I know pirating is always an option, and I used to play EU4 completely pirated.
But I got some credit remaining on Steam and they’re on sale right now, so lads, which should I go for?
Background info being I only played EU4 before, and enjoyed the nation-building side more rather than the military strategy. Although I was able to do some WCs back in the day and I do like micromanaging and extending a 20hr campaign into a 100hr one.
It’s really not worth it, the games aren’t complete unless you own all their dlc, I really recommend pirating paradox in particular
Stellaris > CK3 > Vic3.
At least until the damn slackers update Elder Kings mod then CK3 will be best.
Vic have way too much micromanagement for me. Stellaris have most content and best mods, but it bloats like crazy and work like shit later in game.
Problem with pirating those games is that all of them live by the mods, and best source of mods is Steam workshop. I think CK3 is the one best here since major total conversion mods usually have github or other alternative download. So my advice would be pirate this one and see if you like it.
Finally there is DLC question if you want to buy. Vic is the newest, it have only single DLC but is pretty barebones overall. Stellatis have shitton of DLC so it’s most polished with most content, but it would be expensive, though you can get a lot of them very cheap in keyshops or whatnot. CK3 is middle way, last DLC about tournaments was banger, easily best PDX DLC ever for me.
I’ve bounced off of both Stellaris and CK3 repeatedly but I’ve fallen completely in love with Victoria 3. I think it’s easily the easiest game to get into if you enjoy eu4.
It has problems, yeah. There are some countries that are just completely broken in the current version. But it’s still overall playable and will only get better in time.
