This is The Mechanic, where Alex Wiltshire invites developers to discuss the inner workings of their games. This time, Crusader Kings 2 [official site].
Meet Domnall, Earl of Osraige. He s a pretty affable guy. He s friends with his neighbouring rulers, and all seems peaceful. But he s also ambitious and a just little crazy, and he s about to make a big mess of the Emerald Isle.
Domnall is one of the hundreds of characters across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa that Crusader Kings 2 is simulating here in the year 1066. Whether the player is interacting with them or not, they ll be vying with each other, allying, marrying, dying, giving birth, and generally doing all of the things that your ruler can do. Crusader Kings 2 is a game all about people. It s about marriages and dependencies, accordances and kinship. And at the heart of how it models all these dense and messy human complexities is a single value that governs the way its little computer aristocrats behave:
THE MECHANIC: Opinions … [visit site to read more]
Useful links
Official Website
Crusader Kings II Wiki
Crusader Kings II Development Diary Archive
Useful links
Official Website
Crusader Kings II Wiki
Crusader Kings II Development Diary Archive
The Witcher 3 [official site] is the longest game I’ve played for years, or at least the longest game that I’ve actually come close to completing. There was a time when I’d be thrilled to hear about a new fifty or sixty hour epic adventure, very much subscribing to the policy the more the better , but now I’m more likely to flinch away from the screen when a game’s sprawl is revealed.
I’ve realised that my aversion to enormous games has been growing for a while, but the announcement of Red Dead Redemption 2 brought it into sharp focus. Do I really want> yet another massive open world game? I’m not sure that I do.
Useful links
Official Website
Crusader Kings II Wiki
Crusader Kings II Development Diary Archive
Useful links
Official Website
Crusader Kings II Wiki
Crusader Kings II Development Diary Archive
It’s always a happy day when an update for a much-loved mod appears. The Game of Thrones total conversion for Crusader Kings II [official site] is such a blindingly obvious combination of worlds and mechanics that it simply had to exist. That the team working on it continue to do such a good job is fantastic. The latest update brings in support for the latest expansion to the base game, The Reaper’s Due, which adds all sorts of epidemic modelling and hideous disease-related deaths. So, yes, you can watch your least favourite characters suffer and squirm as they try to sweat or bleed out the bubonic plague.
A new Europa Universalis IV [official site] expansion, named Rights of Man, is out today. This means that people who pay 15 can play with expanded diplomatic options as a Great Power. As is the traditional Paradox grand strategy way, a big update has launched alongside this expansion with fixes and additions for all.
Look, if I sound half-hearted, it’s because I’m reading the notes for a Crusader Kings II patch Paradox also released today, and that has the lot: cats, fraudulent mystics, and cannibals finding human heads in their beds. EU4 is a let-down on the japery front.