Europa Universalis 3
 

The game has gone gold and will hit stores on January 23rd. They've made a lot of changes to the last one, some of them controversial, but overall it looks really good. This french review site has some nice screenshots and videos of game play! I know for one, I can't wait!

hxxp://www.clubic.com/test-jeux-video-6139-0-europa-universalis-iii.html

Really looking forward for this.

Just last month, I picked up the Paradox 6 pack with all of their games in it. Pretty sweet from EB for just 20 dollars too

A lot of that looks great, I'm really excited for this. Although, I don't think it looks all that much better. I'm talking about the map, it looks too much like a puzzle, I think the map in EU2 is better.

I cant wait. I pre-ordered the deluxe edition. Paradox has to be one of the companies I love most. I buy every game from them.

What games are in it?

Hearts of Iron
It’s 1939 and the threat of the Third Reich looms over all of Europe. Lead the Allied forces to victory, or take command of an Axis nation and sweep across the entire globe. Take control of virtually any nation and rewrite history as you see fit in this truly epic game of World War II strategy.

Victoria: An Empire under the Sun
Between ironclads and merchantmen, the New World and old homelands, the British Empire seeks to regain and maintain its former glory on the world stage. In this tumultuous, war-torn 18th century, you can choose to help restore Britannia, guide the United States through the Civil War, Japan through its rush of modernization, or lead any country you wish to its own place in the sun in this unique and engaging strategy title.

Europa Universalis II
From the late Middle Ages to the Renaissance and beyond, new empires were created while old ones fell prey to the dangers of war, colonialism, and even faith. It was a time where a brave new idea could be as dangerous as the sharpest cutlass, and a single battle could mean the difference between independence and vassalage. Guide your chosen nation through these 400 years of progress and reshape the world.

Europa Universalis II: Asia Chapters
Asiatic countries are at a crucial turning point. The influence of Western civilization threatens to creep across their borders in an era marked by feuding samurai clans, the strength of the Ming dynasty, and legendary Korean warships. Dig into an alternative look at the 400 years of the original Europa Universalis II, complete with 20 minutes of additional animation and music, and become the conqueror of the four seas.

Two Thrones
The rivalry between England and France rages on from 1337 to 1490 as noble families in both countries fight to lay claim to the two thrones. Choose a side and direct your country through the Hundred Years’ War and the War of the Roses, all while trying to appease the Papacy and the toughest critics of all: your people.

Crown of the North
Torn apart by power struggles and civil war, Scandinavia finds itself being contested between Sweden, Norway, and Denmark in the years 1275 to 1340. Take control of one of six local factions and pursue your right to the crown through high-powered politics, careful diplomacy, and strategic combat.


I never played 3 of those (or the EUII expansion)...I may pick this up too.

Well the new map is very controversial, they wanted to go to a 3D map, and I think it will bring some good things, like much easier and better zooming in and out, better animations, and some good features like striping provinces with a different color when another nation owns them, but the puzzle look is not popular and I agree it sort of takes a step back, but I figure I'll get used to it.

I guessing this game marks the end of my marriage.

What better eu3 or married sex?

The nice thing about a Paradox game is that you need not invest in it for a couple months until they're on patch 1.03 or 1.04.

As I keep saying, I'm somehow going to be duped into getting this, thinking this'll be the one.... only to be disappointed again. Great concept, but it just doesn't deliver in the slightest for me.

Kind of like Lewis Black's bit on candy corn really.

This certainly has been the pattern, but I think they may break it with this game, they've used a much different model with much longer beta testing, and the testers are reporting that the crashes and bugs have mostly been stomped out pre-release, unlike pretty much all their other games.

Then cue the 'we tested it thoroughly but we only have so many testers on so many setups' excuse as the game crashes on EVERY computer. This is PC game BS 101. EVERY game uses this pre-release.

Europa Universalis is the only PC game in the history of America that's never been advertised. And there's a reason. All of the copies that were ever made were made in 1996. And so, since nobody plays that game, every year there's a ton of copies left over. And Paradox sends the guys out into the stores, to collect out of the dumpsters all the copies we've thrown away. They repackage it! They repackage it!

I'll never forget the first time my mother gave me a copy of Europa Universalis. She said, 'Here ISiddiqui! This is Risk that plays like Civilization!' (takes it, plays it) ... 'This plays like crap!'

And every year since then, a new release is here and I, like an Alzheimer's patient, find myself in a room, and the room has a table in it, and on the table, is a PC with Europa Universalis installed and loaded up. And I look at it, as if I've never seen it before. 'Europa Universalis,' I think. 'Risk that plays like Civilization. I can't wait.' (grabs mouse, hits keyboard) 'SON OF A BITCH!'

