Europa Universalis III

Denerick

Anyone else play this game? Its so epic and vast in its scope, I've spent months playing with one group! Post some screenshots if you have any.

Sephiroth_dude

does go into real time for battles like in the total war series?I'd love to get into it but from what I read in reviews its pretty heavy stuff.

Ardscoil Ris

It's a fantastic game. However, it is heavy going. Think of the total war campaign map, but everything is ten times more detailed and complicated. Some like that others don't. It's a matter of preference.

@Sephiroth_dude: No real time battles I'm afraid because the game has a more realistic approach to troop numbers and I don't think any game can accurately replicated 80,000 men on a battlefield, yet.

Sephiroth_dude

sounds interesting,I'll have to give it a go sometime.

Polar101

I played EU2 a _lot_, but never really got into 3. I suppose it's worth getting with both expansions, I hear the latest expansion fixes many of the silly things.

Static M.e.

Can you tell us more about it, Is it like Civ and Total war together?

Denerick

Currently enjoying a prolonged war with Tuscany to unite Italy. Allied with Venice and the Papacy, we are carving up the petty kingdoms of Italy amongst ourselves.

Ardscoil Ris

Static M.e. wrote: »

Can you tell us more about it, Is it like Civ and Total war together?

It is, but without the 3D battles.

Sephiroth_dude

I mite try the demo if there one available.

Ardscoil Ris

Sephiroth_dude wrote: »

I mite try the demo if there one available.

I wouldn't recommend playing the demo. One of the problems with EU games is that there is so much depth in the gameplay that a demo wouldn't do it justice. When I first played it I was put off by it and overwhelmed. As you get deeper into it you learn why the game gets good reviews.

Just to let you know how detailed this game is. You need to plan a budget nearly every year based on your economic situation. If you're rolling in money that's a bad thing because it will case inflation and make your currency worthless so you need to break even every year. The AI is very very very clever. It always knows when to invade and forms alliances against you.

Alliances in this game work properly as well. Both nations will invade and work together etc. You can't just invade as easily as Total War. For England to invade France would be almost impossible. The amount of effort involved is astronomical. You would need strong allies for this to work.

Long story short if this was secondary school EU would be in the gifted class while the Total War series and Civilization would be in remedial.

Sephiroth_dude

hmm I might pick it sometime,I've been kinda looking out for a game of this nature,sounds cool but also very very deep and complex.

Sand

Its overwhelming at first, but the basic concepts are fairly simple. Could probably be summed up in less than 10 points to remember. For example the strategy for a land war is fairly simple once youve got the knack of it. Same for a naval/colonial war.

The AI is certainly a class above what you will see in other games, though its still capable of making "hmmm" decisions. Assume you play Ireland and build a large fleet. You go to war with France. France has armies hundreds of thousands strong, but you have a huge fleet so it cant reach Ireland. Stalemate? The AI doesnt see it that way. It sees it has vastly bigger armies than you so it doesnt see it has any reason to make peace. It *will* eventually, but it will have to beat it on the field OR grind it down with stab hits, blockades and war exhaustion.

The major bonus is that, unlike Total War, if the AI is clearly losing and under massive stress [ high instability, massive war losses, threatened by other neighbours...] then it will make peace with you on very reasonable terms. Whereas in Total War the AI was incapable of understanding when it was losing and why making peace could be beneficial.

The AI can also be mean as hell. In my Ireland game I have racked up lots of enemies - Portugal, Spain, Great Britain plus their various allies. Now I constantly have to be strong, and to project that strength in terms the AI understands because all those great powers hate me. Should I get embroiled in a long or difficult war the AI will go "AH HA!" and stab me in the back. So a tough war can quickly turn into a nightmare, but luckily for me once you have a powerful navy, Ireland pretty much cant be beaten and victory is only a matter of time after their navies have been sunk and blockades put in place. Which is handy as Im currently fighting another world war against Spain, Great Britain, Portugal, Milan and so on.

Theres some pretty great game experiences to be had though with this game. My other game is guiding Brandenberg up to Holy Roman Emperor, forming Prussia, and later Germany. Early game was hard as nails, fighting France as HRE, losing most of my country but gradually picking off small stacks, building up my forces, crushing Frances smaller allies and eventually winning a very hardfought victory. [ For the uninitiated, fighting France in the early game is probably the biggest challenge in the game - human waves of high morale troops coming again and again and again and again].

Scrambled egg

This game sounds excellent, but just one question. Will it run on a mediocre computer like mine with 1022 MB of RAM ?

Ardscoil Ris

Scrambled egg wrote: »

This game sounds excellent, but just one question. Will it run on a mediocre computer like mine with 1022 MB of RAM ?

Try the demo and find out.

Scrambled egg

no joy, video memory is too small guess ill have to settle for EU2

Sabre Man

EUII is a great alternative.

Slurmsy

It's even better with the Magna Mundi mod.

Krusader

Yeah Magna Mundi is savage
Started as Duchy of Milan and now in 1660 I title myself
King of Sardinia-Piedmont and The Two Sicilies (Naples & Sicily)
I have Mantua as a vassal
I am going for a unified Italy though the Papal State stands in my way,
they have big alliances with Spain & Britain & im allied to them myself as i am Papal Controller
Bad Relations with the Holy Roman Empire has seen alot of Rebels spawning my homelands.
I have a few provinces in N. America under my control and Goa and the Maldives in India

Denerick

Crosáidí wrote: »

Yeah Magna Mundi is savage
Started as Duchy of Milan and now in 1660 I title myself
King of Sardinia-Piedmont and The Two Sicilies (Naples & Sicily)
I have Mantua as a vassal
I am going for a unified Italy though the Papal State stands in my way,
they have big alliances with Spain & Britain & im allied to them myself as i am Papal Controller
Bad Relations with the Holy Roman Empire has seen alot of Rebels spawning my homelands.
I have a few provinces in N. America under my control and Goa and the Maldives in India

Take on the papacy. You get a prestige bonus so long as you hold Rome and it clears the path for the unification of Italy. You're probably strong enough to do that now anyway. You'll take a stability hit though, but feck it.

This is what I did in my Tuscany game; In the first 100 years I had taken all the adjacent provinces to Florence except Rome and had set ourselves up as the merchant power of Europe. Very rich little country, hired several mercenary armies and fought Aragon, Sicily, the papacy and Venice in almost constant warfare for the next 50 years; By the end all that was left in the way of us was Genoa and the city of Venice.

Krusader

Denerick wrote: »

Take on the papacy. You get a prestige bonus so long as you hold Rome and it clears the path for the unification of Italy. You're probably strong enough to do that now anyway. You'll take a stability hit though, but feck it.

This is what I did in my Tuscany game; In the first 100 years I had taken all the adjacent provinces to Florence except Rome and had set ourselves up as the merchant power of Europe. Very rich little country, hired several mercenary armies and fought Aragon, Sicily, the papacy and Venice in almost constant warfare for the next 50 years; By the end all that was left in the way of us was Genoa and the city of Venice.

I will have to take Protestant Firenze first.
The only thing wrong with Magna Mundi is the 100 years till you a core
To long in my opinion