The game has gone gold and will hit stores on January 23rd. They've made a lot of changes to the last one, some of them controversial, but overall it looks really good. This french review site has some nice screenshots and videos of game play! I know for one, I can't wait!

hxxp://www.clubic.com/test-jeux-video-6139-0-europa-universalis-iii.html

Really looking forward for this.

Just last month, I picked up the Paradox 6 pack with all of their games in it. Pretty sweet from EB for just 20 dollars too

A lot of that looks great, I'm really excited for this. Although, I don't think it looks all that much better. I'm talking about the map, it looks too much like a puzzle, I think the map in EU2 is better.

I cant wait. I pre-ordered the deluxe edition. Paradox has to be one of the companies I love most. I buy every game from them.

Just last month, I picked up the Paradox 6 pack with all of their games in it. Pretty sweet from EB for just 20 dollars too

What games are in it?

What games are in it?

Hearts of Iron
It’s 1939 and the threat of the Third Reich looms over all of Europe. Lead the Allied forces to victory, or take command of an Axis nation and sweep across the entire globe. Take control of virtually any nation and rewrite history as you see fit in this truly epic game of World War II strategy.

Victoria: An Empire under the Sun
Between ironclads and merchantmen, the New World and old homelands, the British Empire seeks to regain and maintain its former glory on the world stage. In this tumultuous, war-torn 18th century, you can choose to help restore Britannia, guide the United States through the Civil War, Japan through its rush of modernization, or lead any country you wish to its own place in the sun in this unique and engaging strategy title.

Europa Universalis II
From the late Middle Ages to the Renaissance and beyond, new empires were created while old ones fell prey to the dangers of war, colonialism, and even faith. It was a time where a brave new idea could be as dangerous as the sharpest cutlass, and a single battle could mean the difference between independence and vassalage. Guide your chosen nation through these 400 years of progress and reshape the world.

Europa Universalis II: Asia Chapters
Asiatic countries are at a crucial turning point. The influence of Western civilization threatens to creep across their borders in an era marked by feuding samurai clans, the strength of the Ming dynasty, and legendary Korean warships. Dig into an alternative look at the 400 years of the original Europa Universalis II, complete with 20 minutes of additional animation and music, and become the conqueror of the four seas.

Two Thrones
The rivalry between England and France rages on from 1337 to 1490 as noble families in both countries fight to lay claim to the two thrones. Choose a side and direct your country through the Hundred Years’ War and the War of the Roses, all while trying to appease the Papacy and the toughest critics of all: your people.

Crown of the North
Torn apart by power struggles and civil war, Scandinavia finds itself being contested between Sweden, Norway, and Denmark in the years 1275 to 1340. Take control of one of six local factions and pursue your right to the crown through high-powered politics, careful diplomacy, and strategic combat.


I never played 3 of those (or the EUII expansion)...I may pick this up too.

Well the new map is very controversial, they wanted to go to a 3D map, and I think it will bring some good things, like much easier and better zooming in and out, better animations, and some good features like striping provinces with a different color when another nation owns them, but the puzzle look is not popular and I agree it sort of takes a step back, but I figure I'll get used to it.

I guessing this game marks the end of my marriage.

What better eu3 or married sex?

The nice thing about a Paradox game is that you need not invest in it for a couple months until they're on patch 1.03 or 1.04.

As I keep saying, I'm somehow going to be duped into getting this, thinking this'll be the one.... only to be disappointed again. Great concept, but it just doesn't deliver in the slightest for me.

Kind of like Lewis Black's bit on candy corn really.

The nice thing about a Paradox game is that you need not invest in it for a couple months until they're on patch 1.03 or 1.04.

This certainly has been the pattern, but I think they may break it with this game, they've used a much different model with much longer beta testing, and the testers are reporting that the crashes and bugs have mostly been stomped out pre-release, unlike pretty much all their other games.

This certainly has been the pattern, but I think they may break it with this game, they've used a much different model with much longer beta testing, and the testers are reporting that the crashes and bugs have mostly been stomped out pre-release, unlike pretty much all their other games.

Then cue the 'we tested it thoroughly but we only have so many testers on so many setups' excuse as the game crashes on EVERY computer. This is PC game BS 101. EVERY game uses this pre-release.

Kind of like Lewis Black's bit on candy corn really.

Europa Universalis is the only PC game in the history of America that's never been advertised. And there's a reason. All of the copies that were ever made were made in 1996. And so, since nobody plays that game, every year there's a ton of copies left over. And Paradox sends the guys out into the stores, to collect out of the dumpsters all the copies we've thrown away. They repackage it! They repackage it!

I'll never forget the first time my mother gave me a copy of Europa Universalis. She said, 'Here ISiddiqui! This is Risk that plays like Civilization!' (takes it, plays it) ... 'This plays like crap!'

And every year since then, a new release is here and I, like an Alzheimer's patient, find myself in a room, and the room has a table in it, and on the table, is a PC with Europa Universalis installed and loaded up. And I look at it, as if I've never seen it before. 'Europa Universalis,' I think. 'Risk that plays like Civilization. I can't wait.' (grabs mouse, hits keyboard) 'SON OF A BITCH!'

Then cue the 'we tested it thoroughly but we only have so many testers on so many setups' excuse as the game crashes on EVERY computer. This is PC game BS 101. EVERY game uses this pre-release.

Well it doesn't really matter to me, I'll play it either way, but this is Paradox, they aren't every game developer. I guess we'll find out soon enough.

The bone they're throwing to commerciality (ie dodgy looking 3d graphics) means that I won't be able to run the game. Pity, because I lurved EU2, for all its quirks.

Nice review of the game here:

http://pc.gamezone.com/gzreviews/r28887.htm

and another

http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?cId=3156420

dola - Also, Gamespot is releasing the demo of EU3 today!

Europa Universalis is the only PC game in the history of America that's never been advertised. And there's a reason. All of the copies that were ever made were made in 1996. And so, since nobody plays that game, every year there's a ton of copies left over. And Paradox sends the guys out into the stores, to collect out of the dumpsters all the copies we've thrown away. They repackage it! They repackage it!

I'll never forget the first time my mother gave me a copy of Europa Universalis. She said, 'Here ISiddiqui! This is Risk that plays like Civilization!' (takes it, plays it) ... 'This plays like crap!'

And every year since then, a new release is here and I, like an Alzheimer's patient, find myself in a room, and the room has a table in it, and on the table, is a PC with Europa Universalis installed and loaded up. And I look at it, as if I've never seen it before. 'Europa Universalis,' I think. 'Risk that plays like Civilization. I can't wait.' (grabs mouse, hits keyboard) 'SON OF A BITCH!'

LOL... and eerily accurate. Though the last paragraph would be a on the table is a PC with a NEW EDITION of Europa Universalis on it.

The nice thing about a Paradox game is that you need not invest in it for a couple years until they're on patch 1.03 or 1.04.


Fixed it for ya. But I agree a couple of years after release with all the patches and the mods for their games, it is a great purchase to make. :D

dola - Also, Gamespot is releasing the demo of EU3 today!

Anyone with a link of it?

Anyone with a link of it?

Here you got it buddy :)

http://www.fz.se/filer/?id=2184

It's around 130mb and from that link the speed i get is a nice 400kbps.

Here you got it buddy :)

http://www.fz.se/filer/?id=2184

Awesome. Thank you! :)

So...I've got EU one....anyone know where I can get a patch for it?

i bought it a long time ago, put it down, and even though it looks awesome, never got around to picking it up again.

So...I've got EU one....anyone know where I can get a patch for it?

i bought it a long time ago, put it down, and even though it looks awesome, never got around to picking it up again.

This should work, or if not I think you can get it on Gamespot somewhere:

hxxp://dlh.net/cgi-bin/dlp.cgi?lang=eng&sys=pc&file=eu110uk.zip&ref=ps

Game is out as digital download from gamersgate:

http://www.gamersgate.com/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=shop.flypage&product_id=95&category_id=8&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=14

Also first patch released on release day, some really good fixes:

Europa Universalis III v. 1.1

This is a listing of things in EU3 v1.1 that have resulted in a change to the way that the game is played. Information provided here supersedes what you may have read in the manual, manual errata, strategy guide, forums, or have experienced with the game’s demo version.

System Specifications/Hardware/Game Launch
The game will now allow you to launch even if your graphics card does not report as having 128MB of video RAM (however Pixelshader 2.0 support is still a requirement). You will receive a warning to this effect and can then proceed to launch the game; however, we can offer no assurances as to the overall performance of the game on such systems. Older, sub-spec cards are likely to have serious issues, while integrated chipsets that are designed to share system resources may be able to run with little or no performance deterioration. We offer this change on an “as is” basis and do not make any assurances that the game will work perfectly on any individual system.
A special feature has been added to the launcher to help players manage and launch games with user-modifications. Details of how to use this are provided in the Scenarios & Modifications subforum of the main Paradox forum. In particular this should make it considerably easier for people who participate in multiplayer games to use mods.

Game Play & Interfaces
A human-controlled country that is an elector in the Holy Roman Empire is now unable to vote for itself (this means that the player is restricted in the same way that AI-controlled countries are restricted). The player will automatically vote for the country that it would vote for if it were controlled by the AI (reputation being the primary determining factor, with ties being broken by other considerations such as prestige, size, strength, reputation, etc.).
Being the Papal Controller now also helps to improve your country’s reputation.
The rate that maps will spread to other countries has undergone a large adjustment. A newly-discovered province will not become known to other countries for at least 50 years (unless they discover it independently).
The cost of new technologies is now scaled to country size. Larger countries must now invest somewhat more than a smaller country to achieve the same technological advance.
Having a positive national stability now gives an additional bonus to tax income.
Having a negative national stability now results in a higher revolt risk than was previously the case.
The “Deus Vult” national idea will now give you a casus belli on any country that does not share exactly the same religion as your own (previously you did not receive the casus belli against a country that had a religion in the same religious group as your own).
Some of the allowed government conversion possibilities have been altered (so do not rely on the manual’s appendix to determine a valid path).
The likelihood of a ruler dying is now less linear and increases significantly with time; making very long reigns even rarer than before.
A country that is ruled by a regency council can no longer be the target of a succession war.
The effects of advisors have been tweaked to increase the differences between each skill level.
The monthly salary cost of a newly-hired advisor is now immediately reflected in the domestic budget (previously it would not be applied until month end). The same is also true if you fire an advisor.
The Outliner now has a separate section to show provinces that are colonies (but not yet full-fledged colonial cities). This makes it very easy to quickly select a province that you wish to further develop through sending a colonist.

Diplomacy & Espionage
You may only diplomatically annex a country when it is at peace. The option will remain greyed out if this condition is not satisfied (in addition to the other conditions associated with diplomatic annexation).
It is no longer possible to break an alliance if the alliance is at war.
Voluntarily releasing a vassal will now improve your country’s reputation.
The relationship between countries (and changes in those relationships) has been further tweaked and balanced -- particularly within the Holy Roman Empire. The Emperor (if controlled by the AI) is now much more supportive and protective of member states.
The cost, effects, and penalties for detection for most espionage actions of your spies have been changed to make them somewhat more appealing to use.

War & Peace
You can no longer recruit mercenary regiments of any type in any of your colonies.
The cost of hiring a mercenary will now increase slightly for each additional mercenary in your national army.
Naval attrition has been changed to increase the attrition rates when you are in open ocean waters, and to eliminate it completely when you are in a sea zone that is adjacent to your own territory. This means that a fleet may safely remain at sea in its home waters, but will find exploration and ocean voyages more hazardous.
Naval attrition will be less severe once you have achieved level 20 in naval technology.
The details displayed when you select a fleet now show the transport capacity of that fleet (the number of regiments that it can carry) at the bottom of the fleet interface.
It is now possible to declare war on a country without first cancelling your military access treaty; however, there is a severe stability penalty for doing so.
The penalty for declaring war on a co-religionist now only applies to an enemy that is exactly the same religion as your country, rather than for countries with a religion in the same religious group. (Example: a Protestant country will no longer receive the stability hit for declaring war on a Catholic country.)
If one of your vassals is attacked, you will automatically be given the option protect it (via a “call to allies” message). This means that you will always be able to assist a vassal, even if you have not arranged an alliance with it.
An army will not receive any reinforcements if it is retreating. This only applies to retreating after losing or withdrawing from a battle, and does not affect an army that is moving due to a normal movement order.
If all possible locations that an army may retreat each contain an enemy army that exceeds it in size, the army will be disbanded. Note that every army in every province must be larger, otherwise the defeated army will retreat towards a province that has an enemy army that is smaller than it is.
You may now only initiate an assault in a siege if you are the leader of that siege.
Any alliances a country has will be automatically broken if it accepts an enemy’s demand to become its vassal.
You cannot refuse a peace offer from an AI-controlled country if it currently controls all of your provinces. You can refuse an offer from a human-controlled country but will pay a stability penalty for doing so if the offer is reasonable (100% or less).
It is no longer possible to demand that a country convert religion if it has a religious form of government (theocracies, etc.)
A country that has been forced to convert religions as a result of a peace demand will now be unable to convert religions again (voluntarily) until the ruler who agreed to the peace term has died.

Other
This is by no means a complete listing of changes from 1.0 to 1.1. In addition to the items above, there are a large number of minor alterations, tweaks, bug-fixes, AI tweaks and optimisations, and an assortment of other things that would be far too lengthy to detail. This includes...
Many events have been tweaked for triggers, modifiers and effects; and a variety of events have been added.
Many provinces have been tweaked (trade goods, tax values, etc.)
Some province improvements have been tweaked in cost and/or effect.
Many tweaks to in-game variables in the static_modifiers.txt and defines.txt files; and tweaks to the effects in static_modifers.txt
Tweaked many interfaces to improve their display or information
Tweaked or expanded the information in many tooltips
Made corrections or clarifications to much of the in-game text.
Many history files have been further expanded, tweaked, corrected, or otherwise improved.
A variety of new event conditions and effects have been added.
Most AI routines have been further expanded, improved, and/or optimised. The AI’s ability to manage all aspects of its country and military has been enhanced, as has its diplomatic policies and behaviours. In particular, inter-relationships within the Holy Roman Empire and decisions made by all countries (worldwide) regarding national ideas and colonisation should be more appropriate than before.
Multiplayer stability and functionality has been made considerably more robust to address occasional synchronisation issues experienced in games played over the internet.
And a variety of miscellaneous bug fixes, tweaks, code optimisations, and other fun stuff.

Dola, I'm trying to resist to buy it right now as digital download when it will hit the Spanish stores in Feb 2nd with the printed manual instead of pdf. On the other hand, I prefer to play games in English as usualy the translations are not awesome... Damn, what to do?

Double dola,
Damn why am I so weak? Installing the game now.

Just thought I'd say that EUIII is easily the best Paradox game to date. Yes, the graphics take a little getting used to but trust me, you'll come to appreciate them in time. At least I have. The game has also been quite stable (for me), though there are always going to be little bugs here and there, but I think we (Beta Testers) got most of the bugs.

Just wish I hadn't been so bloody busy the past two months. :( Haven't had time to test the game much. :(

Hey Praetorian, glad to see a beta tester here on FOFC. I'm anxiously awaiting the arrival of my pre-ordered collector's edition.

Double dola,
Damn why am I so weak? Installing the game now.
http://www.fof-ihof.com/phpBB2/images/smiles/icon_rollinglaugh.gif

Pre-ordered this game for my fiance and me. We'll give it a try on Thursday, starting off with mutiplayer co-op mode to help with the learning curve.

Looking forward to it.

Pre-ordered this game for my fiance and me. We'll give it a try on Thursday, starting off with mutiplayer co-op mode to help with the learning curve.

Looking forward to it.

Co-op mode is a feature that is going to be really great, two persons running the same country at same time, it could help to make great dynasties with a guy managing the economic part and another the army etc.

Co-op mode is a feature that is going to be really great, two persons running the same country at same time, it could help to make great dynasties with a guy managing the economic part and another the army etc.

This is one of the main reasons we are purchasing it. It also helps cut down arguements because of one person beating on another, like we do in Civ4. The depth of this game can be realized with two people running the same country.

What better eu3 or married sex?

trick question...there's no such thing as married sex.

trick question...there's no such thing as married sex.

This will be my second marriage. Your statement is true. :D

trick question...there's no such thing as married sex.


We have a winner!

Would anyone else recommend this game so far? I keep trying to get into this genre but can never decide on which one to go with.

The learning curve is big (at least for me). I never played this series before, but I did play Crusader Kings. I thought the personality and character depth would follow into EUIII, but I was incorrect. The game has depth and is enjoyable. It is also slow. Things can take forever to accomplish. I'm hoping my fiance will recover from the flu soon so we can try this co-op. It looks to be an enjoyable game. The ability to mod it should extend the life of this game too.

Having only played the demo it seems to have really kept much of what made the EU series special and built upon it. It is slow moving at times, I'd agree, but this is BY FAR the easiest game in the series to get into.

I'm still waiting for a Crusader Kings II.

I am with Gi, I played Crusader Kings, but this is my first EU game. Im slowly making my way through it. I think I enjoy this game, I think its the game I wish CK was.. but its just taking some time to figure stuff out.

Okay i downloaded the demo and fired it up yesterday. I have to admit i was totally overwhelmed. Is there a tutorial within the game or a written tutorial to get a newbie started?

There is a tutorial with the full version, but I haven't played it so I can't vouch for it's helpfulness. The best way to get into the game is play and read some of the threads at Paradoxplaza.com. It's quite a steep learning curve, though.

The game itself is very good, but there are a number of bugs to get worked out. Right now you see very weird things like traders from the Creek nation in Andalusia, countries that are both allied and at war with each other, growth rates that don't seem to work, etc.

Nevermind it was late and i didn't even notice there was an in game tutorial. I wouldn't mind though if someone new of a strategy guide or guide for newbies that might help.

There is talk of a strategy guide on the EU3 boards, but I haven't dug for it. There is also an EU3 wiki that's just starting. I believe it's stickied on the first page of the forum.

I'm still waiting for a Crusader Kings II.

Where's the ditto button.

There is talk of a strategy guide on the EU3 boards, but I haven't dug for it. There is also an EU3 wiki that's just starting. I believe it's stickied on the first page of the forum.


I haven't come across the strategy guide on the EU3 boards so far, I played through the tutorial, and while they helped some with the basic ideas, by no means could they dig into the incredible amount of depth in this game.

I ended up picking Scotland to try to learn with. Its not really an easy country and most people seem to suggest to try to learn with a country like Portugal. So far though I've been left alone and plodded along trying things and figuring out how they work. I think I have the trade system down now.. but some things I am completely in the dark on.

I still have no clue what i am doing when it comes to most of the sliders, I know the tooltips tell you their effects, but its hard for me to grasp exactly what those effects will mean for my country. I also am thinking only short term and have no long term strategy.

Because of the ability to Mod EUIII, I'm hopeful someone will make a mod that is influenced by Crusader Kings...

I haven't come across the strategy guide on the EU3 boards so far, I played through the tutorial, and while they helped some with the basic ideas, by no means could they dig into the incredible amount of depth in this game.

I ended up picking Scotland to try to learn with. Its not really an easy country and most people seem to suggest to try to learn with a country like Portugal. So far though I've been left alone and plodded along trying things and figuring out how they work. I think I have the trade system down now.. but some things I am completely in the dark on.

I still have no clue what i am doing when it comes to most of the sliders, I know the tooltips tell you their effects, but its hard for me to grasp exactly what those effects will mean for my country. I also am thinking only short term and have no long term strategy.

Alan, the game is complex and takes a while to pick up for people that are new to the series, there are just so many variables it can be difficult to figure out what's going on. I guess I recommend that you decide on one area to focus on, it's easier that way. For example I'm playing Venice in my current game, and I started in around 1580. Venice is a huge trading power, so that's what I focus on heavily, especially with national ideas, by that time in the game starting government levels are around 15 so you have several national ideas, and taking all or most of them in trade really boosts your abilities there, plus getting advisors that add extra merchants helps more. I pretty much just have to keep sending them to the COTs and make sure I keep monopolies in as many as I can (6 merchants in a COT is a monopoly and gives you a really nice boost of income) and the money just rolls in. In terms of sliders a lot of them affect trade, but anything that boosts trade efficiency is key, you're getting so much income that any increase in your multiplier (seen on the left side of where your money/tech sliders are) is huge.

If you want to be a military power, it's a bit trickier, as there are other factors to consider. You have to keep a good level of technology in land or naval, think about your morale levels, manpower pool, unit types, forcelimits, etc. These are scattered around the sliders but Land-Naval, Quality-Quantity, and Offensive-Defensive are primarily concerned with military affairs, though they can affect all kinds of things, from costs of building units to bonus stats for your leaders in various areas. I recommend trying out a strong military nation at some point and focusing only on that, it will give you a good idea of all the factors involve. Some of the military National Ideas are very strong!

Another tip I have is that when you're first learning, it can be more difficult to play in an earlier timeframe. It's harder to build up from nothing because it takes a long time and you don't really have a good idea where you're going. I suggest trying a practice game where you start later on, maybe 1650, you'll have pretty high levels of tech across the board and you'll have a lot more choices in terms of unit/ship types, governments, national idea combos, and especially province improvements. I think for learning the game you can't go too wrong in playing a big country like France, you're so strong that you can do a lot of things and it's a lot harder to make a disastrous mistake.

