I can’t swear on its behalf yet, since I’m as fresh to this iteration as anyone else, but that’s one of the major lures this time: A vastly improved AI capable of remembering and weighing various strategic possibilities as circumstances change.
I can’t say I find the 3D look to be any more attractive than the 2D original, but according to lead programmer Andersson, offloading map rendering to the GPU freed up CPU cycles for the AI.
Like Europa Universalis III, it’s been transfigured both functionally and visually. Hearts of Iron III constitutes a total overhaul of every system–an attempt by Paradox to synthesize the best parts of the first and second games. Not that there’s anything wrong with the latter if, like me, that’s precisely what you love about this stuff. They pay out in triplicate for time invested, but it’s time you’ll spend studying and scrutinizing and sketching out flowcharts to keep track of all the reciprocating political-economic formulae. It’s the yin-yang of loading your game to the hilt with detail. Digging into a Paradox game and honestly getting a sense of what’s happening under the hood can take dozens of hours, literally. Most of the ones reviewing games today are either unequipped to grapple with their staggering scope, or simply more interested in following stuff with practically vertical hand-eye coordination curves (and horizontal intellectual ones).
The problem is getting the critics to play them.
