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So I'm preparing a list of games to look at getting during the sale. Inspired by Thanas' CK / EU4 thread, I've added both games to my list. To those who currently play, what are some of the must have expansions and mods that I should purchase as well? To get them all for EU4 would cost $160 so to hell with that...but I'm cool with buying a few of the better ones. Any suggestions?

You can usually get all the DLCs for a fraction of the price during the sales.

CK2 (in rough order of most recommended to least)

Old Gods - Adds 867 start date, playable pagans
Charlemagne - Adds 768 start date, tribal mechanics
Sons of Abraham - Playable Jews, enhanced religious mechanics for Christians
Way of Life - Enhanced RPG mechanics

The rest of the stuff is a little more optional IMO, depending on your playstyle and preferences. The Ruler Designer lets you play it more like an RPG if that's your bag, Sword of Islam makes Muslims playable, The Republic makes merchant republics playable, Legacy of Rome adds some Byzantine stuff and the retinue military system. There's tons of smaller packs which generally enhance the overall experience with music, better looking units and portraits, etc.

You really need all the expansions for CK2 IMO. I wouldn't want to miss any of them

But: Don't buy them from steam. Instead buy them from Nuveem, which will probably have a sale itself. I picked up all the DLCS and the main game for ~30 EUR over christmas there.

Sunset Invasion is one of my favorites. It gives Western Europe a 'mongol horde' to deal with. I find it usually makes things more interesting without wrecking the world.

I'm not a fan of the retinue system ( I don't like what it does to the map, basically - every duke has a shitty little stack on his lands at all times ) so I usually play without the Byzantium DLC enabled.

Sunset invasion though is pretty stupid and doesn't really provide a challenge - any decent-sized empire can deal with it.

So just pick up all the ones for CK2...simple enough. Any particular recommendations for EU 4?

Borgholio wrote:So just pick up all the ones for CK2...simple enough. Any particular recommendations for EU 4?

You can get by without the cosmetic stuff in EUIV. In CK2, it is needed for better portraits, in EUIV it is not that big of a thing if your pikemen carry blue or yellow trousers.

Also, you need to get the HIP mod for CK2.

What is CK?

Borgholio wrote:So just pick up all the ones for CK2...simple enough. Any particular recommendations for EU 4?

EU4 is a little more all over the place with regard to its DLC, where CK2 is pretty straightforward in major DLC versus minor DLC.

Conquest of Paradise adds a lot of New World mechanics as well as the option to simulate discovering the New World by randomizing its geography.
El Dorado further enhances various New World mechanics, and gives you the Nation Designer (similar to Ruler Designer for CK2).
Art of War enhances war mechanics.
Wealth of Nations enhances trade mechanics.
Res Publica enhances republic mechanics.

Those are the major content DLCs. It's hard to really recommend one or the other, since they're all different prices and all kind of build on each other. You can certainly play EU4 without them and not really miss their presence if you've never played it before (especially since half of each DLC's features are built into the base game via patches).

Thanks for your help, guys. I was a bit overwhelmed with the sheer number of mods and packs available. I'll definitely pick up the core games when they go on sale. If the expansions for CK2 are cheap enough, I'll grab them too. Otherwise I'll check out Nuveem like you suggested.

On another note, I'm also adding a bunch of old games from the 90's that I grew up with like Descent, Quake, Wolfenstein 3D, and others. While I still have the games backed up somewhere, they're all old DOS versions that require a bit of work to get them running on newer machines. The ones on Steam are all ported to work with Windows 7 AND I can access them from anywhere. I think that's worth 2 or 3 bucks a pop.

You might also look at the humble bundle - EUIV and CK2, not to mention Victoria II and Hearts of Iron III are all in the current Paradox bundle.

I'll only play my copy of CK2 if the DLCs are cheap enough to buy. As is, CK2 is useless to me. It isn't even a complete game. If this is how they make their games from now on then CK2 is the last Paradox game I purchase. AFAIK, up till then, you could play as any faction in any of their games (HoI series, EU series, Victoria series). Now it looks like I bought a demo game and not a full one.

You can currently buy CK2 with all the DLCs for about 23 € (+ whatever tariffs apply to your location) at G2A.
EU4, its DLCs, and most other not completely new games, are also available for cheap there.

Malagar wrote:You can currently buy CK2 with all the DLCs for about 23 € at G2A.
EU4, its DLCs, and most other not completely new games, are also available for cheap there.

The Collection named does not include all the DLCs.

And G2A is really dodgy, I wouldn't buy anything from there. They basically resell Steam codes from regions with special pricing. Far better to get the whole thing from Nuveem, which is a legit site and still offers the same pricerange.

Thanas wrote: The Collection named does not include all the DLCs.

Oops, didn't look close enough at that one

Thanas wrote: And G2A is really dodgy, I wouldn't buy anything from there. They basically resell Steam codes from regions with special pricing. Far better to get the whole thing from Nuveem, which is a legit site and still offers the same pricerange.

This is the first I've heard of G2A being dodgy.
Yes they resell Steam codes, but they tell you where the codes can be used and offer a guarantee service on the games.

Malagar wrote:This is the first I've heard of G2A being dodgy.
Yes they resell Steam codes, but they tell you where the codes can be used and offer a guarantee service on the games.

They are an unauthorized key reseller, in short they are operating in a massive grey area. It is not unusual for keys being bought from there getting revoked. They also have a history of other shady shit.

