Tigranes

Nope, EU3 doesn't do it like that. The conditions are if you own Ancona, Rome, and a couple of other key provinces, then every year there is something like a 5% chance you will get the event. This % increases the more italian provinces you own, so if you own all of Italy, then it's very likely that in 10 to 20 years, you'll get the prompt "Do you wish to form the nation of Italy". It's much more realistic than unitiing Italy then waiting 200 years for the prompt... I've seen someone create Italy by 1522, but I dont blitz.

Yes, Germany ends up being a horribly confusing place with about 50 factions that all have similar looking flags, but it all turns out okay in the end. There's still some historical inaccuracy abound, especially in Scandinavia apparently, but it's certianly better than Total War with its horribilities. Played up to 1600 or so. I finally annexed Modena and the Papacy, and am about to diplo-annex the 1-province Sicily. So apart from Naples and Siena I have all of Italy, and I'm just waiting for the Event for the formation of the Nation of Italy. Also going around colonising Brazil and New Zealand, it's pretty amazing that a couple of Fluyts could go out Italy, round Africa completely, go down the Indian Ocean and reach Timor before it dies of attrition.

I remember that list. Good stuff. Can't remember if these were in that list too, but since the link is dead; A) Rats will always, always carry money. These creatures seem to have built an independent economy where they will take human money, keep it carefully preserved and carry it with them at all times. These gold coins appear to operate as symbols of authority in the rat society, and often the leader of each rat community will carry a considerably larger amount of money. Exception; When a rat is broke, it will ensure that its tails are detachable, presumably for a similar purpose. (Planescape: Torment) B) Despite being a hermit in the middle of nowhere who has only ever sold items to yourself and live a life of simple frugality, he will have 1,000,000 gold with which to purchase your loot, such as rat tails. Exception; Sometimes this may not be the case, and shops actually own so little money they would not be able to buy their own merchandise. This is because a mysterious crab has taken all the money in the universe. (Morrowind) C) The game universe, no matter how advanced, civilised or technologically adept it may be, will have only one functional airship at any given time. The giant wheel of Fate or somesuch ensures that as soon as another, usually better, airship becomes available, the previous one is destroyed, usually with a lot of fire and noise. Despite this scarcity of airships, every city, town, cave and ancient ruin will harbour an airport specifically designed, built and manned to service your vehicle during its two weeks of intensive usage. Exception; Your aircraft may sometimes come across less prescient townships, but thankfully you are always provided with an excuse to crash into the middle of it, saving you the need to find parking space. (FFVII, many times)

