We’ve now played hundreds of World War II games as the U.S., USSR, the UK and even Germany, but if you’ve ever wanted to play as Yugoslavia or Hungary, or South Africa, then Hearts Of Iron is the game for you. Paradox’s grand strategy lets you control any country that existed in 1936 and take them through the Second World War. I’ll never forget my game playing as Poland , where I ended up taking Berlin. While the vanilla game is stunning, I found that the core mechanics couldn’t quite capture all the political intricacies of some of the smaller nations. While the first expansion buffed out the countries of the Commonwealth, this one looks at the small countries caught between the the giants of Germany and the USSR.
Check out the key features below:
New Focus Trees:
Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia will all get new Political Focus Trees that capture their unique position in the middle. This is the biggest feature in the expansion as focus trees determine the main political paths you are able to take in the game. They are generally somewhat historically inspired and provide you with a few directions to take.
Equipment Conversion:
You can now update your older units and refurbish captured enemy equipment. The latter seems very fun, especially for counties with low industrial output who can really only afford to train infantry.
New Diplomatic Interaction:
One of my biggest problems with the Vanilla game is there was very little coordination or help that you could get from your AI allies. Together for Victory helped by allowing you to ask for lend lease instead of only offering. Death or Dishonor goes further by allowing you to license military technology from more advanced nations or sell your own weapons tech to other countries.
New Puppet Interactions:
Fascist Governments will get new unique subject levels to reflect the iron grip they held over occupied countries.
As I said, the main event here are the focus trees. It seems we can expect that most Hearts of Iron expansions will be looking at different groups of countries and buffing out their political options. First, it was the Commonwealth countries, now these small Eastern European countries. I’m especially excited to try Yugoslavia. If I had one complaint about this DLC, it is that the Baltic Countries were completely left out. Poland had its own DLC at launch, but Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia haven’t gotten any love. They also were in the same political predicament as these four, so if there was ever a DLC to address them it is this one. My guess is that they were so powerless that Paradox didn’t even bother, but as a descendant of a WW2 refugee from Lithuania, I’m always looking for a chance to play as them. I guess I’ll just have to play Europa Universalis 4 and go back to a time when they were the greatest power in Europe.
