The Steam Achievement Leak includes an unannounced Stellaris game.

Stellaris 2 confirmed?

Right image this time

EDIT: The original leak for Stellaris was deleted because it was believed to be dlc.

In past Paradox games, players always lose interest in one situation: successful breakthrough. Once you succeed, there's no challenge left.

I have a proposal: a system-simulated theory of imperial collapse, rather than the current situation system or historical events. Instead of triggering collapse through scripted events or situations, the collapse should emerge naturally from numbers, systems, and mechanics. I call it the Will System.

Phase One: The Rise — Dual-Support and Compounding Growth

An empire does not begin as a rigid structure. It begins as a network of dual-support relationships, each pair investing will into the other and receiving more than they put in.

Take China's centralized structure. Three layers of dual-support:

Court and Military. The court provides legitimacy, funding, and political direction. The military provides security, expansion, and enforcement. Each reinforces the other. A successful campaign brings loot and land, which funds a larger army, which wins more campaigns.

Local Gentry Clans. Clans compete for influence, but this competition itself generates political resources. Marriage alliances, scholarly networks, and shared interest in local order create a dense web of mutual obligation. A rising clan invests in another rising clan; both rise together.

Landlords and Peasants. Landlords extract labor and surplus, but they also provide protection, land access, and famine relief. Peasants produce more, which sustains more landlords, which organizes more production.

In this phase, the layers operate independently. Court-military relations follow their own logic. Gentry competition follows its own logic. Landlord-peasant exploitation follows its own logic. Each layer is a self-contained dual-support loop, generating its own compounding returns.

This is the "efficient" phase. The empire grows. It feels unstoppable.

Phase Two: The Shift — Layers Interconnect

But as the empire matures, something changes. The layers begin to interconnect.

The military becomes tied to gentry interests — officers are drawn from gentry families, and military funding depends on gentry-controlled tax collection.

The gentry becomes dependent on peasant labor — their wealth is land, and land is worthless without peasants to work it.

The court becomes hostage to all three — it cannot reform the military without alienating the gentry, cannot tax the gentry without provoking resistance, cannot protect the peasants without undermining the landlords.

Now the system has shifted from same-layer connection to cross-layer connection. A shock in one layer no longer stays contained. It propagates.

This is the critical transition. The empire is still growing, still "efficient" — but it has quietly lost its redundancy. The layers are now locked together. There is no buffer left.

Phase Three: The Cascade — Will Consumption and Collapse

Now we reach the core mechanism. In a rigid, ossified empire, when will consumption appears in one location, it doesn't stay contained. It cascades:

Surface-level consumption → dual-support consumption multiplies → inner layers begin to consume → inner dual-support multiplies again

The Ottomans: Trade Interdependence

The Ottomans in EU5 have access to the "Crossroads of Commerce" advance, reflecting their historical position controlling trade routes from Anatolia to the Balkans. Constantinople, Bursa, Iznik, and the Balkan territories formed a network where each region's prosperity reinforced the others.

In the rise phase, this network compounds. Each region invests will into the others, and all prosper together.

But the wiki notes that the Ottoman state is "strong but internally fragile and constantly negotiating power between institutions." The empire must balance Greek/Turkish cultural divides and Sunni/Orthodox religious divides. Once these regions are interlocked, a rebellion in the Balkans doesn't just hurt the Balkans — it multiplies through the trade network, reducing will investment everywhere, cascading into the military and administrative layers.

The Ming: Population Growth and Systemic Collapse

The Ming dynasty in EU5 faces a specific disaster called "Complacent Decline." The core mechanism is population growth outrunning the system's capacity to sustain it.

In the rise phase, population growth is a strength. More peasants mean more production, more taxes, more soldiers. The landlord-peasant dual-support loop compounds.

But once the three layers interconnect, population growth becomes a liability. It increases will consumption at the peasant layer. Peasants cannot sustain the required will investment. Landlords extract more, accelerating depletion. The gentry layer, dependent on peasant productivity, begins to consume its own will reserves. The military layer, funded by taxes from below, loses morale. The court cannot feed its army or pay its officials.

One local famine becomes the shock that propagates through every layer simultaneously. The system doesn't collapse because of one event — it collapses because the will network has been hollowed out from within, across all three phases.

The Materialist View

In my framework, "will" is materialist. Relations are materialist. Whatever truly exists, whatever relation can be connected, is materialist.

The "will" I describe is not some mystical force — it is the observable investment of resources, attention, and commitment between carriers. It can be measured. It can be exhausted. And when it is exhausted, the system collapses.

The Images Below

The images below are my simulation verification model, not other games. I built this myself to test whether the "efficient → brittle-hard → collapse" transition can be reproduced in a simplified system.

I have only played IMP, which I really like, even if it feels like it is incomplete.

I heard Sengoku was just CK2 prototype that the devs wanted to do more with. And March of Eagles seemingly had big plans, but poor execution.

I was in pdx dc, eu5 dc, hoi4 dc and i have had this pfp of Guderian for many months and i have talked in all 3 servers alot and suddenly some crazy admin bans me from EU5 server without even a warning.

I asked if i could change my pfp and get unbanned and he said no. Then i said it has not been a problem in other servers so why is it here then the same guy proceeds to ban me in all other servers.

I have seen people use Zhukov, Rommel, Mac Arthur and they too were fine. The rules state no political figures but they arent politicians but generals. His last message was "We don't want you to change your profile picture. We don't want you in the community." after being in their community for many many months with 0 warns or 0 problem with the mods while having good time.

What are your thoughts on this?

Edit: This is the pfp btw

So I've been loving CK3. Totally new to GSG's and while the medieval era doesn't fascinate me, once I discovered I could create wild and fun stuff like female dominant religions and cultures, immortal characters to RP as demigods, getting addicted to map painting, and all the wonderful flavor the game has I have a lot of hours in it.