So, uh, wow. Of all things, the forum maintenance killed my ginormous AAR-ish post. Started off a full game with Milan, Normal difficulty, Sept 1973 (just after it annexes the Genoans). Milan's not a particularly difficult faction, and after sealing off early alliances with Savoy and Austria I'm sitting there building my tech & army up. I am very fond of selecting the inflation idea for my first at the moment - losing the manpower one doesn't hurt after a while and I just love having 0 inflation all game. It's just my obsessive thing. Took me a while to regain the stab, but Milan looks stronger than most of its neighbours after a few years. In 1478 Massimilio I takes the throne with pretty good stats, and I feel with 6,000 men it's time for some expansion. I had sprayed some warnings around before and I had a nice Casus Belli on Venice for going rampaging with Modena, who afterwards became my ally. Venice has no allies, curiously; and it's the easiest thing in the world to DoW and have Savoy, Austria, Modena and myself pouring troops into their lands. Resistance is quickly crushed, and Brescia becomes Milanese. That turned out to be just the start of a magnificent reign for Massimilio I. Ever the honourable man, he refused to declare unprovoked war, and expanded his realm only to safeguard his own interests. Surely he was entitled to take Verona, and force Venice to free Dalmatia and Ragusa, if they were so callous as to invade his ally Modena. And surely Tuscany, who helped Venice work its mischief, deserved to be vassalised. And if the Pope should see fit to take advantage of his neighbours' war exhaustion and conquer Mantua and Firuli? Why, justice is right here at the point of my sword. Massimilio I reigned from 1478 to 1506, incredibly, and in that time I had managed to conquer Brescia, Verona, Ferrara, Romagna, and vassilise Tuscany. Modena my 'ally' was reduced to a pitiful one-state, the Papacy's strength broken, and I was sitting there pretty much unchallenged and suddenly with a lot more income (workshops in all of them, God bless the AI). I was even the Holy Roman Emperor. But just when life seemed good, Massimilio saw fit to get up on the wrong side of the bed and die of concussion. The regency council took over and I lost my HRE emperorship, and whats more, I was forced into junior partnership in a Personal Union with Modena! The next ten years or so meant my hands were completely tied, and I just sat there consolidating my forces and bribing nearby nations. Austria seemed to be the Lucky Nation in my game, because they took this opportunity to expand like crazy. They couldn't do much on the Italian end, but expanded in every other direction, decimating Bohemia, Hungary, most of central Germany and even touching the Rhine near the northern edge of the Alps. All those unprovoked wars, of course, labelled them "dishonourable scum", but nobody seemed to have enough guts to challenge them. And I certainly couldn't, with stupid Modena curtailing my sovereignty. Relief finally came in 1521 when Massimilo II ascended the throne. Not as able as his father, but competent. His forced annexation of Venezia earned him some bad rep, but he learnt his lesson and peacefully diplo-annexed Tuscany, then with bribery placated the worried Europeans. Then he mobilised. Being a Holy Roman Emperor (again) has its perks; one of them is having 30,000 manpower and 65 supportable land units limit. As patience allowed I raised some thirty thousand men (the first of the gun shooters), then with Savoy as my only (and still faithful) ally took on Austria, the largest kingdom in Europe save the Ottoman. The war continued from 1524 to 1540. Non-stop. It was one hell of a war. I made my ruler general, but with low army tradition my other generals were piss poor. I had better tactical movement (of course) and managed to blitz through the surprised Austrian front, simultaneously besieging about eight provinces at once. The problem came when one of his generals, something of a military legend, smashed through all that with 10,000 men and ransacked Brescia and Lombardia. I would never be able to defeat that army, though God knows I tried, but the time used up in those sieges meant I could inflict far more damage on the Austrian Empire. My warscore was 99% by that point. Massimilio II had died half-way, leaving Massimilio III to inherit the throne. I was finally able to solidify my grip on those conquered nations (God bless HRE emperorship), and though the AI in its infinite wisdom refused EVERY peace deal I made, it offered me Linz, Trent, Firuli and Ragusa by himself, and I was happy to accept. Linz is kinda in the middle of nowhere though, but Sell Province doesn't seem to work. The war might have gone on even longer but for the fact that the Papacy backstabbed me, and I had to go back and vassalise him. The Austrian war also let me vassalise Modena, so I'll be able to have a nice block of Northern Italy to myself after that. The Papacy is really crazy - as soon as I vassalised it it went off and attacked *France*, and now it's getting its butt handed to him again. Having lots of fun with the game, although I am disappointed by superfast colonising (Castille has doen nothing in Europe but has about 50 provinces overseas, same with England and France). I've always thought the EU colonising model was bulky and time-consuming and I'm not going to bother now, I think. Just concentrating on creating Italy and staying HRE.

What the heck happened there? Getting away from both random automatic repostings and silly bickerings, does anybody have the full game yet? Getting mine in about 24 hours, but I'm getting so impatient. Especially since my friend keeps grilling me with his demo disaster stories. Apparently started with Munster (the one in Ireland) to try and unite it. Unfortunately he invaded Connaught before realising it was allied to England., which sent over a massive army. Him being him, he took about 4 loans (gurk) and raised an army. The problem was that while he eventually bought England offw ith ~50 ducats (bankruptcy time!) and annexed Connaught, his BB was such that England soon invaded hiim again.. with his ally, Portugal. So he has about 70 ships circling Ireland, and what with all the bankruptcy, state of war and BB he has massive rebellions going on. The rebel leader, who has 1,000 cavalry with him, promptly destroys his entire army suffering minuite losses, then proceeds to destroy the English and Portuguese troops, and then besiege Ulster or whichever provicne the English hold. After about twenty battles against superior numbers the said rebels are finally eradicated, but not before devastating the entire island and destroying the Anglo-Portuguese invasion army. Then finally, Portugal and England, who now both have provinces in Ireland, declare war on each other, each of them bringing their own allies. He went bankrupt a second time, had rebels besieging his only province, and watched Portuguese and the Venetians fighting the English with their Protestant Lithuanians fighting over Connaught. Then the demo crashed.

