Historical strategy games are used to complaints about inaccuracies: wrong coat of arms, wrong dynasty, wrong border. But accusing a game of showing reality better than a modern atlas is a different level entirely. Especially...

Procedural generation loves throwing out surprises that no scriptwriter would come up with. Sometimes it's a rare anomaly or a lucky neighbor, and sometimes it's pure chaos, like a planet of savages with stone axes...

On January 3, 902, the Christian church split in Crusader Kings 3. The Roman Rite became Catholicism, while the Greek Rite turned into Orthodoxy, followed by the Byzantine Empire. The player, as Pope, took charge...

Paradox Interactive has introduced a new rule for the Hearts of Iron 4 Discord server that bans members from using photos of real political and military figures born after January 1, 1800 as profile pictures....

Newcomers to long-running strategy games almost never stop to think that the title they're playing once looked completely different. With Paradox Interactive, that gap can be especially stark. Some of its games have expanded over...

In global World War Two strategy games, players have been leading the most notorious regimes of the 20th century to victory for years without much controversy. Real drama tends to erupt in the places you'd...

Medieval dynasty simulators tend to produce stories no scriptwriter could dream up. There you are, counting taxes and planning a marriage alliance with a neighboring duchy, when the game casually informs you that your fifteen-year-old...

The random number generator in grand strategy games usually works quietly in the background, scattering stars and neighbors across the galaxy without any particular agenda. But sometimes it produces a layout that makes you wonder...

A medieval dynasty simulator promises full control over bloodlines, marriages, and succession. Until one day a player discovers that their grandson – and future heir – has already been betrothed to a widow old enough...

Paradox Interactive is working on a new strategy game called Afterworld, set in a post-apocalyptic North America. Like other titles from the studio, this game offers players nearly unlimited freedom in building their own society,...

Grand strategy games promise epics – crusades, holy wars, standing against the Mongol horde sweeping in from the east. Then it turns out the biggest bloodbath of an entire campaign had nothing to do with...

Developers of grand strategy games love to insist that conquering the entire map in their titles is impossible – the mechanics won't allow it, the economy will collapse, control will tank. That claim usually holds...

In grand strategy games, the victory screen has become a rare artifact that plenty of players have never actually seen. It is a genre where hundreds of hours logged offer zero guarantee that anyone will...

Medieval strategy games have a habit of dressing up disasters as triumphs in their post-battle screens. The result flashes a proud "victory," but look closer at the numbers and you'll often find nothing left but...

Paradox grand strategy games are built so the final date barely matters. Fans start a campaign with excitement, turn into a land-grabbing machine by the midpoint, then start a new save the moment an heir...

A save folder is more honest than browser history. It doesn't know how to make excuses and has never heard the word "context," so the moment someone peeks at the file list, it turns out...

Paradox strategy games like to pretend that everything comes down to calculation and patience, and then the random number generator shows up and burns fifty years of planning in a single child-birth screen. Sometimes it...

Long strategy games do something strange to the brain: it stops seeing the world map as just a map. First you memorize the shapes of countries, then the resource provinces, and at some point your...

Character creators exist for pretty much one reason – to let people make themselves a little better looking than they actually are. Higher cheekbones, a sharper jawline, none of the asymmetry only the bathroom mirror...

Character creators have basically become the unofficial exam for any game with a portrait system: shape up some nameless barbarian and everything looks fine, but try to recreate your own face, and the whole thing...