Related to my earlier tips, it's helpful to sort of mentally group the many variables in the game into what area they affect, be it Stability, Technology, Military Power, or Trade. It's not critical that you know all of them, but it's helpful to know that the general category of Stability includes things like Revolt Risk, Tolerance, Province Culture and Religion, etc. (Checking out the various factors that affect revolt risk in a province is pretty helpful, though revolts are much less of a problem, it seems, than they were in previous EU games.)

Anyway, this is rambling on, I'd be glad to answer any specific questions anyone has, as a veteran of the series.

dola - Another bit of advice is to make sure to read through the ledger frequently, there's tons of useful info in here, I really like to read through the breakdowns of income and expenses on pages 14-15, page 7 is also good, I'm sure you'll find the ones that are useful to you.

Thanks for the pointers. I chatted with Barkeep some on AIM this morning about it too. I'm just trying to take it slowly and figure everything out. The reason I say I "think" this is the game I wanted is as someone who has purchased a few different MTW and Crusader Kings, I always felt they were lacking something.

So far I dont have a complaint about this game lacking stuff as there is so much I haven't figured out yet.

So being that this game has so much depth to it and I've never played any of the other games in the series, how would it compare to picking up Civ IV, for example, and playing that series for the first time?

Do most of these games have the same learning curve or are others easier to get into?

So being that this game has so much depth to it and I've never played any of the other games in the series, how would it compare to picking up Civ IV, for example, and playing that series for the first time?

Do most of these games have the same learning curve or are others easier to get into?

I can't really speak for EU3 as I haven't put enough time in it to get past the curve (there is alot to learn) but Civ IV is pretty easy to learn I thought. Not easy to be great at but after a run through the tutorial you have the basics down and youre ready to go.

I would say the EU series is definitely tougher to learn than Civ, the basics of Civ gameplay are easy to pick up, but then you have to learn the tech tree, etc. With EU it's harder for new players to understand the basics, though once they pick them up they do fine. Also since the EU games are so open-ended and are basically set up to let you do what you want with your nation, that can be tricky for people who are used to different games.

I think one of the hardest things to grasp about the whole Paradox lineup is that there isn't really a way to win. The player sets their own goals and either lives up to them or not. You can quite literally chose any country and attempt to do almost anything. The only measurement of winning is your own assessment.

so any thoughts on the game after playing it for a while? Paradox has been successful in parting me from my money but I ahve yet to fall in love with any of their games. Will this be any different? How the AI?

Well I'm only about 10 hours into the game. Haven't really seen how the AI is yet (I traditionally play England for my first game before going for a more continental power), but I will tell you the user interface is a TERRIFIC upgrade. A lot of the other stuff is fine, I mean the 3D graphics are whatever for me, and the national ideas is cool, but so far the UI is what's really captured my attention. I also think the fact that countries are less shoehorned into their traditional roles is nice.

Alan T and I did some multiplayer tonight. It was a trying experience, quite buggy, but it was fun. We played 30 years and Alan was at war I think 29.5 of them :)

My soon to be wife and I are playing multiplayer right now. Co-op. Fun, but there are a number of bugs. I'm hoping the second patch will fix them. I also hope they add locking features for allocation of tech.

What do you mean by locking features? Do you mean something specific to multiplayer or just in general? I haven't tried multiplayer but normally you just double click any slider to lock it in place.

What do you mean by locking features? Do you mean something specific to multiplayer or just in general? I haven't tried multiplayer but normally you just double click any slider to lock it in place.


I'd like the ability to set my individual techs, like Government to .4 and lock that allocation in. So if I make adjustments to other tech areas, Government stays at .4

This would apply to single or multi player.

It is a real hassle adjusting tech right now.

Right, that's what the double clicking does, the slider will turn white and will lock at its current level. It's a lot easier than some of the earlier, more annoying slider locks in the series.

Right, that's what the double clicking does, the slider will turn white and will lock at its current level. It's a lot easier than some of the earlier, more annoying slider locks in the series.

Man...my fiance is throwing some serious love your way right now. :)

She is in charge of allocation and her job is a lot easier. :)

Thanks!!!!!

I'm getting close to winning my first game of Medieval War 2 and shelving that until the Total Realism Mod has advanced some.


So, I'm debating on getting this game. I've never really gotten into previous versions that well (although I enjoy Crusader Kings quite a bit.) From what I'm reading, there are considerable bugs in MP still. Are there still a high number of bugs in the SP game?

I've always found double clicking sometimes moves the slider. I prefer to left click to lock in place.

I've always found double clicking sometimes moves the slider. I prefer to left click to lock in place.

Hmm I think I right click them to make them go white.. I usually do that for treasury right away always. Usually end up doing it for stability too.


Like Barkeep said, playing multiplayer was alot of fun. I was England and Barkeep was Portugal. I ended up getting involved in a pretty lengthy war to start off with France + Scotland + Brittany + a bunch of smaller irish provinces. I ended up dragging it way too long though much to Scotland's dismay.

I finally ended the war owning most of Scotland and was ready to try to get rid of the war fatigue when Austria decided to come after one of my provinces in mainland Europe. I conceded it not really wanting to be in a war with that crazy powerhouse.


Right when I got peace there though, a 1 province Scotland with France declared war on me once again. Meanwhile during all of this I am pretty sure Barkeep has colonized all of South America :)

What the heck?

Error: Pixel Shader 2.0 is required to run this program

This glorified text sim needs a better graphics card than Rome: Total War? GD, I love their games, but Paradox always finds a way to screw me in the backside.

Error: Pixel Shader 2.0 is required to run this program

Exact same thing happened to me (with the demo). I have an ATI 9000, 128 mb. It's old, but still a fine graphic card for my use. Is there any workaround to this?

Exact same thing happened to me (with the demo). I have an ATI 9000, 128 mb. It's old, but still a fine graphic card for my use. Is there any workaround to this?

Actually that's the same exact card I have. I don't play a lot of high tech graphics games, so I don't need a great card. I was just surprised that, graphics wise, EU needed more pep than the Total War games.

I don't play a lot of high tech graphics games, so I don't need a great card.

Yeah, me neither. I was interested to try this game, but right now I'm not upgrading my card just for this, as I've never even played this series, so I don't know if I like it or not.

I know it's a point of controversy on the board, but haven't paid attention to this. I do know there is no work around at the moment.

There isn't anything you can do unfortunatly. My work laptop has an integrated Intel video card which doesn't support Pixelshader at all. So I have problems with several of the newer games out there that have been released lately.

Not sure why, but looks like Pixelshader is something alot of games are starting to do this year and I keep running into this problem. You'll have to ask someone more familiar with game programming why people choose to use it. If you have a desktop computer, you can get a cheap $50-60 card that supports pixelshader. If you have a laptop like me you are out of luck. I can only play this on my desktop computer at home.

Is anybody using a computer with the min. requirements to play this game? Mine falls in that catagory, and need to know if I need an upgrade.

Thanks all!

After playing from the earliest starting date to 1500 I recommend starting at 1492. A lot of bugginess went away when 1492 rolled around.

I'm having a lot of fun with this game although I'm sure I'm not playing very well. One great new feature is the roll of leaders that shows you what provinces were gained and lost under each ruler. I wish Crusader Kings had that.

I might do a mini AAR on the dynasty forum if I can figure out how to take screenshots

I might do a mini AAR on the dynasty forum if I can figure out how to take screenshots

Good old Print Screen always works for me.

Is anybody using a computer with the min. requirements to play this game? Mine falls in that catagory, and need to know if I need an upgrade.

Thanks all!

My fiance's computer is min. I turned down all the graphics to the lowest and turned off music. She had crashes with the graphics turned up to medium. Once we made the change to the lowest setting and no music, no more crashes.

Man, my flatmate bought this game and I booted it up last nite for a couple of hours. I can honestly say I had no idea what I was doing for either of those hours.

I picked Japan, spent a few months clicking on things and adjusting sliders that had no determinable meaning to me. Then in year 2 one of my provinces rebelled. I tried to send troops to put down the rebellion, but I'm really not sure if they attacked or just moved in to the province, drank lemonade, and cheered on the rioters.

While this was all going on I set my sights towards foreign affairs, deciding to annex the Ryukyu islands and enslave their peace loving people. I brought a ship to the province my army was in, tried to send them aboard the ship, but our men had not yet mastered the skills of "ship boarding" and could only stare at our 15th century ships and scratch their heads.

More years passed, another province rebelled, and I became further convinced that I really should have tried playing the tutorials before clicking "New Game" on the main menu.

Groundhog, I recommend focusing on a few things first, like if you want to attack some nearby nations, focus on land or naval tech and try to improve the morale of your forces (the vertical green bar in the upper left corner when you select an army or fleet) through the domestic policy sliders, the good ones are Land/Naval, Quality/Quantity, etc. You can hold the mouse over all of the options there and it will show you exactly what the change does.

In terms of boats, you need to make sure you have enough transport ships for your army, one for each regiment. At the bottom of a navy it will say "Room for X regiments" and if you don't have enough, your guys can't board the ships.

Provinces may rebel if your stability is very low ( the -3 to +3 number shown on the upper left bar, very important to a lot of things) or if there are religious or other issues, like you just conquered them. When you click on the province it will show the revolt risk, if they revolt just send some troops in and they will either take it back over immediately (if there's no fort) or beseige the fort in the province (you can click on the army to see how it's going.) In any case, once you're back in control your flag will appear on the province instead of the rebel flag.

My fiance's computer is min. I turned down all the graphics to the lowest and turned off music. She had crashes with the graphics turned up to medium. Once we made the change to the lowest setting and no music, no more crashes.

Cool. I don't need the music, or the graphics.

I'm assuming one can start with any group, including one of the many Native American peoples. . . I enjoy doing that.

Cool. I don't need the music, or the graphics.

I'm assuming one can start with any group, including one of the many Native American peoples. . . I enjoy doing that.

You can start with the native americans, but the game has a heavy european slant to it. The way they try to model after history is by giving penalties to other parts of the world such as the native americans. Chances are you never will catch up to a Spain or Italy in research.

-------------------------

So last night, I had a few extra spare hours for once to play some. So I decided to start up as Mecklenberg. Things were going great for me at the start, one of the top income countries, and had pretty decent relationships with everyone around me. My first King was elected Holy Roman Empire and lived for another good 20 years at least. My second king was also chosen to be the HRE.

As will happen in early Germany, countries started eating up other countries, and soon I found my little alliance of Mecklenberg, Brandenberg and Hamburg to be drawn into a war with Lithuania, Bavaria and Sweden.

My armies wern't the best in the world, but we had a pretty decent defense set up.. We went on a good 25 years of war, holding them off. In the end though, both Lithuania and Sweden were just too strong and my poor country got annexed.

The timing was ok though since it was bed time for me :) In hindsight I should have cut loose Brandenburg (my vassel at the time) when they were attacked. I had held off Poland for many years previous, so figured I could do the same here. Maybe next time :)


-----------------------------

This got me thinking, such ashame my schedule is often hectic and unflexible.. I think it would be alot of fun to have some 2-3 hour a week night setup where we could do a FOFC game together.

I'd be in for that

First lesson learned. If you are a small nation, find yourself a "big brother" to ally with and that's it. Do not get into an alliance with several small nations. One of those small nations will drag you into a war you can't win. I just got ran over by Burgundy. I was Bavaria, allied with a few of the small nations around me, they say "Help us fight The Palatinate" and I'm all "Hell yeah, more land." What's that? Burgundy is in the war too? ....Shit.

I feel your pain :)

Second attempt went better as Bavaria. Allied with Austria and no one else at first. I went after some surrounding provinces and ended up doubling the size of my kingdom by getting Salzburg and Wurttemberg. Things were going good. I was even elected leader of the Holy Roman Empire. Sweet.

Wait, what the hell is that 6.6 on my treasurey screen? Inlfation? Well, that must not be too bad. Let me check the ledger and see what my neig.....damn....All I see is my line going up and up and up and everyone else's stay flatline.

So yeah, second lesson learned. Keep inlfation in check. It doesn't look like a lot, but that extra 6% in cost for everything adds up quickly.


So Bohemia becomes a power and ends up controled by another power, Hungary. Austria gets in a fight with them, and I come to the aid of Austria. I take over a few of Bohemia's provinces, but then Austria chickens out once Hungary starts taking some of their provinces and signs a peace treaty.

By now, Austria is broekn up into 3 seperated parts, all connected to me. A few years later, they come calling back to me and this time I tell them No. The Alliance is broken and I cut off their military access as well.

Time to take over Austria. I build up an army, declare war....and my troops get slaughtered (well, not slaughtered, but I win one battle and lose several), even though I outnumber them 2:1. I check their Diplomatic screen and see "Land:3" and go "That's why. Duh Sab." My Land is still at 1. IOW, their military technology was much better than mine. Luckily for me, Bohemia and Hungary saw this as a perfect time to invade as well. Austria gets crushed by them while I get to keep hold of my land.

So ends the saga of Austria. And Bavaria. By now my inflation has gotten up to over 9, I have little money left, my technology is lagging behind the super powers around me, and I'm pretty much out of allies.

And so far I am loving this game.

Yeah Sabotai, you learned the lesson of inflation, it's lethal to a country. There are some things that can knock it down but they come in much later in the game at high government tech levels. Basically keep as tight a lid on it as possible, if you are a smaller nation and not rolling in cash, I recommend trying to basically live on your yearly money alone and running around 0 monthly, the less money you take for yourself monthly (bottom slider) the better.

Also, Austria knocked out? Wow! They are usually pretty dominant in my games, they are a strong nation.

Yeah, I learned the hard way that you just don't want to mess with inflation as a smaller country. If you are already having problems keeping up with the research of larger countries, inflation will only cause you to slow down further. THe first things I do as a smaller country when I start is push the treasury bar and stability bars all the way left to 0.0 then I right click both so they freeze and won't move dynamically. (I can later move the stability bar if I am having issue with -Stab hits on events).

Its funny about Austria, any time I have played in Italy, Austria has always been an issue. THe times I played as a german state, Austria seems non-existant. I always end up having more problems with Poland and Lithuania.

One thing you can do to combat the low land research compared to others is build up your land tradition earlier on with smaller battles against other near by countries before the big Austria or Lithuania juggernauts get rolling. Once your land tradition is pretty high, spend the money on a good general and get one with pretty decent shock rating.

Once you have your general, you can cool down the wars for a bit and try to repair peace among the nearby countries that you had chosen to war with. Having a strong general with your troops seem to help counter the better trained troops from other countries at times.

They way to play EU2's grand campaign was to set the monthly money slider all the way to the left and invest in trade and infrastructure early. It's rough going early on, but you end up in a much much stronger position a couple hundred years down the line.

That works when you are any of the big countries, I don't know about the smaller ones.

Alan and I had some fun last night playing as Saxony (me) and Brandenberg (him) starting later on (I forgot what year we ended up starting). We both gobbled up a bunch of the smaller countries, but became effectively boxed in by the giant Poland, who had much of Scandanavia and Austria. I had just launched a war against Austria, after nearly a decade of preparation, and it was anyone's guess about who was going to win when the game crashed. By this time it was very late and so we are currently in limbo about what's going to happen in what was looking like it could be a great victory or an AWFUL disaster.

This game is HARD.

Alan and I had some fun last night playing as Saxony (me) and Brandenberg (him) starting later on (I forgot what year we ended up starting). We both gobbled up a bunch of the smaller countries, but became effectively boxed in by the giant Poland, who had much of Scandanavia and Austria. I had just launched a war against Austria, after nearly a decade of preparation, and it was anyone's guess about who was going to win when the game crashed. By this time it was very late and so we are currently in limbo about what's going to happen in what was looking like it could be a great victory or an AWFUL disaster.

1579 was when we started this time.

I had alot more fun this game than the previous one we did. I think having a bit more clue how some things worked help. Short version: With Poland to the East/Northeast, Austria to the South/Southeast and Spain/France to the Southwest. We were limited in our early options.

Barkeep pushed West through some of the smaller provinces and through the netherlands to the sea. I pushed out at the coast along Pommerania, Mecklenburg, and the northern part of the Netherlands. Right when I was making the Netherlands a vassel through war, Denmark declared war on me and I ended up making them a vassel. (I had no desire for any of their territories other than one that they vultured earlier before I could finish taking it. (Hamburg)

When we went to war with Austria, I went in with 34k Calvary, about 4k artillery and about 30k Infantry. I have no idea what Barkeep had in the way of troops or what he faced. He was pushing to their capital through Bolivia, needing to take 2 or 3 provinces in the core of their giant country. I mainly was trying to be a diversion and keep Austria's eastern forces away from the bulk of the fight around the capital.

I don't have any idea how many troops Barkeep went up against, but I know I faced about 30k troops between Austria, their ally and their nearby vassel right at the start. By the time I pushed to Austria's capital, I had a decent seige going on in two provinces, but Austria had more and more troops rolling in, and my calvary was down to only about 18-19k.

I honestly have no idea how long I would hold out there so I hope Barkeep pushes through soon, or I would be toast. :) That is about where his game crashed leaving the suspense for another time.

This game is HARD.

I wouldn't necessarily say its "hard" as much as complex. There is alot more going on in it than in a traditional Civilization type game. I would argue that playing Civ 4 on the hardest levels might be just as difficult, but its a different type of game.

I think alot of times who you pick determines how difficult your challenge is in this game, and there really is no "winning", its just deciding what your goals for that game are and trying to achieve them.

Held out as long as I could, downloading this now.

Held out as long as I could, downloading this now.

It's for sale via download? I would have bought this as an impulse buy a few times if I knew that.

They sell it online at gamersgate.com I believe.. I bought mine in the store though.

They sell it online at gamersgate.com I believe.. I bought mine in the store though.

Yep.

Here is a cool mod I found on the EU 3 forum that adds alot of country specific titles and governments names:


Description:
I've heard some "complaints" about lacking titles, all from german dukes to japanese shoguns. I'm sure there are plenty of modders out there who've solved this problem all for themselves, now is the chance to make it public.

First off, this mini-mod will mainly focus on the file common/governments.txt, since it's the government of the nation that decides the title. The mod is a mini-mod and also meant to be included in other mods since it's more or less just additional flavour if used alone. Adding titles will result in text.csv changes, either by replacing or extending the file. Changing the actual title of the countries will require a quick edit in the files found in history/countries/

Some government examples and ideas:
muslim_monarchy with title Sultan, should be pretty similar to either
feudal_monarchy or despotic_monarchy
caliphate with title Caliph, very similar to papacy and theocracy
khanate with title Khan, similar to tribal_despotism
hanseatic_republic with title Stadtholder, a "hanseatic" copy of
administrative_republic (which should be adapted to other states, perhaps Switzerland, not a republic but is it similar?)
feudal_duchy with title Duke (or Prince to include Russian principalities, otherwise the russians should get their own government), similar to feudal_monarchy
religious_order with title Grand Master, maybe a copy of theocracy
feudal_republic with title Knyaz or Posadnik (help me here), meant to include Novgorod and Pskov, typical feudal republics, similar to administrative_republic
electorate with title Elector, this might not be needed, depends on if it was considered a main title or secondary title, maybe similar to administrative_monarchy
shogunate with title Shogun, maybe similar to feudal_monarchy
empire (better name?) with title Emperor, maybe similar to administrative_monarchy, there should be a tribal_empire for Aztec and Inca as well

Then there's a question on details, should there be different governments for Dukes, Archdukes and Grand dukes? Differences between bishops and archbishops or princes and grand princes?
I considered using latin titles for early european governments (Rex, Dux) but I think I've droped that idea by now.
Lastly I thought about local names (like present Stadtholder or Doge) for the titles (which would require local versions of governments) such as:
Emperors: Tsar/Czar (Russia), Sapa (Inca), Tlatoani (Aztec), Huangdi (China), probably something for Japan and I'm sure there's an appropriate name for By...! Trebizond emperors.
Also, an Iroquis federation could use the title Tadadaho if I'm not mistaken.

Surely I've also missed a whole bunch of important titles.

hxxp://mu.nogo.se/eu3/atage/ATAGE_2006_02_11.rar

Grr. I had to go in and make a bunch of mods to Scandanavia to make Denmark playable. Apparently they just are miserable at the onset, and Sweden mauls them basically every time.

Im kinda lost on how to load mods...? Any quick guides?

Grr. I had to go in and make a bunch of mods to Scandanavia to make Denmark playable. Apparently they just are miserable at the onset, and Sweden mauls them basically every time.


If you start at a later date, they are fairly decent and control most of scandanavia. Never quite the same as some of the other european powers though, but fully capable of handling sweden.

*sigh*

I'm so damn weak.

In Target and I saw the EU3 Collectors' edition.

I wavered and caved in a moment of weakness.

EU3 CE is now mine.

I -really- hope this turns out to be much more palatable to a CKer than EU1 and 2 were.

do they have a list of the cards taht support shading 2.0 or whatever it is?

do they have a list of the cards taht support shading 2.0 or whatever it is?

