Showcases of Europa Universalis 3

[BRickAstley]

**UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Working on a table of contents and reworking this thread overall.

[Commodore]

Tip for dealing with Castile, marry this chick:

[BRickAstley]

So, what is EU3 like anyway? Let's start at the basics of the game. EU3 is probably best classified as a "grand strategy wargame", where players will take control of all of the main aspects of a nation in order to accomplish some goal. The game spans from 1399 to 1821, and any nation from any year within that time period can be chosen for play. Using this system, the player can jump to a certain eventful year and try to repeat/reverse what actually happened in history, or they can start whenever they want (usually an earlier year, in order to allow for a longer game), and try to build up a nation of their choosing to ultimate glory.

The game is played with all nations and commands moving in real time, which advances one day at a time on the slowest speed setting. Gameplay can be paused to allow the player extended time in order to command troops or order provinces around, and it can also be sped up in order to make long/uneventful periods of time pass quickly. From my experience, usually war-times will be played at a crawl, in order to most precisely micromanage troop movements/battles, and peace-times will be played at least slightly faster.

So to what end do we do all of this? Well, any end you want, because EU3 is somewhat peculiar as far as games go in that it has no win condition. That is correct, there is no way to make any sort of fancy splash screen come up telling you about just how good you've done and how you're now the supreme leader of everything. Rather, the objective of this game is to set your own goals to complete, or to do the best with what you have as time goes on, to see what sort of result you get in the end. As long as you have a good imagination and drive to complete goals of your own creation, I believe that this is one of the strongest points of this game. Since this game has many, many, different options to pursue and ways to go about enacting them, EU3 suits itself well to those of us who enjoy setting up our own variant restrictions on games to challenge us to overcome great adversity.

With that freedom allowed, all sorts of challenges can come to mind: Ireland uniting the UK under their banner, Poland becoming a predominant colonist in North America, China using diplomacy to exert control over the entire Far East, the Iroquois surviving against the onslaught of colonists, Spain leading the Holy Roman Empire, the Ottomans crusading to bring Islam to every European nation, Denmark holding the leading spot in every trade market this side of the Atlantic, Grenada not getting demolished by Spain, Scotland building a world domination alliance with Byzantium and Japan, and any other nuanced idea or adventure that you can come up with. My adventure will humbly start out as just Aragon trying to stay relevant and not be an easy target for one of the Big Nations TM, but as time goes on if another epic adventure comes to mind to undertake than I shall strive for the glory of achieving it.

The interface to make all of this happen, which I will focus on in the next post, is through lots of menus and inventory screens. In this game you have to consider military, diplomacy, government, religion, colonization, advisors, missions, global opinions, economy, leaders, culture, and many other areas, all with their own levels of complexity. There is a large amount of things that cause minor modifiers towards many of the main numbers of the game, such as money, manpower, prestige, stability, and infamy among others. Therefore, there is less of a One Right Strategy, as everything that happens causes little differences in how your nation runs. It can definitely be a micromanager's dream, if you want to take the time to plan and understand it all as best as you can.

That's a basic overview of what I think the spirit of the game is: infinite goals with just as many ways of achieving them. Now, to achieve them there are a lot of underlying mechanics that all contribute to the grand scheme, so in the next post, I will offer you pictures and commentary ,some on the starting state of our nation Aragon, but predominately of the interfaces that will be used to deal with the game. In Civ terms, I'm going to be explaining all of the advisor and city view screens, and there will be a lot to cover. Maybe when that's done we can actually get into playing the game. :D

Until then, stay strong in your crusades and your crafts, both dexterous and diplomatic in nature.

[BRickAstley]

Okay, so let's get down to business. Here's the world as we know it, in October of 1399:

Each single-colored shape is one separate country. We're in that pretty red box down there in the bottom left corner. All the rest of the nations that are at least decent sized have their names visible, and those that are just small are only sad nameless colored blobs. While our name is small, at least it still shows up there, so we're not starting off too bad! Nations of note:

> Castille is nice and big and all snuggled up next to us. Luckily, they will probably be waging all-out war on annexing Grenada to their direct south for quite a while, and therefore not be concerned with us immediately in any bad way.

> France (The dark blue that's split in two) looks kinda fragmented, but that is deceiving. A good few of those other colored blobs around them are vassals to France, and they'll be a-conquering most of the rest of them before too long.

> Germany really is that heavily fragmented. I expect lots of disputes between all of those minor nations to come about, with no major victor for quite some time.

> Italy is also split, but either Naples or Milan could grow into a real power there.

>That Golden Horde tag that stretches way far back into unexplored lands? That means that the Horde is approximately insanely large, and could very wreak havoc on Eastern Europe for quite some time to come.