Well it doesn't really matter to me, I'll play it either way, but this is Paradox, they aren't every game developer. I guess we'll find out soon enough.

The bone they're throwing to commerciality (ie dodgy looking 3d graphics) means that I won't be able to run the game. Pity, because I lurved EU2, for all its quirks.

Nice review of the game here:

http://pc.gamezone.com/gzreviews/r28887.htm

and another

http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?cId=3156420

dola - Also, Gamespot is releasing the demo of EU3 today!

LOL... and eerily accurate. Though the last paragraph would be a on the table is a PC with a NEW EDITION of Europa Universalis on it.

Fixed it for ya. But I agree a couple of years after release with all the patches and the mods for their games, it is a great purchase to make. :D

Anyone with a link of it?

Here you got it buddy :)

http://www.fz.se/filer/?id=2184

It's around 130mb and from that link the speed i get is a nice 400kbps.

Awesome. Thank you! :)

So...I've got EU one....anyone know where I can get a patch for it?

i bought it a long time ago, put it down, and even though it looks awesome, never got around to picking it up again.

This should work, or if not I think you can get it on Gamespot somewhere:

hxxp://dlh.net/cgi-bin/dlp.cgi?lang=eng&sys=pc&file=eu110uk.zip&ref=ps

Game is out as digital download from gamersgate:

http://www.gamersgate.com/index.php?...mart&Itemid=14

Also first patch released on release day, some really good fixes:


This is a listing of things in EU3 v1.1 that have resulted in a change to the way that the game is played. Information provided here supersedes what you may have read in the manual, manual errata, strategy guide, forums, or have experienced with the game’s demo version.

System Specifications/Hardware/Game Launch

• The game will now allow you to launch even if your graphics card does not report as having 128MB of video RAM (however Pixelshader 2.0 support is still a requirement). You will receive a warning to this effect and can then proceed to launch the game; however, we can offer no assurances as to the overall performance of the game on such systems. Older, sub-spec cards are likely to have serious issues, while integrated chipsets that are designed to share system resources may be able to run with little or no performance deterioration. We offer this change on an “as is” basis and do not make any assurances that the game will work perfectly on any individual system.
• A special feature has been added to the launcher to help players manage and launch games with user-modifications. Details of how to use this are provided in the Scenarios & Modifications subforum of the main Paradox forum. In particular this should make it considerably easier for people who participate in multiplayer games to use mods.

Game Play & Interfaces

• A human-controlled country that is an elector in the Holy Roman Empire is now unable to vote for itself (this means that the player is restricted in the same way that AI-controlled countries are restricted). The player will automatically vote for the country that it would vote for if it were controlled by the AI (reputation being the primary determining factor, with ties being broken by other considerations such as prestige, size, strength, reputation, etc.).
• Being the Papal Controller now also helps to improve your country’s reputation.
• The rate that maps will spread to other countries has undergone a large adjustment. A newly-discovered province will not become known to other countries for at least 50 years (unless they discover it independently).
• The cost of new technologies is now scaled to country size. Larger countries must now invest somewhat more than a smaller country to achieve the same technological advance.
• Having a positive national stability now gives an additional bonus to tax income.
• Having a negative national stability now results in a higher revolt risk than was previously the case.
• The “Deus Vult” national idea will now give you a casus belli on any country that does not share exactly the same religion as your own (previously you did not receive the casus belli against a country that had a religion in the same religious group as your own).
• Some of the allowed government conversion possibilities have been altered (so do not rely on the manual’s appendix to determine a valid path).
• The likelihood of a ruler dying is now less linear and increases significantly with time; making very long reigns even rarer than before.
• A country that is ruled by a regency council can no longer be the target of a succession war.
• The effects of advisors have been tweaked to increase the differences between each skill level.
• The monthly salary cost of a newly-hired advisor is now immediately reflected in the domestic budget (previously it would not be applied until month end). The same is also true if you fire an advisor.
• The Outliner now has a separate section to show provinces that are colonies (but not yet full-fledged colonial cities). This makes it very easy to quickly select a province that you wish to further develop through sending a colonist.

Diplomacy & Espionage

• You may only diplomatically annex a country when it is at peace. The option will remain greyed out if this condition is not satisfied (in addition to the other conditions associated with diplomatic annexation).
• It is no longer possible to break an alliance if the alliance is at war.
• Voluntarily releasing a vassal will now improve your country’s reputation.
• The relationship between countries (and changes in those relationships) has been further tweaked and balanced -- particularly within the Holy Roman Empire. The Emperor (if controlled by the AI) is now much more supportive and protective of member states.
• The cost, effects, and penalties for detection for most espionage actions of your spies have been changed to make them somewhat more appealing to use.

