I've seen several threads about their games, Hearts of iron, etc, and they seem interesting. I'd like to learn more about them and have a few questions...

How many things in game can you change the name of or use a custom name? Does it run well and not so good computers? Which one is the easiest/best/etc to learn for a newb? How complicated are they? (if possible, how is it complicated? I am hoping not a complicated economic system)

1. depends on if you want to mod it.
2. Yes
3. None, really. If I had to pick one I'd have to say EU2.
4. Very.

1. Very moddable, but for the most part the massive modding community at the paradox forums will cover your needs
2. Will run on the worst of computers, the graphics requirements are practically non-existant
3. I agree with warpstorm, EU2 is probably the easiest of the series. Crusader Kings is also not that complex either.
4. Incredibly so, I reccomend you start with EU2, then Crusader Kings, then Hearts of Iron 2, then, the bohemoth of complex games, Victoria.

Thing is, Victoria is my favorite of the series (I have all of them) BECAUSE of the overcomplexity, and its gameplay and attention to detail just surpasses the other games by leaps and bounds.

*mouth waters*

Excellent, even thoguh I have aout 20 games at my dad's all I play is Civ2. Now I can look into getting a new one. Oh, and keep the coming! And feel free to discuss the games in general here in this thread.

1. From what I know, they are easy to mod, from creating a custom leader, to changing the entire scenario.
2. Most definately.
3. Europa Universalis 2.
4. They're kinda complicated. Stick with it though, and you'll discover a very in-depth game that offers a different experience everytime you play.

Paradox Forums (http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php) - recommended forum.

Technically EU2 isn't that complex. Its possible to go several years without doing anything although there are key points that are not obvious to begin with like:

-Sending merchants is pretty much pointless.
-Try and always maximise research.
-Raising war taxes or hiring mercenaries should be a last resort.
-Loans are evil
-Concentrate solely on infrastructure and military research even if you are a naval power
-Use the religion sliders
-Stability doesn't matter that much. If its a choice between losing innovation or stability, choose stability.
-Just because the AI has armies of 60k doesn't mean that you should
-Sieges win wars, not battles.
-Care about province attrition. If the province can only support 10k troops then don't place more troops in the province unless you have to.
-Let the AI overload a province with armies well over the support limit and watch them gradually die. Especially applicable when playing in northern Europe in the winter months.
-Playing in Russia has additional rules where you should try to start sieges when the snow disappears and have small reinforcement armies ready to maintain sieges if they last into winter.
-Navies are primarily for transport and then blockading and then speeding up sieges.
-Keep an eye on the bad boy rating.
-Try not to declare war without a casus belli especially if you are going to be annexing a one province minor nation.
-Get familiar with the different information screens
-Feel free to reduce military spending and naval spending to 50% when not at war to save money.
-Crushing victories can be gained if you have leaders, your army is in favourable terrain or you outnumber the enemy.
-There are historical events in the game that need to be taken into account. For instance if you want to maintain Aragon independence then don't accept the marriage with Isabelle.

If these games and expecialy Victoria have such a steep learning curve, how long was the beta testing?

If these games and expecialy Victoria have such a steep learning curve, how long was the beta testing?

Over a year, IIRC.

Heh, I wonder how many of the beta testers were sick of the game by the end of it.

Oh, I am creating an account on the Paradox Interactive forums for future use, anyone want me to refer them?

Me! Kan' Sharuminar as ever.

Though I'm rarely there except for the AAR's ;)

The username I entered could not be found...

Kan' Sharuminar

EIDT: I had an extra space in there. Done and done now!

Kan' Sharuminar (http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/member.php?u=24340)

Right there for complete needs. Caps are in, can't see why it doesn't work.

Edit in return: Explains why I have a new referal :p

PrinceScamp, you do not have permission to access this page. This could be due to one of several reasons:
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DO I have to wait or something? I got this when trying to view your profile and then again when trying to post. :confused:

DO I have to wait or something? I got this when trying to view your profile and then again when trying to post. :confused:

Have you fully signed up? As in got the activation link and everything? IIRC it was just the same as signing up to CFC, and both were long ago :p

Thank you, PrinceScamp. Your registration is now complete.

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I got that message after signing up. And this was the e-mail I got:

PrinceScamp,

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Well I think I found you!

His Scampiness (http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/member.php?u=59816)

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I sure have a nice profile...

-Care about province attrition. If the province can only support 10k troops then don't place more troops in the province unless you have to.


Where can you find the number of troops a province can support?


-Keep an eye on the bad boy rating.


Where can you see the bad boy rating?

Troop support you can see if you click on a province it should have a yellow or red number if it is an enemy province and that number is how much the land can support.

Bad boy I think that is go into diplomacy mode click on yourself and see your reputation "You have a very bad reputation" or stuff like that. If you hold your mouse over that it will give you an A/B and A is your bad boy B is a number you don't want but halfway there is the start of your problems I think... well dell knows better.

Thanks for the help. I just got the game, and I'm still learning the ropes.

Believe me after my first two miserable games I finally started figuring it out and am trying to recreate dells old competition for AAR writing. but now I am sucked in and am thinking about buying Doomsday or victoria... i already have crusader kings its fun.

Oh yea HOI the original is pretty easy to learn and you can get it for under 10 dollars

I STILL can't log in on their forums, what the hecK? I'll look into it mroe tomorrow.

