The very fractured one looks interesting. I'd be up for it at some point, but not today.

Same! Looks cool

It's MiscMod, which keeps the game very vanilla with some nice balance changes.

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/...namic-colonies!

Damn, one of my favorite mods out there ( death and taxes ) is going to roll out a major update that seems to squish every single problem i had with the mod.

If it turns out to be true, bye bye week; nonstop EU3 here I come!

I keep finding reasons to not get this game...for example, it seems really complicated. Is it really complicated?

Nope.

It's pretty simle to play while having fun. Mastering it is obv a totally different thing.

The nuts and bolts mechanics can be really really complicated, but you don't have to know them all to play. You can usually get along fine on common sense, like "high tax provinces are good, low tax provinces are bad"

What if the people of the high tax provinces get mad and decide to occupy my capitals?

kill them ldo

I'm free tonight if some are interested in trying out either of those mods

I'd be in for a scenario

edit: just as a FYI, remember that it is always suggested to clear all files in the map/cache folder when switching versions, even if with most mods it is not needed.

mods also don't change the vanilla checksum after clearing the cache and restarting.

I'll be on Hamachi when I get home from work and will pm whoever is there to see if we get 4-5.

I can't tonight but I'd jump into some country some other time and play.

wow, I had no idea there was a new version, omfg win!

if you guys don't mind a "noob" I'd play any time. I played two full games on easy with France and Castille but that's about it.

Also just a general question, how much should one care about alliances/marriages ?

Also other problem, with France at the beginning I crushed a lot to get some rich regions in Lombaria/tirol/current Slovenia (lots of gold), + get my core provinces and some others (stupidly lost reconquest CB on Burgundy) so my infamy went up a lot (30+). So since I had a good ruler, I decided to go for 20 years peace or so with embassy, diplomat etc to work out my infamy around 0. Problem now is I lost all my sick generals and I have no army tradition. I want to get Liege back but when i try powerful bavaria + bohemia + castille declare war on me, and without sicko generals I can't beat them in spite of my 140k men army (stacks of 14). What should I do to avoid that in the future (losing my generals)

Alliances are good (depending on who you are allied to obviously) since they will act as a deterrent to anyone declaring war on you, plus when you go to war they will join in and help you out (mostly). If you have alliances when you declare war be sure to check the "Automatically Call Allies" in the bottom left of the Declare War window.

Royal marriages are a good way to improve relationships with other countries. Also with Royal marriages there is a small chance you could inherit the country or form a personal union. Declaring war on a country you have a royal marriage with is a -2 stability hit and it costs -1 stability to cancel a royal marriage so don't make them with countries you plan to go to war with soon. Royal Marriages also will add to your legitimacy over time, +0.5% per year per marriage.

As far as your France game the easiest way to get advice would be to upload the save file somewhere and let us take a look at it. If you can't do that some questions:

What is your land tech?
What is theirs?
How many Infantry and Cavalry do you have?
I assume you have upgraded your troops to the best available?
How are the alliance between the major countries set up?
Is Leige allied with all 3 or just one and they are calling in their allies?

hey daer

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=G1GIUZK9 this my save, I would be really glad if you could pay a quick look and point out my noob mistakes!

My last wars were 20 years ago, accrued a lot of infamy to get all the gold provinces.
I got warned by a lot of countries, and it seems that even if my infamy is at the lowest I still get pounded all the time. I tried both to declare war to Liege or Provence (second is my mission), and I immediatly get attacked by Bavaria/Bohemia to the East / Castille to the South / Portuguese who wants to seize Azores (obv) and some **** flies in the north east who are just a pain in the bottom.

Thanks a lot sir

You can also abuse royal marriages by getting a royal marriage with a country without a heir or with a low legitimacy heir and then claiming their throne. This will destroy relations with any other country you have a royal marriage with (i think like -100 relations hit) but it will give you a causus belli where you can declare war and form a personal union. Personal unions are awesome because as long as you keep relations above 0, you will eventually inherit all their territory upon a ruler death. If they have the same culture group as you, you instantly get cores on all of their lands that you inherit.

As far as you playing, thats cool, I think at least 1/2 the people playing are relative noobs, and only 3 of us have EU3 multiplayer experience before this game. Just note that there are only a few playable countries left at this point and none are anywhere near as strong as your France or Castille games. Also, playing on easy difficulty means you dont really have to deal with inflation at all, whereas we are playing on normal difficulty so inflation can become a problem.

