Europa Universalis 3

[sabotai]

Got it today and messed around with it a bit. I really like the new Casus Belli system, but didn't really test out the new features. Recruiting advisors is really nice too. Now I'm not stuck with an endless list of advisors for interest and stability costs. The two I recruited were both Level 1, but at least I got advisors contributing to tech instead of no advisors at all.

Plan to start up a more serious go at it this weekend.

[Alan T]

I haven't gotten it yet, but plan on it. I found myself 2-3 hours of time to play the demo though and managed to form the Holy Roman Empire out of Austria. That was fun!

[JPhillips]

How can I get this before get Christmas money?

Hmmm.

[whomario]

So, saw this game (EU 3) on the shelf a few times, but never looked at it really. Definitely sounds intriguing to say the least as i am a huge history guy who reads a ton of books on different time periods. Lots of questions though :

-First off : Now what about vista ? What i found :

Vista should work correctly if there is a compatible driver available for your card.

What driver ? I mean, my card obviously is working, so that means i have a compatible driver, doesn´t it ?

- is the demo still available to test this out ?


Then for gameplay and such :

-Is it turn-based or "real time" alas how much "fast clicking" do i have to do ? There isn´t much "battle clicking" either, is there ?
Basically all those type of games i tried were continuously running and i just couldn´t keep up at all.
I read somewhere that battle isn´t "played" ? That´d be a huge plus right there.

-How time-consuming is it overall ? (like, how many hours of gametime get you where, aproximately ?) I mean, that would be the ideal game to play over and over with different countries, but is that possible ?

-How is the balance between developing and having to expand ? Can i also be a nice little country renowned for science or sth without ever having to go to war ? (just as one example)

-And now, all those updates. Those are all Patches that i can get on the web ?

-What are the add-ons adding exactly ? The base game costs only 12 Euros, the addons bought single or the complete edition comes to about 30 ...


EDIT : Is this Europe only or can you also control "nations" at more exotic places ?

EDIT 2 : What are the alternatives/contenders for this type of game ?

[Alan T]

To try to answer your questions:

1) Vista works, as does windows 7. I've run EU3 on both fine.
2) They refer to your video card driver. It requires pixelshaders which most modern cards support. Some onboard graphics cards or cheaper cards don't support or work well with them. By all means try out the demo on your system before buying it.
3) Yes, I just posted in the other EU3 thread before this one got bumped back up that a demo for the newest expansion pack is out. I believe you can play it as stand alone (I might be wrong on that but am pretty sure)
4) It is real time, but several different speed settings and the ability to pause as you need it. No battle clicking, it is not a tactical game, it is a strategic level game. You move your forces to the right territories but don't actually fight out the battles manually.

5) Time consuming, it depends on what you are tying to do and how fast of a speed you play. If you play the grand campaign (1399 until 1821), it can take many many hours to play through. (I usually take weeks or more of an hour or two here or there to do that).

6) Game balance in my opinion is pretty good. You can choose your focus if you want to be a trader/military might/religious zealot/colonizer or some kind of hybrid country and go to it. You obviously have to keep a balance in mind though (ie: need money for your military, or need a military to protect your trade/etc).

7) Patches are available from their website as long as you have the game registered I believe.

8) By add-ons I assume you mean expansion packs.. they are what make the game great. Just the original EU3 was ok, but now very underwhelming compared to what it is with the expansion packs.

9) This is the entire world, you can control countries wherever, but the game is Europe-centric, so most of the interesting game play is based around that region somewhat.

[aran]

The game actually IS turn-based, but the turns are of very short duration. Turns are simultaneously resolved. A turn represents one day in history and you play through every day from 1399 to 1820 in the grand campaign. Most actions take many turns to carry out. Technologies take over a year to research at least. Battles take at least 5 days, usually a bit longer.

You can set the speed of the game (no clicking end-turn 365 times a yaer, thankfully) to indicate how fast you want turns to last. Usually you'll be playing on fast-ish speed and pause occasionally to issue your units orders, dispatch diplomats and merchants, and respond to requests and events. It's entirely managable if you like strategy games.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by aran

The game actually IS turn-based, but the turns are of very short duration. Turns are simultaneously resolved. A turn represents one day in history and you play through every day from 1399 to 1820 in the grand campaign. Most actions take many turns to carry out. Technologies take over a year to research at least. Battles take at least 5 days, usually a bit longer.

You can set the speed of the game (no clicking end-turn 365 times a yaer, thankfully) to indicate how fast you want turns to last. Usually you'll be playing on fast-ish speed and pause occasionally to issue your units orders, dispatch diplomats and merchants, and respond to requests and events. It's entirely managable if you like strategy games.

When I think of turn-based games, it is ones where you take a turn and hit ok to advance to the next turn, which EU3 does not do. I guess I have a different definition of turn based games, so I'm not sure which he was referring to when asked if it was turn based.

[aran]

In a reductio ad absurdum, you could call every computer or console game a simultaneous turn-based game where a turn is of a fixed 300 or 150ms duration (e.g. the framerate dictates how many "turns" per second and the resolution of input, etc). The real distinction is that in a turn-based game, a turn is longer than one frame and the timing of turns passing is not set in stone. So the game resolves actions one turn at a time, but any one turn could last any amount of time in real life. In a non-turn-based game, a turn lasts a fixed amount of time equal to the inverse of its framerate. Also, non-turn-based game resolve your input each turn and not in-between, whereas in turn-based games you can give the game plenty of input between turns and it won't forget it.

