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Zoomed in view of the water, and the variation in land height. While it may seem that playing as the clan leader is the best choice, there is actually a lot more to worry about. Revolts, Daimyos wanting to separate from your leadership and the general struggle of power make things difficult. For the purposes of this preview, let’s choose Hosokawa, the easiest clan. We start of at war with many clans, which can make things difficult. It is best to make peace with at least some of them. When opening up the diplomacy menu, it becomes evident that Sengoku has a very good looking interface. The gold, maroon and parchment themed menus are very easy on the eye. With a game so centered around the use of the interface, this can only be a good thing. In this preview it was found that all of the warring nations would accept white peace. Keep in mind this is a preview copy, and balancing issues may still be around. By raising my levies from each province, I was able to create a sizable army. This is a gamble, as, if not raised, a levy will help defend it’s home province in the event of a siege. When the war is over, it is easy to return them all home. I moved my army to the border of one of the clans I was still at war with, the Hatakeyama clan. They are at war with multiple neighbours, so their power is split. It is easy to March into their lands, and begin seizing their settlements. The counters for armies look good as well, especially from a strategic distance. Part of Japan showing various Clans, and part of the interface. After fighting off their attempts at resistance, we now control their entire country, aside from a few provinces seized by their rival neighbours. The population of our home provinces are getting rowdy - in all this excitement they have been forgotten. The men of the court, hired to control specific areas of business (Diplomacy, War, Intrigue) Can be used to deal with this by reducing revolt risk, building castles or buildings and improving relations with a province leader, among other things. What comes next is up to you. Will you make the Hatakeyama your vassal, or annex them into your clan completely? Will you start a plot against a powerful rival, recruiting other clans to join you when you carry out the attack? Or will you build up your economy and become a power house, while you are at peace? The possibilities seem almost endless in this promising grand strategy title.

The theatres interface. Another development is the Air Mapmode. This allows players to view each airbase across their nation, and the range of the planes stationed there. This shows how far a plane can go before coming back to refuel. It is great for planning bombing runs or sending in fighter planes to battle it out, as you can quickly see where each plane needs to be based. Having bombers based just behind the front line allows them to easily travel into enemy territory. The new partisan system adds a new level of warfare. This allows you to be a bit sneaky and turn the enemies people against them. By slipping in some of your men, you can begin to create turmoil without actually marching in your armies. This is great to regain lost territory, via supporting rebels, and even to just distract the enemy. You can destroy or support various ideas, in your country or another, in order to twist the people into the place you want them. Coups have also been added, further increasing the ways by which the player can take the war to the enemy. When entering a war, each member of the alliance or faction (Allies, Axis, Comintern) can now set their own War Goals. This allows players to define their reasons and goals for the war, and also helps in keeping the war under control. One can state that he is entering the War for a specific reason, for example, to recapture territories X, Y and Z from the enemy. Once he or she has these territories, they can respectfully withdraw from the war without having to fight a battle that is not in their interest. In this war, Germany's goal is to conquer Poland and expand into France. Also present are a lot of little changes and improvements that add to the overall flow of the game. Previously, when playing, in-game time moved by at a speed of 1 real second to the hour in game. While this speed was often fine when managing forces during a war, it was painfully slow in peacetime, when your country is doing fine. The expansion introduces many more speed settings that can get up to the very fast, which fixes this problem. One of the major points added, for previous Hearts of Iron 3 players, is that of multi-core support. This means that the game now uses more than one CPU core, if more than one is available. This has a drastic effect of gameplay and everything now runs fluidly for those with multi-core machines. This is a feature that should have been in the original, but it is welcome now nonetheless. A zoomed out view of the Air map mode, highlighting airbases and the range of the planes stationed there. Also added by the expansion are smaller battle scenarios, such as Operation Desert Fox, the Southern Conquests, Fall Blau, and a couple of others. These are limited, historical scenarios that can test a player’s abilities or even act as a sort of tutorial to get a new player going. They have have a limited map, so gameplay can only take place in the area that it historically did. These are fun little chunks of gameplay, and a nice side track from the grand campaign. For the Motherland is a great addition to the already good Hearts of Iron 3 repertoire. It brings in a lot of new features and is a solid package. All of the new features added, be they war goals, map modes, theatre management or the partisan system build on the original and really make the game seem full and finished. While there are still some issues from the original that are present - it is not perfect - it does not bring many new problems to light. Still sporting a steep learning curve and heavy, historic, grand strategic, For the Motherland will be enjoyed by all those who liked the original. If you are interested in the time period, or like good grand strategy, this game may be for you. Be sure to check out our review of the original Hearts of Iron 3 and the expansion Semper Fi here.

Military Map Mode showing the unit cards that represents armies. These cards stack upon each other. When creating buildings or units, applying decisions, and moving troops around the map the game uses a drag and drop system. By picking up a building card, for example a railway, you can drag that card onto a region to begin construction. When you pick up a unit or building or construction, the map becomes colour coded so you can see where it is possible to put said building/unit. Green means it is possible, Red means it is not. This is helpful as it isn’t immediately apparent if you have a building of the same type in the area. Colour coded map with building card being dropped onto a province. Pride of Nations suffers from the same disease that many grand strategy games suffer: that of a steep learning curve. While the all text tutorial goes a long way to help, when entering your first campaign it is easy to get struck by the depth of it all. It is a good idea to try one of the smaller scenarios first, before jumping into a grand campaign. The scenarios offer plain historical objectives to be achieved, and have a definitive win/loss/draw. They are great for getting into the roll of the game. When trying a grand campaign, remember it lasts for a very long time, so don’t expect to cripple your enemies with a few quick moves. If you are looking for a casual game, this may not be right for you. The map that you play on looks great from a distance (see screenshot) but when zoomed in is not so pretty. While this is a minor issue if you really are into the game, it doesn’t do much for encouraging new players dig in and learn. This combined with the steep learning curve may well be enough to repel the more casual strategy enthusiast. The games runs on the AGE Engine, which does a noble job, though at some times it can be found to struggle and slow down quite noticeably when moving the camera long distances, for example from a colony back up to the British Isles. Load times are short, and everything fits quite well. The map from a distance imitates 3D well. Pride of Nations is a solid historic grand strategy game that offers a long and involved grand campaign. It comes loaded with varied shorter historical scenarios, great for learning the game and getting a taste of different pieces of history. While marred by a very steep learning curve and some technical and graphical issues, it does what it has set out to do. Historical strategy enthusiasts interested in the period may well find something they like here, this game is made for them. Little features like historically accurate unit portraits show that Pride of Nations was made for history enthusiasts by history enthusiasts. Just be sure you are up to the challenge.