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This is the fifth in a series of reviews looking at the evolution of Hearts of Iron IV. See the previous reviews here:
Hearts of Iron IV: Heart of Production
Together For Victory: Commonwealth of Iron
Death or Dishonor: Heart of Eastern Europe
Waking the Tiger: Heart of China

After Waking the Tiger, Hearts of Iron IV development moved on to the second major expansion, this time introducing a new design system for ships. Man the Guns was announced on May 19, 2018, and was released on February 28, 2019 alongside patch 1.6. Over a month later, patch 1.7 moved the game to 64-bit code, and near the end of the year patch 1.8 moved the game to the new unified Paradox launcher (talked about in the EU IV: Golden Century review).

Fuel

The biggest change in the patch to the underlying game was a change in resources. Oil is still one of the major resources produced in various parts of the world, but is no longer used in unit production. Instead, all oil a country gets a hold of is converted into fuel.

Fuel is a persistent resource; that is, it is stored until used. The revised UI has a small bar next to the fuel symbol showing what percentage of available storage is occupied, and will tell you how long until you fill it up, or how long until it is gone.

Regular infantry, cavalry, etc does not use fuel, but all mechanized formations do, aircraft do, and ships use large quantities of it. Like regular supplies, divisions will store a couple day’s worth internally, which they will consume if cut off from supply. If a supply zone’s throughput is overloaded, other supplies take priority, so fuel will start getting cut off first. When internal supplies run out, mechanized battalions will fight at 10% normal effectiveness. Aircraft consumption is based on the type of mission (“intercept” is efficient, while the long-range logistics and port strikes consume more), and will be at 25% efficiency while out of fuel, and ships are at 50% combat and 25% range (submarines get 20% of their normal torpedo attack).

All countries get a nominal base production of fuel per day, and then convert all the oil they have. Synthetic refineries produce fuel directly, and there are now five technologies that increase the fuel:oil ratio, as well as a new state-level building that stores it.

Overall, it’s a good change, and starts weaning HoI IV off of a resource model where having plenty of something at the start is of no help if you exceed production later. It can be irritating to have to worry about fuel just as there is more need to operate ships that consume lots of it in peacetime, but it is a much better model of the importance of oil.

BuShips

The major feature of the expansion is an all-new ship design system. Instead of just having a general ship type (e.g., 1936 battleship) that you can then add bonuses to in four different stats, you now add modules to a hull that provides base stats (kind of like in Stellaris, but it’d probably be better if it was even more like that system).

This does mean that there are a lot of extra technologies to research in the ships screen for various components. Most of the base hull technologies are faster than the complete ship verions, and there are fewer of them, as there is just one set of “cruiser” hulls, with “heavy” and “light” being purely determined by turret type (and type of armor now determines battleship or battlecruiser for heavy hulls—this should have been true for cruisers as well). This combination means that it takes just about the same number of days (assuming everything is researched at the base rate) of research to get through both versions (discounting some all-new bits, like mine warfare), and there was also an extensive rework to research bonuses in the patch.

The interface on this has a number of problems, starting with the fact that the slots and their contents are not well labeled (by the way, “fixed” slots are below the ship diagram, and optional/variable slots are above). Oddly, before you could, for example, pile more armor on a battleship, but here you can only use the available module types, so there’s only three discrete choices for battleship (or any other) armor now. When you get a new hull, your latest design on the old hull gets copied over to it, so that update is easy. But, if you have a bunch of specialty designs, you may need to manually go and re-create them on the new hull; thankfully, many specialist ships are probably meant to be second-line ships that you can keep on older, smaller, faster to produce, hulls. But if you are actively building and modernizing, for example, light cruisers and heavy cruisers, one of them will have to be updated by hand, at a high cost in naval experience.

The good news is that the patch also added the ability to do naval and air exercises. This of course will use up fuel, which is a problem for countries struggling with their oil supply, but means you can get peacetime naval experience with which to design these new ships.

