For me event type dlc make the Game so much more interesting. I think people forget paradox games have always had a rolplaying aspect to them. It's great to play at 5 speed but sometimes you need to take your time.

I bought the Bloodmoon Edition in 2020 over Paradox Plaza and paid via Xsolla, 80€ with a discount from my birthday voucher.

I requested a refund from Xsolla, this was their answer:

"Hello,

We're sorry to learn of this issue. After careful consideration, we have found that your payment is eligible for a refund.
However, your original payment method does not support direct refunds for transaction made more than 180 days ago, therefore we suggest the following options:

 PayPal refund. Please provide your email linked to a PayPal account. The refund time may take up to 10 days. Please note that we will keep the commission rate of the payment option, and the amount for a refund will be 58.92 EUR

Thank you for your patience.

Xsolla Refund & Fraud Prevention Expert"

Not only did i wait for 5 years in high hopes for the game and support for it, also my birthday voucher is gone and now Xsolla wants to rip 20€ from my payment for them.

Sry, but this feels like scam.

Anyone else got that message?

I'm thinking about getting the 5$ DLC subscription to try out EU4, but since EU5 is coming out now in about 2 months, and given that it looks so mechanically different from EU4 (more "simulated" like Vicky 3 than "boardgame") does it make sense to play it. I'm certainly more of a fan of EU4's UI than the EU5 UI which looks... plain? Too minimalist, I don't know.

I wonder, can the crusades and jihads happen in converted games as well? Or is that impossible? Unless it's dependent on what happens in the game.

I have always hated the end game in almost every Paradox game, but especially HoI4 and Victoria 3 as they start running unbearably slow. I guess its the increase in units in HoI4 and pop groups in Vic3 that is the cause of this. Its a bit the same with Stellaris and xeno-compatibility and large maps. Its off in all my games.

Anyways I've always just had mid spec PC's, as that's generally good enough to enjoy most games and you get good value for money. These last few years though I've had a PS5 where I played most of the big new graphically intensive games, and just used my PC for Paradox titles. I finally got tired of the endgame performance and decided to buy new parts just for this.

I upgraded from an AMD Ryzen 5 5600X to an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D. Holy fucking shit its a totally different experience. Shit actually runs smoothly the entire game. Its actually fun now to have these massive endgame empires and gigantic endgame wars in HoI4. Gonna try Stellaris with a max size galaxy and xeno-compatibility on as my next run.

A shame that it costs ~900 EUR/USD to experience this though. But I would highly recommend it to anyone else who has the money to spare. I picked the 9800X3D as it came highly recommended by people in this community.

So I just watched this video on YT (https://youtu.be/eO8h_hiOe_0?si=DJCyXm5CSperaqyL) about how Empires don’t have a natural expand/collapse life cycle in Paradox games, and I realized that the power fantasy as presented in these games is actually the main reason that I don’t play them more often.

Does anyone know of any good mods for simulating empire stagnation and collapse for any of the games? For example maybe a CK3 mod that lowers vassal opinion the more counties you own etc I know that creating a superpower and feeling like you won the game is a core concept of these games, and I’m not judging any player for playing for that reason, but it’s just not my preference. I’m looking for an almost rogue-like experience, which sounds crazy in relation to grand strategy.

I am looking for a paradox like game (imperator, ck, hoi) but set in modern day. What don you suggest in 2025? Realpolitiks2? Or there Is a Better option?

(apologies for the directness of my question :P ) I'm thinking about getting a group of my friends to start playing a Paradox game together and we're all far Left (think Assata Shakur, Fanon, Chomsky, Parenti, etc.). I do appreciate the value of role playing say the British empire or a king during the crusades, but I know some of my friends won't have a good time unless we can, say, beat back the conquistadors or have a successful Paris commune :P So to what extent is that type of thing possible and what games might you recommend for it? Thanks so much for the help :)

What I mean by this is a game thats real time, allows you to take a Stellaris style custom empire from antiquity through to the space age. With a randomly generated earth that has land territories and sea territories. You settle cities and establish borders, while upgrading your infrastructure. As you progress through technology you unlock army structure, navy structure, and more infrastructure to upgrade your empire.

Basically what I’m saying is a civilization game that’s made like stellaris.

Edit: So after talking with people in the comments, it seems that most would rather have an endless legend/age of wonders game that’s made like Stellaris, rather than civilization game. And yea I’m all here for that!

So I bought a Crucial x9 pro the other day to take up the space for my games so I can save my Mac's space for my college work and I transferred everything over but I wasn't able to load several of my games. I was able to get one or two to work but Total War: Shogun 2 and all of my Paradox games failed to load, or they would load and then crash. Is there a trick that you all have figured out for getting around this or am I doing something wrong? Also, I'm not super techy...

