The Steam Summer Sale is always dangerous, threatening to take money from your wallet and hundreds of hour of your life away with tantalizing games. But today's best deals feel especially life-threatening, because there are some masterful strategy games on sale. Civilization 5, Rome 2: Total War, and Europa Universalis IV are all heavily discounted, and any one of these games could keep you occupied for months of economic planning, political trickery or open warfare. The deal of the day, though, is Dishonored, a top contender for 2012 game of the year.

Don t forget to check out GOG s summer deals, too.

Reminder: if a game isn't a daily deal or a flash sale, it could pop up later in the sale for an even lower price. If you want to be safe, wait until June 30 to pick up a sale-long deal.
5 - Assassin s Creed IV: Black Flag
50% off: $19.99 / 19.99- Steam store page

If you couldn t captain a pirate ship, cannon a schooner to pieces, then leap onto its deck to sword-n-pistol away half the crew, we might have a lower opinion of Black Flag. It s not that landlubbers will get nothing from it: on the islands you ll find a healthy mix of Ubisoft game design staples some good, some tailing missions with a Far Cry 3 level of stuff to do. You can air assassinate an ocelot, which is certainly worthy of praise, but the sailing makes it. Black Flag is one of our favorite Assassin s Creeds because it ditches lots of legacy AC stuff and says: Hey, how about you just be a pirate now?
4 - Europa Universalis IV
75% off: $9.99 / 8.74- Steam store page

Grand strategy is complciated. Paradox Development set out to make it slightly less so, by refining EU4 s interface and presenting every important bit of information a ruler could need in clear, concise alerts. As we said in our review, it worked, and while EU4 is by no means an easy game, it s way easier for new grand commanders to learn. This is a game that you can spend 300 hours with and still discover new surprises. Paradox has the base game on deep discount here, as well as seven different pieces of DLC on sale though Wealth of Nations, its newest expansion pack, is not.
3 - Rome 2: Total War
66% off: $20.37 / 18.69- Steam store page

The Creative Assembly's latest 4X strategy epic is discounted to $20 from its $60 high perch, and that's a great price for a game as vast as the Roman Empire. When Rome 2 launched last September it had some significant issues with performance and enemy AI. Creative Assembly may have gone too big and launched too quickly, but the developer owned up to Rome 2's problems and has released 12 major patches since launch. The campaign map runs more smoothly and battlefield AI isn't completely worthless. And when the game works, it has the Civ effect of pulling you in for just one more turn, until you've spent all night managing your economy and beating off barbarian hordes with a small force of veteran Hastati. Steam Workshop support also means there are tons of mods available to customize the battle experience.
2 - Civilization 5
75% off: $7.49 / 4.99- Steam store page

Some of us were firmly in the Civilization IV is better, and you re wrong if you think otherwise camp when Civ V released, but the debate has become less polarizing it s more about what you prefer than which is better. Between the great Gods & Kings and Brave New World expansions and the magic of Steam Workshop support, Civ V has proven worthy of the series prestige. You might consider the Complete Edition for 67% off again, Gods & Kings and Brave New World add a lot but there are also loads of great free mods. And if you already have Civ V, both of the expansions are 75% off.
1 - Dishonored
75% off: $4.99 / 2.49- Steam store page
It s hard to find a better realized world than Dunwall. It s grimy, filled with rats and refuse, plague-ridden and disgusting. That Arkane Studios made a world this dirty so fun to explore is quite the achievement. Every taffer on the corner has a story to tell, and few of them have happy endings. Sneaking through this world (or marching through it, murdering everyone in your way) is really best experienced on the PC, where you ll have full control of its graphical features and every inch of the rotten city is gorgeously rendered. Sadly, none of Dishonored s DLC is on sale, but you ll get a pretty good taste of Dunwall by the end of the base game.

Other great deals today
Remember that games not categorized as Daily Deals or Flash Sales may be reduced further later in the sale.

Resident Evil 4 Ultimate HD Edition (40% off) $11.99 / 8.99
Steamworld Dig (75% off) $2.49 / 1.74
Left4Dead 2 (75% off) $4.99 / 3.74
Banished (50% off) $9.99 / 7.49
Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition (Flash sale) (75% off) $4.99 / 4.99
Trine Complete (85% off) $3.74 / 2.69

Sorry Paradox, but tactically obscuring part of the word "Essex" won't make your screenshots more interesting.

At any moment, your average PC gamer is on the verge of potentially life-threatening excitement. We're constantly in danger of an over-stimulation overdose made of explosions, guns, speed, spaceships and other, bigger explosions. That's why, every now and then, it's important to slow things down. And so, we should take a moment to thank Paradox, who today announced a trade-focused mini-expansion for Europa Universalis IV.

