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Wednesday, August 20, 2025
The value of a DLC
So I pre-purchased the premium edition of Europa Universalis V. It cost €25 more than the standard version, and comes with one small cosmetic pack, one smaller DLC, and two larger DLC. There is no exact price information about what each DLC would cost, but as they promised 20% savings, it should be something like €6 for the small DLC, and €12 for the larger ones.
What is unique for this DLC situation is that there will be some quantification possible for the value of the DLC. When selecting a nation in EU5, you already get a display of how many unique dynamic historical events come with that country. For example France comes with 176, and Scotland with 48. So when the last DLC of 2026 is released, which is about The Auld Alliance between France and Scotland, we will see exactly how many dynamic historical events are being added that way.
It seems that in EU5 the DLC will only have such country-specific added content, while any changes to game mechanics will be in free patches. Huge improvement over EU4, where you had for example to buy the Cradle of Civilization DLC if you wanted to use the army drill game mechanic. Country specific DLC are a lot fairer, as you can more easily skip them, if you for example aren't interested in the region they add content to.
But if the DLC contains mostly or only added dynamic historical events, then you can do the math. How many new events for a €6 DLC? How many for a €12 DLC? If The Auld Alliance adds 50 events each to France and Scotland, that would make a bigger difference for Scotland, which had far fewer events to begin with. If it added only 20 events each, would people consider it worth the €12 price tag?
The biggest discussion point will probably be how "complete" EU5 is without the DLC. That is the same discussion we always get when a game releases with the DLC for the year to come already announced. Is that content that has been "cut" from the game, to be sold to you later? Or is it a real addition. If a country like France already has plenty of such content, why would it be necessary to buy more? If a country like Scotland has relatively fewer, does the DLC then become considered a must have? That all will remain highly subjective, but at least this times there will be some numbers behind the amount of added DLC content.
- posted by Tobold @ 10:43 PM Permanent Link
Comments:
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But is quantity a good indicator?
I think that assumes that countries would have enough interesting events that could be used, but if you have Boringland where nothing happened, that is likely hard.
It also assumes that each event has the same quality and impact. The 176 of France might be mostly fluff while the 48 of Scotland are impactful events. Or maybe both have 40 meaningful events and the rest are fluff.
And if we consider equal dev time, shouldn't 20 events be better quality than 50 events? But I guess then you run into the question of replayability. How valuable are more varied events of lower quality compared to a handful that you are bored of fast.
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I think that assumes that countries would have enough interesting events that could be used, but if you have Boringland where nothing happened, that is likely hard.
It also assumes that each event has the same quality and impact. The 176 of France might be mostly fluff while the 48 of Scotland are impactful events. Or maybe both have 40 meaningful events and the rest are fluff.
And if we consider equal dev time, shouldn't 20 events be better quality than 50 events? But I guess then you run into the question of replayability. How valuable are more varied events of lower quality compared to a handful that you are bored of fast.
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