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You can pick it up, RIGHT HERE:
http://pdxint.at/2aV1Gdq

This is long over dew. Here you can finally see all our new fiber based buds!
The Stellaris - Plantoid Species pack releases TOMORROW (04/08-16)!

Which will be your first pick to branch out throughout the galaxy?

Deadly New Expansion to Launch on August 25 with New Patch

Paradox Interactive, a publisher and developer whose games have serious reaper-cussions, today announced the release date for The Reaper’s Due, the upcoming expansion for the medieval grand strategy game Crusader Kings II. Featuring new disease and medicine mechanics and a whole host of deadly new challenges for players’ in-game nobles, The Reaper’s Due will be available on Windows, Mac, and Linux PCs on August 25, 2016.

This expansion will return the Black Death to its rightful place in the center of medieval history, and add new systems that reward sound realm management and planning.

But, as with all expansions from Paradox, The Reaper’s Due will launch with a new content patch for Crusader Kings II, updating the game for all players, whether they purchase The Reaper’s Due or not.

Among the changes coming in the new patch will be:

• New custom rules options at start up for epidemics, invasions, legal changes and so on, so you get the Middle Ages that you want.
  
• New options to auto-save the game at different time intervals
  
• A new interface for better understanding the death and succession of rulers
  
• Adjustments to how alliances work, including AI attitudes to disloyal allies
  
• Major improvements to game optimization
  
• “Continue” button on game launcher to get you to your map even faster
  
• New mod triggers to account for The Reaper’s Due content
  
• Tons and tons of balance and gameplay tweaks, plus new events

The new patch will also be available with the release of The Reaper’s Due on August 25, 2016.

For more information about Crusader Kings II, visit http://www.crusaderkings.com/

Hello everyone! I’m Virvatuli, one of the Content Designers on The Reaper’s Due, which also happens to be my very first project here at Paradox. It’s been so much fun working on this DLC and I hope you’ll have even more fun playing it! In this week’s DD (another first for me), I will reveal one of Reaper’s most important features. Oh, okay, it might not be that important, but at least it’s my personal favourite and pet project. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you cats.

For the longest time, there’s been a issue regarding the representation of pets in Crusader Kings 2. In the realm of companion animals, there has been a worrisome lack of diversity. Most of you who play Way of Life have probably had a loyal hunting dog, there have been some events regarding birds of prey, and a lucky few Conclave players might have encountered a tiny rodent friend. Sadly, that has been pretty much it on the pet front. To rectify this serious problem we’ve added some additional furry and feathered friends in The Reaper’s Due. As we did, of course we couldn’t leave out the best animal of them all: our Feline Overlords, Befurred Ninjas, Gods of the Internet.

In the new DLC you can befriend a cat in a number of ways. However, as any Dwarf Fortress player or real-life cat lover knows, you do not adopt a cat. A cat adopts you. Once your feline friend has decided that you’re the one and only slave for it, you will receive a fancy “Pet Cat” character modifier (unless you scare it away, you horrible person). It will give your character +1 health, as the cat brings you so much happiness, and +1 intrigue, because we all know that cat owners are a bit more clever than everyone else (hey, it’s science!).


However, most things can become troublesome in excess, even your love for felines. In every cat...

Hello Stellaris fans! I hope you're all having a lovely summer. The holy month of July is now over, and Paradox developers are slowly trickling back into the office, tanned and rested. Having just returned to work today myself, I just thought I would write a short dev diary to tell you briefly what is coming.

Hello and welcome back to another DD about The Reaper's Due! Ha! I can finally use the name! If all is going to plan you should be reading this while I am on my third, and sadly final, week of vacation, so I may or may not show up to answer questions. For this DD we are getting back to the core values of The Reaper's Due: Death and Suffering!

Being a prisoner is never a fun experience, and frankly, with The Reaper's Due it only gets worse. We have added several fairly unpleasant ways to interact with your captives:

• Humiliate. The prisoner is degraded in some fashion; such as being tarred and feathered, or forced to do a “walk of shame”. This also causes them to lose prestige and be generally looked down on.
• Torture. The prisoner is caused a certain amount of pain; such as being whipped, or stretched on the rack. May cause them to become Stressed or even Depressed, and can cause you to lose the Kind trait.
• Mutilate. Only available to rulers with certain traits, such as Cruel or Impaler, this causes the permanent loss of a body part. May lead to you becoming Cruel if you are not already, and can cause them to gain Stressed or even Lunatic.
• Bad poetry. Rulers with the Poet trait may deploy their very worst poems against a prisoner. While a comparatively mild punishment, it nonetheless has a slight chance to drive them mad.
• Consume. Rulers who are either Possessed or Lunatic and also have the Cannibal modifier may simply eat their prisoners. If you haven’t disabled fantasy content, this may lead to you “gaining the power” of your victim.

All of these options, besides Consume, release the victim afterwards as they are considered to be their punishment, and while you choose the category you do not choose the exact method. Needless to say, your former prisoner will not think kindly of you after any of these punishments, and in the more extreme cases their close family may also be outraged.

Of course,...

