14 DAY TRIAL // Paradox Interactive has announced that its grand strategy title, Hearts of Iron 3, has received the 1.4 patch, which is set to fix the most pressing issues that fans have been having with the game. The biggest changes in the 1.4 patch have targeted the Artificial Intelligence of the game, allowing it to cooperate better with allies on the various fronts where it is engaged and tweaking its research and production routines to make it more of a challenge to a competent human player.
All the brigades and units that appear in the game have been rebalanced and the interface has also been worked on to make the information presented by Hearts of Iron 3 more accessible. Modders can make more changes to the game as more of the LUA scripts have been made public and the developers are also saying that the 1.4 patch runs up to 30% quicker than the initial 2009 release.
Johan Andersson, the leader of development for Hearts of Iron 3 at Paradox Interactive, stated that “With Hearts of Iron 3, I admit we bit off a little more than we could chew. We tried to be revolutionary rather than evolutionary, and while we will always strive for continued improvement, I think the lesson learnt from this project is that people prefer polish over attempts at breaking new ground.”
Andersson is saying that the 1.4 patch solves all the major issues that have been reported by players since the videogame was launched last year and that this is the final core patch for Hearts of Iron 3. If major bugs make an appearance, Paradox will surely release hotfixes to take them out and resources now seem to be devoted to creating an expansion for the game.
The other big Paradox Interactive franchise, Europe Universalis, has only reached the full potential of its third release with the Heir to the Throne expansion, so the developers might change Hearts of Iron 3 massively in the coming year.