My journey through Paradox Games

It’s funny to think about how I got into Paradox Interactive Games by pure accident, I had seen the original Europa Universalis game at a Circuit City, guess how old I am, and as I kid I was always thrilled to find more games like Civilization and this game looked like it, but something told me that this was not for me, at least not yet, and I ended up buying Half-Life Blue Shift that day, a game which I enjoyed for a short time and then I stashed away until I sold it at a discount price because Steam keys and all being digital nowadays.

Fast forward many years later and I was going through a neighbors collection of items he has for sale on a weekly basis, there I found it, Europa Universalis III -Wow, the franchise has gone out this far out? Gotta give this a try- and after paying a dollar for the game I went home and installed it, I found it to be very plain of a game, an interesting concept but the game felt dated as hell, something was telling me there had to be more and while looking I noticed that screenshots for the game looked oddly different than mine and they all referenced versions that were way ahead than mine, turns out Steam had it and I came to find the wonderful world of DLC galore that Paradox brings to the table with every game they release.

But lets go step by step on this, I put the key in, install the game and wow does the world and engine feel completely different, the mechanics were so complicated and then I saw that the DLCs would bring in a lot of flavor to the game, eventually I did buy all the DLCs for EUIII and started to enjoy the game but then I found out that there was a game called Europa Universalis: Rome and Vae Victis, the grandfather of the upcoming Imperator game, I was thrilled to play something related to the Roman Empire as I was just starting my long journey, eight years now, to get my degree in History.

Rome and Vae Victis felt oddly dated but I found something satisfying managing to survive as any nation, thrive and eventually colonize half of the world while crushing the rest of it, harder than it would seem seeing that civil wars seem to be cyclical in this game and some of the mechanics were broken to the point where it was a bit pointless sometimes to play through the campaign.

If I’m not mistaken at the time Paradox had announced that they were releasing a new game called Crusader Kings II, the thought of this being the second iteration made me wonder how good the game could be that it had to get a sequel, I tried the demo out when it came out and I could, for the life of me, not grasp all of the mechanics but they felt oddly familiar from the world of Rome and Vae Victis and not so much from EUIII, I was thrilled to know more, when the game came out I got myself a copy, I must admit here that I did not own a legal one but I redeemed myself and bought the game later on with all the DLCs up to Holy Fury and I have done so with almost all of Paradox games to date.

There was a slight problem with Crusader Kings II though, when I played the game back then on its first iteration it was good but it lacked something, I suspected that DLCs would come out throughout the months or years and I was right on this, not that I was proud of this or anything since this is a considerable cost when you sum all of this up and yet I still bought all of the DLCs. The interesting part of Crusader Kings II is that I have managed to understand, with time, all of the mechanics and some of the dirtier secrets on how to play real evil, so evil that I did notice that the AI would sometimes offer you matrilineal marriages and you would not notice this with all the things going on at the same time, clever girl!

I also got a friend to play Crusader Kings II with me, we did it locally and managed to form an enormous Russian Empire that spanned up to where the Holy Roman Empire was and then some, parts of France belonged to my family because of clever marriages and some plots, plots which were heavily abused also, and were fragmenting Europe to the point the Muslims were on the south of France and in Italy, the Tsarina, a character that started her reign at five years of age, would be one of the most memorable characters I have used to lead a dynasty, she managed to double the size of the Empire, crush rebellions, all enemies, was loved by everyone, had equally distributed land between vassals to avoid huge power struggles which had almost tore the Empire apart during its early formation, no sinful traits, the epitome of catholic religion, yes, Russia became catholic because we could not wait to become Christians and push forward technologically, building and troop wise, staying as pagans had some benefits but none that we would consider that useful on the long run; I have also created Empires from the island of Ireland that made Britannia rule as early as the Norse invasions to the islands, unified Italy under Italian rule, managed to expand the Byzantine Empire as a loyal vassal who in turn would become the de facto Imperial Family of the Empire for centuries to come, all of this and more stories I have from Crusader Kings II, a great game that is a bit hard to get into with all the mechanics going around but nonetheless highly addictive and recommended for anyone really interested in understanding Medieval history. While I suspect that CK2 is coming at the end of its lifetime I am unsure if we will be seeing another sequel to Crusader Kings, CK2 has some flaws but in general you can enjoy and completely make or break the game at will.

Europa Universalis IV has never been my thing, since it never was it has become a very strange game for me that while I have a grasp on I cannot get through with most of the things that are going on, I need to basically read and re-read a ton of mechanics that I missed out on, I find this strange because CK2 was not like this, with CK2 I stopped for a long while and when I came back the game, while changed, still made sense and the mechanics became obvious to me, with EUIV I still struggle to this day and the fact that the game requires a considerable amount of resources from my computer has not allowed me to get on with trying the game out the way I want it to, also I am missing a lot of the DLCs because, again, this is not a game that I was really into and only one person that I know personally has ever played the game to the point where he had some understanding of the game but was in the same place I find myself.

Victoria II, Vicky 2, whichever way you want to call it is a game that I consider personally was left wanting after only two DLCs were released for it, the game is excellent and the mechanics used in the game are very peculiar, at first I would have thought that war was the key element but after being reminded that this is the age of Imperialism and Industrialization I quickly understood why the market was a key component of having the right resources, the right territory and why scrambling for Africa and Asia was such a huge deal, we managed to play this with four people and got very far before the game continuously crashed on us, the highest moment for me was making Mexico a Great Power and keep it at number one, annexing Texas, not having the US hand me my ass in open warfare, expanding the country to half of South America, parts of Egypt and Abu Dhabi, conquering Dai Nam and parts of China and having a 100% literacy all around the country while owning the Panama and Suez canals, surviving a Great War and seeing how Europe tore itself completely apart.

Hearts of Iron III and IV are games that I tried but ultimately never really picked up hard upon, while I enjoy the whole idea of playing through World War II and have managed to survive the red tide of the Soviet Union as many countries, also China becoming a massive crazy super power, I do not feel like there is much there to talk about, there are some really interesting challenges that include playing as Luxemburg but after HoI3 it was not of much interest to me, I got HoI4 because I expected something completely different and well here is where we are.

I am taking note that for all of the previously mentioned games there are several Mods that can improve or completely change the way the game is played or the story in general, while I get this I am concentrating purely on what Paradox offers natively, I have also not mentioned the free updates which include some very interesting changes to the base game, if you do not own DLCs you can still enjoy a good portion of the game and years later Paradox will eventually start unlocking some of the aspects of other DLCs into the game, like with Crusader Kings II, but this is many years down into the game and DLC have been on the market.

Making a slight stop here at one of the lesser known games of Paradox, Sengoku, which while a good concept I felt that it was a bit hard to get into and while it intrigued me I left it be for a while, just right now I found out that it was on sale at about a dollar and had to snatch it, will probably play the hell out of it to find out if maybe I was too fast to dismiss the game and Paradox should revisit a game that had a lot of potential or if this was indeed better left alone, it intrigues me though because Rome/Vae Victis took a while to have a sequel done, which is still being worked upon, so I’m wondering if either Victoria or Sengoku will ever get a sequel pushed through.

The last game on the list is Stellaris, this is a strange one because having played it from the beginning I always felt that the game was heavily lacking on all fronts, a very good concept and one that Paradox was willing to throw itself behind of, with the latest 2.2 “Le Guin” update the game was completely revamped to the point it is a completely different game, I will actually have to write an entire review about it because I feel that the changes done to the way resources are handled, the new market, planetary distribution, districts and buildings, some of the technologies and the fact that you are now only stuck with hyperlane technology, which makes sense in a way but this is debatable, and considering I went all in with the DLCs, including the new MegaCorp DLC, I can say that changes are good but finding a balance in this new game has been complicated due to the way I used to play the game, also Corporations are absolutely broken by the way they work in general and the Criminal Heritage civic gives some insane energy bonuses, having 250+ energy before the end of the first century was something I was not expecting but it is part of finding ways of breaking some of the mechanics.

Did I mention I like breaking the mechanics of these games as much as possible?