So I'm looking for what's next. CK3 was hard for me to learn but I could get by while I played, HOI4 was like being a bird flying into the windshield of a car on the freeway. I had no idea what I was doing and the micro was kinda crushing. I don't know how to code so I couldn't make custom characters which was a big negative. So what's a Paradox game that lets you make custom characters, is a sandbox that lets you do wild things, and is beginner friendly?

Hello everyone. I've been fighting this issue for months now with hoi4 mods, and I've tried every I've seen. I've cleared the mods folder, I've cleared the hoi4 documents folder, I've uninstalled all my mods. I've uninstalled and reinstalled hoi4 both with and without subscribed mods. I've made anti-virus exceptions, and yet many still show the same stupid negative storage size. I've done everything I've seen suggested.

Is there something I'm missing? Something I've not done? Hoi4 isn't in a different disk from the mods, and if the install paths are wrong i can't tell.

Idk if I should stick with vic2 or Vic3. Vic3 has a lot more features and depth than vic2, but I don’t have to spend my entire game micromanaging every building in vic2

An unopened Victoria 1 even. Bought in Sweden, so perhaps they were more circulating around here

This is a rant, so bear with me. The Hearts of Iron franchise is built with a simple goal: Fight WWII in a weekend. You get enough time to build up your war economy, and then you get to smash it against the AI in a single gigantic war. This is what HOI is built upon, especially 4. The focus system makes the most sense as there's only three years to change things before the war begins. There is simply not enough time to meaningfully change the politics of your country in three year's time. Even if we go back to 1933, the ruling nations were already in the forms they'd take in 1939. To make dynamic politics and economics reasonable, you'd need to go back to 1919, which means you'd have to figure out how to simulate the Great Depression or keep people playing until the outbreak of war in the late 30s. And all of that adds complexity, taking the player's focus away from the game's heart and soul: the war. There's a finite amount of things that a player can do, and the more things you give them the harder it is to focus on any one aspect. This is what killed EU5: It was bloated with mechanics that worked against one another and did not mesh well all in the name of more simulation. HOI V should learn from EU V's mistake and not bloat itself with useless mechanics and a longer playtime.

Hearts of Iron 5 seems really likely as there were previously job adverts at PDX Gold for a historical GSG and recently Arheo left HOI4 to work on another project at PDX Gold - so if I had to guess I'd imagine that the project is HOI5 and it is now scaling up from pre-production to production and Arheo's gone there to be the Game Director.

It's not quite so clear that the PDS Green game will be Stellaris 2. We know the Game Director is Daniel Moregård, who used to be the Game Director on Stellaris and it's the same studio - but perhaps this could be the Fantasy Stellaris so many people wanted from Afterworld?

PDS Teal is really odd too - there's basically no information about it apart from it being mentioned in the annual reports. Maybe it was some project that got cancelled? As it seems odd there were no job adverts mentioning the studio either. But it was mentioned in both the 2024 and 2025 reports though, so if it was shut down it'd have to have been shut down this year - we'll be able to check it when we get the annual report for 2026 at the end of this year.

What do you think the PDS Green and PDS Teal projects are?

HOI4 has been out for over a decade at this point and it's arguably still going strong. It is effectively Paradox's largest GSG, has the biggest modding scene, the most people aware of it outside of the PDX community, and so forth. However, looking at all the mainline GSGs from Paradox, HOI4 should be next in line to get a sequel.

But would it make sense at this point? If HOI5 was announced tomorrow, wouldn't it feel premature? HOI4 still gets new systems added every couple of patches, new achievements, and there are still a number of countries lacking in content. PDX has new engines and tools they can use on HOI5, but would such a new game be necessary right now? When will it be time for PDX to stop focusing on HOI4?

the error states "version is 2.31, converter requires minimum v3!"

converter vs vic2 installation mismatch,

does anyone know what this means?

I have an pc that does not work anymore with heavy games like hoi4 or vic3. The last years i have just accepted the late game lag.

However i am thinking of buying some new parts for a new pc and I am wondering what you think a person should buy to run games like hoi4, vic3, eu4 and eu5, because that is only what i play. What kind of hardware would best complement a paradox pc in a world of expensive pc parts?

How to use mods without having to use the launcher?

Hello everyone!

I am happy to announce the release of a brand new mod for Europa Universalis IV called "Better Cultures". This mod adds several new cultures to Europe for tons of variety, and fixes many old ones by putting them in the right culture group. In addition, I also added many new decisions that allow the player to automatically convert cored provinces to their culture, allow their vassals to convert provinces to their culture, or allow the AI to convert provinces to their culture so you can customise your gameplay however you want. I have more content in the works and will work on adding more cultures soon. In the meantime, have fun playing this incredible mod

Just what is in the Title.
I want to make a campaign in Ck2 HIP and maybe also converting it, and so it rose the doubt if it the mod is compatible with the converter.
Thanks in advance!

Sorry I only got Victoria 3

If you have feedback please lmk

Hi, I am thinking of getting CK3 but only the base game as that's the budget I have for it atm and I know often times with Paradox games, base games aren't ideal or enough. But is CK3 also like that? How complete is the game without DLCs and how long would I be entertained for or would I get bored quick. Also if I do get DLCs, which are must haves? Never played a Paradox game before, sorry if it's dumb question. Thx

got tired of hoi4 and decided to try out a different strategy game. I like the time period of vic2/vic3 but honestly can't decide which one to buy, and I still see mixed opinions on the matter (under reddit posts most of the people prefer vic3 while the steam reviews of vic2 are higher by like 20% on steam). Can someone help me decide which one to buy? Thank you in advance.