EU3

[LL!]

Tonight I'm gonna start a new game. Someone recommend me a nation. I want to have a most powerful army, but I need to make lots of money to do so. In fact someone tell me how to make lots of Ducats because I can never make much more that 60 or so a year and 1 or 2 a month.

The easy answer would be England. Others that can work are either France or Castille.

[Farmer Reil]

Wow... how did I manage to never find out about this series?

It's like... Medieval 2, but with the whole world. And way more detail. Wooo. (And no more "The game starts in 1080, but we'll give Toledo to Spain already because it's easier, and while we're at it, lets invent Portugal 50 years early, and relegate Aragon and Valencia to Rebel settlements (although to be fair, they did put El Cid in the game, so...)" ¬_¬ And no "Hell, Helsinki didn't even exist for another 500 years, but we'll put it in anyway. While we're at it, we'll unite Budapest 800 years early too"). ¬_¬

So yeah, is this game more historically accurate? Or does it still sacrifice accuracy for gameplay (which is fine, of course, I'm just wondering...).

Also, some other questions.

How much of a part does Religion play in the game? Am I going to be assraped by the Pope for not building a Cathedral in every tiny village I own? Also, can I *choose* what religion to be? (and if so, is 'Pagan' an option? ) rather than having to conform to the historical religion of the faction I rule?

How does combat work? I'm guessing you can't actually fight battles, so is it pretty much just like the auto-resolve in M2TW? Where the game works out who won based on relative army strengths/compositions and the general's skills and experience? From what I've read, the game seems to be far more political than miltary, is that a fair assumption?

Finally, is Cornwall it's own region? By 1400 it was pretty much under Norman rule (if not 'control' exactly) so it wouldn't be a faction, but it'd be cool if it actually existed on the map instead of being part of Wessex ¬_¬. I wanna play as one of the Celtic nations (probably Ireland or Scotland) and conquer the others in a united Celtic Empire ¬_¬ Methinks that wouldn't prove very successful, but hey...

Edited March 27, 2007 by Farmer Reil

[Gongsun Zan]

Wow... how did I manage to never find out about this series?

It's like... Medieval 2, but with the whole world. And way more detail. Wooo. (And no more "The game starts in 1080, but we'll give Toledo to Spain already because it's easier, and while we're at it, lets invent Portugal 50 years early, and relegate Aragon and Valencia to Rebel settlements (although to be fair, they did put El Cid in the game, so...)" ¬_¬ And no "Hell, Helsinki didn't even exist for another 500 years, but we'll put it in anyway. While we're at it, we'll unite Budapest 800 years early too"). ¬_¬

So yeah, is this game more historically accurate? Or does it still sacrifice accuracy for gameplay (which is fine, of course, I'm just wondering...).

Also, some other questions.

How much of a part does Religion play in the game? Am I going to be assraped by the Pope for not building a Cathedral in every tiny village I own? Also, can I *choose* what religion to be? (and if so, is 'Pagan' an option? ) rather than having to conform to the historical religion of the faction I rule?

How does combat work? I'm guessing you can't actually fight battles, so is it pretty much just like the auto-resolve in M2TW? Where the game works out who won based on relative army strengths/compositions and the general's skills and experience? From what I've read, the game seems to be far more political than miltary, is that a fair assumption?

Finally, is Cornwall it's own region? By 1400 it was pretty much under Norman rule (if not 'control' exactly) so it wouldn't be a faction, but it'd be cool if it actually existed on the map instead of being part of Wessex ¬_¬. I wanna play as one of the Celtic nations (probably Ireland or Scotland) and conquer the others in a united Celtic Empire ¬_¬ Methinks that wouldn't prove very successful, but hey...

[stokeriño]

Forgot to mention, due to being so stunned by the Austrian vasslisattion: I also inherited Poland last night, which shot my BB up 12 points unexpectedly. Cock, I thought. I knew I had no practical way of defending those provinces all the way on the other side of Europe (nor did I especially care to), so I immediately released them again to become my vassals. Unfortunately only 10 of the 12 provinces went back to being Poland, so I now have two entirely random French provinces out near the Black Sea (you can actually see them on my last screenshot).

I would try selling them to somebody, but no one has ever bought a province whenever I've tried...

Edited March 27, 2007 by stokeriño

[LL!]

I would try selling them to somebody, but no one has ever bought a province whenever I've tried...

Nuke them.

[The Sultan of Swank]

CRUSH THEM!

Somebody please help me make money.

[stokeriño]

For money you should really try to avoid inflation at all costs, so keep the amount of money you're minting down to a level which'll give an inflation of 0 or less. Usually you'll have to rely on your annual census tax, so build that up by building Workshops (Production Tech Lv.1). If you're conquering provinces, look for ones with high tax values and/or valuable commodities (duck off grain or fish!). Owning those rare provinces with gold or a Centre of Trade also bring in the cash.

