Victoria I Complete
WOW. That is all I can use to describe this game. The depth, the strategy, the CHALLENGE! It’s basically a strategy gamer and/or history lover’s dream!
Fancy playing as the supreme power of the UK? No problem. Watch your colonial empire grow, take on the French for Africa, and crush the Chinese in the Opium Wars.
Or how about Prussia? Fight of the pesky Austrians and French and unify the glory that is the German Empire.
Looking for a bit more, “FREEDOM”!?!? Play the Yanks and have them whip Mexico into submission over Texas, emancipate the crap out of the Confederate States of America, and “liberate” Cuba from the control of the Spanish.
– Real player with 1013.5 hrs in game
I first got this game on disc when it came out in 2003 as Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun. From the first, I was intrigued and entranced by the workings of this game. I liked the fact that back then, it was one of the first comprehensive strategic World War I simulations you could find that was somewhat realistic. But war isn’t the only thing cool about this game. You can start as any country beginning in 1836 going through 1920. Like all Paradox games, you have research tracks and trajectories to go on, and depending on the country and the track you take, it can lead to some interesting outcomes. There is a budget you have to balance, but if you don’t, you can borrow in increments of 1,000 pounds from the theoretical bank. Borrow too much and you’ll go broke because you can’t afford the interest within your daily expenses. Part of the research investment, of course, is military development, and you have to keep up with your neighbors if you don’t want your military units to get their butts' kicked. A necessary part of the game is trade. You have to build factories, staff them, promote and educate people, convert them to necessary positions, then buy and sell the goods your country needs on the open world market. This early version of building factories and staffing them in Victoria I is inferior to that designed by Paradox for Victoria II. It’s difficult at times to manage. One aspect of the game that you really have no control over is public opinion, although the game instructions imply you do so by the amount you tax people and by how you use them within the economy. You are also supposed to be able to placate public opinion by spending on social services and a developing modern day safety net. Trust me, it doesn’t placate public opinion. If the AI has decided the people of your country are upset at you and are on the way toward revolting, they are going to ultimately revolt until you change the type of government you have to one more liberal and democratic. I guess this is probably faithful to historical dialectic. Regardless, this is an excellent game if you are looking to learn about how 19th century politics worked and how the Imperial powers managed their empires up and until World War I.
– Real player with 487.1 hrs in game
Europa Universalis III Complete
Whee. Europa 3, like its predecessors and its cousins Hearts of Iron and Victoria (Crusader Kings as well, but that isn’t as hard to learn), is an extremely complex game that is notoriously difficult to learn, not helped by crappy tutorials. I had an edge having been playing this series since its first installment, but it still took some time to get used to everything. So right from the start expect a significant time investment on learning how to play the game, and learning to do well at it. War, Diplomacy, Trade, Exploration, and more. It’s all here.
– Real player with 535.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Real-Time with Pause Political Games.
As far as I’m concerned, this is the best game ever - especially in this version with the first two additions to the game.
To a certain extent, it is comparable to the Total War games, if they only included the map mode, which would here be simplified to armies only being able to move from province to province and not within a province. However, you have a more complicated diplomacy and domestic policy to deal with.
Another thing that makes it different, and, for my taste, better than the Total War games, is the greater realism and historical accuracy - in this game you can’t just conquer everything, and it remains challenging for the more than four centuries that its timespan covers.
– Real player with 492.4 hrs in game
Europa Universalis: Rome - Gold Edition
Mix of Europa Universalis IV and Crusader Kings II with an Ancient Era theme?
As mentioned before this game somewhat finds the middle ground between Europa Universalis IV and Crusader Kings II set in the Classical Era, while keeping it a bit more simple. There are individuals with personal properties who are part of families which you can appoint to perform certain tasks in your realm, but you are not playing as a dynasty gaining and losing lands by inheritance. For some people this type of gameplay might make CKII a bit hard to comprehend (or even annoying when you lose your realm because of some patrilineal/matrilineal screw up, or lose your alliances at the death of your ruler), in which case Europa Universalis: Rome offers a nice alternative because you are playing as a state while still having a fun mechanic with indivuals with personal traits.
– Real player with 597.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best Real-Time with Pause Simulation Games.
My most played game on Steam, and it deserves a review.