Steam revokes G2A keys, G2A does nothing
Another example of Steam keys getting revoked
Another example
Statement from developer that keys on G2A are bogus
Only delivering part of the product and postponing content indefinitely while keeping money
Not paying refunds
More discussion.
They've also (in the past?) sold Humble bundle keys.

So yeah, I am staying far away from that site and would encourage everybody else to do the same. I don't want my steam account getting flagged for having stolen or fraudulent game keys.

Enigma wrote:I'll only play my copy of CK2 if the DLCs are cheap enough to buy. As is, CK2 is useless to me. It isn't even a complete game. If this is how they make their games from now on then CK2 is the last Paradox game I purchase. AFAIK, up till then, you could play as any faction in any of their games (HoI series, EU series, Victoria series). Now it looks like I bought a demo game and not a full one.

That's... really not how it works.

One could be forgiven for such a perception, I suppose, since that is how a company like EA would probably do it. But have you even played CK2? I played it when it was first launched years ago - no DLCs - and it was a complete experience well worth the purchase price. The base CK2 game today, with no DLCs, is massively expanded and improved from that at-launch product. Yes, you're limited to Christian feudal lords, but that's the core game experience anyway. Everything else - pagans, Muslims, Indians (whose expansion I forgot to mention above), republics, etc., are all just gravy for advanced CK players to screw around with. If you've never even played the game before, trying to play a non-feudal non-Christian is not only missing the point, but also probably even more difficult than the initial learning curve for the game already is.

It's like buying a chess set, and complaining that the game you bought is useless because it doesn't have frag grenades.

I don't understand these acronyms :`(

Cykeisme wrote:I don't understand these acronyms :`(

RTFM or GTFO.

Cykeisme wrote:I don't understand these acronyms :`(

Crusader Kings

Thanas wrote:

Malagar wrote:You can currently buy CK2 with all the DLCs for about 23 € at G2A.
EU4, its DLCs, and most other not completely new games, are also available for cheap there.

The Collection named does not include all the DLCs.

And G2A is really dodgy, I wouldn't buy anything from there. They basically resell Steam codes from regions with special pricing. Far better to get the whole thing from Nuveem, which is a legit site and still offers the same pricerange.

Reselling humble bundle keys and selling keys from regions with different prices, which often require a VPN to bypass regional restrictions (which can get your Steam account banned), are the least dodgy ways they get keys. Other methods include pretending to be Youtubers and selling press keys, or just selling keys that were purchased via credit card fraud. When the chargeback happens the CC companies add on a penalty fee, making the CC fraud keys worse than piracy because CC fraud actively costs the publisher.

Polygon did an article about the source of the keys. The big thing I take away from that is that the keys change hands multiple times before reaching the end customer, and the final seller in the chain has no way to know if previous links in the chain were telling the truth.

[Update] Ubisoft Says Deactivated Far Cry Keys Purchased With Stolen Credit Card, EA Confirms
Over 7,000 stolen Sniper Elite 3 Steam keys revoked

Natural Selection 2 credit card scam sees developer out $30,000.

Yeah, I linked to some of their shenanigans above.

The difficult part with buying games is knowing if any particular site is an authorised key seller or not. The best way I've found so far is to put any Steam game I'm interested in on my Steam wishlist, get http://isthereanydeal.com/ to import it, add the few non-Steam games that I'm interested in, then have it notify me when one of the games I'm interested in goes on sale on any of the sites it monitors.

Be sure to adjust the settings so that they suit you.

Currently CK II is on sale at: https://www.indiegala.com/store/product/51212 It includes most of the dlcs as far as I can see. The latest major dlc is not included and maybe some of the smaller dlcs(portraits and stuff) might be missing, but the price is very good.

That might be an alternative to shady sites like g2a.

Brother-Captain Gaius wrote:

Enigma wrote:I'll only play my copy of CK2 if the DLCs are cheap enough to buy. As is, CK2 is useless to me. It isn't even a complete game. If this is how they make their games from now on then CK2 is the last Paradox game I purchase. AFAIK, up till then, you could play as any faction in any of their games (HoI series, EU series, Victoria series). Now it looks like I bought a demo game and not a full one.

That's... really not how it works.

One could be forgiven for such a perception, I suppose, since that is how a company like EA would probably do it. But have you even played CK2? I played it when it was first launched years ago - no DLCs - and it was a complete experience well worth the purchase price. The base CK2 game today, with no DLCs, is massively expanded and improved from that at-launch product. Yes, you're limited to Christian feudal lords, but that's the core game experience anyway. Everything else - pagans, Muslims, Indians (whose expansion I forgot to mention above), republics, etc., are all just gravy for advanced CK players to screw around with. If you've never even played the game before, trying to play a non-feudal non-Christian is not only missing the point, but also probably even more difficult than the initial learning curve for the game already is.

It's like buying a chess set, and complaining that the game you bought is useless because it doesn't have frag grenades.

No, it is like buying a chess set but only gives you a king and pawns. You want a queen? You need to buy it. Knight? Bishop? Rook? Sold separately. Sure, you still play the game with just a king and the pawns, but it isn't as fun.

It wasn't like that before. Previous games (don't know about CK1), every nation is open to you, you are not "region locked" so to speak. I'm not going to buy the DLCs until there's a deep discount on them.