Europa Universalis III is a grand strategy computer game by Paradox Interactive.

http://store.steampowered.com/sub/7654/ - $14.99 for the next 3 hours or so.

Resources:

EU3 Wiki
Country Guides
Official Forums

Since the Steam thread was getting a bunch of EU3 posts and it looks like there are several people playing the game I figured it deserved its own thread.

I think tomorrow I will start a new game and post reports in this thread. Since I haven't played any of the Italian countries yet I was thinking of Naples.

My Steam copy crashes constantly which is making it really difficult to get into this game. Back to Hearts of Iron III for my strat fix I guess.

Do you have any mods installed maybe? My home computer is an absolute beast and my work computer is a piece of **** without a video card even and both play the game fine. I'm playing with no mods installed. After 100+ hours of play I've had the game freeze twice but thats it.

A good AAR for beginners: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/...inners-A-Guide

It has just started but it goes more in depth into the actual gameplay and explaining individuals steps then most AARs.

1 of my favorite games, had a few long term multiplayer games which were the most fun i've ever had playing a game online. Unfortunately none of them made it past 1550 or so. We would coordinate on some forums and do diplomacy, peace terms, alliances, etc between sessions during the week.

I think in the last game we had 8-9 players, game eventually turned into a massive world war in 1500s. Started off as Ottomans (me) getting invaded by uberpoland that had all of eastern europe and eastern germany and allied Russia that had expanded into Siberia. Me and Russia both expanding east competing for Asia, I was already getting into Persia and India area and he was jealous. My Allies were Scandinavia and Netherlands but they were both weak on land. Final sides of the war were Ottomans + Scandinavia/Netherlands + France + Italy v. Spain, England, Russia/Poland, Austria. I wound up peacing out giving up the balkans to Austria and Crimea to Poland, but then game ended shortly after over bitterness.

Would love to do a multi game with ppl here if enough people are interested. Its retardedly fun playing against humans and not the stupid, predictable AI.

What are the mechanics of multiplayer games? Like game speed? No pausing I assume? I'd be up to try some multiplayer sometime.

Ive had it crash twice (in 3 or 4 times starting and getting into a game). no mods, just the plain Steam "Complete" version.

Unfortunately every Paradox game I've ever played has absolutely terrible netcode and is very buggy and has sync issues. We would usually play at speed 2 or speed 3 which is why games would take so long and never finish. Occasionally if everyone agrees we would go speed 4 but that can cause some syncs occasionally. During any war speed would be speed 2. We would play in sessions, usually Sunday (not during football season obv) for 3-4 hours, usually getting in around 30-40 years depending on if we had to restart due to drops, syncs, having to do speed 2 due to wars, etc.

Only the host has the ability to change the speed, but anyone can pause. Obviously pausing is frowned upon but sometimes necessary.

Also we would just play through hamachi because their server blows too.

Good news, I just somehow found the amazing russian multiplayer stats site where we uploaded the saves + screenshots.

Here was the world at the end of the first session in 1424:


Heres end of 2nd session in 1454 showing all the player countries and their vassals:

Italian situation caused first major war. Guy had been playing Milan or Venice but he either failcascaded them due to being to aggressive and got decced by every surrounding AI and then lost, or he quit and some new guy joined, I can't remember. Either way, the guy restarted with Genoa since Milan/venice got destroyed, so thats the yellow in Italy. I made an agreement with him that I would use my troops to help him take over all of north/central Italy in a few years but in exchange would get southern italy and sicily. He agreed and the situation is how you see it in that pic. However in the next session which went 1454-1474, he betrayed me and allied with Austria and Poland who all invaded me and I had to give him South Italy (but kept sicily). I also had to release a bunch of eastern europe/balkan vassals, to be conquered by Poland/Austria.

Don't have a pic for 1474


That was the world situation in 1503, right before the war, showing all the player countries and their vassals. Guy who played France didn't show up, but he had the obvious blank space in France area. The seemingly blank space in the middle of Austria is an Austrian vassal.

Unfortunately game ended after that due to holidays causing the next 2 sessions to be missed then was impossible to re-coordinate.