Its very indeph with loads of micromanagement, and if you happen to like the timeline, you are welcome to buy it.
You can tune it to play it with unlimited time, if that bothers you.
What sets it apart from normal EU games, is the barbarian mechanic.
There are lots of uncivilized lands where barbarians are uprising all the time, and it takes near the end of the game, to civilize them all. If you play a nation that borders to them, it makes the game very “fun” and unpredictible.
– Real player with 527.6 hrs in game
Hearts of Iron III
This game lets you play as any country during World War 2. I played the base game plus all expansions (SF, FtM, TFH).
You can manage every aspect of the war, from diplomacy to espionage to research to actual combat. You can even try to stay neutral and sit out the fighting if you want, but what fun would that be?
There is an enormous amount of complexity - casual gamers beware! If one part of the war is too tedious for you, it can be set to be automated. For example, rather than personally overseeing every trade deal you can check a box and let the computer handle all of your trades. The computer is not as smart as a person and it can’t metagame but in most tasks it does an adequate job.
– Real player with 755.9 hrs in game
The King of Grand Strategy
Most of you who visit the shop-page for Hearts of Iron III probably already know what this game is all about. It’s a hardcore (as hardcore as it can get, actually!) Grand Strategy Game by Paradox Interactive. That one sentence really says it all.
This review is intended for those who don’t yet know what Grand Strategy (the capitals are there with a purpose!) is all about. Simply put: Grand Strategy games are the best, but also the most complex, pc gaming has to offer. They are immersive, complex, and very addictive. They are not for everyone, that’s for sure. You don’t play them for the graphics, nor for the sounds or some great level-design, but only for the gameplay, which can also be very, very difficult to master. There are tons of stats, of units and/or provinces to be controlled and only one person who has the power to control them: you.
– Real player with 408.6 hrs in game
Crusader Kings Complete
The Grandness of Paradox Grand Strategy titles is not a misnomer. Shame the grandeur tends to also come with a small helping of bugginess. Crusader Kings 1 is perhaps the poster child for that. The title was initially developed by an outside studio, with a similar style to Europa Universalis but in the Middle Ages with a focus on families instead of nation states. Unfortunately, the outside studio kind of screwed some things up. Even with all the fixes eventually given to the title, there are still random quirks that don’t work like they should.
– Real player with 389.1 hrs in game
Crusader Kings in many ways is a biographer’s wet dream. It has mechanics of Europa Universalis 2, the warfare, the economics, the diplomacy but unlike that grand strategy epic, this grand strategy epic portrays you not as some nameless entity ruling your nation through the ages but as the head of a noble medieval family, your faith not tied into the success of the nation you rule but the rulers themselves.
You start the game by picking which family to control, you can start off as a great King yes but you can also choose to play as a powerful Duke or even an impoverished Count. You then set about forging alliances, mostly through marriage, produce offspring that can one day take over the mantle of leadership and assert your claim to various noble titles. As you grow in power and influence new challenges will arise. Conquer too quickly and others will see you as a warmonger, your vassals may grow too powerful and seek to claim your titles for themselves and should you have too many children they may differ over who should rule when you are dead.
– Real player with 259.8 hrs in game
March of the Eagles
I would give a positive review for just about any Paradox title (yes, including Victoria II and Hearts of Iron III, as buggy as they may be), but this is a title I simply cannot baby for its mistakes.
To get one thing off the board immediately, I would NEVER recommend without this mod: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/669074
The reason for suggesting that mod is that it takes you, instead, back to pre-Napoleon era just prior to when he became First Consul, thus there is more time to play and less satellites of France (aka more countries to play as). Plus, the mod offers new technology and an uncommon chance to gain cores on conquered provinces–thus the freedom to build units/ships there.
– Real player with 75.3 hrs in game
For fans of the Total War series who like looking at the bigger picture. Or an excellent entry level Paradox Interactive grand strategy game.
When I bought the game I was a complete Paradox Interactive noob but I always liked the idea of their truly-grand strategy games. However, having played the demos for Europa Universalis III and Hearts of Iron II, I was convinced I would never be able to get my head around the complexities of Paradox’s games. This all changed with March of the Eagles. The era in which the game is set is right up my street and the scale of the campaign map was like nothing I’d experienced before (‘scale’ is a relative term here).
