14 DAY TRIAL // No World War II simulation would be complete without a complex weather and terrain system, and the team at Paradox Development Studio is aiming to make sure that Hearts of Iron IV will push gamers to take Mother Nature into account when creating their plans.
An official forum announcement explains that scripting will be used to decide probabilities for each weather type for each of the map's strategic region at defined periods of time.
Paradox explains, "For example we can get that hardcore, dirty, Russian mud everyone is craving for the months and locations where it makes sense. For modders out there we made a really nifty tool for setting up these values, so its easy to tweak and work with (so when you guys make the Cats of the 4th Reich total conversion I've been waiting for it will be easy)."
The weather patterns in Hearts of Iron IV include:
- clear skies, with no modifiers;
- light rain affects airplane and ship detection, as well as attacks between navies and air flotillas;
- storm, no take-off for carrier planes and bombers have reduced accuracy;
- snow, detection is harder as are attacks between airplanes and navies;
- blizzard is a stronger version of snow with even less visibility;
- sandstorm, detection of other aircraft is impossible and bombers cannot hit targets.
Hearts of Iron IV will track temperature at a province level, and the game will affect attrition for forces in the field.
Mud and snow will also affect unit movement and the way armies behave in the field.
Hearts of Iron IV tweaks terrain use as well
Paradox will use the province level to define terrain, and the entire system is perfectly scriptable in the coming grand strategy title, which means that it will be easy for modders to tweak the values.
The range of options includes plains, forest, hills, mountains, urban, jungle, desert, and marsh.
Hearts of Iron IV introduces bonuses for various unit types in some of the terrains in order to get gamers to evaluate the composition of their own forces based on the target of their attacks.
Hearts of Iron IV will be launched on the PC at some point in early 2016.