Res Publica is the name of this third expansion, and, in addition to additional trade options, it will also introduce new methods of governance. Paradox's announcement post explains exactly what players can expect:


"Republic Affairs: Grow your influence with the Merchant Republic faction to create new trade posts and reap bonuses, or exploit the inner power struggles of the Dutch Republic and their unique election events
"Meet the New Boss: Try the all-new Republican Dictatorship government type, and decide between increases in power or Republic Tradition in new in-game opportunities and events
"Don t Fight the Power: Retain power for the ruling family by backing heirs in Elective Monarchies; boost your growth with the National Focus bonus and spend your points on Administrative, Diplomatic, or Military Power"


Dammit, Paradox! With all this talk of power-struggle exploitation, we're straight back into over-excitement territory.

Res Publica is due out this Summer.

Calling all magnates, tycoons and financiers, Europa Universalis 4 has a business deal for you. Wealth of Nations, the game's second major expansion pack, is out now and offering trade-focused improvements and additions... for a price. For those more frugal in nature, Paradox are also releasing a new update, introducing major changes for owners of the base game.

The new trailer is short and mostly pointless, but I'm yet to embed a video today so what the hell...



The salient points are that Wealth of Nations adds the ability to start trade conflicts, create a trade capital, hire privateers and use peace treaties to gain trade power.

As for the 1.6 patch, you can see the scope of its changes below.

Wealth of Nations:

- Privateers
* You can now send Light Ships on privateering missions to trade nodes
* A fleet on a privateering mission will hoist the Jolly Roger flag
* Privateers will generated 1.5 times their trade power for the Pirate (PIR) nation.
* The Pirate nation will act as a collecting merchant in the node, the sending nation receives 40%
* Nations with over 20% of trade power in a Trade Node receives a Pirate Hunt CB aginst the privateering nations
* Several Privateer specific events added
* With privateers in, the old Pirates are removed.

- Trade Companies
* Now possible to form Trade Companies by assigning provinces to the Trade Company
* Only provinces within a Trade Company Area can be assigned to a Trade Company
* A province in a Trade Company gives +50% tradepower, +0.5 Naval Force Limit, -100% Manpower, -50% Tax
* Every province in a Trade Company Area gains a bonus to Goods Produced proportional to how much of the trade the company controls
* If a single Trade Company controls >50% of the province Trade Power in an Area, the owning nation gets an extra merchant.
* Each Trade Company gets a generated name and is listed in the Subject View.
* Several new events for Trade Companies
* No longer possible to westernize if you only neighbour western provinces that are in trade companies

- Buildable Canals.
* Now possible to build the Kiel Canal, the Suez Canal and the Panama Canal.
* Building a Canal requires Administrative Tech 20, 50k gold and ownership of specific provinces, the project takes around 10 years.
* The project can be affected by a number of events
* Having a Canal will boost trade power in the province, allow the transit of ships and affects naval distance.
* The Canals are visible on the map

- Justify Trade Conflict-action
A trade conflict can be justified against another nation where there is a node where you have at least 10% of the trade power and they have at least 20% of the trade power.
Gives a Trade Conflict CB

- Implemented the "Fervor"-feature for reformed religion.
* Each month a Reformed country gets an amount of Fervor points
* In the religion view there are 3 Fervor bonuses Military, Diplomatic and Trade. None to all can be activated at any one time.
* Having a bonus active costs 5 Fervor point per month
* Up to 100 Fervor points can be stored
* fervor = yes activates the mechanic for a religion (there can only be one religion specific mechanic per religion).

- Added personal dieties
* Hindu rulers can now select their own personal diety out of 6 possible
* Each Diety gives a specific bonus
* A diety pick stays until the monarch dies or its removed via event
* Added several new diety specific events
* Added 50 unique hindu events and 41 unique event pictures

- Request Trade Power
* Now possible to Request Trade Power from another nation
* You can request 0-100% of their trade power wich if accepted will be counted as yours.
* Until the Transfer is canceled, the party recieving tradepower can not declare war on the giving party.

- Designate Trade Port
* You main trade collection point is now your Main Trading Port instead of your capital.
* Main Trading Port is located in your capital by default
* Main Trading Port can be moved for a cost of 300 Diplomatic Points

- Inland Trading
* Several trade nodes in the game are designated as inland trading nodes where trading nations can use their influence to gain direct power even without provinces or ships.
* When having a merchant in inland tradenodes, you now get direct bonues from your trade efficiency as well as some ideas.
* When having a merchant steering towards an inland Trade Node merchant republics as well as nations with Plutocratic and Trade ideas get direct bonuses.

