Wargamer Weekly: 38% In Our Favour By Joe Robinson

I’ve made it my mission to actually finish a game of Hearts of Iron IV. After some false starts as the Kingdom of Hungary, I decided to try out Romania instead, and just to give myself a break I even joined the Axis.

It’s currently 1946 and the War is still raging. I’ve contributed 18% to the overall score, although it feels like more because the AI doesn’t actually seem to do anything until I rock up and break the stalemates it keeps finding itself in. First we broke Africa, then we threw the Allies out of Europe, now I’m in the far-east taking the last of Free France’s land. The war with the Soviet Union was over in barely a few months, randomly, and now the entire Russian land-mass is split between Japan and Germany.

Globally, the war is 38% In our favour, but I’m starting to feel things dragging – since the allies can’t seem to get a foothold anyway, I’m surprised the AI still wants to continue. Makes me wonder what would have happened if Normandy had failed… would the Allies have just kept probing and trying to crack Fortress Europe? Or would they just have given up?

Food for thought while you ponder this week’s news…

Matrix Games/Slitherine

Highlight of the week was the release of Order of Battle: Panzerkrieg. The Artistocrats have taken the war to the Eastern Front in 1942-43. You can read our full review of the game here, as well as the second part of Jeff’s Specialization Guide. The final part looking at all three German campaigns to date will be released soon.

Did somebody say new Field of Glory II: Immortal Fire screenshots? No? I guess you won’t be wanting these then…

The Operational Art of War IV has been quietly impressing since its launch a few weeks ago, but with its near endless pit of scenarios and flexible mechanics, it can be hard to know where to start. There’s an official ‘tutorial’ scenario that is set during the Korean War, but a gamer that goes by the name ‘warspite1’ on the official Matrix forums is going through a journey of discovery of his own in the Campaign for North Africa 40D – 43. It’s pretty entertaining, and informative to boot.

Finally, Battlestar Galactica Deadlock is getting its first piece of DLC called the Reinforcement Pack. It’s a modest update with four news ships and a new mechanic for mines. Read a preview of one of the new Cylon ships here.

It’s due to release on December 8th along-side the free ‘Firepower’ update, as well as the game’s console release.

Paradox Interactive

We get to talk about two Paradox Interactive games again this week – Hearts of Iron IV has another Dev Dairy out, but Stellaris is also talking about war-related things this week as well.

In HoI4, Leaders are getting a bit revamp in the upcoming expansion – as they’ve mentioned in the past there will now be a ‘Field Marshal’ slot who will be in charge of all of the armies in a theatre. In addition, the way leaders gain traits is also changing, giving your commanders a lot more personality. You can read about it here, as well as the new ‘Command Powers’ mechanic.

Meanwhile, in space: At the moment, fighting wars in Stellaris isn’t really a satisfying experience largely because of the presence of ‘Doomstacks’. Currently there’s little incentive for AI or Player to not rock their entire fleet around in one fleet, meaning there’s very little fighting, and whenever the two fleets DO meet it’s very decisive. In the latest Dev Diary, the developers break this problem down into various parts and details how they’re going to address each component in the hope of addressing the larger problem.

Last, but certainly not least... just in case you missed it, Dominions 5: Warriors of the Faith was also released at the start of the week. You can read our review here.

That's all for this week's news update - seen anything else you want to highlight? Feel like your news has been missed out? Let us know in the comments! This article discusses games developed and published by members of the Slitherine Group with which we share an affiliation. For more information, please see the About Us page.