Higher stability boosts your tax income (at +1 it's +10%, +2 +20% etc). Keep your armies/navies on their lowest maintaince if you're not going to be using them in the immediate future. Equally, save money on Advisors if they're all useless. I would talk about Merchants, but it's frickin' impossible to do them in EU3 without CONSTANT attention to them. No more 'auto-send' Merchants like in prior games. And of course, one of the National Ideas that helps with money (either +5% tax or -10 inflation if you're having trouble minting enough to break even whilst still keeping inflation down).

But generally I find the best way to increase your income is get more provinces. Lots more.

Edited March 27, 2007 by stokeriño

[LL!]

This was the scene after what I like to call the first World War. Notice all the yellow? Yeah, that's mine bitches.

The day was February 3, 1603. I decided it would be fun and very monetarily friendly to declare war on Muscowy. Little did I know it would cause the biggest global disaster the world had ever seen. Every major nation in the world had their hand in the war other than Austria and The Papal State.

I, was only teamed with England and Salzburg at the beginning of the war. Sometime through the middle of it all, Salzburg dropped out as an ally of mine only to be replaced by Aragon. Aragon would then fight along with England and me throughout the rest of the war.

Through the long 60 years of turmoil I was able to annex Muscowy, The Teutonic Order, and Crimea. Also, I obtained land from Kazan, The Ottoman Empire, Sweden, France, Mazovia, and Burgundy. Lands that I didn't get land from, but were also involved in the war including nations such as Bohemia, The Bohemian Vassal, All The French Vassals, A Country Next To Kazan I Can't Remember, The One Country With The Star Of David That I Also Forget The Name Of, amongst a couple of others.

As you can imagine this was fun as all hell, and it turned out the best for me as I ended up winning the war. Sacrificing thousands of lives has never been so worth it.

[stokeriño]

Sacrificing thousands of lives has never been so worth it.

That should be a catchphrase or something. Or at the very least the game's official tag line.

Does look rather awesome. What's the deal with Burgandy, Austria and Bohemia dividing central Europe up into near-vertical stripes? Crazy fuckers.

Edited March 28, 2007 by stokeriño

[Farmer Reil]

Damnit, you bastards've made me buy this now

MADE ME!

You owe me £20.

[LL!]

Just remember you can't be Scotland. THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE HIGHLANDER!

[stokeriño]

Except Apsham was one first.

[LL!]

I'll annex him.

[apsham]

i'm in ur country

annexing ur provinces

[stokeriño]

Scottish Civil War = most anticlimactic conflict ever.

"Grrr."

"GRRR."

"Fuck."

"What?"

"Run out of Irn Bru."

"Shit."

*go home*

[LL!]

You know what sucks about being the number 1 country? The rest of the World hates you. The game said so.

[stokeriño]

Well that's clearly your fault for conquering so much in such a short space of time.

This is why I'm not sure if I'll ever annex Spain. You get +1 BB point for every province. You only need 35 or 40 to become the most hatest scum in the world.

Spain has at least 60 provinces.

I'm sure I could manage to do it and survive, but literally spending the next 70 years of game time fending off aggressors is not the most appealling of prospects.

[LL!]

I'm sure I could manage to do it and survive, but literally spending the next 70 years of game time fending off aggressors is not the most appealling of prospects.

You clearly haven't done it then yet. You should see all these countries just tossing themselves at me continuously losing more land. Soon, I will be able to ammend all my relations, but for now, fuck it. My empire is dominating.

[stokeriño]

See now, when I did it as Austria the FIRST time round I was okay. The SECOND time round it was just pain. Not so much because of the enemy armies themselves, but all of the war exhaustion and other such inconvenient side effects.

Oh I'm sure you're thinking to yourself "Pfft, war exhaustion? So your likelihood of rebellion goes up a few percent, what's the big deal?". Clearly you've never had a 20+ year war while in control of the Netherlands. Those guys are fucking insane even when you're at peace. Throwing war exhaustion in on top of it means a permanent garrison of 20,000 just to keep four provinces in check.

Besides, I'd rather turn America into an economic powerhouse before I do all that.

[Farmer Reil]

*sigh* Amazon are annoyingly prompt with their deliveries. I'm not going to get any sleep for days now, am I?

I do, however, love this paragraph in the manual:

Once you're comfortable with the basic interfaces and controls, consider getting involved in a small-scale war or two. For your first war, try to find an opponent that will be fairly easy to defeat. You should try to avoid early confrontations with nations that are large, or that have powerful allies.