I like the surprise of a new continent, I dislike its long-term implications

Jan 17, 2014 17:46 GMT  ·  By

When the Europa Universalis series was first launched by Paradox, it was predicated on a very simple idea: what if you could choose any country on the continent and then reshape its historical destiny in any way you pleased?

The first and second titles in the series were fairly deterministic and included a lot of events taken from actual history that the player could replicate but there were also a lot of possibilities for alternative scenarios, also coded via events.

In the third Europa Universalis, Paradox shifted the focus towards more speculation and made sure that it was hard if not impossible to replicate the way a country behaved in our actual, real past.

EU IV keeps the same core idea of freedom, but brings in history as a parallel track, via decisions and missions that are based on context rather than on solid triggers and allow the player to borrow the best from the virtual and the real past.

When Conquest of Paradise was announced as the first expansion, I was a little disappointed that they would allow the American continents to be fully randomized, even if the other features seemed appealing.

This seemed a step too far from the core ideas of the franchise and I could actually see a future when the entire world could be created without any relation to the geography of the real-world Earth.

That experience would no longer be meaningful to me because I want the game to allow me to explore “what if” scenarios and see what could happen if small or big events were changed in the past.

A truly random world would make that impossible.

So far, I am enjoying the way an entirely new America changes the game, but I will probably not enable the Randomize option for my long-term games.