Hearts of Iron 3 Demo was released today, full game release is still on for the 7th. The link shown is only one of the sites at which it is available. May also be on Torrent by now. If you do a search for Hearts of Iron 3 forum paradox you should find the main forum site. There you will find links for a quick start .pdf and a manual .pdf in different threads.
I have not played HoI since HoI 1, so I am an utter noob. The noobiest of noobs. I hope that someone more familiar with the series will offer some substantial comments. All I can say is that I am favorably impressed with the Demo and will buy the game.
Being an utter noob, I went through the Tutorial, getting somewhat of the flavor of the game. You will love your instructor! Then I started an example game and chose Poland. You only get 4 choices in the Demo, but in the full game you can play any nation in the world.
Paradox has made this game easy to learn. Having chose Poland, I set the game to Easy mode. Next, I put everything under AI control except Diplomacy. How much trouble can I get into with Diplomacy since everyone is intent on being mean to Poland anyways? And really, there was not much input to give in this mode, just watch notifications pop up on the progress of the war, pause the game, read the notifications, go look at what was happening. The sprites really look pretty good.
I only got to play for about an hour. No spoilers here, let us just say that in Easy Mode with the Player AI handling nearly everything for me, attacking Poland was not a good thing for Germany to do.
I cannot find any discussion of DRM to be used on the boxed set. It is available on Impulse, of course.
I think paradox is using goo for drm on all their new games. Just so you know goo is stardocks version of drm, that they liscence to 3rd parties (as their games do not have drm). Goo is basically impulse in a file.
I loved the 2nd one. Best simulation series ever, but I think I lack the time to invest in this right now. School is keeping me too busy.
I will probably buy it, maybe. I have like alllll the add-ons for the last one.
Actually they've said they will continue going DRM free for the games they develop...including HoI 3. Now, when it's sold on Impulse it might use Goo...not sure about that...but of GG or physical copy it won't be using it.
Tried out the demo...yikes, they took away AI management of pretty much EVERY domestic production slider. I'm not digging more micromanagement, especially when it looked like they were striving for more ability to hand tasks off to the AI. I'm gonna have to do a wait and see with this one.
all i can say any hearts of iron or europa universalis is a must have for any grand strategy junkie. the paradox forums are amazingly active so youll always have someone to help you out
Paradox developed games use no DRM. Even back in the EUII days, their publisher made them use a disk-check DRM, their first patch (may have even been day 0) removed it I think. Paradox and Stardock do think a lot alike.
One warning: 3rd party games on GG can have nasty stuff, and they're not good about telling you what it is. They have some unusual stuff you won't find other spots- like Suguri (dojin shooter game like the Touhou series) You won't find that on Impulse probably ever.
On Impulse it also doesn't use any DRM, but I'd rather by it on GG, since Paradox gets more of the money that way. (I wouldn't buy Elemental on GG, I'd buy it on Impulse)
To access their mod forums you have to enter a reg code (or did for EUIII)
This game is more complicated than HOI2, but it actually is more fun as well.
My friend keeps talking about HOI3... so i gave the demo a try.
Long loading times... tutorial is funny but doesn't give any real info and absolutely gives no idea how to actually play the game.
So i start the demo scenario and... 19 frames per second. The game has absolutely no graphics, and even with water and trees turned off, no multisampling and low resolution, the maximun fps is 30 (minus empty water when 100% zoom where i get 60) and thats not even consistent, mostly its 10-20... AND i wasn't even doing anything, it was the starting zoom, location and that on pause right after starting the scenario.
My laptop is not highend system (Turion 64x2, mobile; ATI Mobility Radeon 2600 HD, 3gigs of memory, Vista) and I don't normally care about graphics (as long as the FPS is consistent 30+ and i can run the game above "low", which is the case with all the games i have) but considering the graphcis of the game, less than 30 fps that is inconsistent, is ABSOLUTELY unacceptable. Now i didn't bother playing any further, so i'm not sure if its some startup initialization but with already long loading times, i don't think its the case.
Its a demo, but demo is supposed to be a taste of the final game... but with this thing, i won't be bothering.
Too bad. I sort of liked the idea...
