Strategy and Wargaming

Paradox’s WWII Strategy Wargame Conquers the World

Paradox Development Studio is thrilled to announce that Hearts of Iron IV, its World War II themed strategy wargame, has sold 500,000 copies worldwide since its release in June 2016. This milestone follows record sales for Stellaris, Europa Universalis IV and Crusader Kings II, once again confirming Paradox as the premier developer of computer strategy games.

Fredrik Wester, CEO of Paradox Interactive, underlines how the continued success of Paradox games justifies the company philosophy.

“The PC remains the primary platform for games of this nature,” Wester says. “Even genres that have traditionally been seen as niche can find a large audience, if a developer is dedicated to quality, variety and learning from both previous experiences and the community at large.”

Hearts of Iron IV recently saw the release of Together for Victory, the first major expansion to the game. Lead Designer Dan Lind is very pleased with the ongoing development of the game, and the team remains committed to continually improving the HoI experience.

“As a result of this success we are able to take advantage of extra time to add tweaks and polish to the game. Our community has high standards, and we will work hard to to live up to their expectations in the coming weeks and months. We really want HoI to be the best it can be for our fans.”

Hearts of Iron IV is currently 33% off at the official Paradox Store. The game is also available on Steam.

We have the pleasure to announce that we’ll be running a very special preview stream of Afghanistan ’11!

Our Agrippa Maxentius will tackle the game, show you its many innovative features and attempt to win a war based on counter-insurgency and winning the Hearts & Minds of people! Will he manage to stabilize Afghanistan?

Keith Boschoff, lead programmer of Afghanistan ’11 and member of Retro Epic will also be there, ready to answer to any question you might have! The stream will commence at 5 pm CET / 4 pm GMT / 11 am EST on Thursday February 23rd, only on the Slitherine Group’s Official Twitch Channel.

We are receiving news from the Korean peninsula about an American mobilization of troops and warships after the confirmation that Pyongyang has conducted a new series of nuclear tests! The Command: LIVE Team has been dispatched in the region to gather all the information about this crisis! Watch the report here!

The situation on the Korean peninsula is becoming more dangerous month by month. The bellicose statements from the ‘Supreme Leader’ notwithstanding, its North Korea’s foray into the Nuclear weapons arena that has made the situation critical.

The Supreme leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un, in somewhat typical fashion has been making extremely provocative boasts in the lead up to Generalissimo Day, a day which honors his father Kim Jong Il, the 14th of February. The main thrust of these rants is characteristically anti-western but there was a hint of something big that intelligence communities are taking seriously. True to form, both a successful missile launch and a Nuclear test on the same day startled the world.

Command LIVE: Korean Missile Crisis will be available on February 28th!

Matrix Games is pleased to announce that Afghanistan ’11 will hit your screens on March 23rd.

Afghanistan ’11 builds upon the very successful Vietnam ’65 and brings its original formula to the desolate mountains of Afghanistan, where the US armed forces, assisted by the local Afghan National Army, fought for years against an invisible enemy.

Afghanistan ’11 isn’t your standard wargame: if you want to win it won’t just be about eliminating the enemy on the battlefield, but you will need to conquer the Hearts & Minds of the locals by ensuring safety to villages, isolating and eliminating Taliban units, training the Afghan army and building and protecting infrastructure.

Logistics and organization will be extremely important as the Taliban and tribal militias will attempt to thwart your efforts with sneaky ambushes and sudden strikes – the enemy plays hide and seek and could be everywhere and only the most skilled strategist will manage to win the war in Afghanistan and help build a modern nation.

Afghanistan ’11 brings back the extremely successful formula of Vietnam ’65 and expands on it. The gameplay is now richer than ever! Extend your supply lines with a whole new modular FOB system. It will be the player’s duty to fight the war on drug production – destroy opium crops and deprive the Taliban of their economic sustenance. Oversee dynamic national elections which could affect your whole strategy! React to many unique political events which will add further unpredictability to your game! And much more.

Watch the introductory trailer here.

Visit the Afghanistan ’11 official product page here.

Last but not least, the Steam page is also now live!

Paradox’s Medieval Strategy Classic Still Going Strong Half a Decade Later

On Valentine’s Day 2012, Paradox Development Studio and Paradox Interactive released Crusader Kings II, a game about Medieval conquest, intrigue, diplomacy, and faith. Over the last five years, Paradox has updated, supported and expanded Crusader Kings II and it continues to challenge the development team’s imagination. Over the last five years, the game has sold over a million copies, not counting the many hundreds of thousands of sales for the many expansions and cosmetic DLC.

Crusader Kings II launched Paradox Development Studio into a new era of popular success, demonstrating that broad and complex games about serious subjects could find a large audience. For half a decade, the game’s community has shared stories of world conquest, daring Crusades, accidental empires and soul-compromising sins.

Let’s be honest; there has been a lot of murder.

To mark this milestone, Paradox will dedicate much of 2017 to celebrating Crusader Kings II and its community. The first step in this year of modern medieval pageantry is to give away a free portrait pack to everyone that owns Crusader Kings II. This South Indian portrait pack will add more color and personality for those who fight for control of the great subcontinent. The pack is available here.

And then tomorrow the celebrations continue with a celebratory video from LongGameShort. His humorous animated videos are firm favorites of the Dev team and the community, so it seemed only right to involve him in our celebrations!

