Paradox’s Grand Strategy World War 2 game Hearts of Iron 4 just got its first major DLC expansion Together For Victory. The DLC mostly focuses on buffing out the Commonwealth Nations of the British Empire with tons more diplomatic options. It also fixes some small but incredibly annoying quirks of the vanilla game. Below is an overview of some of the most exciting things, big and small, that you can look out for.
New Commonwealth Diplomacy:
If you’re starting a new game, I urge you to try playing as South Africa, Australia, Canada, or The Raj (India). All these countries had their national focus trees fleshed out. For new Hearts of Iron players - National Focus Trees are how you guide the politics of your country. You may see options to Annex neighbors, to push your country towards Communism, or maybe spark a civil war. In the case of these Commonwealth countries, expect to see a lot of options for when and how you want to break with your Imperial overlords in Westminster.
A lot of these will be really interesting, historically plausible directions to move, unique for each country. Now is definitely the time to try your hand at one of these.
Changes to Grand Battle Strategy:
There are a few adjustments to how you monitor and control your armies. Prior to the update, I found it nearly impossible to really tell how my armies were doing. I could see if they were winning battles, but couldn’t easily tell how many troops and equipment was being lost to do so. The DLC adds some new tools to better dig into how well you’re fighting.
Battlelog: The first change is the battlelog. Now, for each theater, you can scroll through all the completed battles and see details that reveal how your troops fared. You can then make adjustments to the equipment and division makeup as necessary. It’s still pretty work intensive, but at least it is possible. I think it will be far more usable for smaller countries and fronts. When I tried to use it on my giant 200+ division front with the Soviet Union, it was just too much information to sift through in any meaningful way.
Theater Quick Tool: Also new are quick tools in the Theater Menu that show at a high level how you are doing in that theater. It will tell you how many of your attacks you are winning, or how well you are defending against attacks. If the battlelog is too much for you, this is an easy well to see if you need to reinforce, halt an attack or push harder.
Spearhead Battleplan: You now have a new battle plan at your disposal: the spearhead. Instead of taking territory and then spreading out along the flanks to slowly expand the line, the spearhead will push deep in only the territories you select. This will mostly be useful for smaller shock troops in conjunction with a larger conventional plan on the same line. You could use it to cut through the line in an attempt to encircle large amounts of troops. Or maybe to rush to a port or city that you think you can take if the enemy has less time to reinforce. I’ll be curious to see how players find innovative ways to use this tactic.
Very Helpful Minor Changes:
Lend-Lease Changes: I previously listed this as my most wanted feature, but now you can request Lend-Lease. This is huge for people like me who love trying to survive as small nations. I’ve had so many scenarios where I know the U.S. would happily to send me some guns, but I had no way to request it and the AI wasn’t aggressive in using Lend-Lease. Now as a small nation, you can request supplies from your larger neighbors. Time to start a new Poland playthrough?
Outdated Equipment Notifiers: Previously you just had to remember to update your production lines to newer equipment. While waging war over land, sea and air across the entire planet it could be pretty hard to remember to switch your factories over to the newer trucks you researched. Of course, sometimes you want to keep producing out of date equipment because your factories lose efficiency when you switch over, but now there is a helpful indicator to let you know when you are producing out of date equipment. They’ve also changed the background color in the production screen for equipment that could be upgraded, providing another reminder.
These are the changes I’m loving but let me know if I missed any that you’re excited about. You can see the full list here.
