W FEATURE
a great case for 4X games to dip their toes into real-
time action, mashing up empire management with
gorgeous RTS space battles. You could quickly dash
between commanding a fleet of ships, laying siege to
an outpost, and governing worlds, seamlessly. And
where other 4X games could be slow-burning, Sins of
a Solar Empire had the pace and aggression of an RTS.
Alliances could be forged, but conquest was always on
everyone’s minds.
Throughout the ’00s, Paradox Development Studio
had been creating some of the most complex and
dense grand strategy games around. All of them
played out in real time, but with speed controls and
liberal use of the pause button. Years could fly by in-
game, but equally you could spend hours not moving
time forward at all, obsessing over trade deals and
assassination plots with your nose buried deep in
the menus. The Europa Universalis series, set in the
late Middle Ages, is the flagship of the bunch, giving
players control over the fate of a historical nation
across centuries. There’s the economy to juggle, along
with wars, colonial ambitions, religious crises, civil
wars, and political relationships with countless other
nations all across the world.
The success of the first Europa Universalis spurred
Paradox on to create more grand strategy romps,
including Hearts of Iron, set during World War 2, and
Victoria, which honed in on the industrial revolution
and the dramatic political and social changes that
the era brought with it. All of them were liberating
simulations that let players chart their own course
through history, creating bizarre alternate realities
that only made sense if you’d read the after action
report. They were also incredibly rough around the
edges, buggy and a nightmare for newcomers to get
their teeth into.
Sporting a new engine and an extra layer of polish,
Crusader Kings II was a turning point for Paradox.
Though its predecessor had been tepidly received in
2004, Crusader Kings II found a much larger audience,
who then spread bizarre stories and anecdotes of the
histories of their characters and dynasties. Instead of
running a nation, players controlled the leader of a
medieval family; you might be a powerful empress or a
count with no vassals and no ducats. Through political
marriages, wars, and Choose Your Own Adventure-
style events, you could end up losing everything,
including your head. Or you
could kill your spouse, marry
your horse, leave everything
to your children, and flee to
another continent to start a new,
more enlightened kingdom.
Crusader Kings II could get weird,
especially when you throw in
expansions that include Aztec
invasions of Europe and
Satanic cults.
Paradox’s peculiar grand
strategy RPG arrived during a
more hopeful time for strategy
games. The first decade of the 21st
century had not, when all was
said and done, been particularly
kind to the genre, but things
seemed to be slowly changing.
More new 4X games were
appearing, like the extremely
complex Distant Worlds and
the Master of Magic-inspired
Warlock: Master of the Arcane.
After overextending with the
massive and ungainly Empire:
Total War, Creative Assembly
returned with a focused and
refined standalone expansion,
which it then followed up with
arguably the best game in the
historical series, Total War:
Shogun 2. Then, in 2012, aliens
invaded Earth again.ABOVE: Map porn
doesn’t come better
than a Paradox game.