The user interface of Hearts of Iron IV will be immediately familiar to veterans of Paradox strategy games. The left hand of the screen will be used to manage large national issues, alert tabs will appear at the top of the screen as a warning of things that need attention, and the right hand side of the screen will be devoted to information about troops. The very top border of the screen will include important summary information about the state of the game and the world.
Top Information Bar
Across the top left to center of the main play screen, there is a row of numbers running from left to right.
Political power
This is the amount of political capital the nation’s leadership has accumulated. Political power can be spent on completing national focus ideas, recruiting military and scientific advisors, changing trade and conscription laws, and some diplomatic actions. Each nation gets 2 points of political power per day, modified by certain traits, individuals, player actions or characteristics.
Stability
The measure of a nation’s support of it’s government. A country with low stability suffers penalties to industry, political power gain, and consumer goods. The average stability is 50%. A nation with 50% stability does not gain nor lose anything. Stability above 50% yields positive modifiers related to industry, political power, and consumer goods while stability below 50% yields negative modifiers in those categories.
War support
The measure of a nation’s support for war. War support directly affects mobilization speed, and attack and defense on core territory. Fascist and aggressive nations generally have more initial war support, but they can eventually be surpassed by democracies fighting a defensive war. Countries gain a positive war support buff for being in a defensive war and a negative buff when being in an offensive war. War support is also affected by world tension, enemy bombing, and allied interception. Nations with low war support tend to surrender quicker.
Manpower
The number of men available to create and reinforce military units. This is affected by a number of factors, primarily mobilization laws and the number of units under construction.
Factories
Three separate numbers, listing the military factories, naval dockyards and civilian factories available for new orders. We will deal with their roles in a future section.
As units fight or, in the case of armies, exercise, they will gain experience. Army experience can be spent in the unit designer to edit or invent land divisions. Naval and air experience can be spent on modifications for ships and planes, giving them bonuses to speed, firepower, and so on.
Convoys
The number of convoys or transports that are available. Each trade for strategic resources requires the allocation of a convoy unit. Moving land units across oceans and seas requires an allocation of transports. The number of available transports can be increased by building new convoys in the unit production menu.
World tension
To the upper right of the screen there is a glowing circle with a percentage below it, indicating the world tension. This percentage is the measure of how much tension is in the world. Some diplomatic and military actions, especially for democratic or neutral nations, require the world tension to reach a specific level. World tension is increase by historic events, declarations of war, and other hostile diplomatic actions.
Main Menu Bar
The Flag and 7 grey buttons just underneath the top bar provide direct access to the primary menus that are used to interact with the country. The hotkeys for these menu buttons are noted above. They follow, from left to right, across the top row of the keyboard. The windows they open are detailed below.
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