[whomario]

thanks for all your answers you guys Played the demo for a bit and liked it enough to see myself giving it a good hard look, ordered the complete collection with the 2 expansions (in nomine, napoleon) , was just about 12 euros on amazon uk with shipping to germany

Turn would be like in FM for me But it felt okay with the demo and having the ability to stop is good.
At some point i just have to try sth other than sports (management) games

EDIT : do i have to download any patches with this edition ? I read on the feature list that "in nomine" changes gameplay things like rebels and religion, does that then hold true for the full game ?

EDIT 2 : Is there any chance of, like, surviving as the Mayan or Inca Empire ? Or as, say, Granada ? That would interest me as a starting point if there´s a chance to survive.

[sabotai]

Originally Posted by bhlloy

Purchased the whole set today (complete and Heir to the Throne) and I have a question. How the hell do I "use" a casus belli?

Playing as Bavaria, have conquest casus belli on Ansbach, alliance casus belli on a bunch of countries but if I try to declare war on them I get the -2 stability hit and it tells me I don't have casus belli. Confused.

When you go to declare war, you sould see Casus Belli options on the screen. You should see "Alliance Casus Belli" or maybe just "Alliance"....I forget.

Heir to the Throne - Dev Diary 7 - Paradox Interactive Forums

The third screenshot at the bottom of that post shows the screen. On the right inside the "Declare War" box, you see "No Casus Belli" and "Reconquest". That's where you should see "Alliance" or "Conquest" or whatever other CBs you have on the nation. Click on it and it'll change the conditions of war, including what your stability hit would be.

[sabotai]

Originally Posted by whomario

EDIT 2 : Is there any chance of, like, surviving as the Mayan or Inca Empire ? Or as, say, Granada ? That would interest me as a starting point if there´s a chance to survive.

Granada is possible. It's hard, but if you got the right allies, you might be bale to survive.

The Native Americans are another story. The tech advantage the Europeans have by the time they get there is so big that all you could hope to do is survive. I've never tried it.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by sabotai

Granada is possible. It's hard, but if you got the right allies, you might be bale to survive.

The Native Americans are another story. The tech advantage the Europeans have by the time they get there is so big that all you could hope to do is survive. I've never tried it.

Granada is pretty difficult to survive as even with good allies. None of the European powers will ally you, and the African powers won't be enough to keep Castille/Portugal off of your back.

The way to survive as Granada is somewhat gamey. You pretty much have to immediately invade some small one province country somewhere just to give yourself some land away from Castille and prevent them from being able to just outright annex you. Then it is just a matter of buying time to building yourself up strong enough to keep them away yourself.

[whomario]

When i read how many things are new in the 2 expansions aside from the timeline i stopped playing the demo (didn´t want to play the HTTT demo as i don´t plan on paying 20 bucks right now, maybe later if i really love the game) and now am awaiting delivery by amazon. Hope for Monday as i won´t have much time over christmas and directly afterward i have to pack up for my upcoming move to a new place right after new years...

@ Alan T : OK, i´ll try that later on. I guess i will try my hand with a stronger country to start or maybe one of the more remote/quiet areas. Any pointers for countries that will let me expand some without being attacked by stronger countries right off the bat ?


And i´ve browsed around the Forum for the game at paradox and wow, that´s a damn active and crowded place What´s the deal with all those mods available, any usefull ones that also maybe simplify things and "make sense" rather than just add even more stuff to a game allready full of stuff to do ? EU3 - User Modifications - Paradox Interactive Forums
Even in the FAQ posts of the respective subforums of the mods theres a bunch of features and everything but no real "what does this mod do" explanation.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by whomario

@ Alan T : OK, i´ll try that later on. I guess i will try my hand with a stronger country to start or maybe one of the more remote/quiet areas. Any pointers for countries that will let me expand some without being attacked by stronger countries right off the bat ?

Most people say the best beginner countries are either Portugal or Castille. Portugal as long as you stay in good relations with Castille pretty much has free reign to do whatever else you want without attack. Including trying out merchant play, Colonization or whatever else you want.

Castille is not usually in France's sights at the start, so they don't have any huge threats early on either and are pretty strong. They give you the chance to be a warmonger, a colonizer, or whatever you want as well.

[Alan T]

As for the mods, most of them are to add features to the game. There are some specific ones for other purposes such as changing the apperance of the map or what not. I've tried many of the mods out and some are pretty good, but I usually play without any mods myself because Barkeep and I still play a weekly EU3 game and having the game modded means it is virtually impossible to play multiplayer

[Abe Sargent]

I've narrowed down my choices for my next EU3 game to:



Bar - French, one province, indy
Ulster, Connacht, Munster, Leinster - the one province Ireland provinces
Yaroslavl - Russian one province, surrounded by big boys
Mazovia, Transylvania, Wallachia
Haasa - Arabian Peninsula Shiite
Sukhothai - One province Buddihst state in central SE Asia
Khandesh - One province Sunni state in central India
Manipur - One province Hindu province in inner west SE Asia just east of Bengal.
Makassar - One province Sunni province in Indies

[Alan T]

I always enjoyed playing as Irish provinces with the goal of taking over all of England/Scotland/Ireland.

