Jonatan Järpehag did an amazing job with this game's soundtrack. I don't think I dislike any of them, with my favourites being Silk Road, Nightwatch and Red Sun. At the time of writing this, the OST pack contains the tracks for the Base Game, the Deluxe Edition, and the Magna Graecia and Punic Wars additions in both mp3 and flac formats.
Disclaimer: I have not played other paradox games or games of this genre. I bought the game in the end of patch 1.3 and at the time of this review I have played for 70 hours. In the beginning I was overwhelmed by the number of things the player can or has to interact with - I admit, I did not complete the tutorial and had to watch a couple of videos in order to understand some of the mechanics of the game. Some of the things I found to be interesting include: - depending on the size of your country, you have different diplomatic options regarding other nations - characters have stats allocated into different categories, making them good at doing one thing or terrible at another, with their productivity linked to their loyalty, you can even interact with characters from other nations and encourage their disloyalty and joining you! - diplomacy is affected by the distance between countries - the population, whose productivity depends on their culture and religion, is divided into groups responsible for different things - manpower replenishment, commerce, taxes, surplus of production - each territory can attract people from others and can be upgraded gradually, from a tribal settlement or a slave fishing village into a prospering research metropolis. - depending on your form of government, you will have to worry about different things - is the heir of your monarch guaranteed to inherit the throne, or is there another pretender? Is the term of each of your archons too short, causing the stability of your country to fall every 5 years? - depending on your starting region, you have different missions to complete for bonuses I am in no way a veteran, but (judging by online reviews, especially the early ones), Paradox has made a big effort to correct the state of the game with multiple patches ( as I am writing this I am downloading the latest 1.4, with more to come). Consider giving the game a chance, especially at a discount (available currently).
