Being a new player to Hearts of Iron IV is very intimidating. You look around and think, I have no idea where to start here. It's like I haven't swum before and I'm just looking at jumping off a cruise ship into the ocean. What I realized is that the first couple of times I tried to play Hearts of Iron IV, I jumped straight into the deep end — including the last game I did, the video called Worst Hearts of Iron Player Ever. I'm grateful for all the support on that one, and so many of you said, please make some more Hearts of Iron content. I'm like, I don't even know where to get started with Hearts of Iron content. So I guess the thing to do is start with: how do I even try to figure out the game?
Start small — don't jump into 1939 or play Germany
It seems like the thing I need to do is start small. Some of you said you can't just jump into August 14, 1939 — that's the deep end. And then I saw a lot of other helpful advice that said try to pick a smaller country, because of course you want to jump right into Germany and see if you can do it differently and get it right. But some of these other countries, like France, the United States, Italy, Japan, and the Soviet Union, are also going to be really difficult. Some of the comments said, look, go into a country that's really tiny. You can maybe play something like Canada, or South Africa — pick a country that's smaller.
It turns out you can filter the list, even by region like the Middle East. For some reason I can click on "not played here" and see which ones I haven't tried. You have China — you can play China — and all kinds of different small countries. I could jump in and play as Mexico, or the Netherlands, or Poland. Playing Poland just doesn't seem like a good idea, though; you're going to get hit from both sides. But there are all these different countries you can play as that are a lot smaller and that make things so much easier.
Maybe I just play Canada
So I'm thinking maybe I jump in and do something simple. I think it'd be pretty easy to just play Canada. I don't even know where to start picking which country I'd want to play as. Somebody said play the Kingdom of Hungary — that's going to be super relaxed, and Germany can help you out if you suck. Or you can jump in as Romania. But then I look at these and I think, ah, Romania, Yugoslavia, what am I going to do? I'm not going to take over the world as Yugoslavia — although that might be really satisfying, right? And then some of these I don't even recognize, like these Chinese provinces; I don't even know where some of them are.
So out of all the countries to play as to begin, do you want to be in the middle of the action with the Netherlands or Poland? I don't know. I think playing as Canada might be interesting, because you think, what did Canada do in World War II? What did they contribute? You could just kind of stay over there and do your thing. It says Canada entered the Great War as a mere colony and left as a nation — but, like, what do you even do as Canada? I don't know. So we can select the country Canada, and it just seems like this would be pretty relaxing.
Picking a difficulty and facing the humility
Then there's the difficulty, and I don't even know what to click. Do you know, if you put it on Civilian — I hate even starting off on Civilian, because it seems like, or rather, on the lowest difficulty you have to face the humility of admitting, okay, I really do suck at this game. But of course I should suck, because I've never played before. I don't know what I'm doing here. Is it more satisfying to play a smaller game, or to start as a civilian and then whoop up and upgrade to recruit from there? As much as I got my butt kicked the first game I ever played on regular, it makes sense to just click Civilian.
And then there's historical AI focus: do I want things to happen in a specific order, or do I want things to just kind of have anything happen? It seems like, to start with, the historical AI might be easier. Then there are custom game rules, and I'm scrolling through all of them. You can even change Canada's whole situation — you can go into Quebec colonization, set the list to Free Quebec. I mean, this is nuts, how complicated this is.
Why I love this, and where I need your help
It's so wild — I've spent five minutes just thinking about how to even start a campaign. But I love learning a strategy game. I love a strategy game where there's a lot to think about. It can be difficult to make content around a strategy game, though. There's a lot of content to make, but it can be hard to talk while you're actually playing, because there's so much brain activity required that it can be difficult to even speak. That challenge of just getting started is real, and it's the same thing I talked about in the hardest thing in gaming is starting a new game.
So I really appreciate all the love and support from the Hearts of Iron community. I'm reading the comments and looking for guidance on where to dive in here, and to figure out whether I want to make this a Hearts of Iron channel where I learn the game — and what kind of content would even be valuable to you. If you want to follow along as I learn, you can watch more of these in my Games playlist. Thanks for watching, and I'm looking forward to your feedback.