EU3

[Chris the Human]

I got it yesterday and so far haven't played a great deal of time - keep starting over. Castille seems to be the go, but I got frustrated with never having any money for research. What's the trick there?

Started a game as Transylvania, but starting at war with The Ottomans is a dirty whore. The Marmuks (or whatever) look interesting, but I fired up a French game and immediately went to town whooping Aragon from pillar to post. Then it crashed. *Sigh*

Someone tell me who to play as now

[stokeriño]

Um...Ming?

You know, just to have an obscenely easy time of it.

[Gongsun Zan]

The Knights.

[Chris the Human]

Haha, I'd love to be able to turn The Knights into a super power. Them or Transylvania. But the money is what fucks me up. Ming it is!

[NobBe Nobbs]

Now Austria is starting to colonise California and Canada while fighting off a Franco-Spain alliance. This is the greatest game ever.

See, I have a few provinces in Spain cultivated from beating up someone, it may have been Aragon, it may have been one of the North African nations, I'm not sure, and Navarre had been bugging me to join them in a military alliance for some time. So, finally, I just said sure. It got me involved in a quasi-war with England, wherein I occupied Kent for a while before making a white peace with them (we had good relations with them, so I wanted to keep that good), and then just as I was about to launch an offensive into Poland (who had basically taken over Bohemia. The two powers in Central Europe are me, after absorbing Hungary and some of the Balkans, and Poland, who'd expanded west and up and had just polished off the Teutons), I got called to attack France. Thinking this would be a good way to improve on the Calais/Flanders area I had going, I agreed only to find out that Spain/Castile, I don't remember what the name is now, had recently allied with France. Well cock doesn't do it justice.

[stokeriño]

EU3 add-on announced: 'Napoleon's Ambition'

Scheduled for an end-of-August release. EU3 + French Revolution + Napoleonic Wars? Excellence.

Edited May 8, 2007 by stokeriño

[Farmer Reil]

* Enchanced Trading System

An all-new system to auto send merchants will allow players to choose the trading centres they most want to focus on, and the game will take care of the rest. This system also includes a new rule for trade overseas. The only way players will be able to access markets is to use war or diplomacy to allow merchants in. Get there first and reap the profits!

[stokeriño]

To be fair, they had auto-sending merchants in EU2. They just chose to take it out again randomly. >_>

[stokeriño]

Bump-b-bu-bump.

Just got an email to tell me that Napoleon's Ambition is available to buy/download from Gamers Gate. There goes any chance of me writing when I get home tonight.

I've actually been playing a bit of EU3 recently. First I started a game as Great Britain in 1718 (the Quadruple Alliance scenario) and twatted Spain about a couple of times - expanding my single Belize colony to encompass everything in Central America down from Mexico City (or where it should be, anyway) to Panama. I could easily go on taking stuff from the Spanish forever (especially since I added the National Idea allowing me to declare war on Catholic scum and other religions without a CB...Deus whatever it is), but France are beginning to concern me. It's currently 1749 and they're still sitting unthreatened in Canada...which just isn't right. But on the other hand, I've actually got a good relationship with them (+165), so I don't feel right to spoil it unless I have nothing better to do...

So in the meantime, I spent my efforts focusing on India. From my two original isolated provinces (in Calcutta and Madras), I've expanded the latter to take out both the Mysore and those-other-people-beginning-with-M to provide with a nice little foothold in the lower third of the peninsula, encompassing Bangalore and the like. I also got the event to create the East Indian Trading Company, so yay - money. Then for a laugh I took out the Arakans (a single province nation with no armed forces, sitting on the coast of where Burma/Myanmar should be)...just because. Now unfortunately India is basically just 'Me' and 'THE MASSIVE MOGHUL EMPIRE' in their intimidating purpleness. Yikes.

I also started a little game up as the USA in the Revolutionary War, but only got through eight months or so from when I last played. At the moment my tactic is to have my main force of about 8,000 men shadow the main British force of 15,000 as they run rampant through my provinces, slowly whittling them down as I go (engage, retreat...engage, retreat...). I then have another 3,000 running round where the British have just been to liberate the captured provinces, and elsewhere I have 1 or 2 cavelry units just riding round and round Canada to take as many unfortified British provinces as I can in the meantime. They keep taking them back of course, but not quite as fast as I take them.

