Paradox and Adam may tell you that the next Crusader Kings II [official site] expansion is about diseases tearing through medieval Europe, but no. The Reaper’s Due is about cats. Lovely cats. Hunting dogs be damned, Reaper’s Due will let characters befriend a cat – which naturally brings bonuses. Then… maybe a few more cats. All of the cats. Lovely, lovely cats. Get carried away and you might get the ‘Crazy Cat Lady’ trait. And then something something black death bad omens angry mob blah blah but look, the point is: cats. Oh, and the expansion now has a release date: August 25th.

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We all get sick every once in a while. When certain unnameable stars are ascendant and the pollen count is high, the writers of RPS are stricken with a variety of ailments ranging from the mildly irritating Wheezing Calamities to the truly dreadful Kneecaps-A-Shudder that causes the sound of grinding bones to echo around our word-cubicles, day and night. We have a proud record of ‘zero plagues’ in 2016 though and that’s something to celebrate.

Crusader Kings II [official site] is set in more sickly times though and the next expansion to the bestest of all historical strategy games will explore illness, death and all that other good stuff.

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Total conversions are like mods, except so ambitious they never get released. Ho ho!> A little bit of 1999 mod community humour there. They’re also sometimes mods that completely change the face and function of game, bending its every part in service of some new purpose. That’s what Paradox want to support more of across all their games, and to that end they’ve released a 3D model exporting tool alongside a new developer diary discussing modding for their upcoming procedural space strategy game, Stellaris. It looks hot like that sun.

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The launch of a new expansion for Crusader Kings II [official site] is a happy time. Folks with spare cash can add an interesting new system to the dynasty-building strategy game, all players benefit from a big free update launching alongside it, and non-players like me get to enjoy the silliness that comes in that update’s changelog.

So, the Conclave expansion has arrived today to add a council who can work with or against rulers, the update has added an infamy system, and I’m giggling at patch notes explaining that humans should no longer give birth to horses and wondering whether “History is no longer executed if the player loads a savegame” refers to somehow sticking the head of history itself on a pike above the gates.

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I like to think of Crusader Kings II [official site] players as those shopfolk in comedies who painstakingly stack vast pyramids of cans, only for our hero to breeze through and trash it. So they start over. Then our hero returns. Restart, return. And again. That’s you, CK2 players. That’s you and new expansions coming along just as you’ve managed to get your kingdom running smoothly. Hey look, here comes the Conclave expansion, ready to make councils interfere with your rule. Pick up your cans, Canno.

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These are my personal Edwin Droods. Stories that I’ve failed to finish, for one reason or another, and that are left suspended. In the manner of somebody reversing out of a relationship like a heavy goods vehicle, trundling slowly and beeping nonchalantly, I’d like to say to the games included: It’s not you, it’s me. >

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That feeling when you finish a long series of books, or a television series, and say goodbye to the characters for the last time. Closing a world, pulling down the shutters and knowing that it has run its course, is a peculiar sensation. Indeed, it can provoke a sense of loss. How utterly ridiculous I felt last week when I mourned the ending of tens of thousands of tiny football-men, each of which is little more than a pile of numbers and behaviours. BUT CAN ANY ONE OF US CLAIM TO BE MORE THAN THAT, I thought, as I uninstalled Football Manager 2015 [official site] and prepared to move on to the beta for the new model.

I’m very bad at goodbyes.>

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Crusader Kings 2 [official site] is a grand strategy game about human beings instead of armies, and it spins gripping Shakespearean yarns about medieval social climbing, full of murder, betrayal and bastards. It’s brilliant, but you might be a little intimidated by its setting. That’s just one of the reasons why the Game of Thrones mod is so good – and it’s just hit version 1.0.

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Paradox Interactive’s grand strategy games create extraordinary scenarios. Often they’re based around small, local events – everyone seems to love sharing Crusader Kings II‘s twisted family trees and tales of incest, treachery and knives in the dark – but occasionally a story emerges that shows how preposterous and impressive these games can be at the other end of the scale. I’ve never seen anything quite like this million-man battle from Europa Universalis IV [official site] though.

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Expansion packs were once a core part of playing PC games, but they can often feel less essential in a world of constant updates and microtransactions. Original game Alec, expansions Adam and Graham, and brief DLC Alice gathered to discuss their favourite game expansions and why they still think the model works.

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