As I understand, when the game runs *properly*, in the fastest setting, 3-4 days pass in a second. Thus, it would take around two minutes a year. Thus it would be about 2 hours to play 50 years, barring player-initiated pauses and so forth. My computer on demo only handles ~1 day per second, which is significantly slower, but apparently that's due to "lag"! I'll see when I get the real game tomorrow, but that does not sound very nice. EU does take up a lot of processing power though.

As I understand, when the game runs *properly*, in the fastest setting, 3-4 days pass in a second. Thus, it would take around two minutes a year. Thus it would be about 2 hours to play 50 years, barring player-initiated pauses and so forth. My computer on demo only handles ~1 day per second, which is significantly slower, but apparently that's due to "lag"! I'll see when I get the real game tomorrow, but that does not sound very nice. EU does take up a lot of processing power though.

As I understand, when the game runs *properly*, in the fastest setting, 3-4 days pass in a second. Thus, it would take around two minutes a year. Thus it would be about 2 hours to play 50 years, barring player-initiated pauses and so forth. My computer on demo only handles ~1 day per second, which is significantly slower, but apparently that's due to "lag"! I'll see when I get the real game tomorrow, but that does not sound very nice. EU does take up a lot of processing power though.

Uh..... we know. Getting a bit fed up with the apathetic AI in the demo that just waits for you and does nothing, so I'm having to wait for the full version. It's ridiculous how it takes ~2 months to get to New Zealand, I should just get myself a credict card and download it.

You're exactly right, meta. Yes. Some of those things aren't done well at the moment (like the option to automatically pause the game when a popup appears - that's due in the next patch). Political mapmode is the easiest to get your geography right. Still, after the first 10 years or so you know your surroundings pretty well. The fastest time mode in EUIII is not as fast as that in EUII, which sucks because it really should be much faster. I tend to go down to low/mid speed in times of war and when I'm doing stuff (or just pause), and then go to full speed to pass a couple of weeks or a month. It is a very long game and in my experience there are times where you dont do much for ~6 months and so have to leave the game going. The great thing is you can just alt-tab and the game would still run!

The full game is out (although not here). Gamersgate has it available for pay-to-download as well. The demo is pretty different from the full version in a number of ways. The AI is too passive and apathetic; colonisation happens way way too fast; naval attrition is screwed; tech development is too fast; map knowledge spreads too fast. All of those things are redressed in the full game, which is now patched to v1.1. It seems right now that public opinion is divided on EU3 - that is, public opinion amongst the EU2-players. EU2 pursued a very controlled history, whereby a slew of historical events happened in EVERY game and you just had to go with the flow or work against it. So if you played EU in 1907 as Muscovy (you can't) you'd always aget the "Communitst Revolution" event, and though you could choose how to react to that event, it would always happen in some form. EU3 uses a new dynamic way of scripting (I cant get more technical) and pursues a slightly different philosophy to create a more 'free-form' game. The starting conditions are set as close to history as possible, and national 'personalities' and 'tendencies' are too, but then the game follows no set guidelines as EU2 does, and instead lets things happen - so you could really see Savoy take over France, Spain inherit Austria (yep, happened) or Milan become the big colonising power of the world. The premise is that, if conditions are fulfilled so X can happen, then X will happen. Why shouldn't Savoy take over France if it becoems extremely powerful and the French kingdom stagnates? Why shouldn't Spain inherit Austria when such big inheritances had happened before (i.e. Frenchman on Polish throne)? Why shouldn't Milan become the next colonising power if Spain and Portugal are wracked by civil war, or excomm'd by the Pope, and Milan comes tod ominate the western mediterrenean shipping? Anyway, no matter which side one takes, everyone agrees that the full game is miles better than the demo. I'm salivating, myself.

The biggest disadvantage to using mercenaries is that you will not gain military tradition from winning battles with mercenaries. Military tradition is extremely important in getting you generals (amongst other things) - which is the key to having a great army long-term. Also, of course, EU is much more punishing with war weariness ont he citizens and inflation from loans. You really have to watch yourself because even a successful war can easily bankrupt you. I've tweaked things and got into the game, and I must say that it is a better game than EU2, if not significantly better. We'lls till need AGCEEP to give us a plethora of funky events, but I like especially the Holy Roman Empire. It's a pity that retreat-cycle-chase-enemies-around-for-5-years is still there, though, even if it's historical. I got smashed by Savoy playing as Milan thanks to having no Generals and with some bad decision-making, will try again tonight.