Construction changed as well in the patch. Shipyards still do not use the efficiency mechanic of factories, but now there is a cap on how many can be designated to a particular ship. Capital ships have a limit of 5 shipyards, which puts a very hard limit on how fast a capital ship can be produced. A very interesting side note to that is that repairing a ship now also takes shipyards. Be careful as to what occupies the bottom of your naval production list, as they may be halted to repair damage from combat or a mishap during a training patrol.

I was one of the people excited for a more detailed ship designer, but the experience is underwhelming. There’s a number of problems, which generally boil down to a lack of obvious interesting decisions. You can put just about everything you want on a design, leading to very good generalist ships that won’t give you any trouble. It might be very slow to produce, but while the interface tells you the cost, it doesn’t tell you how that translates to build time. That said, once you think your way through a naval strategy, there’s plenty of room for specialty ships.

A good feature is that you can update older designs to use newer parts, and refit existing ships to that new design. Notably, most radar technologies now unlock a better radar module, which you could refit into existing designs. Fire control is a separate technology dependent on computing machine technologies and add bonuses to hit chances. You can refit much more than these, but they are force multipliers, relatively cheap, and were often refitted on ships historically. The real problem here is that refitting is done by finding a ship, telling it to refit, waiting for it to arrive and show up at the bottom of the build queue, and then (possibly) repositioning it in the queue, and reworking dockyard priorities. It’s nice to be able to do it, and generally takes no resources, but it needs some automation (e.g., telling the game to send one ship of a particular class in at a time to get new radar sets, or being able to refit a ship while its already under repair).

Enemy Mine

One thing that does increase the potential naval research time in the expansion is a group of nine new technologies around naval mines. The basic tech (that most countries should start with) allows the use of minelaying and minesweeping gear.

Generally speaking, both are best done by destroyers, though other surface ships can take the module. Two of the other techs allow submarines to deploy them, which allows for potentially sneaking into enemy waters to cause mayhem. Areas are rated for the general number of mines present, and cause enemy (but not friendly) forces to suffer ‘accidents’ and take a penalty to invasions on those coasts.

To help with the problems created by this, the expansion also lets you restrict your forces’ travel through a sea area. You can set access to either avoid or blocked, which will cause all non-manual sea travel to not go through there, possibly just to force trade routes to go through areas you have more control over, or to avoid places known to have mines or submarines operating.

In general, it’s a nicely done feature, but I’m reminded of Federation & Empire avoiding the entire subject because it’d boil down to if you have minesweepers along, you’re safe, otherwise you’re not. And despite the potential power of a solid minelaying strategy, most people (even multiplayer) ignore it… and so does the AI. It will never make more than a minimal effort at minesweeping, so this can be too easy of an advantage over it.

Big Happy Fleet

Naval organization was also completely redone for the patch. Paradox finally introduced a good amount of hierarchy for naval forces, which does help with distributing them. That said, the interface is is pretty difficult to decipher. Thankfully, initial naval forces are pre-distributed in the new scheme at the beginning, unlike land forces, which must always be arranged in armies and theaters manually.

Just like land forces, there are now naval theaters, which can be used for geographical splits, or just to organize by type (say, all the minelayers in a separate theater). Theaters can contain any number of fleets (which is the only level that uses admirals), which can then have task forces. Each theater always has a reserve fleet, which can contain task forces not assigned to a normal fleet, and can serve as a ‘holding pool’ of ships used to bring regular fleets back up to strength after losses.

One of the options in the ship designer is to assign an icon that symbolizes the design’s general role; this is important, as that’s how the task forces work assignments. You set a task force to have so many ships of a particular type, and a particular role, and the game knows to send ships of that type to it when some are missing.

