Paradox Interactive's sweeping historical grand strategy title Europa Universalis 4 is the latest freebie to grace the Epic Games Store.

Released back in 2013 and still tottering along today (its most recent expansion, Leviathan, was so disastrous its director issued an apology), Europa Universalis 4 gives players control of a country somewhere between 1444 to 1821 and lets them shape it into global significance through trade, diplomacy, colonisation, and war.

It's a supremely complicated beast (I ended up watching ten hours of YouTube tutorials before I could even begin to fathom its depths and make sense of its interface), but the core game is a dazzlingly rich thing, full of enthralling strategic possibilities, if you manage to crack its shell.

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The recent Leviathan expansion for Europa Universalis 4 has managed to earn itself an unflattering spot amongst the lowest-ranked products on Steam, with a positive review rating of only seven percent from 3955 reviews. Players said the DLC was seriously buggy and suffered from a host of problems, and sure enough, the game's bug report megathreads quickly filled up with complaints. Paradox Tinto studio manager and game director Johan Andersson has now issued an apology for the state of the expansion and several previous releases for EU4.

Over on the Paradox Forums, Andersson admitted "Leviathan was one of the worst releases we have had," and that the expansion "follows a long trail of low quality releases starting back with Golden Century for EU4.

"As the studio manager and game director, at the end of the day, this is my responsibility, so I have to apologise for this," Andersson added. "This is entirely my fault."

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Europa Universalis 4, Paradox Interactive's dizzyingly rich grand strategy game, will be getting its 17th major expansion, titled Leviathan, on 27th April.

Leviathan is focussed on offering new ways to succeed beyond endless expansion and warmongering, introducing a range of new diplomatic and economic options to meet that goal. "Build a force of diplomats," explains Paradox by way of example, "and use your flattery as a weapon against others. Or draw wealth and power from the remote regions of your realm to construct a metropolis to be the engine of your economy."

One of Leviathan's most significant additions is the ability for diplomats to proactively gain Favours with a nation (previously they were accrued over time), which can then be used to perform useful diplomatic functions - such as abandoning an alliance, or having a nation return a core province - without having to declare war.

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Following the introduction of a monthly subscription service for Crusader Kings 2 last month, Paradox Interactive has launched a similar model for its dizzyingly rich flagship grand strategy game Europa Universalis 4, providing an easier entry point for its mountain of DLC.

Paradox initially began exploring a potential subscription model for Europa Universalis 4 last January, offering the feature to a "limited group of people" in an experimental capacity.

At the time, it explained, "We have heard for years from existing and potential new players that the cost of getting the game and all expansions all at once is quite expensive (and might be discouraging for completely new EU4 fans), it's been supported for almost 7 years after all. A subscription model has been suggested to us on many occasions, so we thought we'd run a test to see how popular such a service would be."

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Paradox is getting into the business of making board games via Kickstarter.

The Swedish publisher, known for its grand strategy video games on PC, is working on tabletop versions of four of its biggest titles: Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron and Cities: Skylines.

The first game to be made is the Crusader Kings board game, which is designed and published with Free League Publishing (Mutant Year Zero and Tales from the Loop RPG). In the medieval-set game, players compete for military, religious and political power while keeping their personal dynasty strong using cards and miniatures.

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