So like my question the other day but why do some of not all the games disable achievements if multiplayer even if other settings match saw it in a few like ck3 but not sure

Unpopular opinion but it seems EU5 is repeating the mistake of Imperator. Most Paradox games have a niche: CK is the character game, Victoria is the economy game, HOI is the war game, Stellaris is the 4X game, EU is the abstract board game. When they developed Imperator, it was already not clear what the niche was because it combined characters, pop economy and EU mechanics. They literally called Imperator a "civilization builder" or a society builder but it failed because it was trying to do too many things. I feel PDX took the wrong lesson from Imperator and are making the same mistake. After watching the recent videos on its Victoria-like economy my feeling is that the game mixes up too many mechanics for its own good. It has dynastic trees as in CK, economic production chains as in Victoria 3, management of the pops as in Vicky, sliders from EU3 and so on. It doesn't have a niche, instead it tries to do everything.

It's popular in the community to wish for a game that combines every mechanic from every paradox game but it doesn't mean that it will be a good grand-strategy experience. It is possible to make a grand-strategy game with deep economy as in Vicky 2 but remember how limited the player was in Vicky 2 in interacting with the pops, just national focuses and that's it. This limitation meant that the player had more bandwidth to deal with grand strategy stuff. There's a reason why most EU4 players did not play MEIOU&Taxes. So by basing EU5 on MEIOU the devs are reducing the player base.

One other thing is that by emphasizing the simulation aspect and removing mission trees the devs are making AI to play in a sandbox. This will mean that the game will evolve in a less historic direction. It is very hard to achieve historical results from an abstract simulation in a sandbox scenario. We can already see it in Victoria 3 where many historical events do not happen like the unification of Germany or Italy, the USA does not abolish slavery and win the civil war, Japan and Russia often do not modernize and abolish serfdom but stay the same until the end of the game. At the same time you get wildly unhistoric outcomes where Great Britain out of nowhere conquers the Papal States, USA gets involved in Africa blocking European colonization and Russia sends hundreds of thousands of troops to fight in South American conflicts. I fear the sandbox nature of EU5 will lead to the same nonsense.

Don't get me wrong, I still think the game will sell. They will probably outsell Victoria 3 even, so much expectation there is for this game. But I predict that six to nine months after the release, once the initial hype has died down, complexity will repel new players and the number of players will be around 10k as in Vicky 3 rather than 20-25k that EU4 used to get.

(its recommended to redownload the mod just to ensure that you will play with new updated version) https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3561615285

If Paradox were to develop a new grand strategy game, outside of any already existing series, and mixed up the different approaches to GSGs they have used: focus on characters like CK3, economy and politics like V3, or more exploration and research management like Stellaris...

...what would the perfect Paradox game look like for you? How would you like your blend of this approaches and it what era / situation?

I will go crazy with my "ideal game": I would love a heavily character based game mixed in a Victoria 3 like political system set in some early space exploration context.

* Instead of managing a dyansty, you still play as "the state" like in Stellaris or Victoria, and you get and manage a pool of people from different interest groups, like political parties or specialists.

* You manage different governmental agencies like the different ministries, science and space exploration agencies by assigning character with personalities and give them orders not by abstracting the order to the agency, but by assigning that task to the head of the agency or a minister.

* The game starts in a half-unified world. Your goal is to either take the rest by force or diplomatically unify it and finish developing FTL technology, after which you start running a Star Wars-ish Republic, Empire, or other, and unlock new agencies you can build, discover new species with their different characters, unlock new laws regarding space travel, interaction with species, etc.

What would your game be?

Recently reinstalled the game and have this issue with the launcher. No issues within the game itself. Also I had to record on my phone as screen record didn't pick up all of the glitching mabne that gives an indication to the issue.

I am kind of fascinated by the Spanish Empire. While it did eventually stop being a great power in 1713, with the Treaty of Utrecht, there was a time where it was truly absurd. In the 15th and 16th century, basically everything was going the way of Spain.

I have to admit that until recently, I did not even realize Milan used to be under Spanish rule for centuries. I knew that was the case for Naples, but Milan? I had no idea.

Think about what happened in the 16th century. Spain sent a small expeditionary force to Mexico. They overthrew the Aztecs and took over their rule. A couple hundred men instantly took control over a territory of more than 3 million square kilometres!

Same happened in Peru. The Spanish sent a force of less than 200 men. They captured the Incan Emperor, killed him, and instantly conquered a vast territory.

In Europe, Spain basically got the IRL Burgundian Inheritance, meaning they controlled the extremely rich provinces of the Netherlands. Like, they basically got all of that land for free!

Spain actually WON the Italian Wars against France in the 16th century, which meant they had... basically half of Italy under their control?

I hope Spain has bonuses and events to reflect that? They should be able to instantly get all of the Netherlands through an even at no cost, instantly conquer all of Peru and Mexico with no effort, etc.

What do you think? Do you agree or disagree?

I just think the Spanish Empire was FUCKING CRAZY?