I found a second hand copy of Europa Universalis 2 for £4 yesterday. First time I saw it for sale ever. Before then, I saw Hearts of Iron II second hand once about a year ago.

I STILL can't log in on their forums, what the hecK? I'll look into it mroe tomorrow.
Have you found out what was wrong? Because I have the exact same problem!

No, I've forgotten abotu it actualy, I'll check tomorrow.

Do you still have some problems? I can log in..:mischief:

And I'd probably recommend EU 1, as EU 2 (especially patched) can be a bit overwhelming when it comes to trade etc..

When it comes to modding - you can mod most things :)
Also, mods resolve most problems original games have..

Knights of Honor is a paradox game. probably the best one for sure.

EU2 without AGCEEP is like soccer without Brazil. Download it, NOW!

I still cannot post on the forums. When I click contact admin it automaticaly goes to Opera mail so it asks me to make an account, which means I can't get the e-mail address.

Diplomacy was also made by Paradox Games, but I think they don't own it anymore.

I still cannot post on the forums. When I click contact admin it automaticaly goes to Opera mail so it asks me to make an account, which means I can't get the e-mail address.

Surely when it opens your mail client it gives you an email address?

I love this games, best gaming company in the world for me, keep talking with the fans in the paradox forum, posting developement diaries for EUIII every week etc etc.

I have EU2 HOI2 + DD and Vicky:R.

I am planing to do an Victoria Revolutions AAR with Prussia and post it in this forum :D

Technically EU2 isn't that complex. Its possible to go several years without doing anything although there are key points that are not obvious to begin with like:

-Sending merchants is pretty much pointless.
-Try and always maximise research.
-Raising war taxes or hiring mercenaries should be a last resort.
-Loans are evil
-Concentrate solely on infrastructure and military research even if you are a naval power
-Use the religion sliders
-Stability doesn't matter that much. If its a choice between losing innovation or stability, choose stability.
-Just because the AI has armies of 60k doesn't mean that you should
-Sieges win wars, not battles.
-Care about province attrition. If the province can only support 10k troops then don't place more troops in the province unless you have to.
-Let the AI overload a province with armies well over the support limit and watch them gradually die. Especially applicable when playing in northern Europe in the winter months.
-Playing in Russia has additional rules where you should try to start sieges when the snow disappears and have small reinforcement armies ready to maintain sieges if they last into winter.
-Navies are primarily for transport and then blockading and then speeding up sieges.
-Keep an eye on the bad boy rating.
-Try not to declare war without a casus belli especially if you are going to be annexing a one province minor nation.
-Get familiar with the different information screens
-Feel free to reduce military spending and naval spending to 50% when not at war to save money.
-Crushing victories can be gained if you have leaders, your army is in favourable terrain or you outnumber the enemy.
-There are historical events in the game that need to be taken into account. For instance if you want to maintain Aragon independence then don't accept the marriage with Isabelle.

Well Dell, you seem to not know the power of Trade in Eu2. Sending merchants after you get trade 4 is pretty much you biggest income source ;).

I am planing to do an Victoria Revolutions AAR with Prussia and post it in this forum :D

Please do, we've been without a Victoria AAR for quite some time :D

Well Dell, you seem to not know the power of Trade in Eu2. Sending merchants after you get trade 4 is pretty much you biggest income source ;).


The biggest source of income is owning large provinces that may happen to have trade centres. :p

If the Ottomans are very weak then it is nice to grab Alexandria.

Kan, check out paradox entertainment forums. It has lots of AARs, for example a hilarious someones Switzerland "Liberate London" AAR.

Hah! I remember that AAR, the guy conquered london with the swiss... but I know one that conquered the world with Tibet, Krakow and some other Uncivilized nations ;)

BTW, how about posting you Empires in different paradox games... I remember one of my first Eu2 AGCEEP games was this:

http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c92/deo89/France.jpg

this is right after diplo anexing Spain and now I have an Army bigger than the whole Europe has... I also own half of the Americas now :D, Could have done much better...

EDIT: How quickly empires fall :

http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c92/deo89/untitled.jpg

Its the same game and Poland is an one province state since 1680 or so...

This is a nice Rome Total Realism AAR.

http://forums.totalrealism.net/index.php?showtopic=12656&st=0

Kan, check out paradox entertainment forums. It has lots of AARs, for example a hilarious someones Switzerland "Liberate London" AAR.

:) I used to go there regularly to read the AAR's, but less in recent times. I do keep up with the British Co-operative AAR, which I believe has 2'300 pages and is only at 1937 :lol:

http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/5153/brandenberg2vs1.jpg

Thats pretty much the biggest empire that I have had although I tend to get bored once I have conquered a couple of real life countries. Played Russia until I reached China and I guess that could have been an even larger empire but I don't have screenshots.

I'm just downloading mymap after seeing how many additional provinces it adds. Looks like a very interesting map as it will make fighting in Europe much more interesting. Will probably start as Milan and see what happens.

I for myself will not play EU2 anymore, I cant wait for EUIII :D

I have a feeling that EU3 will not be complete until AGCEEP is released for it and so it could take a while.

I have a feeling that EU3 will not be complete until AGCEEP is released for it and so it could take a while.