[atatange1]

I asked this on the paradox forum but thought maybe you guys could help. I have upgraded to HttT and now many of the custom flags are not showing. The game loads the original flags, not the ones I have gotten from here. I looked in the gfx/flags folder and the custom flags are still there so where are the default flags coming from? Also can I just copy over them, once they are found, to use the custom flags again? Thanks for any help.

[path12]

Farther along than I've gotten with either EU1 or 2. (bought the Gold pack plus HTTT over the weekend.)

Got through the tutorials and started a game with Castille on very easy. Went right to war with Grenada and got that, but I probably should have waited a bit in hindsight. I have very good relations with Portugal and was able to grab Aragon in a war but only the one province. So I was sitting pretty well.

Then, new ruler. My prestige started to drop, I got caught up in a war with Aragon and didn't realize they were allied with France and England, half my provinces started to rebel and it was frankly a disaster. I lost Aragon, Navarra and Pironni (sp?) (which I had taken from England but couldn't get them to cede before all hell broke loose).

So, two newbie questions:

How do you keep your prestige up?
How do you pass the time getting your government tech to 9 so I can start to actually colonize? (which I was waiting to do but got antsy and jumped in that ill fated war instead)

So far so good I guess.

[MrBug708]

Dont declare war is a good start, hire good advisors, and sit patiently.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by path12

Farther along than I've gotten with either EU1 or 2. (bought the Gold pack plus HTTT over the weekend.)

Got through the tutorials and started a game with Castille on very easy. Went right to war with Grenada and got that, but I probably should have waited a bit in hindsight. I have very good relations with Portugal and was able to grab Aragon in a war but only the one province. So I was sitting pretty well.

Then, new ruler. My prestige started to drop, I got caught up in a war with Aragon and didn't realize they were allied with France and England, half my provinces started to rebel and it was frankly a disaster. I lost Aragon, Navarra and Pironni (sp?) (which I had taken from England but couldn't get them to cede before all hell broke loose).

So, two newbie questions:

How do you keep your prestige up?
How do you pass the time getting your government tech to 9 so I can start to actually colonize? (which I was waiting to do but got antsy and jumped in that ill fated war instead)

So far so good I guess.

With no other factors, your prestige wants to return to 0. So you have to actively add National Ideas, or Provincial decisions or other things to allow your prestige to tick higher. The most common way to get quick prestige is from winning battles, but you have to have other ways to sustain that prestige. A quick way for people to lose prestige (other than losing battles) is to have a bunch of core territories that other nations own. If you hover over your prestige it will give you an idea of what things are adding or subtracting from your prestige each month. If you have territories that you do not own but consider core, it is a good idea to try to capture them back if you can reasonably easily to prevent your prestige from falling.

As for passing the time to Government tech 9, you can work on improving your trade, or work on missions given you, or really whatever you want to focus on. Generally early on since colonization is out most people focus either on trade or easy wars that can help strengthen their position. Your war with granada was a good one, but you absolutely don't want to fight France early on unless your goal is going to be to try to destabilize you. There are ways that you can team up with other allies and put a dent into France early on, but it likely will take you away from any other focus other than that for a while.

[Izulde]

I just wish a true CK2 would come out.

[Coffee Warlord]

Originally Posted by Izulde

I just wish a true CK2 would come out.

Plus. Fucking. One.

[Groundhog]

+ 2

[path12]

Originally Posted by Alan T

With no other factors, your prestige wants to return to 0. So you have to actively add National Ideas, or Provincial decisions or other things to allow your prestige to tick higher. The most common way to get quick prestige is from winning battles, but you have to have other ways to sustain that prestige. A quick way for people to lose prestige (other than losing battles) is to have a bunch of core territories that other nations own. If you hover over your prestige it will give you an idea of what things are adding or subtracting from your prestige each month. If you have territories that you do not own but consider core, it is a good idea to try to capture them back if you can reasonably easily to prevent your prestige from falling.

As for passing the time to Government tech 9, you can work on improving your trade, or work on missions given you, or really whatever you want to focus on. Generally early on since colonization is out most people focus either on trade or easy wars that can help strengthen their position. Your war with granada was a good one, but you absolutely don't want to fight France early on unless your goal is going to be to try to destabilize you. There are ways that you can team up with other allies and put a dent into France early on, but it likely will take you away from any other focus other than that for a while.

I went back to an early save before everything went sour and tried patience.

Realized I didn't understand and so hadn't been doing anything in trade at all, so got that going and up to 5 merchants in three centers of trade. Then got Papal Controller so took advantage of that to grab a couple of provinces from Morocco in a holy war, which jumped both my prestige and my legitimacy numbers way up (the legitimacy number had been -20 and went to 45 or so).

England now has Navarra which makes me a little concerned but he's not actively in the area at all and we have a royal marriage, though our relations are in the negative -- so I'm courting France a bit just in case England gets aggressive.

