WWII Grand Strategy Buyer’s Guide
Making History, The Calm Before the Storm
Summary: Good, solid game play, medium level of complexity sometimes abstracting realism. Artificial intelligence can be aggressive.
Developer: Muzzy Lane
Publisher: Strategy First
Scope: The entire war
Players: Player controls one nation. Player can change nation after save. Most nations, even minor ones, such as Poland and Argentina are playable.
Multi-player: LAN / Internet play up to six players. No PBEM play.
Game Play: Turn based, each nation plots turns, and resolution is simultaneous.
Map: Region based, medium sized regions, and entire globe is covered.
Units: Divisions, infantry, armor, mechanized, air. Tech upgrade possible with advances in research.
Combat: Turns are resolved simultaneously. Combat occurs when enemy forces meet during movement. Combat may span several turns before one side is destroyed or forced to retreat.
Strategic War: Nations buy transport capacity to move units from one nation to another. These ships can be intercepted by naval and air units. Strategic bombers reduce production capacity, can be stopped by fighters.
Diplomacy: Alliances play a strong and key role in the game. Not restricted by history; but nations of similar political ideology will tend to group. Trade increases affinity between nations, embargo’s move nations apart, but otherwise not many options.
Economy: Production based on output of controlled cities. Investment in infrastructure and industry increases output and capabilities. Raw materials such as iron, population and oil required to build units, military supplies, or goods for the nation’s population. These materials either produced in home nation, or traded on the international market. Easy to use world trading engine
Technology: Can research increased unit capabilities, like better infantry weapons or heavy tanks. More than 20 areas of research, including industry. Upgrades of existing units must be paid for.
Events: No scripting in this game. Everything is dynamic by design. This means that the world is an open book for alliance possibilities.
Scenarios: Full war from 1936, 39, 40, 41, 42, or 44
Atmosphere: Nice graphics and clean, well thought out interface.
Mod Support: Scenario editor provided. Full editing of most aspects of the game.
Other Points: This game has gone through several rounds of improvement and keeps getting better. Good for lower end computers.
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I have owned and played this game for a couple of years now. It is always enjoyable and I like the fact that you can take Russia out of the picture and see how the world would be with only a one front ware.
Hearts of Iron 2 has about as much realism as a glossy version of Risk. The game has a “face” of realism but the mechanics of the game don’t give realistic results. The game system can be appreciated by itself without any of the WW2 references painted on but if you ignore the game system and expect to get results based on the WW2 stuff you will be disappointed.
Hearts of Iron 2 Doomsday is a great, but very complex, grand strategy wargame. There is no such thing as a quick game and the learning curve is a little steep. That said, it is a thoroughly enjoyable game. It presents the entire world and ever aspect of the war while giving you, the player, the opportunity to follow or change history. The results are indeed realistic, but with the great number of factors contributing to each situation it can be hard to understand at times why things happen the way they do. All that said, for anyone looking for a serious and long running grand strategy World War II game, you can’t beat Hearts of Iron 2 Doomsday.
Hearts of iron is the most comprehensive ww II strategy game ever created. It is awesome in scope, time consuming and very addictive.
Ive played all of these games and Strategic Command is a good measure better than the other 2. The game lets you focus on playing it rather than micro managing it. It has plenty of units, a good uncomplicated tech tree, an excellent (best really) editor, lots of mods made, excellent interface, high playability without even reading the instructions, and its fun.
Economics, Spys, and Diplomacy is simple which lets you focus on what players really want to do with WW2, move armies.
Graphics are the least appealing of all the games but it has high visibility. There is no trying to figure out what the map is, its obvious where units are and what their strengths are.
Overall very well built and streamlined. The company really cares about the game and keeps putting out a better and better product.