Aztek No Prisoners: Crusader Kings II - Sunset Invasion

Here's the inevitable pagan DLC for Crusader Kings II then. I'll just take a quick look at the feature list: human sacrifice...Mesoamerican Menace? That second part doesn't with my preconceived notions as to what this next expansion includes. "Brings the savage, blood drenched Aztec civilization to European shores, determined to wreak carnage on its inhabitants"? This might not be the pagan DLC I expected after all, but rather a fantastical alternate history upheaval of the sort never before seen in a Paradox grand strategy game. Set your eyes below the break for more info on what the Aztec invasion might mean for the ever-warring folks of the Old World.

The Aztecs will be a mid-to-late game force, invading from the West and no doubt making Spain even more of a mess than it usually is by that point. Rather than bringing potatoes and tobacco, the Aztecs are bringing blood-hungry gods and a "terrible disease", which is nice of them. Essentially, they're not that much different to the Europeans but in this retelling of the tale, they hopped on their boats first. Probably because they weren't interbreeding and dropping their own children out of windows quite as often. That sort of thing tends to curtail the launch of a bold Age of Discovery. Crusader Kings II's events tend to be more akin to an Age of Dysentery than Discovery.

It does seem like the first expansion that I won't necessarily want to use every time I start a new game, although that's not to say I won't be trying it out straight away when it's released on November 15th. It'd be a far larger undertaking, but I do wish this had been used as a mad springboard to add America to the CKII map. I always want more, greedy little sod that I am. Sunset Invasion will be $4.99 and I'll see about revisiting the game sometime around the end of the month and examining how significantly months of patching and expanding have changed it.

I've been playing around with the Legacy of Rome expansion recently - factions are brilliant, bulking out plots and intrigue and giving lowly rulers far more to do and the greater powers far more to keep the thousand eyes of their spymasters trained on. I haven't been continuing the diary due to a combination of distractions and a lost save file. So, there's a reminder of one of my many failures. Go me!

It all ended with infanticide. It always ends with infanticide.