There are a few lists out as pixelshader 2.0 is a more common thing for newer games as requirements go. You basically are ok if you use most newer ati or nvidia graphics cards. If you use an imbedded graphics card (such as various intel cards) you are out of luck.


This page probably is a decent start:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_computer_games_that_require_Pixel_Shader

You'll all be happy to know. The 2nd War of Danish Aggression succeeded in wresting full control of what was once Sweden from the evil hands of Novgorod. The grand and glorious Danish Empire, along with their loyal Norweigan vassals, controls Scandanavia.

Edit: Although the Grand and Glorious Danish Empire can't hold onto trade routes for shit.

You'll all be happy to know. The 2nd War of Danish Aggression succeeded in wresting full control of what was once Sweden from the evil hands of Novgorod. The grand and glorious Danish Empire, along with their loyal Norweigan vassals, controls Scandanavia.

Edit: Although the Grand and Glorious Danish Empire can't hold onto trade routes for shit.

I find trade routes nearly impossible to hold on to unless I focus my entire game around them. If i have a game where I am doing a bit of other things and not sinking all my resources into trade, they usually end up getting competed away for me alot. (This varies depending on who I am playing as however)

I've noticed the same. The aforementioned war with Novogorad, I declared war with 4 merchants in 2 centers of the trade, and 2 more merchants in 1 other.

The war ended and I had 3 merchants left in ONE center of trade, and that's it. Two months after the war, those 3 were eaten as well. Couldn't believe it.

Noticed the same as well. I was playing as Castille and was in a war with Morocco and Algiers for several years. Had 4 merchants in 2 CoTs (4 in each). When the war was over, they were all gone.

dola,

Also, the "Sell Province" is bugged. Or appears so. I offered to sell a province to Portugal (just to test it out) and after I made the offer, the game thought I was offering War Subsidies and my economy got wrecked. (I did it a second time to make sure I didn't accidently pick War Subsidies and it did the same thing.)

I've found that the slightest amount of badboy kills your trade unless your tech is beyond the rest of the world. If I have any badboy I just give up on sending merchants until it's back to zero.

Another bug that I found was the inability to gain a nation's discoveries after you annex them. I annexed Portugal(too easy to do diplomatically btw) and I couldn't see a few of my new colonies because I hadn't discovered those lands yet.

http://www.europa-universalis.com/forum/showthread.php?t=233095

Here is a pretty good start info and lists every graphics card that is supported

I've found that the slightest amount of badboy kills your trade unless your tech is beyond the rest of the world. If I have any badboy I just give up on sending merchants until it's back to zero.

Another bug that I found was the inability to gain a nation's discoveries after you annex them. I annexed Portugal(too easy to do diplomatically btw) and I couldn't see a few of my new colonies because I hadn't discovered those lands yet.
I agree that this is a definite minus.

I've found that the slightest amount of badboy kills your trade unless your tech is beyond the rest of the world. If I have any badboy I just give up on sending merchants until it's back to zero..

Looking in the various textfiles, that is indeed the case. 1% chance to compete penatly per point of badboy. That'd do it.

http://www.europa-universalis.com/forum/showthread.php?t=233095

Here is a pretty good start info and lists every graphics card that is supported

One hurdle overcome:

GeForce 7600 GT Mar-06 PCIe x16, AGP 8x 256


now...how are those patches coming along? :D

So Barkeep and I continued a little over the weekend in our joint game (I am Brandenburg and he is Saxony). We left off the previous time after Saxony and Brandenburg having declared war on the juggernaut that is Austria. Brandenburg had pushed all the way to the Austrian capital in Wien fairly quickly, but was suddenly facing amazing numbers of Austrians who pushed us back hard. Saxony did not faire much better in the west and the tide of battle turned quickly in Austria's favor. Saxony (the senior partner in the war) settled for peace by giving up some land in return to end things. Brandenburg had gained one province in the war (annexing one of Austria's vassals), however the war was pretty much a failure.

Saxony went to work on a new strategy involving colonization of the new world while Brandenburg tried to recover from the high manpower loss and high war fatigue. It was probably about a good 10-15 years before Brandenburg was rolling full steam again in good condition with their stability recovered fully.

After several years over in the new world, Saxony started going to war with alot of the native tribes there, gaining a decent amount of land while Brandenburg decided to revisit an older nemesis that currently was unallied (Scotland). The war was pretty fast and painless, and Scotland agreed to be another vassal of Brandenburg.

Not even a year after the war with Scotland was over however, Austria decided to take this chance to strike again and catch us offguard. This time, the matchup was even scarier as Austria (the #4 rank country) was now allied with Spain (by far and away the #1 rank country in thr world). Spain had provinces around the world, made roughly 3 times more money in income than the second highest country, and had holdings nearby just south of our vassal Holland.

Brandenburg and Saxony agreed that Saxony couldn't last as a buffer zone this time in the war, so Saxony chose not to enter the war. As Scotland was too new of a vassal, the relations there were not set up for them to ally us in the war either. This war would be Brandenburg, Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands vs Spain and Austria. The strategy this time however was different. Instead of suffering horrible attrition trying to push through to Austria's capital, we wanted the war on our terms.

With Denmark and the Netherlands helping vs Spain in the West, I focused mainly on the east side and Austria. Much slower this time we pushed through one province at a time, finally reaching the capital again. This is when Austria pulled out all of the stops and threw another 50-60k men at me. I had to fall back but held strong the rest of the ground I had taken for the most part (only losing Bohemia back to them which I had captured previously). Finally after a stalemate, we agreed to terms with another white peace, Austria giving up their claims on two of my provinces. A minor victory for me.

I then turned my attention fully to spain, and proceeded to march through their small grouping of northern provinces one by one, easily overpowering their smaller forces in the netherlands. When it looked like I would be able to settle the terms with Spain on my terms, a new curveball was thrown into the mix. Suddenly Spain and Austria declared war on Saxony, causing me to have to return troops back to the east and focusing on Austria before they had any real decent time to mend.

After another decent push into Austria, they gave favorable terms to Saxony to settle that side of the war, leaving things now just between Saxony/Brandenburg and Spain. Things here were a bit rougher as I had made pretty decent ground on Spain in the Netherlands (capturing and retaining hold on their provinces there easily), as well as pushing into Spain's holdings in Northern Italy (thanks to France having granted me military access previously), however Spain was doing a number on Saxony's holdings in the new world.

As wars go, this one was also ended with mixed success. Brandenburg gained a few provinces in the netherlands, however did not get Spain to agree to handing over the lucrative COT there. Saxony settled I believe by handing over some land in the new world, however things were finally over and we could return to lick our wounds again.

We ended the gameplay about here somewhere to pick it up again another day. There is no telling how long the peace will last with Spain and Austria, however next time its most likely going to need to be a war on our terms where I bring my allies into it rather than just coming to Saxony's aide. Also there is no telling what the future holds for other world powers such as France, Poland, the Ottaman Empire and Russia who are also nearby but fairly quiet.

This is screaming for a dynasty AlanT. :D

This is screaming for a dynasty AlanT. :D

I've thought about doing a dynasty, but probably not of this one. In multiplayer its too much of a pain to keep pausing stuff for screenshots. :) I've thought about doing one in a single player game I've had going, but i just don't get much time to play at home right now. Maybe at some point in the future I will. :)

OK, is there any reason why I can never seem to send more than 2 settlers to a province before the natives revolt and kill them all? Do I need to wait longer before sending my settlers? I'm sending about 1 per year.

Also, why can't I board ships? I have a group of ships and when I select them it says they can hold 1 regiment. I then select an army that consists of just 1 regiment, then try and right-click on the ship to board it, but it does nothing???

*sigh*

I'm so damn weak.

In Target and I saw the EU3 Collectors' edition.

I wavered and caved in a moment of weakness.

EU3 CE is now mine.

I did exactly the same thing.

My PC is such a mess, though, that I told myself that I'm not going to install EU3 until I fix/replace the CPU fan (done), get a new graphics card (ordered today), and reformat the computer (procrastinating).

OK, is there any reason why I can never seem to send more than 2 settlers to a province before the natives revolt and kill them all? Do I need to wait longer before sending my settlers? I'm sending about 1 per year.

Often times the natives can be fairly restless, and your colonies have no defenses at all. If you are looking for a better way to try to protect your colonies, before you colonize an area, send over a regiment or few regiments to the territory first. They will guard the colony vs any uprisings. Just make sure to have enough men to fight off the number of natives there. You can see how many natives are in each area by clicking on the province itself.

Your other option is to simply pick areas that have less hostile natives. Thats not as foolproof however I find.

Also, why can't I board ships? I have a group of ships and when I select them it says they can hold 1 regiment. I then select an army that consists of just 1 regiment, then try and right-click on the ship to board it, but it does nothing???

I had a problem with that too. Try to click on the water of that area instead of the actual ship and see if that helps any. As long as its your ship, your troops and you have enough room to carry the regiment, it should let you.

Often times the natives can be fairly restless, and your colonies have no defenses at all. If you are looking for a better way to try to protect your colonies, before you colonize an area, send over a regiment or few regiments to the territory first. They will guard the colony vs any uprisings. Just make sure to have enough men to fight off the number of natives there. You can see how many natives are in each area by clicking on the province itself.

I send troops over and kill all of the natives before I colonize. I'm a genocidal prick. :)

I had a problem with that too. Try to click on the water of that area instead of the actual ship and see if that helps any. As long as its your ship, your troops and you have enough room to carry the regiment, it should let you.

Cheers, worked a treat! Seems like a bizarre design decision to me...

One more question: After you merge several regiments in to an army, is there a way to unmerge them?

I send troops over and kill all of the natives before I colonize. I'm a genocidal prick. :)

Since discovering I could do this 5 minutes ago, this has also become my main method of keeping those pesky natives away from my settlers... ;)

Cheers, worked a treat! Seems like a bizarre design decision to me...

One more question: After you merge several regiments in to an army, is there a way to unmerge them?

When you have the army selected, you should see a button that looks like two arrows pointing away from each other (or towards each other...I can't remember after the top of my head). It's on the little info box that pops up on the left when you select an army.

When you have the army selected, you should see a button that looks like two arrows pointing away from each other (or towards each other...I can't remember after the top of my head). It's on the little info box that pops up on the left when you select an army.

Off the top of my head, I think its two arrows, one on top of the other. One pointing left, one pointing right... I might be wrong though.. but yeah, basically what he says. :)

(I believe the two arrows pointing towards each other actually merges them if I remember right)

Off the top of my head, I think its two arrows, one on top of the other. One pointing left, one pointing right... I might be wrong though.. but yeah, basically what he says. :)

(I believe the two arrows pointing towards each other actually merges them if I remember right)

The natives will almost always rise up if you just leave it as it is. In America, most of them won't rise upp to often, but once you get to 1000 people andmake it into a sicyt, they are gone. If you want to colonize Africa, it's impossible to build the colony fast enough before the natives destroy the settlement

It's important to emphasize that is you can avoid killing the natives they really help your colonies once they become cities.

Since discovering I could do this 5 minutes ago, this has also become my main method of keeping those pesky natives away from my settlers... ;)

You'll want to watch which natives your are killing mate. If for example province A has, say, 2000 Natives with a low aggression (4 or lower, for example) then they won't likely cause too many problems and will be a HUGE boost when you become a full grown city.

Now Prov B has 200 natives with 9 aggression, then certainly it'd be wise to kill them before starting your colony. It'll increase your chances to establish the colony, in addition to keeping them from causing problems later...and your pop growth is also affected by native aggression.

You'll want to watch which natives your are killing mate. If for example province A has, say, 2000 Natives with a low aggression (4 or lower, for example) then they won't likely cause too many problems and will be a HUGE boost when you become a full grown city.

Pffft, I don't want those inferior savages contaminating my pure citizens. They all must die. :D

Just got done playing a marathon session. I played as Portugal and became THE colonial power. I took the New World idea as soon as I could. The only other nation who also had it as their Idea was Castille. So it was a race.

I won it easily. I didn't get into an alliance with anyone so I didn't get dragged into any wars. I left everyone alone so no one had a reason to attack me. Castille, on the other hand, I don't think they ever were not in a war.

I started colonizing any area I found to have non-aggressive natives. I built up the three provinces on Cuba and used that as my base. I first attacked the indians in North America. They were easy. Only took an army of 10,000 to take out the Creek, Shawnee and Cherokee.

Then I built up a massive army (30,000) to take on the Maya, Zapotec and Aztec (they were all allied). I waited to get my second National Idea, the one that lets me attacked nations of different religions without a Casus Belli. I attacked from the south with 20,000 and then, after a few month, sent the rest of my forces from the north when I noticed a large Aztec army in Zapotec territory. It was a hell of a fight. I ran over the Mayans and the southern part of the Zapotec, but it was a dogfight from then on. After 2 years of fighting, I finally took over all of Zapotec and annexed them. (I wanted to annex all three, and I declared war on Maya so I had to save them for last.) This not only got rid of the Zapotec forces, but the Aztecs had fewer places to run. 3 years later, all of Aztec and Mayan terriroty were mine.

I moved on the Incas, but only sent 20,000 troops. I figured it was just one so it wouldn't be as hard as the last fight. Wrong. I did the same strat, 15,000 from the north, and I dropped 5,000 off at the southern end. I quickly took a bunch of territories (since none of them have forts), but then they stopped me on both ends. I ran out of manpower and took a peace deal that gave me several provinces. I waited for the truce to end and went back to work, this time with 30,000 troops.

One epic battle took place in Lima as we both continuously sent in reinforments. At one point, we both had over 20,000 troops fighting. We broke them after a very long fight. We lost just under 5,000 troops and they just cleared 10,000 casualties. After that, they were broken for good.

Castille, in the meantime, had been colonizing the northern part of South America and the northern part of North America. New England speaks spanish in this game's future. And everyone else speaks Portugese. :D

After I had finished military conquests in the New World, I turned my attention to Europe. I had MAD MONEY. My income completely dwarfed the income of the second highest income (about 3 times as much as the Ming, who start the game WAY ahead of everyone else for income, I think). So I should be able to roll over my enemies, right? Wrong. My tech was still a bit behind every one else right now (being as I paid a fortune to colonize a bunch of territories.).

And the biggest problem of all. Manpower. I had just over 20,000 in Manpower by 1580 or so. Not enough to wage war with nations, that by now, have grown very large. To give an idea, there were only 5 nations left in the Holy Roman Empire. The Ottomans were insane. The Mamlucks had also grown to twice their original size.

So, while I could buy and sell everyone, I could not match their man power (I still decided to kick Algiers ass, though. :D). And I gave invading the Mamlucks a try too, but they bitch slapped. I just could not reinforce my troops fast enough, and before I knew it, my manpower was almost gone.

It's always something.... :)

Sabotai, the times I played as Portugal I have enjoyed it. I always tried with the same idea, but I have a few questions. Usually as portugal for me it doesn't take long for Castille and/or Morocco to come trying to take over portugal. I find that I usually have to spend part of the early years making sure to build some form of defense up to make them think twice about that. Did you ever have them threaten, or did everyone simply just leave you alone?

Also when you colonized stuff, did you just take everything that was free or did you try to target the wealthy provinces. I usually end up leaving all of the grain provinces for others and try to snatch up the fur, sugar, coffee, tobacco and gold provinces :) But I usually also have alot more people trying to colonize than just one other country! I think my last game as Castille, I managed to get all of south america for the most part, but England, Portugal, France and Austria all had colonies too that were pretty well developed by 1530.

Did you ever have them threaten, or did everyone simply just leave you alone?

For the most part, everyone left me alone. Castille looked like they really destroyed Morocco and I' m pretty sure Castile had a lot of off and on wars with Aragon. I did have a pretty scary moment, though. I had not even looked at main land Portugal for a good 50 years while I centered on my New World conquests. I see Castille has 5,000 troops in every single province that bordered mine.

I don't know if they were planning invasion, or just protecting themselves from me, but I signed an alliance with them right away to be safe.

Also when you colonized stuff, did you just take everything that was free or did you try to target the wealthy provinces. I usually end up leaving all of the grain provinces for others and try to snatch up the fur, sugar, coffee, tobacco and gold provinces :) But I usually also have alot more people trying to colonize than just one other country! I think my last game as Castille, I managed to get all of south america for the most part, but England, Portugal, France and Austria all had colonies too that were pretty well developed by 1530.

I did target the wealthy ones, but also the ones that "completed" my territory. For instance, I wanted to colonize entire islands. And after my conquest of the Incas and the Central American nations, I colonized all of the territory that connected them. Next on the list was to connect my North American territory with my Central American, but it was about 2:30am and I had been playing for 12 hours straight, so I thought I should give it a rest. :D

As for other countries, they started popping up just after 1500. France got a part of South America as did Mecklenburg (both the Brazil area). Burgundy got a province on the northern part of South America. Great Britan had a few on North America. In fact, when I had stopped playing last night, they were really spreading quickly. They had most of the territory from the South Carlonia are to Maryland and over to Ohio. Venice was colonizing Newfoundland. Austria had a few islands, but I didn't see them there for long (must have been attacked by natives).

War was very rampent in my game (moreso than usual) so I don't think the rest of Europe had much money to devote to colonization. I think that was why they did leave me alone and that I was free to colonize at will.

Pirates were a huge pain in the ass. But, I grew to love them because 1) Free ships and 2) My Navel Tradition got REALLY high. The Admirals I was recruiting were gods.

Finally got around to picking this up at a local CompUSA that was closing! 10% off is still good enough for me, apparently.

I've almost picked this up the last few times that I've gone into a Gamespot mainly because of this thread, and you guys make this game sound so good. How many annoying bugs remain at this point?

I've almost picked this up the last few times that I've gone into a Gamespot mainly because of this thread, and you guys make this game sound so good. How many annoying bugs remain at this point?
Honestly, I'm sure there are bugs there but besides the one about the unification of Italy, the only time I've been annoyed with the game is when playing MP. I have had a virtually bug free SP experience.

Honestly, I'm sure there are bugs there but besides the one about the unification of Italy, the only time I've been annoyed with the game is when playing MP. I have had a virtually bug free SP experience.

Ditto. there is an annoying bug with war subsidies, and I get annoyed some at how the AI handles peace treaties, but for the most part I enjoy the game in Single player mode. I've gotten plenty of time to play it lately.

For the most part, everyone left me alone. Castille looked like they really destroyed Morocco and I' m pretty sure Castile had a lot of off and on wars with Aragon. I did have a pretty scary moment, though. I had not even looked at main land Portugal for a good 50 years while I centered on my New World conquests. I see Castille has 5,000 troops in every single province that bordered mine.

I don't know if they were planning invasion, or just protecting themselves from me, but I signed an alliance with them right away to be safe.

This was probably key for you. In almost every game I have ever seen, Castille and/or Monocco goes after Portugal unless they work out some Ally before hand. I have found by just building up a little extra troops on the border (similar to what Castille did to you) is enough sometimes to keep them at bay for a long time though.



I did target the wealthy ones, but also the ones that "completed" my territory. For instance, I wanted to colonize entire islands. And after my conquest of the Incas and the Central American nations, I colonized all of the territory that connected them. Next on the list was to connect my North American territory with my Central American, but it was about 2:30am and I had been playing for 12 hours straight, so I thought I should give it a rest. :D

As for other countries, they started popping up just after 1500. France got a part of South America as did Mecklenburg (both the Brazil area). Burgundy got a province on the northern part of South America. Great Britan had a few on North America. In fact, when I had stopped playing last night, they were really spreading quickly. They had most of the territory from the South Carlonia are to Maryland and over to Ohio. Venice was colonizing Newfoundland. Austria had a few islands, but I didn't see them there for long (must have been attacked by natives).

War was very rampent in my game (moreso than usual) so I don't think the rest of Europe had much money to devote to colonization. I think that was why they did leave me alone and that I was free to colonize at will.

Pirates were a huge pain in the ass. But, I grew to love them because 1) Free ships and 2) My Navel Tradition got REALLY high. The Admirals I was recruiting were gods.


Most of my games tend to have pretty rampant wars in them. My current SP game I am playing, I started as Castille, and currently am Spain, with Portugal, Tuscany, Morocco, Norway , The Papal State and Mecklenburg as vassals. France is still a power, as is Burgandy, Ottoman Empire and Austria pretty much has most of central Europe.. that is pretty common for most of the games I see if I don't participate in keeping the AI away. I know I usually get frustrated in games where I try to play a more economic game using someone like Milan or Mecklenburg. I can't ever keep the predators away without showing some method of defending myself.

Just got done playing a marathon session. I played as Portugal and became THE colonial power. I took the New World idea as soon as I could. The only other nation who also had it as their Idea was Castille. So it was a race.

...

Just wait until you start to feel the affects of all that gold, ;)

It WILL catch up to you sooner or later, unless you've done an especially brilliant job of managing your economy.

Just wait until you start to feel the affects of all that gold, ;)

It WILL catch up to you sooner or later, unless you've done an especially brilliant job of managing your economy.