I wonder if there will be any AGCEEP for EUIII because in EUIII, you will never know who will be you next king, you will never know when some big even happens ( there are no historical events anymore ;). I like this! :D

That could be cool. How are they planning to recreate something like the hundred years war? Additionally I hope this doesn't mean that the AI nations will randomly join each other because a King dies without an heir. I dislike the AGCEEP plot line that has Burgundy become Spain if they live long enough.

No, they will not randomly join each other, a succesion war will happen before a nation can join another one but this will happen rarely

Anyway, the best future is that YOU WILL BE ABLE TO START AT ANY DATE BETWEEN 1453 and 1792! :D:D:D

Dell19, your Brandenburg is just HUGE. What difficulty/aggressiveness level do you play at?

It depends. The difficulty is always normal and the AI aggressiveness is generally weakling. I tend to turn off rebels once I have a large empire as I have no interest in playing a game where the only activity is putting down rebellions, especially once I have colonies and start getting colonial uprisings.

I play Very hard/Coward. That way AI is hard to beat and it doesn't make unplanned attacks.

Damn, I wanted to post a screenie of my Poland game on year 145X, but I can't find the save! Well, maybe I'll post a screenie of my CK Napoli later. In that I have something like 7 king titles.

http://img56.imageshack.us/img56/5329/milanottodr7.jpg

Who can stop the Ottomans?

Playing as Italy I force annexed Venice for the trade centre, gained two provinces from the Huguenots and then finally diploannexed Savoy which let my BB rating explode to 23. I've had about three wars against the Ottomans where the only thing I could do was hold my ground and attack one of their weaker allies in Hungary. The last time I heavily gifted France so that they would let me in their alliance with Spain. When the Ottomans declared war it still wasn't enough and France ended up losing a couple of provinces.

I think I will concentrate on colonising whilst waiting the hundred years or so for my BB to decrease. Hopefully by then I will have a tech advantage against the Ottomans or will have a higher land/quality rating. Morrocco has conquered basically the entire Sahara region. I think one of the reasons is that the Golden Horde beat Muscowy and the Ottomans diploannexed Crimea and Kazan which had inherited the Golden Horde provinces.

That is pretty impressive for an AI Ottoman Empire, especially by the 1580's

Who can stop the Ottomans? You, of course! Ye won't get so much BB for declaring war to heathens which surely have a high BB. Declare war when they are fighting against Poland or some other big empire and you can conquer Austrian provinces without much BB. And then your only border to Ottomans is in North Africa, which is easier to defend and you to conquer than hills of Austria.

BTW, can you play AGCEEP on MyMap mod? I don't like vanilla that much, but AGCEEP rocks.

Its MyMap-AGCEEP so it is both mods although it seems to be the previous AGCEEP version. I was thinking about waiting for Poland to declare war as they do have a rather large empire. The first problem is that the Ottomans have military access through Hungary so it isn't easy to cut off their armies. The second is that for some reason their armies are virtually undefeatable even though our tech levels are identical. France managed to screw up their war with the Ottomans by declaring war elsewhere and losing their advantage.

I quite like the idea of waiting for a long period of time and hoping that Hungary drop out of the alliance. I don't like the idea of pushing the Ottomans out of Austria only for France etc to declare war on me because my BB rating is too high. Of course in that situation I could create some Vassals. I've found it quite a bit harder to create Italy as there are simply more provinces to take and thus more BB to gain. I have diplo annexed Genoa, Savoy, Tuscany, Modena (They have a different name) but the BB score went through the roof when I annexed Venice (trade centre!).

Maybe we can play MP guys? :D

What are your relations with France and Poland, - and even more important, - what are Polands relations towards Otto? And you may lose many battles what seem to be a piece of cake if you attack when they have lots of cavalry, coz that really smacks your troops of the battlefield.

Could do although the game isn't exactly quick. I would be up for trying but I would rather only play with people who genuinely thought they would be able to play it at least once a week (on average) and believed they could complete the game or at least get us halfway through the timeline.

Relations with France are between 130-150 as I keep on sending them small gifts every so often. Poland hate me but I think they hate the Ottomans as well. Even with cavalry superiority I can still lose and it doesn't help that their provinces have a low attrition limit.

After playing through the two recent wars as Italy I am curious what people think about BB points. I have a number of problems with them. The first is that you cannot gain new core provinces except for a couple of nations so that conquests become very costly for small nations. There is no disguishing factors at all so capturing Venice is the same as capturing a colony and liberating provinces from a different religion has no positive effect.

The biggest issue is that the bad boy rating is universal so that it affects my relations with France at the same rate as the Ottomans. This is perhaps not an issue as groups of another religion would hate me anyway except when it comes to declaring war. The Ottomans are happy to declare war against me as my BB rating is high. Basically I feel the BB rating should be split for each religion so that the Ottomans rightly hate me for my aggression and declare war whilst I can maintain good relations with France as I have not attacked any Catholic countries.

A simple(ish) solution could be to treat the BB rating as how other nations of the same religion feel about your nation. So in this system the badboy points gained from taking provinces of a different religion or owned by a nation with a different religion would cost very few bad boy points. Additionally conquering provinces would be linked to the tax rate, year and province buildings.

