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The publisher (Paradox Interactive) has quite a few LINUX Games in their library. Their first hit was Europa Universalis in 2000, so they've been around awhile. The developer is a much smaller, newer company called Colossal Order. Paradox is Swedish, Colossal Order are Finns.

So check out their LINUX games. Mostly they're Paradox's classic grand strategy game, but Colossal Order also has a couple transit system sims, and some fantasy stuff too.

Germany, on the other hand, was a small, massively industrial country between the size of the 4th and 5th largest US states (Montana and New Mexico) and smaller than Severo-Kavkazsky federalny okrug, the second smallest of the nine federal districts of Russia.

According to this the population of Montana in 1936 was about 554k. According to this Germany had a population of 65M and the US had a population of 122M. Germany was 117 times as big as Montana. Your numbers are a bit off. Russia had a population of 131M. If you are talking land area then you are looking at the wrong numbers. Land area is meaningless when calculating ability to wage war. By that logic Mongolia should be quite powerful but it is not. Population is the most important factor. Then there is the recent memory of WW1 and had a desire to avoid another war with Germany at all costs. No WW1 Allied Power in Europe wanted to lose another generation of young men so soon. Hitler gambled on the US not getting involved and he was almost right.

Putin may be trying to follow Hitler's path but the west isn't. You need to take the whole time frame into context not just isolated actions.

I had this happen to me. I emailed Paradox Software asking them to release the source code to Supreme Ruler 2020 under the GPL or whatever license they see fit because the game has a mountain of potential the community would like to improve upon.
The response I got was that although they'd be delighted to consider releasing the source code in their mind it was not an option because the code base includes third party code only they have a license to (they sighted MILES Sound System as one).

*cough* paradoxplaza.com/thewesterfront/2010/9/the-drm-dilemma *cough*

What the summary fails to mention is that the company still will actively be looking for pirates on torrent sites. Paradox Interactive's approach is not to bother at all, but rather provide those with unique CD-keys additional benefits.

What an awesome RPG. Not the usual shoot or hack everything that gets in your view. Thanks for the story development and humor. I bought the game - these devs deserve the support so much more than the group that murdered mass effect II. Mass Effect I was an awesome game - great stepping stone to something better - and they blew it. Maybe it is up to the small game devs to save the genre.

*cough* paradoxplaza.com/thewesterfront/2010/9/the-drm-dilemma *cough*

What the summary fails to mention is that the company still will actively be looking for pirates on torrent sites. Paradox Interactive's approach is not to bother at all, but rather provide those with unique CD-keys additional benefits.

Hopefully this time they don't rely on Steam for its multiplayer capabilities so they can release a version that is Steam-free. They had to cancel the non-DRM-fucked version because of that.

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?527049-Magicka-Weekly-Community-Update-18th-of-March-2011&p=12198554#post12198554

I think that forums do provide useful input, but it has to be filtered. If people do have opinions about certain items it means that they can be changed for the next major release, but maybe not at all in the way that what's said on the forum.

I think if an indie dev does not read his forums and personally respond to posts, he won't be an indie developer for long.

Yes, the dev should not personally moderate the forums, but they have to understand that they are going to have a small player base to start with because they are most likely a niche game and in order to continue sales it is imperative they have some response to concerns and quests by the community. If you alienate the people who have actually bought your product with a wall of silence, then they will think "this douche doesn't care that I spent $20 on his game... f' him!"

Now there are some people you aren't going to please at all no matter what you say and most of the time you are going to reply "feature was WAD" was as designed and "patch is forthcoming and will be ready when it is ready" but it shows that you are trying and that is good enough for some.

Also, as a small time developer you aren't going to have paid QA staff and 9 times out of 10, your player base is going to be the ones reporting bugs through the forums.

A really good (no longer small) company is Paradox interactive where it is not uncommon for a developer to respond to a post complaining about a game saying "That shouldn't be happening. Could you send me a save game so I can take a look for myself?"

