Hearts of Iron

Looking at the current GoG weekend sale, I see that an array of Hearts of Iron games are on sale (Hearts of Iron, Hearts of Iron II complete, Hearts of Iron III and HoI : Darkest Hour). While I've only ever played Hearts of Iron a long time ago, I hear Hearts of Iron II is the better game. However, I can see that Darkest Hour is also on sale.

So, putting the nostalgia googles on, I'm getting an itch to replay the first Hearts of Iron game which I played as a kid. I remember C.O.R.E being one of the best mods all around back then, though I never played it. Can anyone recommend it? I'm especially interested in mods that add tons of events.

Regarding the second installment, is there any reason to pick HoI II rather than HoI : Darkest Hour ? From what I understand, Darkest Hour is just an all-around better HoI II. Are some of the good mods for HoI II not available for DH? I'm especially interested in mods that add events such as C.O.R.E, and it seems that there is no C.OR.E for HoI : DH. Are there any other mods for HoI : DH that add events?

PS: not interested in HoI III : from what I read, it sought primarily to develop the wargame aspect of of HoI, which is never what appealed to me in those games - I'm much more interested in the political, diplomatic, scientific, economic and espionage stuff.

 

I never did manage to get into HoI2 because I started with 3 and got used to its awful quirkiness. But from reading some AAR's it seems Kaiserreich is the mod for HoI2/Darkest Hour, great alt-history mod with plenty of events. Allow me to cast greater summon Finnish Wargamers Vaarna_Aarne and GarfunkeL , not entirely sure if they've played HoI2 but at least they might be able to sell you on HoI3.

Should you decide to plonk down some money for HoI3 + expansions (Old paradox game, so you really need the expansions to get it halfway playable) then the Historical Plausability Project (HPP) is a good mod. Black I.C.E. is the major competitor, but that's event driven railroaded nonsense in my humble opinion.

 

Yes, Darkest Hour is essentially an engine upgrade to HoI2. Kaiserreich and other mods migrated to it after release, and you don't really need other reasons to pick it over HoI2 than that it has the newer Kaiserreich. Darkest Hour can also run basic HoI2+expansions instead of its own altered map and mechanics, which I'd recommend because Darkest Hour's alternative Manpower mechanic is kind of funky and unbalanced.

When it comes to mods with events, there's just about nothing that compares to Kaiserreich. It's the mod that's got events for alternative paths of alternative paths of alternative paths. Just the fact the game succesfully navigates through potentially six civil wars that can occur within 1937-1940 period and does so very well (I'd say the only disappointing one is the Second Russian Civil War, which is far too heavily stacked in favor of the new Tsar/republic so it's nowhere near as interesting as Spanish Civil War, Second American Civil War, Indian Civil War, Chinese Civil War/Reunification, or Austro-Hungarian Civil War). Most of them really benefit from being structured as Mexican Standoffs between multiple roughly equal parties (usually three). Another thing I'd consider a shortcoming in the mod is that it is a little too heavy on Germanophilia, with Second World War tending to fizzle out in comparison to the really fun local conflicts across the globe, since Germany is just too strong and well-prepared. There's also not enough sharks around Germany. The same shark shortage problem is also present in Second Russian Civil War, which even if it happens doesn't have a shark tank effect that it should given the alt history backstory presented. A good example is that Lapua Movement Finland does absolutely nothing to completely ruin Germany's day in the United Baltic Duchy like even the blurb foreshadows, and possible shark effect in Russian Civil War is rather disappointing in its possible impact.

IMO, the ideal "default story" for the world war would be German defeat in Europe followed by a failed attempt by the imperial family to relocate to Mittelafrika colonies, with focus in global game shifting to trying to use interventions, diplomacy, and force between Entente, Internationale, and the severely weakened German colonies and imperial family to try and rally support across the world for the second phase of the Weltkrieg. There's such a wealth of possible neutral blocs, precarious civil war stalemates, and potential rising powers to provide a perfect basis for this, and I feel it was a missed opportunity (so the best fun is doing the rising power bit yourself). In Europe alone, potential unaligned countries with much stronger position than in 1936 include reformed Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Austria-Hungary/Danubian Federation, Finland, Sweden, and various other regional winners in the Russian and Balkan shark tanks. Or then maybe Ungern Khan conquers the world instead.

