The World War II title will include new mechanics, redesigned map

Mar 3, 2014 15:26 GMT  ·  By

Hearts of Iron IV is a very ambitious project that Paradox Development Studio is working on and I got a series of answers about everything from maps, production, battle plans, and tech teams in an interview with Dan Lind, project lead at Paradox Development Studio.

Softpedia: How exciting is it to work on a new Hearts of Iron, given that 2014 marks four years since the previous title in the franchise was launched?

Dan Lind: Very exciting! As you know, the Hearts of Iron series is about taking control of your nation of choice in the years around World War II and it all comes down to how well you, as a player, can navigate your ship of state. We have been thinking and discussing Hearts of Iron IV for years, and now we finally get the chance to buckle up and test our ideas!

As we designed each expansion for Hearts of Iron III, there were always things too large to implement and we had to put those things in our "future" pile. So as we started development, we had a few years of notes and discussions to build from. Our first goal is similar to what we did with Crusader Kings II and Europa Universalis IV – keep the complexity of the game series, while making the game more streamlined with improved interfaces and add and revise a lot of features.

Softpedia: What are the core design ideas that are powering all the changes made for Hearts of Iron IV?

Dan Lind: You as a player should have everything at your fingertips; we want to improve the usability dramatically compared to the previous games. We want to reduce micromanagement and instead let the player focus on long term planning and those high level decisions that have the biggest impact. We want less railroading through a single path of history and instead aim for a historical feel in the gameplay by making players live through events in the war rather than using hindsight to tell them what will and should happen.

Softpedia: Does the focus on World War II and its immediate aftermath restrict the ability of the development team to open a more sandbox experience?

Dan Lind: In a way, yes. Compared to Crusader Kings II and Europa Universalis, IV Hearts of Iron takes place is a much shorter time period, so making it a complete sandbox game would completely ruin the player’s immersion. In a WWII game, people expect WWII to happen even if many things that happened historically only did so because of seemingly random minor events. If you give too much freedom to the AI or the player, no play-through will look remotely like history, which is problematic for a game that people are buying because it is about WWII.

Striking a balance between gameplay, historical feel and player freedom is one of the trickiest design hurdles we’re facing as we develop Hearts of Iron IV. This is something that we are working hard on, because we need to deal with it without losing the sense of place and realism that people have come to appreciate about the Hearts of Iron series. Some things will require gradual changes, which should give a stronger historical feel as well as creating a game where it is easier to try out alternate paths of history.

Softpedia: How big a part will event chains play in the new game?

Dan Lind: Depends on what you mean. There won’t be a lot of minor random events happening (say, a random factory breaks down in Parma) but a large part of the gameplay will be driven though something we call National Goals which can be thought of as chained missions. There will also be events around ministers and the like, providing flavor to the game.

Softpedia: One of the original reveals is a new design for the map, which combines different modes based on zoom. How much info can players get without switching their view settings?

Dan Lind: This is a tricky one to answer at this early stage in development. The main idea is that the default map mode gives you all the information you need to make immediate tactical and strategic decisions in the war. So, when zoomed out, you can clearly see who controls what area and such. Zoomed in, you can see terrain, weather, time of day, location of important targets, etc. Things like the number of divisions will also be summarized depending on the view distance, so it should be easy to see exactly how many divisions are concentrated along a certain border, for example, when zoomed out while you can see exact placement when nearer.

Softpedia: What are the main changes made to the way armies are produced in Hearts of Iron IV?

Dan Lind: Hearts of Iron IV introduces two new concepts: Production Lines and Equipment, such as a Tiger tank or a P-51 Mustang fighter. A production line is a collection of factories set up to produce a specific equipment type. The more of a specific piece of equipment it builds, the more efficient it gets and the more quickly these units will get to the front as reinforcements or new divisions.

The tricky bit is that switching a production line over from, say, a Panzer III to a Panzer IV tank requires changes that drastically reduce the effectiveness of the line. New tanks mean new tools and new parts.

Players will therefore be faced with a lot of tough decisions on whether or when to switch over their factories to a shiny new model or keep producing masses of equipment from their already optimized production lines. Historically, the Germans tended to switch their tank versions much more frequently than the Soviets, for example. So you had masses of T-34s facing a wide range of German armor that was powerful but not efficiently made.

Softpedia: How important is it for the game to be accessible and how do battle plans affect ease of play?

Dan Lind: Super important! Quite often, fans of our other games will say to me “I love all your games, but I just couldn’t get into Hearts of Iron III, it was too difficult – like hitting a wall of information!” It’s definitely our goal that this won’t happen again. So we are taking everything we have learned from the development of Crusader Kings II and Europa Universalis IV, both of which made great strides in usability, and applying it to making good interfaces and giving the player the information they need, when they need it.

Battle plans are the first big step because they allow the player to quickly and easily give orders to many units, and will also by providing an interface that people may be familiar with from documentaries or history books. They also make it easier for the player to see their planned next moves and launch them at the right time rather than trying to hold an entire plan in their head as it unfolds in front of them.

Softpedia: Will tech teams return to the game?

Dan Lind: Yes, in a way. They won't be exactly like Hearts of Iron II tech teams which were hard to balance and tended to favor large countries heavily and restrict player freedom. We call them Research Teams this time around and they will focus more around trade-offs in research as well as providing cool historical flavor.

Softpedia: What are the changes made to the combat system in terms of unit statistics and combat stances?

Dan Lind: It's a bit early to get into this (again, the game is in pre-alpha so please forgive me for dodging). Land combat will largely be similar but naval and air combat will change greatly.

Softpedia: How successful will series’ veterans be when they launche the inevitable land war in Russia in Hearts of Iron IV?

Dan Lind: One of the core ideas in Hearts of Iron IV is that historical hindsight should be less of an advantage compared to Hearts of Iron III. The player will need actual experience with winter warfare and can't perfectly prepare for it just because they know the historical problems that the Wehrmacht faced, because their in-game troops and generals won't have that information. Veterans of the series will, of course, fare better than beginners since they are more familiar with Hearts of Iron, but it should be a fresh experience for them too.

Softpedia: Is a future Hearts of Iron able to support the same expansion model that has worked so well for Crusader Kings II and Europa Universalis IV?

Dan Lind: That’s the idea! This is much better both for us and gamers compared to the old model where people that were using expansions could no longer play multiplayer with people without them and making updates and bugfixes to the base game was much harder. Using the modular system of Crusader Kings II and Europa Universalis IV means that we can keep updating the base game both for patches and for adding and improving features while releasing new content as well.