Crusader Kings II: The Reaper's Due Announced
New Expansion Coming Soon, Gamebook Available Now

Published: July 15, 2016 3:44:00 PM CEST

STOCKHOLM – 21 July 2016 – Little remains of those settlements where the Black Death has passed through. Hasty burials make a mockery of the sacraments and set a feast for the crows. Once prosperous provinces have been laid waste, and the lord of the land hides away – secluded in his hilltop fortress, hoping the plague will pass him by. Wiser princes took precautions, and didn’t waste the revenues from more prosperous years.

But, in time, all must pay The Reaper’s Due.

The Reaper’s Due is the newest expansion for Crusader Kings II, the best-selling medieval strategy simulator from Paradox Development Studio. This expansion highlights the historic importance of epidemics and disease in the Middle Ages, especially the Black Death – an outbreak of the bubonic plague that may have killed a third of the population of Europe.

The Reaper’s Due introduces many new systems and features to what is already the richest medieval tapestry in gaming:
Epidemics Improved: As diseases spread from province to province along trade and sea lanes, they lower your manpower and sap your wealth
Hospitals and Royal Physicians: Prevent the outbreak of disease in your kingdom, and make sure your courtiers have access to the latest in Dark Ages Medical Science
Prosperity and Royal Focus: Well managed provinces in peaceful kingdoms will pay huge dividends in gold and levies
Seclusion: Shield yourself from the diseases tearing your kingdom apart, even if it means ignoring the plight of your people
New Event Chains: Is the new epidemic the End of Days? Is there someone else to blame for these horrors? Are there supernatural origins or solutions to the world’s problems?

To help you pass the time until release,...

Paradox Development Studio will soon release the first Species Pack for its hit science fiction strategy game, Stellaris. Species Packs will give players new phenotypes to play with as they expand across the galaxy.


You can pick-up the e-book and the soundtrack today via the Paradox Interactive store or Steam. Plantoids will be available for sale as of August 4th, 2016.

Summer is here and work in Sweden is grinding to a halt. Everyone has shed their winter skin and developed a peculiar form of photosynthesis, and are now idly vegetating in parks and lawns around the country. The season really is tragically short here… I myself am likely doing the same today, trying to develop some sorely needed vitamin D. That’s why I wrote this dev diary last week; it’s all about planning ahead, which brings me to the topic of the week - the future of Crusader Kings II.

Is it time to let go after 11 (soon to be 12) expansions? Not a chance! There are still some areas left to explore, and when we finally decide the time has come, I want the game to be in the best shape possible. We’ll soon be announcing the upcoming expansion, which is slated for release in late August. It’s not a huge one this time around, but there is plenty of good stuff in there as you've probably gleaned from Darkrenown's diaries. After that, we have two more expansions teed up. The first will be somewhat similar to Way of Life in scope and theme, and the second one will likely be huge. After that, it might really be time to let go, but it’s also possible we’ll wind down with another small expansion (nr 15).

We learned some valuable lessons with Horse Lords and Conclave, both when it comes to design and implementation. Crusader Kings II is an old dog now, and it’s getting harder to teach it new tricks. It is unlikely that we’ll mess around with the core gameplay mechanics like we did in Conclave. Instead, we’ll optimize the game and improve the AI (sorely needed, though I've done some work on it for the upcoming patch) and moddability in the free updates, and focus on roleplaying features and quality of life stuff in the expansions. That said, there are still some blanks in the Old World; rulers you cannot play and regions not yet covered…

I'm afraid that will be all this week. Back to my sun lounger... where's my Gin and Tonic?...

Hello all, it’s time for another DD about <Secret DLC> and interesting 2.6 patch things! I am pre-writing this DD to be posted while I am on vacation, so I may or may not show up to answer questions when it goes live. Anyway, “today” I want to reveal a few cool but unrelated features and fixes we’ve made.

Let’s start with some rather old complaints! Flanders is now part of k_france. Wow! And on the subject of France, the AI king of France will no longer create the Kingdom of Aquitaine unless they are close to meeting the requirements of creating the empire of Francia. Barcelona and Trier are also in more logical places.

A little pet peeve I’ve had since playing Conclave was that the fact someone owes you a favor is a bit hard to see, so there is now an icon on a character’s portrait if they owe you one.

Speaking of favors, Muslims will be able to force Decadent relatives to shape up using favors now too.

Players with Horse Lords may have been annoyed at the number of clicks needed to pillage a holding, so instead of needing to continually decide to pillage, the decision is now a toggle rather than an action. Once you decide to pillage, buildings will be destroyed periodically until either the player decides to stop or the holding is destroyed. You can simultaneously pillage multiple holders per province too. The revolt risk has also been capped at 30% while the revolt size has been made more sensible (larger!).

Speaking of Nomads, when a non-nomadic realm conquers an empty province from a horde, the province now gains some revolt risk from Nomad Agitation. This effect remains until the nomads are pacified, either by constructing a Castle or City, or if Tribal by constructing at least 2 buildings. If a province has not been pacified upon succession it will break away and spawn a new Nomadic ruler.

And on the subject of Horse Lord things, the Silk Road has been extended by adding a new branch from Lut - passing through Rayy and Tabriz - to Trebizond, and the...