War & Peace

• You can no longer recruit mercenary regiments of any type in any of your colonies.
• The cost of hiring a mercenary will now increase slightly for each additional mercenary in your national army.
• Naval attrition has been changed to increase the attrition rates when you are in open ocean waters, and to eliminate it completely when you are in a sea zone that is adjacent to your own territory. This means that a fleet may safely remain at sea in its home waters, but will find exploration and ocean voyages more hazardous.
• Naval attrition will be less severe once you have achieved level 20 in naval technology.
• The details displayed when you select a fleet now show the transport capacity of that fleet (the number of regiments that it can carry) at the bottom of the fleet interface.
• It is now possible to declare war on a country without first cancelling your military access treaty; however, there is a severe stability penalty for doing so.
• The penalty for declaring war on a co-religionist now only applies to an enemy that is exactly the same religion as your country, rather than for countries with a religion in the same religious group. (Example: a Protestant country will no longer receive the stability hit for declaring war on a Catholic country.)
• If one of your vassals is attacked, you will automatically be given the option protect it (via a “call to allies” message). This means that you will always be able to assist a vassal, even if you have not arranged an alliance with it.
• An army will not receive any reinforcements if it is retreating. This only applies to retreating after losing or withdrawing from a battle, and does not affect an army that is moving due to a normal movement order.
• If all possible locations that an army may retreat each contain an enemy army that exceeds it in size, the army will be disbanded. Note that every army in every province must be larger, otherwise the defeated army will retreat towards a province that has an enemy army that is smaller than it is.
• You may now only initiate an assault in a siege if you are the leader of that siege.
• Any alliances a country has will be automatically broken if it accepts an enemy’s demand to become its vassal.
• You cannot refuse a peace offer from an AI-controlled country if it currently controls all of your provinces. You can refuse an offer from a human-controlled country but will pay a stability penalty for doing so if the offer is reasonable (100% or less).
• It is no longer possible to demand that a country convert religion if it has a religious form of government (theocracies, etc.)
• A country that has been forced to convert religions as a result of a peace demand will now be unable to convert religions again (voluntarily) until the ruler who agreed to the peace term has died.

Other
This is by no means a complete listing of changes from 1.0 to 1.1. In addition to the items above, there are a large number of minor alterations, tweaks, bug-fixes, AI tweaks and optimisations, and an assortment of other things that would be far too lengthy to detail. This includes...

• Many events have been tweaked for triggers, modifiers and effects; and a variety of events have been added.
• Many provinces have been tweaked (trade goods, tax values, etc.)
• Some province improvements have been tweaked in cost and/or effect.
• Many tweaks to in-game variables in the static_modifiers.txt and defines.txt files; and tweaks to the effects in static_modifers.txt
• Tweaked many interfaces to improve their display or information
• Tweaked or expanded the information in many tooltips
• Made corrections or clarifications to much of the in-game text.
• Many history files have been further expanded, tweaked, corrected, or otherwise improved.
• A variety of new event conditions and effects have been added.
• Most AI routines have been further expanded, improved, and/or optimised. The AI’s ability to manage all aspects of its country and military has been enhanced, as has its diplomatic policies and behaviours. In particular, inter-relationships within the Holy Roman Empire and decisions made by all countries (worldwide) regarding national ideas and colonisation should be more appropriate than before.
• Multiplayer stability and functionality has been made considerably more robust to address occasional synchronisation issues experienced in games played over the internet.
• And a variety of miscellaneous bug fixes, tweaks, code optimisations, and other fun stuff.

Dola, I'm trying to resist to buy it right now as digital download when it will hit the Spanish stores in Feb 2nd with the printed manual instead of pdf. On the other hand, I prefer to play games in English as usualy the translations are not awesome... Damn, what to do?

Double dola,
Damn why am I so weak? Installing the game now.

Just thought I'd say that EUIII is easily the best Paradox game to date. Yes, the graphics take a little getting used to but trust me, you'll come to appreciate them in time. At least I have. The game has also been quite stable (for me), though there are always going to be little bugs here and there, but I think we (Beta Testers) got most of the bugs.

Just wish I hadn't been so bloody busy the past two months. :( Haven't had time to test the game much. :(

Hey Praetorian, glad to see a beta tester here on FOFC. I'm anxiously awaiting the arrival of my pre-ordered collector's edition.

Pre-ordered this game for my fiance and me. We'll give it a try on Thursday, starting off with mutiplayer co-op mode to help with the learning curve.

Looking forward to it.

Co-op mode is a feature that is going to be really great, two persons running the same country at same time, it could help to make great dynasties with a guy managing the economic part and another the army etc.

