PDXCON 2019

And the endgame is trying to figure which game design allows for the maximum possible number of DLC. ;)

My personal bet is anything other than a sequel to EU4 or CK2. Making sequels to those games is trouble and I don’t think they know what to do with that.

CK2 would be a great starting point for a Wolf of Wall Street style business sim.

I hope it’s not CK3. CK2 is my favorite Paradox game, and I don’t think it needs competition from a sequel. I’d be interested in seeing CK2’s mechanics adapted to a new period or timescale, though.

It won’t happen anytime soon, but the one game I wish they’d do a sequel for is Stellaris. It was their first stab at a 4X hybrid as well as a game not rooted in history, so it’s not surprising to me that it’s been harder for them to nail down the design. I’d love to see them take the lessons learned and start from the ground up but it won’t happen anytime soon with how prominent the game is and how well it’s doing.

Yeah I agree. Similar to the way the had to iterate on EU and CK until they nailed the design.

Okay, just for fun lets say the new game is CK3. Some obvious reasons to do it would be getting it built in the latest version of the engine. Imperator’s map is gorgeous, the scripting is a lot more powerful and easier to use, etc. So there’s reasons there, but that’s not enough.

Paradox has said that they’ll keep expanding existing games until they run out of things they want to do or when they want to take things in a new direction. If they’re using a different design for CK3, what does that look like? An example of this happening was EU3->EU4. Monarch Power became a core part of the design that everything else kind of hung off of. How might CK2->CK3 evolve, I wonder?

The base Crusader Kings 2 game is now free.

But there’s already an incredible GoT mod for CK2. Unless the mod spun a licensing agreement and they brought some of the modders on to make it the real deal. I think a different fantasy IP is more likely, or going full-Stellaris and hitting on a make-your-own fantasy universe.

Another possibility is a China-focused historical game, or even Sengoku 2.

Shams implied they had at least looked into this on one of the podcast episodes. I think it would be a great idea.

I’d like to see the paradox treatment of a more civ like game. Starting small, going from ancient to modern, exploring an unknown world. That may be more in their wheelhouse than sci-fi and much more interesting to me personally.

This is my hope also - a PDX take on starting from scratch human history a la Civilization.

Gosh I would hate that, I went from 4x strategy games to Paradox GSGs and have not looked back since. Asymmetrical starts are just much more interesting and lead to much more lasting gameplay (in my view).

It would be a strange time to do Civilization thing now. This series was basically unopposed since early 2000’s when there was a bad Call to Power game. And just couple of months ago Amplitude - arguably the best modern 4X developer - has announced Humankind, their own 4X game. And Soren Johnson - author of Civ4 - is doing his own 4X right now, but this one is just antiquity, I think. Paradox game for all the history is not unlikely but it feels wrong to me.

So, Crusader Kings III it is then.

Interesting that Surviving the Aftermath is not only EA, but an Epic exclusive. Guess they are testing the waters.

Isn’t only Epic exclusive for the early access?

That’s how it read to me, but it could be interpreted either way. Epic is a no sale for me at this point, I tried again with Borderlands but they lost multiple of my cloud saves and I’m just done with the hassle.

Surviving the Aftermath will be coming to Steam and PS4 when they release onto 1.0.

They were offered a pretty good deal by Epic to go EGS exclusive for the EA period so it sounded like an offer they couldn’t refuse.

I linked this in the Imperator thread because the interview was specifically about that game, but I thought Johan made some interesting comments regarding the development model for Paradox games that might indicate a change of thinking for other titles as well. Speaking specifically of Imperator, he says he would like to get away from expansions and only sell Content Packs for various countries and regions. He said he wants to avoid the EU4 situation, where if you tie new mechanics to an expansion pack, it makes it very difficult to iterate and expand on those mechanics in the future. So, put all the new mechanics in the free updates, leave only the extra content in the paid DLC.

He got on the subject when asked initially about what he would do with unlimited time and money so I don’t think he’s guaranteeing it will be that way, but it’s clear from the latest EU4 changes (making Development and Estates part of the base game for the purpose of expanding on them) that Paradox has identified it as an issue with their current development/business model.

Here’s the video. He starts talking about it around the 13:00 mark or so.