14 DAY TRIAL // The team at Paradox Development Studio plans to launch Hearts of Iron IV at some point near the start of 2015, and the company says that gamers who have loved the series since it was first introduced will be surprised by the way it has shifted some of the core elements of the experience.
Dan Lind, who is the leading developer on the project, tells GameReactor that the emphasis this time around is on creating plans for the future, which rely on the player’s strategic thinking and ability to allocate resources.
The need to react to events in the game world will be more limited and there will be less opportunities for gamers to constantly tinker with their armies and with the strategies that they are aiming to employ.
Dan Lind states, “The one biggest thing is probably the planner, the AI co-operation stuff where you draw plans and hand them over to leaders to execute for you. The other one I think is strategic warfare for air and naval which was something we kind of wanted and semi-designed for Hearts of Iron III, but we never had time to really finish it there and now we're kind of doing that for Hearts of Iron IV instead.”
Grand strategy for the masses
Hearts of Iron IV, as the other big grand strategy titles from Paradox, has long been seen as impossible to comprehend by a large number of players, but the team is determined to change that by streamlining the interface and by offering plenty of info that can be used to base decisions on.
Hearts of Iron IV will allow gamers to choose any nation in the world and guide it through the difficult years of World War II.
Gamers tend to gravitate towards important nations, from the United States and Great Britain to Germany, the USSR or Japan, but the studio plans to make it interesting to play even as medium participants in the conflict, like Hungary, Argentina or Romania.
So far, the Paradox Development Studio team has talked about a new production system, which will simulate the momentum that industrial construction gained during the war, and about a new approach to air combat.
Before Hearts of Iron IV is launched, grand strategy fans will be able to enjoy a new Art of War expansion for Europa Universalis IV and the Charlemagne content linked to Crusader Kings II.