The AI sucks, automation is broken. Even when patched it is broken, buggy, and overcomplicated. Go play HoI 2.
Take technology for instance, rather than HoI 2's perfectly fine system which involved tech teams who would be assigned to slots and then research tiers of a technology, basic light tank, improved light tank, advanced light tank. The system has been thrown out for a HoI 1 system where you research multiple parts to create a tank. In addition to that you have to juggle leadership points to fund your research
On leadership points. It added a totally unnecessary element to the game which now heavily penalizes small nations. You need leadership for officers, espionage, technology, and diplomacy. A small nation now can't do nearly as much as it could historically, because they are now limited by officers rather than money. A foolish design choice.
Diplomacy has also regressed back to HoI 1. It now uses the triangle system where the three alliances(Comintern, Allies, Axis)
are at a point on a triangle, and nations drift towards them. It's unrealistic, it's pointless to form your own alliances, and it doesn't allow for "realpolitik" diplomacy(Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Comintern and Allies, the Big Three). Worse you can no longer warmonger unless you convince the world that the nation you want to attack is a threat. This is not historic, Italy aggressively expanded, Germany aggressively expanded, Japan aggressively expanded. They didn't need to prove that the nations they were invading were a threat. HoI2's system of belligerence was much better as it allowed you to warmonger, but at the expense of global outcry, and if your belligerence was high enough;global action.
The entire game is full of design choices like this. Almost every single change they made has needlessly overcomplicated the game without adding any fun whatsoever. For example Carrier Air Groups are now controlled separately from carriers. You no longer simply select a carrier and give it an order. This design design has made it infinitely more complicated for strong naval powers to control their navies.This is just one example of needless micromanagement
Another big problem is performance. Mid to late game is a absolute slide show. It doesn't matter what kind of computer you have (core i7, 8gb of RAM, 2 5870's in crossfire) you will mostly have piss-poor performance.I posted on the forums about this and was told that the game doesn't support multi-core processors, or 64-bit. I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't support Crossfire either. This game came out in 2009, and Paradox is telling me it isn't designed to run on modern computers. It's a modern game, very cpu-intensive with numerous AI scripts running in the background and it doesn't support multicore (I'm running the latest patch with semper fi as a reminder) Multicores have been out a long time, and hyper-threading before that and your engine doesn't support it, ridiculous. So I ask about performance and when their going to fix it. I get directed to a forum article on how to fix your performance problems on your own. That's right, they can't be bothered to fix it, or rather are too incompetent to know how. Anyway, most of that article was baloney like turn down your graphics settings. Yeah right, I'm not turning down the graphics settings on your crappy looking- game to run it. Fix the problem (turning down the graphics setting didn't help btw)
Paradox really disappointed me on this one. It's almost as if they didn't care about the product at all. They still churn out crappy sprite packs, and lame expansions (Semper Fi was 20$ and didn't fix any of the games problems) content to milk their consumers for money. I'm afraid my favorite developer is going downhill fast. Sprite packs should have been free, expansions free, and the damn game should run. It's clear that they release buggy games and use their consumers as beta testers (they even said this in one of their interview videos, albeit not directly. Quote: "Thank you for all the testing (referring to people playing the game) you do, it helps us make a better patch" Or something along those lines) I sincerely hope they get their act together and fix the damn game or they'll never get my money ever again.
BTW I highly recommend buying Arsenal of Democracy, a modder developed HoI2 game which does a magnificent job of modernizing HoI2, including the addition of higher resolutions and widescreen support. Otherwise just go back to HoI2 or EU series if you don't mind a different period.)
UPDATE: I would also like to make you aware of the upcoming Expansion, "For the Motherland". It has great potential, which great improvements across the board including multicore support. I have my fingers crossed, but hopefully it give this game some semblance of playability. The core design is so flawed though, at best we'll see HoI3's score rise to a 6.5