Matrix Games Forums

They publish through Paradox. Finnish company. Have an older one now in "Collectors" edition format (fully patched and fixed, plus two DLCs that sold afterward): "East Indian Collection." One of the best gaming experiences I've had since I played CoGEE or FOF.

Basically a trading game, setup an East Indian trading Empire. Also has an excellent naval tactical battles engine.

Their latest one is "Commander Conquest of the Americas." Whereas EIC covers only the Old World, CotA covers only the New (and indeed not all of it). Little more disppointed in some features of this one; after all it has not been out for two _plus years getting patched and enhanced, but in some ways a nice improvement on the basic design in EIC. I'm thinking that by the time the patch it a bit more, and expand it with a DLC or two it will be as good or better than EIC.

EIC covers 1600 to 1800 from cutters and carracks to 96-gun ships of the line.

CotA covers 1500 to 1650.

What I would really like to see them do is adapt their basic engine to cover the 1800 to 1935 time frame: the age of transformation to naval iron and steel! [:D]

I will say, I have a few Paradox Games that I picked up for cheap.  Beware however, that in my opinion they tend to issue games in "beta" and expect the players to submit the flaws for correction.
 
They are fairly good at updates though, and the older (ie. fully patched) games tend to be good.  I have played a mod Magna Mundi of Europa Universalis 3 recently.  Great stuff (and the mod is much better than the standard game so much so it is getting a stand alone game sometime next year)!
 
To show you what you can possibily do, I have grown small Thuringia in Germany to the heredity emperor of the Holy Roman Empire!  Of course, it helped that I was the leader of the winning Protestant faction in the Thirty Years War.  [:D]
 
Oh, I think all their games are "real time" also.  Takes awhile to get use to.

P.I. is not perfect by a long shot, but they do have some games that are darn good-if not great. The continuous time aspect does make MP a bit more daunting.

I tried a demo for the EIC a while back, looked good-especially the ship graphics. I never did get into it though.

The 109 game has me thinking about doing the Ottoman Empire in EU3-it would be interesting.

I think you are absolutely right about Paradox releasing most or all of their products before they are 'fully-cooked.' I bought Arsenal of Democracy what must seems like a year ago, played it a bit, realized there were some pretty nasty imbalances, stopped playing to wait for a patch. They are now to patch 1.5 I think. Same thing with Vicky2: beautiful game, with inspiring design, but there were some serious flaws in balance in the first release. That one has also been patched so I'll eventually get around to another rousing epic of forming Prussia in 1850 and then trouncing all of Europe [:D]

When I compare Paradox to Matrix (for example) this feature of them releasing games that are a bit less complete does seem to be more of a problem, but then I think about how many patches WiTPAE needed, Distant Worlds, etc. I fear that this is just a growing trend, particularly in strategy games which have very complex ecologies, and that the frequency of it is just simply a reflection of publishing frequency.

I guess when I compare the negatives of patronizing a company that has a clear habit of releasing stuff maybe "sooner" than they should have versus the negatives of their not being a nice selection of strategy games, I'll go with the former! I fear the slow inexorable takeover of the Civ "Interative Cartoon" ethos in computer strategy gaming.

You know, that real-time aspect of Paradox games actually deterred me for quite some time. But once I took the plunge and got used to it, I dont' really see it as being any different than turn-based. I like 'em both now.

I had a lot of fun with EU3 Heir to the Throne, but just eventually binged out on it playing Castille and taking over the northwestern Mediterranean. Only thing I _really_ did not like in EU is the ridiculously large standing armies that are so totally unrealistic for the period. I think when I finally quit my longest match in about 1690 or thereabouts, I had something like 80K man armies in everyone of my border provinces with the disarticulated French kingdoms, Bavaria and the much-carved down Austria (Venice and all of Italy were part of greater Spain. The colony aspect of EU was also just slightly underwhelming. Will eventually go back to EU HTT a bit more and also looking forward to Magna Mundi. Another game from Paradox I'm looking forward to is Crusader Kings II. If you never played I, it is a very neat game. Quite dated now in graphics and interface, but the focus on forming a line of descent was quite unusual and I thought innovative. I'm hoping that they really flesh that out more with CKII.

I agree as far as the "real time."  I thought I would hate it but it just takes awhile to get used to.
 
If you haven't played the Magni Mundi mod for EU3, do so.  The western European countries can do much more as far as colonization.  But try a member of the Holy Roman Empire!  The religious wars make things very exciting!
 
I will say that for MP, Matrix games are much better.  In EU3, I tried 1 MP game and was underimpressed.  Give me COGEE any day for MP.

The rel time approach for single play is excellent. In some games it adds realism that is not possible (yet) with IGOUGO games. However, with MP gaming real time does create problems that you do not face with PBEM games. Wego, as in the CoG system seems to be the best for MP gaming-for me anyway.

With only one opponent real time MP gaming is not so bad-just scheduling. In some of the P.I games you can have many players. This creates many problems.

I have played HoI3 MP. I have EU3 also, but have not become familiar enough to give that a shot in MP. I have one EU3 game going as Castille-up to 1500. Interesting, but does not really grab me.