Europa Universalis III

fable · Post by **fable** » Tue Jan 30, 2007 9:24 pm

Game's still not out, here. They're saying perhaps Friday.

fable · Post by **fable** » Sun Feb 04, 2007 10:11 pm

Not Friday, but possibly Monday or Tuesday.

fable · Post by **fable** » Tue Feb 06, 2007 3:17 pm

Possibly this Friday.

At this point, I'm wondering if they'll have the game here in the US before EU4 comes out.

Monolith · Post by **Monolith** » Tue Feb 06, 2007 3:38 pm

It's released here in Germany. I'm just ordering it. 34 Euro, quite tolerable. Why are they pushing the release date in USA? We already have a patch over here...

fable · Post by **fable** » Tue Feb 06, 2007 4:54 pm

Monolith wrote:It's released here in Germany. I'm just ordering it. 34 Euro, quite tolerable. Why are they pushing the release date in USA? We already have a patch over here...

I"m sure the 1.1 patch is available in English, too, but that doesn't affect us. The big name monopolistic distributors both state that the game's been shipped for a week, and they have no idea why it's taking so long to arrive.

fable · Post by **fable** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 7:18 pm

It finally came in, so I got it.

Uhfortunately, I now have next to no time to play it, as opposed to two weeks ago. On the bright side, by the time I really get a chance to delve into it, the 1.2 patch is likely to be out.

fable · Post by **fable** » Sun Mar 04, 2007 7:47 am

What with my wife being ill and, regrettably, assignments flagging at the moment, I have had a bit of time to spend on EU3. The prognosis isn't good: with the 1.1 patch, the AI does many, many Dumb Things. It attacks piecemeal when at war. It refuses to give a single halfway decent province in peace negotiations with the human player, but offers instead 2 or 3 better ones that aren't contiguous with the human's territory. Annexes either aren't possible when they should be, or suddenly happen in your own territory by a neighbor, when they shouldn't. Alliances suddenly include your current enemies, forcing peace on you and territorial losses without discussion. Tiny landlocked Central European states are suddenly showing up with large colonies in Africa and the Americas--in the 16th century.

I checked Paradox's website to read the experiences of other players, and they mirror my own. (Some are far more, shall we say, exuberant about these.) There's an excellent game buried in EU3 at the moment, but until the 1.2 patch appears it's more an exercise in frustration than anything else. Unless, of course, you care to put 1 hour into trying it out, and write a starry-eyed review like those I've seen in some online sites.

Dottie · Post by **Dottie** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 8:25 am

Disappointing. Not surprising though, Paradox seems to have some kind of principle against beta testing. In the first Hearts of Iron game your antiaircraft guns where still targeting your own planes after the second patch was out as far as I recall.

It's a shame, but perhaps you can enjoy the game in 6 months where 53 new patches have been released.

fable · Post by **fable** » Mon Apr 02, 2007 7:18 am

For any who are interested, the devs at Paradox Entertainment are currently in final testing of a comprehensive 1.2 patch, and have let it be known the thing will be available "in the early part of April."

Monolith · Post by **Monolith** » Mon Apr 02, 2007 7:32 am

fable wrote:For any who are interested, the devs at Paradox Entertainment are currently in final testing of a comprehensive 1.2 patch, and have let it be known the thing will be available "in the early part of April."

Here are the details - or some details, I don't know.

**********************************
******* Gameplay Balancing *******
**********************************
- Tradition gain is now based on base force limit, instead of the one modified by ideas and sliders.
- Increased maintenance costs of armies by 50%.
- It is no longer possible to diplomatic annex a country of another religious group.
- Calling allies no longer uses up diplomats.
- Demands for slaves now depend on the amount of plantation types in the game.
- Increased minimum demand on fish and grain to 0.5.
- Exploring now takes 3 times as long as normal movement.
- Conquistadors now use same logic as explorers for discovering adjacent provinces.
- It is now possible to just seize territories from pagans without a peace deal.

*****************************************
******* Interface Enhancements **********
*****************************************
- Current effects from prestige have been added as a delayed tooltip to the prestige value.
- You can now see a leaders stats in tooltips in a combat.
- Enter no longer works as "accept" shortcut for diplomatic offers.

