Paradox held its Paradox Insider event over the weekend and, in case you missed it, the company announced a plethora of game updates. There’s DLC news for Stellaris, Crusader Kings III, and Europa Universalis IV. And numerous updates for other titles including Empire of Sin and Surviving Mars.
But I’m too excited to talk about any of that until we get into the new subscription service for EUIV.
Paradox started testing an EU4 DLC subscription model at least a year ago. And, while we recently saw Crusader Kings II launch a similar service, we hadn’t seen hide nor hair of a launch date for the EUIV service until now: it launches on Steam on 17 March for $4.99 per month.
As far as we can tell, you’ll get access to all DLC ever released for the game, to include more than 40 content packs total. To put this into perspective: a bundle containing the game and its major expansions (17 items total) costs more than $250 on Steam, at a 10% discount.
The subscription won’t be required to play the game or its DLCs for anyone who already owns them. What it does is provide an incredible entry-point for new players. Rather than pick and choose a handful of DLCs or stick to the vanilla version of the game, players can invest five dollars and play everything EUIV has to offer.
I love this idea. It wouldn’t make sense for a game that only has a handful of DLC offerings, but EUIV not only has a huge catalog of previous DLC: it’s still getting new ones.
Paradox has announced Leviathans for EUIV:
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Per the company’s Steam page:
Leviathan introduces new diplomatic and economic tools that help small nations punch above their weight. Draw wealth and development to your capital while you curry favors with powerful neighbors. Leviathan also makes changes to colonial management, regencies and more.
Other upcoming Paradox releases include new DLC for Stellaris in the form of the highly-anticipated Nemesis add-on and the Northern Lords Flavor Pack for Crusader Kings III.
Nemesis for Stellaris contains a bunch of gameplay updates, including new ways to interact with the galactic community, but its core lies in giving players the new ability to “become the crisis.”
Apparently players will be given the opportunity to become a galaxy-wrecking, star-eating problem. Alternately, you may be able to declare emergency powers and seize control of the galaxy’s resources in a concentrated effort to defeat the crisis – whether you’re willing to give up that control when the danger abates will be up to you.
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There’s a lot of buzz surrounding Nemesis with many pundits pointing out that it seems like you’ll be able to play out various galaxy-reaching plots from the Star Wars franchise with it.
Nemesis launches 15 April on PC.
And then there’s the new flavor pack for CKIII. Northern Lords brings new events, units, art, and music to the Viking territories.
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I’ve been playing the Princes of Darkness mod for CKIII that reimagines the game world as a dark ages playground for the undead using lore from Vampire: The Masquerade’s World of Darkness. But, now I know which areas I’ll be looking at for my next vanilla playthrough.
Next up, Empire of Sin is coming to Xbox Game Pass on 18 March. If you’re a fan of Paradox’s games or you’re looking to try some out, Xbox Game Pass for PC is one of the best deals around. Among its hundreds of titles, it features most of the Paradox’s most popular games including Crusader Kings III, Europa Universalis IV, Hearts of Iron IV, and more.
And that brings us to Surviving Mars. We haven’t heard a lot about this one lately so it’s great to know that not only is the game being developed by Abstraction again, but we’ll be getting a free “tourism” update today, 15 March. There’s also a new building pack available in the game, courtesy of a partnership between Paradox and modder Silva.
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Paradox says we should expect a full expansion for Surviving Mars by the end of the year.
Finally, as COVID-19 continues to make in-person events challenging, the company’s annual PDXCON will be held virtually under the banner “PDXCON REMIXED.” The digital-only online event will last three days and be free for all attendees.
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That wraps up the major news from the latest PDX Insider. You can check out the entire stream here.