Introduction Hearts of Iron II is the sequel to Paradox Entertainment's award-winning Hearts of Iron, a game where you will guide your nation to glorious victory (or ignominious defeat) in the World War II era. With several Grand Campaigns, numerous Battle Scenarios, multiplayer capability, and your choice of the more than 70 playable countries that spanned the globe at the time, Hearts of Iron II will give you hour upon hour of challenge and entertainment. This is a highly complex grand strategy game, not a historical simulation or FPS. With Hol2's nearly limitless options and exceptional depth comes a comparable learning curve. It may take some time to become familiar with its richness and its multitude of controls, so don't be surprised if your first few campaigns end in disaster. There is no "right" or "wrong" way to play Hol2, and no sure way to win. You'll probably find that the lessons you learn in your early defeats will be just as valuable as any that you later gain through victory. Use those experiences and don't be afraid to experiment or save the game and then try a variety of alternatives. While this manual will familiarise you with most of the ins and outs of Hearts of Iron II, the most valuable resource of all is the Paradox public forums (www.paradoxplaza. com/forums), You can usually get the answer to any question you might have about the game in a matter of hours (if not minutes), It's also a place where tips and strategies are exchanged, where people from around the world will arrange multiplayer games, where you can read about others' Hol2 experiences (or post your own), and where new battle scenarios and user game modifications will often be developed. This is also where you'll find Paradox's latest post-release enhancements available for download and a large number of FAQ's and other resources. start: or is disabled for this drive: then click Start> Run and then type X:\Setup.exe to launch the installation program (replace "X" with the drive designation for the CD-ROM in which you placed the Hearts of Iron II CD: usually D or E on most systems). Simply follow the on-screen prompts to install the game. Keeping Up To Date Paradox is deeply committed to its customers and in my experience their product support is almost unparalleled in the gaming industry. The developers read (and frequently participate in) the discussions on the public forums and will often implement some of the best player-requested features or enhancements post release. They also make minor tweaks or alterations to existing features and squish the occasional bug that had previously escaped detection. You can go directly to the downloads page at www.paradoxplaza.com/downloads.asp under the Hol2 heading or visit the thriving community at www.paradoxplaza.com under the same heading. (You probably think I get paid to promote their forums, but I don't. They're just that good!) of your own experimentation you'll probably want to come back to the other sections where you will find detailed descriptions of all the controls and some of the underlying strategies and tips. My best advice would be a mixture of "don't panic" and "be patient". Hol2 can seem a bit intimidating and complex at first, but once you've played it for a little while you'll find that most aspects of it are quite intuitive. Remember that a full grand campaign game is quite long and that if you rush headlong into battle without preparing for it, you're likely to be just about as successful as you would be if you tried to do it in real life. If you can't find the answer to a question you have in this manual, don't forget that you can probably get one almost immediately on (yep, you guessed it...) the Paradox public forums. degree of control over the nation you are playing. The goal of this section is to give you a broad overview of the major components of Hol2: to give you an introduction to its key concepts before moving on to the subsequent sections that detail each feature and interface in turn. The Second World War: indeed almost every war fought throughout history: was not purely a matter of pitting man against man on the field of battle; nor is Hol2 merely a large digital battlefield. Simply fielding a larger army than your enemy will not ensure victory, and neglecting the "engine of war": your economy: can be perilous for your chances of survival. It is vital, then, to ensure that your nation has the necessary economic infrastructure and political wherewithal to stand against your enemies if attacked, or to support any aggressive moves you might wish to make. A huge army might seem invincible at first glance, but it can easily succumb to a seemingly weaker force that is equipped with more modern weapons, is in better supply, or is superbly trained and led. Elite forces can tip the balance in a conflict, as can employing a strategy that uses terrain or weather to your advantage. Your ability to coordinate every element of your armed forces to bring them to bear against your enemy will also greatly increase your chances of winning. Armies may be held in reserve or support other actions; air forces may be used to soften up an enemy's defences, disrupt his troops' organisation, hamper his supply, or even gut his industry; and navies can actively patrol enemy waters to embargo the import of much-needed resources or even bombard and invade his shores. For Hoi P l a y e r s . . . What's New? If you're a Hearts of Iron vet, then you'll find that Hol2 builds upon the best aspects of the Hoi engine, adds some important new features, incorporates a few big game-play changes, and has undergone some pretty significant interface changes. You may want to simply dive in and explore, but I'd recommend that at a minimum you read the Key Concepts section (and glancing: or reading: through the entire manual really wouldn't be such a bad idea). The complete "what's new" list is far too long to present here, but major changes include a complete revamp of the technology system, further abstraction of the air and naval system, a significantly expanded set of diplomatic options, and many military changes (there are lots of new units; brigades are now detachable; carriers have integral aircraft; and the new "movement is attack" combat system now initiates combat when you begin to move to an enemycontrolled province). Other changes include a revised map with more provinces, greater generalisation (and realism) for resources and global trade, major