So something like:

3/4 if it is a different religion owned by the same religion
1/4 if it is a different religion owned by a country of a different religion
0 if it is the same religion but owned by a country of a different religion (liberation)
+1/4 for every 5 points of province income above 20
-1/4 for every 5 points of province income below 20.
(So a 100 income province would cost 4 additional BB points whilst conquering a province with an income of 4 would cost 0.75 BB points less*)

*Nations are already penalised for conquering worthless provinces as stability costs etc increase. Additionally it would cover bonus buildings as a trade centre boosts province income.

Thoughts?

Im not sure yet but i think BB has been improved much in EUIII, I understand you Dell that BB is a problem but to look at reality, you cant just go and conuqer everything in you way, but its an Interesting Idea, IMO BB system should be changed (and will), so lets wait and see.

As for me, i start slowly and conquer everything in the 1700s anyway...

I forgot to mention in that post the other issue in that mymap adds a lot more provences so it would make sense to reduce the BB effect for the scenario simply to make things equal assuming you wanted things to be equal.

The other consideration is that nations like the Ottomans get free cultures at the start of the game that do not really make sense. Do they really deserve to Slav culture at the start of the game? Is it fair to give them Greek culture? It raises the issue of what is acceptable editing of the game. For instance should an Italian nation be able to gain Greek culture if they start to conquer Greece especially if they own Venice which has Greek culture?

For those who wants to play MP Watk is the map :P
Europe is balanced and fine but the rest is real crap warning for people that wants to play asians. So Watk = World Universalis as European nation ;D

EU2 MP FTW!!:king:

You lot posting all these AARs has convinced me to get an EU game...probably I will wait until EU3 is out next year. :D

I may also look at getting Hearts of Iron. :D

EU2 you can get extremely cheap nowadays, and is what I would call Paradox's 'Flagship game.' Well worth a test before EU3.

Having an interest in the time period also helps matters, which probably explains why I play HoI more than EU2 these days. Which isn't to say EU isn't installed permanently on my computer :p

EU3... I'm not sure what to think about that. The option to start the year you want sounds cool, but maybe it needs more new to be worth of buying. And the graphics look little... messed. Oh well, if you can see units on political map mode then it doesn't matter, I like Victoria's and CK's graphics coz you can see units on political map mode.

You will be able to see units in Political mode ;)

Oh and, remeber Civ4s graphics back than? They will improve ;).

Well, if the whim takes me I may pick up EU2...I think Civ and maybe Medieval 2 will keep me busy though. ;)

Hearts of Iron 2 plus the expansion I might see about getting soon (I am more interested in the WW2 period anyway)

Maybe I'll buy EU3 when it is cheaper and it has AGCEEP on it. Without that the game feels unready. And MTW2, FM07, PES6 and EU2 will keep me busy enough ;)

One annoying thing I found out recently about AGCEEP is that they have decimated Novgorod. Considering that they are already surrounded by enemies it is pretty harsh to give them 1 offensiveness - so that they cannot attack, 1 Quality - Would need lots more troops and 5 land whilst giving Muscowy 9 land so that their armies always win.

I've edited Novgorod so that they have the same stats as Muscowy as they have worse leaders and are likely to be attacked by three different alliances at some point in the early game.

Well, Novgorod lost to Muscowy. Novgorod was a trade city, so that gives reasons to land 5, and they had even harbours, when Muscowy was in-land principality.

I dislike the quality ratings and the offensive rating more. The only battles that Novgorod can win are when it is 10k against 1k and even they can be a close call. I realise Novgorod lost which makes sense for the ratings when playing elsewhere in Europe as most players would prefer Russia to form however when playing a nation in the area it seems to make sense to improve their ratings as surely in an alternate history they could have defeated Muscowy. It seems ridiculous to guarentee their downfall.

I don't know the background why so lame quality and offense to Novgorod, but Muscowy has neat generals too, like Yuri Patrikeev(?).

...
The biggest issue is that the bad boy rating is universal so that it affects my relations with France at the same rate as the Ottomans.

Don't you control some provinces that are considered french? If you own some french core provinces, relations will sure fall in addition to the BB -points.

I just finished a game with Granada on normal/weakling. Pretty fun game; it was hard to stop Castille and Portugal in the beginning, but the hard work paid off in the end.

http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/5808/screensave1mm4.jpg
Norway in Catalonia :) They make me proud :salute: However, they were soon kicked out by me :D

The goal for the rest of the campaign was to colonize western Africa, and capture sunni provinces with arabic culture. Therefore alot of the wars was against the Ottomans :)

http://img172.imageshack.us/img172/6978/screensave4es0.jpg

Thats a great Empire there Olav :thumbsup:

Yes about the French provinces which is why I was sending them gifts all the time until they broke the alliance. The AGCEEP wars of religion for France are a great opportunity to gain French provinces and I diplo-annexed Savoy who had brought me into a couple of wars against France and had plenty of French provinces.

Playing as Byzantium on MyMap at the moment. It isn't that much different from playing on the standard map. The only change of strategy was to attack Venice instead of Ghazi and get the two island chains next to Athens. Kind of cool that I have 16 provinces and yet the Ottomans still have a decent empire.

Nice Grenada empire btw. Tunisia have invaded Italy in my game.