It's hard to just wait, but that's part of the game I guess when the time span is so big. My mission is to get one more Morocco province so that will likely be my next war. My personal mission is to grab all of Iberia (except Portugal) before I get to colonization.

Appreciate the tips.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by path12

I went back to an early save before everything went sour and tried patience.

Realized I didn't understand and so hadn't been doing anything in trade at all, so got that going and up to 5 merchants in three centers of trade. Then got Papal Controller so took advantage of that to grab a couple of provinces from Morocco in a holy war, which jumped both my prestige and my legitimacy numbers way up (the legitimacy number had been -20 and went to 45 or so).

England now has Navarra which makes me a little concerned but he's not actively in the area at all and we have a royal marriage, though our relations are in the negative -- so I'm courting France a bit just in case England gets aggressive.

It's hard to just wait, but that's part of the game I guess when the time span is so big. My mission is to get one more Morocco province so that will likely be my next war. My personal mission is to grab all of Iberia (except Portugal) before I get to colonization.

Appreciate the tips.

I haven't played as Spain much in the past, but I don't remember most of the Morocco provinces being that valuable. So be careful when grabbing a ton of those provinces, if they don't have valuable resources for trade purposes, or valuable production or tax base, they actually end up as an anchor for your country's growth. The more provinces you have the higher the cost is for research and tech development. If you get valuable provinces, they are worth more than the increased time for tech development, but poor provinces end up being an anchor.

If you are looking to expand, try to pick up either rich Provinces or ones that you have cores on. (Especially provinces you have cores on as that will also help you with your prestige issue). As Castille, the obvious early game expansion for you likely is: Granada -> Aragon (but be careful to not piss off France in the process and not cause your War weariness to get so high that you look like a good target for someone else). Alternatively you could try to reach out and go after some of the Italian minors, especially the ones in the south that are not part of the HRE, they can be fairly weak early on. The richer Italian provinces are in the HRE though, so tread carefully there.

[path12]

Gotcha. The only reason I went Morocco was my national mission (is that what it's called?) was to establish some Christian cities there so I needed to take three provinces. I'm not planning on doing anymore there once I get that third province.

Aragon is my main target when the time seems right (no major alliances, cassis belli and a weak English leader are the main things I'm waiting for).

[Barkeep49]

In one of the MP games Alan and I played, I was Castille. I have also played them in several SP games. After Granada I definitely recommend trying to pick-off some of the easier island countries and/or southern Italy. You do need to nibble away at Aragon, but they're also a good French buffer state. If I were recommending the game to someone new I would probably start them in 1492 as the time expanded from there is good if you want to build a base and have a plan, but otherwise 1492 gets them to the action much quicker. To go past the boring parts, I definitely recommend turning the speed up.

[Alan T]

Barkeep and I finished another one of our multiplayer games last night. (we play weekly on Sunday nights) I think we started this one last December, so took maybe about 20 weeks to play. I started out as The Hansa and eventually became Germany. He started out as Venice and ended up becoming Italy. Here are the maps! First map is just our countries and our vassals (vassals are the slightly different shaded color). The second map is everyone in the world.






In the World map, in North America, the Green is Portugal, Purple is Brittany, grey is Germany, White is the Papal State and Orange is Quebec.

In Central America, All of that Blue is actually the Mayans, believe it or not.

In South America, it is mostly Castille (the Yellow). The Darker Burgandy is Aragon, the lighter Magenta is Venezuela

In Africa, you have some Castille (yellow), some Italy (olive Green), Some Portugal (Green), some Tripoli (I think - the light green), Morocco (salmon colored), and all kinds of various others.

Australia is pretty much Portugal and Castille.

For other large countries of note...

England does not exist at all (neither does Great Britain). It actually ended up becoming the Papal State in a weird move earlier in the game. So the places you see the Papal State are the left overs of the former British Empire.

If you are looking for France, you can see it in one little spot in Africa, two places in South America or if you look really hard in the Caribbean somewhere.

Ming, Manchu and Japan all have one tiny little territory each roughly where you would expect them.

All of Cuba is now known as the UPCA. I had to actually look that one up as I had never seen it before ever in a game of EU3 before. Turns out that is the Democratic government of Central America (now a days known as Guatemala).

[atatange1]

I have a quick question since I can't use the search function at the paradox boards. For those of you with all of the expansions and the HttT patch 4.1 beta, when you select your nation on the start a game or continue save game get those black streaks like when you are occupied? I just switched computers and used an older patch so I have never noticed this until the newest patch. Thanks.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by atatange1

I have a quick question since I can't use the search function at the paradox boards. For those of you with all of the expansions and the HttT patch 4.1 beta, when you select your nation on the start a game or continue save game get those black streaks like when you are occupied? I just switched computers and used an older patch so I have never noticed this until the newest patch. Thanks.

Yeah, that is new in this patch.

[atatange1]

Thanks, Alan T.

[Big Fo]

I've been getting into this now that I have a new PC that can zoom through a month in a few seconds on the fastest setting. It will hold me over until Victoria II comes out in two weeks.

