I'm not going to complain about them charging for expansions when they keep working on a game for 3.5 years after release - which is the case for CKII, and they haven't said they're done with CKII, either. At the end of the day Paradox has to pay their employees for working on the games, their employees want to have a decent living, and while popular in the strategy genre, their games aren't so wildly popular that they can add content for free for years.
I'm happy that they're actually adding good gameplay changes years after release, which means that nearly every game of EU4 I play, I have something new to experiment with, including when I haven't bought the latest expansion. Yet even the vanilla version of EU4 was polished enough that it made for a very enjoyable game - something that I don't think the Civ series has done as well over the past decade.
I picked up Common Sense and El Dorado recently, and have just started my first game since getting those as well as Art of War. All this is on the 1.13 patch. It's been great.
The main problem I see with the Humble sale (where I got El Dorado, Sword of the Stars, and Way of Life for myself, Art of War for a friend, and EU4 base for a friend who didn't have it yet - all for $10 combined) is the different way of packaging the same games. So if you want to buy EU4 (base game, not expansions), you can get:
- EU4 itself
- EU4 Conquest Collection, which includes Conquest of Paradise and some minor DLC
- Paradox Platinum Pack, which also includes CK2, CiM2, and three other games including Magicka
- Paradox Grand Strategy Collection, which also includes Vicky2, HOI3, and CKII
But not the Paradox Kings and Queens Bundle, which sounds like it might and includes CKII and Vicky2, but not EU4. And also not the EU4 DLC Collection, which doesn't include the base game.
I wonder how many people actually buy the Platinum Pack/Grand Strategy Collection. Given that they typically are pretty far down the list of Gamersgate's Bestselling list when they have a Paradox sale, I suspect not very many. Eliminating one or both of those would make it less confusing. The need for the Conquest Collection is also questionable - it's kind of like a traditional Deluxe Edition but it would be just as well to either offer EU4, and Conquest of Paradise separately, or simply make the Conquest Collection the new base version similar to how Civ3 Gold Edition replaced Civ3 Vanilla eventually.
But when I can get EU4, three expansions, and another whole game all for $10, I'm happy.