Of course, a good way around this is to make some modifications to the mod yourself. One I tend to do myself is to make a special set of possible alterations to Germany's military position at game start, with the one I found to be enough to make French commies able to present Red Menace to the whole planet requiring TOTAL removal of the German starting armor, air force, and land fortifications (this should give an idea of how prepostrously good Germany's position is). If I could be assed, I'd have probably added balance tipper and stalemate decision-triggered events for various civil wars as well, so the world war can grow and spread.

 

If the wargaming aspects do not interest you, then you can skip HoI3. IMHO it's the best iteration of HoI but I can freely admit that it's political and diplomatic sides are not better than HoI2s - and some people claim that they are actually inferior.

For HoI1, CORE is the way to go. For HoI2, it's Darkest Hour and Kaiserreich, though there are plenty of good mods to choose from. For HoI3 you really should get the expansions too as they fix broken mechanics and introduce new mechanics that fix some core concepts. I wouldn't go with BICE, it's a bloated mess. HPP keeps the vanilla gameplay largely intact aside from overhauling the tech tree. If you want to larp Germany, then I can heartily recommend the Deutsche's Wehrmacht Immersion mod. But you do have to enjoy assigning generals and fiddling with your chain of command and naming your divisions/corps/armies and then planning operational movements and executing them to get your moneys worth of HoI3. I know some people on Pdox forums who have gotten good experiences with limited AI use but personally I don't see the point. Oh and logistics. HoI3 has one of the more in-depth logistics simulations running under the hood and learning how to properly use it is THE big hurdle on running successful big campaigns.

AI is shit in all three, after you learn the basics you can steamroll any country if you play as a major. Savvy people have done World Conquests even as Albania, so exploits and cheese are plentiful in all of them.

 

Albania is easy mode, I was most impressed by the guy who did a WC with Luxembourg by abusing all the wonky game behaviour to annex france while the Germans did all the work. Might have been the same guy, come to think of it.

 

Absolutely get Darkest Hour over HoI2, but there's also Arsenal of Democracy which is basically a second fan fork and plays a bit differently. I'd say that Darkest Hour is definitely the superior of the two, and it has a wider variety of mods.

Luxembourg allied to germany? That's not even difficult. Real men WC as a non-aligned Tibet.

 

All right guys, thanks for the detailed advice, I picked up HoI and Darkest Hour (along with Crusader Kings, Victoria and EU : Rome for good measure)

 

Regarding BICE, I'd say if you wanna try it you need to get one of the older versions. Version VII or whatever IIRC. That's before they changed to total bloat and it was essentially just a deluxe version of the base game that added many improvements (ie, possibility to focus the economy and increase your resource base and leadership).

Yea, I never saw the appeal of HoI majors outside of larping GROSSDEUTSCHLAND or FREEDOM IS THE ONLY WAY YEAH to see just how overpowered you can get. Otherwise probably the only majors worth playing as are Italy and Japan due to the specific challenges they face and historical divergence options available to them (ie, neutral but aggressive Japan making strikes of opportunity in HoI3). Minors or mid-tier countries are generally much more interesting to play as because you can do that whole rising power thing even besides being savvy.

 

Kaiserreich is great but Germany is just too strong with the Commune of France quickly collapsing while there's such a network of eastern buffer states that Germany and Russia never really chafe. Still even minor powers are awesomely detailed.

 

Kaiserreich sounds great as an alternate history mod but is there another mod for DH that only improves the base game while keeping an historical 1936 start?

 

Kaiserreich makes no sense as a scenario for a game. Germany wining WW I would be just way too strong to be threatened by a weakened France. Unless there was a huge and unrealistic economic collapse in Germany.

This always was my main issue with the scenario.