I started as England in the 1453 scenario (I think that's it anyway, whatever one begins right after the Ottomans took Constantinople). I've been beating up on the Irish and Scottish (annexed all of Ireland within 20 years, took some Scottish territory) but I haven't fared as well in wars with France and a super Burgundy (who inherited Aragon and have a big lead on everyone for income), Calais is my only remaining province on the continent but it's only a matter of time before the Burgundians take that. I figure I'll make Quest for the New World my next national idea and start colonizing the east coast of North America instead of fighting them and the French once a decade.

[sabotai]

They announced another expansion for EU III - Divine Wind

It's going to be released in December. Here's the features so far.

Features:

• Play as one of four major daimyo’s in Japan vying for influence over the Emperor and control over the Shogunate
• Enhanced diplomacy with more options for alliances and peace negotiations
• Dozens of new culture-specific building types allowing greater control over the development of provinces
• More realistic development of trade
• Manage the internal factions within China to keep the Mandate of Heaven
• Over 50 Achievements for players to unlock
• Multiplayer for up to 32 players
• Requires Europa Universalis III Complete and the expansion Heir to the Throne in order to play

Europa Universalis III: Divine Wind announced - Paradox Interactive

[PraetorianX]

Wouldn't have been my choice for expansion really, I thought Rome especially needed some love.

But they did a poll on the forums and EUIII won that OVERWHELMINGLY with almost 50% of the total vote (it was iirc EUIII - RotW, Vic2 - ACW, Rome - Alexander era, HoI3 - I forget...playability perhaps)

I'm interested in the improvements to diplomacy. That is one area that could certainly do with some vast improvements in my opinion.

And trade could be interesting depending on what they do with it.

And I might actually play China or Japan for once if they make them cool enough. Never played as either before, so it'd be something new.

They're also supposed to be making a bunch of tweaks to the interface and such, so we'll see how that goes.

And the map has gotten an overhaul, looks much better. More Victoria 2ish.

[Groundhog]

There is a pretty neat Sengoku Jidai mod for EUIII that is quite good already.

[Abe Sargent]

I keep chomping at the bit for Divine Wind. There've been a bunch of awesome developer diaries for it, and it's release is still Q4 2010. That means next month basically.

Some of my favorite adds from the dev diaries I quoted below. There is a lot I didn't quote and add:

First up - by popular demand - the call allies button. No longer do you have to call in your allies into pointless wars that have nothing to do with them. Instead, you can save them for wars that really matter. Allies will be automatically called when you are the defender, and you also have a check box you can click when you are the attacker to call allies. Otherwise, you can pick who joins your war and when they will do it. You can also bring new allies into a war once it has begun, but only if you are the war leader.

The final diplomatic option we have added is the ability to integrate countries that you are in a personal union with. This functions like a diplomatic annexation requiring high relations, but instead of 10 years you need to be a personal Union for 50 years. Like annexation, the junior partner is free to refuse your just and wise offer to integrate their country into yours.



We've tried to change this by introducing two new concepts; Trade Range and a compete chance bonus for each province you own that is connected to the specific center. The first one is a range which works very similarly to Naval Range, but instead of influencing colonies it influences how far away a center of trade can be for you to trade in it. It also calculates range from your closest province, so that it now pays to control provinces in strategic places the world over. The second one means that the greater fraction of the value of a CoT you physically control, the greater chance you have of actually getting a piece of that value. We then rebalanced Mercantilism and Free Trade to work with these new concepts so that a Mercantilist gets an increased bonus for owning provinces while a Free Trader gets an increased base chance and longer range. In conclusion, all this means that you now have two distinct paths to gain access to the great wealth of trade; you can either take direct control over the rich provinces and protect that wealth through mercantilism (even if you don't happen to own every CoT in the neighborhood) or you can be a free trader and get a piece of the action everywhere.

Now, while this is a fairly big step in evolving the existing trade system, it's not the only step we've taken. As you all know, each province has a specific trade goods which contributes to the CoT's value. The value, however, used to be the only difference between them and there was not really any reason for a naval nation to keep an eye on the naval supplies trade, not so any more. We've added a concept we call strategic resources, where each trade good brings a bonus. Naval Supplies for example will give you a bonus to naval force limit. So how do you get access to this bonus? The answer is of course trade. You need to have access to a certain fraction of the world market to get the bonus, and you do this by having a least one trade in CoTs representing this fraction of the market. If, say 10% of the worlds Naval Supplies are traded out of Riga and you have at least one trader there, you have access to 10% and so on. We believe this will give a new dimension to trading even if you aren't one of the top five trading nations in the world. You will need to make sure you keep an eye on those pesky ex-vikings up north that start to put their hands on the Naval Supplies provinces around the Baltic Sea; with all those in the hands of one nation what would a sudden embargo do to your Grand Fleet?

Finally, we added one last feature that uses the trade goods, namely the concept of Trade and Production leader. This means that if you are the nation that either controls the majority of the world production (by owning the provinces) or the world trade (by gaining access via trading) of a certain good, you will get a bonus. It's not a major bonus but we believe it's enough to bring yet another area of conflict and competition to the game and new areas of conflict increase replayability even more.


So for Divine Wind, the first thing we did was to get rid of a lot of the province decisions and merge in their effects in the buildings system. Then we had some unemployed magistrates so we made it so that each building you build requires a magistrate. The good thing with this is that we get rid of the gamey tactic of minting furiously when you know that the workshop is coming up in a tech or two and then carpet your country in them within a day, now you have to manage your magistrates and prioritize.

