I bought Hearts of Iron 4 last year and I love it. Once I figured out all the controls and fancy buttons, the game was a lot of fun. The only alternative before I got this was Risk (or Yahtzee with Maps as a friend of mine calls it). I couldn’t get anyone to play it with me and I desperately wanted to play a war game. This comic accurately sums up my experience trying to get people to play Risk with me:

It was hopeless. Then I discovered Hearts Of Iron. Through memes. Being a fan of history (most notably the 2 world wars) I really liked these memes and might even have a shot at making my own in the near future. Then I went out and bought the game when it was on sale. I fumbled around in the tutorial and somehow lost the Italian-Ethiopian War and decided that maybe it would be better if I just started playing the game.

Bad decision.

I started as the Soviet Union because, why not? Since I had not played the tutorial properly, I ended up stuffing up the timeline by starting WW2 in 1937 because the Soviet Union invaded Estonia (and lost!). The Great Purge never happened and Trotsky was the leader of the Soviet Union.

Estonia ended up getting more territory than they should have and I decided to restart and play as another nation.

The second time, I played as the German Reich because apparently you can just chew through Europe and got a bunch of territories by guilt tripping Britain and France about the Treaty Of Versailles and questioning sovereignty. That seemed to work out and I was getting comfortable with some of the controls. I signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and became buddy-buddy with the Soviets.

Everything was going well until I decided to declare war on a neighboring country who happened to be aligned with Britain and France and… needless to say, things got ugly.

I ended up moving troops to the borders to invade but didn’t issue a plan of attack. Sigh. Germany became democratic (briefly) but not long after my grand defeat, I was up to my old tricks again. For fun, I decided to turn Germany’s ideology to Communist and started harassing everyone. This was a stupid idea because I ended up getting invaded by DENMARK. They cut right through the country and I didn’t have any men left to fight because I had conscripted them all.

This save got boring after a while so I decided to start a proper game.

I played the tutorial and could find the buttons and won the Italian-Ethiopian War and my confidence was instilled.

I started as the German Reich, set it to Recruit difficulty, buffed Italy and Germany and turned off historical AI. This was the right choice. I did the guilt tripping thing, questioned sovereignty, and teamed up with competent Italy, Japan and the Soviet Union. I invaded Poland but screwed up and didn’t issue a plan of attack so the Soviets got more of Poland than I would have liked.

Nevertheless, I pushed forward and at this point, I have the control of Austria, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Kingdom Of Hungary, Romania, Legionnaires Bulgaria, part of Poland, Yugoslavia, Serbia, Independent State of Croatia, Norway and Lithuania.

Heh heh, times are good. I had some close calls, like when Sweden decided to launch a naval invasion but I luckily pushed them out. Then proceeded to invade THEM. That’s karma for you.

What is one of the funniest things about this game is that Italy is actually competent. They have taken over France and Switzerland and are still going strong.

1936 1944

I am also working on a large, very huge bomb, bigger than any other bomb, ever™.

My allies have expanded beyond competent Italy, Japan and the Soviet Union. Now, I am allied with Greece, Fascist Siam (I turned them fascist) and the best of all: FASCIST CANADA! I was a bit bored and decided to stage a coup in Canada and it was a success.

Now, no war is without its casualties and the Berlin-Moscow Axis has suffered a lot.

All in all this game is going very well and I think I have a real handle on HOI4 now. It only took me like, 5 games and 6 hours to learn it.

Next stop: world domination.