadsheets and figures, there’s nothing quite like seeing the culmination of a strategy you’ve invested in since 1936 pay its dividends in 1945.
Hearts of Iron IV is a grand strategyvideo game developed by Paradox Development Studio and published by Paradox Interactive. It was released worldwide on June 6, 2016.[1] It is the sequel to 2009's Hearts of Iron III and the fourth main installment in the Hearts of Iron series. Like previous games in the series, Hearts of Iron IV is a grand strategy wargame that focuses on World War II. The player may take control of any nation in the world in either 1936 or 1939 and lead them to victory or defeat against other countries.
Gameplay[edit]
Hearts of Iron IV is a grand strategy wargame that primarily revolves around World War II. The player may play as any nation in the world in the 1936 or 1939 start dates in singleplayer or multiplayer, although the game is not designed to go beyond 1948. A nation's military is divided between naval forces, aerial forces, and ground forces. For the ground forces, the player may train, customize, and command divisions consisting of various types of infantry, tanks, and other units. These divisions require equipment and manpower to properly fight. The navy and air force also require men and equipment, including the actual warships and warplanes that are used in combat. Equipment is produced by military factories, while ships are built by dockyards. These military factories and dockyards are, in turn, constructed by civilian factories, which also construct a variety of other buildings, produce consumer goods for the civilian population, and oversee commerce with other nations. Most nations are initially forced to devote a significant number of their civilian factories to producing consumer goods, but as the nation becomes increasingly mobilized, more factories will be freed up for other purposes. Mobilization is represented as a 'policy' that the player may adjust with the proper amount of political power, an abstract 'resource' that is also used to appoint new ministers and change other facets of the nation's government. In addition to mobilization, there are other policies, including the nation's stance on conscription and commerce.[2]
Land in Hearts of Iron IV is divided into tiny regions known as provinces, which are grouped together to form states. Each state has a certain amount of building slots, factory slots, and 10 infrastructure slots. The major seas and oceans (for warships) and the sky (for warplanes) are similarly divided into different regions. These provinces each have a type of terrain assigned to them that determines how well different types of units will perform in combat there. Divisions are placed in provinces and can attack enemy units in adjacent provinces. How well divisions perform in combat depends on various factors, such as the quality of their equipment, the weather, the type of terrain, the skill and traits of the general commanding the divisions, and the morale of both sides. Technologies can be researched to improve equipment and learn new military doctrines, among other things, which often means that a more technologically advanced nation will have an edge in combat. If a division (or a group of divisions) successfully overwhelms an enemy province, they may occupy it. Some provinces may have victory points, and if you secure enough enemy victory points, the enemy nation will capitulate. Occupying key provinces within a state allows the occupying power to access the enemy's factories and natural resources in that state. Resistance to occupation within a state can hamper the occupying power's control over it. Late in the game, nations may develop nuclear bombs if they have the proper technology, which can be used to devastate enemy provinces and states.[3]
Hearts of Iron IV also attempts to recreate the complex diplomatic relationships of the day. Nations may undertake a variety of diplomatic actions; they may sign non-aggression pacts, guarantee the independence of other nations, and offer or request military access, amongst other things. Another key feature of diplomacy is the ability to create a faction or invite other nations to an existing one. Factions represent the main alliances of the era, like the Axis and Allies (for gameplay purposes, real-world factions like the Axis and Allies are split into numerous smaller factions, like the Comintern, the Chinese United Front, and the Co-Prosperity Sphere). Faction members may assist each other in wars, making faction members very valuable assets. A number of more clandestine diplomatic actions are also available. For example, the player may justify war against other nations, spread their ideology abroad, or stage a coup. Countries in the game may be democratic, fascist, communist, or non-aligned. Each of the four ideologies have advantages and disadvantages; for example, fascist nations can go to war with other countries easily, but other nations are not as willing to trade with them as they are with democratic countries. If a different ideology becomes too popular in a country, a referendum may be held that will peacefully convert the nation to the more popular ideology. Otherwise, ideologies may come to power violently through coups, civil wars, or forced subjugation by a foreign power.[4]