End game stats: http://www.europa3.ru/cgi-bin/mpstat...&yearsave=1503

Protip: don't **** with castille, portugal and grenada at the same time as Ottomans, no matter how balla you think you are... United the turkish zone tho, and got up to poland...


Count me in for multiplayer... CO-OP WORLD CONQUEST ON SKYPE IMHO!

I fully support the idea of Hamachi / Tunngle ( prefer the latter ) btw

as the netherlands player who crushed the armies of austria, england, spain, and poland in the game drunken is talking abput i would be happy to play some more eu3 multi.
fear the dutch

Honestly, if you have never played the game (or any other paradox game) before it's got a steep learning curve. But after a few days of playing you pretty much learn all the basic mechanics, and the MP games DO and I have run have typically been newbie friendly. Newer (aka weaker) players usually get to be the superpowers of the game like France, Spain, Austria, and Ottomans which are pretty hard to failboat. More experienced players will pick harder nations like Holland, Muscowy, Denmark, and Milan that take more skill to develop and even then usually aren't as strong as the major countries.

The mp games with 7 or 8+ players are just flat out amazing. The wars especially can get epic and aren't as simple as who has more soldiers wins. Your tech level, troop type, morale, army composition, and your general's abilities all come into play. There were several wars in the last game that involved upset victories. England managed to completely destroy the combined armies of France and Austria in a single epic battle at Calais after losing the entirety of the war up until that point. Holland (me) was invaded by England and Spain several times and mostly managed to hold my own despite being outnumbered 3-1 most of the time, what wars they won were essentially pyrrhic victories where I would rout half their army (quick explanation, you can lose a battle without losing any units permanently. Each regiment just loses troops and eventually reinforces from your manpower pool. However, if you get routed the regiment is completely destroyed and you have to buy a new one) before they could grind me down into a peace.

The last world war we had was ridiculous. Initially a ottoman vs Poland + Russia war, Holland (again me) and Scandinavia declared war against poland since we were allied with the ottomans, at which point Austria declared war on us to help Poland, and then England and Spain declared war on Holland and Scandinavia due to history (basically Holland, Scandinavia, England, and Spain where the 4 major naval powers + colonizers. Several wars between the two power blocs had been fought previously. The last round was a draw and they were basically trying to jump us while we were weak. Unfortunately for them we had spent lots of money building up huge navies and utterly raped them navally). Then, after Holland had annihilated 2/3rds of Austria's standing army...

Quick Aside. Generals can be extremely important when it comes to winning a battle. Battle mechanics work through dice rolls, the higher the roll the more damage you do, and a Generals abilities can add to the value of that dice roll. A Shock 5 general early in the game is extremely good and can turn the tide of a battle by himself easily. I had extremely good generals due to the fact that I was a smaller country (you make generals from 'Army Tradition' which you gain from fighting battles mostly, and smaller countries gain it more quickly than larger ones, so smaller countries can have powerful generals but not many troops while larger countries have the opposite) and our Austrian player left his armies general-less because he figured that since he had about 70,000 troops on the border he could handle my 30,000 strong army. He was very very wrong and I had completely destroyed all his forces within the first few months of the war.

... Italy declared war on Austria to try and reconquer Venice (some Dutch prodding was involved as the English and Spanish had managed to land troops in holland before their fleets were smashed and blockaded in the channel by the Combined Dutch and Scandinavian Navies) and then promptly failboated and lost his entire Army. After the combined English and Spanish invasion of Holland was smashed by Dutch troops (seriously my tiny army rocked this war) they retreated to join up with the Polish (the poles having the largest army and the best cavalry) and re-invaded Holland. Poland's initial army of 32,000 and assorted Austrian reinforcements was smashed and routed by the Dutch Army, prompting the French to finally get off their asses and declare war on Spain, England, Austria, and Poland, and a Dutch 2-pronged counter attack routed 10,000 spanish troops and sent a second Polish/English army of around 20,000 running like little babies far into Poland before they were stopped.

The basic point here is that even small countries can do a rapetrain on larger ones, and that eu3 wars are awesome.

I'd be up for a multiplayer game if one gets started. No idea how I'd fare up against real human competition though Do we all have to have the same version of the game?

Yes you do. The expansions are very worth it though if you don't have them already