So, let's zoom in now and take a look at our lovely kingdom.

Here is Aragon. We have 7 provinces on the mainland, and an island in the Mediterranean. In EU3, all land/cities are grouped into provinces, which act like one city each. Their borders do not change, but provinces can and very often do change hands from nation to nation. The only unoccupied provinces are territories far away to be colonized. Each province has a list of buildings it can build/troops it can support/goods that it exports/much more, but I have that in a separate screenshot so I will get to that later.

To start explaining the interface, let's take a look at the top info bar.

>The Aragon crest is the button used to enter the advisor/nation menus, and I will take a look at those next.

> The people standing around is the amount of MANPOWER that I have available. Manpower is used as a measure of how many spare bodies you have in your kingdom that you can recruit into your armies. Manpower also gradually increases with time, and grows larger the more provinces you have.

> The scale is the representation of my nation's stability, which can range from -3 to +3. From Civ terms, think of it as movement from a lighter version of anarchy at -3, to normal operations at 0, to golden age at +3. Your stability generally reflects how well your government is doing in its affairs and in supporting its people. If you have a high stability, you get bonuses to researching tech, more money, and less chances of provinces revolting. Vice versa if you have low stability, where you lose more money, it's hard to advance in tech, and your provinces are showing some revolts. Stability is arguably the key stat to manage in this game, as if you don't keep your people happy and your government working everything will break down, no matter how big or small your nation is. It does recover over time though, so eventually you can get out of a stability hole.

> The coins are Ducats, which is the currency used in this game. Money is money, you get it and then use it to spend things. You have monthly investments and expenses, as well as an extra bonus every year, all of which are influenced by a number of factors, which I will get to in the economy sub-screen.

> The crown is my measure of prestige. The higher prestige I have, the more other nations are inclined to deal with me favorably.

> The flag is my measure of infamy. You get more infamy when you do bad things, like taking over lots of other nations! If you accumulate too much infamy, the whole world gets mad at you and eventually all declare war on you, since you are a menace to the world.

> The other crown is the measure of legitimacy of my ruler, which has another host of modifiers to costs and stability and such.

[Bigger]

Do you start with a personal union with sicily in divine wind? in HTTT Aragon starts with that, or maybe they are just a vassal (I don't remember). Actually vassal might be better, you have some control over annexing them, with a personal union you just have to wait and be really patient.

Naples rarely gets dominance over Italy - Milan is usually significantly stronger. You could try attacking Italy from the south through your ally sicily - that seems easier than expanding into Iberia (after Navarra, anyway - nobody in the area seems to care if Aragon takes them out). Of course the yummy part of Italy is the north (there are 6-7 provinces north of Rome that all have Universities) but southern Italy has some high tax base provinces that are deent, and the wine trade good in Napoli and Urbino is excellent too.

Thats just an idea, I'm sure conquering Castille and forming Spain is quite possible, too, if you prefer a challenge .

I assume your first mission has something to do with Navarra? I have no idea what the missions after Navarra is conquered will be, though.

your first 2 goals (I think with just about any country, not just Aragon) should be 1. get stability up to +3 2. get your government level from level 3 to level 4 so you can get a national idea.

[Bigger]

oy, I just checked, I was mistaken. Aragon simply starts with an alliance with Sicily, although it might be different in your version, not sure.

[BRickAstley]

Okay, now I'm back and have renewed vigor to tackle the rest of the relevant information screens. First, the rest of that last picture:

The disembodied heads along the top are my different action people, that can be used to accomplish specialized missions. In order of display:

> Merchants are useful for sending off to Centers of Trade, where they compete in the market against other merchants from other countries, with the ultimate goal of achieving a measure of market dominance and from that, more money.

> Colonists are sent to unclaimed territories, where they start and grow colonies, which bring back more resources for you to trade, as well as adding to land under your control.

> Diplomats are sent to other nations in order to cut deals and issue statements. There are a wide variety of things they can do, ranging from alliances to vassalization to royal marriages to trade embargos to warnings to denouncements and so on. You must keep in mind though that you have a limited amount of diplomats, so you cannot spam alliance offers, or try to take advantage of the AI by talking to everybody all of the time. You have to have a plan/idea of how you want to conduct diplomacy for it to be effective.

> Missionaries can be sent to provinces (I think only that you own) to try and convert that province to your state religion. This is important because, well, if you have a nation of Christians and Muslims and Pagans, eventually those differences will rear their heads and there will be rebels traversing around rioting and making your life miserable.

> Spies... do spy-like stuff. I haven't done anything with them before so that will be a new adventure into finding out their usefulness.