Then we looked over all the effects of buildings and province decisions and tried to get rid of overlapping and useless effects. After this was done we ended up with 56 different buildings.


So out of my bag of tricks this week is a few minor features we have added to the game. First up Trade Winds and colonisation. We have increased the distance that sea provinces have for range calculations and added in more trade wind provinces. The upshot is that Brazil and the Caribbean are ‘closer’ game terms to Iberia and much further from places like Britain and France. This makes it easier for the Iberian powers to explore this part of the world while making going to North America the first logical choice for Great Britain. Our goal is to use game mechanics to give a little historical push to countries.

Next the HRE, we have made it more difficult to take non core territory inside the HRE if you are a member. So it is now time to give something back so there is always a viable strategy for HRE countries to expand inside the empire. So now when an HRE member inherits another country any Imperial provinces are automatically considered your core regardless of the underlying culture of the province.

Moving swiftly along to rebels. We have made two changes to them, one cosmetic and one rather major. Each Rebel type now has a unique flag, which means at a glance you can see that all rebels are the same. Once you learn the flags you will be able prioritize the pretenders and zealots over the angry peasants. Rebels now also fight each other. Pretenders no longer help nationalists break up the kingdom they are trying to claim.

We have also increased the cap on the number envoys, i.e. magistrates, colonists etc. that you can store. You can now have 9 of each, meaning you can save up more magistrates before that next wave of buildings comes along.

The final change is to army numbers. We have imported the system of army numbers from Victoria 2 with its colour-coded information. This allows you to quickly see how strong you and your enemies are, making army management less of a pain.


On China:


China has always been a bit of a problem in Europa Universalis; a huge nation with huge potential power, that for some reason spent the era in decline and failed to compete with the European powers. This kind of situation, where a nation is theoretically strong (and therefore strong in a historical setup) but due to bad decisions or factors not modeled in the game acts weak, is always a problem in a strategy game. We have always had the problem where the Chinese AI takes a look at what it has to work with and goes on to conquer large chunks of the world. The solution so far has been to give China a modifier that simply penalizes it for being China. We figured we could do better than that.

We sat down and thought about how we could tame the Chinese monster with something that felt more historical and fun and that would give someone playing China something to play with. We came up with what we call Factions.

In the present implementation, China has three factions that compete for influence over the empire. These are the Eunuchs, the Temples and the Bureaucrats. Each of these factions will have an influence value, and the faction with the highest influence will be considered to be in power. Which faction is in power will have a great impact on what you can do with your country; one faction might allow you to build colonies and fleets but will only let you fight defensive wars and so on.

The influence of the factions will change with the mood of the country, represented by the current monarch and the domestic policy sliders. A monarch with a high military value will cause the influence of the warlike Temples faction to increase, while a domestic policy setting favouring Naval over Land will increase the power of the Eunuchs.

The second thing we are implementing is a new government type for China called the Celestial Empire. The key property of the Celestial Empire is that its ruler has the Mandate of Heaven. This represents the very strong belief of both the rulers of China and its citizens that they have the support of heaven. As long as the emperor has the Mandate the people will support him and China will enjoy peace and stability. Should signs appear that he no longer enjoys the Mandate of Heaven his people will lose faith in him with the result that revolts are more likely, stability will be harder to regain and so on.

These effects combined will make China a colossus on clay feet, fettered by an internal power struggle. A Chinese player will have a huge potential at his fingertips if he can maneuver the right faction into and out of power at the right time while at the same time trying to maintain a stable and harmonious country. Should things go against him though, he can quickly find himself in a situation with an unstable country, possibly facing mass revolts with factions that will not release the tools needed to correct the situation; a great challenge, in other words...


On Japan:

So, what are we doing with Japan? As many of you know, Japan was a very divided country during this era, and we are trying to bring a little bit of this into the game. We have been playing around with the rules for Japan in a way that brings out the internal dynamics without changing the EU3 game play too much. What we ended up with was a system where you can play one of four Daimyos, struggling for the power of Shogun. Only one of these Daimyos can at any time hold the title of Shogun, and only the Shogun can do diplomacy with the outside world.

Some of the more historically savvy among you will notice that the map at the start of the game doesn't really look like a historical map of Japan at the time. The reason for this is that the areas controlled by different families in the era were often fractured and the families rose and fell in a way that doesn't really work within the constraints of EU3. We hope that we can capture the feel of the period even if we don't get the geography exactly right. If you think I'm wrong... well, everything is moddable as usual.
The Shogun has a special value called Authority which represents his standing with the other Daimyos and with the emperor. As this value increases or decreases, the Daimyos get access to more or less diplomatic options that they can use in their internal power struggle (Daimyos can only do diplomacy within Japan though). Should the Shogun's authority fall too low, he will be forced to resign and a bitter struggle ensues, with all Daimyos competing to make the others recognize them as the new Shogun through war or diplomacy. Should Japan be attacked by foreigners though, all the factions will instantly unite to see off the invaders.



And this is my favorite:

To make the horde nations bring a new aspect to the game we have assigned them a new government type that will give them a whole new functionality.