And as far as niche goes... Paradox is very niche and they are going strong after 10 years because they are active in their forums and people really respect them for it.

Paradox Interactive has a great system where users have to register with their serial number in order to post in or view certain areas of their vBulletin forum. There's no in game DRM. It's completely unobtrusive but there's a lot of peer pressure to register games (anyone posting in the General Discussion areas for support almost immediately gets told to register their game and post in the support area). I'm not sure how piracy rates are figured but I'd be curious to see what theirs is--I'd imagine they do better than average.

I just spent a few hours playing a video game and I'd find it hard to call it a passive experience - some people here seem to feel a similar way. There are entire categories of video games based upon making things yourself, some of which have been around for decades - you remember Simcity?

I invite you to go play Hearts of Iron.

I think it's less that the brainy games have gone down - it's just that there is so much more shit in the room, it makes them harder to find.

Then you should really take a look at the games being published by Paradox Interactive. Classics such as the Europa Universalis-series and the Hearts of Iron-series are great strategy games. They're also publishing several other games in the same genre and I'd strongly suggest taking a closer look for games that play well and don't need a brand new gaming rig.

... at least according to their CEO. In general, it does look like "most" of their games are DRM-free, but I was unable to find a clear statement about when and what. The example above is Majesty 2: The Fantasy Kingdom, the DRM in question is Stardock's GOO.

I am currently only buying DRM-free games. I patronize GOG extensively, they explicitly state they never use DRM. The games are older, but they have many good ones, the prices are excellent, and ... NO DRM. I'm very interested in Paradox, but want to be able to know - clearly and explicitly - which games lack DRM

BULL SHIT

I say this because I know one company who sells tons of games and they use no DRM:

Paradox Interactive

Before they were self publishing, their publisher required them to have DRM in the store release, but the lead Dev patched it out in an official patch a few months later.

Now they self-publish and host Gamersgate, which beyond the download check, the game itself is completely copyable without any DRM whatsover.

Does that mean people pirate their games? Yes, they do, but players like myself have basically spent hundreds of dollars on their games because:

1. They have no DRM
2. The developers are active with speaking directly with users on the forums
3. They have open beta patches with registered users to test bug fixes with the gaming community rather than throwing stuff out there.

Yes, being a successful gaming company can be done without DRM.

I'm surprised that Mount&Blade wasn't mentioned. It was released recently, and it's awesome. For those that never heard about it, think Pirates! in a medieval setting. It's a great (if not the best) melee combat simulator i've ever played, and horse combat is amazing. It also has some light RPG elements.

Check the developers' site (http://www.taleworlds.com/), and play the demo. You can enjoy the full game until level 7. After that you either create a new character or buy the full version. And I highly recommend it.

If you prefer, Paradox (the publisher) also sells through their site: http://www.paradoxplaza.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=395&Itemid=228

Have a louder cry about the DRM. I'm sure you'd love games costing several million dollars to develop shoved up on FTP with an honesty box, but someone with any brainpower whatsoever would realise that its fucking retarded.

Its what Paradox Interactive does with Gamer's Gate with their own games (3rd party titles I'm not so sure).

You could say the actual download process is DRM because you do have to install the Gamer's Gate Client to download the game, but once you have downloaded any of Pdox's games you can copy to any machine anywhere without any DRM.

They are a niche company, but frankly their fans (like myself) are hard core and I'll have to admit that I've given them more money for their games last year than any other gaming company I can think of.

Of course they do something kind of unique that kind of encourages honesty. For each game your purchase you can an icon of the community forums (they run them personally) and its like a badge of honor and you get direct communication with the developers.

They may not be making huge money like EA but they are quite successful in what they do and have a "rabid" community following their games.

In my experience these guys don't put any DRM whatsoever in their games, they have a very good customer support and their games are generally of high quality (gameplay). That being said, the stability of their games sometimes leaves to be desired, but are still worth their money. Take a look at this thread if you don't believe me.