– Real player with 44.7 hrs in game
Victoria II
“Ugh… What could’ve been… Praise KEK that I at least have my videogames to live out my epic power fantasies”
– Real player with 1707.9 hrs in game
Really fun game once you get the hang of it, and If you ever get bored of the base vanilla content, there’s so much creative and fun community mods that gives the game infinite replayability
– Real player with 1442.6 hrs in game
Sengoku
Sengoku is yet another of the mods for a Paradox game turned into a full fledged retail release. This one in particular was a mod for Europa Universalis 3 intended to add dept to an otherwise neglected Japan. And it succeeded quite well, both then as a mod and now as a full game.
Where most of the other mod made retail releases from Paradox never seem to move beyond their mother game Sengoku manages to introduce several new concept and in many ways drastically change the gameplay from what was present in regular Europa Universalis 3.
– Real player with 211.7 hrs in game
This is the most flawed Paradox game. There are so many frustrating flaws.
-My vassals keep conquering provinces, going over their demesne limit, and continuously having rebellions. Usually if the rebellion is too large, the rebels win, establishing a religious group province, which then raises the revolt risk in the surrounding provinces. I then have to come in and remove the rebels, with rebellions occurring now on the surrounding provinces, and redistribute the province to a clansman that isn’t over their demesne limit or clansman who have no provinces. It ends up being an endless cycle as I declare war on other clans and my vassals continue to swallow up the enemy clan’s provinces, forcing them over the limit again.
– Real player with 62.1 hrs in game
Hegemony Gold: Wars of Ancient Greece
Hegemony Gold: Wars of Ancient Greece Review
Nostalgia Goggles Factor: Very Low
Bug Factor: Low
Crash Factor: Crashless
Replay Factor: Low
Developed by only a handful of people, Hegemony Gold: Wars of Ancient Greece is a pausable RTS game and logistics food management simulator set in the age of the destructive Peloponnesian war and the rise of Philip II’s Kingdom of Macedon. Wonderful game for any history buffs out there.
The Good
- Three scenarios; Philip II of Macedon, which is also the tutorial, the Archidamian War and the Ionian War.
– Real player with 191.0 hrs in game
I bought this during the summer sale but it well worth the standard price. Its a simple concept (raise troops, pay them, feed them, attack your neighbors) but finding the right balence makes it much more complex than you might think. Definitely a different spin than any of the other strategy games you might also be playing, EUIV, Total War, CKII.
- Supply Lines/Logistics- Your cities each have a predetermined number of trade routes based on the economic power of that city. Some have 2, some have 16. These can connect to farms (which produce food, with varying amounts for each season), mines (which produce gold when worked by workers or slaves captured in battle), and they connect to other cities. Food moves along these routes with different capacities based on how long it is. Some routes that are very close (like a city to the farm next to it) can carry up to 100 a week and longer routes usually start at a base level of 15 per week, but can be upgraded by paying gold. Your units replentish their losses only if they are on one of these supply lines.
– Real player with 138.9 hrs in game
Polaris Sector
Nice and deep space 4X game, definately the best of the recent releases. It also avoided a common fact with 4X which is that many features are copy/pasted beetween games, so it will feel fresh even if you’re used to the genre.
In a nutshell, it’s a bit rough but a must for every space 4X fan. It shines in empire management, elegant mechanics, diplomacy. It would deserve a bit more streamlining.
Why is it better than most other 4X?
+ Rewarding diplomacy:
Interactions pretty rational. There are many possibilities, from trading ressources (shortages are common so that’s handy), to technologies, to being able to use friendly planets as bases for your fleet or asking for a 3rd party to negociate a peace with your ennemy, or bribe them into getting into war against your ennemy (or request a bribe to help them!)
– Real player with 229.8 hrs in game
Lets get to it.
Pro:
[olist]
- A.I. (Articial Intelligence) - I cannot emphasis or stress enough of how extremely good the A.I. is. It’s probably one of the most advanced one I’ve seen in a 4x game genre. I absolutely love how it handles playing against me and handling my orders for planets, colonization, and etc (without the need to micromanage everything). Again, the A.I. in this game is just so good that it cannot be expressed sufficiently of how good it is. Even the developer of this game admits that hard is very tough for him.
– Real player with 159.5 hrs in game