I guess I did because it never caught up to me. I assuming you mean inflation, which I kept under control (with the help from a National Idea). It was high, around 11, but most of Europe was around 6 or so, and I was making so much money that it didn't really matter. Once I got the National Idea, I kept it at the .1 so my inflation flatlined. But the extra gold didn't really contribute to inflation since I had a lot of other income sources (I had control of 3 CoTs, and always had 5 merchants in them, and some in others, etc.). And taxes. Took in lots of taxes.

What DID catch up to me was a succession war the put my at war against Burgundy, Aragon and Castille (over Corsica....). I lost a few colonies to Castile in North America (and I burned some of their's to the ground, mwahaha). And I took one off Aragon. I was doing pretty good. I was killing Castille in Africa, except for Castille seizing some colonies, I was beating them and Burgundy badly in South America and the Carribean (which brings up the issue if expanding too fast is a good idea....I had a lot of unprotected areas and Castille took advantage of it).

And I was beating Aragon in the Mediterranean. Took a few of thier islands easily. I was in a war with Milan and took a few of their provinces off of them (they had taken over just about all of Italy).

The only problem I had was on the Iberian Peninsula. I had most of my troops in Africa (I had taken over all of Algiers and had a few provinces off The Mamlucks). I was preparing for a major war with The Mamlucks at the time. I made peace with Aragon ASAP (they gladly took a white peace) so I could move those troops over to mainland Portugal to defend against Castille who were starting to push my guys back into the sea.

Just as I moved 12,000 troops over to Portugal and started pushing Castille back out of my territory....I ran out of Manpower. :(

I made peace with Burgundy (and the entire alliance). I had to give up some, even though I had a good warscore, but I had to be sure they would accept since I would not survive another push from Castille.

I think I'm going to end this game and start fresh. I way, WAY overextended myself and it almost got me killed. Or I may just go back to an early save game and make sure I do things right (like not putting 30,000 troops in Africa and leaving Portugal defensless).

I started up a game at the earliest possible date (1430 or something IIRC) using... Bali. No idea why I decided to choose such a tiny nation, but I figured it might be fun.

As I discovered, with a nation like this it takes a long time to do ANYTHING. The first 2 hours of real-time and, aside from screwing around with trying to get men on boats, trying to figure out how to send out traders, and trying to get a feel for the sliders, we pretty much weren't able to do anything else. We were poor, earning next to nothing each month from our single province, and our traders were continually pushed out of markets (I imagine that trading skill affects this?). Many, many years passed by and we entered in to a royal marriage with some country near Malaysia. Their king dies, we inherit the country, and almost immediately it's neighbour, a 4 or 5 province power, declares war on us, and takes over our new lands. I wasn't too concerned anyhow, as they added next to nothing to my income and didn't even have enough manpower to produce a single military unit.

Finally we get our first national idea, and we hope to take advantage of the New World idea to settle the many islands all around our small nation. I start building settlers, sending them out, but I can't figure out how to land settler on islands with no ports, as my boats won't dock?

Eventually though I settle 3 islands that make up part of Indonesia today, but have trouble with the natives, and need to send soldiers there to "pacify" them... ;)

At this point though I've just about given up on trading as my traders don't last even 2 months before getting taken over, and all my income (about 50-60 ducats anually) is going in to sending out settlers in the hopes of turning some of our new settlements in to towns.

I think I'm about 120 years in or so, and it may not sound like it but I'm having a lot of fun doing nothing with a nation that is out of the way from everyone else, and thus pretty safe. I have two neighbours on islands nearby, one is fairly strong (compared to us, anyway), and the other is a vassal state that is a little bigger than us. We are decades away from any significant upgrades, I don't know how to earn more cash, and if anyone really wanted to we could be erased from the map altogether considering we have just 2 regiments of infantry in our whole nation.

Would anyone have any tips on making more money? Should I just keep settling the Indonesian islands? My trading ability went up 1 notch recently, should I try and put my traders in markets again, despite the fact that it costs valuable gold and they rarely seem to last very long? Will the trading improvement be noticeable here?

I should also add that I *like* that it's so slow using a nation like Bali. If this were M:TW 2 or something I would have already invaded every island within stone throw of me by now and would have an Asiatic army ready to conquer the world.

With a dynasty from Indonesia, you simply MUST read my EU2 dynasty, Mataram Rising! It'll give you some tips, I'm sure. :) [/plug]


http://www.operationsports.com/fofc/showthread.php?t=4726&

Thanks Anxiety, giving it a read now.

As you can probably see, I used colonization as the foundation for my nation. However, I did not neglect trade and war. I used all three tools to achieve greatness.

I'm playing a 'Sengoko Jidai' mod for EUIII where the goal is to unify Japan during the 16th-17th centuries, but for some damn reason I can't annex a couple of states... why is that? I've conquered all states except two nations who own a total of 4 states, and when I declare war on them, get the warscore to 100, the option to annex is greyed out? What do I need to do to annex these nations?

I noticed a similar thing when I played my game with Bali using no mod. I conquered a large muslim country nearby (can't recall the name), got the warscore to 100, yet the option to annex was greyed out. Sometimes it works fine, other times I just can't tell what I need to do.

You can't annex unless the nation is just 1 province or has a Tribal government type. (EDIT: And I'm pretty sure it's just one of the Tribal types, but I forget which one)

You can't annex unless the nation is just 1 province or has a Tribal government type. (EDIT: And I'm pretty sure it's just one of the Tribal types, but I forget which one)

Hm. One of the nations are just 1 province. Could it be that they still hold core provinces on some of the provinces I've taken over? Shoudl I get them to give up the cores, and then try?

Hm. One of the nations are just 1 province. Could it be that they still hold core provinces on some of the provinces I've taken over? Shoudl I get them to give up the cores, and then try?

That's odd. I don't think it has anything to do with core provinces. I've never been stopped from annexing 1 province nations before, regardless of what cores they had.

That's odd. I don't think it has anything to do with core provinces. I've never been stopped from annexing 1 province nations before, regardless of what cores they had.

OK, I have it figured. I just did a little reading. Firstly, I need to reduce one of the nations from 2 to 1 province. Secondly, it appears that the other annoying single province must have expanded and colonised somewhere. Even though they had just one province, when I sieged it I had a war score of just 40% or something, so it appears that they have gone elsewhere too. Anyone know of a way to see a list of provinces for nations in-game? I'm sure it's not that easy... damn, looks like I'll have to go naval and track it down.

OK, I have it figured. I just did a little reading. Firstly, I need to reduce one of the nations from 2 to 1 province. Secondly, it appears that the other annoying single province must have expanded and colonised somewhere. Even though they had just one province, when I sieged it I had a war score of just 40% or something, so it appears that they have gone elsewhere too. Anyone know of a way to see a list of provinces for nations in-game? I'm sure it's not that easy... damn, looks like I'll have to go naval and track it down.

Diplomatic map? Hilight the country in question and look for another colored province?

This game is very high in my rotation right now DESPITE my having aquired GTA Vice City for the first time in my young PS2 life. I'm playing Moscovy, and just went to war with Lithuania. I'm going to liberate the Orthodox! :D

The past few nights I've discovered that this game has now reached the "just one more turn" stage for me. I was up until 2am last night and now I'm paying for it today.

In about 1605 I declared war once again on the pesky Uesugi clan of northern Japan, capturing their final province and annexing them, leaving me just the Miyoshi clan to take care of on the island of Shikoku. These were the guys who I had assumed must have colonised, but to my great surprise I zoomed out and saw that they had conquered half of Korea! I hadn't been paying any attention to what was going on outside of Japan, so I missed this pretty major event.

I waited a few years for my stability to improve enough, then declared war on Miyoshi. I sent 3k infantry army in to their single, unmanned province in Japan, then marched two 12k strong infantry and cavalry armies in to Korea to capture their cities on that continent. I won easily, but made the mistake of taking all of Miyoshi's states except one, and that one happened to be landlocked by Korea and the Ming. I waited a few more years for my stability to climb again, then tried to get military access from Korea and Ming, but no luck. Thankfully, almost immediately after failing that, Korea declared war on me, joined by their ally Manchuria!

I ignored Korea and Manchuria at first, and finished annexing Miyoshi within a few months, thus uniting Japan finally, about 10 years later than it took in real life!

This left me with the unplanned war in Korea & Manchuria however, and I decided I might as well take advantage of it - once again, this Korean invasion was about 10-15 years later than real life. We shipped another two 12k strong armies on the continent, and my four armies raged through Korea and Manchuria easily beating off all resistance. There were only two Korean provinces worth taking however, so after suing for peace and taking a stack of provinces, we garrisoned only the two southern most Korean states - both big chinaware provinces - and left the rest to their own devices.

Not long after, Ming declared war on us, followed by Korea and Manchuria. Ming quickly swept through my abandoned Korean and Manchurian provinces, but Ming is already too massively powerful, so I sued for peace with Korea and ceeded all the Ming-captured provinces to Korea, and got China to agree to a white peace. Manchuria is just one land-locked province, with Ming to the west, north, and Korea to the south and east.

One former Korean province of mine, landlocked by Ming, that I abandoned but was never captured in the previous war, saw a rebel rising. I did nothing to stop it, and my good friends the Miyoshi reappeared after the rebels stormed the fort! Good for them. :)

Our badboy rating is through the roof, and we are universally hated, which I imagine probably isn't a good thing. Just before I went to bed much later than I should have I spent some time trying to improve relations with Korea & Miyoshi, but those pesky Koreans keep declaring war on me. I generally just ignore them for a year or so then declare white peace without any armies meeting in battle.

Well, I didn't mean for this to turn in to a dynasty post... but yeah, great game this one. I'm glad I stuck it out and put the effort in to learn how the game works, or else I would have just shelved it after my initial attempts back on like page 2... I guess that would have at least meant that I'd get some sleep! :D

An update for those with performance issues. The latest patch adds some software emulation for Pixel Shader 2.0 and the option to turn off water graphics. I can now run the game quite well on my laptop whereas before I couldn't play at all.

The patch has an incredible amount of changes/fixes and typical of Paradox it significantly improves the game.

An update for those with performance issues. The latest patch adds some software emulation for Pixel Shader 2.0 and the option to turn off water graphics. I can now run the game quite well on my laptop whereas before I couldn't play at all.

The patch has an incredible amount of changes/fixes and typical of Paradox it significantly improves the game.

Great! Thanks for the update! Mine hasn't been able to run, so hopefully this will solve the problem.

Will it run on a laptop without a video card, but with one of those crappy integrated video chipsets?

I think it varies from model to model, but some integrated sets will now work, although the top speed will be a little slow.

Saw this at GoGamer for $14.90 today and ordered it, just thought I'd share the deal. Very much enjoyed the first two.

In Nomine was released last night. Downloading right now and hopefully it'll have some Vista workarounds

In Nomine was released last night. Downloading right now and hopefully it'll have some Vista workarounds
What's In Nomine?

It's the Expansion for EU:III

Major new features:
Rebels with a cause: Peasants, Revolutionary, Heretics, Zealots, Nationalists, Nobles, Separatists, Patriots, Pretenders and Colonial Patriots. They have more than a dozen parameters defining their behaviour (area of action, political goal, defection rules, reinforcing yes/no, ...). You can give in to their demands, but at a considerable cost.
National missions which guide your nation and give benefits. You can cancel a mission each five years - or ignore them without penalty (just losing out on the benefits). There are country specific missions and generic missions which can happen to everyone under the right circumstances.
National, provincial and religious decisions which have a variety of nationwide and regional effects. They range from reducing local revolt risk to founding your nation or westernizing your country. A number of events have been converted to decisions.
Expanded timeline and historical database starting in 1399 - can you say 'Byzantium'?
Religious changes:
The religious tolerance sliders were removed and replaced by fixed values which can be influenced by national ideas and religious decisions.
Religious conversions changed: Missionaries have a yearly chance of converting a province and run until successful. The revolt risk is significantly raised during the process though. The missionaries have a yearly maintenance cost and their efficiency is influenced by the new "Missionary Maintenance" slider.
Added diplomatic options "Call for Crusade", "Excommunicate" and "Revoke Excommunication" for the Papal Controller. Crusades last for 30 years or until the target country is annexed, Catholics get a bonus for being at war with crusade targets. Excommunication lasts until it is revoked or the monarch dies, but can be avoided by decent relations with the Pope.
Each cardinal can now only be bribed once every three months.
Removed the stability hit for DoW on countries of a different religion group. The "Deus Vult" idea was renamed to "Unam Sanctam" and changed to apply only to religions within the same group.
Changes to the colonial system:
Colonial system changed: Colonies are still founded with a colonist but will then grow to city size on their own, usually in 10-20 years. Colonial growth is mainly determined by the new "Colonial Maintenance" slider, but is affected by slider settings, national ideas and advisors. Colonists are harder to get to balance for the new colonial growth.
Only cores can now be the origin for colonial range.
Tariffs now are the main overseas income, they are made up of base tax value, improvements by buildings and production income. Tariff efficiency is determined by the sum of 'big ships' and 'small ships' under your command.
Trade goods in empty provinces everywhere in the world are unknown before they contain a colony of a certain size. Then their trade good is determined by event.
Provincial Decision "Colonial Assimilation": Provinces with a population of less than 5000 people outside of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East can be assimilated to the primary state culture.
You can no longer move your capital overseas while it is still adjacent to at least one other owned province.
Changes to war and warfare:
War exhaustion mechanics changed: Wars don't give WE automatically anymore, instead it increases based on provinces occupied on your home continent, blockaded home ports, battle losses, attrition losses and war taxes. War Exhaustion now drains unit morale.
Mercenaries nerfed: They no longer reinforce, take time to recruit (25% of normal units) and can be recruited on occupied territory. The mercenary pool consists of 1/2th infantry, 1/3th cavalry and 1/6th artillery. The amount of used mercenaries decreases the chances of getting new mercenaries in your pool. Getting new mercenaries for your pool is also based on prestige. Mercenaries are not affected by discipline.
Toned reinforcements down: Only 50% reinforcement speed at hostile territory when adjacent to a friendly occupied province, only 10% speed at lack of supply line to a friendly occupied city, no reinforcements at all in empty provinces.
Recruiting troops now takes longer in looted and blockaded provinces.
Artillery provides 50% of its defensive values to the front rank if it is in the back.
Zero morale troops in frontlines will be removed during a combat.
A failed assault makes the garrisons recover morale now, and morale recovers for garrisons the same speed as for normal troops (maintenance!).
It is no longer possible to retreat from a battle for the first 5 days. Armies whose morale collapses in the first 5 days and face more than double the amount of enemies will be eliminated.
It is no longer legal to retreat towards a province with at least 5x your own force.
Prestige, War Exhaustion and Tradition gains and losses are seen for the leaders country in end of combat view.
Blockading affects war score at a scaling factor.
It is shown in peace negotiations if the AI will accept or not.
The cost for force releasing a country in a peace treaty has been significantly lowered.
Capitals can be demanded in peace, provided they are isolated from the rest of the country.
The AI will never propose or accept demands of >100 peace value.
There is a new message when you sign peace due to the leader of your alliance signing it.
Units can scorch owned provinces, applying a nasty modifier in order to hurt a strong invader.
New buttons for land units: "Detach Mercenaries" and "Detach Siege Unit" (enough men to siege the current province).
The declare war and call to arms confirm boxes now list all that may join the enemy in a war.
It is no longer possible to declare war on other countries' vassals.
The 'Casus Belli will expire' indicator is shown with the expiration date in the tooltip.
Friendly regiments now lower the revolt risk and minimum revolt risk in a province (at war and peace).
Reinforcement rates and fort defensiveness values were added as tooltips.
Localized army and navy names.
Changes to the naval system:
Overhauled the naval system: Naval ideas strenghtened, naval force limits reduced, navy size impacts tariff efficiency, patrolling order for fleets, fleets can detach blockade fleets with a button.
Pirates are made more common, can have leaders, are more cunning and in general a factor to be dealt with. They don't like to spawn in sea zones which were patrolled recently though. Anti-pirate patrol data can be seen in tooltips over seazones.
There is no longer attrition in coastal seazones for ships within naval supply range (which is a fraction of colonial range). Thus the constant micromanagement of blockades can be forgotten for most cases.
Changes with regards to MP:
Added a player count to the MP lobby.
Saved games are now sorted by time stamp rather than name.
Savegame transfer code reworked.
Troop positions are no longer visible when watching a savegame in the MP lobby.
The war overview no longer shows the enemy's troops and fleets when playing MP. Several ledger pages are deactivated in MP too.
There are no longer any badboy wars in MP.
F12 saves a political map of the whole world, Shift-F12 does the same just showing player countries and their vassals.
The space bar only works as pause in single-player mode.
Scenario options can no longer be changed in the front end lobby if a saved game is loaded.
Current Checksum is now (temporarily) changed everytime you resign, to avoid "out of sync" problems in MP.
Economic changes:
Trade good prices reworked: Supply and demand are calculated depending on factors like looted provinces or being at war.
Centralization (left of 0) now gives a slight inflation reduction.
War taxes can now be switched on and off, with a cooldown period of one year.
Inland CoTs are now less valuable than coastal CoTs.
Removed cap on technology costs when expanding.
The treasury tooltip now indicates annual profit/loss.
Default merchant costs are increased, the national idea "Merchant Adventures" gives cheaper merchants. Trade agreements, personal unions, cultural differences and effective distance from capital affect placement costs for merchants.
Each placed merchant now reduces competition chance by 0.5%.
Changes to the Holy Roman Empire:
The Emperor has an auto-guarantee on all HRE members.
Provinces can join and leave the HRE with a provincial decision.
Human played HRE electors can vote for the candidate of their choice adding new depth to Imperial politics in both SP and MP.
Diplomacy skill and diplomacy attribute (new!) now affects who an AI decides to elect to the Emperor status.
Other additions and changes:
33 land provinces added and province borders changed, most of them in Europe.
Added 22 more types of advisors giving bonuses to almost anything.
Five new national ideas were added and the effects of several national ideas changed.
The policy slider effects have been reworked extensively. Tooltips for left and right buttons on the policy sliders now show what the maximum policy's effect would be.
The interval between being able to move the policy sliders now depends on the size of the country and the government form ("administrative efficiency"), but moving them no longer costs stability.
Two new map modes: Cultures and regions.
Improvements to some map textures.
Techlevels expanded for the bigger time frame.
Added an option regarding lucky nations: 'Historical' (default), 'Random' (old code) or 'None'. Playing without lucky nations is NOT recommended for historical gameplay or fun in SP though.
Prestige now affects merchant compete chance, unit morale, yearly diplomats, stability costs, spy defence, trade income, fort defensiveness and cost of mercenaries.
Numerous tweaks and fixes for the AI, from strategic goals (such as its missions) over more intelligent behaviour on the battle field to diplomatic nuances like rivals and trust values. Countries now have a "permanent strategy" which can be altered by event effects. The cheat code "view_ai" shows AI tooltips.
For modders: Many new triggers and effects, more values exported to text files. Geographical regions can be defined at will for easier referencing.
Events can be set to be "major" which puts them in their own category in the message settings.
Government titles can now be culture, culture group, religion and religion group specific, with the basic name being shown in the tooltip. Government names and ruler titles can also be specific for vassal states.
Several changes to the effects of government forms.
There is now a reset in relations and timers with all other vassals when you diplomatically annex one. You get -1 centralization for diplomatic annexations.
Selling a province now removes the selling nation's core on it.
Two new spy actions added: "Infiltrate Administration" (can lift the fog of war from the target country) and "Tarnish Reputation" (can reduce target's prestige).
Fabricate claims no longer gives a core, but gives a cb intead.
Large tribes will suffer a succession crisis whenever they get a new ruler.
Large Latin, Eastern and Muslim nations can now choose the "Empire" form of government through a national decision.
If a capital is held by rebels for 2 years straight, the country will break.
The budget slider lock status is now saved.
The game will now play any .mp3 you put into the /music folder.
Additions and changes to the National Ideas:
*NEW* Press Gangs: -50% ship costs
*NEW* Regimental System: -40% recruit time for land units, requires land tech 30
*NEW* Land of Opportunity: +20 colonial growth
*NEW* Vetting: +20% spy defence
*NEW* Ecumenism: +2 tolerance for heretics
Grand Navy: +100% naval forcelimit (was +33%)
Superior Seamanship: +1.0 naval morale (was 0.5)
Naval Glory: +100% prestige from naval battles (was +33%)
Excellent Shipwrights: now requires naval tech 7
Naval Fighting Instruction: +50% blockade efficiency (was +25%), now requires naval tech 30
Naval Provisioning: allows ships to repair in coastal sea zones, now requires naval tech 53
Military Drill: +1.0 land morale (was 0.5)
Glorious Arms: +100% prestige from land battles (was +33%)
National Conscripts: now requires land tech 7
Esprit d'Corps: now requires land tech 53 (was 45)
Merchant Adventures: -33% merchant placement costs (was +1 yearly merchants)
Vice Roys: +25% tariffs (was +30% overseas income)
Quest for the New World: now requires trade tech 7
Scientific Revolution: -10% technology costs (was -2.5%), now requires trade tech 30
Improved Foraging: now requires trade tech 53 (was 45)
Bill of Rights: now requires production tech 7
Smithian Economics: now requires production tech 30
Cabinet: -1.0 badboy per year (was +1 yearly diplomats), now requires government tech 30
Liberté, égalité, fraternité: now requires production tech 53 (was 45)
Divine Supremacy: +0.5 yearly missionaries (was +1)
Deus Vult: renamed to 'Unam Sanctam', only applies within the religious group now
Humanist Tolerance: +2 tolerance for heathens (was +1 tolerance), now requires government tech 7
Revolution and Counter-Revolution: now requires government tech 53 (was 45)

I don't think that list comes from Paradox, I think someone on the forums made it. Not sure though.

