Have you ever looked at a map and experienced an almost carnal rush of admiration? Then you've come to the right grand strategy PC videogame preview, for Hearts of Iron 4 has an excellent world map that depicts not only the movement of troops, but the vast logistical networks that support them. Enough games have tackled the close, tactical tit-for-tat of ground combat, this is a game about the industry, business and politics of war.
Hearts of Iron 4, like its predecessors, is set during World War 2, and runs on an advanced version of Crusader King 2's Clausewitz engine. Time trickles away at a gradual pace, but can be paused to issue complex orders. You take charge of the military infrastructure of a nation of your choice, and manage their war effort by tweaking interlocking layers of research, production, politics and, of course, troop movement.
You want to build a tank in Hearts of Iron 4. You've researched the production processes you need to assemble some famous German armour: the Panzer IV. You choose how many factories to assign to the task, but production lines for new technology are inefficient—a dozen facilities may only produce three tanks a week. Over time, they'll become faster and more useful, but there's a teething period that makes any switch to upgraded tech painful.
This simple rule lets Paradox reflect vital differences between each nation's industrial setup. German engineering favoured separate, tailored designs for their war machines, and that hurt their ability to mass produce. If you want to tech up as the Germans in Hearts of Iron, the production system will put you in a similar bind. If you master the tech transition problem, you can tweak new naval and heavy armour designs to boost their resilience, firepower or speed, and apply further buffs through the political system. Senior political figures apply bonuses to their areas of expertise; elect Joe McBoat to a top job and you'll receive bonuses to your naval output.
You've got your tanks, but you've got to get them to your front lines, keep them oiled, and keep their crews fed. Open supply lines are vital. At sea, you can target trade routes to damage enemy supply. On land supply is represented by a heat-map overlay that calculates how well supplied each zone is based on enemy influence in nearby areas, and the proximity of big population centres. Big cities are now capable of supplying themselves, which might seem like a small update, but this allows Hearts of Iron 4 to model prolonged sieges like Stalingrad where encirclement and air superiority won't necessarily guarantee a quick win.
Air dominance is still important, of course. You send bombers on air raid sorties from select home bases, but you'll want to make sure they're well guarded by fighters. If you rob the enemy of their AA capability, you can strike at their production centres with impunity to gain a vital production advantage. You can capitalise on your enemy's production woes with smooth manufacturing processes of your own, which you can accentuate by striking deals with the major tech companies of the time to take advantage of their engine-building and materials expertise.
You defeat nations by taking victory points within their territory, tied to a nation's major cities and landmarks. It's important to pay attention to terrain as you plan attacks. Countries are split into provinces, themselves split into subsectors that contain plains, forests and rivers that affect troop movement. You give your orders by assigning units to a commanding officer, and then drawing their orders onto the map, itself a detailed sketch of the world rendered in muted greens and coffee-stain browns. It's Europe through a moody instagram filter.
These arrows represent combat plans. As you leave them in place, they'll grow in effectiveness to reflect the extra intelligence and planning work being administered by top brass. It's a risk, though. Successful enemy spywork will reveal your movement arrows to the enemy and give them chance to prepare. As you'll see in the screenshot above, weather changes the map significantly, and there are penalties for sending infantry marching through the wilderness during winter in Russia.
Hearts of Iron 4 is shaping up well. It's slick and clever, and while there's not much, visually, to the moment that troops clash, the point of conflict in HoI is an almost incidental result of a vast continent-wide engineering effort. It's a game about careful, detailed state organisation and top-level strategy. You pull arrows across the map with a push of the mouse, painting out your strategy with sweeping gestures that give physical form to the feelings of power and control that drive a good grand strategy game. I hope its systems are balanced enough to prop up that fantasy. We'll find out when it's released early next year.
The below chapter provides all of the information on all resources available in the game. You have to remember that there are filters that will help you find information on resources available in individual regions.
While planning on expansion into individual territories, you first have to obtain intel on resources and define your war goals basing on that. If you want to wage a war against another nation, it would be good to get something more from it, than just a strip of land for building new factories. Of course, your territorial expansion will result in greater amount of resources at your disposal. This is when to take a closer look at your trade policy and decide whether all of the agreements are really as profitable and as necessary.
Oil
In this case, apart from geologic resources, you can also take advantage of synthetic refineries. Thanks to this, you do not have to only rely on basic resources available in the region, but also you can obtain the material thanks to technologies that you develop.
Construction | Demand |
Aviation | Low |
Medium | |
Cars | Low |
Mechanized units | Medium |
Mechanized artillery | Medium |
Tanks | Low |
Note: You can easily note that, when it comes to oil, it is material that is required for construction of many units, but its supply is not the key for their production. Thanks to several refineries and trade contracts, you can establish many production lines for the above types of units without worrying that you will run out of supply of oil to maintain military and civilian factories in full operation.
Aluminum
Mining for natural resources is the only way of obtaining aluminium. If your factories cannot satisfy your needs, you will have to take advantage of trade agreements.
Construction | Demand |
Aviation | High |
Gear for support battalions | Low |
Note: Aluminum is the basic material that you use in production of all types of planes. If you decide to develop aviation, remember that you should obtain as much of this material as possible. Also, you will require it for production of gear for support battalions, but demand here is not as high.
Rubber
Just like in the case of oil, you can obtain rubber from synthetic refineries. In this case, the income from trade may not be as high, but they should satisfy low demand.
Construction | Demand |
Aviation | Medium |
Cars | Low |
Mechanized vehicles | Low |
Mechanized artillery | Low |
Note: Rubber is necessary to build all types of planes. Still, it is not as important as aluminum, but you will require much of it, if you decide to develop your aviation. Partially, it is also used for production of cars, but local resources should be able to cover that demand.