> Magistrates are used to accomplish specific things in a province, usually enacting a provincial decision or overseeing the construction of a building.

All of these people replenish over time, and the amount that you get over time is, again, influenced by a few factors. Now, let's take a look into the advisor windows:

The Overview Screen: This lists Aragon's basic nation statistics. Our government (Feudal Monarchy), culture group (Catalan), Current Ruler (Marti I d'Arago), Prestige (2) and ranking among nations (#16- I also have no idea how this one is calculated or how relevant it is.) There's also a list of all of our diplomatic ties to other nations currently in place, with a count of our relation levels with other nations to the right of it. . Of the diplomatic states listed:

> Allied means the obvious, allied together in case of war.

> Royal Marriage increases the relation between two nations, which you can see translates to Sicily having a very high relation with us.

> Casus Belli is a reason that it would be acceptable to go to war: these can be gained through a number of different ways, and they allow you to declare war on somebody without any penalty. If you declare on someone without a Casus Belli, you suffer a significant stability drop, so you want to make sure you have a Casus Belli as often as possible when declaring war.

> Guaranteeing Independence is a way that larger nations look out for smaller ones, by stating protection in case of war. In this case, if someone would go to war with the Knights, I would join in to the war to help them, but they do not have to do the same for me. A bit unfortunate if I don't want to war, but it least it helps my relations with them.



The Court: Displays the current king and the men of his court. Each king has a rating in stars for how good he is at Administration, Diplomacy, and Military. It also lists if he has a heir, and the fact that he does not right now is slightly worrying; if he dies without a heir, then the country might descend into a ruling crisis and that rarely ends up being beneficial.

You can hire advisors into your court, which, depending on their profession, give extra bonuses to your country in one of the main areas such as Stability, Economy, etc. I have to hire some, so when I actually start gameplay this will be one of the first places I return to.



Economy and Tech: Lists all the doings of your money. There are a few different areas listed there that income and expense originate from. If things go very dire economically, you can take out a loan to repay over time.

Under the Western Technology heading are Aragon's spendings on increasing tech. You adjust the sliders to determine how much money you put into researching tech levels, and each time you go up a level in one of those categories you get a bonus. Government increases lead to adopting new National Ideas (re: civics). Production increases to allowing more buildings to be built and a faster speed for building them. Trade increases your capacity to compete in trade markets. Naval increases the power of your ships, and Land increases the power of your land armies. Stability can increase your stability by a point, and is one of the main ways to keep Stability up. Like Bigger said, I will probably start off only putting money into Government and Stability, in order to get my stability up and reach my first national idea.



Military: Lists all of your armies and navies. I'm... not really sure EXACTLY what Fire and Shock mean, but I know they're both variables added to battle calculations and higher numbers of both of them are helpful. This window also lists how many of each type of unit that we have, and our nation's War Exhaustion. Also here: overall troop morale, the total number of land and navel troops and our nation's maximum support limit, and the maintenance that is being spent on properly up keeping the military.



Religion: Shows our nation's allegiance to the True Faith of the Pope, and the tolerance our nation has for different faiths. Currently, we don't like non-catholics much at all, so if we have any non-catholic provinces added anytime soon, there's a decent chance they can try to rebel, in which case they'd be listed under that Rebel Factions section. You can also enact religious decisions, which can influence what effects your religion has on your nation.



Government: One of the most important screens. This is where you select your national ideas every time your level of Government tech increases enough. At the bottom are the Domestic Policy Sliders. The degree that your nation weighs towards one extreme or another defines the makeup of your nation. These are ways that your people are set in, and large changes to these ways have very significant influence on everything that our nation does, and can greatly change all of the relevant modifiers present. As a result, Domestic changes are not undergone lightly, and have a significant backlash. In Aragon's current situation, One slider can be moves one tick in either direction once every 10 years, and doing so can throw your nation into revolt, cause a loss of stability, or make you look extra weak and able to be attacked by other nations around. It is not something to change around easily, but the later benefits can lead to a thriving nation.



Leaders: Lists the Army and Navy Traditions, which build by accomplishing missions and winning combat, as well as the overall discipline of your troops. It also is the station to recruit generals or admirals to lead your forces in battle, or to recruit explorers for later exploring. You can also send your King to rule your forces out in battle, but he will stand a chance of dying if he does so.



Culture: Lists the traditions again, and shows you great men you can hire to increase the overall culture of your nation. Cultural Decisions can also be undertaken, if you have certain prerequisites, to expand your culture.



