Quick Look: Hearts of Iron III - For the Motherland

For the Motherland is the second expansion that Paradox Interactive has developed for their grand strategy game Hears of Iron III, the first one of their line up to use the Clausewith game engine, trying to tweak the gameplay and give a sense of scale to the World War II experience.

The main campaign has received quite a few changes including those long requested by the community like being able to see the minister line-up for other nations in the Intelligence tab of the interface.

There are also more tools to deal with Theater management, new resources and new mechanics designed to bring the game closer to the strategic reality of the conflict the game aims to portray, alongside a number of new events and decisions for the player to enjoy.

I've played one of the newly added operational scenarios, the one dealing with the battle for North Africa, in order to see how they differ from the rest of the game, and I am happy to report that Paradox Interactive managed something interesting with them.

The player is locked out of the strategic options, like building units or diplomacy, and the focus is on achieving better than historical results for one of the sides while using pretty much the same assets (I am sure that there are World War II buffs contesting the order of battle right now) relying just on tactical abilities and a bit of historical hindsight.

The scenarios are short enough to get through in one evening and after my initial success I was quickly interested in upping the difficulty in order to see how the Artificial Intelligence of Hearts of Iron III – For the Motherland can perform.

I am, of course, going to start off a new 1936 campaign with Germany and will report on its progress.

Here's a look at Hearts of Iron III – For the Motherland in action: