Gaming Paradox Interactive grand strategy games (Europa Universalis, Crusader Kings etc.)

[Count Orduck]

Does anyone else play these? I recently got hold of Crusader Kings 2 for a tenner off steam (it's back up to forty quid now!) and I must say it's one of the best and most complex games I've ever played. I really like the medieval era, and this is the best of the lot (and that includes the Total War games!).

It's like someone has taken the overworld map view from the Total War games, mixed it with Risk and then added another million layers of complexity. It's sublime.

I'm now tempted to go and buy the most recent Europa Universalis (which I believe is III, from 2009) because I was under the impression it's very similar to Crusader Kings, but set about five hundred years later during the colonial era. That said, I might just wait until they release the fourth installment, since it seems to be a bit of a regular for them.

They've plenty of other eras covered, too, with the same sort of "grand strategy" approach to all of them. "Rome" is set in the classical era, "Victoria" during the 1800 - early 1900s.

I wonder if there are other Cafites out there just as obssessed with their games? You can spend hours lost in the intricacies of them!

 

[Revan]

I never played any of them cause I am not a big fan of strategic games. The only strategy game I ever enjoyed was Age of Empires II and that is completely different to Paradox's games.

My roommate has played all of them and rates them very high.

In the future I can give them a shot, cause in my favorite genre RPG, I have played all the best games and nowadays every game is more shit than previous. Maybe finally I am going to try something entirely different.

 

[nimic]

I've played them since ca 2002. They're excellent. I think you're going to have to wait a while for EU4, at least a couple of years. EU3 is still an excellent game. Their best, really. Just make sure to get all the expansions. You should be able to find a good offer with all of them. Just note that the version that is called "EU3 Complete" is actually not complete, since they then went and released a couple more expansions. It's still great, but you'll miss out on some great features.

Oh, and after playing CK2 you might not like the look of EU3. There should be graphical mods for it. There are mods for just about everything with Paradox games (they are incredibly modable).

I waited for Crusader Kings 2 for ages. I loved Crusader Kings, but it was always a flawed gem. It seemed like they didn't really have the technology or the engine to do their ideas justice. With CK2, they could. Just make sure to patch it, as, you know, it's a Paradox game. Also, there's a huge (free) content patch due out on tuesday, so you might want to hold off on starting any new games then. On the same day there's also the first expansion for CK2, Sword of Islam, which enables you to play Muslim nations, with many unique features to them (as Christian feudalism wouldn't really make that much sense for them). I'm not sure what the price is, but Paradox expansions are always cheap.

 

[Count Orduck]

It's $10. Staggeringly cheap. I'm getting that in a heartbeat, don't worry - I've played CK2 through campaigns as Ireland, Denmark and Rostov now. I think it's time for a change, and playing one of the Muslim nations seems like really good fun. I want to crush the Papacy and see what happens.

Also, I always wondered why they put so much effort into modelling the terrain at the base of the map beneath the Sahara in Africa, only to leave it unplayable, but now my questions have been answered - they were saving it! The provinces are unlocked in the expansion.

 

[Rudie]

Hearts of iron 2 was epic, I still get it out to play now, if these are anything similar then I may have to give them a try.

 

[Badunk]

I got EUIII Chronicles for £6-odd and it is epic. You will lose a lot of sleep. I can't recommend it highly enough.

 

[Badunk]

Keep an eye on Gamersgate coz that's where I got mine.

 

[SmashedHombre]

Mount & Blade was my favourite Paradox Interactive game. Staggering amount of potential with that one

 

[Badunk]

Anyone played Majicka? I nearly bought it a few times. Just dont have enough time for the games I have as it is.

 

[Revan]

Mount & Blade was my favourite Paradox Interactive game. Staggering amount of potential with that one

Paradox only published it. It was a Turkish couple who developed it and later they opened a company to develop other Mount & Blade games.

 

[jim]

EU3 is brilliant, but much easier than CK2 to my mind.

I've done all sorts in EU3, taken over the whole of Europe and so on, but so far in CK2 I've not managed to even survive.

 

[nimic]

I wouldn't say easier, really. It's just a different game, since it's about dynasties rather than countries. They had to make it near impossible to blob. It's still possible to get really, really big, mind you.

 

[JezChan]

EU3 is brilliant, but much easier than CK2 to my mind.

I've done all sorts in EU3, taken over the whole of Europe and so on, but so far in CK2 I've not managed to even survive.

I agree - for me, EU3 seemed much easier to pick up and do well after a while. I played my first games as Bavaria then Portugal, which brought me up to speed with the mechanics quite quickly. I tried CK2 but I never seemed to achieve much. I played as a count first up; should I have tried further up the food chain?

I wouldn't say easier, really. It's just a different game, since it's about dynasties rather than countries. They had to make it near impossible to blob. It's still possible to get really, really big, mind you.

Nothing's better than inheriting France, Castille and Portugal to pick up Europe and the New World as a German OPM.

 

[SiYuan]

Do not play this game.

You will lose your social life.

 

[Count Orduck]

The feckin' Duke of Munster rebelled against me and brought the Duke of Connacht with him; luckily I still held Meath and Leinster, and called upon the Dukes of Ulster, Galloway and Brittany (even though the last two aren't De Jure Ireland, I still have them as vassals) and quashed it.

Most games of this type after one hundred years, no matter who you're playing as, you own half the map and are pushing for the rest; in this one I'm two hundred years in and my greatest achievement was uniting Ireland and getting a few extra duchies. I've hit my size limit now, though, because I'm just trying to survive. And God help me if the French sort out their problems and start casting an eye towards Brittany.

CK2 is sensational.

And amusingly in this campaign, whilst the Ilkhanate have predictably arrived in Persia and immediately taken over almost the entire bottom right of the map, when the Golden Horde rocked up in the East the Cumans, Turkmens and Rus managed to repel them! So there's no Golden Horde in this game for me.

 

[Arruda]

I played Europa Universalis a while ago (can't remember if it was 2 or 3) and really enjoyed it. Very interesting game. Tried to take over the entire South American continent with Portugal but the bloody Spanish managed to sneak in.

 

[Nucks]

One of the very few must buy developers imo.

 

[Count Orduck]

Anyone got the new expansion? It's a tenner at the moment, but amusingly with Ulster Bank seizing up I can't actually buy it. What are the muslim factions like to play?

 

[nimic]

It's a lot of fun. They made the Iberian Muslims too strong, though. One of my favourite games was with Leon, and that is damn near impossible now. Within a few years, the Muslims will have eaten up all of Iberia, and will only be stopped when they border France.

It's a lot of fun playing Muslims, though.

 

[Count Orduck]

In fairness the muslims tend to eat up Iberia in most games I play anyway, even before this expansion.

By the way, I've seen it mentioned a good few times, what is "blobbing"?

 

[nimic]

Yes, so there was no need to buff them. It was still entirely possible to play Leon and organize a Christian victory (well, Leon victory ). Now it might be completely impossible unless you simply get really lucky. And even then I haven't actually seen anyone do it yet.

 

[Badunk]

In fairness the muslims tend to eat up Iberia in most games I play anyway, even before this expansion.

By the way, I've seen it mentioned a good few times, what is "blobbing"?

When you eat up all the territory around you until you're a massive empire.

 

[nimic]

It is much more prevalent in Paradox' other games, particularly EU3. It is much easier for everything to go spectacularly wrong in CK2, both for the AI and the player. And I like when that happens once in a while. If it didn't, the game would be boring. It was okay in EU3 (if we're honest, the nations did "blob" historically"), but it's just not what CK2 is about.

 

[Heffo]

Thank you for starting this thread. I'd never even heard of these games but after reading this thread I kinda just bought them on impulse. I started before the latest patch so haven't tried that yet but the scale and detail is great.

I started in Ireland, had four counties and then the Pope declared a crusade on the areas that the Shia Caliphate held in the kingdom of Jerusalem. I decided to tag along for the craic and after a bloody 10 year war I somehow managed to be the one who inherited 7 territories in and around Jerusalem and became the king of Jerusalem.

I moved my capital to Jerusalem as it was more advanced than my counties in Ireland and also in order to deal with the rebels that kept popping up everywhere. During the 25-30 years that it took to get everything producing as normal (due to the culture and religion penalties) I had to deal with numerous rebellions from peasants and one Emir who decided he wanted some of Jerusalem whom I barely managed to defeat thanks to the help of a holy order and some mercenaries.

Then a year after everything is normal the pope decides he wants the other three territories the Shia Caliphate holds in the kingdom and calls another crusade. Just as their armies begin to attack my guy dies and know I'm playing as a 3 year old with no skills and lisp as my only trait. The Emir of Damascus decides this would be a great time to start a war with me for Jerusalem and after he took it my capital moved back to Ireland so 3 of my vassals in my remaining 5 territories in the de jure kingdom of Jerusalem rebeled as about 30,000 enemy troops milled around the place. Luckily I managed to come out of it with 3 territories intact as the Pope ended the crusade before I could lose these (although I have since lost one as they rebelled and the Shia Caliphate came along with a massive army to take it).

I'm kind of resigned to losing the two I have left at some stage and then I'll be back to just Ireland where I started. But because of all the effort I went through with Jerusalem I still haven't managed to take any of the duchy of Munster and the snakey Scotts have taken the county of Ulster before I had the chance. Basically the game is class.

 

[nimic]

I started in Ireland, had four counties and then the Pope declared a crusade on the areas that the Shia Caliphate held in the kingdom of Jerusalem. I decided to tag along for the craic and after a bloody 10 year war I somehow managed to be the one who inherited 7 territories in and around Jerusalem and became the king of Jerusalem.

That is genuinely shocking. I can't believe you won a Crusade as an Irish Duke in your first game.

Are you Irish Jesus?

 

[Count Orduck]

The scoring system, in my opinion, actually rewards careful, planned play, and not all-out conquest of everything in sight, because that way leads to your work falling apart. Establishing a kingdom and just having three rulers in a row serenly keeping it together actually ramps up the score pretty quick.

 

[nimic]

I don't think you'll find many people playing CK2 for the score, though. None of the Paradox games, really.

 

[Count Orduck]

I do

 

[nimic]

You're doing it wrong!

 

[Heffo]

That is genuinely shocking. I can't believe you won a Crusade as an Irish Duke in your first game.

Are you Irish Jesus?

There was massive armies milling about the place fighting each other and they kind of ignored me sieging all the baronies, castle and cities so I ended up holding about 4 or 5 of them. Then the war starting leaning heavily in the way of the crusaders so I just joined the large group of troops that were roaming about and killing the remaining hostile troops. The the war ended and seemingly because of the holdings during the crusade my score had kept rising and I became the King of Jerusalem. Good Times.

 

[Count Orduck]

Don't know if you've seen this niMic, but 1.06b was released a couple of days ago and one of the patch notes caught my eye on your behalf:

- Buffed the Christian states of Iberia by giving them more holdings, more initial building upgrades and slightly higher tech

So you can go back to playing Iberian Christians!

 

[Heffo]

Has anyone tried the Game of Thrones Mod for CK2?

 

[nimic]

Don't know if you've seen this niMic, but 1.06b was released a couple of days ago and one of the patch notes caught my eye on your behalf:



So you can go back to playing Iberian Christians!

Yeah, that's exactly what I was waiting for

First thing I did was start a Leon game. Actually, it might even a bit a bit too easy now. That's a big change, but also big was the change that means you have a drastically increased chance of completing the kill-plot if you're over 100%. Particularly as Leon, since you are the heir of your brother in Castille, who is the heir of your mutual brother in Galicia. On top of that, Alfonso of Leon has fantastic intrigue, and you should always be able to bribe someone to get well over 100% in the plot. I was the King of Leon, Castille and Galicia pretty soon. And married to the daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor, just in case the Muslims got aggressive.

There's also another fairly big change, in that England and parts of mainland Europe also get more holdings. That, of course, prompted me to start a new Norway game with the first start date, with me winning the Invasion (William first won, but then I was simply at war with him, and I just about managed to beat him).

So yeah, this was a very good "fix" patch.

Has anyone tried the Game of Thrones Mod for CK2?

Yeah, I have. It's a while ago, but I don't think it has changed much. Right now I expect they are working on making it compatible with the latest patches. It's pretty fun, but it might be best for a multiplayer game than single player. Once you're on the Iron Throne, there's not a whole lot to do. I expect they'll keep working on that, it's still very much early days for that mod.

 

[Vooon]

Great thread, I used to be quite a EU III junkie back in the days, but after I started on my master degree computer games fell out of the picture. So I haven't played the latest updates/patches.

My strategy used to be sneaking around as a small state, often Lübeck, trying to join aggressive alliances and gain loads of casus bellis on my neighbors, smash them in a quick war, make them vassals, then eventually annex them by diplomacy after ten years. Managed to form Germany this way after a while.

After growing to a decent size (including rich colonies) I would wage wars against Austria, Lithuania, Poland, France, Burgundy, maybe Castilla/Aragon and make at least two-three of these guys my vassals after some crushing defeats. After about 100 years of this stuff I would build some wicked armies, annex them and gain extreme amounts of "bad boy points" having to fight wars against every single neighboring state in the world for the rest of the game. Again gaining extremely gifted generals and huge armies. I usually conquered most of Europe in the end this way, with both Germany and Great Britain. Fun game.

 

[nimic]

I only ever did one World Conquest, with France (the easiest, probably), and it was honestly quite boring. Fighting Europe was fun, but going around the world taking over every single province was a chore.

 

[SharkyMcShark]

I have EU3. Couldn't really get into that much although I did have a multiplayer game that went for about 6 hours with a mate.

 

[nimic]

I had a group who used to play EU2 multiplayer games. This was for years after even EU3 came out. It was brilliant. We'd usually do a couple every year, at least one around Christmas. We didn't know each other in real life, but we mainly met playing a small online game, Visual Utopia (and some of us knew each other before that from a fansite for another online game, Utopia).

We had a few house-rules, and we usually had some excellent wars (sometimes including everyone). I remember being France, and taking extreme advantage of the relative newbie playing Austria, which let me expand a lot early. In the end England, Spain and Austria ganged up on me. I was not amused.

I probably deserved it. I had been bullying all of them individually.

 

[Vooon]

I only ever did one World Conquest, with France (the easiest, probably), and it was honestly quite boring. Fighting Europe was fun, but going around the world taking over every single province was a chore.

EU3? Never liked playing with the big nations like France, Austria etc. You don't really have any clear goals except fight endless wars against your neighbors. England is fun though, you can mess around on your own invincible island and take over Scotland and Ireland to form Great Britain. Of course you go to the new world and mess around a little before the real mayhem on the continent begins when the endless bad boy point wars begin after you annex two-three huge nations in one go.

It gets a little boring after a while to be honest.

 

[Count Orduck]

Um, I sound like a total moron, but I've lost my login for the Paradox official forums and need access to a mod thread to get an update. Can anyone with a CK2-keyed account PM me the download link from the opening post?

Titular Title Generator

I'd buy a whole new copy of the game, but it's still 40 Euro on Steam and that seems a bit steep just because I've lost my login!

 

[PhilipB]

I've downloaded Europa Universalis 3 and played it a bit there. Didn't do the tutorial or anything, just took control of England and tried to make friends with the Irish to soothe my guilty psyche.

Anyway, the French went a bit mental and started attacking me and then the Scottish joined in. I started hiring mercenaries and started raising war taxes. It was all going well, the French got some shitty region but I didn't mind, the Scottish were put firmly back in their place after trying to take Cumbria but then civil revolts started happening.

I think I'm really going to need to play the tutorial as I feel like I'm missing out on doing things I should be doing. I attacked a region but I could only occupy it after beating and laying siege to it. How do I actually bring the region under my control?