A place to discuss Paradox Interactive’s grand strategy games. This includes of course major titles/series such as Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron, Crusader Kings, Victoria, Stellaris and Imperator: Rome, but also various minor titles (Sengoku, March of the Eagles) and “spin-offs” (e.g. For the Glory, Darkest Hour), whether it be vanilla versions or with mods.
Share thy glorious border gore!!
Ah Crusader Kings 2, the only game that I invested over 20 hours yet I still don’t know what I’m doing and the only achievement I unlocked was the one for getting married.
Wanted to like so much but the menu’s are a mess and overcomplicates everything.
Just looking at those achievements (and their numbers) in all their games from the past decade made me go “Nah, screw this, there’s only so much a man can do in one lifetime” 
Have you considered trying CK3 instead? Might be more approachable. I think I’ll finally give it a go in the next few days, been kinda in the mood for it. Will share my impressions here if I do.
Maybe one day but for now it’s nowhere on my “to play” list 
Vicky 3 finally got a release date this week!
i’ve only played stellaris, but i’ve played stellaris. running through my first devouring swarm playthrough at the moment and just murdered 3 empires in the first 50 years; it’s insanely powerful.
my favourite stellaris playthrough is this one:
i created the holy alarian union; an empire of democratic, xenophile, pacifist space elves. beautiful space people to bring together a beautiful galaxy.
early on, there was this chokepoint at one end of my empire that would neatly close off and make my territory more defendable. it had some ancient mining drones in it, which i couldn’t deal with, so i left it till i could, assuming no one would take it.
in the meantime, another empire - the catharian coalition - came in and cleared the drones with a 2k fleet. more sneakily than my role play intended, i immediately surveyed and claimed the system. the catharian’s did not like that. they - somewhat justifiably - declared war and laid claims on a large part of my empire in retaliation.
i instantly acquiesced to minimise losses.
ten years later - the enforced period of peace from a surrender - i smashed that empire in half with several 5-10k and technologically advanced fleets i’d rapidly built in the meantime. i handed the territory over to the enemy empire’s slaves (they were slavers) as a border between us.
it didn’t stop there.
by the end game, some 200-300 years later, my beautiful hippy space elves had formed a brutal galactic empire, headed by an immortal psychic god-empress.
we had smashed the endgame crisis singlehandedly as soon as it had appeared, wiped out the fallen empires and the great khan without breaking a sweat, destroyed or enslaved all opposing empires (and turned the majority of their populations into food), and made a deal with an eldritch entity that turned our sun into a black hole and my beautiful space elves into ugly, purple abominations.
we did, however, have galactic-wide social welfare, so swings and roundabouts, eh?
anyway, love the look of victoria 3 and ck3. just wish i had a system to play them on! 
Sounds exhilirating! If it´s possible for you to post some screens (or rather pics in your case) here, feel free to do so 
I do have the base Stellaris, but it will likely take me a looong time before I even consider trying it. I´m just not really one for sci-fi settings. Prefer to do my empire building on good ol´ familiar Earth, even if the geography and actors don´t change 
You´re on PS4 right now? CK3 has a PS5 version and I´m sure Vicky 3 will eventually get one as well, so as long as you can upgrade in the future, you´re golden 
I think I´ll probably nab V3 right upon release. The HW requirements are pretty high for a PDX game, but it looks gorgeous. Hopefully it won´t have too steep of a learning curve. I´m curious (and worried at the same time) about the strategic warfare management. Feels weird not being able to move my forces around manually 
yeah, it was pretty funny. i like the way stellaris can generate these kinds of stories. it’s got a lot in common with rpgs, in a way.
i can probably scrounge up the the final layout of the map and a before and after of the race, at some point. 
yeah, i dig that.
that’s right. i’ll definitely be all over ck3 if i’m ever fortunate enough to get a ps5. i watched a run through that was total cloak and dagger; just marrying and whacking the right people. super cool. there was another that was all about getting key royalty into a cult. very much my bag.
you know, after watching gameplay, i’m not sure how the ui would work for vicky. i’m impressed they even managed to get stellaris’ working so well on a controller! that’s a complicated game but vicky looks on another level entirely.
I share this man’s pain… (And also finally have a reason to bump this thread, yay!!)
Surprised that he doesn’t mention the (apparently very good) Cold War mod for Vicky 2 or the promising-looking in-development (albeit not Paradox) Espiocracy.
man, i feel the same.
also, there are a couple of reasons to bump the thread.
out today (i think) for console:
out next week for pc:
this one has cloaking mechanics!