At the beginning of this week, Paradox Interactive announced the first expansion pack to Europa Universalis IV, and I swear, they were reading my mind on some of these features. Considering that my review only came out a few days before the announcement, I must say they have perfect timing. Conquest of Paradise is scheduled for release on the 11th of December this year, so it’s not that far off.
And it’s got the number one feature I’ve been wanting. A randomized new world. Here is a quote about the expansion’s principal attraction, the random map generator.
In Conquest of Paradise, you as a player will have the option of completely randomizing the new world. We wanted you to have the option to really explore a brand new continent. So for the first time ever in a Paradox Development Studio game, you can now choose to discover a completely randomized American continent. Therefore, when Columbus sets sails across the ocean, he might just find some nice islands that he can use as a stopover on his route to India or something completely different. –Paradox Development Team
They’ve definitely been listening to their fan base on this one. Don’t worry, fans, they aren’t just making a random world generator, but also a overhaul for native American nations which have been in need of love for sometime. But, in pure game changing scale, it is definitely the random map generator that takes the cake. No longer do we know exactly where to place our colonies to get the best benefits. Now we can do some real exploration! Continuing a trend they have set with Crusader Kings II, there will be a lot of free stuff for the owners of EU4.
In addition to the expansion, we are working on lots of completely free gameplay features (in addition to bug fixes, of course). Even if you don’t buy the expansion, you will get completely new map modes, more playable nations, colonial nations and much more. Also, don’t worry about MP: just like in Crusader Kings II, if the host has the expansion – everyone in the MP session can use the gameplay features of Conquest of Paradise. –Paradox Development Team
So if you are hosting a LAN party, only the host needs to have Conquest of Paradise and all the players can have the benefit of it and even if you don’t have the expansion you are still gonna get a lot of content. And a nice little touch is the minimap in the corner, which now starts unclearing parts of the world that you have explored.
They are going to be releasing developer diaries every week till release, so here is the first one.
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Great news! It will be awesome to do some “real” exploration.
I love Paradox games and I dream to see then developing something like Civilization: a complete random world where you can start your nation from the very beggining but keeping the mechanics of EU with lots of kingdoms emerging and falling. I like Civilization but the world seems to be a little bit boring with only a dozen different civilizations.
Maybe with this expansion modders will be able to do some thing like that?
You know I really wanted to LOVE this game. It sounded ideal, except I have EU III and in the end found it a tedious micro management game with moments of satisfaction. I suspect and fear EU IV is more of the same. (I tried the Demo and it left me shrugging my shoulders.) Guess I am more of a beer and pretzel type of player. I would love EU IV Developers (Paradox) to assume a few things and automate some of the more mundane tasks or have the option to disable certain time consuming features. (Horror of horrors, how about a game of global developement that is not set on Earth). Having said that, I think it is a great step to allow the colonies to be random generated….
I get what you’re saying, but a lot of the fans that have been playing for awhile enjoy the fact that it doesn’t hold your hand and do things for you. We like the micro management. They for sure have steep learning curves, but they are some of my favorite games ever. I have over 1000 hours played in CK2 and it’s still rising. I hope they don’t change a thing.
Looks like they’ve pushed the release to January 2014.