First of all is the change to how a country with this feature works diplomatically. For the horde, the default state is no longer peace but war. The only viable options when dealing with hordes will be war or submission, submission in this case meaning that the horde is paid tribute or accepts the vassalization of their victim. This will turn the hordes away from being diplomatic partners - which you can lock into your civilized system of alliances and royal marriages - into warlike tribes that you need to keep a constant watch on. You can pay them off or send expeditions to suppress them, but sooner or later they will rise again. This constant state of war will not affect war exhaustion like other wars, so you don't have to make peace with hordes, just keep them under control with your armies.

So, if you can't negotiate with them for provinces, how do you take their lands? Well, as I said the hordes represent uncivilized nomadic tribes, so the solution is to civilize the lands in which they live. To enable you to do that you can now send colonists to lands owned by hordes. These work much like regular colonists except that you don't get ownership of the province until the colony turns into a city. When this happens you will simply conquer the province. But be aware that your colonists are very vulnerable; at any time the nomadic hordes can come along and burn your colony, so you will have to use your armies to protect them.

So what is life like as a horde? Why would you want to be these unwashed brutes? Well, you get a couple of new bonuses, including increased combat strength and attrition tolerance when fighting on plains in your own lands. And then there is the loot. When you loot enemy provinces you can now extract more gold that usual and you also get military tradition, so the more you loot the more powerful you become until... you have to go home and beat down your uppity brother who has started eying the crown. But it doesn't have to end like that. After years of hard living on the plains you can also amass enough success that you can change your horde empire into a civilized state and go on from there to even bigger arenas.





That's all some AWESOME stuff for one expansion.

[Abe Sargent]

Linkage to the dev diaries if you wants to reads mores

Paradox Interactive Forums - EU3

[Abe Sargent]

New patch for Heir to the Throne released today:

Paradox Interactive Forums - Heir to the Throne 4.1b Released


The highlights:

* Dynamic names of countries will now be seen on the map as its zoomed out, adapting to borders as they change.
* Large overhaul of the Holy Roman Empire, with benefits to those that stay members, and penalties on those trying to wreck it.
* Dozens of major gameplay enhancements, including reinforcing mercenaries, possibility for local naval supremacy, and possibility to annex countries with more than one province.
* Lots of improvements to the AI, providing a more challenging experience for the veteran users.
* Several Interface improvements, including more detailed information for military units and details on the Imperial elections.

[Abe Sargent]

Some of the more detailed changes I like:


Converting a province to the catholic faith increases your papal influence now.

Now possible to annex countries of greater size than 1. If you can vassalize them, you can annex them as well, but you always need to occupy their whole territory.

It is now much cheaper to send spies to a country with high badboy.

Mercenaries are now more expensive when badboy goes up.

The Horde type FoGs now bleed off Infamy much faster

Badboy is now a bigger impact on imperial elections.

Being a member of the HRE now has a nice static bonus to diplomatic skill, badboy reduction, prestige and cultural tradition.

When there is 25 members of the HRE, every member gets a nice bonus to tech costs, stability costs, manpower and revolt risk.

Separate tech group for the Ottomans, with their units in it, and all decisions, events and missions updated

An inheriting country only gets cores on provinces of their culture group, if they were already cores of the inherited country

Tweaked the Excommunication CB (you can only demand your cores or culture group provinces at reduced costs)

Big Army AI: Should avoid killer attrition provinces like the plague

AI will prioritize missionaries more

AI: More wary of assaulting with enemy armies nearby

Strategic AI: Will tend to be friendly to its Merchant League controller

[Abe Sargent]

Dev Diary 11 for Divine Wind includes:

First up, spheres of influence; probably one of the more underused features in EU3, so we decided to give it a little boost. We have firstly given the following boosts to spheres: As mentioned in the previous developer diary thread you will now gain additional magistrates for having countries in your sphere. With magistrates being so remarkably useful to build buildings this is a very nice boost. Sphere members also boost your diplomatic skill - which gives you other nice bonuses - and the cost is now scaled by the number of sphere members you currently have, thus making adding a couple of countries to your sphere not too expensive. We have also placed a limit on your sphere membership. If you cannot trade into the province it cannot be added into your sphere. Thus you need to have a presence nearby to be able to add it into your sphere.

Next up vassals. We made a nice simple diplomatic AI change to vassal AI: Controlled vassals will never grant military access to someone who is at war with their master. Secondly, masters can always call in vassals to war. Currently, only the war leader can call in new countries to the war, however countries with vassals have this restriction lifted. Thus, if France joins a war as an ally, its vassals (if they still exist and if they want them) are still available to them. This makes having vassals more useful and also closes a little exploit people have been known to use in the deceleration of war logic. Finally to put the fun back into France vassal provinces count towards your support limit.


Finally, the Holy Roman Empire; as we all know the HRE under a good emperor is time bomb at the centre of Europe. If the Emperor can ever unite the Empire then all neighbours need to fear him. So, we have given you a new peace option against the Emperor. You can now demand that the Emperor rollback the previous reform. No longer do you have to disband the Empire, before they disband you.

[Abe Sargent]

got an e-mail today about EU3. Offical launch date for Divine Wind:

Paradox Interactive have today announced that the grand strategy expansion Europa Universalis III: Divine Wind will release on the 14th of December with a recommended retail price of $19.99/€19.99/£14.99.
To celebrate the occasion, a new trailer for the sweeping new expansion for Europa Universalis III set in the ancient Far East has been released.