- New peace treaties
* Now possible to enforce Military Access
* Now possible to enforce Fleet Basing Rights

- Enhanced Merchant republics
* Merchant republics now give a bonus to Goods Produced in provinces that they do not own, proportional to how much fo the trade in the area that they control.

- Dynamic Province Names
* Names can now be scripted to be unique for either the province owner, the province culture or the province culture group (in that priority).
* Activating Dynamic Province Names is now a gameplay setting

- New Ship Models for Great Frigate, War Galley, Galiot, Brig and Trabakul

Major Free features:

- Rivals
* Countries now pick rivals from a list of nearby nations that aren't too strong or too weak compared to that country. Larger nations can pick rivals further away. Picking a rival gives all the previous benefits of having a rival and also unlocks the Power Projection system.
* You gain Power Projection by having longtime rivals and acting aggressively against those rivals by for example declaring war on them, taking provinces from them, subsiding their enemies and sending privateers against them. You lose Power Projection from having too few rivals picked and losing provinces to your rivals.
* Power Projection gives bonuses to Trade Power, Fort Defense, Land Morale, Naval Morale, Legitimacy and Republican Tradition. Additionally, at 25 Power Projection a nation gets +1 Leader without Upkeep and at 50 Power Projection it gets +1 to monthly Administrative, Diplomatic and Military Power.

- Policies
* New Policy Interface under Missions and Decisions Tab
* Completing two full Idea Groups unlocks several Policies
* Activating a policy gives bonuses but costs 1 monarch point, type depend
* Several old decisions now converted to policies

- 10 New Achievments

- New Trade Conflict CB
* Given by Justify Trade Conflict
* Ticking warscore from blockades

- New Colonial Region Australia

- Detach obsolete ships
* Now possible to easly detach obsolete ships with one button

- Improved Macro Build
* Updated look of Macro Build Interface
* Now possible to Build cores, Change Culture and do Harsh Treatment from Macro Build Interface

- Change Role of Trade - Now possible to change role of trader without travel time
- Added New ships, Great Frigate, War Galley, Galiot, Brig and Trabakul
- Added the religouns Coptic and Ibadi Sikh. Coptic and Ibadi in from the start, Sikh will appear later.
- Modifiers such as Estuary now shown on map in Trade Mapmode.
- Now possible to form the nations Egypt and Bukhara and Courland.

- Administrative Efficiency:
* New country wide bonus that is unlocked at administrative technology level 23 and increases at 26 and 29, up to a total of 75%. Administrative Efficiency directly reduces the impact of province base tax on overextension and warscore cost, allowing for much larger territories to be conquered at once.
* The scaling of core time from country size has been removed - all nations now core provinces at the same speed regardless of size (but it is still affected by factors such as culture, religion, having a claim and so on).

- New Launcher
* Supports all platforms.
* Steamworks support, subscribe to the mods in steam and the launcher will update accordingly.

- Papal Automation
* You can now prioritise which cardinal to vote for and then let the game do the work.

Conquest of Paradise:

- Added new siege strip + assault and breach overlays for Native Americans
- Added several new events for Native Americans

(There are also quite a few major rebalances, see http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/...alance-Changes)

With the Sons of Abraham expansion for Crusader Kings II arriving next week, the medieval strategy sandbox will also receive the massive 2.0 patch. Heralding the arrival of what Paradox Development Studio calls "phase two" of the game's expansion and DLC cycle, 2.0 has one of the longest change lists of any patch the game has ever received. In addition to Steam achievements, workshop support, Ironman mode, and the replacement of the dismal metaserver-based multiplayer, the patch notes are also laden with the usual, hilarious-sounding fixes you only find in Crusader Kings.

The most entertaining pulls from the patch notes include:

Characters of a religion where priests are not allowed to marry will now divorce their wives if ordained
Fixed some bugs with how dead spouses are handled
Fixed a bug where dead popes would have the incorrect character portrait
Changes to the bastard children of Antso IV of Navarra
AI: Will no longer accept giving away women as concubines to characters whose religion they will not intermarry with
Modding: Added "evil_god_names" to religions, to be used in event texts
Modding: Added trigger 'any_spouse_even_if_dead'

Other highlights include a change to enemy war AI to put it more in line with Europa Universalis IV—AI armies will form "hunter-killer" stacks focused on winning battles rather than taking land, and will take army composition into account when engaging in battle (rather than just numbers). The CK2 to EU4 converter is also being updated to import the new Jewish religion and cultures, as well as unique ideas for Jerusalem, the Knights Templar, and the formable Kingdom of Israel.

You can read the full patch notes and a dev diary detailing the patch on the Paradox forums.

This week's podcast is all about Steam's three, big announcements. What do SteamOS, Steam Machines, and the Steam Controller mean to PC gaming? How does it all work? How much does it cost? Does Valve want to replace your main rig? Your living room entertainment center? All of the above? How would Nicholas Cage fare in the political landscape of the 15th Century?