Poland is probably in the best shape, they have Lithuania in a personal union and have Teutonic order as a vassal and have a pretty big army and good amount of territory. They just don't have a good strategic position, being surrounded on all sides, and Russia is hungrily eyeing Lithuania.

Sweden is relatively intact, has a decent strategic position (not surrounded by enemies like Poland), and has Norway as a vassal. However, its lands are poor and Denmark is owned by Hansa and England. Hansa and England would help you out though, Hansa for one would be willing to gift you Skane which is one of the best Scandinavian provinces, and I'm sure England would be willing to give or sell you Sjaeland (aka Copenhagen) which would enable you to form Scandinavia. I believe Russia is going to want some of your Eastern territories, Neva at the very least.

Those are the only European countries that are viable really, everything else is a player country, a vassal, or a one or two province minor. You could also try your luck at being an asian country but that may be too difficult for a newer player given that you would need to westernize. Vijayanagar seems to be doing well as usual in India and will heavy edits could be playable. Theres also the enormous Timurid blob, but thats likely even more difficult for a new player than India (plus Daer will hate you). Then theres China, but you would be playing alone for another 50 years when a European finally reaches you.

I think most people will learn something new from this thread on the somthingawfulforums: How the hell do we play europa universalis 3?

The OP takes different nations and lets you watch his progress through screenshots and comments. In between his game updates people post questions and he answers them. If you want to read just the OP's posts you can hit the ? next to the date in the left column.

He plays as many different nation types to showcase the differences in strategy.

He has also posted how to get the in-game message system to behave better, and has included his own configuration for people to download.

Definitely worth checking out at least the OP, it's great!

- Royal Marriages would definately help your low legitimacy. Get as many as you can (ignoring anyone you plan to war with).

- Don't know if you are aware you can spent extra Magistrates for Cultural Tradition which you can then use to recruit better advisors. The higher the Cultural Tradition the higher level the advisor. You do this in the Culture tab -> Commission Painting. 1 magistrate for 5 cultural tradition.

- You are way behind in Land Tech. You are 11 while everyone else around you is 14 or higher. Since you get better Infantry at 13 everyone has better troops then you. When you are researching Techs it is better to focus 100% research on one at a time. As a warmongering nation you generally just focus on Land>Government>Naval. You can even mostly ignore naval if you don't plan on fighting overseas or colonizing. Bascially whenever you aren't ahead in Land (This technology is X years ahead of its time) research it.

- You have the National Decision to Switch governements to an empire. Switching will give your armies +0.25 morale but you can't really do that yet unless you disband some troops. Your current form of Government gives you +20% force limits and you are almost at the limit already. Basically every country to your East is in the HRE.

- Liege is part of the Holy Roman Empire. Since your relatively weak (because of Land Tech) the Emperor will declare war on you and the Emperor (Bavaria) is allied with Bohemia and Castille which is why they join in. You are also allied with Castille but the AI always picks fighting against you if it is allied with both sides of the war.

Suggested moves:

- Form as many Royal Marriages as possible.
- Recruit a Army Reformer for the Land Tech Research Bonus. I see there is a two star one available. That is as good as you'll get spending tradition so just buy him.
- Put all research towards land until you are caught up. Should go fast at the beginning.

So I spoke to my housemate again, he's bought the game and would like to be included for next weeks game. I think his first choice for a country would be Sweden, but whatever is available will be fine.


Also could we have the same start time as last week? Its Halloween weekend and there are parties to go to in the evening which will probably cut my time short.

hey thanks a lot, I think I'll join the next one or possibly an episodic one and will take the time to improve offline first!

thanks A LOT for taking the time sir!

think im gonna start a new game with France with all the new stuff I know!

Current Targets:

- Brittany. You have a CB against them. Auto Call Allies. They join, England probably doesn't answer call. Boom Annexed.
- Aragon. No CB. Be sure to automatically call allies. They should all join you and Portugal won't join with Aragon. Boom Annexed.
- Liege. Reconquest CB. Call allies. I tried this and Castille & Austria joined you. Bavaria and Lithuania joined Liege. Didn't actually play it but if you can quickly siege amd annex Liege you might be able to peace out with Bavaria. Of course Bavaria might call in Bohemia later too.