This is one of the main reasons we are purchasing it. It also helps cut down arguements because of one person beating on another, like we do in Civ4. The depth of this game can be realized with two people running the same country.

trick question...there's no such thing as married sex.

This will be my second marriage. Your statement is true. :D

We have a winner!

Would anyone else recommend this game so far? I keep trying to get into this genre but can never decide on which one to go with.

The learning curve is big (at least for me). I never played this series before, but I did play Crusader Kings. I thought the personality and character depth would follow into EUIII, but I was incorrect. The game has depth and is enjoyable. It is also slow. Things can take forever to accomplish. I'm hoping my fiance will recover from the flu soon so we can try this co-op. It looks to be an enjoyable game. The ability to mod it should extend the life of this game too.

Having only played the demo it seems to have really kept much of what made the EU series special and built upon it. It is slow moving at times, I'd agree, but this is BY FAR the easiest game in the series to get into.

I'm still waiting for a Crusader Kings II.

I am with Gi, I played Crusader Kings, but this is my first EU game. Im slowly making my way through it. I think I enjoy this game, I think its the game I wish CK was.. but its just taking some time to figure stuff out.

Okay i downloaded the demo and fired it up yesterday. I have to admit i was totally overwhelmed. Is there a tutorial within the game or a written tutorial to get a newbie started?

There is a tutorial with the full version, but I haven't played it so I can't vouch for it's helpfulness. The best way to get into the game is play and read some of the threads at Paradoxplaza.com. It's quite a steep learning curve, though.

The game itself is very good, but there are a number of bugs to get worked out. Right now you see very weird things like traders from the Creek nation in Andalusia, countries that are both allied and at war with each other, growth rates that don't seem to work, etc.

Nevermind it was late and i didn't even notice there was an in game tutorial. I wouldn't mind though if someone new of a strategy guide or guide for newbies that might help.

There is talk of a strategy guide on the EU3 boards, but I haven't dug for it. There is also an EU3 wiki that's just starting. I believe it's stickied on the first page of the forum.

Where's the ditto button.

I haven't come across the strategy guide on the EU3 boards so far, I played through the tutorial, and while they helped some with the basic ideas, by no means could they dig into the incredible amount of depth in this game.

I ended up picking Scotland to try to learn with. Its not really an easy country and most people seem to suggest to try to learn with a country like Portugal. So far though I've been left alone and plodded along trying things and figuring out how they work. I think I have the trade system down now.. but some things I am completely in the dark on.

I still have no clue what i am doing when it comes to most of the sliders, I know the tooltips tell you their effects, but its hard for me to grasp exactly what those effects will mean for my country. I also am thinking only short term and have no long term strategy.

Because of the ability to Mod EUIII, I'm hopeful someone will make a mod that is influenced by Crusader Kings...

Alan, the game is complex and takes a while to pick up for people that are new to the series, there are just so many variables it can be difficult to figure out what's going on. I guess I recommend that you decide on one area to focus on, it's easier that way. For example I'm playing Venice in my current game, and I started in around 1580. Venice is a huge trading power, so that's what I focus on heavily, especially with national ideas, by that time in the game starting government levels are around 15 so you have several national ideas, and taking all or most of them in trade really boosts your abilities there, plus getting advisors that add extra merchants helps more. I pretty much just have to keep sending them to the COTs and make sure I keep monopolies in as many as I can (6 merchants in a COT is a monopoly and gives you a really nice boost of income) and the money just rolls in. In terms of sliders a lot of them affect trade, but anything that boosts trade efficiency is key, you're getting so much income that any increase in your multiplier (seen on the left side of where your money/tech sliders are) is huge.

If you want to be a military power, it's a bit trickier, as there are other factors to consider. You have to keep a good level of technology in land or naval, think about your morale levels, manpower pool, unit types, forcelimits, etc. These are scattered around the sliders but Land-Naval, Quality-Quantity, and Offensive-Defensive are primarily concerned with military affairs, though they can affect all kinds of things, from costs of building units to bonus stats for your leaders in various areas. I recommend trying out a strong military nation at some point and focusing only on that, it will give you a good idea of all the factors involve. Some of the military National Ideas are very strong!

Another tip I have is that when you're first learning, it can be more difficult to play in an earlier timeframe. It's harder to build up from nothing because it takes a long time and you don't really have a good idea where you're going. I suggest trying a practice game where you start later on, maybe 1650, you'll have pretty high levels of tech across the board and you'll have a lot more choices in terms of unit/ship types, governments, national idea combos, and especially province improvements. I think for learning the game you can't go too wrong in playing a big country like France, you're so strong that you can do a lot of things and it's a lot harder to make a disastrous mistake.

