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.
That’d be great for anyone starting a PDX title after a couple years of post-release development. I recently bought HoI4 and CS, and it took a fair amount of work to sort out which DLC or free patches were necessary. Happily (for me, maybe not for PDX) so many features made it into the patches that I didn’t feel like any DLC were necessary at the start, though I’ve since bought HoI4 DLC w/the factions I want to play.
I agree with this. From a consumer perspective it would make me way less hesitant to jump into one of these games knowing I don’t need to figure out what DLC is “required”. Focusing on content packs for regions or whatever should make it obvious that DLC will be relevant when I’m deciding what country to play. This also explains why they are adding UI for EU4(I think?) to help point out what DLC is relevant to what countries.