Hearts of Iron 2: How playable now?

[Protra3211]

Hearts of Iron 2 is now selling for 29 dollars. Which is a great price for a game less than a year old. Thinking of giving it a try as 2 patches have already been made. Shouldnt be too many CTD,s
The kind of games I like are Civ3 and CtP2-empire building games. Now I see that this is more of a tactical game after all its a WW2 war. But might have the same feel as EU2. How is the game now ? Is the AI able to mange all the details or just like HOI it has a sleeping AI at times when too many wars happened at once or forgets to build more units

[Dinner]

Very playable but I'd say it still had balance issues. The Soviets can conquor the world in 1936 and no one can stop them. The reality the Soviets were a third rate military force until about 1942.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Very playable but I'd say it still had balance issues. The Soviets can conquor the world in 1936 and no one can stop them. The reality the Soviets were a third rate military force until about 1942.

No one with a 4 million man army and more tanks and planes than anyone else in 1938 can be called a "third rate" force. Their asswhooping of the Japanese in the Far East in 1939 was pretty conclusive. UNless you say that Japan was a forth rate military power in 1939....

That said, the game is OK, but I do agree that taking over the world might be too easy. I also dislike the diplomacy angle. States are reticent to ever make peace, or join alliences and so forth. I think you can probably play a whole game in whcih the only two things you ever do in the diplomacy screen are annex states and make trade deals to get resources you need. All the other options seem rather pointless.

[lord of the mark]

IIUC a good part of the Soviet military weakness in the late '30s and 1940/41 was due to the purges of the officer corps, and the need to rebuild the office corps. In an alternate history where the purges dont take place, they could be much stronger earlier.