@mavs: Oh man, see, for me the card game was good in evenly matched encounters but suuuuuuucked most of the time because it was swinging between "trivially easy" and "prepare to get crushed." It was a real Goldilocks experience which soured me on that whole system, even though my few close victories felt amazing.
@leem101: So I think Hearts of Iron 4 could be amazing, though it was in SUPER rough shape when I looked at it last summer. But that's an eternity in Paradox time. The main thing I'd say is that it streamlines a lot of the complexity out of old-school Hearts of Iron and tries to shorten the distance between thought and action. So instead of managing giant resource stockpiles, it's more about managing input and output streams. Instead of constructing an entire chain of command from HQ all the way down to the last tank regiment, it's more about just grouping units into armies, designing war plans, and then putting it into action at the right moment.
For me, those changes are pretty cool, though I'm not sure the rate-economy idea is super viable (the Germans couldn't have fought WW2 without their strategic reserves, as the beta version I played made abundantly clear!). But I wonder if it will turn off old HoI fans, because man was that series about the details of WW2 command economies.
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