LongGameShort will help in the celebrations with a video release on the 15th of February

Paradox is very grateful for everyone that has embraced Crusader Kings and hopes that you will join us through the year as we pay homage to the lord and master of role-playing grand strategy games.

Those who have not delved into the plotting and intrigue of Crusader Kings II can even pick it up with up to a 75% discount at the Paradox store here!

Today we have decided to take a more in-depth look at the next DLC in the Order of Battle series: Kriegsmarine.

Why the Kriegsmarine?

Well, mostly three reasons.

First, the upcoming Skirmish Mode has several naval maps available. By giving Germany an extensive roster of naval units, the nation can be also used on these types of maps.

Second, we haven’t had meaningful naval combat in any campaign since the release of the original Pacific War content. The Kriegsmarine DLC allows us to revisit this aspect of the game and gives us the opportunity to tweak and add gameplay mechanics to make naval warfare even more exciting.

Third… very few strategy games cover the Kriegsmarine in an extensive way. While its historical role was fairly small in comparison to the air and land battles waged by Germany, it none the less allows us to add a lot of exciting new units, scenarios and features to the game. It is an incredibly fascinating subject, and we felt it’d make for a unique and original DLC.

Read on…

Tigers on the Hunt: Kursk will be released tomorrow, and to celebrate this important occasion, our friend Idjester will stream the game on his Twitch Channel on Thursday Feb 9th from 6:00-9:00 pm EST and again on Friday Night from 6:00-9:00 pm EST!

Watch the Stream here!

Tigers on the Hunt: Kursk is a DLC containing three Campaign Game Scenarios for Tigers on the Hunt, focused on the key operations during Operation Citadel. This nice addition features a different type of gameplay from the original base game, giving the players a more challenging experience!

A Campaign Game Scenario is a much larger scenario with a lot of units on a large map. The battle lasts generally over several days and nights before the Campaign Game winner is called. To do this the Game Turns are divided into portions for Day (8 Game Turns) and Night (4 Game Turns). See more information on how it works on the official product page here.

Following the steps of the base game, Tigers on the Hunt: Kursk will make you toiling for every inch conquered, fighting against an unforgiving AI!

Get more information about Tigers on the Hunt: Kursk from its official product page.

The release date for the first official installment of Tigers on the Hunt is approaching, so it could be interesting to know how differently it plays from the original game. Take a look at this document (.PDF) developers have put together!

Tigers on the Hunt: Kursk is a DLC containing three Campaign Game Scenarios for the Tigers on the Hunt Game. The Campaign Game Scenarios portrait three different battles during the German Summer Campaign 1943, more known as the Operation Citadel. The first Campaign Game Scenario is about 3rd SS Panzergrenadier Division Totenkopf crossing of river Psel, the second 1st SS Panzergrenadier Division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitlers drive towards Prokhorovka and the third XLI Panzer Korps attempt to penetrate the Russian lines at Ponyri.

Get more information about Tigers on the Hunt: Kursk from its official product page!

North Korea has been a pariah for many decades among the International Community. Its totalitarian regime has strongly pursued the policy of “military-first” (or Songun), building one of the largest military apparatus in the world.

His ambitions have achieved a new phase with the active development of a nuclear deterrent, and different warheads have been tested in the last years, violating numerous UN resolutions.

What if he develops the capacity to directly hit the continental area of the United States? What kind of response would this threat trigger?

Korean Missile Crisis is the latest installment in the acclaimed Command LIVE series, and it aims to explore a scenario where Russia and the US are competing to put an end to Pyongyang’s ambitions

A full analysis of the situation has been dispatched! Read the in-depth analysis (.PDF)!

Get more information about the game from its official Product Page!

Developer Cats Who Play have revealed their new single-player RTS project, Syrian Warfare, will be released on February 21, 2017. The game will be released on Steam versions in two languages, English and Russian. With the release announcement, a new gameplay video has been released. You can view it here.

Here’s some game info:

Our planet has seen to many wars, and that’s a sensitive subject for all of us. That’s the way the world wags, and every day we see consequences of numerous conflicts taking place in faraway lands. We see them in the news, we see them in the refugees at our borders.

This war has been going on for a long time, and it’s hard to say when it will be over. We got so used to it that news from Syria has become trivial. We’ve even already forgotten how it all started, and where the roots of the terrible terror lie – the terror that swept across Europe in recent years.

Syria is all over the news, and it’s become a subject of many documentaries. We, however, want to show the story through the lens of the game, and don’t let the word “game” mislead you. This game does not claim to be a history lesson, but it shows the course of the war in all its seriousness through the major milestones, from the first days till the latest important victories over terror.

Syrian Warfare is:

• Real Time Strategy game with a high degree of realism.
• Detailed simulation of modern weapon systems.
• Close to reality tactical actions of different types of troops.
• Game based on a true story.
• Realistic graphics.

It’s is not a cheap actioner, but rather a game claiming to look and feel like a non-fiction doc. Following the game progress will bring you to better and clearer understanding of the hornet’s nest that has been stirred up in the Middle East. Understanding of how it all started and how all sides of the conflict tend to act now. We do understand the seriousness of the subject and we are not afraid to take on it.

Find out more on the official Syrian Warfare webpage.