I got an email about the expansion this morning and it looks great.

I just wish my work laptop would run it. Have a very heavypower laptop for work stuff, just not built for gaming due to an integrated intel video card.

It's an intriguing expansion list, alright. I got the urge to play EU3 and got NA at that point. I'm sure it'll be something similar with this.

Hmm.. guess I posted too much and the board just ate it....

New patch 3.1 for In Nomine is out.. so a good time to end my current game as Bohemia that I had been playing. It was rather disjointed and I didn't really have a clear objective in my head other than doing everything I could to cause the French to implode.. which I think I was successful at... but the vacuum was filled up by England (Whom formed Great Britain) and Castille (whom I had to stop from eating Aragon alive)...

Only 1505 or so:

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y19/Turlos/bohemiagame-worldmap.jpg
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y19/Turlos/bohemiagame-allymap.jpg

Anyhows.. the 3.1 changes:

In Nomine – 3.1 Players Guide

We’ve worked hard at 3.1 over the summer, and hope to have it out very soon. Since its such a big update with close to 600 lines in the readme alone, we thought a quick guide highlighting the major changes and improvements would be a good read before the weekend. Of course not everything is mentioned, and this is still may be subject to change.

Policy Sliders
One of the first things you will notice when playing the new update is the enhancement to the policy sliders. Now you have the possibility to get events happening when you move a slider in a certain direction. Some give bad effects, and some give benefits in short and long term. This adds another strategic element to the act of changing your country.

What also is important is the change to the time between the changes. This have been reduced dramatically, and is now something that can be done even in the larger empires in a reasonable time period.

Rebels
The abilities of rebels should now depend much more on the local province they are from, which may make them harder to fight in Europe, but easier outside of it.
We’ve also added severe restrictions on how rebels can defect and declare independence to avoid weird results in the world.

Spies
We have added three new spy actions, mostly tying it in with rebels. You now have the possibility to sponsor rebels of pretender, nationalist or patriot ambitions in an enemy’s territory. These rebels formed from these actions will be friendly towards the country sponsoring them.

The formula for spy discovery and success have been reworked, so that spy efficiency is the offensive attribute, and the spy defence is the defensive attribute when it comes to success. Discovery depends entirely on prestige and badboy of the involved countries. These values are now shown in the spies interface, together with tooltips.

The cost of sending a spy now directly depends on the tax-value of the target province, so it is more expensive to attack richer provinces. For the multiplayer crowd, you also get a casus belli on any human player that is discovered sending spies to you.

Privateers
The privateers you commission will now be friendly to you, and will not blockade your coasts. Instead they will send part of the money they take in to your cofferts. This will create some new naval strategies, where people can play like the historical England, and try to ruin Spanish trade.

HRE
The Emperor no longer start the game with a large amount of standing troops, but just with extra manpower. This makes Bohemia less like a mobile death-star at the start of the game.

Countries inside the HRE now are more wary of any anyone doing anything bad towards another member, and an attack on any of them results in a relation hit with everyone.

We have also fixed a few bugs with the election mechanism, and we hope this will create a more interesting mechanic in the HRE.

Military
First of all, we fixed the bug that sometimes made a unit without morale enable to wipe out a unit with morale if they still had a certain amount of troops.

Secondly, we reworked how the naval combat works so that losses are reduced, and morale drops are much bigger. This will make naval battles less like bloodbaths.

Another aspect that impact this is the penalties for going over your forcelimits. Now the scaling depends on the force limits. Also, the costs of building a ship is increased by how much you go over the force limits.

Economy
We’ve strengthened the economy of European home provinces drastically, by increasing the production income efficiency by tax values. Tariffs base factors have also been decreased, so that a rich province like Napoli is actually not worth less than a random Indian province.

The value of the trade-goods wine have been increased.

We’ve reworked centre of trade dynamics quite a lot, and the stagnation logic is now in full effect. Small centres of trade will slowly disappear if they can’t reach a certain threshold of income.

Diplomacy
It wil now be possiblr to declare war on vassals and lesser partners in personal unions. The overlord will always be called in. Declining the call results in the end of the vassalization or union.

Quite a few issues with alliances have been worked out, so that it should no longer be possible to end up in a war against someone you are in a war together with.

Another impact on multiplayer is that alliances between players will not auto-terminate if relations go below 0.

War exhaustion
War exhaustion will now drop quicker when you are at peace, and the war exhaustion from blockades is now scaled depending on size.
Revolt risk from War Exhaustion has been dropped by 50%, but the stability costs from it have been increased. The morale on troops will no longer be decreased by WE, but it will take longer to recruit new troops.

Warscore & Peace Negotiation
Warscore from blockades on allies are now scaled the same way as everything else, and blockading occupied provinces no longer affects the war score.

It is now also possible to demand territory owned by vassals and lesser union partners from someone in a peace treaty. Of course only if they are in that war.

The cost of a province in peace-negotiation has been rebalanced to depend on the size of the country giving it up. Religion, Culture and Core-status also impacts it.

Stabilityhitting another nation in a peace offer now have more serious impact. First of all the threshold for when you can do it is reduced by the targets war-exhaustion, secondly the target also gets a prestige hit, and thirdly there is a likelihood of getting rebels.

Prestige
Prestige is now more important, but there are caps on the gains of prestige from battles. You no longer will get prestige from fighting rebels, pirates or natives.

Ledger
Two full new pages have been added to the ledger. The first one lists all previous emperors, so you can see who was interrupting your rightful reign as Emperor. The other page is a listing of which provinces can do provincial decisions, and which ones.


Interface
It will now be possible to change the name of a province and the name of its capital at any time you like, by just clicking on the name.

There is now an indicator at the province screen for provinces that are not your core yet, telling you when they will become a core.

We’ve worked hard on adding in and expanding tooltips all over the game to make information more obvious to the player.

AI
A lot of development for this patch has been into improving the capabilities of the AI.

The naval AI has had a lot of attention, is now better at maintaining competitive fleets. It also knows how to patrol to keep pirates away, and is better at keeping its transport fleets protected.

The land AI has learned quite a lot about saving damaged troops, and at handling rebels and armies outside its own territories.

We have also severely updated the diplomatic AI to understand when to go to war and to sign peace, as well as how to behave to other countries.

The Strategic AI has also gotten a lot of love, and is now better at understanding the situation. The economic AI should be able to use its money better, and will be able to build more buildings and ships to compete with the player-

Databases
We’ve corrected a few setups in the world, thanks to the great input of people at the forum. Also, france has been nerfed, and italy boosted.

We went through all events, decisions and missions, tweaking them and balancing them after feedback from players. Most noticeable here would be the following changes.

Several dozens of random events have been added, giving more decisions to the player, and making it harder to keep a +3 stability at all times.

Quite a few new missions have been added as well, several from ideas given in the forum thread requesting them.

The religious wars event series is now a major one, and is as “bad” as the peasant wars or times of troubles one for a player.



Ok, hope you’ll enjoy it as much as we do..


From the 3.1 readme.txt

************************
******* Missions *******
************************
- Fixed a few problems with missions sharing tags
- It is no longer possible to cancel missions multiple times due to lag

- Only monarchies can get the 'Convince Electors' mission
- "Improve Relations with Vassal" aborts if rival ceases to exist
- The generic "Annex Minor" aborts if the nation disappears
- Added a mission to get an elector to vote for you
- Theocracies and republics no longer get the "Become Emperor" mission
- The generic alliance- and relation missions abort if the nations cease to exist
- The royal marriage mission aborts if the countries are no longer monarchies
- The 'Improve Relations" missions will only trigger if you're current relations are below 100
- The 'Generic Annex Vassal' mission won't trigger if you already have a core on the target province
- The 'Improved Relations with Electors' mission will increase your stability
- The generic "annex vassal" mission will only trigger for countries of the same religion
- The generic form alliance mission won't trigger if the country feels threatened by the other
- The 'Improved Relations with Elector' mission now correctly improves your own stability

- The 'Construct Navy' mission will only trigger for core provinces
- The 'Blockade province' mission aborts if you're not at war
- The 'Construct Navy' mission will abort if the country doesn't have a port
- The "Naval Race" mission won't trigger for African and New World countries
- "Get Control of Naval Supplies" won't trigger if you lose your ports
- Added missions to construct fleets and armies larger than a rivals
- Added a mission to improve navysize to reach 100% tariff efficiency if needed
- The 'Buildup Manpower Reserves' mission won't trigger for minor countries

- Added abort clauses to the colonial missions in case the country lacks a port
- The 'Establish Colony' mission will abort if someone else builds a colony in that province
- Made some historical balance tweaks for generic colonise and discover missions for Spain, Portugal, England and France

- "Force Open Market" aborts if you own the CoT
- Fixed the abort-clause in the "Reduce Inflation" mission
- Establish trade missions now wants 5 merchants placed
- Added a 'last mission' check to all monopoly mission
- "Get Minor Cash Reserve" and "Amass Wealth" abort if you take a loan
- "Improve Economical Mismanagement" aborts if the nation goes bankrupt
- "Gain Monopoly" and "Establish Trade in CoT" requires at least one merchant
- "Recover Negative Stability" triggers more often when the stability is below -2
- "Grain Trade post in China" and "Increase Spice Trade" abort if you no longer control a port
- The manufactory-missions now gives a 4-star advisor instead of +1 base-tax when completing

- Added two missions to attack rivals
- Added a mission for rivals to clash over Italy
- "Blockade Enemy Coast" aborts if the war ends
- Added another mission to make christian medium/majors to get into Italy
- "Conquer Neighbour" aborts if the target country isn't a neighbour anymore
- "Conquer Core" aborts if you lose the core
- "Attack Prestigious Rival" aborts if you become a vassal or lesser partner in a union
- "Attack Weaker Rival" aborts if you become a vassal or lesser partner in a union

- Added a mission to restore the Holy See if catholic
- Added a mission to increase relations with the pope if catholic
- Fixed a missing title for the 'Embrace the Reformation' mission
- The generic force convert mission aborts if the countries change religion
- The convert province mission only fire if you have at least one missionary
- "Take control of Papacy" won't fire for excommunicated countries and aborts if you go to war with the Papacy or the Papacy ceases to exist
- "Gain Cardinals" aborts if the Papacy ceases to exist or the target country is excommunicated
- "Restore Holy See" won't fire for excommunicated countries and fires more often for neighbours
- "Solidify our Papal Relations" aborts if you are excommunicated or no longer Catholic

- Added port triggers to the discovery missions
- Added religion triggers to the annex missions
- Burgundy, Bavaria, Byzantium, America, Lithuania, Bohemia, Scotland, Polish, Sweden, Ming China, Denmark, Russia, Portugal, France, the Ottomans and Aragon: added abort clauses to all the "conquer missions" for countries becoming vassals or lesser partners in unions
- Added port triggers to the colonization missions
- The "Partition Poland" mission won't trigger unless Russia, Austria and Prussia are Poland's neighbours
- The 'Annex Genoa' mission will abort if Genoa doesn't own Liguria
- The "Connect Brandenburg and Prussia" mission will only trigger if Prussia and Brandenburg have a valid land connection
- The 'Conquer Delhi' mission requires you to conquer Multan instead of Jammu
- Fixed some potential exploits in the Mughal and Timurid vassalize missions
- Added a country flag to the 'Taj Mahal' mission to keep it from triggering for the Mughals more than once
- The 'defeat England' mission requires the Mughals to take over all British provinces in the Indian region
- Changed the provinces you need to protect in the "Block the Safavid Advance" and "Defend the Timurid Lands" missions
- The 'Conquer Delhi' mission only aborts if the Timurids doesn't own any of sultanate's provinces and Delhi doesn't exist
- Changed the "Block the Safavid Advance" and "The footsteps of Timur" to trigger for Khorasan instead of the Timurids
- The 'Recapture Minsk' mission won't be counted as a success unless Poland both owns and controls Minsk
- The Polish 'Relations with Mazovia' mission will abort if Mazovia doesn't exist
- The discovery missions for Madeira and Azores will only trigger between 1415 and 1425
- Fixed the broken text for the 'Dutch Colony in the Caribbean' mission
- Changed the relation requirement for the 'Ming-Oirat Relations' mission to 150
- Added a neighbour trigger to the "Defend Korea" mission
- The 'Defend Bohemia against Hungary' mission will abort if Hungary doesn't exist
- Tweaked trigger and effect for the Austrian Mission to take north Italy
- The 'Establish a CoT in Britain' mission won't trigger if you own Antwerp or Île-de-France
- The "Conquer Korea" mission won't trigger unless Korea is a neighbour
- The "Establish Foot holding in Manchuria" won't trigger unless Manchuria is a neighbour
- The 'Conquer Sicily' mission will add a core on Palermo
- The Spanish missions to improve relations with Portugal and Aragon won't trigger if either of them become a republic or cease to exist
- Iberia must be controlled by Spain for the "Finish Reconquista" to be a success
- The 'Continue the Reconquista' mission will abort if Tangiers, Ceuta and Melilla are controlled by another Christian nation
- The 'Continue the Reconquista' mission won't trigger if some other Christian nation than Spain owns Tangiers, Melilla and Ceuta
- Updated the success condition of the 'Reach the Mississippi' mission
- The 'Tobacco Factory' mission will only trigger once
- "Defend the American colonies" will only be counted as a success, if the US owns the colonies
- "Reach the Mississippi" will abort if there are no neighbouring provinces
- Increased the requirements for the 'Conquer Florida' mission to include Pensacola and Apalachee
- The 'Reclaim Mecca' mission will abort if Mecca is conquered by some other Muslim country
- The "Muslim Asia Minor" mission will abort if the Ottomans change religion

Events & Decisions and Interface changes:



***********************
******* Events *******
***********************
- Added a check for native size in 'Native Raids'
- Events can no longer drop the size of a city down to a colony
- Fixed the discovery triggers for 'Colonial Ventures' and 'Trade Expansion'
- Increased the number of colonies required for the 'Colonial Migration' event to trigger
- The 'Colonial Expansion' event will only give you 200 settlers and won't trigger unless you have discovered at least one empty, neighbouring province
- Toned down the frequency of the 'Minorities flock to the colonies' events and changed the option so that it sets the culture to the main culture

- Added a missing merchant trigger to the Slider event for mercantilism-free trade
- Fixed the "Minority Prospers" event so that it increases province tax
- Added in the events for the aristocracy/plutocracy slider

- Added a few new events that triggers at high war-exhaustion
- Reworked province defection event-chain slightly
- Changed the effects of 'support monarch' in 'Civil War'
- 'Temporary Insanity of Monarch', 'Excellent Minister', 'Nobles Demand Increased Pensions' and 'Revolution' can trigger for Imperial governments too
- Altered the second option for the "Monarch ignores Country" event so that it is displayed correctly
- Fixed the text for the "Fortification Expert" event and added a "number of cities" trigger

- New events for the centralization_decentralization, serfdom_freesubjects, innovative_narrowminded, mercantilism_freetrade, offensive_defensive, land_naval slider and the quality_quantity slider
- Changed the "slider events" so that 'overseas_provinces_percentage' triggers correctly

- Religious Wars now end when less than 10% is a minority
- Reworked the religious war event chain to be a bit more challenging
- Made the effect of the "enable the counter reformation" event immediate
- The Spread of Protestant and Reformed religion events now have a lower chance of triggering overseas and in non-Christian countries

- Added lots of new random events, and also tweaked triggers and effects of the old ones to get more of them appearing

*************************
******* Decisions *******
*************************
- Denouce Neo-Confucianism no longer gives +50% to missionary success, but a reasonable change instead.
- All religious decisions now have proper AI directives. Also, moved some prerequisites from 'potential' to 'allow'.

- The Papal States can no longer create Italy
- Fixed the effects of the 'Form Kingdom of Prussia' decision.
- Fixed a typo in PolishDecisions.txt
- Fixed the 'Germany Nation' decision so that cores are given correctly
- Making Constantinople capital through the decision makes it Turkish and Sunni as well
- 'The Jizya Tax' decision now increases stability costs by 20% instead of +1 RR.
- Made ownership of Edirne, Bithynia, Bursa and Burgas a requirement for the 'Make Constantinople Capital' decision
- Increased the manpower bonus from the Devshirme System to 33%
- Added country flags to the 'move capital' decisions to keep them from triggering repeatedly
- Making St-Petersburg the capital will cost 200 ducats but also increase the city size
- You must be orthodox to restore the Byzantine Empire
- "Defend Russia Against The Mongols" only happens if the Golden Horde is big and strong

- Transformed the tribal government reform event into decisions.
- Added a province decision to establish a march in border provinces.
- Changed 'Trade Crisis', 'Force Open Market', 'Gain Monopoly', 'Pass Joint-Stock Companies Act' and 'Stato da Mar' so that they trigger if your trade_income_percentage is above 40% or your trade income is above 100 ducats
- The 'Benign Neglect' decision only requires you to own 30% provinces overseas
- Removed the "Promote National Merchants" province decision.
- Tweaked effects from 'statue in restraint of appeals'
- Removed ownership of five colonies as a requirement for the 'Abolish Slavery' decision
- Restriction for colonies no longer reduce revolt risk dramatically.


From the 3.1 readme.txt

*****************************************
******* Interface Enhancements **********
*****************************************
- Players can now freely edit the names of their provinces in the province panel.
- Now possible to change the name of province capitals.
- Added an indicator for when a province will become a core province.

- The displayed supply limit is now rounded the same way in the unit tooltip and province view.
- Added an explanation of union tags to the culture tooltip in the country view and diplomacy view.
- Added a tooltip to the FoG in the game setup view.
- The inaugeration date for foreign monarchs is now shown in a tooltip.
- Added missing tooltips for the Cancel Alliance diplomatic action.
- Added a missing tooltip to the Propose Alliance action.
- The inflation tooltip in the treasury slider is now color-coded.
- Corrected the tooltip for Marketplaces.

- Added a province decision page to the ledger.
- Added a ledger page listing all previous emperors of the HRE.

- Added a new message type, for the senior country when a junior partner ends a personal union.
- Added a separate message for when you cancel the military access given to you by another nation.
- Added a separate message for when succession wars involving the player break out (the text is the same though.)
- Added a message for when your enemies accept peace with another country.
- Changed the default for the message when a personal union ends so it's a popup.
- Zooming in on newly independent countries from the message will now always target the correct capital province.
- The self-sustaining colony message now pops up from event effects too.

- The actual name of the Holy Roman Emperor is now show in the HRE view.
- Shortened the length of the leader text field in the unit view.
- Made more room for the ruler name and changed the formatting in the game setup view.
- Added spy efficiency and defense to the spy view.
- Rearranged some text fields in the province panel.

- Your own preferred unit types will now be listed first in the army build view.
- Rebel factions now get their appropriate unit sprites.
- Missionary maintenance is now correctly added to the topbar gold tooltip.
- Missionary maintenance is now correctly included in the sum of expenses in the economy view.
- Truce expiry alerts are now shown with dates, like CB expiry.
- Made more room for advisor names.
- Shortened the Outliner a bit so it doesn't hide the Find Province button.
- The game now first looks for "gameplaysettings.txt" under "\mod\mod_name", then "\mod", then the default.
- Music is no longer played at all if the music volume is set to 0.
- The map in the peace negotiation window will be better centered on the relevant area.
- Fixed the "send missionary" button so it won't lit up when you can't send a missionary.
- Monthly income text scrolling up from map provinces: All monthly income from the province is now added to the figure.
- Corrected icon colors for the 'expand_colonial_territory' and 'restrict_colonial_expansion' modifiers.
- Fixed so the eventwindow is always centered when shown.

- Selecting the currently selected province again no longer clears the province modifier icons.
- Selecting an enemy occupied province will drop you out of any sub-view (decisions, etc).
- While in the build mercenaries view, switching to other occupied provinces will not drop you out of the view.
- While in the building, merc or province decision views, switching province to a non-core province will no longer drop you out of the view.
- The correct flag will now be shown for rebel units again when zoomed out on the map.

Ai Improvements and Gameplay balancing:

From the 3.1 readme..