This is all a big help—once you’re used to it. I’d say it’s harder to figure out at first, but with the separate patrol and strike force missions you can really make naval dominance work. However, production seems to get confused if there is more than one naval theater, and there is now an unfulfilled need for the logistics screen to tell you how many ships (especially destroyers and subs) are needed to fill out your task forces.

Britain Redux

Part of the patch was a rework of the British focus tree, though three extra branches are also added by the expansion.

The general rearmament branch got expanded and reworked in the naval section, and the Special Air Service was added for a bonus to the number of special forces formations allowed. With the expansion, the colonial branch can turn the Commonwealth into the Imperial Federation, a super-state of all or most of the Dominions (this will require a lot of stored political power for a series of decisions).

New to the expansion (and mutually exclusive with Reinforce the Empire) is a decolonization branch, which will dismantle the British Empire, but will grant more manpower at home (immigration of people who think they’ll do better there than under the new independent governments).

Then there is a pair of mutually exclusive branches, one of which is partially a rework of an old sub-branch that aimed towards war with the USSR. The overall branch is the historical appeasement policy, and is intended as a ‘play for time’, while getting rearmament going, and so includes focuses that construct coastal forts or other bases, and the Home Defense branch includes “Prepare for the Inevitable” for a permanent civilian factory boost.

The final branch is the full-on alternate history section, and the first sub-branch starts with Edward VIII staying King of England, while marrying Wallis Simpson, and leads to events causing revolts throughout the empire, which then must be stamped out with loyalist help. The second sub-branch is the Fascist route, which can kick off a civil war, but spending political power can avoid this, or at least put if off until winnable. The third is the Communist branch, which focuses on granting various concessions with trade unions in return for bonuses to help rearmament.

In addition, the patch included around seventy new countries releasable from current nations. Some of this was needed for the decolonization above, but the rest was put in just to be consistent with those.

New Deals, New Civil Wars

The American focus tree was also completely reworked for the patch. The main idea was to give the US player more to do in the early game, when usually it’s a case of sitting around, forced to do nothing while the war gets going. To this end, Congress was added with the patch, and current support can be seen in the decisions menu. Many focuses now require sufficient support from Congress, and there are plenty of random events as well as decisions that will adjust this.

Naturally, anything that needs Congress will expend political capital, sending members into opposition after getting it to pass. One of the effects of the Great Depression is -1 political power/day, so after picking a focus, at the start of the game, the only political power available for decisions and such is the extra 0.15/day caused by good stability.

The center part of the main tree is a series of mutually-exclusive focuses, starting with Continue the New Deal and Reestablish the Gold Standard. The former leads to the WPA branch, which has some economic bonuses and a research slot, and the other leads to the Adjusted Compensation Act, which does much the same, though the research slot takes longer to get to.

With the expansion, there are two further alt-history branches, with Suspend the Persecution leading towards communism from the New Deal, and America First leading towards fascism from Gold Standard. Both of these will cause a civil war if pursued, with somewhat different mechanics.

In the center there’s a second choice of The Neutrality Act, which focuses on the internal economy, and Limited Intervention lowers the bar for getting involved with what the rest of the world is dealing with, but is opposed by Congress, making it hard to do anything else. A few more things are available from either branch (such as Lend-Lease Act, though it’s harder to do on the neutrality side).

Overall, it’s a much better experience than the original focus tree, though the truly historical path is still a lesson in patience. The political shenanigans don’t really make up for it, but do give a fuller appreciation of FDR’s second term.

Extras

Two countries got all-new unique focus trees in the expansion.

The Netherlands have five national spirits with the expansion (only one, for Queen Wilhelmina, exists without it), greatly weakening its position. One is their version of the Great Depression (De Crisisjaren), which doubles all construction times. While the Netherlands sat out WWI, the carnage happening just across their borders made neutrality the only reasonable option, and so Aloof Neutrality also acts like The Great Depression in making it harder to join factions and the like, while Shell-Shocked Spectator of the Great War reduces recruitable population and factory output (surprisingly, they do not use some form of equivalent to the US’s Disarmed Nation or Undisturbed Isolation laws—the former seems particularly apropos). Finally, Weak Government lowers stability, and reduces political power.