Where is this? And NWN1 AI was just as bad as NWN2, really. I don't remember many respawns and instaspawns..

Probably so that the publishers can be persuaded that EU3 is a good decision. Yes, EU3 really is ugly. But I find that in the end it really doesn't matter for me. After all, while EU2 looked pretty good for its purposes, I never looked at any part of it and thought "wow, that's beautiful". In terms of aesthetics EU has always been poor so it wont make a difference for me. What does make a difference is that I can't merge armies!! It's making me really frustrated, how do you do it? Anyway, other than that, it seems very similar to EU2 with small improvements, but hard to tell yet, esp. with the AI.

Oh, it works now. Dunno what happened before. Thanks guys, hopefully this one works. I loved EU2 + AGCEEP, played a lot of it before it finally got routine. alanschu (or whoever) is right in that AI makes or breaks these games.

Meh, fileplanet = subscribers only. Are there any other sites with the file? Gamespot is subs too isnt it?

Well, okay. Installation fails around 50% because some western?stormHouse.tga or something has an invalid name or something. Tried downloading twice, didn't work. Anyone know anything about that?

Wait, it's only 128mb?! I can get it with my remaining bandwidth! Holy crap, I live in New Zealand and I'm getting 350kbps (that NEVER Happens in this country).

How does having random monarchs work at the same time as having historical monarchs? O_o isn't it one or the other? I loved the complexity of EU's AI compared to TW's, and that's why I was willing to have historical monarchs (which I dont mind at all). I would guess that starting at any date works by having a 'map' for every single year? So if you start at a specific year it will always be under the same conditions?

I can't count the number of orgasms that gave me. Is the random monarchs thing a tick-box option? Because I may actually prefer historical monarchs if we dont have a family tree and selectable heirs a la TW. Is the battle system getting any revamp? I dont want it too complicated, but I thought EU2's was *too* simple so that it broke immerison and got in way of your politically and economically and geographically well-planned maneuvres.

In one day and nine hours on Crapspot. Of course, I gotta wait for 2 weeks for my bandwidth cap to reset. :'( I blame the Russians. I haven't kept up with what exactly was changing in EU3 over EU2, although as usual I keep hearing "3D" thrown about everywhere. Anyone else excited? Surely we still have some EU enthusiasts. What are the biggest changes?

But then, people who find funky haircuts, buying titles such as Arseface and sexxing up barmaids enjoyable in a game would find a YMCA dance hilarious.

*shrug* to you maybe. The basic mechanics were very similar, but PST had a much smaller pool of classes, spells, monster types and so forth. They also lacked traps (did the game even have any?) and spellcasting enemies, and the only really different type of enemy I remember are the Cranium Rats. There was also only one ranged weapon NPC, and combat items were much more limited. I haven't played PST in a while, but as I remember those were the main reasons. Similar mechanics but much more limited, and therefore every battle was similar.

Yes. However, I think Torment has shown that for many games, unless the system is changed a lot to promote this kind of bonuses, they are only seen by players as nice little 'add-ons' - in other words, little 'secret' or 'special' bonuses you find, and not the main way of getting your character fitted out. Torment had a fair bit of these bonueses but people always did moan about, say, the lack of armour or even other equipment to be found in that game. Although, tattoos were a great bonus, and as was filing up your empty eye slot. Perhaps the complaint came to light more because of PST's lacklustre combat side?

The problem, of course, is that those too must be given very sparingly. Having lots of unique items with unique effects can become more a chore than a reward if you're constantly having to think about them, or turn them on and off; thats why simple skill + or DC + bonuses usually work better. As an example, I remember loving the Ring of Energy adn the RIng of the Ram in BG1/2, but later finding out that I had only ever used a couple of chargres, just because I kept forgetting about them. This is less of an issue with the NWN2 hotbar system, of course, but just a note. I always thought that it would be nice to confine a particular theme of enchantments to a particular type of equipment. For example, AC bonuses or damage reduction can only be provided by Armour or Helms; Gloves often provide Dexterity bonuses (nimble fingers) or spellcasting ease, only boots can give stealth bonuses, and so forth. Something that could easily be pursued in conjunction to the 'unique enchamtments' idea, combining to make equipment that is truly more realistic than "i have 7 slots of magical itemss for +ac".