f13.net

So, it looks like Paradox games are on sale this weekend.

Only problem is, I really don't know much about the company or their stuff.  Most of the titles don't look familiar to me.  What titles should I avoid, which are good, are there any worth keeping an eye out for?  Anyone have any reccommendations?

A lot of these games are merely published by Paradox while only a select few were developed by them.  Also, one of the greatest titles in their catalogue, Crusader Kings, sadly isn't on Steam. 

There is some redundancy in the Paradox Complete Pack: Arsenal of Democracy is a spruced up Hearts of Iron 2 Complete, and is generally better than Hearts of Iron 3 anything, in my opinion, and Mount & Blade: Warband is, I think, better than With Fire and Sword, while Mount & Blade really shouldn't even be on there anymore because both titles supersede it.  For the Glory is a spruced up Europa Universalis 2, which I think is better than Europa Universalis 3 because that title always seemed bland to me.  I've heard reasonably good things about Pride of Nations, but it covers the same era as Victoria 1 & 2, and those two often play more like spreadsheets than actual games.  Supreme Commander is terrible, along with Rise of Prussia.  East India Company and Commander are both middling titles that I wouldn't waste my time with.  Sword of the Stars is good for what it is, and Magicka is a ton of fun multiplayer, but is generally cheap anyway.  Majesty 2 was a serious letdown and Majesty didn't age well.

Overall, I'd say that the publisher pack just isn't worth the $100 price tag given all of the lackluster and redundant titles.  For the Glory is great as long as you like grand strategy and you don't mind some dated graphics.  Hearts of Iron 2 is a really good grand strategy game set in WWII.  Mount & Blade: Warband is also very awesome.  Europa Universalis 3 is actually good too, it's just very bland without the historical events that made EU2 so much fun.  Sadly, I think Paradox developed titles have deteriorated in quality over the past five or six years, and I hope they end that slump with their upcoming Crusader Kings 2, the first installment of which I still play today some seven years after its release.

 :cry:

Supreme Commander? You mean Supreme Ruler?

I am going to buy EU: Rome Gold for $3. Why not?  :grin:

Oops.  Yeah, I meant Supreme Ruler.

In fairness, it was Supreme Ruler 2020 that I played and thought was abysmal, but I haven't read anything to lead me to believe the new iteration is any better.  2020 really was dreck.

EU: Rome is one of my favorite EU style games, sadly it has some kind of save corruption problem on my laptop.

For The Glory, Vicky 2, M&B: Warband, all worth looking at, IMO. I also disagree with Ruvaldt that Majesty 2 was a letdown, it is pretty much Majesty 1 prettied up (albeit wtihout gnomes.) I felt EU3 went in the wrong direction compared to the prior titles in the line, and I've never been a great fan of any of the Hearts of Iron games but I'm not really a WW2 dude. Lum probably has some thoughts, I still see him playing those all the time.

Has anyone tried those Elven Legacy games?

I think Lum had a joygasm over Victoria II

I agree, after its expansion EU: Rome became a good game.  The senate function is very cool and it simulates internal politics better than most any other grand strategy game.  There are also some good mods out there for it.

I think Majesty 2 was a letdown exactly because it was a prettied up Majesty 1.  In the end it felt like I had already played that game, and it lacked the replayability of other games that have received similar refurbishments, such as EU2 with For the Glory.  On the other hand, if I hadn't already played the first Majesty I might not have thought the gameplay felt stale so my opinion might not be the right one for the original poster to listen to anyway.

Victoria II was really cool for a week, but after a while it really felt like the computer was playing the game and not me.

I went ahead and grabbed the EL complete pack.  It's only $7.49, what could go wrong?  :awesome_for_real:

Only played the first mission in the campaign, so far.  The voice acting is awful.  Graphics aren't anything fancy, but they get the job done.  Other than that, it's fairly run of the mill.  My main gripes so far are that units can move a certain number of hexes per turn, but if you don't move all of them from the get go, they're gone.   The only other annoyance, and this could be ignorance of the UI on my part, is that you can't see how you'll fare in combat until you're actually in position to initiate combat.

I'm going to spend all weekend watching football and BiiFing EU:Rome.

There is also "Cities in Motion" available for € 9.99 (whole collection for 20 bucks). It's a game that allows you to build an entire trasportation network for a city (trains, bus, underground metros and so on). As always for this kind of games, for someone it may be interesting, for others is snore-inducing stuff.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/73010/

There is a demo available (tutorial), and it only weights 234 MB

http://www.citiesinmotion.com/media/demos

Was on Sale the first day for 5€

While I spent lots of hours in EU (probably applies to the whole family, I dunno, never having played HoI or Victoria), I always thought it to be a big error to incorporate the RTS element over board oriented TBS.

Majesty 2 (/agree, a prettied up Majesty 1) is fun for a little while.

I wouldn't really call it an RTS element, exactly, given how pausable it all is. I think it adds a lot do to it the way they do it, in particular because of how terrain ends up shaping invasion routes, the 'will this ship starve to death or make it to coastline', etc. You can't really make terrain matter the same way with a boardgame feel unless you're doing the full neckbeard and going to hexes instead of Risk-style spaces.