They start with eleven civilian and four military factories, and three dockyards, the army is eight understrength divisions with a lackluster template (no support companies; but how would they produce supplies for them?), and only 70 recruitable population. What they do have is a large supply of oil from Curaço, aluminum from Suriname, and the Dutch East Indies, a sprawling puppet state (with no national spirits or other tweaks of its own) with its own seven-division army, a single dockyard and factory, and a lot of rubber.

There are three big focus trees, one starting with Abandon the Gold Standard (which they historically did late in 1936) which starts working off de Crisisjaren, and allows for improved industry, and can try to strengthen the military. Obtain Foreign Colonial Investments instead boosts the colonies, and can move the government to the East Indies if forced to capitulate in Europe, and Form New Government opens up a web of potential focuses to try and get protection from one of the nearby major powers. Extra fun bits are works to reclaim more land (which was indeed ongoing at the time), and the ability to flood provinces, which inhibit movement, and greatly aid defensive strength.

Mexico starts with eight civilian factories, three military, and two dockyards. Worse, while there’s good oil production, much of it is under the control of the US and Britain (thanks to the Oil Concessions spirit). Other signs of recent instability include Callistas, which reduces political power and construction, Politicized Army, decreasing planning, and making new leaders more expensive, and Caudillo Tensions, which lowers stability. There’s a surprising twenty-one divisions available, though most of them are really bare brigades, but there’s six regular divisions (infantry and cavalry) with support artillery, and most equipment is already in place.

There are three different civil wars brewing. Caudillo Tensions start “moderate” with a 150-day timer to go to “high”, and then another 150 days to go to a civil war. Various focuses will reset things, but the timer will continue until General Cedillo is supported or arrested in the focus tree, which are 3-5 steps down different trees, or the civil war happens and is defeated. (This last is all I’ve seen the AI manage so far.) The other two depend on the strength of the Catholic Church in Mexico, and can only happen if stability is less than 60%. Stability starts at 22%….

Finally, two extra features are the ability to play on as a government-in-exile (mostly meant for multiplayer), or get the benefit of veteran formations put together from defeated nations who you’re protecting. There’s also two new techs for AMTRACs, armored amphibious infantry carriers to help with landings, and two for amphibious tanks. Both are expensive to build and use, but handy if you have some serious naval invasions ahead of you. (Unfortunately, that last will need a separate template, whereas it might have been better to instead allow an armored battalion that is currently undergoing planning for a naval invasion to temporarily reequip with it. Instead, you’d need a duplicate template with amphibious tanks in place of the usual armor battalions, and switch a division’s template to it, and then back again once the invasion is secure and you’re driving inland.)

Conclusion

All of this came with even more knock-on effects than I have gone into already. For example, regular (as opposed to support company) artillery, anti-tank, and AA battalions are “towed”, and now those can be specified as being truck towed (motorized), so as to keep up with faster formations. This of course, eats up more fuel.

The increased number of alt-history paths for major powers does mean that things can go very strange if you don’t use the “use historical focuses” AI setting. However, Paradox also put in a new interface at this point which lets you direct what ideology each country can/will go to, which might be a lot to set up, but can keep things within bounds. I’d prefer a setting that makes historical paths more likely, but not guaranteed so that things don’t either always go down a historical path, or go completely wild.

The expansion itself is huge, and a mixed bag, with the headline feature (ship designer) not being nearly as good as I think it could be, but still worthwhile. Certainly avoid this expansion if you’re just learning the game. Get to know the base game before getting the ship designer and access to alt-history/faction versions of the US and Britain. Once you know the game, I do recommend the expansion if you’re ready to dive into the details of naval warfare. (I’d recommend getting the early country packs first instead, but they’re now part of the base game anyway.)