Here's some good news for you World War II buffs and strategy game addicts - Paradox Interactive has announced that they're working on a third installment of the critically-acclaimed Hearts of Iron series. It's due in the third quarter of 2009 and they released a trailer at Leipzig to give you a taste.

Like its predecessors, Hearts of Iron 3 allows you to control one of over a hundred nations in the period before, during, and after World War II. In addition to training and directing your nation's troops, you'll also coordinate research, manage your resources, conduct diplomacy with other nations, and appoint your political and military leaders. If this isn't enough for you, Paradox is promising they'll be adding even more features for the third installment.

I'm pretty inept at strategy games and it looks like I'd be especially terrible at Hearts of Iron 3 because of the sheer amount of micromanagement. It's a very dense game - the game map is going to have over ten thousand provinces. It looks like Paradox spends a huge amount of time on backing up the HOI games with real historical data so hey, you might learn something, too (shudder).