Recent reviews by Mercary

Great with friends.

Great game from great developers.

I'm poor at normal chess, I don't know why I bought this, but sucking's great.

Good short horror-y game with a cute rat that didn't die after all. Minus point for the momentarily making you think so and because it could not be petted, but it was said beforehand, so at least they were honest about it. Overall good ~30min experience.

Brilliant grand strategy game, even if Paradox's DLC-policy is more or less questionable.

Despite Paradox's lamentable business practises, this game is quite good. You may for example start as a patrician of a merchant republic, work your way up murdering your rival-families and with good luck maybe getting some of their trade posts as their dynasty dies out. You could also keep one of their children alive at all times so new family doesn't rise in power and you are secured as those children have no prestige nor the age to become new patrician of the republic, so that's a nice -well, effective - thing to do to stay in power. Then next good step could be to turn to zoroastrian, if you haven't now, and marry all your sisters and children and make sweet sweet love to them.. not that I have experience on that or anything.. *cough cough*

Or you could do as I did:
> Be a Irish king (well, more or less tribal)
> worship satan
> sire an unholy son, a demonspawn even
> son disappears when he's 6 or 7 like good genes within the Habsburg family
> few, maybe five years later scouts tell about these weird ships coming from the West with strange people on board speaking this unfathomable language.
> few, maybe five years later (again), receive message that hundreds of thousands of troops have landed to Northern Spain
> who cares, they're Spanish
> few months later get message from the cult that the dark prince have risen and we should all join him in his fight for the name of Satan
> see my son there
> he's the emperor of Aztec Empire
> soon my character dies and my eldest son inherits me, have been following the events unfolding for few years
> get an idea: what if I'd murder the Aztec emperor.
> murder my own brother, he had a child, that kid's heir apparent is me. So I killed him as well.
> from Irish chief to king, to the Aztec emperor due to blood right. 10/10, would steamroll over Europe again.

My story is not as much of a joyous, but rather grim, a story of oppression, a story of predatory capitalism, a story of effects when bad people are let in handles of power, imperialism.

I started my reign as the king of Sweden, my nation's coffers were on negative side, it was a choice of cuts or massive debts. The industry was nowhere to be found, my nation was crumbled. My nation had lost its status as an Empire a long time ago, our Eastern front, Finland, was sadly in Russian hands. It was time to make Sweden Great Again.

Couple of years, decade or few, my country's economy was flourishing again and I could easily say that we had the first actual welfare state while also being thousands silver kronors in profit every month. Our capitalists were happy with their factories built with state's money and brought quite a merry profits for my coffers, besides of course offering workplace for every citizen in my country.

My country provided healthcare, pensions, minimum wage, unemployment bonus, excellent educational system, everything one would presume finding from a modern successful welfare state. Then I, and my council, found out how oppressed and poor our Southern neighbours in Denmark were, I of course as great humanitarian had to intervene when I saw their sorrow and on advice of my Council (ooc: RL-friends watching my play) I declared war to liberate the Danish people as our brothers and sisters and bring them under the Swedish flag. My intentions were purely good. Yet some did not like it. I also tried to liberate our Finnish brothers under Russian flag to be united with us again with help of International help, sadly international community was not very helpful on my cause.

The status quo started to change after liberating the Denmark and as the wealth of my country spread far. Nations close and far started to attack to "contain my aggression", bah, I merely liberated them. First war or two I won defending my country from Southern and Eastern invaders. Then I lost my beloved subjects in Denmark as I lost the war and had to cede it back to their and Danish oppressive leadership. The wars of containment became monthly, almost daily, robbers came from as far as Turkey, . On worst time I had seven or eight nations "containing my aggression", most of them doing that for I know not how many times already, four, five, seven? Nevertheless, in the end I had few dozens of peace deals which in theory would've been taking about 500-1,000% of my collected taxes and then of course effectively had demilitarized whole Sweden.

I gave order for my councillors to come up with a way to make Sweden Great Again, and they thought: what would Hiedler do? Well we called both of Johann Hiedlers, Georg and Nepomuk, and asked for their advice. Following their advice, I fired the current government and gave power to a party which name I can not remember, but they swore in the name of this new movement called fascism. With their help I abolished the taxes from my people, as those money were going straight to robbers and criminals of South and East, no more I said. Then I just raised the tariffs to about 20-30% and my economy flourished again, as the foreign powers only wanted the tax money, which was none. My welfare national socialist Sweden felt Great Again, all thanks to my council-approved Hiedler-approach.

We made Sweden Great once Again.

For a year or two anyways. Some wars of containment were still held in this time, and still they continued, but why should've I cared for those, they weren't getting anything anyways. Well some separatist movements sadly rose after the last war I made peace with, my country was militarized again with a force that probably could've marched over United States, all of Europe and Russia with ease, not to mention recently westernized China. Actually probably most of my population was revolting against my rule, although I don't know quite the reason as their living conditions were like from few centuries forwards. Due to continuous wars and those damned surely imperialist-backed separatists they 'liberated' the Norway, we would've not needed them anyways. But then those imperialists got the catch I was cheating on them and was paying nothing. In time after those rebels and once more demilitarized it was Belgia to first notice it, and declared war to annex the Northern Sweden, well they got it with ease, as I still could've not get armies raised. Then came France or Italy, who annexed the Southern Sweden. Then came the Turks who conquered the rest.

I made Sweden Great Again not only once but twice, and the teaching of the story? People do not like not being taxed and that crony capitalist imperialists do not like when someone out-earns and lives better than them. So do not try to make welfare system of the future few centuries early.

5/7 (for those who understand) or 10/10 play, laughed much with friends in the end-game, I'd approve.