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[Morsigil]

http://www.europauniversalis3.com/


Seems like a game folk here would like.

Incredibly historically accurate in regards to country names and borders, even rulers, for the years you start at. After that point, the game mechanics take over and things go into alternate-history mode.

For instance, as the Aztecs, I marched across North America and kicked Portugal out of their colonies with thousands upon thousands of spearmen.

I am having some issues with some choice design flaws however. As Morocco during the age of Cristobal Colon, I built a sizable army (too small in retrospect) and was dominating the markets of Europe. My allies included my large neighbor Algiers and my much, much larger neighbors the Mamluks.

30 years into the game (took something like 5 or 6 hours to get to this point with the game on full speed the whole time), and about a year into the construction of my VERY expensive textile mill (it took me 3 years or so to save for this thing) Portugal suddenly decides it has nothing better to do than march into my country with a huge, advanced army (muskets against my spears) along with Britain and Navarra. They destroy my textile mill before it is even finished. My allies cop out. Algiers, who I had just successfully joined with in a war against Tunisia, turns and starts eating up my provinces.

From there on out, Portugal turns around and beats on me every time the cease fire ends and I'm left to ask, what the fuck? 30 years and no word, and then suddenly I'm looking tasty to those mutts dangling from the tip of Spain.

Discuss?

[Croquantes]

One thing I dislike about Paradox games, is that wars go from being epic, to being a headache. The AI likes to break apart its armies and quickly conquer your territories with one unit armies. This makes playing an uncivilized nation in EUIII -really- hard, because you start off not knowing how to build forts, so all your territories can quickly be conquered. Which raises the revolt risk, so while you're busy mopping up the enemy, revolts break out left and right AND new armies are marching in from enemy territory.

Also, battles are sort of ping-pong like. Where you lose a battle, then the AI wins, then they lose and you win. Then you lose, and they win. And you lose.

I played a good game as one of those south east asian countries though. I gave up when I realised how handicapped I was when it came to technology, even if I did have a massive empire. ><

I like the game, alright I guess. I prefer Europa Universalis: Rome and Victoria (plus expansion). There's more customization, and it feels more hands on. Lots of people didn't like Rome though... I loved it, and almost conquered Europe as Illyria. Except eventually the game would crash every 6 months and I gave up playing.

[Morsigil]

Also, battles are sort of ping-pong like. Where you lose a battle, then the AI wins, then they lose and you win. Then you lose, and they win. And you lose.

I played a good game as one of those south east asian countries though. I gave up when I realised how handicapped I was when it came to technology, even if I did have a massive empire. ><

Exactly! I mean I understand they're trying to preserve -some- semblance of historical accuracy by making primitive cultures so backwards that they can't help but get walked on by more advanced ones (read: Native Americans < All of Europe), but I don't understand what the value of being able to play the Maya is, for example, when you cannot realistically compete technologically. I was kind of hoping someone here would tell me I'm just missing something. =P

[Croquantes]

The best thing to do, is troll the Paradox forums. You can learn a lot about the game there, because the community provides more documentation about Paradox's games than Paradox itself. Some of the After Action Reports are as riveting as they are informative.

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=360

[mainiac]

Paradox games have more then a little sandbox to them.  The reason you can play as countries like the Maya is because it's fun to be able to play around with the strange parts of the sandboxes.  However the Maya are seriously nerfed because they should be for the simulation to work.  And it is possible to lose the low tech culture penalties.

I haven't played EUIII but I used to really like turning little nations into superpowers in Paradox titles.  Doing this isn't supposed to be easy or fast, but it's definitely possible.  And accomplishing a lot as the underdog is a lot more satisfying, IMHO.  It's cool to have the opportunity to have the Kingdom of greater Eire reclaim Jerusalem for the cross or claim North America in the name of the Irish crown or turn a united Central America into an economic powerhouse full of Irish immigrants.  Hopefully when HOI3 comes out it will be possible to make a minor nation defeat both fascism and communism so that the world will be safe for Irish democracy without the tea drinkers steal all the credit.

[Kanil]

Sounds like you guys just need to practice a bit more.

Morocco can best Portugal with reasonable ease. As for them continually attacking: They usually gain a mission to conquer Tangiers. It's possible they were preoccupied with a different mission, then got Tangiers and decided it was time to say hi!

Although ping ponging is a bitch.