But isnt it so that in MyMap, because of more provinces you get more gold, more gold means more armies and that makes it a bit unhistorical? (I never played MyMap)

Sort of. If you start with two provinces you have to conquer more provinces to get more gold and some of the added provinces are not always that profitable. I haven't really found that it is a problem since large armies are still expensive and thus I tend not to build them. I would question whether it was unhistorical though as it feels as if the army sizes are more realistic. Combat is a lot more interesting as there are more provinces to take and campaigns spread across several wars rather than one war.

Thanks for the compliments, deo and Dell :)

I have read through your Italian AAR Dell - good work!
In MyMap is the technology cost increased? Say if you are France and get all the french cores, you will have loads of provinces compared to vanilla EU2, right? Doesn't that mean much more money as deo said?

Could we see some pics from your Byzantium game Dell?

I would question whether it was unhistorical though as it feels as if the army sizes are more realistic. Combat is a lot more interesting as there are more provinces to take and campaigns spread across several wars rather than one war.

Nope, even in normal EUII, the armies are oversized.

Expect smaller armies in EUIII.

Thanks for the compliments, deo and Dell :)

I have read through your Italian AAR Dell - good work!
In MyMap is the technology cost increased? Say if you are France and get all the french cores, you will have loads of provinces compared to vanilla EU2, right? Doesn't that mean much more money as deo said?

Could we see some pics from your Byzantium game Dell?

The big nations like France, Spain and England don't really gain that many more provinces. The Ottomans gain a lot more and there are a lot more provinces in Italy and the eastern Adriatic coastline. It might explain why the Ottomans seem to do well technologically in the two games that I have played however there hasn't been any drastic changes in balance that I have noticed. I'll probably post a Byzantine screenshot later.

Could we see some pics from your Byzantium game Dell?

A little late:

Austria keeps on declaring war every five years after I attacked Naples. I decided to make them core provinces after I had taken them. Pisa was owned by Tunisia which was gained in my latest war. Karaman was annexed and I gained three provinces off the Mamluks. My BB rating is pretty high.

http://img237.imageshack.us/img237/8137/byzantium3fx7.jpg

Its been an odd game so far as Burgundy has actually survived because France hasn't formed. Austria is forming a BWB which I haven't seen for a while. I'm planning on giving myself some more cores on Italy and eventually Italian culture after I take Rome and wait several years.

Albania and the Georgian state are my allies however I have been unable to vassalise them partly because of a lack of regular diplomats.

Looking good! Are you able to fend of Austria without problems? They look pretty scary. Btw, what's BWB? Good luck conquering Italy!

In my game as Savoy Poland is gigantic :eek: :
http://img289.imageshack.us/img289/999/screensave7kh3.jpg
Fortunately I have a powerfull ally in Spain, so I hope we will win the wars against Poland if they come. The Ottomans are also pretty big - they have a BB around 60, and their limit is around 40. Doesn't BB wars happen to the AI?

They happen. I once saw Otto (120BB, limit 60) at war with every big (France, Austria, England, Scandinavian nations, Spain, Poland, Hungary...) European nation and Persia. Austria conquered all the way to Rumelia, Persia took everything between Aleppo and Jordan. Otto pwned Persia later, though.

So far Austria hasn't been a problem. All three wars have ended in white peaces whilst I concentrated on Venice. The last war I had 40k troops on Vidin which seemed to help. BWB stands for Big White Blob because of all those vanilla games where the Austrian AI conquers everywhere.

BWB almost always eats Germany, and fights with Spain against France and Otto. That's realistic and useful when you play as Brandenburg. I conquered once all from Oldenburg to Wielkopolska and Jylland to Würzburg.

Hmm... I'll try Brande maybe again with MyMap.

Ah yes, Big White Blob... should have thought of that :crazyeye:

Do you experience this "problem"? :
http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/5796/screensave8gm0.jpg
I'm at war with Modena, and they have 4k troops in my nation. However, killing them is quite hard because they travel under white flag everytime they move. So the only way I can kill them is to find out where they will travel next, and send my troops there. If I'm too late, the enemy troops will be under white flag again :mad:

Split your troops to provinces Modena-troops could go.

Yeah, I have tried to do that - but as soon as I engage them in combat, they retreat to another province. I guess I just have to live with it...

Annex Modena then! ;)

That solves always everything.

:lol: Maybe I will ;) Only problem is that they have a province in Scotland - and they're allied with England :(

What do you do when two nations are in an endless war? Earlier in the game as Meissen/Saxony I had conquered most of Bohemia with one offensive war and then two defensive wars because they were vassals and thus unallied. Brandenberg declared war on them and have conquered one province however they cannot reach the other two provinces. My solution has been to edit the saved game file so they both have military access through my territory. :) It reminds me of the Egyptian Discworld book.

The other piece of editing I did was to disable the treaty of Arras. It seemed pretty silly for Burgundy to give France three provinces when they had just defeated them in a war and France was now a one province minor and their vassal.

Is there a demo for that game? It seems interesting. Also, Diplomacy is pretty good. But the computer backstabs you. :p

I don't think there is a demo for EU2, unfortunately. But I don't think you will regret it if you buy it :) You can also wait until Paradox releases EU3, perhaps a demo will come too.

Dell: Editing the save files seems very smart sometimes - like in the situations you have been in. I think one of the biggest drawbacks in EU2 is that the events sometimes is very illogical. AFAIK they will cut the events in EU3 - which I appreciate. What do you think of this?

Cut events in what way?

