HoI3 announced

[Nikolai]

Paradox Interactive keeps the Grand Strategy genre in its iron grip with the much awaited announcement of Hearts of Iron 3

New York, USA (August 20, 2008) – Amidst a backdrop of fevered online speculation, Paradox Interactive has today finally revealed the true identity of "Project Mayhem" at the Games Convention in Leipzig. The next Grand Strategy title to be released from the Paradox Interactive development team is the third instalment in the critically acclaimed Hearts of Iron series.

The Hearts of Iron series has become renowned for beingthe biggest, most detailed and complete strategic game series on World War 2 ever made. Hearts of Iron 3 will follow that tradition closely while focusing on satisfying veteran players through a multitude of brand new features and systems, including a huge map with more than 10,000 provinces.

It's clear this is a game that fans of our titles have been eagerly anticipating", commented Johan Andersson, Head of Development at Paradox Interactive. "Before revealing the project, our upcoming announcement online forum received more than 14,000 page views in less than 24 hours with a third installment of Hearts of Iron seemingly being at the top of everyone's wish list."

Hearts of Iron 3 is scheduled for release in Q3, 2009. For any enquiries on this or other Paradox Interactive titles, please e-mail pr@paradoxplaza.com.

Meet Paradox Interactive in Exhibition Hall 3 – A02 to find out more about this game.

About Paradox development

The experienced development team has released more than 20 titles, including multiple award winning titles like Hearts of Iron 2, uropa Universalis II, Europa Universalis III. The next project, Hearts of Iron 3 is said to be the teams biggest production to date.

Not the game I had hoped for, but surely a winning title. Johan, the lead developer, and a few others have answered some questions here and there on PIF, and one major thing is this: Where EU3 had 2000 provinces total, HoI3 will have 10.000 on land alone!

[Spaced Cowboy]

10k provinces, WTF. Good lord, there are maybe too few now, but this takes MM to a new level.

How can they balance the game with that many provinces?

LOL, I can't get my airpower to attack where I want it now.

[Nikolai]

Provinces are grouped together into regions. Regions are where the IC are, the provinces are for improved maneuvering.

[Dinner]

My thread was better.

[Dinner]

BTW with 10,000 provinces the map should be huge. Now you can have things like Portuguese control of Goa.

[DrSpike]

I never played the HoI series - is it better than EU?

[Standup]

I've HoI 1 (next to EU3) on my to play shelf for a couple of years now. Maybe I should just pass it over?

[Nikolai]

Originally posted by DrSpike
I never played the HoI series - is it better than EU?

It's based on the same principles, but it's vastly different. It's seen as a unique game, and very good. Myself, I like the EU series better, but saleswise, HoI has been in a whole different league, with much better sales.

[Nikolai]

Here's the link to the forum: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/...play.php?f=415

Much new every day now.

The first trailer has been released, just keep in mind this is one year from release and still in the alpha stage.

As said, the devs are answering lots of questions on the forums, one of the more interesting remarks are that the game's taking use of multicore processors.

[Patroklos]

Maybe I will actually get to play an online game now!

I discovered HOI2 long after its release

I know it is EXTREME micromanagement and would never work as a real game, but it would be sweet to have a HOI staregic came with a Panzer General tactical game option within it

The first trailer has been released, just keep in mind this is one year from release and still in the alpha stage.

The map look great.

[Nikolai]

I think you will like the MP in this game. It uses the same engine as EU3, and EU3 IN(latest XP) is said to be very stable. I read some time ago a guy praising EU3 MP, where he pointed out he and several friends had just played for 6 hours straight, without any issues.

And yeah, I too think the map look good. And when this is only an alpha...

[Patroklos]

Is it the same engine as EU3 or an updated one? It seems the map graphics are much different, but that could just be my limited experiance with EU3.

[Dinner]

Like many other people I would like to see the way resources work be given a face lift so that it is more involved. I'd like to see raw materials in and things like steel out which you then assign to make manufactured goods like ships or tanks. Also the command structure needs to be worked over; I'd like to be able to assign a commander for a whole army group (like north, center, or south) and have that commander be the over all commander for several provinces at once. You could still have field commanders in charge of individual units.

[Dinner]

I'm actually afraid it will be the exact same game but migrated over to EU3's 3D engine. Lord knows HOI2 was really just HOI1.5 as so little had changed it could have been a large patch or small expansion pack.

I hope not but suspect Paradox will try to do the same thing again. There is no reason the game should end at 1948 so it is obvious they just want us to buy yet another expansion pack in order to play the game out to 1963. As a small country you kind of need the extra time.

[Nikolai]

Originally posted by Patroklos
Is it the same engine as EU3 or an updated one? It seems the map graphics are much different, but that could just be my limited experiance with EU3.

It's the same engine. But it's been improved much graphically, already for Rome, and surely even more for HoI3. Remember, the engine is very customizeable for modders in all respects, for the devs even more so I'd imagine.