14 DAY TRIAL // The team at the Paradox Development Studios is delivering a new diary for their new Hearts of Iron IV, which is offering fans of the series more information about the land doctrines that they will be able to research and implement for their armies.
The company says that it will offer four different progression paths, each of them based on the realities of warfare during World War II and that they will be mutually exclusive, creating a lot of differentiation between nations.
On the official forum, the company states, “Each path also has one or more mutually exclusive choices to further differentiate the doctrines and sub-doctrines. Because we are still pre-alpha, I can't really describe exactly what each tech in the tree does at the moment; this can and will change as we implement, test and iterate over them.”
Mobile Warfare will be the doctrine that’s traditionally associated with the German army, focused on the power of armor and motorized units that can break through the enemy lines while leaving the mop-up work to the slower infantry.
The sub-bonuses allow the player to choose whether he wants to focus on infantry or on tanks and whether he might be interested in switching to a defensive posture at some point or if he aims to further develop the mobility of his armies.
Paradox explains that, “And yes, we know Blitzkrieg wasn't a formal doctrine, but the mishmash of innovations and new techniques that the Germans used is popularly known as such, so we roll with it.”
Superior Firepower is the doctrine that’s traditionally used by players of the United States and focuses on powerful individual divisions that can benefit from friendly airpower and from ground-based artillery fire.
It can be tweaked using bonuses for Airland Battle or Shock and Awe.
The Soviets and the Chinese start off using Mass Assault, which has many less powerful divisions to simply overwhelm enemy defenses, with little focus on support units, but gamers can choose to develop the Deep Battle Doctrine, which offers solid boosts to armor and artillery.
Britain, France, Japan and Italy will start using the Brand Battleplan doctrine, which is more traditional and offers solid bonuses for defense, while making it hard to attack and sustain an offensive.
Players can improve it, but switching to another set of ideas is also a possibility, although it comes with some costs.
Hearts of Iron IV will be launched in the first few months of next year.