It is annoying in EU2, when historical events just don't fit in. In one of my games Great Northern War events triggered when Sweden was 2 province country pwned by Denmark.

I've read a bit at the EU3 forum, and got the impression that we don't will get such events as mentioned as much as before. But there will of course still be events. So I didn't mean they would cut all events in EU3 :)

Have soon finished my Savoy game - it did go better than expected:
http://img53.imageshack.us/img53/444/screensave10hl7.jpg
As you can see I just finished a war agaisnt Spain. I gained a few Italian provinces from it. The last province on my wishlist is Liguria - but Genoa have provinces by the Black Sea :( What to do?

Savoy did get many good monarchs and few, but very good leaders! Did plenty of siege-stealings :D

It is annoying in EU2, when historical events just don't fit in. In one of my games Great Northern War events triggered when Sweden was 2 province country pwned by Denmark.

Yeah it is annoying when things like that happen so I plan on stopping them from now on. I do like it how the Austrian diplomatic annexation events are relatively dynamic now as I think Poland could inherit Bohemia and Hungary instead and Hungary can remain independant.

I don't think it would be quite the same game without scripted events as things are going to go very ahistorical even without human interaction. Does sound quite cool though that if you were playing as a minor nation then it would be possible to gain beneficial events to continue increasing the size.

Btw has anyone formed Germany on AGCEEP as the event requirements are extremely harsh. You need to have four specific vassals, a nation size of 6, be the elected leader of the HRE, have great relations with your vassals and a BB rating of 3.

@Olav - That looks very similar to my Savoy game however I accidentally saved over half of the progress with another game.

I haven't tried to Germany yet, but I will try sometime. It is very harsh yeah - don't know what will be the worst factor, but getting 4 vassals is perhaps the hardest? Getting 6 provinces too - and keeping BB low is also difficult IMO. Isn't it a time limit too? Before 1500 if I remember correctly.

Too bad about your save, Dell :( Always frustrating when that happens...

1505 is the event death date. I don't believe it is really possible on MyMap as Mainz and Cologne start with vassals and thus they will not accept my own vassalisation attempts. It would be possible to start wars on their vassals though and then vassalise them later. A lot of cash would be necessary to keep relations high. On normal AGCEEP it should be more feasable as several of the nations could be force vassalised.

People have created alternative events to form Germany and I might use one eventually in my game if I eliminate the majority of German states (probably not including Austria and the fringe nations). Bohemia is a one province minor after giving provinces to Austria so I plan to annex them at some point. I would force vassalise them however they are already vassals of Poland.

One of the most annoying things ever...

Brandenberg have one province in the south that has a supply limit of 8 and has a medium fort. Throughout the war I have defeated all their armies and have spent four years continuously building infantry and artillary that I have sent to this province and continual assaults have reduced the fort to 2000 men. The Austrians at this point decide to declare war and have a fecking leader and steal the siege. The stupid thing is that Brandenberg only have four provinces so I would have been able to get everything off them and possibly make them my vassals.

I hate siege stealing in this situation especially as Austria will never actually get that province.

One of the most annoying things ever...

Brandenberg have one province in the south that has a supply limit of 8 and has a medium fort. Throughout the war I have defeated all their armies and have spent four years continuously building infantry and artillary that I have sent to this province and continual assaults have reduced the fort to 2000 men. The Austrians at this point decide to declare war and have a fecking leader and steal the siege. The stupid thing is that Brandenberg only have four provinces so I would have been able to get everything off them and possibly make them my vassals.

I hate siege stealing in this situation especially as Austria will never actually get that province.

:lol: A familiar situation... Don't you have enough WS to get them as vassals (around 80%)?
Perhaps Austria will go for peace if you wait long enough, so you can continue your conquest. I guess your warexhaustion is pretty high?

I've got quite a large nation now as Burgundy declared war on my allies twice and then gave me 7 provinces in total. Usually siege stealing is just mildly annoying however I am playing MyMap so lots of provinces now have medium forts except for Burgundy which had a couple of provinces with no forts. I believe the Palatinate and the Ottomans have been at war for a zillion years as the Ottomans cannot reach the Palatinate capital.

Did you use Burgundy's good relations towards England to your favor against Dauphine? If you beat them and have Lyonnais, Ile de France and Tours(not sure of the provinces) you become France AND have cores on Netherlands. So you have French provinces and extremely good Dutch provinces.

I'm Saxony. :)

I believe that Burgundy annexed France at some point since France were their vassals. Milan owned Lyon and three other French provinces but lost them to Spain. The Ottomans have gained most of Hungary again.

Oh. You mentioned Burgundy so many times in yer last post that I was confused. :blush:

No, I've forgotten abotu it actualy, I'll check tomorrow.
If you're still interested, I found out that it has to do with how many post you have (or maybe also how long you've been a member). I'm now a member for over a month and have about 26 posts and can access the memberlist and put a signature up. So I guess it works somehow as the system used here for custom titles.

I'm getting EUII soon and i will set up an account for future use now my user name is dimalio

I think I signed up to Paradox forums about 3 months ago- and I'm yet to post anything yet...

Oh and over there I'm Peck of Savoy if anyone was curious (Why Savoy I don't know... then again, why Arabia is even less obvious)

I have a question: Does the Fine Arts Academy give any bonuses if your stability is +3? Do the 5 ducats/month go to the treasury instead?

