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.
Empire builders, rejoice. Thanks to the latest Humble Bundle, you can now conquer the whole of Europa Universalis IV and its many, many expansion packs for as little as 13 / $17, or just get the base game (and six other DLC packs) for a single US dollar – that’s 76p in the UK! That’s an outright steal if ever I saw one, so why not read on for the full list of Europa-themed spoils?