*******************************
******* AI Improvements *******
*******************************
* Naval AI
- No blockades of occupied enemy provinces.
- AI now uses patrols to prevent piracy.
- Improved blockade behaviour.
- Fixed an infinite loop bug that could occur when switching nations in a save game.
- More careful with its transport fleets.
- Will scramble fleets from port to block straits in their own sea zone.
- Will no longer cancel moves out of enemy occupied provinces
- Will prioritize its original planned invasion target province more.
* Land AI
- Fixed a problem where the main army could go passive in order to reinforce, though the enemy was almost overrunning the country.
- Fixed a problem with the main army moving around deep inside enemy territory instead of returning home.
- The main army will no longer go passive to reinforce if not at war (i.e. cleaning up rebels.)
- The main army will no longer go passive to reinforce if there are no decent manpower reserves.
- The main army is better at forming, despite enemy armies in the way.
- Fixed a problem with the AI stacking up a huge army in an area, way past the supply limit.
- Fixed some problems with the sufficient force checks for new attacks.
- Improved check for enemy units on their way into a target province.
- Fixed a problem with cancel move orders sent to retreating units.
- Fixed a problem with units moving to a province they are already in.
- Fixed a crash bug.
- Better at taking back strongholds of defecting rebels.
- Changed the base calculation for area needs to be more dependent on forces in neighboring areas. Should greatly help countries with overseas possessions near belligerents.
- Adjusted overseas troop stacks.
- More intelligent about when to withdraw and rest up damaged regiments.
- Fixed a problem where the AI would strip its home area of troops and send them to another area bordering the same enemy area.
* Diplomatic AI
- Better at waiting for one-province nations to get occupied before willing to sign peace.
- Fixed a bug that let players milk AI nations with high WE for money, or force vassalize them.
- Adjusted acceptance of separate peace demands.
- Fixed two stalemate bugs in the Peace AI.
- Fixed a problem with overly stubborn Peace AI in some situations.
- More prone to accept alliances with threatening nations.
- Acceptance of diplomatic vassalization proposals adjusted (now harder and more dependent on the difference in diplomatic skill of the rulers.)
- Revised code for deciding on whom to target for trade agreements.
- Optimized and improved trade agreement proposal code further.
- Improved DoW checks. AI will be less afraid of guarantees and alliances if the target is annexable or the allies distant.
- AI electors will now always re-determine who to vote for at the end of a month.
- AI electors is now less likely to vote for emperors outside the empire.
- AI nations with an interest in the HRE should now send gifts to the electors.
- Fixed a problem with AI HRE Electors very rarely changing their votes.
- AI electors that have an interest in the HRE throne and are able to vote for themselves will now tend to do so.
- Tweaked AI HRE Elector choice of emperor code to be more dependent on relations.
- Fixed a problem with the Holy Roman Emperor overbidding insanely in peace deals.
- AI should be more reasonable about military access paths for land movement.
- Updated AI for the new DoW and Call Allies rules.
- When considering declaring war, now better at estimating whether an ally will answer a call to war or not.
- Improved AI acceptance code for call to war requests.
* Strategic AI
- Updated the code for checking if a country should be interested in the HRE throne.
- Adjusted relative priority between colonial and construction expenses.
- Reduced the colonial interest of small nations.
- Greatly increased number of desired ships up the tariff needs.
- Proper power rank checks to curb superpower alliances.
- Befriend and Antagonism values are now also dependent on relative world military ranking.
- Adjusted personality calculation.
- Adjusted consolidation check for Militarist AIs.
- Added AI strategy calculations to the new triggers "army", "navy", "tariff_efficiency" and "preferred_emperor".
- Adjusted wanted buildings calculations.
- Will prioritize building warships if it cannot use transports safely while at war.
- Updated the wanted number of warships calculation to match the biggest enemy (threat, target) navy.
- Doubled the minimum number of wanted transports.
- Fixed a problem with it going into a long period of consolidation for dubious reasons.
- No longer counts transports when worrying about the naval force limit.
- Will prioritize building ships if it has less then 3/4 of the desired amount.
- Improved calculation for army recruit priority.
- Added consolidation check for low manpower reserves.
- Improved desperation calculation (more likely to fold in a war if it loses core provinces of its own culture in its capital area.)
* Other
- AI now stops collecting wartaxes if war exhaustion grows high.
- Adjusted the Colonial AI to handle the new 50 people/year growth rate.
- Improved Colonial AI expense checks.
- Improved Colonization target selection code. Will prefer islands, and clustering its colonies, avoiding rival colonies, etc.
- The AI should not create new CoTs early in the year, but wait and see if it still has surplus gold later on.
- The AI should not create new CoTs if it is currently suspending that type of expense.
- The AI should not create new CoTs if it has building construction plans.
- Recruit AI: Tweaked the code for selecting the best province to build ships in.
- AI should now be more keen on constructing buildings in general.
- Fixed a minor bug with invalid building plans being started.
- Higher prio on goods manufactories.
- Improved modifier evaluation for provinces.
- The choice between light and big ships is no longer random. It will strive for a 2:1 ratio.
- Will now correctly count warships under construction when calculating new ships to build.
- Will not build galleys if it has overseas provinces.
- AI will now disband "exiled" units even while at war.
- Toned down AI tendency to overrun army force limits.
- AI will no longer take decisions that permanently raise the global revolt risk.
- Fixed a bug that made it possible to the AI to cancel a retreat.
- AI countries now get the full revolt risk in their home areas, but a more reduced chance overseas.
- AI will no longer move sliders if it has less troops than an average rebellion would spawn, nor do it when at war.
- AI will cancel missions after 25 years.

**********************************
******* Gameplay Balancing *******
**********************************
- Added new spy actions 'sponsor_patriots', 'sponsor_nationalists' and 'sponsor_pretender'.
- Implemented a system for events to be called when going left or right on a policy slider, including dozens of events.

- Updated accepted culture gain/loss to disregard cultures in the group of a union tag (there is no need for special acceptance.)
- Prestige from battles is now capped.
- Reduced the prestige-hit from cores getting lost to -10.
- Increased impact of prestige slightly.
- There is no longer any prestige gains from fighting pirates, natives or rebels.
- There is now a monthly hit for each uncostested core at about 0.3% yearly.
- Reduced time-delay of changing policies dramatically.
- Fixed an exploit with changing leaders in hostile territory.
- Forcelimits are now rounded down properly.
- Tribal Federations can't have a higher centralization value than 2
- Countries with a Republican Dictatorship can't form royal marriages anymore
- The 'Excommunication' triggered modifier is no longer applied to non-Catholic countries, even if their ruler has been excommunicated (through a personal union).
- The bonus for Absolute Monarchy is now 5% discipline instead of lowered war exhaustion.
- Uncontested core status is now refreshed properly when a core is expired.
- Tweaked down probabilities of unions, succession wars and inheritances.

- Implemented support in code for pirates/rebels/natives units to be friendly to a country.
- Commisioning privateers will now create privateers that are friendly to you and won't blockade your ports or attack your ships, but create havoc for everyone else.
- Pirates & Rebels get tech research again now.
- Privateers now give their money to their sponsor.

- Costs for provincial spy-actions are now scaled with the tax-value of the target province.
- Spy Efficiency now affects spy action success instead of just discovery.
- Spy discovery chance is now based on prestige and badboy.
- You now get a CB on anyone doing spy actions on you and getting discovered with it in multiplayer.

- Newly formed rebel states will now get a guarantee and good relations with their sponsor from the start.
- Warnings and Guarantees now changes relations a little bit when done.
- Patriot rebels no longer add cores to provinces they take.
- Smaller rebel forces spawn on islands.
- Defection of the last province of a country should now result in a proper annexation
- Patriot rebels failing to move from a "friendly" province should now disband.
- Rebels now use combat abilities of their origin province's owners tech.
- Peasant and Heretic rebel controlled provinces can now defect after 10 years.
- Increased defection delays of rebels.
- Rebel defection is no longer possible to overseas countries, unless the province neighbors their territory.
- Colonial rebels are no longer possible before 1750.
- Doubled the defection delay (now 36 months) for colonial rebel types.
- Religious and heretic rebels can no longer enforce their demands on the Papal State.
- Normal nationalist rebels can no longer seek independence for colonial tags, preventing any kind of unhistorical early colonial rebellion.
- Rebel armies now use the new friend system for their units, if they are of a defector type.
- Rebels will no longer lose control of occupied provinces when their last army dies.
- Throne pretender rebels are now more keen on taking the capital province.
- No longer possible to negotiate with rebels that are willing to negotiate but unable to enforce their demands.

- The emperors bonus is now only adapted after the start of the game, so starting troops will not be insanely large.
- New HRE elections are now properly held when the previous emperor dies, no matter how it happens (through events etc.)
- It is now much less likely for the HRE to go above 7 electors.
- HRE electors will now vote for themselves if at least one other elector is also voting for them.

- Sieges should no longer reset if someone in the war makes a separate peace.
- There is now a cap on prestige from a single battle, no matter how successful.
- Reworked naval combat a bit, and morale hits are bigger than strength damage each round.
- Going over force limits is now a bit more costly. (It now increases by the percentage above it, not percentage of units above)
- Going above naval force limits increases costs of ships.

- Wine is now more valuable.
- Population impact on production values is now capped at 100k for 100% bonus, and is only applied in non-overseas provinces.
- Each base-tax value increases production income base by 5% in a non overseas province.
- Decreased base income on tariffs to take vice-roys and naval to get it up to about 100%.
- Starting fleets are now adapted to the need for tariffs.
- Adjusted the 'has_coastal_center_of_trade' and 'has_inland_center_of_trade' modifiers.
- Stagnation now actually works on Centers of Trade.
- It is no longer possible to create a CoT adjacent to another CoT.
- Small cot's are now far more likely to close down due to stagnation.
- Fixed a problem where two countries could get a monopoly in the same CoT.

- Declaring war, demanding vassalization/annexation & claiming thrones on someone in the HRE will now reduce relation with all other HRE members.
- You can now declare war on vassals and lesser partners in personal unions. The overlord will always be called in. Declining the call results in the end of the vassalization or union.
- Alliances between two players will not auto disband because relation is <0.
- Junior partners in PUs can no longer be targeted for excommunication.
- Alliances are now broken if two countries go into a succssion war against each other.
- All alliances are now broken when a country joins a union.
- Annexations now give control of provinces to the current occupier if they got a core, which is needed in revolutionary wars.
- Allies are called in for all defensive wars, even if the ally has not discovered the provinces of the attacker.
- Joining a war now properly cancels all alliances, warnings and guarantees with everyone you fight with.
- Nations fighting a war together can not be called as allies into war against each other.
- Truce dates are now originating properly from the end of the war.

- Warexhaustion from blockades now depend on size of homearea much more.
- War exhaustion now increases cost of stability by 5% for each step.
- War exhaustion no longer impacts on morale of troops, but increase recruit speed dramatically.
- Each war-exhaustion now increases revolt risk by 0.5 instead of +1.
- Slightly increased the effect of WE on war capacity.
- Added default peacetime war exhaustion decrease (-1 per year of peace).
- You now take the WE hit for attrition on other countries territories when at peace.

- Warscore from blockades on allies are now scaled the same way as everything else.
- Blockading occupied provinces no longer affects the war score.
- You can now also demand provinces belonging to vassals and lesser personal union partners in a separate peace with their overlord.
- Peace Offers: You can now demand the last province of a lesser partner in a personal union, like you can with vassals.
- Rebalanced costs of peace a bit , so that for a large country, demanding 100 WS is maximum 25% of the country.
- Peacescores are now scaled to importance for country.
- Religion, Culture and Core status now affects the peacecosts of a province.
- Revolts are more likely to happen when you refuse a good peace offer.
- It is no longer possible to demand more gold than what a country has in its coffers.
- Declining a stability hitting peace offer now also reduces your prestige.
- Can now demand more than one vassal capital province in the peace view.
- The "stability hit" threshold on a peace offer is now reduced by the war-exhaustion of the target.

- Tropical now have severe impacts on income from a province.
- Halved the colonial growth penalties from tropical provinces and natives to correspond to the new colonial growth rate.
- Rebalanced colonial range to be lower before 1500.
- Non-Accepted culture provinces are now -30% on manpower instead of -50%. (Same as tax is).
- There is now a random chance of discovering unknown provinces neighboring your cities.
- You can now correctly send missionaries to provinces that are constructing troops or ships.
- Overseas territories will no longer be the home of the counter-reformation.

This game seems so good to read/hear about but it is also daunting and Ive owned earlier versions of EU and they just swamp my boat repeatedly.

This game seems so good to read/hear about but it is also daunting and Ive owned earlier versions of EU and they just swamp my boat repeatedly.


That is actually almost 100% how I feel about Championship manager oddly enough. Everyone raves about it, but I always felt so overwhelmed and my lack of knowledge about soccer never helped.

This game is probably similar in that there is so much going on everywhere you don't know where to start. That is why the In Nomine expansion pack is so great (well one of many reasons), that it gives you missions to accomplish that can help direct you to a logical course of what you should be focusing on. Starting off as certain small countries can help too such as Mecklenburg is very easy to play. It is rich, so you have money to do stuff, small so you don't get overwhelmed, in the Holy Roman Empire so you have some level of protection but not invincible and alot of neighbors and possible directions to go in.

Stuff...


post whore. ;)

Atually, Paradox announced last month that they'll be releasing an EU3 Complete edition, with the game and both expansions for $39.99 or so in October. So, if you're an EU fan who's been waiting (like me), wait another month. :)

at that price i might give it a shot but I think there is another great coming out this fall that is a must by. It involves a round thing, 11 players, and is played on a pitch :)

Atually, Paradox announced last month that they'll be releasing an EU3 Complete edition, with the game and both expansions for $39.99 or so in October. So, if you're an EU fan who's been waiting (like me), wait another month. :)

I saw that. Also, the Rome EU game is getting a expansion download only released in Decemebr so some good stuff on the horizon.

I saw that. Also, the Rome EU game is getting a expansion download only released in Decemebr so some good stuff on the horizon.


I never bought EU:Rome.. It just doesn't seem to have the playability of the other games.. Someone convince me I'm wrong on that?

I never bought EU:Rome.. It just doesn't seem to have the playability of the other games.. Someone convince me I'm wrong on that?

If you are a fan of that era "Roman" it is alot of fun and IMHO the best Rome themed game out there including Total War Rome. This is especially true after the last patch.

I wish EU 3 worked with Vista and my video card :(

Atually, Paradox announced last month that they'll be releasing an EU3 Complete edition, with the game and both expansions for $39.99 or so in October. So, if you're an EU fan who's been waiting (like me), wait another month. :)


If you were waiting for a good deal to try out EU3, I have a better one than that for some of you at least. People who already had Colonization 2 on their immediate buy list can get EU3 for free if they pre-order it on Gamersgate. This is just EU3, not the full expansions.. but if you were already going to get Colonization 2, this is a pretty good deal.

I wish I wouldn't have accidentally left my EU3 disc at home. I'm getting the urge to try it out and explore it more fully. Granted, it's just vanilla because I don't have the expansions, but still.

I wish I wouldn't have accidentally left my EU3 disc at home. I'm getting the urge to try it out and explore it more fully. Granted, it's just vanilla because I don't have the expansions, but still.

In my opinion I don't know if vanilla EU3 is as good as EU2 was or CK honestly. EU3 only won me over with In Nomine.. however I'm not sold on the latest In Nomine patch, I think they need to do a bit more tweaking on it.

For anyone who cares this week EU III :Complete Edition is being relelased. It has the origianal EU3 plus both expansion pacts for $30-40 dollars depending where you get it. i think after reading Alan's impressions and recommendations I will have to pick this up.

For anyone who cares this week EU III :Complete Edition is being relelased. It has the origianal EU3 plus both expansion pacts for $30-40 dollars depending where you get it. i think after reading Alan's impressions and recommendations I will have to pick this up.


In Nomine definitely makes it a better game. I don't know that it is enough to make someone who doesn't enjoy this type of game want to play it, but if you normally enjoy this type of thing.. I love EU3: IN. Just got through playing a weekly multiplayer game with Barkeep that we do a little while ago as well.

Wooooooo!

Latest patch + Latest Video Drivers = Working EU3 on Vista!

Atually, Paradox announced last month that they'll be releasing an EU3 Complete edition, with the game and both expansions for $39.99 or so in October. So, if you're an EU fan who's been waiting (like me), wait another month. :)

For anyone who cares this week EU III :Complete Edition is being relelased. It has the origianal EU3 plus both expansion pacts for $30-40 dollars depending where you get it. i think after reading Alan's impressions and recommendations I will have to pick this up.

Anyone see the complete edition in stores yet? I know it is suppose to be out in stores tomorrow in NA? But, hard to say if they are really distributing it much since they lose money on this as opposed to someone buying all the EUIII expansion and original separately.

For anyone still looking to get the EU3 Complete pack, it appears Best Buy has this at 9.99 (at least currently)... THat is a pretty good price for the game + both expansion packs.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9089675&st=europa+&type=product&id=1218019186389

I just got EU3 complete. It's really cool. After reading a few AARs I dove in. Controlling Denmark seemed like it would be fun, but so far not a lot has happened. I think I may restart and be a little bit more of a warmonger. I basically hunkered down, built a few regiments of cavalry, and allied up with some of the minors below me as well as Poland.

Unfortunately, I can't get my regiments to go onto boats, so I can't invade the Teutonic Order (which is getting thrashed right now by Poland and Lithuania)...

I left click the 2 infantry divisions that I want to put on the boats. I then have tried right clicking on the water under the boats, on the boats themselves, and on the port, and none of these have led to my troops getting on the boat. I don't see a reason why I can't put 2 regiments of infantry on boats that claim they can hold 4 regiments.

Any help?

I just got EU3 complete. It's really cool. After reading a few AARs I dove in. Controlling Denmark seemed like it would be fun, but so far not a lot has happened. I think I may restart and be a little bit more of a warmonger. I basically hunkered down, built a few regiments of cavalry, and allied up with some of the minors below me as well as Poland.

Unfortunately, I can't get my regiments to go onto boats, so I can't invade the Teutonic Order (which is getting thrashed right now by Poland and Lithuania)...

I left click the 2 infantry divisions that I want to put on the boats. I then have tried right clicking on the water under the boats, on the boats themselves, and on the port, and none of these have led to my troops getting on the boat. I don't see a reason why I can't put 2 regiments of infantry on boats that claim they can hold 4 regiments.

Any help?

The only way to load boats is you have to have boats capable of transport (The boats will indicate that they can transport. not all boats are capable of it). You have to move the boat to a water space adjacent to your land territory that your troops are located in. You have to move your troops to the water territory the same way you would move them to an adjacent land territory, but only after the boats are there. And you can't put more troops there then you have boat space to carry them.

As for a warmonger type, the best warmonger countries in my opinion for a starter player are Bohemia and Austria (if starting at the very earliest date allowed in IN), or France. All three of those become way too easy to play once you are more familiar with the game.

I just got EU3 complete.

Just picked this up m'self for $10 at Best Buy. Apparently all of the Paradox titles are that price there this week.

For anyone still looking to get the EU3 Complete pack, it appears Best Buy has this at 9.99 (at least currently)... THat is a pretty good price for the game + both expansion packs.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9089675&st=europa+&type=product&id=1218019186389

Heh, just to follow up there, I guess. It's not just EU3 Complete that's that price. So is EU Rome, Supreme Ruler 2020, and a handful of other titles I've identified as Paradox games.

Ah! My problem was that the ships were at port. It's odd that you have to actually move the ships OUT of port before you can load troops on to them...

Thanks Alan T.! (Is that "T" for "Turing"? :P)

New EU3 3.2 Beta out today:

- Reputation was called badboy in a trigger tooltip.
- The target country is now correctly shown if it's not the player in event effect tooltips.
- Mission effect text now left formatted and uses a smaller font in the mission view.
- The AI will no longer gain inflation when going bankrupt to reduce cycles of constant bankruptcies.
- Navalcombats will now be a bit quicker, with more morale loss.
- Fixed a problem which could cause OOS when starting a game in MP.
- Performed some optimisations and memory leak removals in the game.
- Battles now have a length of at least 10 days, which will lessen "ping-pong".
- has_empty_adjacent_province now only checks land provinces.
- Trade embargos has some bigger drawbacks now.
- The 'heretic' eventscope should now work properly.
- Its no longer possible to excommunicate someone already excommunicated.
- Assaults can now fail as soon as the morale of the infantry is 0.
- Added a new province for Holstein.

New EU3 3.2 Beta out today:

- Reputation was called badboy in a trigger tooltip.
- The target country is now correctly shown if it's not the player in event effect tooltips.
- Mission effect text now left formatted and uses a smaller font in the mission view.
- The AI will no longer gain inflation when going bankrupt to reduce cycles of constant bankruptcies.
- Navalcombats will now be a bit quicker, with more morale loss.
- Fixed a problem which could cause OOS when starting a game in MP.
- Performed some optimisations and memory leak removals in the game.
- Battles now have a length of at least 10 days, which will lessen "ping-pong".
- has_empty_adjacent_province now only checks land provinces.
- Trade embargos has some bigger drawbacks now.
- The 'heretic' eventscope should now work properly.
- Its no longer possible to excommunicate someone already excommunicated.
- Assaults can now fail as soon as the morale of the infantry is 0.
- Added a new province for Holstein.


Some notes on this, sounds like some people are getting crashes to the desktop when minimizing the game with this patch. it is also completely not save-game compatible. I might wait and see if anyone else mention problems with it before trying myself down the road.