Question 2: Lets say Nation A and B are in an alliance. If I declare war on Nation A, they bring in nation B. If we look at the separate war with me and Nation B - is nation B the aggressor, or am I the aggressor? (I believe I'm the aggressor, but have to be sure :))

I assume it must go to your treasury since thats what it says on the slider.

You would be the aggressor. Nation B would have the penalties for breaking royal marriages with you though.

Ok. Thanks for the quick answer! :)

I'm sort of struggling to find new game angles. :)

I'm currently playing as Provence and have just become France after about 10 years. I initially went to war with the Dauphine and got my two cores however then England declared war which led to me taking Paris and becoming France. I have military access with the Dauphine because of the wars with France so I might let them live and see what they do. I think I may disable the Castile/Aragon annexation event to see how Aragon does on their own.

Could Lorraine become France? I play as them in a game now, and I own all the "french" provinces.

In AGCEEP the answer is no.

I started a game as Byzantium in Fantasy Byzantium -AGCEEP. I've taken all cores except one - Rhodos. I guess you know what my problem is now... :cry:

The Order have 40k troops there, and they have higher landtech than me.
What shall I do? Wait for a leader?

Your relations with Order?

Rhodos is a pain in the ass to conquer. Same with Cyprus and Crete. Try to attack Order when they fight against some other nation, or let them invade first.

Relations are at -133. Did you think of diplovassalising and then diploannexing? Diploannexing will not work, AFAIK, because I'm orthodox and they are catholic :(

I guess I have to go to war and hope they invade. However they have a small fleet, so it will take a while :)

Set fleets near Rhodos, so you can see when their fleet enters your coast. Then crush their boats when their troops haven't landed yet.

I tried to fight them now, but didn't prevail. Unfortunately, they didn't invade me, so all the fightning was at Rhodos. Looks like the only way to do it is to get a leader or wait for my tech to be superior.

One bad thing about Victoria is that the graphics (especially the map buildings, railroads etc) are very poorly created. Any modder could make something better in virtually no time at all, which is a dissapointment. I used to think that the Civ series was the worst in terms of creating poor gfx which are routinely beaten by user created ones, but Victoria makes civ3 look amazing in that respect :shake:

So, anyone got a link to custom created map gfx for Victoria: Revolutions? (i mean a specific link to such gfx/ a specific thread about them) :)

Errr... I like them, i like it simple and not flashy... thats why I like Civ 3s graphics more than Civ 4s.

The Order have 40k troops there, and they have higher landtech than me.
What shall I do? Wait for a leader?

Rhodes isn't an amazing province and they have probably converted it so that it is now Catholic. I would leave it and just periodically check the province. They might go to war with someone else and lose their stack.

Ah, I finally beat them. They sent around 7k troops to invade me, so they had around 30k left at Rhodos. They started to train new recruits, and I attacked them right after they were finished. The small morale reduction was the key factor for winning the battle :) Of course, I got a leader some months after I had annexed them...

Yeah, Rhodos isn't a very good province, but it was the last province I had claim/core on.

Imo the paradox games i've played (EU1, EU2, Victoria: Revolutions) are too much like each other. The eu series is too much like the HOI series, which is too much like Victoria, although of course they are focused on different periods, and Victoria is a lot more complicated than EU. In a way Paradox has become the modern Koei, producing a line of similar games, using the current tech (although not quite), much like Koei produced a series of very similar to one another strategy games (the ROTTK series; the Bandit kings series, the Ghenghis Khan series, L' Empereur- same as the rest, only the map being industrial Europe, etc). It can get boring...
I got the demo of Knights of Honor. It seems a bit different (mostly due to the graphics being more advanced) but probably deep down it is not (?) ; i didnt play a lot of it though.
Also im not sure if it was a good move to make tens of provinces for each nation. Just how many provinces does the Victoria map have? Although at first i was happy to see that Greece has 20 provinces (possibly more; i was too bored to count them all :lol: ) later on i realised just how boring it is to go to war with nations that have endless numbers of provinces... In that respect probably Eu1 and Eu2 were better; there was a reasonable number of provinces and not this hyberbole of Victoria (Germany/Prussia has some 50 provinces i think!).
It is an interesting game (Victoria) but i want to be able to play something to the end in one go (nothing new here as a problem; Eu1/Eu2 were taking aeons to finish as well) and then again in a way the game creates a bottleneck on itself since you have less than 100 years to play (which can seem not that much if you are forced to use the 'extremely fast' speed so as to avoid sleeping while you have to collect cash to build capitalists/factories etc.
Also the game is not balanced. If you control a minor nation there is nothing else that you can do apart from going to war. And then there are a number of entirely unrealistic ploys, for example as Greece i allied myself with Russia (which accepted a full alliance with a nation of 1 million people) and then declared war on the Ottomans. Naturally i made peace with them without caring at all about Russia, and at the same time using mostly the russian points scored. This is really a very bad ploy, since it is the exact opposite of the Crimean war, during which Greece was effectively occupied by "friendly" France and Britain, so as to dissallow it from declaring war on the Ottoman Empire.
But since in Victoria this is easy to pull off i got to control almost all of the balcans by 1860. From then on things become what they effecively are if you control a stronger nation, ie raising money and improving the infrastructure. But for what?
Imo Victoria (and the other paradox games; except perhaps Eu1, which was at least original) suffers from not having a distinct goal. You cannot hope to conquer the entire map. You cannot even hope to clarly defeat all other major opponents (as in the Industrialist series). But then what is your goal? To spend hours observing a perpetual balance of power? To march armies of 100k troops to a few key provinces, without getting anything much out of it? (after all, if you can afford 100k armies, nomatter what the provinces are like they would not increase your income much). Or is the goal simply to score enough points to be the nation that got the most of them? This reminds me of the end message of a game i owned for Gameboy, which had 100 levels, and then in the end there only appeared on the screan a message reading: "Congratulations: you are good player" (not even grammatically correct) :)