Related to my earlier tips, it's helpful to sort of mentally group the many variables in the game into what area they affect, be it Stability, Technology, Military Power, or Trade. It's not critical that you know all of them, but it's helpful to know that the general category of Stability includes things like Revolt Risk, Tolerance, Province Culture and Religion, etc. (Checking out the various factors that affect revolt risk in a province is pretty helpful, though revolts are much less of a problem, it seems, than they were in previous EU games.)

Anyway, this is rambling on, I'd be glad to answer any specific questions anyone has, as a veteran of the series.

dola - Another bit of advice is to make sure to read through the ledger frequently, there's tons of useful info in here, I really like to read through the breakdowns of income and expenses on pages 14-15, page 7 is also good, I'm sure you'll find the ones that are useful to you.

Thanks for the pointers. I chatted with Barkeep some on AIM this morning about it too. I'm just trying to take it slowly and figure everything out. The reason I say I "think" this is the game I wanted is as someone who has purchased a few different MTW and Crusader Kings, I always felt they were lacking something.

So far I dont have a complaint about this game lacking stuff as there is so much I haven't figured out yet.

So being that this game has so much depth to it and I've never played any of the other games in the series, how would it compare to picking up Civ IV, for example, and playing that series for the first time?

Do most of these games have the same learning curve or are others easier to get into?

I can't really speak for EU3 as I haven't put enough time in it to get past the curve (there is alot to learn) but Civ IV is pretty easy to learn I thought. Not easy to be great at but after a run through the tutorial you have the basics down and youre ready to go.

I would say the EU series is definitely tougher to learn than Civ, the basics of Civ gameplay are easy to pick up, but then you have to learn the tech tree, etc. With EU it's harder for new players to understand the basics, though once they pick them up they do fine. Also since the EU games are so open-ended and are basically set up to let you do what you want with your nation, that can be tricky for people who are used to different games.

I think one of the hardest things to grasp about the whole Paradox lineup is that there isn't really a way to win. The player sets their own goals and either lives up to them or not. You can quite literally chose any country and attempt to do almost anything. The only measurement of winning is your own assessment.

so any thoughts on the game after playing it for a while? Paradox has been successful in parting me from my money but I ahve yet to fall in love with any of their games. Will this be any different? How the AI?

Well I'm only about 10 hours into the game. Haven't really seen how the AI is yet (I traditionally play England for my first game before going for a more continental power), but I will tell you the user interface is a TERRIFIC upgrade. A lot of the other stuff is fine, I mean the 3D graphics are whatever for me, and the national ideas is cool, but so far the UI is what's really captured my attention. I also think the fact that countries are less shoehorned into their traditional roles is nice.

Alan T and I did some multiplayer tonight. It was a trying experience, quite buggy, but it was fun. We played 30 years and Alan was at war I think 29.5 of them :)

My soon to be wife and I are playing multiplayer right now. Co-op. Fun, but there are a number of bugs. I'm hoping the second patch will fix them. I also hope they add locking features for allocation of tech.

What do you mean by locking features? Do you mean something specific to multiplayer or just in general? I haven't tried multiplayer but normally you just double click any slider to lock it in place.

I'd like the ability to set my individual techs, like Government to .4 and lock that allocation in. So if I make adjustments to other tech areas, Government stays at .4

This would apply to single or multi player.

It is a real hassle adjusting tech right now.

Right, that's what the double clicking does, the slider will turn white and will lock at its current level. It's a lot easier than some of the earlier, more annoying slider locks in the series.

Man...my fiance is throwing some serious love your way right now. :)

She is in charge of allocation and her job is a lot easier. :)

Thanks!!!!!

I'm getting close to winning my first game of Medieval War 2 and shelving that until the Total Realism Mod has advanced some.


So, I'm debating on getting this game. I've never really gotten into previous versions that well (although I enjoy Crusader Kings quite a bit.) From what I'm reading, there are considerable bugs in MP still. Are there still a high number of bugs in the SP game?

I've always found double clicking sometimes moves the slider. I prefer to left click to lock in place.

Hmm I think I right click them to make them go white.. I usually do that for treasury right away always. Usually end up doing it for stability too.


Like Barkeep said, playing multiplayer was alot of fun. I was England and Barkeep was Portugal. I ended up getting involved in a pretty lengthy war to start off with France + Scotland + Brittany + a bunch of smaller irish provinces. I ended up dragging it way too long though much to Scotland's dismay.

I finally ended the war owning most of Scotland and was ready to try to get rid of the war fatigue when Austria decided to come after one of my provinces in mainland Europe. I conceded it not really wanting to be in a war with that crazy powerhouse.


Right when I got peace there though, a 1 province Scotland with France declared war on me once again. Meanwhile during all of this I am pretty sure Barkeep has colonized all of South America :)

What the heck?