You can find them here. Please respect these guys when you're interested in their games, and actually buy them, instead of downloading from some p2p network.

In my experience these guys don't put any DRM whatsoever in their games, they have a very good customer support and their games are generally of high quality (gameplay). That being said, the stability of their games sometimes leaves to be desired, but are still worth their money. Take a look at this thread if you don't believe me.

You can find them here. Please respect these guys when you're interested in their games, and actually buy them, instead of downloading from some p2p network.

Games that have levels usually have them as way to indicate that the game just got harder.

Or the opposite like in Oblivion where the hardness is simply adjusted to your power everywhere you go but lets you go wherever you want (mostly).

Now if you want to go complete non-scaled, then lets talk about games by Paradox Interactive that create world simulations such as Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, and Hearts of Iron.

There are no levels... No end goals... No difficulty progressing as you progress if you choose certain paths... But rather is a sand box type of a game.

One of the terms they use is "World Conquest" in which it may get progressively difficult for a player to take over the world due to revolts, micromanagement, and supply efficiency but this is not scaled at an arbitrary level.

And if a player chooses he could remain a small country and do his best to stay out of world conflicts.

I would also consider the Europa Universalis series and Victoria to be 'Highbrow'. Pretty much any game with a steep learning curve that's geared towards an educated mature player.

I would also consider the Europa Universalis series and Victoria to be 'Highbrow'. Pretty much any game with a steep learning curve that's geared towards an educated mature player.

I have been playing Rome Total War, and it's a turn-based game until you come to the battles, which you don't have to play if you don't want to. I think it's a nice mix of turn-based and realtime. As for other turn-based games, I haven't played it myself, but I've heard a lot off good things about Europa Universalis.

If you want serious history games, check out Paradox.

I've learned more about geography and history from Europa Universalis II than maybe anywhere else. The user community tends to be well-read and informed; inspires me to go out and find out more about the Timurid Empire or early Tsarist Russia.

I'd like to see an option where you can give up most of your empire to a new computer player (call it a civil war or something) and get a big bonus on your score for doing so. That way you can spend the whole game struggling against superior foes, which is when it is interesting, racking up a huge score if you can split your empire multiple times and still come back.

You forgot Hearts of Iron 1 and 2 http://www.paradoxplaza.com/heartsofiron2.asp

It was mostly over the fact of the Nationalist Chinese see as a different country than Communist China.

Unfortunately, very few developer groups out there have the a good enough financial position to do something like this. Paradox Entertainment and a few others that hava a loyal fan base are starting to do this kind of thing, but most other studios are either owned by a big media conglomerate or just sold out to a big publisher. id is one of the few developers that has the power to do something like this and is not even trying.

I don't plan to buy the game until id releases the obligatory official patch that removes the copy protection once and for all, just like Bioware did with Neverwinter Nights.They won't get my money if they treat me like a thief

The game used is called Europa Universalis 2 and is something which has consumed hundreds of hours of my playing time over the last couple of years.

It's a strategy game that uses historical events to shape the course of the game. The game has military, economy, diplomacy, colonization and religious aspects to it. There are also hundreds of available countries to play with and the game is very moddable through text file editing.

Also, the game was developped in english which makes it available for a wide audience.

Ahh. Ok, that point was pretty.. indirect. I have to say that 1938 was the last chance. If you like, put all of WW2 on Chamberlain's tab. Or the French, a couple of rifle regiments in the Reinland and Hitlar would never have gotten started. It's no wonder Churchill drank like a fish, he was screaming preparedness for most of the interwar period and nobody listened until it was way too late. Then they gave him the job of saving the country. A lot of people here know what that can be like, with differences mainly of degree and not of kind.

If I ever get *really* into Hearts of Iron I may see if I can shut Hitler down diplomatically in the late 30s.

The guys at Paradox Entertainment, the makers of Europa Universalis II and Hearts of Iron, also release patches years after the original game had come out while working without pay. Now, that's what I call true gamer geek spirit.:)