[Ivefan]

I played as china, conquered my way to east of india, took a boat to egypt and subsequently conqured the area, befrended some latin country and entered that techgroup... my huge income caused me to pass the latin countried in tech soon enough.
then i got bored.

[andrea]

i remember in EU 3 my 10 years long war france against netherlands. i was netherlands.
10 years of war all fought on the same region... lots of battles and i even killed a king. unluckly, i didn't have many men. at the end i had to use mercenaries. and while i could afford it, it was slowing economic growth. and mercenaries become more expensive every time you hire them.
so, i just offered peace, without loss of land , maybe even gave them few coins (remember that i was so rich that i could afford to fight france for some time only with mercenaries). at the end, the small netherlands could stop their neighborough. woo!
then game started crashing, and i abandoned it.

[Morsigil]

Thanks for replying everyone. I will definitely need to sign up for their forums it appears. I do hope you can lose the low tech culture negatives in EUIII.

I would like to ask one more question of the veterans, since I don't have time right now to sign up and sift through all the information on the Paradox site: What is the best way to grab new and better advisers? As soon as they come on the market they get snapped up, even when I'm sitting there watching, waiting for them to come (like, for instance, when a country gets 'et up), the best I can do is grab the cast off of the empire that grabbed the good one. Is this a sign I just have the speed on too high? It seems silly to sit there with that menu open for ages upon ages.

[Ivefan]

Hire before you unpause, other than that its just luck.
the tech penalties is the same as before, you just have to get a good ruler, friendly relation with a better tech country and have a province next to theirs. i've forgotten if the province need to e core or not.

[olemars]

To grab advisors, set the game to pause when a country gets annexed by someone.

[Croquantes]

there are some really great mods, like magna mundi. it really improves upon the game, and low tech countries no longer start with a 1 in all techs. also, they added in the sengoku period for japan, so you can try and unite all of japan (and prolly gain some serious badboy along the way ).

[Ivefan]

This is also quite fun to play cooperatively. I colonized america and my friend africa, after that noone could stop us.

[Nirur Torir]

Fun game. I briefly considered trying an AAR/LP of it, but then my computer with a video card died. I like blockading people who declare war on me for no apparent reason, and completely destroying their economy until the game forces me to accept a peace treaty.
Good mods to have (All easy to find in the index post on the mod section of the Paradox EU3 forums, I'll grab links if anybody's feeling particularly lazy):

Hiring Fair mini-mod - Makes it much easier to hire advisers.

Magna Mundi - Hard mode. It aims for historical plausibility and limiting expansion. I fail at it, because I refuse to play on easy. It changes gameplay noticeably. Comes with Hiring Fair.

Whole World Mod - It makes fairly small balance adjustments, removes that annoying permanently explorable land, and boosts non-European techgroups. Not only do they gain tech faster, but they get units able to fight European units (Land tech 50 units should be able to compete with land tech 50 units, which is not so in standard EU3.) The Incans are still not equal to the Spanish, but the Spanish will probably need more than just three cavalry regiments to beat them. (It also splits the Incan empire up if you start early enough, for some fun filled tribal wars.)

Civilization Universalis - A strange mod, completely changing the EU3 experience. Everybody starts with just one province and is relatively equal. Rapid colonization ensues.

[Muz]

*Bumped, don't want to start a new thread when there's an existing one.*

Just bought Europa Complete for AUD10. Damn, this is a fun game and fairly realistic at my skill level. It sort of annoyed me how Rhye's and Fall of Civilization took hundreds years to conquer parts of the world and how Medieval: Total War let you conquer all of Europe in just a few years. EU3 seems to get it the closest of all those games so far, and runs a lot more smoothly than RFC.

I played as the Malacca Sultanate just to test how it matches up with my history books. It came up pretty close. Area's too poor to develop tech, even with being a trade center of most of the known world at that time. Military was a challenge to reform but navy was quite strong. Aceh was practically hostile from the start, but didn't have the balls to attack.

Heh, but Southeast Asia seems to be easily conquerable by just a 8000 man army. By 1440, I had controlled almost all the known Indonesian lands, including Bali and Majapahit... historically where the real Majapahit Empire would've conquered at that time. I had arranged for a Royal Marriage with the Brunei Empire early on, and got a Personal Union with them at that time, so influence spread all the way to Sulu. Now I'm just waiting for European colonial troops to come and storm the region.

It's a lot of fun to history lovers