From competitive multiplayer games to the most niche strategy games, the concept of a 'meta' - a set of optimal choices that bring the most desired outcome - is not new. Sometimes changing up a game's meta is done liberally, but in grand strategy games like Hearts of Iron IV, you can't just throw up a quick fix.
But where there's a will, there's a way, and the developers are finally coming to tear up the old order and bring about a new era for warfare in Hearts of Iron IV. This is something the dev team have been talking about since May, when they first detailed some changes coming to combat, but former game director Dan Lind came back for this week's dev diary to outline some additional changes that are going to bust the status quo wide open.
The WW2 game has had a rather stale combat meta for quite a few years now - known as the 40/20 meta - which relates specifically to how you design combat divisions in terms of their combat width, a key stat when it comes to large-scale formations in battle. On top of the province width changes mentioned earlier in the year, the devs are also changing how combat divisions choose their targets in battle, and how damage is spread.
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