Wolfram
This material is only obtainable through trade and local markets.
Construction | Demand |
Artillery | Medium |
Mechanized artillery | Medium |
Aviation | High |
Note: Nearly all types of artillery require wolfram, so you should focus on obtaining it, if you want to provide individual divisions with artillery. In the case of aviation, you require this material only for jets, but requirement of assembly lines here is 3 units, which is not too much.
Steel
This material is only obtainable through trade and local markets.
Construction | Demand |
Weaponry | High |
Gear for support battalions | Medium |
Cars | Low |
Mechanized vehicles | High |
Artillery | High |
Tanks | High |
Navy | High |
Note: High demand for steel should not be a surprise. It should be noted that steel is not required only for production of planes. You can notice increased demand for this material in all assembly lines. In the case of firearms, demand for this material grows with development of technology. As for the rest of the areas, this material is necessary at each production stage and if you do not have enough of that coming from your geographical situation, you will be devoting the most of your convoys to importing it.
Chromium
This material is only obtainable through trade and local markets.
Construction | Demand Rivacheg. |
Navy | Medium |
Tanks | High |
Note: Chromium is especially important for production of armored vehicles. Regardless of the type, you will have to deal with increased demand. Additionally, some of the assembly lines of the navy also use chromium. Demand in this case is medium, because some of the units do not require chromium at all. Still, there are units that will have to import it in larger quantities.
Have you ever looked at a map and experienced an almost carnal rush of admiration? Then you've come to the right grand strategy PC videogame preview, for Hearts of Iron 4 has an excellent world map that depicts not only the movement of troops, but the vast logistical networks that support them. Enough games have tackled the close, tactical tit-for-tat of ground combat, this is a game about the industry, business and politics of war.
Hearts of Iron 4, like its predecessors, is set during World War 2, and runs on an advanced version of Crusader King 2's Clausewitz engine. Time trickles away at a gradual pace, but can be paused to issue complex orders. You take charge of the military infrastructure of a nation of your choice, and manage their war effort by tweaking interlocking layers of research, production, politics and, of course, troop movement.
You want to build a tank in Hearts of Iron 4. You've researched the production processes you need to assemble some famous German armour: the Panzer IV. You choose how many factories to assign to the task, but production lines for new technology are inefficient—a dozen facilities may only produce three tanks a week. Over time, they'll become faster and more useful, but there's a teething period that makes any switch to upgraded tech painful.
This simple rule lets Paradox reflect vital differences between each nation's industrial setup. German engineering favoured separate, tailored designs for their war machines, and that hurt their ability to mass produce. If you want to tech up as the Germans in Hearts of Iron, the production system will put you in a similar bind. If you master the tech transition problem, you can tweak new naval and heavy armour designs to boost their resilience, firepower or speed, and apply further buffs through the political system. Senior political figures apply bonuses to their areas of expertise; elect Joe McBoat to a top job and you'll receive bonuses to your naval output.
You've got your tanks, but you've got to get them to your front lines, keep them oiled, and keep their crews fed. Open supply lines are vital. At sea, you can target trade routes to damage enemy supply. On land supply is represented by a heat-map overlay that calculates how well supplied each zone is based on enemy influence in nearby areas, and the proximity of big population centres. Big cities are now capable of supplying themselves, which might seem like a small update, but this allows Hearts of Iron 4 to model prolonged sieges like Stalingrad where encirclement and air superiority won't necessarily guarantee a quick win.
Air dominance is still important, of course. You send bombers on air raid sorties from select home bases, but you'll want to make sure they're well guarded by fighters. If you rob the enemy of their AA capability, you can strike at their production centres with impunity to gain a vital production advantage. You can capitalise on your enemy's production woes with smooth manufacturing processes of your own, which you can accentuate by striking deals with the major tech companies of the time to take advantage of their engine-building and materials expertise.
You defeat nations by taking victory points within their territory, tied to a nation's major cities and landmarks. It's important to pay attention to terrain as you plan attacks. Countries are split into provinces, themselves split into subsectors that contain plains, forests and rivers that affect troop movement. You give your orders by assigning units to a commanding officer, and then drawing their orders onto the map, itself a detailed sketch of the world rendered in muted greens and coffee-stain browns. It's Europe through a moody instagram filter.
These arrows represent combat plans. As you leave them in place, they'll grow in effectiveness to reflect the extra intelligence and planning work being administered by top brass. It's a risk, though. Successful enemy spywork will reveal your movement arrows to the enemy and give them chance to prepare. As you'll see in the screenshot above, weather changes the map significantly, and there are penalties for sending infantry marching through the wilderness during winter in Russia.
Hearts of Iron 4 is shaping up well. It's slick and clever, and while there's not much, visually, to the moment that troops clash, the point of conflict in HoI is an almost incidental result of a vast continent-wide engineering effort. It's a game about careful, detailed state organisation and top-level strategy. You pull arrows across the map with a push of the mouse, painting out your strategy with sweeping gestures that give physical form to the feelings of power and control that drive a good grand strategy game. I hope its systems are balanced enough to prop up that fantasy. We'll find out when it's released early next year.
Posted by3 years ago
Hearts Of Iron 4 Supply Lines
Archived
I can't seem to fully understand the supply map mode (F4), mainly what the numbers above and below the rail and port symbols mean?
Hearts Of Iron 4 Supply Lines Reviews
I have the basic idea that 'build more ports and infrastructure will help move supply' but I would like a more detailed explanation of that whole map mode. I have a good understanding on everything else by now but I can't find any videos or tutorials on how this works.
If anyone knows a link to some information or could provide an explanation that would be great. Thanks
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