Some of the people who read this (by the way, who exactly is that?) might have heard me talk about Hearts of Iron. If you have, you know that it’s more of an obsession than a game.
On the surface it looks, feels, and plays a lot like Risk. But comparing Hearts of Iron to Risk is like comparing Halo 3 to the original Pong.
In this and all future screenshots, click on the picture to view a larger version.
That’s just the top bar. Yea. I’m not explaining the game in any more detail than that, cause it’d just take way too long…
Ok, so lets walk through a game! In this, I’m playing as the USNA (blue) in the scenario “The Abyss,” and I’ve declared war on The Confederates (black).
The Confederate’s Capital is Mexico City (it’s the one in the middle, surrounded by blue). I’ve landed troops in the surrounding provinces, and thus cut off all supply lines (they all stem from the capital). Now every one of their divisions is out of supply, making it easy to defeat them.
I’ve taken most of the southwest, and I’m starting to advance into the southeast.
I’ve taken the entire south except for one province. That gets taken soon.
I take Mexico City (allowing supply chains to resume. whoops), and push south into northern South America.
And there you have it. I’ve conquered the entire continent of North America, and some northern South America, and annexed The Confederates. Notice the date: It took just a little over 2 years.
Again, that’s barely scratching the surface. In this case, I didn’t have any allies to compete with (yes, I compete with my allies), so I was able to take the entire country. In other cases, such as the one below, you’ll see that that’s usually not the case.
Now, that doesn’t come with a before picture, but just pretend there is. APR (orange) originally extended from Cape Town (South Africa) to the Ottoman Empire (light green) border (there are still some APR controlled provinces there), and north to Roma (green) (again, still one province there), then west to the Atlantic, where it bordered Bourbon (gray) to the north. So, basically, everything there that is now brown (Republic of China), blue (USNA), off-white (Australasia), and light blue (I think that’s Sweden), and some parts of the gray (Bourbon), was once orange (APR). By the way, the big message window? A peace offer made by APR, offering some large amount of territory in exchange for me backing off. Well, sorry, I already had most of the country…
And another desperate offer, when all they actually still controlled was their capital (so they wouldn’t be in supply). Which is about to be taken. “Decline.”
So yea. After that, I declared war on Prussia and let my allies in Europe (mostly the Cossacks and Sweden, and a couple provinces for Bourbon) fall in on it. The Cossacks took most of the country. As the leader of the Axis (a required alliance even if the timeline’s been screwed with), they didn’t want to let the alliance die, so they allied with the Empire of Russia near the end of the war. The Russians started chipping away at the Cossacks, so they rushed back to defend the eastern border. Meanwhile, I went north, around Sweden, and landed in northern Russia. I surrounded Moscow, the capital, and next went south, then east to capture most of western Russia (the Chinese got eastern Russia). After that, I declared war on the Empire of Persia, and took almost the entire country (the Cossacks got a couple territories. Now, I’m preparing to invade the European Soviets (Stalinist Britain), Roma (Stalinist Italy), and PRRS (Stalinist Japan) (their all allied). And the people in South America (also Stalinist, I forget their name) might join them. So, a war on four different fronts. This should be interesting :).