Getting Started in Hearts of Iron III

Having chosen your country and start date, the game will start in paused mode. Speed control is very important, so familiarize yourself with the buttons near the date in the lower line of the bar at the top of the screen (I added an orange rectangle around them in the screenshot on the right, click to enlarge). Don’t unpause just yet. I chose France in the Blitzkrieg Campaign, which will make for plenty of action right away and a great, quick, compact introduction.

Before you even touch an army, there are probably a few icons at the top left, just under the main bar at the top of the screen. Mousing over them will give you a tool tip, holding there for a second longer will bring up details. There is a lot to keep track of in Hearts of Iron III, but these icons will let you know the critical details, like when you are at war and with whom, have units to deploy, wasted research or industrial capacity, undersupplied units, and so on.

These are our most pressing concerns, so we will deal with them first.

The first icon you will usually see (other than the one that tells you you’re at war) is a little gavel and papers, and mousing over it tells us we could have more appropriate laws. This is normal whenever your country goes to war, at which point most countries will benefit from changing legal policies. Holding your mouse here will give specific changes you should probably make.

Click on the Politics button in the bar at the top of the screen to bring up that view. You can dictate legal policy on seven topics. Note that if the political side isn’t your thing, you can click the little arrows to the left and right of the word “normal” under the word politics, above the Politics window at the right corner, which will set Politics to AI control. Unlike some facets of the game though, Politics isn’t too bad in terms of micro-management, and the decisions involved are pretty important. If you will use the AI, just skip ahead to the next page.

The more restrictive your Civil and Press laws, the easier it is to maintain loyalty and root out spies, but you can only do this if political conditions in the country are right. Hitler has a lot more latitude than FDR, for instance. The same goes for conscription laws, with more aggressive settings getting you a larger manpower and officer recruitment pool. Economic Laws and Industrial Policy let you set how war oriented your economy is, allowing you to make more money in peace time and crank out more units when needed in war time.

Educational Policy lets you decide how much money to pour into developing leadership. Your leadership pool gets divided between Diplomats, Spies, Officers, and Researchers (we’ll come back to this when we discuss the tech tree), so unless you are going broke, it is money well spent. Training Laws are a similar trade off: it takes longer to put troops in the field, but the experience bonus is generally worth it.

This window also lets you see and change (changing depends on the country’s politics) your cabinet members. I usually don’t bother with this, but since I’m running France I got rid of a few people with collaborationist leanings and put in a few loyal sons of the Republic.