Darkest Hour: A Hearts of Iron Game

Darkest Hour: A Hearts of Iron Game, or DH, is a grand strategy wargame that is based on Paradox Interactive's Europa engine. It is described as a 1914-1964 Grand Strategy Game and it allows the player to take control of and manage nearly any nation-state during the 1914-1964 timeframe including its political, diplomatic, espionage, economic, military, and technological aspects.
The game was released on 5 April, 2011. [2]
Contents
1 Description
2 Gameplay
2.1 Community Mods
3 Development
4 References
5 External links
[edit]Description

Darkest Hour is, at its core, an evolution of Heart of Iron 2 Armageddon.[3] This has been considered crucial by the development team to make it easy to port community-made modifications from HOI2 to DH.[3] Moreover, the most important changes to the engines have been added as mods to the core game, with the name "Darkest Hour Light" and "Darkest Hour Full"[3]:
Darkest Hour (core game): this version is focused on compatibility with Heart of Iron 2 Armageddon and all mods available for it. The number of changed files has been kept as low as possible and all new options are disabled or set as close as possible to the original settings.
Darkest Hour Light: this version is available as a mod with only a few changes from HOI2, but nearly all new features are enabled.
Darkest Hour Full: this version is available as a mod without any compatibility with HOI2 and implements or reworks many new feature, the most visible difference being the new map.
[edit]Gameplay

Darkest Hour Full provides different grand campaign scenarios (where it is possible to choose any of the nations involved) or battlescenarios (focused on single theaters of operations, with only a few nations involved and playable).[3]
The scenarios are:
1914 The Great War (starting on June 27, 1914)
1936 The Road to War (starting on January 1, 1936)
The player can build land divisions, aircraft wings, and naval ships/fleets, and combine these into corps and armies. The player also has the ability to control the appointment of military leaders of land, air and naval units as well as to control the appointment of individual government ministers and military commanders in key General Staff positions. The player can declare war, enforce embargoes, make alliances, claim and annex territories. The player can also alter the social and economic policies of their nation using sliders, such as democratic versus authoritarian, free market versus central planning and so on. Moving the sliders will result in different bonuses and penalties, allowing for a range of choices and strategies. Technological research is also controlled by the player. All this is on a global scale, with the player simultaneously dealing and interacting with nations across the world. The game can be paused at any point.
The game provides a launcher that allows the player to change its settings (like resolution, language, etc.) and eventually choose a mod to run on top of it.[3]
[edit]Community Mods
It had been confirmed that many Mods designed for HOI2 Armageddon would also be converted to Darkest Hour, like the Kaiserreich Mod, the Fallout Mod, and Mod33. Kaiserreich was released the same day as the game [1]

The HoI2 Iron Cross expansion is compatible with Darkest Hour too[4]
[edit]Development

Darkest Hour was first announced on September 14, 2010 by Paradox Interactive.[5] The game became possible due to Paradox Interactive licensing the Europa engine to independent developers.[6]
[edit]References

^ Paradox Interactive (April 05, 2011). "Darkest Hour: A Hearts of Iron Game Released". Press release. Retrieved April 05, 2011.
^ Paradox Interactive (April 05, 2011). "Darkest Hour: A Hearts of Iron Game Released". Press release. Retrieved April 05, 2011.
^ a b c d e "First Developer's Diary". 2010-09-14.
^ http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=499365
^ "Paradox Interactive announce Iron Cross and Darkest Hour". Paradox Interactive. 2010-09-14.
^ Licensing Europa Engine, Paradox Plaza
[edit]External links

Official Darkest Hour Forum
Facebook Page
Twitter Page
Presentation of the Game in English French German