I'm new to Victoria 3 and I've been playing Sokoto and having a blast. I am curious on what the recommended strategy is to unite Africa. So far, all I've read is that you have to get as many coastal ports as you can to prevent the European powers from beginning to trade from there.

Pick up EU4 the way I pick up all of my games....on a steep steep discount when the next one is announced.

Started CK2 legitimately (ahem) when it went free-to-play on Steam. Don't like the idea of subscriptions for games, so picked up a couple of DLC on summer sales, etc... for dirt cheap. Figure "hey...I'm not an addict...I can handle only having one or two crucial DLCs. It's fine.

7 expansion packs later and, even on summer and winter sales, the amount comes to far more than what the subscription would have cost, but by then it's already been done.

EU5 gets announced. Both EU4 and HOI4 get steep discounts and new starter packs that integrate some DLC into them. Figure it's a good time to get into both games, but I won't need any extra Expansion packs because of the new included content and because there's just no way either of them can truly compare to my beloved CK2. Once again eschew the subscription for both.

Fast forward to five extra expansion packs later (4 for EU4 and 1 for HOI4) and once AGAIN, I've spent more than the bloody subscription would have cost me in the first place.

I still don't like or believe in subscriptions for DLC, but damn the addiction is real...

As usual, i was playing as argentina, forming rio de la plata, and going on to conquer the world. I got number 1 gdp and a nice military, although i didn't focus on beating the british.

Not to be a little freak but will we have options to depopulate specific cultures?

Whats the deal with this non-standard file type? Has Paradox ever talked about why they created it? Does anyone know when they made this change to the file system?

Edit: I've been trying to save my edited gamestate by figuring out how to recompress it into a .ck3 file. I don't really know how to replicate the header. Its really a shame I didn't back up the original save. The file starts with SAV and then a unique set of metadata bytes and then the plaintext stuff which, it turns out, is for the main menu and the icon next to the save name, and then it has the rest of the save data compressed with the PK header, which means its in the .zip format. I can replicate all this but the save doesn't properly load due to the incorrect metadata in the header I believe.

Video Version of the Dev Diary

(11 minutes long) A mini-documentary with Johan and others in Pdx Tinto retelling how work on the game started. Found it really interesting to watch!

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/63416312

Paradox Interactive has announced that its next grand strategy game is Europa Universalis 5, following a tease posted last week.

Do you think the game will be announced soon?

Started this campaign as an adventurer run where I got a random event to convert to Bahá’í. Took it and spread the religion around before some vassals I converted deposed a Llanero, Aria De Machete king and put my character on the throne.

From there I became head of the faith and built a large empire that later switched over to admin. By the end Bahá’í was the worlds largest religion and we were able to muster larger armies than Brazil.

Sadly I was never to form actual Gran Columbia since its restricted to characters of the Divina Patriota faiths but I did fulfill all the requirements besides that.

Overall one of my favorite campaigns to date. I would highly recommend giving South America a go for future ATE campaigns. I know I will be visiting the region again.

Full dev diary here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/dev-diary-164-realm-maintenance.1730576/