Missions and Decisions: Shows your current national mission that the game assigns you, and lists national decisions you can undertake. The national mission, while shiny, is optional, and will chance to a different mission if you cancel the current one. However, they tend to pop in when they would be relevant to your nation's interests, and this one certainly isn't a bad mission to consider. Gain stability and vassalize a One Province Minor that's right at our doorstep? We might have to take a closer look at that later...

The national decisions are similar to the religious and cultural decisions that were listed earlier: if you have certain prerequisites, you can enact a decision to gain extra benefits.

City Window: to the left are the different levels of buildings you can build in your cities, to provide more benefits in the categories that they are grouped in. To the right is the collection of data about each province.

> Supply Limit: the maximum amount of troops that the province can support. Though stacks of units can grow to be infinite in size, if the amount of troops in a province is higher than this limit, than the amount of troops will decrease by the amount under Max Attrition; basically, if the land can't support your troops they die of hunger.

> Revolt Risk: How likely a province is to revolt. For core provinces that are of the state religion like Barcelona is, that number will be 0 or trivially small.

> Building Units: The buttons at the bottom are where you will go to recruit armies, or to hire mercenaries to use in battle.

> The Grapes: The main export of Barcelona. There are different resources for trade in each province, and those are connected to the chance for success in Centers of Trade.

Other Nation Window: When you click on a province of another country, a diplomacy window for that country opens up. It shows their King, and his rankings in various areas. All of our diplomatic relations are listed under the king, as well as all of their current diplomatic entanglements. To the right is a list of all of the diplomatic ventures that you can undergo with a nation.


So there you have it, an overview of all of the various advisors I and windows I will be dealing with, and with them an explanation of as many of the main gameplay ideas that I can bring up. I think that will do for mechanics explanation for now, so on to playing the actual game! :D

[Bigger]

The nation ranking is purely based on your prestige - the #1 country has the most prestige in the world. You can find every countries prestige (and a whole bunch of other stats) by clicking the graphs button (its right under the "menu" button on the right hand screen) and scrolling through the different menu's.

Also, You don't HAVE to go to war with a nation the DOW The Knights (or other that you have guaranteed), although you will take a big prestige hit (-25) if you don't.

[regoarrarr]

What are the main differences between this and Crusader Kings? To the untrained eye they look awful similar

[BRickAstley]

Do you start with a personal union with sicily in divine wind? in HTTT Aragon starts with that, or maybe they are just a vassal (I don't remember). Actually vassal might be better, you have some control over annexing them, with a personal union you just have to wait and be really patient.

I am currently allied and in a royal marriage with them. This is jumping ahead, but I'm currently planning to try and vassalize them, with annexation later, to act as a vanguard for an invasion of Italy

Thats just an idea, I'm sure conquering Castille and forming Spain is quite possible, too, if you prefer a challenge .

Well this is all about playing for a challenge right? We'll see if that comes up later.

I assume your first mission has something to do with Navarra? I have no idea what the missions after Navarra is conquered will be, though.

Yup, and that's listed above. And idk either, but I'll probably be predisposed to try whatever mission is thrown at me, for the experience. And to add in some fun roleplaying.

your first 2 goals (I think with just about any country, not just Aragon) should be 1. get stability up to +3 2. get your government level from level 3 to level 4 so you can get a national idea.

Yup, already on track to do so.

The nation ranking is purely based on your prestige - the #1 country has the most prestige in the world. You can find every countries prestige (and a whole bunch of other stats) by clicking the graphs button (its right under the "menu" button on the right hand screen) and scrolling through the different menu's.

Oh, really? That's handy to know. I saw the graphs as well, but I wasn't going to be looking inot them too much anytime soon, so thanks for the info.

Also, You don't HAVE to go to war with a nation the DOW The Knights (or other that you have guaranteed), although you will take a big prestige hit (-25) if you don't.

Okay, so it's similar to the alliance system. You *technically* don't have to follow an ally into war, but it makes you look really bad if you don't.

What are the main differences between this and Crusader Kings? To the untrained eye they look awful similar

They do, which is probably an artifact of being made by the same company. I think there are two main differences that I can tell:

1) The time period of this game is later, as I'm fairly sure CK2 covers the area of time before 1400, and this game is after.

2) The game-play focus is different. In CK2, from what I've seen of Mist's thread, CK2 seems to focus a lot on the ruler and the ruler's family, advisers, and all of the other characters involved. There is a lot of personal sagas and drama involved, and it seems to center around this idea of advancing your rule and your people in charge.

In EU3, the game-play is on much more of a national scale, and while you interact with the Kings and advisers and such, there's a lot less focus on them, and more on the stances and policies and missions of your nation, making it feel more like empire-management than I imagine CK2 feels like.