This glorified text sim needs a better graphics card than Rome: Total War? GD, I love their games, but Paradox always finds a way to screw me in the backside.

Exact same thing happened to me (with the demo). I have an ATI 9000, 128 mb. It's old, but still a fine graphic card for my use. Is there any workaround to this?

Actually that's the same exact card I have. I don't play a lot of high tech graphics games, so I don't need a great card. I was just surprised that, graphics wise, EU needed more pep than the Total War games.

Yeah, me neither. I was interested to try this game, but right now I'm not upgrading my card just for this, as I've never even played this series, so I don't know if I like it or not.

I know it's a point of controversy on the board, but haven't paid attention to this. I do know there is no work around at the moment.

There isn't anything you can do unfortunatly. My work laptop has an integrated Intel video card which doesn't support Pixelshader at all. So I have problems with several of the newer games out there that have been released lately.

Not sure why, but looks like Pixelshader is something alot of games are starting to do this year and I keep running into this problem. You'll have to ask someone more familiar with game programming why people choose to use it. If you have a desktop computer, you can get a cheap $50-60 card that supports pixelshader. If you have a laptop like me you are out of luck. I can only play this on my desktop computer at home.

Is anybody using a computer with the min. requirements to play this game? Mine falls in that catagory, and need to know if I need an upgrade.

Thanks all!

After playing from the earliest starting date to 1500 I recommend starting at 1492. A lot of bugginess went away when 1492 rolled around.

I'm having a lot of fun with this game although I'm sure I'm not playing very well. One great new feature is the roll of leaders that shows you what provinces were gained and lost under each ruler. I wish Crusader Kings had that.

I might do a mini AAR on the dynasty forum if I can figure out how to take screenshots

Good old Print Screen always works for me.

My fiance's computer is min. I turned down all the graphics to the lowest and turned off music. She had crashes with the graphics turned up to medium. Once we made the change to the lowest setting and no music, no more crashes.

Man, my flatmate bought this game and I booted it up last nite for a couple of hours. I can honestly say I had no idea what I was doing for either of those hours.

I picked Japan, spent a few months clicking on things and adjusting sliders that had no determinable meaning to me. Then in year 2 one of my provinces rebelled. I tried to send troops to put down the rebellion, but I'm really not sure if they attacked or just moved in to the province, drank lemonade, and cheered on the rioters.

While this was all going on I set my sights towards foreign affairs, deciding to annex the Ryukyu islands and enslave their peace loving people. I brought a ship to the province my army was in, tried to send them aboard the ship, but our men had not yet mastered the skills of "ship boarding" and could only stare at our 15th century ships and scratch their heads.

More years passed, another province rebelled, and I became further convinced that I really should have tried playing the tutorials before clicking "New Game" on the main menu.

Groundhog, I recommend focusing on a few things first, like if you want to attack some nearby nations, focus on land or naval tech and try to improve the morale of your forces (the vertical green bar in the upper left corner when you select an army or fleet) through the domestic policy sliders, the good ones are Land/Naval, Quality/Quantity, etc. You can hold the mouse over all of the options there and it will show you exactly what the change does.

In terms of boats, you need to make sure you have enough transport ships for your army, one for each regiment. At the bottom of a navy it will say "Room for X regiments" and if you don't have enough, your guys can't board the ships.

Provinces may rebel if your stability is very low ( the -3 to +3 number shown on the upper left bar, very important to a lot of things) or if there are religious or other issues, like you just conquered them. When you click on the province it will show the revolt risk, if they revolt just send some troops in and they will either take it back over immediately (if there's no fort) or beseige the fort in the province (you can click on the army to see how it's going.) In any case, once you're back in control your flag will appear on the province instead of the rebel flag.

Cool. I don't need the music, or the graphics.

I'm assuming one can start with any group, including one of the many Native American peoples. . . I enjoy doing that.

You can start with the native americans, but the game has a heavy european slant to it. The way they try to model after history is by giving penalties to other parts of the world such as the native americans. Chances are you never will catch up to a Spain or Italy in research.

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So last night, I had a few extra spare hours for once to play some. So I decided to start up as Mecklenberg. Things were going great for me at the start, one of the top income countries, and had pretty decent relationships with everyone around me. My first King was elected Holy Roman Empire and lived for another good 20 years at least. My second king was also chosen to be the HRE.

As will happen in early Germany, countries started eating up other countries, and soon I found my little alliance of Mecklenberg, Brandenberg and Hamburg to be drawn into a war with Lithuania, Bavaria and Sweden.

