Vote for Hearts of Iron 3

[Micha]

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/features/48041/E3-2009-Readers-Choice-Awards/p4/c1/

Please give it your vote! HoI3 is the worthy successor to the Paradox series, known for immense depth gameplay.

[Spaced Cowboy]

I think it will be a bust, too many provinces and the AI will be brain dead. I wish/hope I am wrong.

[DarkCloud]

How many more provinces than the last game? There were quite a lot in HoI2.

[Main_Brain]

"10,000 provinces, the Hearts of Iron 3 map has over 10,000 land provinces. To put this in perspective there were exactly 2608 total provinces in Hearts of Iron 2"
- 1st Developers Diary, Johan

Spoiler:

We didn’t do this just to add more; we could of added 100, 200 maybe even a 1,000 more provinces and went there you go Hearts of Iron 3 gives you more. In fact when came to set up the number of provinces we had no hard number in mind, 10,000 was just the result. However we knew we wanted a bigger map with more provinces and to do this we had to solve a number of technical problems. However we are rather pleased that we have managed to create a map that is 9 times bigger (the length and breadth have been increased by 3 times) without everyone having to go out and buy the very latest graphics cards. We’ve also achieved this without having to compromise on the modability of the map, for those of you who enjoyed modding or playing mods on the EU3 or Rome map, Hearts of Iron 3 will be able to offer you the same.

With that in mind you are probably asking why did we do it? Well the first reason is that we can give more provinces to areas that didn’t have as many in Hearts of Iron 3. All continents have more provinces now, but we could add more to places that were not as favoured in Hearts of Iron 2. The Asian mainland is a big winner here, the Sino-Japanese war and the War in Burma now have a broader front in which people can plan and manoeuvre. Adding something to these wars.

What we did is to create three size groups of provinces, for ease we will call them small, medium and large. We aimed to make the provinces approximately all the same size inside these groups. This map is not about modelling various administrative regions inside countries but a place for fighting wars.

When it came to placing these provinces small provinces are usually found on coasts (like the east coast of America) and places were there were combat, Europe, large parts of China, South East Asia. The medium sized provinces then appear adjacent to the small provinces, and finally the large provinces are in places that are considered less important, large tracts of Siberia and the inland parts of the Sahara desert come under this category. Essentially the medium sized provinces act as transition provinces between large and small.

So to give you a sense of scale, the Burmese and Manchurian border have had their total number of province roughly tripled. While the Soviet Union’s 1936 border has seen its province total double (note I am not giving out hard numbers at the moment because the map is most definitely not set in stone and we will be seeking to continue to improve it all through development). This is something we really wanted, double the provinces means double the choices of where to attack and doubles the number of spots you have to think about defending. Giving players choices like this is always good; more choices like these means more strategic thought is required.

We also wanted to give combat a more blitzkrieg feeling. With more provinces there is more opportunities for you to carve out armoured breakthroughs and exploitation. Creating opportunities for encirclements or battles of manoeuvre were both sides. Mobile troops attack and counter attack. We are aiming to try and create a canvas were you can practice the operational art.

[DarkCloud]

...And the 2,600 seemed a bit excessive. How will the fit them all in?
I have the promotional map on my wall and some of the provinces are very small... where will they put these? More sea squares?

Even the explanation I read there makes me wonder. Only doubling the Russian border will perhaps add 100 new provinces... That is nowhere near the 7,000 they are planning...

[Nikolai]

Provinces are herded together into regions, which is the size of the HoI2 provinces. More provinces = better manouvering = more options for warfare.

[DrSpike]

Sounds like a lot of micro to me.

[Spaced Cowboy]

Sounds like a lot of micro to me.

Give the man a cookie.

I still play HOI2 Quite often, I have 5 icons on my desktop for it (mods)

[Nikolai]

Sounds like a lot of micro to me.

It is. Hence the possibilities of automation en masse and simplification at start up in various areas.

[Micha]

So are you done complaining?

Did you vote for HoI3? I can understand the doubts you have, but as a HoI3beta I can assure you that this game WILL BE a blast! Sorry, no details allowed.

[Nikolai]

Yeah, the game seem to become a great one. Among the PI games, the HoI series is my least favourite, but HoI2 was a good game. HoI3 looks to become even better. Hopefully I can turn the whole air force part on auto, never managed to get that thing to work in the previous games. Winning wars without an air force is....hard.

[Nikolai]

Voted a few days ago btw, when the thread came on the PI forums.