Good morning, you're listening to Three Moves Ahead, and I'm your host, Rob Zakene.

With me today, we welcome for the first time freelance writer Joe Robinson.

Joe, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me, Rob.

And we also welcome, also for the first time, our friend from Paradox, designer, Thomas Johansen.

Project lead, actually, but thank you. Thanks for having me.

So, Thomas, you are a project lead on the upcoming European Universalis 4, correct?

Yes, that is great.

How did you rest, how did you rest that game away from Johan?

Well, the thing is that Joan is more like leading the entire studio now, and he can't

really take on every project

at the same time.

But of course at the same time, he's not completely out of the project.

This is still his baby and has been since the late 90s, I think.

So having wrested it away from him might be an overstatement, but everyone can't do everything

themselves.

We were actually in Stockholm last week for a huge, I think it was at least 20 people,

a multiplayer session of EU4. And Joe was in the game, as were a number of other people, our friend Paul Dean, Fraser Brown, T.J. Hafer, we're all in that game.

And it was a really fascinating experience, certainly one of the largest scale multiplayer sessions I've ever had, and a completely different way of playing a paradox strategy game. I thought

it was really interesting, and I thought it would be fascinating to talk to Thomas about and sort

of reminisce with Joe about a bit here. So, you know, to sort of lay the groundwork, though,

so I was the Ottomans, uh i made some i made some mistakes

...