You can oust Hirohito as Japan, put the workers of Tokyo in charge of a hardworking People’s Republic, and cast your lot in with Mao and the Soviets. By spending political power on national focuses and various, historically based government ministers, you can play as a Germany who pushes its luck as far as it can with political demands, but never actually fires a shot. These amusing and flexible ahistorical options exist for the majors, as well. I only had eight divisions on the field due to my tiny population, but they had kill-to-death ratios that would make a pro Counter-Strike player sweat, enough stored veterancy that their unit cards were emblazoned with skulls, and were overall just the hardest bastards on the entire Ostfront. I buddied up to Germany, spammed industrial buildings to keep up in arms production, and held off the entire might of a Soviet army on the banks of Lake Peipus into early ‘45. “One of the most entertaining runs I attempted was as fascist Estonia, among of the smallest and least-advanced players in Europe. It added up to make me feel like I was really there on those North African battlefields of ‘42, considering all possibilities both foreseeable and unforeseeable to eke out a victory. At the highest level of play, you’ll be considering things like waiting for the weather to break before launching your armored offensive, and the dilemma of deploying your strategic bombers in the wee hours of the morning for better accuracy on vital targets or in the dead of night for a lower chance of being detected by enemy fighters and AA emplacements. Climates, terrain, the day/night cycle, weather patterns, and supply lines are simulated and animated down to the individual province, and all have noticeable effects on your units’ real-time movement and combat.

That’s roughly 250 times as many as a Risk board, and it really feels like a board gamer’s dream representation of Earth during the Second World War. The amazingly large world map of Earth circa 1936 is made up of over 11,000 unique provinces, sea regions, and air zones. The payoff is brilliant for those willing to put in the time to learn.

Thanks to an unusually striking look and clean, easily navigable interface, the biggest challenges we Hearts of Iron 4 presents us with are the good kind: strategic planning, division composition, and fine-tuning economic and political policies. And as someone eager to invest that kind of time into a game as long as it continues to reward me with new layers of depth, I consider that a very good thing. Hearts of Iron 4 is an incredibly complex World War II simulation that will require potentially hundreds of hours to master, both in-game and poring over wiki articles that read like an economics textbook.

Hearts of iron tips