The tutorials are awful...absolutely awful. I've played HoI 2, and even I was lost with how the new UI works...for a total newbie to the HoI universe, that has got to be absolutely baffling.
I also cannot believe they REMOVED AI control over the domestic sliders. Did people WANT to have to baby sit that crap again? So, I can now order AI fronts on what objectives to push for...so that I can micromanage domestic economic policy.
Not real thrilled. I'll be waiting to see what happens with this one.
Looks pretty complicated, even for a strategy buff like me. I'll wait a bit and see what the reviews say. The demo certainly did a god job of showing how massive the game is.
i fell asleep during the first 5 minutes, this game was NOT for me, thank god for a demo.
Grassmaster, I think they fixed the slider problems in patch 1.1 which is supposed to be in the download versions by now. I can't find the patch notes again. There is a huge amount of changes in the patch notes for 1.1 if you can find them.
Edit: (Oops. They did not fix the slider problems in 1.1. Many other problems are emerging as players now begin to comment on the full released game. I think this game will need several patch levels, perhaps some expansions and user mods too.)
HoI 3 puts all the graphics work onto the GPU, leaving the CPU to handle all the calculations. Thus, your GPU will get a major workout and you need a hefty GPU with 512. Think the recommended is an 8800. That being said, even those with the best available systems are finding it slow compared to HoI 2. Optimizations are promised but will probably take some time.
I do not understand why they made the graphics 3D. The only reason you want 3D is so you can look at 3D sprites, tiny little tanks and such. But to get framerate and game speed, you will probably switch to the standard strategy map counters, just little stacks of postage stamp squares. Why do you need 3D to look at little flat squares? The map as a whole does not look good to me. There are a lot of colorings you can do for various categories, but in normal mode it just looks drab and sort of depressing.
The demo really is strange. The tutorial just shows you where things are. Then you get a choice of four scenarios, each one dropping you into a war with more complications to deal with than a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Good way to scare off potential players who are not too bright, such as I'm. I suspect that they designed the demo to appeal to the beta testers, all of whom felt that allowing a prospective customer to start with a small out of the line of fire country and build things up from scratch would be too boring. No, let them find themselves suddenly thrown into the proverbial stinking waterway without a means of locomotion! har har har
On the positive side, it does look like once it has its rough edges worn off by patches and perhaps some mods it will be a great game, if you like moving little postage stamps around. Meanwhile I would suggest to anyone considering it that you spend some time on the forums reading threads including the technical ones to make sure it will work on your equipment.
Paradox really does care about this game. Johan and the devs are up there along with some really sharp moderators. The threads are interesting to say the least.
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=415
Yep, I'll take another look at it a couple of patches down the road. I don't mind the decision to go to a 3D map, but how do you manage to make a 3D map that doesn't really give a clear indication of terrain?! How is that even possible???
I concur totally!
I had the first HOI. But it wasn't good. (And I play computer wargames since the heroic days of 1984, when they cost from 120 to 240$. Yeah, those imported games were expensive in those days!).
I have Europe Universalis (excellent) and EU2 (excellent too).
But I didn't buy neither EU3 nor EU:Rome because...I waited and forums told me it was the good thing to do. Now, I tried this demo because a goud HOI would be cool. But... I totally agree with you:
- the tutorial is useless. They tried to put some humour while saying that "the button Democracy opens the Democracy panel". Wow! It tells you nothing about how to play, the mechanisms of armies and such...
- it is a hell of micromanagement. Unless if you let the AI run it. But Paradox is well-known for their crappy AI.
- it takes a lot of power from the processor. My laptop fan is working non-stop: not good for the hardware.
- I REALLY don't like to read on the official Paradox forum something like "these days, it's normal a game is released so bugged that the buyers are beta-testers and if you don't like it, it won't change!"
The game is not complex, it's complicated. It's not ready, it needs patching and modding, and usually thex charge their customers for add-ons... It's perhaps only a video-game but corporation reputation and customer respect is something for me.
They won't get my money with this one.
"They won't get my money with this one." Agree. All my initial enthusiasm has evaporated after reading the forum posts. The game as released was barely alpha, not a beta. Just from reading all the forum posts, I'm thinking probably a year worth of patches, maybe an expansion, some player mods.
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