While Hearts of Iron 4 does feature some scripted events, the game features a 'national focus' system that makes fixed events less necessary than in previous installments in the series. Each country in the game has a 'focus tree' with various 'national focuses' that grant certain effects or trigger events. For example, in order for the Anschluss to occur, Germany must first complete the focus that is related to it. Other focuses can grant special bonuses, like faster research times for certain technologies or extra factories. While some bonuses (like extra factories) are very tangible, others (like improvements to morale) are more abstract. These abstract bonuses are represented by 'national spirits' that can be temporary or permanent. Not all national spirits are granted by focuses, and not all spirits are entirely beneficial in nature. Focuses are completed over time; only one focus may be worked on at once, and working on one consumes some political power. Initially, only a handful of key nations, like Germany, the Soviet Union, and the United States, had unique focus trees; all other nations shared a generic one. Subsequent updates and DLCs have added focus trees to other nations as well.[5]
Hearts of Iron IV also introduces the concept of 'world tension,' an abstract representation of how close the world is to war on a scale from 0 to 100. Aggressive actions by any nation can increase world tension, while peaceful actions can decrease it. Depending on the circumstances of a nation, like their ideology, a certain level of world tension may be necessary to perform certain actions, like justifying war against another country.[6]
Expansions and mods[edit]Expansions[edit]
Mods[edit]
Hearts of Iron IV was developed to be more open-ended than previous games in the series. Partially as a result of this, the game can be more readily modded than its predecessors.[15] A variety of mods for the game, most of which can be found on the Steam Workshop, have been developed, including a number of total conversion mods that dramatically change the game. Some mods have been successful enough to attract attention from the media, such as Kaiserreich, a mod set in a world where the Central Powers won World War One, Red World, a mod set in a world where the Soviet Union won the Cold War, Millennium Dawn, a mod set in the modern day, and The Great War, a mod set in the First World War.[16][17] Some mods have also attracted controversy for alleged racism and bigotry, such as Deus Vult, a mod that adds the Knights Templar to the game and allows them to commit various atrocities.[18]
Development[edit]
Hearts of Iron IV was announced in 2014 and was originally slated for a late 2015 release.[19] At E3 2015, creative director Johan Andersson confirmed that the game would be pushed back from its original release window, with the new release date being scheduled for the first quarter of 2016. This was an attempt to resolve several issues encountered with the game.[20] In March 2016, it was announced that the game would be released on June 6, 2016, which is the 72nd anniversary of the Normandy landings.[1]
Reception[edit]
Currently, the base game has a score of 83 from review aggregator Metacritic, translating to 'generally favorable reviews'.[21]
GameSpot gave the game a positive review, writing that 'Hearts of Iron IV embodies the hard truths about all-consuming war and the international politics that guide it.' It argued that the tutorial was the only weak point, and that 'for the dedicated, Hearts of Iron IV could end up being the best grand strategy game in some time.'[25]
It was also reviewed in Kotaku, with the reviewer writing it was 'overwhelming in both its depth and, more importantly, its complexity,' and arguing that some players unfamiliar with the franchise might find the game interface too complex to easily navigate.[26]
IGN wrote a positive review, describing it as 'an incredibly complex World War II simulation that will require potentially hundreds of hours to master, both in-game and pouring over wiki articles that read like an economics textbook,' but writing that 'the payoff is brilliant for those willing to put in the time to learn.' The review praised the layout, writing 'thanks to an unusually striking look and clean, easily navigable interface, the biggest challenges Hearts of Iron 4 presents us with are the good kind: strategic planning, division composition, and fine-tuning economic and political policies.' IGN went on to conclude that Hearts of Iron IV 'is a strong contender for the title of ultimate armchair-general game. The biggest problems I can point to are almost all performance-related, putting a slow, frustrating finale on what is otherwise an ingeniously detailed strategic stimulation of just about every aspect of 20th-century global warfare.'[22]
A review in PC Gamer described it as a 'unique, beautiful, thrilling wargame.. while I found a number of flaws when I stood close to the tapestry, it's important to remember that Hearts of Iron 4 exists to encompass the whole sweep of the war.'[24]
See also[edit]References[edit]
External links[edit]
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hearts_of_Iron_IV&oldid=902471037'
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