Europa Universalis IV: Conquest of Paradise Review

Strategy gamers should never take Paradox Interactive lightly. The studio invades with more enhanced strategy titles one after another, taking as much time as possible from our lives. Just when Europa Universalis IV was causing enough trouble with my daily schedule, an expansion was thrown on my plate to double it.

While its basics are the same as the original, Conquest of Paradise is more features-driven, has improved pacing, and includes dozens of Native American nations, with new events and decisions to make.

Conquest of Paradise introduces a unique feature that allows players to discover a new and completely randomized world. Upon starting a game, players can randomize the makeup of South and North America and discover terrains and tribal placements. Keeping American history intact, the game randomly generates irrational territories and culture maps, letting gamers experience a mystical unveiling of a new land.

Even though certain areas remain in the same sites due to their historical resemblances, play-throughs can hardly be the same. This alters the whole dynamics of the gameplay when colonies are established to gather resources, trade with the native tribes, and, eventually, take their lands by means of overpower. Despite the world being fictional here, in each campaign, players experience a genuine sense of wonder whilst discovering new lands and progressing through the game.

Besides the randomized new world, Conquest of Paradise mostly features its Colonial segment. Players have the option to manage colonies or play as one. Plenty of Native American tribes are to be unwrapped, including one-province tribes that provide additional benefits to the player who plays as a tribal nation early in the game.

You can choose to play as the new nation or take over an existing colony. Users managing the colonies typically deal with their affairs, with the luxury of striving for liberty from the motherland or even declaring war.

Managing the Colonial Nations, however, is different and offers more complicated gameplay. Colonies can grow large enough to form Colonial Nations. A nation can be colonized with four or more provinces from a region, with each nation as an individual entity in the Colonial Nations, which can form their own set of army and fleet and have the freedom to run by their own, except for paying a percentage of income from the tax earned.

Players managing a Colonial Nation have the authority to increase the amount each nation must pay, but this also increases their liberty-desire. Once the desire for a nation reaches 100%, they are more likely to rebel. These nations can either be released on their own or regained by force. All nations will, mostly likely, act as vassals unless put pressure on their economy.

It gets fairly easier when Colonial Nations are formed as the nations keep giving money, until the day of rebellion. Players can also reach out to Africa or East India and colonize nations, but there are limitations to three colonies per region.

Changes in the Conquest of Paradise are certainly appealing at first, but the intensity dies down rather quickly. Tinted Native American play-through doesn’t really add much after the initial excitement and gets mediocre with no special events to witness. Though without any doubt, this expansion brings many desired changes, the lack of detail piles up the frustrations in the end.

Under no circumstances can Conquest of Paradise be considered a bad game. Perhaps it’s the reputation of Europa Universalis IV that has made gamers anticipate more. However, it’s understandable that Conquest of Paradise is only an expansion and certainly provides the grounds for enhancements for the upcoming expansion, Wealth of Nations. The dynamic improvements players experience in this DLC only make the anticipation go higher for the upcoming ones.