changes to the supply and convoy systems, a lot of very nice revisions to the various interfaces, the introduction of battle scenarios that use only small portions of the map and may involve only a few nations, a newly expanded MP option that allow more than one human player to be in control of a country, implementation of a new air and naval basing system, a change in the way that provincial assets are purchased and deployed.. .and much, much, much, much, much more! Getting Started Launching the G m ae Click Start> Program Files> Paradox Entertainment Hearts of Iron 2> Hol2 to launch Hearts of Iron It's opening movie. Hol2 (and most Paradox titles for that matter) tend to launch a little more slowly than some games because Paradox leaves a large number of files in simple text format to make them easily modifiable by users who might want to tweak unit values, write their own events, or even construct new battle scenarios on their own. This gives the game immense flexibility, but it also means that those files must be compiled when the game loads. Note: you may experience some issues if the Bink Player (a small program used to play the opening movie) does not correctly release resources on your system when it finishes playing the opening movie. If you suspect that you are experiencing this problem you can easily resolve it by going to the main folder where you installed Hol2 and renaming the avi folder to avi_old. This will disable the opening movie and take you directly to the Main Menu on launch. Victory The ultimate goal of Hearts of Iron II is to guide your nation to victory. For those who play a conventional game, there are a number of provinces located around the globe that have a victory point value, and there are the three main political factions: the Axis, the Allies, and the Comintern. Each campaign game has a predetermined end date: usually December 30th, 1947: and the victor is the faction which controls the highest point total of these provinces when the scenario ends. The shorter battle scenarios may have somewhat different victory conditions. Although this is the only measure of victory recognised by the game, you might wish to consider alternate "personal achievement" criteria if you choose to play a "doomed" nation, or a country that is not a member of one of the factions and remains aloof. If you are participating in a multiplayer game where it is likely that there will be more than one player on the victorious side you may want to establish some "house rules" about victory too, The choice is yours'. Installation System Requirements To play Hearts of Iron II you will need to meet the following minimum requirements: Pentium III 450MHz (800MHz or better recommended) Windows® 98/ME/2000/XP 128Mb RAM (512Mb or more is highly recommended) 900Mb free hard drive space 4Mb Video Card DirectX compatible (8Mb or more recommended) DirectX compatible sound card DirectX9.0 or higher (included on the CD). For Beginning Players If you're new to Hearts of Iron and Paradox games I would recommend that you begin by reading the next section: Key Concepts: and then work your way through the tutorial scenarios. These will introduce you to the most important parts of the interface and get you up and running fairly quickly, though they focus mostly on "how" to do something, not "why". Once you're more comfortable and have done a bit Key Concepts As I said in the introduction, Hearts of Iron 2 is a game of considerable complexity. It is vital to understand that virtually every aspect of the game is interconnected. It can (and will) take time to learn how each of the game elements interacts with each other, and to gain a good Installation Procedure Place the Hearts of Iron II CD in your CD-ROM drive. If you have AutoPlay enabled on this drive the installation screen will appear automatically. If the AutoPlay doesn't The Engine of War While Hol2 is undeniably a game that focuses on war, it is not exclusively about war. Conflict is costly: very costly: and can involve immense expenditures in resources and lives before a victor is declared. The engine that propels a nation through war and ultimately leads to its success or failure is its capacity for industrial production; and it is frequently for economic or geopolitical reasons that wars are waged: and often won and lost: in the first place. artificially capping your production during plentiful periods. Shortages of fuel, however, may be alleviated by converting some of your energy stockpile into oil; but this is a very inefficient process unless you have researched advanced technologies to improve the conversion rate, IC Allocation, Production and Gearing Bonuses Resources are consumed by factories to generate the IC you require to manufacture the various things that you will need in the game. You will often lack sufficient capacity to do everything you want to, so you must decide how to carefully allocate whatever amount you have. IC is used by the assembly lines that manufacture your tanks, warships and airplanes. It produces the ammunition and supplies needed to equip and maintain your troops. It is also used to upgrade your existing armies and to make the various consumer goods needed to keep your population happy. A country that lacks sufficient IC will soon find its forces in disarray and its population in revolt, A country with surplus IC can convert this into cash which you can use to fund research, purchase natural resources, or to conduct certain other types of foreign diplomacy,. .or to stockpile supplies and prepare for war. Excess IC can also be left voluntarily unused, which conserves natural resources that might be required in the future. A steady flow of resources and a healthy complement of factories will be vital to your success, but, as you'd expect, this may not be quite so simple to achieve as you might like. Some resources may have to be imported from your distant territorial holdings or obtained through trade with other countries, Imports will be at risk of loss if your enemy conquers your source or actively engages in blockade and embargo activities. Further, your industry may be subjected to a bombing campaign if you lack control of the skies, resulting in the destruction of factories and a drop in available capacity. An additional consideration when deciding how to allocate IC will be whether to take advantage of a possible gearing bonus. This reflects the efficiencies of scale that are achieved thr ...