Looking back at it now, 2020 doesn’t feel like a banner year for strategy games, but that doesn’t mean there haven’t been a few gems. The list below – gathered by a panel of experts and regularly updated – contains games from as recently as 12 months ago alongside classics from as far back as 28 years ago. They’re all games we think you could play and love right now.

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Six weeks after the release of Crusader Kings 3, and there are already over 1200 mods, tweaks, and more to download. Paradox’s grand soap opera is as much fun to fix as it is to play, it seems.

A lot of the more extensive mods are still heavily in development, so I’ve steered clear of most total conversions (aside from one that I couldn’t not highlight) and stuck to more general upgrades and rules for your kings and queens. (more…)

What to do when you’ve completed a Crusader Kings 3 campaign? You could start over as a new ruler in a new place, I suppose, but isn’t that negligent? A truly responsible leader would steer their nation through the middle ages, the Victorian era, and World War 2. And you can do that thanks to a tool which transfers a CK3 world into Europa Universalis 4, picking it back up in the Paradox grand strategy game set in the following era. You could also then use another tool to take that from EU4 into Victoria 2, then into Hearts Of Iron 4 with yet another tool, converting the same world across one millennium-long ‘megacampaign’.

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The game that’s spawned more offspring than some actual emperors has popped out another. Them strategy game folks at Paradox Interactive have released the new Emperor expansion for Europa Universalis IV. It’s all about keeping the faith and controlling the people with new Pope abilities to help you stand against revolutions. Alongside the new expansion is a free update for all EU4 players.

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Paradox Interactive, the makers of Crusader Kings and Stellaris, have announced the “impending completion” of a collective bargaining agreement with the labour unions for its employees in Sweden. By the end of this month, Paradox employees should have a formal way of influencing their pay, benefits and responsibilities, and be generally better protected by the unions they’re part of. If you’re a little confused on what all this “collective agreement” business means though, bear with me while I have a go at explaining it.

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Paradox Interactive today announced the opening of Paradox Tinto, a new Spanish studio who will focus primarily on grand strategy games. Led by a Paradox veteran with two decades of gran estrategia under his belt, the studio based in Barcelona will initially help out with ongoing work on Europa Universalis IV then later start making new grand strategies of their own. No hints yet at what they might have in mind.

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Paradox Interactive have formally announced the next Europa Universalis IV expansion, named Emperor. It will bring new powers for the Pope, livelier revolutions, some troubling incidents for the Holy Roman Empire, and more. And as is customary for Paradox strategy games, the expansion will be accompanied by a free update overhauling bits and pieces.

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I did not expect that I would ever Google something like “will Big Ben bong?” in service to an article for RPS, and yet here we are – and it turns out it will not. The big B day has arrived, not with a bong but a whimper. It’s a sore subject for a lot of us (stuff disappearing off of Netflix; my partner is European and won’t have to queue as long at airports), a genuinely frightening one for others (unknown economic impact; forced repatriation).

As in most times of stress, I turn to video games for both a distraction from and mirror to life. I don’t even mean obviously Brexit-y things like Not Tonight or Spinnortality. There are many games notionally unrelated to today that nonetheless feel apposite to play. Here are a few that I thought of.

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For a time it looked as though strategy games had sunk into a kind of deathly malaise, unsure which territory to claim next and which ones it should leave well and truly alone. Fast forward to 2020, though, and strategy games have never looked healthier, which is why we’ve compiled this best strategy games list of all time. Whether you want to conquer the depths of space, wage historical warfare or hulk around in big mechanical robots, there’s a strategy game for you below.

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Paradox Interactive, the publishers of games from Crusader Kings to Cities: Skylines, have settled into a familiar and successful model: release a game then, rather chase it with a sequel, spend years expanding it with free content updates and paid add-ons. I quite like this when I buy a Paradox game near the start of its long life, and happily buy an expansion or two a year, but the sheer mass and price of extras for later games can be intimidating. Consider Europa Universalis IV, which after sevens years has almost 200 of expansions. I’m very interested, then, to see Paradox are experimenting with an EU4 subscription service that would cover the strategy game and it expansions.

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