***********************
*******Databases*******
***********************
- Renamed Galicien to Lublin, Lublin to Sandomierz, Lodz to Sieradz, and changed the capitals accordingly.
- Increased the taxbase and manpower in Själland and Skåne
- Added Finnish cores to Osterbotten, Finland, Nyland, Tavastland and Savolaks
- Spanish & Austrian core provinces gets a minor boost in tax value

fable · Post by **fable** » Mon Apr 02, 2007 8:32 am

Lots more than that. They're just dribbling them out.

fable · Post by **fable** » Thu Apr 05, 2007 5:51 am

Patch is out, and the changes are huge. You can read its contents here.

Jeff_31 · Post by **Jeff_31** » Thu Apr 05, 2007 7:23 am

Unfortunately, I don't see the point in buying EU III... I'm happy with EUII and am not particularly interested in EU III's features (3D...)

fable · Post by **fable** » Thu Apr 05, 2007 7:29 am

Jeff_31 wrote:Unfortunately, I don't see the point in buying EU III... I'm happy with EUII and am not particularly interested in EU III's features (3D...)

So? That's your choice, but this thread is about EU3. Feel free to start up a thread about EU2 if you wish; it's a fine game. But leave this thread to its area of discussion.

Monolith · Post by **Monolith** » Sun Jul 29, 2007 4:38 am

EU3 has been sitting on my shelf for far too long so I decided to give it another try. Good thing that I did. Patch 1.3 is out, as well as some great mods. One of them is Magna Mundi IV. It adds many events to the game and makes it much more challenging, especially if you're playing a central European country. I'm playing Brandenburg now (using the Germany correction mod) and being an aggressor I really have a hard time ruling. The Holy Roman Empire doesn't like me annexing provinces that are part of it and because of the dire consequences I already had to give one province back. Plus I had a civil war recently because my ruler died and there were quarrels about the legitimacy of the heir. If you thought that EU3 wasn't enough, give it a try now. Much has changed.

fable · Post by **fable** » Sun Jul 29, 2007 4:17 pm

I would agree that the 1.3 patch plus Magna Mundi IV make for a much stronger, more interesting, and less buggy experience. There are still things to tweak, but essentially, the game is now "there." Granted, this is how it should have been released, but failiing that, it's now a reasonable buy, IMO.

Curry · Post by **Curry** » Sat Aug 25, 2007 9:07 am

So does anyone have Napoleon's Ambition expansion yet ?

Jazz.z · Post by **Jazz.z** » Tue Oct 09, 2007 8:13 am

I'm not really interested in real time strategy games nor turn based games, but EU3 drives me mad. I've been playing it for hours. I hope you can all get to play it. There was too a very similar game called Making History, The Calm and The Storm taking place during the Second World War, wonder if any of you has managed to put your hands on it

fable · Post by **fable** » Tue Oct 09, 2007 8:28 am

I tried Making History, and meaning no offense, found it a bore. Simply put, there were virtually no diplomatic options or information feedback. I later found out while interviewing the developer for a magazine article that quite a bit of content (notably many options for regional development within your nation) were removed from the public release of the game, which had been included in the educational release. This was because they assumed the entertainment market consisted of people who didn't want that kind of detail. Evidently, they were unaware of other games that do well and offer a great deal of strategic detail, such as Galactic Civ, Europa Universalis, and the Civilization series. Since then, they've gotten beat up by reviewers for having a shallow game, and they're wondering why.

Ulfang · Post by **Ulfang** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 11:42 am

I have to admit I wasn't a fan of EU3 initially. Don't get me wrong I love all the EU games as well as Crusader Kings, Victoria and HOI but EU3 put me off in regard to the graphics and the lack of historical rulers and events but after a month or two I gave it another go and got back into it and have been playing it ahead of EUII ever since. I recently got the Napoleon's Ambition expansion which not only adds some nice feature and extends the play to date but also re-adds Historical Rulers and Events if you want to use them.

They've just released a new patch which makes a lot of changes as well as making various fixies to the colonization rules and they are turning out to be pretty popular.

Crusader Kings is also a favourite if only for the RPG element to the game (well it wouldn't be down to the combat engine). I also got the expansion for that (Deus Vult) and that is another good expansion. The graphics are overhauled and now there's a Ledger which improves the game a lot. It also has a bride finder incorporated into the Ledger.