 

Balance seems to shift constantly, recent versions are much more heavily tilted towards CoF winning.

Well there was a collapse. Did you not notice Germany getting 20 dissent minimum? There was a little event called the Great Depression.

Germany winning WW1 is as much a penalty as it is a boon. They still suffered extensively during the war and now the nation is drastically overstretched string to handle most of the French/British colonial empires. And instead of UK and especially France sort of stagnating and only seriously gearing up for war at the last minute in OTL WW2 imagine them under Stalin-esque plans where the whole country is dedicated to developing a war machine (with Germany being somewhat the opposite).

Personally what I find more unrealistic is the whole "Germany won but Austria Hungary disintegrates + US becomes half commie and about to break up" because their feelings were hurt by not being as awesome as Germany or w/e the explanation is.

 

There's also no shark tank effect for Russia on Germany, and Bolsheviks will *never* win the Second Russian Civil War because their territory is made to be so tiny and their military so much smaller so you have an almost guaranteed member of Mitteleuropa instead. The only thing they are is just a opening parade for the shark tank (if that even bothers to happen) when the border states around Russia chomp on it. The Eastern buffer states are also far too loyal and stable in their support. There is no Finnish pounce on UBC at all, I have *never* seen the UBC civil war event fire (really, the whole Baltic integration thing should *never* succeed for the AI and be a huge effort even for player to work through, since UBC is basically just a temporary satellite that then joins Germany now which just makes Germany EVEN STRONGER), Lithuania and White Ruthenia very rarely do anything despite the potential to stir huge amounts of shit, it's too easy for Germany to succesfully intervene if they do (never seen them fail to do so), the Serbians, Greeks, and Romanians just sit around with thumbs up their asses, Italian stalemate goes nowhere, Kruschev barely ever coups Ukraine into Internationale, and so on. All of these events are wayyyyy too heavily biased towards Germany's favor. If anything, the first phase of WW2 should be the economically hamstringed and militarily mismanaged German Empire ending up facing a quadruple front war with French and South Italians coming from the South and West, British Union, Norway, and Danish totalists coming down from the North, and Eastern buffer states stabbing in the back from the East.

The pivotal second phase in WW2 should be about intervention in the civil wars in major areas (United States most of all, followed by Spain due to staging potential, Russia and Ottoman Empire/Arab Union for additional fronts and mass advantage, Austria-Hungary, China and India for tipping the odds), and wooing the unaligned powers to build up a stronger coalition for the showdown so you can win BEFORE everyone gets nukes and Cold War starts to set in.

But in short, the biggest issue is just that if Germany doesn't lose WW2 first phase -> BOOOOOORING.

 

I had a cool as hell game as Bharitya Commune actually, pushing the revolution into South East Asia and helping out Ho Chi Minh while fighting moderate Japan + Jap puppeted China + German garrisons (Reds also won the American Civil War while I also have Thailand and Afghanistan as fellow travellers). Perhaps most impressively Jap naval AI is behaving semi coherently and making some interesting landings in Burma to try and cut off the bulk of my army, perhaps the first HoI conflict that hasn't been a complete steamroll for my favour and quite tactically interesting.

 

One case for me was a Pacific States of America game where my goal was to secure independence and gain all the possible additional core provinces, a lot of high stakes surprise attacks and blitzes were needed to compensate for vastly lower numbers in terms of aircraft and divisions. Eventually managed to accomplish the goals of gaining Alaska, Sonora, Baja, and the mishmash slice in the Eastern border. After that it was a matter of keeping the three bigger combatants in the US offbalance through gifts of oil and supplies and building enough land forts to have a defensive line that governor-general MacArthur couldn't break once he'd beaten the CSA and Union State. Sadly I could never get around to seeing how joining the Entente or attacking MacArthur would turn out, since the game always crashed mid-'43 for reasons I could never decipher.

Baron Ungern is also a guy who always provides a fun campaign.

 

What kind of Kaiserreich did you guys play? AI Germany always lost to AI France in my games, every single time unless I intervened. And not just a little, but curbstomped in half a year or less.