My armies wern't the best in the world, but we had a pretty decent defense set up.. We went on a good 25 years of war, holding them off. In the end though, both Lithuania and Sweden were just too strong and my poor country got annexed.

The timing was ok though since it was bed time for me :) In hindsight I should have cut loose Brandenburg (my vassel at the time) when they were attacked. I had held off Poland for many years previous, so figured I could do the same here. Maybe next time :)


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This got me thinking, such ashame my schedule is often hectic and unflexible.. I think it would be alot of fun to have some 2-3 hour a week night setup where we could do a FOFC game together.

I'd be in for that

First lesson learned. If you are a small nation, find yourself a "big brother" to ally with and that's it. Do not get into an alliance with several small nations. One of those small nations will drag you into a war you can't win. I just got ran over by Burgundy. I was Bavaria, allied with a few of the small nations around me, they say "Help us fight The Palatinate" and I'm all "Hell yeah, more land." What's that? Burgundy is in the war too? ....Shit.

I feel your pain :)

Second attempt went better as Bavaria. Allied with Austria and no one else at first. I went after some surrounding provinces and ended up doubling the size of my kingdom by getting Salzburg and Wurttemberg. Things were going good. I was even elected leader of the Holy Roman Empire. Sweet.

Wait, what the hell is that 6.6 on my treasurey screen? Inlfation? Well, that must not be too bad. Let me check the ledger and see what my neig.....damn....All I see is my line going up and up and up and everyone else's stay flatline.

So yeah, second lesson learned. Keep inlfation in check. It doesn't look like a lot, but that extra 6% in cost for everything adds up quickly.


So Bohemia becomes a power and ends up controled by another power, Hungary. Austria gets in a fight with them, and I come to the aid of Austria. I take over a few of Bohemia's provinces, but then Austria chickens out once Hungary starts taking some of their provinces and signs a peace treaty.

By now, Austria is broekn up into 3 seperated parts, all connected to me. A few years later, they come calling back to me and this time I tell them No. The Alliance is broken and I cut off their military access as well.

Time to take over Austria. I build up an army, declare war....and my troops get slaughtered (well, not slaughtered, but I win one battle and lose several), even though I outnumber them 2:1. I check their Diplomatic screen and see "Land:3" and go "That's why. Duh Sab." My Land is still at 1. IOW, their military technology was much better than mine. Luckily for me, Bohemia and Hungary saw this as a perfect time to invade as well. Austria gets crushed by them while I get to keep hold of my land.

So ends the saga of Austria. And Bavaria. By now my inflation has gotten up to over 9, I have little money left, my technology is lagging behind the super powers around me, and I'm pretty much out of allies.

And so far I am loving this game.

Yeah Sabotai, you learned the lesson of inflation, it's lethal to a country. There are some things that can knock it down but they come in much later in the game at high government tech levels. Basically keep as tight a lid on it as possible, if you are a smaller nation and not rolling in cash, I recommend trying to basically live on your yearly money alone and running around 0 monthly, the less money you take for yourself monthly (bottom slider) the better.

Also, Austria knocked out? Wow! They are usually pretty dominant in my games, they are a strong nation.

Yeah, I learned the hard way that you just don't want to mess with inflation as a smaller country. If you are already having problems keeping up with the research of larger countries, inflation will only cause you to slow down further. THe first things I do as a smaller country when I start is push the treasury bar and stability bars all the way left to 0.0 then I right click both so they freeze and won't move dynamically. (I can later move the stability bar if I am having issue with -Stab hits on events).

Its funny about Austria, any time I have played in Italy, Austria has always been an issue. THe times I played as a german state, Austria seems non-existant. I always end up having more problems with Poland and Lithuania.

One thing you can do to combat the low land research compared to others is build up your land tradition earlier on with smaller battles against other near by countries before the big Austria or Lithuania juggernauts get rolling. Once your land tradition is pretty high, spend the money on a good general and get one with pretty decent shock rating.

Once you have your general, you can cool down the wars for a bit and try to repair peace among the nearby countries that you had chosen to war with. Having a strong general with your troops seem to help counter the better trained troops from other countries at times.

They way to play EU2's grand campaign was to set the monthly money slider all the way to the left and invest in trade and infrastructure early. It's rough going early on, but you end up in a much much stronger position a couple hundred years down the line.

That works when you are any of the big countries, I don't know about the smaller ones.

Alan and I had some fun last night playing as Saxony (me) and Brandenberg (him) starting later on (I forgot what year we ended up starting). We both gobbled up a bunch of the smaller countries, but became effectively boxed in by the giant Poland, who had much of Scandanavia and Austria. I had just launched a war against Austria, after nearly a decade of preparation, and it was anyone's guess about who was going to win when the game crashed. By this time it was very late and so we are currently in limbo about what's going to happen in what was looking like it could be a great victory or an AWFUL disaster.

