Have any of you played Europa Universalis III?

[HunterSeeker]

I am curious, have you? Im in love with it, its a grand strategy game (it feels like a turn based game, but is actually real time) spanning the entire world and covering the time periods between 1453 and 1820 (IIRC). You can play as ANY nation that existed anytime in that time period, although playing as the europeans is highly recommended as the rest of the world have a noticible tech disadvantage, but the tech disadvantage is by no means a guarantee for failure.

 

[Raziaar]

No. Do tell me more though, I'm very intrigued.

 

[HunterSeeker]

Be aware that the joy of this game is in its gameplay, not its graphics (which are not bad, but not exactly great either).

Official Website: http://www.europauniversalis3.com/

I seem to have misinformed you, the vanilla game covers 1453 to 1789. Its expansion (Napoleons Ambition) extends it to 1820.


Essentially, you start by picking any date between the periods covered (the game measuers time by the day). The inital state of the world will be like it was in the real world that date, you then pick from any nation that existed in that date and off you go.

The overall gameplay has many similarites of the stategic mode of the Total War series, although you cannot take control of individual battles.

It has so many features I have a difficult time knowing what to cover
Only real complain might be that it has a learning curve, even if its not very steep.

You have a number of provinces in which you can construct improvements, recruit armies and build ships. They also provide income and manpower (manpower is a reasource representing how many able bodied men you have avalible to make into soldiers). You can form alliances, royal marriages and even aquire smaller nations using nothing but words.

You can make lots of money by sending your merchants to Centers of Trade and trying to compete with the other nations, or by colonzing the new world or by conquest in the far east ot bring precious resources to europe (provided you are european that is :cheese.

The abilites of your leader affects a lot of things, research being one of the more important areas. You can also reqruit court advisors that provides certain benifts. Each nation can have up to ten national ideas, you intially have none but as you research you open up more slots. Whenever a new slot opens you can pick from 35 (IIRC) different national ideas that each provide benifts for your nations. Example ideas include Conquest of the New World, National Conscripts and Smithian Economics.

Then there is religion, the reformation, different government types, policy sliders, military leaders and other things.

 

[Raziaar]

Sounds quite interesting... but I'm curious if you can provide a concise list of things that really make this game stand out from the other Civilization type games out there.

Are there problems other games face severely such as diplomacy that doesn't work right, or is too simplified and not affective?

 

[Acepilotf14]

I saw it at target.. was going to buy it, till I realized the minnimum specs for RAM was 512 mb.... which seems a bit high for a game like this. And on my better PC, I have so many better things to play.

 

[Raziaar]

Man. The Gamespot review makes this game sound amazing!

 

[staticprimer]

Well I am intrigued. I downloaded the demo, but I'll have to play it later.

 

[Stigmata]

I saw it at target.. was going to buy it, till I realized the minnimum specs for RAM was 512 mb.... which seems a bit high for a game like this. And on my better PC, I have so many better things to play.

You didn't buy it because the specs didn't match the game's appearance, even though your computer would run it fine?

 

[HunterSeeker]

Sounds quite interesting... but I'm curious if you can provide a concise list of things that really make this game stand out from the other Civilization type games out there.

Are there problems other games face severely such as diplomacy that doesn't work right, or is too simplified and not affective?

Its a difficult question to answear, it does things differently and is quite a different experience from say Civ. I would say its larger in scale and definatly more "historical" then anything else I have played.

 

[The Monkey]

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=120345

It's quite good, but I got bored by it after a month or so.

I conquered whole of Scandinavia and had taked most of what is today western Russia when Latvia attacked my in the back (right as my armies were about to start a was with central Asia). I stopped playing there.