This is what Hearts of Iron II should have been but never matured into because of paradoxian stubborness.
More specific towards all the folks out there who are praising Paradox company for creating one of the best WW2 strategy games in decades while cursing them for being so stubborn - oh, i mentioned that already!
The problem with HOI2 is that several bad game mechanics never were adressed.
To name a few: Submarines never worked as most people thought they should (see the excellent "Are Submarines worthless?" thread in the Paradox forums), massive Airfleets attacking the same grasshalm and nothing else for months or years to come, or those embarassing moments when you realize that you just lost important units because you forgot to micro-manage those production sliders four times a day.
It seems that the Arsenal development team concentrated their work on exactly those issues.
For example those production sliders i just mentioned.
You won't believe me for sure when i tell you...
...that they finally work - ON AUTOMATIC!
Sorry for the caps chaps, but i really was stunned when i saw those sliders adjusting themselves correctly over and over again.
Just to test it out i picked a not-so-common situation and ordered my Canadian troops to attack Venezuela while being burdened with a full production queue and some unrest.
Well. I could have done better than the AI. But not by much. All in all the automatic system works very well and can be left alone to do its thing - finally, i want to add.
The same goes with other improvements i have discovered so far. For example, the resource trading can be set on automatic as well.
I told the AI to sell all that oil from Venezuela for money and supplies, and that's what it did. Maybe too well, as last time i checked it sold so much that i lost a hundred units a day.
I cannot say if this is an AI failure or working as intended so far as i captured a real massive stockpile of oil that i could never dry out.
At least my stomach tells me that all of the trades are working fine, they *seem* to work in the same way as the production sliders do.
So, this is not really a review. It's a first impression of what might happen when some modders come up upon the real thing and get their hands dirty.
I like it so far. More than any other HOI2 mod i played over the years.
I suggest you give it a shot. Revival might overcome Resurrection (HOI3) so to speak.