‘Waking the Tiger’ is not a ho-ho-hilarious euphemism for onanism, unless you want it to be, but rather the next Hearts of Iron IV expansion. It’ll focus on making China more unique in the WW2 grand strategy game, complete with several possible political paths the country might have gone down, along with expanding other systems in the game. Paradox are taking their time with this one as, after announcing Waking the Tiger way back in November 2017, they today announced plans to release it on March 8. For now, here’s a new dev video going over some of its additions:



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Paradox have been writing a string of developer diaries explaining features in Waking the Tiger and the free update, patch 1.5 (codenamed ‘Cornflakes’), that will accompany it. These cover the three new National Focuses for China–Nationalist, Communist, and Manchukuo–along with improved German focus trees, a big new focus tree for Japan, and loads more. Get stuck in if you’re curious.

Waking the Tiger will cost £15.49/$19.99 when it hits Steam on March 8th. Paradox tend to keep a fairly tight schedule for expansions so I’m surprised that this is coming so late, 113 days after its announcement. For comparison, the next expansion for Paradox’s sci-fi strategy game Stellaris will launch 42 days after its announcement (that’ll be on February 22nd by the way, stargazers).

I don’t play HoI myself but, comparing it to other strategy games I do know, its expansions always seem a little small and unexciting? I suppose WW2 doesn’t support adding big exciting newness like planet-destroying weapons, black magic, factions of assimilating sentient machines, or the black death. Sound off, armchair generals.