Europa Universalis 3 is a Real Time Strategy game that seems like a combination of Civilization 4 and the strategic view of Rome Total War. The game period was originally from 1453 to 1780. With the second expansion, Napoleons Ambition, the gameplay went up to 1820, and with the third expansion, In Nomine, the gameplay went from 1399 to 1820. Besides this, In Nomine created a mission and national decision system, which meant that different countries now can have different abilities, like Russia getting higher maximum war exhaustion before people start revolting, or Prussia and Sweden having more diciplined soldiers than other countries.
I have recently come across a full game mod known as Magna Mundi which makes the game far more difficult. Things like converting cities to your religion take much longer, and revolts that come out of things like that are much stronger and harder to deal with, and besides this come out more frequently.
Combine this with an intense amount of boredom, and hell, why not? Let's play this bastard.
Generally, the only
really interesting areas to play in are Europe. However, Magna Mundi adds Japan as an interesting region to play as, mostly because they rather realistically portray the warring states period.
So here are screens of the places where I, as a player of moderate skill, could play in and not get my shit rocked--
Western Europe
The obvious big players in Western Europe are France (and the many vassals she has), Spain, and Portugal. The rather not obvious one is Burgundy, which, before they were tweaked, had a habit of becoming Austria's rival in Germany and being France's rival for massive power status. Now that Burgundy is weaker, France generally becomes the superpower game, to the degree that they have the nickname "big blue blob". France is nearly always a late game rival for anyone in proximity to them.
South Eastern Europe
The powers of South-Eastern Europe are always Austria (which hasn't unified yet), Hungary (early on), and the Ottoman empire. Italy, depending on the players actions, gets either stomped on by France, or Venice nearly unifies the country then gets stomped by France, or the player unifies Italy and fights France. The Holy Roman Empire, comprised of a shit ton of small ass countries, gives massive powers to whomever they vote as their Emperor (huge amounts of stability and manpower, far higher maximum for how large your army can be, etc).
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the most variable of all of the regions, because there are so many possible powers in the area. Lithuania, similarly to Burgundy, can become really powerful if it starts beating down the Russian states before they unify into Russia. It's also an odd region because at the start of the game, both Novgorod (a trading country) and Muscovy (a military-based country) have equal chance at taking the other city-states shit first and unifying into Russia.
Northern Europe
There's Northern Europe, with England, just waiting to become Great Britain, and Sweden (with Finland) as the powers of the area. Sweden has a bunch of missions which try to move it towards taking over Lithuania's stuff, so depending on whether Lithuania is powerful or not, it might become kinda meh-ish strong or be a totally boring area.
Japan
Holy shit, look at that. That's like a million fucking countries. How the fuck are you supposed to unite Japan from the starting point of a 1-providence minor?
Posts
If not that I also vote for Castile.
I was free of this game! Now I will have to try to unify america or india again and fail utterly because you mentioned this.
I vote for Sweden because I live there.
With the Magna Mundi Mod such feats are very hard to achieve (but still possible).
I'm voting for either England or Denmark.
England is one of the few countries actually able to colonize the Americas in Magna Mundi and Denmark... Well, they're a kind of vikings so thats cool.
I've played the vanilla game with In Nomine but never really gotten anywhere. The one decent game I had was with Novgorod but I got caught up in a war with the Golden Horde which pretty much was unwinable.
Don't underestimate EU, especially with Magna Mundi!
And Disney World is nowhere in sight.
Japan techs up slower than the Latin states, but if I were to try to consolidate my area then go almost entirely into Naval tech, I could possibly get into the Eastern seaboard and the Inca's before Spain/Portugal.
mayyybeeee.
By moderate skill, I mean I've played Sweden, Brandenburg, and I could prolly play any major power, but I'm not ridiculously good, and I've played few games without cheating (the 2 recent ones were Sweden going into Scandanavia and colonizing N. America and the Ottoman Empire)
Dear God. They found a way to make it even longer?
When I tried to convert Constantinople as the Ottomans, it said "+1.9% a year"
If that means what I think it means, then...good god.
Right now I'm reading through the manual for MM, and I have various dates and parties. So we'll start the game sometime around the New Year, which gives you guys that much time to decide a nation. Right now, the vote is
9 for Japan
7 for Castille
1 for Sweden
1 for England
1 for Denmark
1 for Huron
1 for Scotland
1 for Poland
Samurai Warriors and Nobunaga's Ambition games (and, well, history) just really make me enjoy the Warring States period.
I'm glad one of these is going on. One of my friends had talked about Europa Universalis 2 and 3 a few times lately, and I saw it in Best Buy and almost bought it, but had no idea if my computer could run it. I'm pretty sure it can now, so if this looks cool, I'll be picking it up for myself.
Pfft, the Spanish make the Samurai look like friendly dudes. When they aren't torturing heretics and heathens to death, they are massacring helpless natives and stealing their gold. Fuck yeah.
There are always the good old Reconquista thought I think that was pretty much over by 1399.
1492 is the official end, I believe.
I'm going to start on 1453, the best start date for Magna Mundi, and even then, there's the 3-providence Grenada.
as far as the Lets Play goes, I gotta add my love for Japan as well.
There's the Huron and the Iriquoi.
Huron is closest, they have that horn thing that Ontario has.
This game and Hearts of Iron 2 with the world in flames mod and some graphics packs have taken countless hours of my life.
As a warning Bestbuy clearance prices are ymmv.
It seems odd to me that the game punishes players so hard for having many provinces by scaling the cost of technology with your country size. Regardless, I am now putting all of my effort into getting my economy on its feet, pay back my loans and try to push back the mounting inflation. Of course, even with optimistic calculations reducing my 20% inflation will take at least 50 years during which I can only support just enough soldiers to beat down the constant rebellions. Such is the cost of war.
ETHAN: I would recommend you to update your game to In Nomine. Much better AI, and lots of stuff that mods can't even replicate like automatized trading. Vanilla EU3 is piss poor easy even with mods.
And crap, I am so terrible at this. My income has risen to 50 denars a year after I acquired a sixth CoT, but that is still nowhere near enough to achieve anything at all.
I guess that either the computer players have an unfair advantage, or I just do not get economy in this game.
A comparison between me and Persia, one of my rivals.
Vijayanagar:
Provinces: 44
Inflation: 21%, Income: 50.1, TE: 31%, PE: 26&
Soldiers: 10k mounted, 2k foot
Tech levels: 4 3 4 3 4
Persia:
Provinces: 12
Inflation: 5%, Income: 22,3, TE: 23%, PE: 29%
Soldiers: 12k mounted, 12k foot
Tech levels: 7 7 6 6 5
So all right, I have fucked myself on the inflation and I have been borrowing money. I have also been doing a lot of fighting which has hampered my teching. However, I can not see how it is possible for me to have been handling my economy so poorly that I have only gained three tech levels while he has gained sixteen.
Edit: Read up even more in Inflation, and I guess I still have some learning to do.
Yeah, inflation is bad and if it grows enough, you are truly fucked, as only real way to control it (tax accessor) comes at Goverment level 32. But after you have built tax accessor to your each province, inflation is pretty much non-issue.