Hearts of Iron III

Hearts of Iron III
Developer(s)	Paradox Interactive
Publisher(s)	Paradox Interactive
Engine	Clausewitz Engine
Version	1.4 (Hoi III) 2.04f (Semper Fi) 3.05 (For the Motherland)
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X
Release date(s)	7 August 2009 (US) 14 August 2009 (UK) 24 September 2009 (Australia) 4 December 2009 (Macintosh platform)
Genre(s)	Real-time grand strategy
Mode(s)	Single-player, Multiplayer
System requirements Microsoft Windows Minimum: XP or Vista Intel Pentium IV 2.4 GHz or AMD 3500+ (single core) 1 GB or more of RAM (2 GB for Vista) 2 GB available HDD space NVIDIA GeForce 6800 or ATI Radeon X850XT Mac OS X Minimum: OS X 10.5.8 or higher Any Intel CPU GeForce 7300, Radeon HD 2400 (GMA cards not supported) 128 MB VRAM, 1GB RAM 1.3 GB hard disk space

Hearts of Iron III is a grand strategy wargame developed and published by Paradox Interactive that is the sequel to the previous Hearts of Iron games. It was announced on August 20, 2008 and was released on August 7, 2009.

A Mac OS X version was announced by Virtual Programming on December 7, 2009. The game was available for purchase the same day.

Gameplay

Hearts of Iron III allows the player to take control of almost any nation that existed or even plausibly could have existed during the period of 1936–1948, guiding it through World War II. A variety of decisions regarding the armed forces, production, research, diplomacy, politics and espionage is the focus of the game.

The game centres around three factions: the Axis (Germany and its allies), the Allies (Britain and the Commonwealth, as well as France), and the Comintern (the Soviet Union and its allies). All other nations can slowly align with one of the factions. Nations are more likely to side with those with similar ideology.

Resources found in the game include: energy, metal, rare materials, and oil. The first three are required for industrial production, while oil is converted to fuel for vehicles, planes and ships.

The scope of military organisation ranges from brigades to entire theatres of operation.

Development

The first trailer from the Games Convention in Leipzig showed new features such as 3D graphics.

Paradox released a series of developer diaries and video showcases.

Although happy with the scope of Hearts of Iron II, lead designer Johan Andersson wanted to improve upon every aspect of the game, starting again with a new engine. The game's artificial intelligence (AI) was designed to be able to achieve strategic objectives and control forces delegated to it, including whole theatres of operation. The AI can also remember and compare strategic possibilities as circumstances change. Changing to 3D graphics helped improve other areas, as Andersson explained:

"Going 3D meant we could do another type of architecture where we could support more screen resolutions, and develop our maps in a quicker way. The biggest advantage from going 3D though was the ability to offload more to the GPU. With the machine advances during the last decade this gives us the biggest benefits in development when it comes to gameplay and AI."

Paradox had a vision for the style of the map, given that the player would spend the majority of their time looking at it: "...to create a map that feels like a WW2 map, like it could be a map which...a commander in the War would be looking at himself." The content of the map was also altered; the number of provinces increased to more than 15,000 over Hearts of Iron II's 2,600. Customizable divisions, a first for the series, are available, each one containing two to five brigades, with each brigade increasing the division's combat power and cost.

Reception

Reception
Review scores
Publication	Score
GameSpot	8.5/10
IGN	8.5/10
Crispy Gamer	Buy
GamerLimit	75/100
GamePro	70/100
Smartyweb!	65/100
PC Zone UK	60/100
PC Gamer UK	81/100

Hearts of Iron III initially received a mixed reception because the game shipped with a large number of bugs in the initial release. After several patches eliminated many bugs, reception improved and the game got generally positive reviews. In 2009 December it had a combined average of a 77 on Metacritic" and a 79% on Gamerankings."

Gamepro wrote "perhaps the worst problem is the interface itself, or more specifically, the amount of feedback it affords the player. In contrast to the old system, there is no instant way to assess how many divisions you have in each province, nor important values like their units' organization or combat values."

On the other hand, the game has been praised as being "tailored for experienced strat heads and wargamers with a lot of patience, but the game is more accessible than either of its predecessors and a great jumping-on point for new players who want to make the leap into a grand strategy epic."

Expansions

On 6 June 2010, an expansion called Hearts of Iron III: Semper Fi was released. It is only available as a download.

The Mac OS X version of the Semper Fi expansion pack shipped from Virtual Programming on July 23, 2010.

A second expansion named Hearts of Iron III: For the Motherland was announced on 27 January 2011 and released on June 28th 2011.

The Mac OS X version of the Hearts of Iron III: For the Motherland expansion pack shipped from Virtual Programming on September 28, 2011.

On the 22th of November 2011, Paradox Interactive released the Hearts of Iron III Collection, which include both expansions for Hearts Of Iron III and all previously released sprite packs.

External links

• Official Site
• Hearts of Iron III at Paradox
• HoI3Wiki - Official Wiki
• Hearts of Iron III Development Twitter