Europa Universalis III Demo

[Jorian Drake]

 

 

1973?!!

[Morgoth]

I just see from Tigranes screenshots that the description of the various states remain in their own native language. Very charming. Also very funny how much bigger K

[Tigranes]

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.

[Morgoth]

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.

That would be 1866 I think. Does the EU3 timeline get that far? I read somewhere it only goes ~1800 or so. Anyway, after the Austo-Prussian War in 1866, Italy united as a nation, as Prussia united Germany.

[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.

[Checkpoint]

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.

That would be 1866 I think. Does the EU3 timeline get that far? I read somewhere it only goes ~1800 or so. Anyway, after the Austo-Prussian War in 1866, Italy united as a nation, as Prussia united Germany.

Actually, the Kingdom of Italy was united in 1861 following the work of mainly Camillo di Cavour and Giuseppe Garibaldi.

[Lare Kikkeli]

There's a really nice mod that makes the map look realistic, it's much more pleasing to the eye than the default map. I got it from the official forums.

[Oerwinde]

has anyone else been playing with mods? I've been playing this freaking game nonstop for like 2 weeks and some of the mods and the ease of tweaking some things just makes sure I keep playing. So far I've added Vinland, Iceland, Finland, a united Scandinavia, Jerusalem, and Haiti to the game. I was thinking of modding in my own little fantasy nation too. I also added some mods that allow the Teutonic order to become Prussia, allows tribal governments to become monarchies, some events for the netherlands, and I modded in Old Norse as a religion. I kept the stats similar to Shinto but it gives some colonists.

 

I changed a buttload of flags too. Thought the Brittany flag was ugly so I changed it to the flag of the Duchy of Brittany. The mod that added scandinavia used the Kalmer Union flag, which I thought was ugly so I made my own out of a combination of Norway, Denmark, and Sweden's flags.

[metadigital]

Linkies to mods?

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".

That's kewl!

[Oerwinde]

Linkies to mods?

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".

That's kewl!

 

Most are on the official forums, but the servers are down for an upgrade right now.

[Llyranor]

I really should get myself to try the demo at some point.

[alanschu]

Then we can start and quit a game!

[Oerwinde]

Then we can start and quit a game!

 

I haven't actually finished a game. I get into the 1700s then start over with a new country or to try out some new mods.

[Girias_Solo]

That fast colonising thing sounds like it blows. Though I don't mind the historical events open to whoever gets the pre requisites.

 

Can Greece be reformed? Or the ERE?

[damonors]

That fast colonising thing sounds like it blows. Though I don't mind the historical events open to whoever gets the pre requisites.

 

Can Greece be reformed? Or the ERE?

Alas, but no. I had a wondeful time playing the "fantasy byzantium" part of agceep in eu2, but nothing like it yet. There is a mod to allow for the "Byzantine Empire", but nothing like the eu2 one.

 

About Italy, it is damn annoying. I am playing as Venice and had pretty much all of Italy (no ferrara for another 100 years unfortunately), beauracracy national idea, high centralization and it took a LOOOOOOOOOONG time to form Italy. It is random, but the Prestige hits from the Papal states events sucked. One time I got it twice *simultaneously*!!! I had to release Rome via the event (if I did as 'release vassal' it would have given them 2 more provinces), but I had to declare war to get them to vassalize. Rome was a nice province.

[Oerwinde]

That fast colonising thing sounds like it blows. Though I don't mind the historical events open to whoever gets the pre requisites.

 

Can Greece be reformed? Or the ERE?

 

Someone created a mod that allows the nation of greece to form if you have at least athens and morea, similar to the german nation, russian nation, italian nation, etc. events.

[Tigranes]

The Rome portion of Italy event is bugged; its mean time of occurance is about 2 months, with no limits on repeated occurances. In other words you're going to get an evil prestige hit (and a BB hit, but that's bugged too so it actually reduces your BB), which was completely nonsensical. I modded it to only happen once, but quadriple the damage or something.

 

Still, I had moved on by then. I've been playing Utrecht from 1453 and now i'm in the 1680s - might actually finish this one. My mission was to first form the Netherlands, become the Holy Roman Empire, then create a "real" HRE. In short, I would try to vassalise every single member of the holy roman empire.

 

Those who play EU3 will know of "Blobbing" that is a problem right now; especially in HRE boundary disputes and all that mean the small nations kill each other off much too qucikly, and after a 100 years or so you're left with massive blobby superpowers, notably Austria, who never seem to fight each other. My mission would be to make war on these blobs one by one, annex all their territory, then release it all as tiny, tiny vassals.

 

I achieved it mainly in all of Germany north of Wurzburg; the southern half would be completely covered by a massive Austria who had S. Germany, all of Italy except Rome, Hungary, west half of Balkans, so forth.