This game is HARD.

1579 was when we started this time.

I had alot more fun this game than the previous one we did. I think having a bit more clue how some things worked help. Short version: With Poland to the East/Northeast, Austria to the South/Southeast and Spain/France to the Southwest. We were limited in our early options.

Barkeep pushed West through some of the smaller provinces and through the netherlands to the sea. I pushed out at the coast along Pommerania, Mecklenburg, and the northern part of the Netherlands. Right when I was making the Netherlands a vassel through war, Denmark declared war on me and I ended up making them a vassel. (I had no desire for any of their territories other than one that they vultured earlier before I could finish taking it. (Hamburg)

When we went to war with Austria, I went in with 34k Calvary, about 4k artillery and about 30k Infantry. I have no idea what Barkeep had in the way of troops or what he faced. He was pushing to their capital through Bolivia, needing to take 2 or 3 provinces in the core of their giant country. I mainly was trying to be a diversion and keep Austria's eastern forces away from the bulk of the fight around the capital.

I don't have any idea how many troops Barkeep went up against, but I know I faced about 30k troops between Austria, their ally and their nearby vassel right at the start. By the time I pushed to Austria's capital, I had a decent seige going on in two provinces, but Austria had more and more troops rolling in, and my calvary was down to only about 18-19k.

I honestly have no idea how long I would hold out there so I hope Barkeep pushes through soon, or I would be toast. :) That is about where his game crashed leaving the suspense for another time.

I wouldn't necessarily say its "hard" as much as complex. There is alot more going on in it than in a traditional Civilization type game. I would argue that playing Civ 4 on the hardest levels might be just as difficult, but its a different type of game.

I think alot of times who you pick determines how difficult your challenge is in this game, and there really is no "winning", its just deciding what your goals for that game are and trying to achieve them.

Held out as long as I could, downloading this now.

It's for sale via download? I would have bought this as an impulse buy a few times if I knew that.

They sell it online at gamersgate.com I believe.. I bought mine in the store though.

Yep.

Here is a cool mod I found on the EU 3 forum that adds alot of country specific titles and governments names:


Description:
I've heard some "complaints" about lacking titles, all from german dukes to japanese shoguns. I'm sure there are plenty of modders out there who've solved this problem all for themselves, now is the chance to make it public.

First off, this mini-mod will mainly focus on the file common/governments.txt, since it's the government of the nation that decides the title. The mod is a mini-mod and also meant to be included in other mods since it's more or less just additional flavour if used alone. Adding titles will result in text.csv changes, either by replacing or extending the file. Changing the actual title of the countries will require a quick edit in the files found in history/countries/

Some government examples and ideas:
muslim_monarchy with title Sultan, should be pretty similar to either
feudal_monarchy or despotic_monarchy
caliphate with title Caliph, very similar to papacy and theocracy
khanate with title Khan, similar to tribal_despotism
hanseatic_republic with title Stadtholder, a "hanseatic" copy of
administrative_republic (which should be adapted to other states, perhaps Switzerland, not a republic but is it similar?)
feudal_duchy with title Duke (or Prince to include Russian principalities, otherwise the russians should get their own government), similar to feudal_monarchy
religious_order with title Grand Master, maybe a copy of theocracy
feudal_republic with title Knyaz or Posadnik (help me here), meant to include Novgorod and Pskov, typical feudal republics, similar to administrative_republic
electorate with title Elector, this might not be needed, depends on if it was considered a main title or secondary title, maybe similar to administrative_monarchy
shogunate with title Shogun, maybe similar to feudal_monarchy
empire (better name?) with title Emperor, maybe similar to administrative_monarchy, there should be a tribal_empire for Aztec and Inca as well

Then there's a question on details, should there be different governments for Dukes, Archdukes and Grand dukes? Differences between bishops and archbishops or princes and grand princes?
I considered using latin titles for early european governments (Rex, Dux) but I think I've droped that idea by now.
Lastly I thought about local names (like present Stadtholder or Doge) for the titles (which would require local versions of governments) such as:
Emperors: Tsar/Czar (Russia), Sapa (Inca), Tlatoani (Aztec), Huangdi (China), probably something for Japan and I'm sure there's an appropriate name for By...! Trebizond emperors.
Also, an Iroquis federation could use the title Tadadaho if I'm not mistaken.

Surely I've also missed a whole bunch of important titles.

hxxp://mu.nogo.se/eu3/atage/ATAGE_2006_02_11.rar

Grr. I had to go in and make a bunch of mods to Scandanavia to make Denmark playable. Apparently they just are miserable at the onset, and Sweden mauls them basically every time.