[Abe Sargent]

The final Dev Diary for Divine Wind:


First, we have something that you guys that played Semper Fi will recognize, a triggered modifier screen. No longer will you have to read the files to find out how you can get the Sound Toll.

The next thing is something that we've noticed that's all cool games have these days (so we have to have it too), loading hints. So when you load up Divine Wind you will get helpful hints about things you may or may not know. Did you know by the way that the tooltips for each technology category will show you which tech-levels unlock things, such as buildings, units, government forms, etc? Yes, that is also one of the little interface improvements.

We also have some new alerts that you might find useful. For example you get one you get one if you are a horde nation and some so called civilized nation is trying to settle your provinces. There is also an alert for when your provinces are blockaded.
We also changed around the advisers a bit. As some of you have noticed you could get really unbalanced results if you stacked up three advisers of the same type. No more, as you can now only have one adviser of the same type.

Then we have the little things that the more perceptive of you might have seen in the screenshots. We have a new level of message importance, the message icons from Victoria 2 for those things that are too important to be lost in the log and too common to give you a popup every time. On the map we've made it so that you can see the size of your army at a glance, also an idea from Victoria 2.

Finally, we added what every Eu3 expansion should have, more stuff. More provinces, more (and more informative) tooltips and even a few new countries.

[Alan T]

Divine Wind has been officially released for those waiting for it

[Abe Sargent]

I'll be getting it later this week;. Right now I'ma playing through Guild Wars again with a different character, and I want to take that as far as I'll go.

[Peregrine]

I have to say I haven't played EU3 in a while - I didn't even get the last expansion. But the features in this one look fantastic, and I think it's about time I crack this open, buy some expansions, and give this a try again.

[I. J. Reilly]

I jumped on the GamersGate deal a few weeks ago and have been playing Heir to the Throne quite a bit. It’s a great game and the learning curve hasn’t been nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I have a few questions though, so if any of you experts want to chime in that would be great:

1. Is it best to spread your merchants out across several centers of trade, or should you concentrate on only one until you place all 5 merchants, and then move on to another?
2. Is there a trick to wars? It seems like it’s just a matter of whoever has the most troop’s wins.
3. Is there a way to see all of the provinces that are currently controlled by a country?
4. Any other random tips that would help a first time EU’er?

[Peregrine]

Here's my advice, I'm sure others may have more of it.

1. As far as merchants go, I usually try to concentrate them, this is especially true if you own the center of trade. If your country is in an area with multiple COTs you can try to spread them out depending on level of competition, but usually it is tough to make an impact this way due to competition getting your guys thrown out.

2. Not really a trick, but you have to rig things to your advantage as much as possible. If you have a strong navy, try to intercept enemy ships before they can land troops in your country. Use mercenaries to prop up your own forces. If possible, get other countries to declare war on your enemy to distract them. Build up fortifications in your provinces, that way it will take the enemy a lot longer to take control. If you're getting beaten, keep trying to sue for peace - a lot of times, especially if they are in multiple wars, you can buy your enemy off. Try to use gold, renounce claims, even change religion, if you can to avoid giving up territories.

3. You should be able to do this in the political view - it's the map view that (for me) makes it easiest to see who controls what.

4. Don't take out loans if at all possible - the interest is brutal and it's hard to save enough money to pay them back at the proper time. If you are a small country, use royal marriages and gifts of gold (if you have it) to keep larger, aggressive neighbors happy with you. Also (obviously) try to join a larger alliance. It will keep enemies off your back and you won't be expected to do much if you join a war an ally starts (and you can white peace out quickly.)

Originally Posted by I. J. Reilly

I jumped on the GamersGate deal a few weeks ago and have been playing Heir to the Throne quite a bit. It’s a great game and the learning curve hasn’t been nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I have a few questions though, so if any of you experts want to chime in that would be great:

1. Is it best to spread your merchants out across several centers of trade, or should you concentrate on only one until you place all 5 merchants, and then move on to another?
2. Is there a trick to wars? It seems like it’s just a matter of whoever has the most troop’s wins.
3. Is there a way to see all of the provinces that are currently controlled by a country?
4. Any other random tips that would help a first time EU’er?

[Abe Sargent]

Also understand attrition. If you are in an area with a few provinces that have a high degree of attrition, forcing your foe to come through them, or taking a long way around them, can help you win a battle.

Also, you want a good general. Generals get better with some sliders. Look at slider like Offensive vs Defensive.

What Great Ideas do you have? They can impact battle significantly.

If your army had a better land tech, a better general, you can easily handle a tougher force.

Some troops fight better on certain terrain. Cavalry are better on plains, worse on mountains. Fighting on you terrain can really help. Putting a high fortress in a high attrition province can really change the war as you leave their forces there for a few months and they lose to siege and attrition. Plus, if its winter, that can really hurt them as well.

[I. J. Reilly]

Thanks guys, your comments help. I think it’s just going to take a whole lot of time playing and experimenting before I am a successful campaigner. I find myself lapsing into CivIV tactics, which aren’t working so well