I'll preface this by saying I've bought almost every other DLC that came out for this game. Each time I get a new one, I spend a few dozen hours on a new sandbox city (don't care much for custom scenarios), so I quite often feel I get my money's worth.
I wouldn't say Green Cities is a must-buy right now, I'd wait till it goes on sale for a 50% discount maybe. If you don't already have Mass Transit, I'd recommend it over this one. But if you're like me and get a nice tingly feeling from seeing electric cars buzzing around your city, reducing pollution & whatnot, by all means get it now.
Even at the current price point, it doesn't feel like a ripoff, and I quite like supporting Paradox's work on this game and encouraging them to keep putting out DLC for it.
This DLC adds a bunch of fairly useful abilities to the game, like the "great power" system (if you're planning to play as one of the bigger nations). There's another DLC out there giving you the ability to "threaten war" to slowly annex provinces, and I've come to use it almost constantly. I imagine threatening over breaking alliances will be just as useful.
Similarly, personality traits add a bit of extra spice to gameplay, and having queen regents seems pretty darn useful to sidestep painful regency periods.
One of the first DLCs I'd recommend getting, provided you already have the essential "Common Sense" and "Art of War" (otherwise go for those first).
This is one of the older, and probably therefore cheaper DLCs for the game, but it doesn't add a whole lot of extra content over the free update. Really cheap if you can get it on sale, but I'd highly recommend going for more highly valued DLC first (like Common Sense or Art of War), if you don't have them already.
There are numerous threads on Reddit ranking EU4 expansions in terms of usefulness if you need more advice to go on (just search "what DLCs should I get EU4"). Hope this helps.
I'll be honest, I only got this because I was very keen on playing a specific country (Moldavia), which starts off as a vassal at the beginning of the game. The DLC allows for new diplomacy options, most importantly (to me) the one to get other countries to support your independence war against your overlord. This drastically improves gameplay options if you're playing as a vassal/march.
Other than that, the custom/random nation content might be nice, if you get bored with the base historical game (I haven't yet).
I only got this for the timelapse feature (very annoying on Paradox's part not to include it in the free patch).
Otherwise, renting out your army to a foreign nation for ducats sounds interesting, but is highly situational (I haven't had an opportunity to do it yet). Plus a few improvements to trade/espionage. Not a game-changer, I'd otherwise recommend this DLC only after other, more essential ones.
This is one of the "tier 1", highly recommended DLCs for the game, according to reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/comments/5et9si/which_dlcs_should_i_get_a_help_for_people_new_to/
Good to get with a discount, one star deducted just for the ungodly number of DLCs that Paradox released for the game.
This is one of the "tier 1", highly recommended DLCs for the game, according to reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/comments/5et9si/which_dlcs_should_i_get_a_help_for_people_new_to/
Good to get with a discount, one star deducted just for the ungodly number of DLCs that Paradox released for the game.
This is one of the "tier 1", highly recommended DLCs for the game, according to reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/comments/5et9si/which_dlcs_should_i_get_a_help_for_people_new_to/
Good to get with a discount, one star deducted just for the ungodly number of DLCs that Paradox released for the game, and the fact that recent patches made it more-or-less mandatory to have Common Sense (the free base game apparently had new "challenges" introduced that can only be addressed through mechanics introduced in paid DLC).
I very much like the idea that they're still doing work on this game, and expanding it with great features (though some of them already existed as mods). It must be costly to keep the dev team working, so I don't mind spending the ten bucks every now and then if it keeps attention on the game high.
I'm going to give it five stars though, because I also *very* much like the approach of releasing some of the features as free updates. And indeed, I consider some of the free updates to the base game to be quite essential quality-of-life improvements.
The new transit options look good, and it's always fun to tinker with diverse options, but they're not really super-useful (if you're a really mechanics-oriented player). I ended up not using monorails all that much, because the stations take up a lot of space, generate noise pollution AND cost loads in upkeep. It's much more efficient to use something like trams instead.
Haven't used blimps or cable cars yet, but I can't imagine they help much with elimination gridlock (though I might be proven wrong). They seem more situational than anything else.
I won't lie, this game is hard to get into (I tried picking it up several times it the past, but got annoyed with losing too much), but once you do, you can easily sink hundreds of hours into it. The world is richly detailed, the geography and history are largely accurate, and you get a significantly different experience depending on your starting nation and the goals you have in mind (near-endless re-playability in my mind).
On the fence as to whether or not to detract a star (eventually elected not to), because of the ridiculous state of the DLCs. You need to do a heck of a lot of research to figure out which DLCs are worthwhile, and a lot of DLC packs are largely useless (containing mostly unit texture packs). Otherwise, the base game has a ton of content for the price anyway, but you will very likely feel the need to get the expansions once you get a taste of the original.
Graphics are definitely dated by this point, but they still look like lovingly crafted 2D sprites. If you can get past that, this is a real gem of a game, the amount of content you get is absolutely insane.
Each of the 17 (!) races plays largely differently, and your hero's class (chosen out of a possible 29!) also is a big influence on the kind of gameplay you're going to get. I'm not even a fan of RTS games, but the hero persistence & RPG mechanics drew me in, and I've been playing it for years.
It's a real shame this is title typically sits as an undiscovered gem of the RPG + RTS combo genre, while most people think Warcraft is the pinnacle of it (it isn't, IMHO).
In conclusion, you can watch a gameplay video, play a demo (if you can find one), but there's otherwise no reason not to buy the game, if you're a fan of the genre at all.
Not a bad piece of DLC, if you can get it at a discounted price (full price is a bit much IMO). Having to lay down hot water pipes in the ground might make it a bit more realistic but it's ultimately just more busywork.
On the whole, the weather effects are nice and add some immersion (especially now with the cold season approaching), and I feel like I got my money's worth just from the new map theme and expanded transportation options.
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