Cory, Evan, and T.J. answer all of these questions to the best of their ability in PC Gamer Podcast 363 - Gabecube!

Have a question, comment, complaint, or observation? Send an MP3 to pcgamerpodcast@gmail.com or call us toll-free at 877-404-1337 x724.

Subscribe to the podcast RSS feed.

Follow us on Twitter:
@ELahti (Evan Lahti)
@demiurge (Cory Banks)
@AsaTJ (T.J. Hafer)
@belsaas (Erik Belsaas, podcast producer)

Paradox Interactive has weighed in on the recent announcement of SteamOS, and with a very positive attitude. CEO Fredrik Wester called it a "great thing for PC gaming," and confirmed that the publisher fully intends to support it going forward. Titles like Crusader Kings 2 and Europa Universalis IV, which already have working Linux versions, will run natively on the new OS.

"We have been developing for SteamOS for quite a while as it’s basically the same as the Linux version Steam runs," Johan Andersson, Studio Manager of Paradox Development Studio (one of Paradox's internal dev teams), confirmed. "CK2 & EU4 should run on it natively, as it runs on Linux on Steam, and all our future games will as well. We think SteamOS is great for gamers, as it will give far better performance on the same hardware than Windows does."

While the publishing side of Paradox hasn't committed to the same universal support at this point, Wester expressed that the roster of Paradox-published games that run on SteamOS will continue to grow.

"We are actively expanding the number of published games on SteamOS—and as Johan mentioned, is fully supporting SteamOS already," he said. "SteamOS is a great thing for PC gaming; competition means more choices which, in the end, should favor gamers."

A fun game is to scour through the patch notes for Paradox's strategies, hunting for things that sound funny out of context. A good time can be had by all. Unfortunately, I've not yet sat down to crack open Europa Universalis IV, so lack the necessary context to even parse this massive list of fixes. "Event 'Conservative Backlash' now requires idea divine_supremacy" might sound funny, but what does it mean?

To be safe we'd better stick to the headline features: new vassal options, new map modes, and an expanded peace interface. Also some key cardinal update: "Cardinals now have a far higher likelihood to die as they grow old," and "Cardinals not yet in the curia can now die." Take that, immortal clergymen!

Here are the new features:


Added new ideagroups for Anatolian Beyliks, Marathas, Taungu, Rajput States,Granada, Papal States, Daimyos, Serbia, Orissa, Punjab, Ragusa, German States, Ryukyu, Bengal States, Tibet, Dravidian States, Assam, Gujarati States, Tuscany, USA, Switzerland, Irish States, Songhai, Brittany, Malayan States, Arabian States, Italian States, Najd & Hedjaz
When you release a vassal you now get the option to swap to that country and play as it.
Added two buttons to the peace interface. 'Surrender' - clicking this will automatically construct a peace offer the AI would accept & 'Suggest Demands' that constructs a demanding peace offer the AI will accept.
Editboxes can now have use copy/paste/cut and accepts text from other applications. This is handy if you want to copy a steamid for example. Also implemented some basic text navigation-features like ctrl-skipping words, and marking text.
There is now support for windowed fullscreen, and you can now toggle between fullscreen, windowed, windowed fullscreen) in the video-settings.
Added in two new mapmodes, one to display coalitions, and one to display opinions.
Added in five new achievements: Grand Coalition - to get a coalition with 6 members in it. Trade Hegemon - be a western european and owning Aden, Hormoz & Malacca. Winged Hussars - Have the Winged Hussar unit, while having at least 50% cavalry power. Luck of the Irish - Conquer all the british isles as an irish country. Sunset Invasion - Start as the Aztecs and conquer Lisbon, Madrid, Paris, London, Amsterdam & Rome.


The rest is a giant list of tweaks and fixes to balance, AI, interface, multiplayer, performance, modding, events, and - let's be honest - basically everything. Check out the full changelist at the Paradox Forum page.

This week, Evan, Tyler, T.J., and Cory recap news from Gamescom: Diablo, XCOM, Elder Scrolls, and more. We compare notes on our current adventures in Saints Row IV, and T.J. vastly exceeds the legal limit for Bohemian Rhapsody lyric puns in a single podcast.

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? The answer is none of the above—it's PC Gamer Podcast 361 - Samurai Kangaroo Cavalry!

Have a question, comment, complaint, or observation? Send an MP3 to pcgamerpodcast@gmail.com or call us toll-free at 877-404-1337 x724.

Subscribe to the podcast RSS feed.

Follow us on Twitter:
@ELahti (Evan Lahti)
@tyler_wilde (Tyler Wilde)
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