I bought Hearts of Iron IV in the Steam Summer sale. It’s a WWII grand strategy game and it’s engaged me more than I thought it would. I started off a campaign as the UK (of course) and promptly realised I had no idea what I was doing so I watched a few YouTube videos. People advise avoiding naval combat in the first play through, so the UK wasn’t the best choice. The recommendations are to start with either Germany or Italy, so I went with Italy because I’m not quite ready to be a full blown Nazi. And Italy isn’t really famous for its WW2 maritime endeavours… despite 95% of its border being coastline… I should have thought more about that actually.

Everything was going well to begin with; I was happily conquering Ethiopia (the game starts in 1936, when the Italians were invading Ethiopia) and building up my military production which was going mainly into my land units. Then I started developing my colonies in Libya to secure more rubber and oil while working on my air force.

But then Germany decided to go and invade Poland and it’s been downhill from there. Germany is most of the way through conquering mainland Europe, meanwhile my naval fleet in the Mediterranean has been almost entirely destroyed by the French and British navies. Occasionally my bombers manage to take down a destroyer or a submarine, but my fleet is dwindling and theirs isn’t. I managed to kick the British out of Somalia entirely, which is pretty much my only success in the entire war.

Things started to look up after France capitulated to Germany, as more German ships started appearing in the Mediterranean and the French navy disappeared entirely, but even so, Britain is steadily taking Libya both via their forces in Egypt and through naval landings. I’m just about holding on in Ethiopia, but my supply lines aren’t looking great as the British control the Suez canal. Really, the British are a huge problem for such a small island.

Anyway, I feel very enriched for playing this game, because now I can talk authoritatively about the second Italian-Ethiopian war and I can confidently put Libya and Somalia on a map.