 

<UberAustria>

 

But when I made war on them, I had over thirty tiny German vassals who would all lend a hand, and as I was a massive trading empire raking in thousands of ducats a year from trade (and East Indies colonies), I could fund a smackin', and eventually make them release over half their prodigiously sized empire. Furthermore, I actually inherited Poland, who had over 10 provinces. Immediately I re-released it, but with only half its lands, releasing the other half as things like Bohemia and Silesia. My vassals number at 35 right now, including Connaght and Munster in Ireland.

 

It's pretty fun to still be a relatively small ntaion, but through your vassals and alliances, which you must keep up (even when half of them turn Protestant and you're Catholic), and make sure you defend them and guarantee them. I recently went on a war against Lithuania to get rid of the provinces it had in the middle of my vassal-empire, and secure the eastern frontier - hell, in principle my dominion stretches from Ireland to the Black Sea.

 

<After destroying UberAustria>

 

 

Anyway, yes. It's a good game but there are a few kinks that do hurt immersion; A) the inevitable creation of massive superpowers that NEVER attack eachother, B) it's much much much too hard to make alliances because they are often impossible for nor eason, C) the AI will not accept peace offers, even when they are much more generous than the ones they offer you themselves. With such errors, the lack of prescripted events becomes jarring; but it's still very playable and hopefully will get better with mods.

[Oerwinde]

I'm playing with the Magna Mundi mod right now, which solves the blobbing issue in a very annoying way: HRE nations can't keep the provices they take from other HRE nations unless they have a core on them. But they nerfed the boundary dispute event so no one ever gets cores on anyone else. I was france and managed to vassalize and diplo-annex Friesland, Gelre, Utrecht and Burgundy, and was going to release the Netherlands as a vassal, but the emperor made me give all those provinces back, releasing Holland, Brabant, Friesland, Gelre, and Utrecht, all with 200 relations with me.

 

I've also conquered Lorraine 3 times but it won't let me keep them. You can keep them, but you get like 5 BB points for every province you keep plus it lowers your relations with all the nations in the HRE for every province you keep based on the culture of the province (for instance, I wouldn't give up Zeeland, Brabant, Holland and Utrecht and my relations with Friesland went from 200 to -200 because they were all dutch provinces, while my relations with brandenburg only went down by 100.)

 

It does make the game pretty interesting though in terms of colonization. I used to just hire a conquistador and explorer on the first turn and head off to N/A and pretty much start colonizing right from the start. As france with this mod I wasn't able to explore the new world until like 1510, while Spain had started colonizing the caribbean in 1495

 

Oh, and tigranes, I notice in your screenshot you seem to have a super Sweden too. My game with france so far they haven't touched norway or Denmark, but have conquered most of Novgorod and the northern Teutonic Order and are setting their sights on Lithuania. Which was funny as they were allied with Lithuania and Poland until a war of succession event which made them carve out a couple provinces from Lithuania's northern border.

Edited February 25, 2007 by Oerwinde

[Tigranes]

Yep, apart from the crazy Central European situation I've concocted, the rest of Europe has blobbed quite nicely. Great Britain has done nothing in a hundred years except for occasional slapfests with France, and when I invaded for a lark I found over a hundred thousand men sitting around playing poker. Spain formed a while ago, sans Portugal, and has ALL of North Africa up to Egypt. the Ottomans inherited the Mamluks and have everything from Ethiopia to Egypt to Persia to the Balkans, and even had Yemen on inheritance for a while. Portugal has all of the west coast of Canada and USA. It would be nice if those blobs actually got into wars and dished out the massacres, but they just go too inactive - I'm not sure how long I"ll play my Dutch empire, probably try to invade France or something before I quit.

 

Super Sweden has been in existence nearly all of the game, after they flattened Norway & Denmark in about twnety years. O_o I

 

I did have one succession war, actually - around 1630. Regency Council meant I lost my HREship for the first time in nearly a century (MILAN took it, who I had revived in Pfalz, visible on first screenie), and I had to choose between Spain and Lithuania. Curiously, when I picked Lithuania, it actually put me on Spain's side against Lithuania. This turned out to be very good because Spain didnt' lift a finger, being far away; I quickly white peace'd Lithuania after some battles and then waited for a King to turn up. Later, I diploannexed Milan and re-released as the Palatinate, just to get the HREship back (see second screenie, Pfalz.)

[Girias_Solo]

What difficulty are you playing on Tigranes?

 

Maybe the AI gets a little more adventurous at a higher level (I hope). <_<

[Tigranes]

Played the first few decades on Normal, then the rest on Hard. I see no difference in AI, and VH gives stupid bonuses (+50% morale I think, and tax modifier, etc). I enjoy a challenge and the game could use one, but not in the manner of making other countries have production workers on speed.

[Rhomal]

I just picked up this game the other day... will let you know my impressions when I have enough time to play. I can tell this is one of the few games I HAVE to read the manual... Trying to dive right in is futile from my attempts... heh

[Tigranes]

I don't know. I dived into EU2, and did pretty well for a while - then I got AGCEEP and read up a few things on the EU2 wiki. But then, I'm the sort that *never* reads manuals. There are a lot of complicated things in EU3, but sometimes what things are confusing is different to different people.