Europa Universalis IV: Conquest of Paradise

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. With its basics being 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 brings a unique addition that allows players to discover a new and completely randomized world. Upon starting a game, players can randomize the make-up of South and North America and discover terrains and tribal placements. Keeping the 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 establishing colonies to gather resources, trading with the native tribes and, eventually, taking their lands by means of overpower. Despite the world is fictional here, in each campaign, players experience a genuine sense of wonder whilst discovering new lands and progress through the game.

Besides the randomized new world, Conquest of Paradise mostly features its Colonial segment. Players have the alternatives to manage colonies or to play as one. There are plenty of Native American tribes to be unwrapped, including one-province tribes that provide additional benefits to the one who plays as a tribal nation early during a game. There are options to either play as the new nation or take over an existing colony. Users managing the colonies are typically dealing with their own affairs, with the luxury of striving for liberty from the motherland or, even, declare war.

Managing the Colonial Nations, however, is a 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 individual entities 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 Nations have the authority to increase the amount each nation must pay, but this also increases their liberty-desire. Once the desire reaches 100% for a nation, they are more likely to rebel. These nations can be either released to be 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 rebelling. Players can also reach out to Africa or East India and colonize nations, but there are limitations to three colonies per regions.

Changes in the Conquest of Paradise are certainly appealing at first, but the intensity dries 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, but, under no circumstances, Conquest of Paradise can be considered as a bad game. Perhaps it’s the reputation of Europa Universalis IV that has made gamers to 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 makes the anticipation go higher for the upcoming ones.

Sarwar Ron, NoobFeed
Twitter | +SarwarRon