Clearly other people must restart playing EU3. CLEARLY. :@

Edited August 22, 2007 by stokeriño

[METALMAN]

Thought I'd revive this to bring news of a new expansion pack:

EU III EXPANSION "IN NOMINE" REVEALED

While the developers are busy putting their finishing touches on EU: Rome, the team is already thinking ahead and we are thrilled to announce the next expansion for EU III - "In Nomine" (requires Napoleon's Ambition). This is what Producer Johan Andersson had to say about the expansion:

* Start in October 1399, at the coronation of Henry IV of England. Experience over 50 more years of gameplay, experiencing the Byzantine Empire, Tamerlane and the end of the Hundred Years War.

* Se exactly what is required to make the decisions that will shape the future of your country. Strive to create Great Britain, Make Paris worth a Mass, or institute an East Indian Trade Company. Act, rather than react, and implement decisions on both country and province level, with the new decision system, including hundreds of different decisions depending on situation.

* Experience our new Mission System, where the player and AI will both be given goals to achieve, providing endless replayability by guiding history along different tracks every time.

* In Nomine will feature Rebels with a Cause. There are countless types of rebels, with different goals, and different abilities. You may get colonial rebels in your colonies determined to get representation or independence, you may get reactionary nobles rising up to put the serfs back where the belong. Crush them by force, or negotiate with them, or even worse, watch them enforce their demands on your country.

* Religious tolerance now depends on the ideas and decisions you take, making it a new layer of strategy. As cardinals stay loyal longer, the power of the Papa Controller has grown, as he can now excommunicate rulers, and call crusades against infidels.

Revised AI, focusing on strategic top level goals, with support for fully scriptable logics.

"In Nomine" is scheduled for release before the summer. Head over to our forums if you want to discuss this game.

[stokeriño]

Heh, so they've given us back the years that were in EU2 but they took away in EU3 (with the Hundred Years War, Byzantium, etc.). Cool.

And it's sweet that they'll let us actually see what's required to make this shit happen. Prevents me from having to delve into the Program Files and search through all the .txt documents to find out.

I imagine the mission system will be as pointless as the one they ditched from previous versions. Though perhaps they will surprise me.

YES, REBELS WITH BRAINS. That is awesome. How often has a rebellion started up in some conquered province due to nationality or whatever, but then proceeded to just wander wherever it pleased - even attacking the armies of the nation it wants to rejoin! Looking forward to that.

Since I often end up being Papal Controller for extended periods anyway, being able to excommunicate scum who I dislike seems most pleasing.

But, before all of that, we've got EUROPA UNIVERSALIS: ROME due for release in April. It's like they thought that walking all over Medieval Total War wasn't enough - they had to do it to RTW as well. >_>

[METALMAN]

I've been playing Crusader Kings by the same developers a lot recently as well. It's a really good idea and a good game. It's very buggy though.

I'm going to look out for this expansion though. I didn't expect Napoleon's Ambition to improve the game much but I bought it anyway and it made a huge difference(particularly auto-sending merchants). This looks better than Napoleon's Ambition did at first site so I'll definitely try and get it.

[stokeriño]

Auto-sending merchants is another thing from previous versions that they took out and instantly regretted it.

[Cactus Drags]

Bastards. I read the whole thread to see why someone had dregged this up, and now I want.

[stokeriño]

Hah, another conversion.

[Cactus Drags]

Yeah, just wait until my complete lack of patience and attention span kicks in. I'll be weighing up the pros and cons of a peaceful negotiation over some tiny little state and then be all fuck it, I'm invading Brazil.

[METALMAN]

Here's a screenshot to demonstrate the mission system:

[stokeriño]

Well that seems better than the old "Royal Marriage with X / Make X your vassal / Discover X" missions, though it seems so specific that I have to wonder how good they'll be after a hundred years or so of gameplay.

[METALMAN]

EU: Rome demo has been released. It can be found at http://uk.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/europau...tml?sid=6188676. I'm downloading it right now.

[METALMAN]

IGN did a feature on the EU3 expansion. It looks like it will be fantastic.

http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/866/866938p1.html