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6 months ago
Feature: Veni, videogame, vici
Imperator: Rome finds the difference between obstruction and intimidation
Bugger me, Paradox Interactive’s grand strategy games are a lot, right? If I could put that even more in bold, I would have fattened up like a sacrificial pig before god-appeasing slaughter, because they really are. My experience with Crusader Kings II, for example, mainly involved me staring at menus for half an hour then crushing half a pack of ibuprofen into a fine powder,…
7 months ago
Feature: The children of the night impale Ottomans
Dracula’s Revenge: conquering Europa Universalis IV as Romania
Impaling the Ottoman Sultan was not part of the plan. When the Ottoman Empire declared war on tiny Moldavia, my objective was to survive, not to murder the most powerful king in the region. Moldavia, which in 1444 begins the game with a handful of provinces and neighbours eager to conquer them, defeated the last of the Ottoman Empire’s armies on the European side of…
11 months ago
Feature: From reformed pagans to unreformed sharks
What’s next for Crusader Kings 2, EUIV and Hearts of Iron IV DLC
The Paradox DLC factory continues to diligently extend the lives of its myriad grand strategy romps, with all but Stellaris getting new DLC announcements at PDXCON last month. We’re getting restless pagan warriors, war elephants and even some sharks. If you can match the feature to the game, you get a polite nod of respect. Rather than tiring you out, making you click on three…
1 year ago
Feature: The biggest hits of the past 12 months
Another year over, a new one just begun, which means, impossibly, even more games. But what about last year? Which were the games that most people were buying and, more importantly, playing? As is now something of a tradition, Valve have let slip a big ol' breakdown of the most successful titles released on Steam over the past twelve months. Below is the full, hundred-strong…
2 years ago
Feature: Of Mughals and men
We sent Brendan to a castle in Poland to witness a giant session of strategy game Europa Universalis IV [official site]. In this final report, he tells us of the manipulative merchant kings of India, and how blood money corrupted the world. You can read part 1 here I’m eating soup with the ministers from Malaysia, Italy and Bavaria when the head diplomat of Mughal…
Feature: The grandest game
We sent Brendan to a castle in Poland to witness a giant session of strategy game Europa Universalis IV [official site]. In the first of a two-part report, he tells us of war-hungry Germans, scheming Saxons and unlucky Irish - the victims and villains of an epic four-day LAN party I wake up to the sound of muskets. Outside, the ministers of France, Japan and…
Feature: The great LAN war
40 people are playing Europa Universalis IV together in a real castle
[Update: the organisers have now set up a Twitch livestream for this, which you can see here] Hello from Poland, where I am currently living in a castle with forty angry strategy gamers. The castle is Zamek Czocha, a 13th century fortress that has been occupied more times than an airport toilet cubicle. This week its invaders are the Grandest LAN Party, a giant multiplayer…
Feature: Strategy of place
Civ 6, EUIV and Endless Legend designers on how their strategy games create the illusion of a world
Big, slow, sweeping strategy games expose their rules in a way no other game does. Call of Duty doesn’t have floating numbers above enemy heads, telling you their movement speed, for example. But in most 4X and grand strategy games, there is no attempt to hide exactly how everything works: the stats, their interactions, are all laid out and plain to see. Yet these games…
Feature: "The next Crusader Kings could be an RPG"
Paradox on the future of historical strategy, RPGs and their internal development studio
At the Paradox Convention last month, I was hoping to see something new from Paradox Development Studio, the internal team responsible for the company's core strategy titles. There were new expansions for Europa Universalis IV [official site] and Hearts of Iron IV [official site], and the hiring of Jon Shafer is an interesting move, but no actual games were announced. I sat down with creative…
Feature: Master of maps
Jon Shafer on designing Civilization 5, joining Paradox and making strategy games better
Jon Shafer was 21 years old when he became lead designer of Civilization V. Now working at Paradox on an unannounced project and on his own historical strategy game At The Gates in his spare time, he says he's learning from the likes of Spelunky along with the more obvious strategic influences. We spoke about how the second half of every Civ sucks, the part…
Feature: From Fallout to Game of Thrones
Since you already know what the best Crusader Kings 2 mods are, I thought you should probably get the skinny on the best additions to Paradox’s other grand strategy romp: Europa Universalis 4. It’s got more than a few, too. Tweaks, fantastical overhauls, graphics improvements – modders have given the game plenty of love. And while some mods have fallen by the wayside, there’s still…
Feature: Top ten bestsellers for the past week
He was a boy. She was a girl. Can I make it anymore obvious? He wrote the weekly Steam charts. She read them. What more can I say? Other than that these are the ten Steam games with the most accumulated sales over the past week, obv. See ya later, boy.
Feature: And how they can do it better
Video games always come with an expectation that the player will suspend disbelief to some extent. Genetically engineered super-soldier clones don’t exist, radiation has never and will never work like that, and overweight Italian plumbers could never make that jump. In most cases, if we are unwilling or unable to suspend our disbelief, we may well struggle to enjoy the game and our questioning of…
Feature: Hail the underdogs
From the forum threads full of arguments to the constant tweaking and occasional overhauls via patches – balance has long been one of the pillars of strategy games. It means fairness, a level playing field, and in competition it means that victory comes purely from player skill. But balance, and the quest to reach it, can easily become the enemy of surprise and of the…
4 years ago
Feature: How To Get Involved
RPS Community Update: What You Did in Dirt Rally, Europa Universalis, Terraria, Trove and More!
September was absolutely packed full of games in the RPS community, with events taking place in Dirt Rally [official site], Europa Universalis [official site], Guild Wars 2 [official site], Terraria [official site], Trove [official site] and more! Want to know what happened and how you can get involved? Read on!
Feature: How To Get Involved
RPS Community Update: What You Did in Arma 3, Europa Universalis, Guild Wars 2 and Terraria
July is for lazy mornings in the sunshine, lounging around beer gardens with family in the afternoon, and tackling gaming challenges with friends in the evening. Despite the height of summer, the RPS community has continued to soar, with action in Arma 3 [official site], Europa Universalis [official site], Guild Wars 2 [official site] and Terraria [official site].
Feature: Cult adjective rather than cult noun
“We don't want to be a cult.” Shams Jorjani is VP of Acquisition and Portfolio Strategy at Paradox Interactive. He's the guy who reads through and listens to a thousand MOBA pitches and occasionally finds a Teleglitch hidden behind them. He laughs at the cult line as soon as its out there. This, after all, is a company that frequently dresses its employees in coloured…
5 years ago
Feature: Ridley me this
Ahead of the release of Conquest of Paradise on January 14th, I spoke to Paradox Development Studio Lead Johann Andersson about the changes that the America-centric expansion will bring to Europa Universalis IV. As well as discussing the randomisation of the Americas, a first for the series, we talked about changes to the mechanics that govern Native American and colonial nations. Beyond the meaty mechanical…
6 years ago
Feature: Some journalists just want to watch the world burn
A few weeks ago, Paradox invited a group of journalists to Stockholm in order to see how much violence we could do to one another in a massive two-day multiplayer session of Europa Universalis IV. I packed my bags, steeled my nerves and prepared to present Rock, Paper, Shotgun the only way I know how - with fruitless acts of violence and a burning desire…
Feature: The Least Serene Republic
They say history is written by the victors and they quite often go on to say that Churchill said that, but they don’t appear to have any proof of the latter. I’m here to prove the former wrong as well. This is a Europa Universalis IV tale of betrayal and bellicose bastards, in which the losers have the final word, and that word is an…
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