Teaching Paradox: Hearts of Iron IV, Part I: Operational Art

This week, at long last, we begin our long-delayed but always expected something that we blog for: the Hearts of Iron IV Teaching Paradox series!1 This has been a long requested series that I put off for a long time because I wasn’t entirely sure how I wanted to tackle it. But my thoughts here have at least congealed somewhat. So we are going to cover Paradox Interactive’s most popular strategy title: Hearts of Iron IV. And make no mistake: Hearts of Iron IV is popular, more so than any other Paradox game by some distance.2 These days, Hearts of Iron IV generally has more concurrent players on Steam than even strategy stalwarts like Sid Meier’s Civilization (VI, because apparently no one likes VII), Age of Empires IV, Mount & Blade Bannerlord, etc. Hearts of Iron IV isn’t just the most popular Paradox game, it is the most popular strategy game – the whole genre – right now.3 And that makes its historical assumptions well worth talking about. This week we’re going to look at how Hearts…