Their dlc's have always been overpriced, but there hasn't been one that actually broke the game in years.
Well... Eu4's newest expansion, "Leviathan", has actually broken the game, it is actually unplayable. And the worst part? Even if you don't have the DLC, you're still screwed because the free patch that came with the DLC also breaks the game.
Oh, and also this dlc is 20$.
So please shit on paradox interactive in this thread.
I used to read the paradox forums in HoI2 days, and all the paradox forums had their After Action Reports where people would make sort-of novelised stories out of their campaigns from the perspectives of the higher-ups in the countries (I'm sure they still do). They were dorky but harmless except half the hoi ones were these stories from their german campaigns where they had Goering and Himmler etc chatting as the protagonists, it was really fucking creepy. I kinda sorta understand why Germany was kinda their default “can you change the course of history?” campaign (though of course this raises broader questions about how fundamentally psychopathic the inbuilt "default" way of playing most strategy games is), but it always felt way too gross for me to ever play as them, and the people going further and doing fash cosplay before it was cool were suuuuuuper fucking sketchy.
I've read a couple of those AARs you are talking about back in the day, and while I'm sure you have your hitler fanboy stories that are garbage and trash writing anyway, many history grognards like myself just find perverse enjoyment in imagining general staff conversations between famous/infamous historical figures. I've written similar AARs for the USSR where its just Marshal Zhukov eating a sandwich and complaining about ammunition shortages. The good German AARs still acknowledge the horrors of war and Nazism, even if paradox rules mean you can't ever discuss them directly. I personally also don't like playing Nazi Germany, it feels way better to stomp them as someone else (especially USSR)
Oh yeah I totally get the grognard appeal of these things, but from memory the german ones I read all seemed rather too excited about their protagonists (I remember that the better ones had a mod or whatever where the nazis were overthrown and there were aggressive-but-totally-not-actual-nazis running germany)
My thoughts are also coloured by the time when I made fun of Himmler on one of the HoI forums for being such a massive loser, and this whole gang of people leapt to his defense and dogpiled on me with shit about how at least he made something of himself and ran a whole government agency, while I of course just sit in my mums basement... it was pretty disconcerting back in the day, before being openly fash was cool
John French and Haig after the Battle of Loos blaming each other, but then they start kissing.......