(Remember, it is a beta patch, but the last beta patch remained beta for over a year so.. *shrug*)

A new Beta out today with some fixes and additional changes to 3.2:

- Ledger: Fixed a crash bug with building buildings
- Ledger: Fixed missing tooltips for province decisions
- Fixed missing gold icon in text
- Fixed an exit crash
- Alt-tab crash fixed.
- Combat now starts with fire phase.
- Battles now last 12 days minimum, with 2 fire and 2 shock phases.
- Units that end up inside the empire after peace, can now move through the empire to get back.

First time in a while that I played the game the entire way through to the end. The map was from 1800, but only because I forgot to take one at 1821 :)

Started off as Muscovy, eventually becoming Russia and played with certain house rules (I could only take territories that I either had a core on, or had a mission to take). I also did not take any vassals unless they were the same religion as me (Orthodox).

It made some parts a bit more challenging for sure (especially at the beginning when I was constantly at war with the Golden Horde, Novrogod and Lithuania)

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y19/Turlos/EU3_MAP_RUS_180097_4.jpg

Interesting outcomes there. A few notables on that map:

A fractured North America--doesn't look like the US has emerged.

Aragon is still alive and kicking in eastern Iberia.

Germany never formed.

Persia is still a power.

The OE is completely fractured and hasn't been reconquered.

Korea did well for itself.

Ming has a significant bite taken out of its south-western interior..

India never formed.

Was that Naples which almost unified Italy (and Greece? or that could be some other country) and Austria with a bunch of German and Swiss territory?

Interesting outcomes there. A few notables on that map:

A fractured North America--doesn't look like the US has emerged.

Aragon is still alive and kicking in eastern Iberia.

Germany never formed.

Persia is still a power.

The OE is completely fractured and hasn't been reconquered.

Korea did well for itself.

Ming has a significant bite taken out of its south-western interior..

India never formed.

Germany never formed because Flanders (later to become Netherlands) took over most of it early. Later on Austria beat them back out for the most part of Germany.


OE and Ming both being destroyed was due most likely to me and my assaults. Despite not attacking on whim, I often did have missions/cores in those lands. When I went in, I destroyed them, often causing all kinds of rebels issues. Wu ended up taking over everything that was Ming related, while OE ended up going over to Persia for the most part.

Korea also benefited thanks to my advances.

Was that Naples which almost unified Italy (and Greece? or that could be some other country) and Austria with a bunch of German and Swiss territory?


That was Naples there as well as Austria

Heir to the Throne came out yesterday. AI is apparently much improved! New casus belli system looks awesome and some heir-related stuff that adds some more fun around succession wars.

I'm going to dig into it tomorrow. Should be lots of fun!

Got it today and messed around with it a bit. I really like the new Casus Belli system, but didn't really test out the new features. Recruiting advisors is really nice too. Now I'm not stuck with an endless list of advisors for interest and stability costs. The two I recruited were both Level 1, but at least I got advisors contributing to tech instead of no advisors at all.

Plan to start up a more serious go at it this weekend.

I haven't gotten it yet, but plan on it. I found myself 2-3 hours of time to play the demo though and managed to form the Holy Roman Empire out of Austria. That was fun!

How can I get this before get Christmas money?

Hmmm.

So, saw this game (EU 3) on the shelf a few times, but never looked at it really. Definitely sounds intriguing to say the least as i am a huge history guy who reads a ton of books on different time periods. Lots of questions though :

-First off : Now what about vista ? What i found : Vista should work correctly if there is a compatible driver available for your card.
What driver ? I mean, my card obviously is working, so that means i have a compatible driver, doesn´t it ?

- is the demo still available to test this out ?


Then for gameplay and such :

-Is it turn-based or "real time" alas how much "fast clicking" do i have to do ? There isn´t much "battle clicking" either, is there ?
Basically all those type of games i tried were continuously running and i just couldn´t keep up at all.
I read somewhere that battle isn´t "played" ? That´d be a huge plus right there.

-How time-consuming is it overall ? (like, how many hours of gametime get you where, aproximately ?) I mean, that would be the ideal game to play over and over with different countries, but is that possible ?

-How is the balance between developing and having to expand ? Can i also be a nice little country renowned for science or sth without ever having to go to war ? (just as one example)

-And now, all those updates. Those are all Patches that i can get on the web ?

-What are the add-ons adding exactly ? The base game costs only 12 Euros, the addons bought single or the complete edition comes to about 30 ...


EDIT : Is this Europe only or can you also control "nations" at more exotic places ?

EDIT 2 : What are the alternatives/contenders for this type of game ?

To try to answer your questions:

1) Vista works, as does windows 7. I've run EU3 on both fine.
2) They refer to your video card driver. It requires pixelshaders which most modern cards support. Some onboard graphics cards or cheaper cards don't support or work well with them. By all means try out the demo on your system before buying it.
3) Yes, I just posted in the other EU3 thread before this one got bumped back up that a demo for the newest expansion pack is out. I believe you can play it as stand alone (I might be wrong on that but am pretty sure)
4) It is real time, but several different speed settings and the ability to pause as you need it. No battle clicking, it is not a tactical game, it is a strategic level game. You move your forces to the right territories but don't actually fight out the battles manually.

5) Time consuming, it depends on what you are tying to do and how fast of a speed you play. If you play the grand campaign (1399 until 1821), it can take many many hours to play through. (I usually take weeks or more of an hour or two here or there to do that).

6) Game balance in my opinion is pretty good. You can choose your focus if you want to be a trader/military might/religious zealot/colonizer or some kind of hybrid country and go to it. You obviously have to keep a balance in mind though (ie: need money for your military, or need a military to protect your trade/etc).

7) Patches are available from their website as long as you have the game registered I believe.

8) By add-ons I assume you mean expansion packs.. they are what make the game great. Just the original EU3 was ok, but now very underwhelming compared to what it is with the expansion packs.

9) This is the entire world, you can control countries wherever, but the game is Europe-centric, so most of the interesting game play is based around that region somewhat.

The game actually IS turn-based, but the turns are of very short duration. Turns are simultaneously resolved. A turn represents one day in history and you play through every day from 1399 to 1820 in the grand campaign. Most actions take many turns to carry out. Technologies take over a year to research at least. Battles take at least 5 days, usually a bit longer.

You can set the speed of the game (no clicking end-turn 365 times a yaer, thankfully) to indicate how fast you want turns to last. Usually you'll be playing on fast-ish speed and pause occasionally to issue your units orders, dispatch diplomats and merchants, and respond to requests and events. It's entirely managable if you like strategy games.

The game actually IS turn-based, but the turns are of very short duration. Turns are simultaneously resolved. A turn represents one day in history and you play through every day from 1399 to 1820 in the grand campaign. Most actions take many turns to carry out. Technologies take over a year to research at least. Battles take at least 5 days, usually a bit longer.

You can set the speed of the game (no clicking end-turn 365 times a yaer, thankfully) to indicate how fast you want turns to last. Usually you'll be playing on fast-ish speed and pause occasionally to issue your units orders, dispatch diplomats and merchants, and respond to requests and events. It's entirely managable if you like strategy games.


When I think of turn-based games, it is ones where you take a turn and hit ok to advance to the next turn, which EU3 does not do. I guess I have a different definition of turn based games, so I'm not sure which he was referring to when asked if it was turn based.

In a reductio ad absurdum, you could call every computer or console game a simultaneous turn-based game where a turn is of a fixed 300 or 150ms duration (e.g. the framerate dictates how many "turns" per second and the resolution of input, etc). The real distinction is that in a turn-based game, a turn is longer than one frame and the timing of turns passing is not set in stone. So the game resolves actions one turn at a time, but any one turn could last any amount of time in real life. In a non-turn-based game, a turn lasts a fixed amount of time equal to the inverse of its framerate. Also, non-turn-based game resolve your input each turn and not in-between, whereas in turn-based games you can give the game plenty of input between turns and it won't forget it.

thanks for all your answers you guys :) Played the demo for a bit and liked it enough to see myself giving it a good hard look, ordered the complete collection with the 2 expansions (in nomine, napoleon) , was just about 12 euros on amazon uk with shipping to germany :)

Turn would be like in FM for me ;) But it felt okay with the demo and having the ability to stop is good.
At some point i just have to try sth other than sports (management) games ;)

EDIT : do i have to download any patches with this edition ? I read on the feature list that "in nomine" changes gameplay things like rebels and religion, does that then hold true for the full game ?

EDIT 2 : Is there any chance of, like, surviving as the Mayan or Inca Empire ? Or as, say, Granada ? That would interest me as a starting point if there´s a chance to survive.

Purchased the whole set today (complete and Heir to the Throne) and I have a question. How the hell do I "use" a casus belli?

Playing as Bavaria, have conquest casus belli on Ansbach, alliance casus belli on a bunch of countries but if I try to declare war on them I get the -2 stability hit and it tells me I don't have casus belli. Confused.

When you go to declare war, you sould see Casus Belli options on the screen. You should see "Alliance Casus Belli" or maybe just "Alliance"....I forget.

Heir to the Throne - Dev Diary 7 - Paradox Interactive Forums (http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=442732)

The third screenshot at the bottom of that post shows the screen. On the right inside the "Declare War" box, you see "No Casus Belli" and "Reconquest". That's where you should see "Alliance" or "Conquest" or whatever other CBs you have on the nation. Click on it and it'll change the conditions of war, including what your stability hit would be.

EDIT 2 : Is there any chance of, like, surviving as the Mayan or Inca Empire ? Or as, say, Granada ? That would interest me as a starting point if there´s a chance to survive.

Granada is possible. It's hard, but if you got the right allies, you might be bale to survive.

The Native Americans are another story. The tech advantage the Europeans have by the time they get there is so big that all you could hope to do is survive. I've never tried it.

Granada is possible. It's hard, but if you got the right allies, you might be bale to survive.

The Native Americans are another story. The tech advantage the Europeans have by the time they get there is so big that all you could hope to do is survive. I've never tried it.


Granada is pretty difficult to survive as even with good allies. None of the European powers will ally you, and the African powers won't be enough to keep Castille/Portugal off of your back.

The way to survive as Granada is somewhat gamey. You pretty much have to immediately invade some small one province country somewhere just to give yourself some land away from Castille and prevent them from being able to just outright annex you. Then it is just a matter of buying time to building yourself up strong enough to keep them away yourself.

When i read how many things are new in the 2 expansions aside from the timeline i stopped playing the demo (didn´t want to play the HTTT demo as i don´t plan on paying 20 bucks right now, maybe later if i really love the game) and now am awaiting delivery by amazon. Hope for Monday as i won´t have much time over christmas and directly afterward i have to pack up for my upcoming move to a new place right after new years...

@ Alan T : OK, i´ll try that later on. I guess i will try my hand with a stronger country to start or maybe one of the more remote/quiet areas. Any pointers for countries that will let me expand some without being attacked by stronger countries right off the bat ?


And i´ve browsed around the Forum for the game at paradox and wow, that´s a damn active and crowded place :eek: What´s the deal with all those mods available, any usefull ones that also maybe simplify things and "make sense" rather than just add even more stuff to a game allready full of stuff to do ? EU3 - User Modifications - Paradox Interactive Forums (http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=357)
Even in the FAQ posts of the respective subforums of the mods theres a bunch of features and everything but no real "what does this mod do" explanation.

@ Alan T : OK, i´ll try that later on. I guess i will try my hand with a stronger country to start or maybe one of the more remote/quiet areas. Any pointers for countries that will let me expand some without being attacked by stronger countries right off the bat ?





Most people say the best beginner countries are either Portugal or Castille. Portugal as long as you stay in good relations with Castille pretty much has free reign to do whatever else you want without attack. Including trying out merchant play, Colonization or whatever else you want.

Castille is not usually in France's sights at the start, so they don't have any huge threats early on either and are pretty strong. They give you the chance to be a warmonger, a colonizer, or whatever you want as well.

As for the mods, most of them are to add features to the game. There are some specific ones for other purposes such as changing the apperance of the map or what not. I've tried many of the mods out and some are pretty good, but I usually play without any mods myself because Barkeep and I still play a weekly EU3 game and having the game modded means it is virtually impossible to play multiplayer

I've narrowed down my choices for my next EU3 game to:



Bar - French, one province, indy
Ulster, Connacht, Munster, Leinster - the one province Ireland provinces
Yaroslavl - Russian one province, surrounded by big boys
Mazovia, Transylvania, Wallachia
Haasa - Arabian Peninsula Shiite
Sukhothai - One province Buddihst state in central SE Asia
Khandesh - One province Sunni state in central India
Manipur - One province Hindu province in inner west SE Asia just east of Bengal.
Makassar - One province Sunni province in Indies

I always enjoyed playing as Irish provinces with the goal of taking over all of England/Scotland/Ireland.

I asked this on the paradox forum but thought maybe you guys could help. I have upgraded to HttT and now many of the custom flags are not showing. The game loads the original flags, not the ones I have gotten from here. I looked in the gfx/flags folder and the custom flags are still there so where are the default flags coming from? Also can I just copy over them, once they are found, to use the custom flags again? Thanks for any help.

Farther along than I've gotten with either EU1 or 2. (bought the Gold pack plus HTTT over the weekend.)

Got through the tutorials and started a game with Castille on very easy. Went right to war with Grenada and got that, but I probably should have waited a bit in hindsight. I have very good relations with Portugal and was able to grab Aragon in a war but only the one province. So I was sitting pretty well.

Then, new ruler. My prestige started to drop, I got caught up in a war with Aragon and didn't realize they were allied with France and England, half my provinces started to rebel and it was frankly a disaster. I lost Aragon, Navarra and Pironni (sp?) (which I had taken from England but couldn't get them to cede before all hell broke loose).

So, two newbie questions:

How do you keep your prestige up?
How do you pass the time getting your government tech to 9 so I can start to actually colonize? (which I was waiting to do but got antsy and jumped in that ill fated war instead)

So far so good I guess.

Dont declare war is a good start, hire good advisors, and sit patiently.

Farther along than I've gotten with either EU1 or 2. (bought the Gold pack plus HTTT over the weekend.)

Got through the tutorials and started a game with Castille on very easy. Went right to war with Grenada and got that, but I probably should have waited a bit in hindsight. I have very good relations with Portugal and was able to grab Aragon in a war but only the one province. So I was sitting pretty well.

Then, new ruler. My prestige started to drop, I got caught up in a war with Aragon and didn't realize they were allied with France and England, half my provinces started to rebel and it was frankly a disaster. I lost Aragon, Navarra and Pironni (sp?) (which I had taken from England but couldn't get them to cede before all hell broke loose).

So, two newbie questions:

How do you keep your prestige up?
How do you pass the time getting your government tech to 9 so I can start to actually colonize? (which I was waiting to do but got antsy and jumped in that ill fated war instead)

So far so good I guess.


With no other factors, your prestige wants to return to 0. So you have to actively add National Ideas, or Provincial decisions or other things to allow your prestige to tick higher. The most common way to get quick prestige is from winning battles, but you have to have other ways to sustain that prestige. A quick way for people to lose prestige (other than losing battles) is to have a bunch of core territories that other nations own. If you hover over your prestige it will give you an idea of what things are adding or subtracting from your prestige each month. If you have territories that you do not own but consider core, it is a good idea to try to capture them back if you can reasonably easily to prevent your prestige from falling.

As for passing the time to Government tech 9, you can work on improving your trade, or work on missions given you, or really whatever you want to focus on. Generally early on since colonization is out most people focus either on trade or easy wars that can help strengthen their position. Your war with granada was a good one, but you absolutely don't want to fight France early on unless your goal is going to be to try to destabilize you. There are ways that you can team up with other allies and put a dent into France early on, but it likely will take you away from any other focus other than that for a while.

I just wish a true CK2 would come out.

I just wish a true CK2 would come out.

Plus. Fucking. One.

+ 2

With no other factors, your prestige wants to return to 0. So you have to actively add National Ideas, or Provincial decisions or other things to allow your prestige to tick higher. The most common way to get quick prestige is from winning battles, but you have to have other ways to sustain that prestige. A quick way for people to lose prestige (other than losing battles) is to have a bunch of core territories that other nations own. If you hover over your prestige it will give you an idea of what things are adding or subtracting from your prestige each month. If you have territories that you do not own but consider core, it is a good idea to try to capture them back if you can reasonably easily to prevent your prestige from falling.

As for passing the time to Government tech 9, you can work on improving your trade, or work on missions given you, or really whatever you want to focus on. Generally early on since colonization is out most people focus either on trade or easy wars that can help strengthen their position. Your war with granada was a good one, but you absolutely don't want to fight France early on unless your goal is going to be to try to destabilize you. There are ways that you can team up with other allies and put a dent into France early on, but it likely will take you away from any other focus other than that for a while.

I went back to an early save before everything went sour and tried patience. :)

Realized I didn't understand and so hadn't been doing anything in trade at all, so got that going and up to 5 merchants in three centers of trade. Then got Papal Controller so took advantage of that to grab a couple of provinces from Morocco in a holy war, which jumped both my prestige and my legitimacy numbers way up (the legitimacy number had been -20 and went to 45 or so).

England now has Navarra which makes me a little concerned but he's not actively in the area at all and we have a royal marriage, though our relations are in the negative -- so I'm courting France a bit just in case England gets aggressive.

It's hard to just wait, but that's part of the game I guess when the time span is so big. My mission is to get one more Morocco province so that will likely be my next war. My personal mission is to grab all of Iberia (except Portugal) before I get to colonization.

Appreciate the tips.

I went back to an early save before everything went sour and tried patience. :)

Realized I didn't understand and so hadn't been doing anything in trade at all, so got that going and up to 5 merchants in three centers of trade. Then got Papal Controller so took advantage of that to grab a couple of provinces from Morocco in a holy war, which jumped both my prestige and my legitimacy numbers way up (the legitimacy number had been -20 and went to 45 or so).

England now has Navarra which makes me a little concerned but he's not actively in the area at all and we have a royal marriage, though our relations are in the negative -- so I'm courting France a bit just in case England gets aggressive.

It's hard to just wait, but that's part of the game I guess when the time span is so big. My mission is to get one more Morocco province so that will likely be my next war. My personal mission is to grab all of Iberia (except Portugal) before I get to colonization.

Appreciate the tips.


I haven't played as Spain much in the past, but I don't remember most of the Morocco provinces being that valuable. So be careful when grabbing a ton of those provinces, if they don't have valuable resources for trade purposes, or valuable production or tax base, they actually end up as an anchor for your country's growth. The more provinces you have the higher the cost is for research and tech development. If you get valuable provinces, they are worth more than the increased time for tech development, but poor provinces end up being an anchor.

If you are looking to expand, try to pick up either rich Provinces or ones that you have cores on. (Especially provinces you have cores on as that will also help you with your prestige issue). As Castille, the obvious early game expansion for you likely is: Granada -> Aragon (but be careful to not piss off France in the process and not cause your War weariness to get so high that you look like a good target for someone else). Alternatively you could try to reach out and go after some of the Italian minors, especially the ones in the south that are not part of the HRE, they can be fairly weak early on. The richer Italian provinces are in the HRE though, so tread carefully there.

Gotcha. The only reason I went Morocco was my national mission (is that what it's called?) was to establish some Christian cities there so I needed to take three provinces. I'm not planning on doing anymore there once I get that third province.

Aragon is my main target when the time seems right (no major alliances, cassis belli and a weak English leader are the main things I'm waiting for).

In one of the MP games Alan and I played, I was Castille. I have also played them in several SP games. After Granada I definitely recommend trying to pick-off some of the easier island countries and/or southern Italy. You do need to nibble away at Aragon, but they're also a good French buffer state. If I were recommending the game to someone new I would probably start them in 1492 as the time expanded from there is good if you want to build a base and have a plan, but otherwise 1492 gets them to the action much quicker. To go past the boring parts, I definitely recommend turning the speed up.

Barkeep and I finished another one of our multiplayer games last night. (we play weekly on Sunday nights) I think we started this one last December, so took maybe about 20 weeks to play. I started out as The Hansa and eventually became Germany. He started out as Venice and ended up becoming Italy. Here are the maps! First map is just our countries and our vassals (vassals are the slightly different shaded color). The second map is everyone in the world.

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y19/Turlos/EU3_MAP_mp_182112_2.jpg

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y19/Turlos/EU3_MAP_mp_182112_3.jpg


In the World map, in North America, the Green is Portugal, Purple is Brittany, grey is Germany, White is the Papal State and Orange is Quebec.

In Central America, All of that Blue is actually the Mayans, believe it or not.

In South America, it is mostly Castille (the Yellow). The Darker Burgandy is Aragon, the lighter Magenta is Venezuela

In Africa, you have some Castille (yellow), some Italy (olive Green), Some Portugal (Green), some Tripoli (I think - the light green), Morocco (salmon colored), and all kinds of various others.

Australia is pretty much Portugal and Castille.

For other large countries of note...

England does not exist at all (neither does Great Britain). It actually ended up becoming the Papal State in a weird move earlier in the game. So the places you see the Papal State are the left overs of the former British Empire.

If you are looking for France, you can see it in one little spot in Africa, two places in South America or if you look really hard in the Caribbean somewhere.

Ming, Manchu and Japan all have one tiny little territory each roughly where you would expect them.

All of Cuba is now known as the UPCA. I had to actually look that one up as I had never seen it before ever in a game of EU3 before. Turns out that is the Democratic government of Central America (now a days known as Guatemala).

I have a quick question since I can't use the search function at the paradox boards. For those of you with all of the expansions and the HttT patch 4.1 beta, when you select your nation on the start a game or continue save game get those black streaks like when you are occupied? I just switched computers and used an older patch so I have never noticed this until the newest patch. Thanks.

I have a quick question since I can't use the search function at the paradox boards. For those of you with all of the expansions and the HttT patch 4.1 beta, when you select your nation on the start a game or continue save game get those black streaks like when you are occupied? I just switched computers and used an older patch so I have never noticed this until the newest patch. Thanks.


Yeah, that is new in this patch.

Thanks, Alan T.

I've been getting into this now that I have a new PC that can zoom through a month in a few seconds on the fastest setting. It will hold me over until Victoria II comes out in two weeks.

I started as England in the 1453 scenario (I think that's it anyway, whatever one begins right after the Ottomans took Constantinople). I've been beating up on the Irish and Scottish (annexed all of Ireland within 20 years, took some Scottish territory) but I haven't fared as well in wars with France and a super Burgundy (who inherited Aragon and have a big lead on everyone for income), Calais is my only remaining province on the continent but it's only a matter of time before the Burgundians take that. I figure I'll make Quest for the New World my next national idea and start colonizing the east coast of North America instead of fighting them and the French once a decade.

They announced another expansion for EU III - Divine Wind

It's going to be released in December. Here's the features so far.

Features:

Play as one of four major daimyo’s in Japan vying for influence over the Emperor and control over the Shogunate
Enhanced diplomacy with more options for alliances and peace negotiations
Dozens of new culture-specific building types allowing greater control over the development of provinces
More realistic development of trade
Manage the internal factions within China to keep the Mandate of Heaven
Over 50 Achievements for players to unlock
Multiplayer for up to 32 players
Requires Europa Universalis III Complete and the expansion Heir to the Throne in order to play

Europa Universalis III: Divine Wind announced - Paradox Interactive (http://www.paradoxplaza.com/press/2010/9/europa-universalis-iii-divine-wind-announced)

Wouldn't have been my choice for expansion really, I thought Rome especially needed some love.

But they did a poll on the forums and EUIII won that OVERWHELMINGLY with almost 50% of the total vote (it was iirc EUIII - RotW, Vic2 - ACW, Rome - Alexander era, HoI3 - I forget...playability perhaps)

I'm interested in the improvements to diplomacy. That is one area that could certainly do with some vast improvements in my opinion.

And trade could be interesting depending on what they do with it.

And I might actually play China or Japan for once if they make them cool enough. Never played as either before, so it'd be something new.

They're also supposed to be making a bunch of tweaks to the interface and such, so we'll see how that goes.

And the map has gotten an overhaul, looks much better. More Victoria 2ish.

There is a pretty neat Sengoku Jidai mod for EUIII that is quite good already.

I keep chomping at the bit for Divine Wind. There've been a bunch of awesome developer diaries for it, and it's release is still Q4 2010. That means next month basically.

Some of my favorite adds from the dev diaries I quoted below. There is a lot I didn't quote and add:

First up - by popular demand - the call allies button. No longer do you have to call in your allies into pointless wars that have nothing to do with them. Instead, you can save them for wars that really matter. Allies will be automatically called when you are the defender, and you also have a check box you can click when you are the attacker to call allies. Otherwise, you can pick who joins your war and when they will do it. You can also bring new allies into a war once it has begun, but only if you are the war leader.

The final diplomatic option we have added is the ability to integrate countries that you are in a personal union with. This functions like a diplomatic annexation requiring high relations, but instead of 10 years you need to be a personal Union for 50 years. Like annexation, the junior partner is free to refuse your just and wise offer to integrate their country into yours.



We've tried to change this by introducing two new concepts; Trade Range and a compete chance bonus for each province you own that is connected to the specific center. The first one is a range which works very similarly to Naval Range, but instead of influencing colonies it influences how far away a center of trade can be for you to trade in it. It also calculates range from your closest province, so that it now pays to control provinces in strategic places the world over. The second one means that the greater fraction of the value of a CoT you physically control, the greater chance you have of actually getting a piece of that value. We then rebalanced Mercantilism and Free Trade to work with these new concepts so that a Mercantilist gets an increased bonus for owning provinces while a Free Trader gets an increased base chance and longer range. In conclusion, all this means that you now have two distinct paths to gain access to the great wealth of trade; you can either take direct control over the rich provinces and protect that wealth through mercantilism (even if you don't happen to own every CoT in the neighborhood) or you can be a free trader and get a piece of the action everywhere.

Now, while this is a fairly big step in evolving the existing trade system, it's not the only step we've taken. As you all know, each province has a specific trade goods which contributes to the CoT's value. The value, however, used to be the only difference between them and there was not really any reason for a naval nation to keep an eye on the naval supplies trade, not so any more. We've added a concept we call strategic resources, where each trade good brings a bonus. Naval Supplies for example will give you a bonus to naval force limit. So how do you get access to this bonus? The answer is of course trade. You need to have access to a certain fraction of the world market to get the bonus, and you do this by having a least one trade in CoTs representing this fraction of the market. If, say 10% of the worlds Naval Supplies are traded out of Riga and you have at least one trader there, you have access to 10% and so on. We believe this will give a new dimension to trading even if you aren't one of the top five trading nations in the world. You will need to make sure you keep an eye on those pesky ex-vikings up north that start to put their hands on the Naval Supplies provinces around the Baltic Sea; with all those in the hands of one nation what would a sudden embargo do to your Grand Fleet?

Finally, we added one last feature that uses the trade goods, namely the concept of Trade and Production leader. This means that if you are the nation that either controls the majority of the world production (by owning the provinces) or the world trade (by gaining access via trading) of a certain good, you will get a bonus. It's not a major bonus but we believe it's enough to bring yet another area of conflict and competition to the game and new areas of conflict increase replayability even more.


So for Divine Wind, the first thing we did was to get rid of a lot of the province decisions and merge in their effects in the buildings system. Then we had some unemployed magistrates so we made it so that each building you build requires a magistrate. The good thing with this is that we get rid of the gamey tactic of minting furiously when you know that the workshop is coming up in a tech or two and then carpet your country in them within a day, now you have to manage your magistrates and prioritize.

Then we looked over all the effects of buildings and province decisions and tried to get rid of overlapping and useless effects. After this was done we ended up with 56 different buildings.


So out of my bag of tricks this week is a few minor features we have added to the game. First up Trade Winds and colonisation. We have increased the distance that sea provinces have for range calculations and added in more trade wind provinces. The upshot is that Brazil and the Caribbean are ‘closer’ game terms to Iberia and much further from places like Britain and France. This makes it easier for the Iberian powers to explore this part of the world while making going to North America the first logical choice for Great Britain. Our goal is to use game mechanics to give a little historical push to countries.

Next the HRE, we have made it more difficult to take non core territory inside the HRE if you are a member. So it is now time to give something back so there is always a viable strategy for HRE countries to expand inside the empire. So now when an HRE member inherits another country any Imperial provinces are automatically considered your core regardless of the underlying culture of the province.

Moving swiftly along to rebels. We have made two changes to them, one cosmetic and one rather major. Each Rebel type now has a unique flag, which means at a glance you can see that all rebels are the same. Once you learn the flags you will be able prioritize the pretenders and zealots over the angry peasants. Rebels now also fight each other. Pretenders no longer help nationalists break up the kingdom they are trying to claim.

We have also increased the cap on the number envoys, i.e. magistrates, colonists etc. that you can store. You can now have 9 of each, meaning you can save up more magistrates before that next wave of buildings comes along.

The final change is to army numbers. We have imported the system of army numbers from Victoria 2 with its colour-coded information. This allows you to quickly see how strong you and your enemies are, making army management less of a pain.


On China:


China has always been a bit of a problem in Europa Universalis; a huge nation with huge potential power, that for some reason spent the era in decline and failed to compete with the European powers. This kind of situation, where a nation is theoretically strong (and therefore strong in a historical setup) but due to bad decisions or factors not modeled in the game acts weak, is always a problem in a strategy game. We have always had the problem where the Chinese AI takes a look at what it has to work with and goes on to conquer large chunks of the world. The solution so far has been to give China a modifier that simply penalizes it for being China. We figured we could do better than that.

We sat down and thought about how we could tame the Chinese monster with something that felt more historical and fun and that would give someone playing China something to play with. We came up with what we call Factions.

In the present implementation, China has three factions that compete for influence over the empire. These are the Eunuchs, the Temples and the Bureaucrats. Each of these factions will have an influence value, and the faction with the highest influence will be considered to be in power. Which faction is in power will have a great impact on what you can do with your country; one faction might allow you to build colonies and fleets but will only let you fight defensive wars and so on.

The influence of the factions will change with the mood of the country, represented by the current monarch and the domestic policy sliders. A monarch with a high military value will cause the influence of the warlike Temples faction to increase, while a domestic policy setting favouring Naval over Land will increase the power of the Eunuchs.

The second thing we are implementing is a new government type for China called the Celestial Empire. The key property of the Celestial Empire is that its ruler has the Mandate of Heaven. This represents the very strong belief of both the rulers of China and its citizens that they have the support of heaven. As long as the emperor has the Mandate the people will support him and China will enjoy peace and stability. Should signs appear that he no longer enjoys the Mandate of Heaven his people will lose faith in him with the result that revolts are more likely, stability will be harder to regain and so on.

These effects combined will make China a colossus on clay feet, fettered by an internal power struggle. A Chinese player will have a huge potential at his fingertips if he can maneuver the right faction into and out of power at the right time while at the same time trying to maintain a stable and harmonious country. Should things go against him though, he can quickly find himself in a situation with an unstable country, possibly facing mass revolts with factions that will not release the tools needed to correct the situation; a great challenge, in other words...


On Japan:

So, what are we doing with Japan? As many of you know, Japan was a very divided country during this era, and we are trying to bring a little bit of this into the game. We have been playing around with the rules for Japan in a way that brings out the internal dynamics without changing the EU3 game play too much. What we ended up with was a system where you can play one of four Daimyos, struggling for the power of Shogun. Only one of these Daimyos can at any time hold the title of Shogun, and only the Shogun can do diplomacy with the outside world.

Some of the more historically savvy among you will notice that the map at the start of the game doesn't really look like a historical map of Japan at the time. The reason for this is that the areas controlled by different families in the era were often fractured and the families rose and fell in a way that doesn't really work within the constraints of EU3. We hope that we can capture the feel of the period even if we don't get the geography exactly right. If you think I'm wrong... well, everything is moddable as usual.
The Shogun has a special value called Authority which represents his standing with the other Daimyos and with the emperor. As this value increases or decreases, the Daimyos get access to more or less diplomatic options that they can use in their internal power struggle (Daimyos can only do diplomacy within Japan though). Should the Shogun's authority fall too low, he will be forced to resign and a bitter struggle ensues, with all Daimyos competing to make the others recognize them as the new Shogun through war or diplomacy. Should Japan be attacked by foreigners though, all the factions will instantly unite to see off the invaders.



And this is my favorite:

To make the horde nations bring a new aspect to the game we have assigned them a new government type that will give them a whole new functionality.

First of all is the change to how a country with this feature works diplomatically. For the horde, the default state is no longer peace but war. The only viable options when dealing with hordes will be war or submission, submission in this case meaning that the horde is paid tribute or accepts the vassalization of their victim. This will turn the hordes away from being diplomatic partners - which you can lock into your civilized system of alliances and royal marriages - into warlike tribes that you need to keep a constant watch on. You can pay them off or send expeditions to suppress them, but sooner or later they will rise again. This constant state of war will not affect war exhaustion like other wars, so you don't have to make peace with hordes, just keep them under control with your armies.

So, if you can't negotiate with them for provinces, how do you take their lands? Well, as I said the hordes represent uncivilized nomadic tribes, so the solution is to civilize the lands in which they live. To enable you to do that you can now send colonists to lands owned by hordes. These work much like regular colonists except that you don't get ownership of the province until the colony turns into a city. When this happens you will simply conquer the province. But be aware that your colonists are very vulnerable; at any time the nomadic hordes can come along and burn your colony, so you will have to use your armies to protect them.

So what is life like as a horde? Why would you want to be these unwashed brutes? Well, you get a couple of new bonuses, including increased combat strength and attrition tolerance when fighting on plains in your own lands. And then there is the loot. When you loot enemy provinces you can now extract more gold that usual and you also get military tradition, so the more you loot the more powerful you become until... you have to go home and beat down your uppity brother who has started eying the crown. But it doesn't have to end like that. After years of hard living on the plains you can also amass enough success that you can change your horde empire into a civilized state and go on from there to even bigger arenas.





That's all some AWESOME stuff for one expansion.

Linkage to the dev diaries if you wants to reads mores

Paradox Interactive Forums - EU3 (http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/content.php?223-eu3)

New patch for Heir to the Throne released today:

Paradox Interactive Forums - Heir to the Throne 4.1b Released (http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/content.php?331-Heir-to-the-Throne-4.1b-Released)


The highlights:

* Dynamic names of countries will now be seen on the map as its zoomed out, adapting to borders as they change.
* Large overhaul of the Holy Roman Empire, with benefits to those that stay members, and penalties on those trying to wreck it.
* Dozens of major gameplay enhancements, including reinforcing mercenaries, possibility for local naval supremacy, and possibility to annex countries with more than one province.
* Lots of improvements to the AI, providing a more challenging experience for the veteran users.
* Several Interface improvements, including more detailed information for military units and details on the Imperial elections.

Some of the more detailed changes I like:


Converting a province to the catholic faith increases your papal influence now.

Now possible to annex countries of greater size than 1. If you can vassalize them, you can annex them as well, but you always need to occupy their whole territory.

It is now much cheaper to send spies to a country with high badboy.

Mercenaries are now more expensive when badboy goes up.

The Horde type FoGs now bleed off Infamy much faster

Badboy is now a bigger impact on imperial elections.

Being a member of the HRE now has a nice static bonus to diplomatic skill, badboy reduction, prestige and cultural tradition.

When there is 25 members of the HRE, every member gets a nice bonus to tech costs, stability costs, manpower and revolt risk.

Separate tech group for the Ottomans, with their units in it, and all decisions, events and missions updated

An inheriting country only gets cores on provinces of their culture group, if they were already cores of the inherited country

Tweaked the Excommunication CB (you can only demand your cores or culture group provinces at reduced costs)

Big Army AI: Should avoid killer attrition provinces like the plague

AI will prioritize missionaries more

AI: More wary of assaulting with enemy armies nearby

Strategic AI: Will tend to be friendly to its Merchant League controller

Dev Diary 11 for Divine Wind includes:

First up, spheres of influence; probably one of the more underused features in EU3, so we decided to give it a little boost. We have firstly given the following boosts to spheres: As mentioned in the previous developer diary thread you will now gain additional magistrates for having countries in your sphere. With magistrates being so remarkably useful to build buildings this is a very nice boost. Sphere members also boost your diplomatic skill - which gives you other nice bonuses - and the cost is now scaled by the number of sphere members you currently have, thus making adding a couple of countries to your sphere not too expensive. We have also placed a limit on your sphere membership. If you cannot trade into the province it cannot be added into your sphere. Thus you need to have a presence nearby to be able to add it into your sphere.

Next up vassals. We made a nice simple diplomatic AI change to vassal AI: Controlled vassals will never grant military access to someone who is at war with their master. Secondly, masters can always call in vassals to war. Currently, only the war leader can call in new countries to the war, however countries with vassals have this restriction lifted. Thus, if France joins a war as an ally, its vassals (if they still exist and if they want them) are still available to them. This makes having vassals more useful and also closes a little exploit people have been known to use in the deceleration of war logic. Finally to put the fun back into France vassal provinces count towards your support limit.


Finally, the Holy Roman Empire; as we all know the HRE under a good emperor is time bomb at the centre of Europe. If the Emperor can ever unite the Empire then all neighbours need to fear him. So, we have given you a new peace option against the Emperor. You can now demand that the Emperor rollback the previous reform. No longer do you have to disband the Empire, before they disband you.

got an e-mail today about EU3. Offical launch date for Divine Wind:

Paradox Interactive have today announced that the grand strategy expansion Europa Universalis III: Divine Wind will release on the 14th of December with a recommended retail price of $19.99/€19.99/£14.99.
To celebrate the occasion, a new trailer for the sweeping new expansion for Europa Universalis III set in the ancient Far East has been released.

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The final Dev Diary for Divine Wind:


First, we have something that you guys that played Semper Fi will recognize, a triggered modifier screen. No longer will you have to read the files to find out how you can get the Sound Toll.

The next thing is something that we've noticed that's all cool games have these days (so we have to have it too), loading hints. So when you load up Divine Wind you will get helpful hints about things you may or may not know. Did you know by the way that the tooltips for each technology category will show you which tech-levels unlock things, such as buildings, units, government forms, etc? Yes, that is also one of the little interface improvements.

We also have some new alerts that you might find useful. For example you get one you get one if you are a horde nation and some so called civilized nation is trying to settle your provinces. There is also an alert for when your provinces are blockaded.
We also changed around the advisers a bit. As some of you have noticed you could get really unbalanced results if you stacked up three advisers of the same type. No more, as you can now only have one adviser of the same type.

Then we have the little things that the more perceptive of you might have seen in the screenshots. We have a new level of message importance, the message icons from Victoria 2 for those things that are too important to be lost in the log and too common to give you a popup every time. On the map we've made it so that you can see the size of your army at a glance, also an idea from Victoria 2.

Finally, we added what every Eu3 expansion should have, more stuff. More provinces, more (and more informative) tooltips and even a few new countries.

Divine Wind has been officially released for those waiting for it

I'll be getting it later this week;. Right now I'ma playing through Guild Wars again with a different character, and I want to take that as far as I'll go.

I have to say I haven't played EU3 in a while - I didn't even get the last expansion. But the features in this one look fantastic, and I think it's about time I crack this open, buy some expansions, and give this a try again.

I jumped on the GamersGate deal a few weeks ago and have been playing Heir to the Throne quite a bit. It’s a great game and the learning curve hasn’t been nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I have a few questions though, so if any of you experts want to chime in that would be great:

1. Is it best to spread your merchants out across several centers of trade, or should you concentrate on only one until you place all 5 merchants, and then move on to another?
2. Is there a trick to wars? It seems like it’s just a matter of whoever has the most troop’s wins.
3. Is there a way to see all of the provinces that are currently controlled by a country?
4. Any other random tips that would help a first time EU’er?

Here's my advice, I'm sure others may have more of it.

1. As far as merchants go, I usually try to concentrate them, this is especially true if you own the center of trade. If your country is in an area with multiple COTs you can try to spread them out depending on level of competition, but usually it is tough to make an impact this way due to competition getting your guys thrown out.

2. Not really a trick, but you have to rig things to your advantage as much as possible. If you have a strong navy, try to intercept enemy ships before they can land troops in your country. Use mercenaries to prop up your own forces. If possible, get other countries to declare war on your enemy to distract them. Build up fortifications in your provinces, that way it will take the enemy a lot longer to take control. If you're getting beaten, keep trying to sue for peace - a lot of times, especially if they are in multiple wars, you can buy your enemy off. Try to use gold, renounce claims, even change religion, if you can to avoid giving up territories.

3. You should be able to do this in the political view - it's the map view that (for me) makes it easiest to see who controls what.

4. Don't take out loans if at all possible - the interest is brutal and it's hard to save enough money to pay them back at the proper time. If you are a small country, use royal marriages and gifts of gold (if you have it) to keep larger, aggressive neighbors happy with you. Also (obviously) try to join a larger alliance. It will keep enemies off your back and you won't be expected to do much if you join a war an ally starts (and you can white peace out quickly.)

I jumped on the GamersGate deal a few weeks ago and have been playing Heir to the Throne quite a bit. It’s a great game and the learning curve hasn’t been nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I have a few questions though, so if any of you experts want to chime in that would be great:

1. Is it best to spread your merchants out across several centers of trade, or should you concentrate on only one until you place all 5 merchants, and then move on to another?
2. Is there a trick to wars? It seems like it’s just a matter of whoever has the most troop’s wins.
3. Is there a way to see all of the provinces that are currently controlled by a country?
4. Any other random tips that would help a first time EU’er?

Also understand attrition. If you are in an area with a few provinces that have a high degree of attrition, forcing your foe to come through them, or taking a long way around them, can help you win a battle.

Also, you want a good general. Generals get better with some sliders. Look at slider like Offensive vs Defensive.

What Great Ideas do you have? They can impact battle significantly.

If your army had a better land tech, a better general, you can easily handle a tougher force.

Some troops fight better on certain terrain. Cavalry are better on plains, worse on mountains. Fighting on you terrain can really help. Putting a high fortress in a high attrition province can really change the war as you leave their forces there for a few months and they lose to siege and attrition. Plus, if its winter, that can really hurt them as well.

Thanks guys, your comments help. I think it’s just going to take a whole lot of time playing and experimenting before I am a successful campaigner. I find myself lapsing into CivIV tactics, which aren’t working so well:)