Imo the paradox games i've played (EU1, EU2, Victoria: Revolutions) are too much like each other. The eu series is too much like the HOI series, which is too much like Victoria, although of course they are focused on different periods, and Victoria is a lot more complicated than EU.

I haven't played HoI very much, but I found it very different. Of course they are kinda same, both are strategy games. But EU has more variations in type of nations. HoI has only warfare, when EU has warfare, diplomacy(HoI has too but hey, it is WWII), many historical events and colonization. Victoria is some more like EU, but it has political parties, social reforms and industrialization.

Also im not sure if it was a good move to make tens of provinces for each nation. Just how many provinces does the Victoria map have? Although at first i was happy to see that Greece has 20 provinces (possibly more; i was too bored to count them all ) later on i realised just how boring it is to go to war with nations that have endless numbers of provinces... In that respect probably Eu1 and Eu2 were better; there was a reasonable number of provinces and not this hyberbole of Victoria (Germany/Prussia has some 50 provinces i think!).

It is good to have many provinces. You can't conquer France in few years in real life at year 1600. And Greece isn't easy to conquer, it is very crowded area, so it is harder to conquer them than some part of Siberia. And in Victoria there could be more provinces, because Germany was divided into masses of small nations, like Italy.

It is an interesting game (Victoria) but i want to be able to play something to the end in one go (nothing new here as a problem; Eu1/Eu2 were taking aeons to finish as well) and then again in a way the game creates a bottleneck on itself since you have less than 100 years to play (which can seem not that much if you are forced to use the 'extremely fast' speed so as to avoid sleeping while you have to collect cash to build capitalists/factories etc.

Strategy games are not meant to play in 30 minutes to the end. But hey, you can start EU2 at Napoleonic wars and Victoria at WWI. With save game "converters" you can start at year 1066(Crusader Kings), play to 1419 and continue with EU2, play to 1820, then jump to 1836 to Victoria, and after that play until 1920 and jump to HoI. So THAT is a long game.

Also the game is not balanced. If you control a minor nation there is nothing else that you can do apart from going to war. And then there are a number of entirely unrealistic ploys, for example as Greece i allied myself with Russia (which accepted a full alliance with a nation of 1 million people) and then declared war on the Ottomans. Naturally i made peace with them without caring at all about Russia, and at the same time using mostly the russian points scored. This is really a very bad ploy, since it is the exact opposite of the Crimean war, during which Greece was effectively occupied by "friendly" France and Britain, so as to dissallow it from declaring war on the Ottoman Empire.

There is other things for minor nations than fight. Get allies to protect you and make some industry and colonization. After that you are not a minor nation. About the Greece-Russia alliance, what is that weird in that alliance? In WWII Finland allied with Germany. And the example you used could happen. Greece and Russia form an anti-Ottoman alliance, attack, Greece gets rid of the war with some excuse, Russia sees a chance to kick Turkish a**.

But since in Victoria this is easy to pull off i got to control almost all of the balcans by 1860. From then on things become what they effecively are if you control a stronger nation, ie raising money and improving the infrastructure. But for what?
Imo Victoria (and the other paradox games; except perhaps Eu1, which was at least original) suffers from not having a distinct goal. You cannot hope to conquer the entire map. You cannot even hope to clarly defeat all other major opponents (as in the Industrialist series). But then what is your goal? To spend hours observing a perpetual balance of power? To march armies of 100k troops to a few key provinces, without getting anything much out of it? (after all, if you can afford 100k armies, nomatter what the provinces are like they would not increase your income much). Or is the goal simply to score enough points to be the nation that got the most of them? This reminds me of the end message of a game i owned for Gameboy, which had 100 levels, and then in the end there only appeared on the screan a message reading: "Congratulations: you are good player" (not even grammatically correct)

You CAN conquer whole world. Many have done it, but it's veery hard. And what goals should there be? You said you conquered the Balkans. What about other Ottoman areas in Europe? That is another goal. And Crete, Rhodes, Cyprus and Corfu? Conquer them too.

The goal? lol!, the goal is to enjoy the game. In most games the goal is to win. In Victoria you can win by points and that is if I recall correctly, military score + Industrial score + 1/2 prestige score.

And remember, this is Victoria, this is played in the 19th century where Industrial capacity and National Population matter the most, not like in Eu2 where only you can conquer the world with a minor (even in Vicky that is possible).

The whole idea of these kind of games is to set your own goals. If you lack the imagination for that then you probably shouldn't be playing them. For example, take the Greek situation, yes, it's unlikely that you can conquer the world as them, but you can regain all of the provinces of Greek cultures, what next? Liberate the Balkans. After that? become a dominant mediterranian power, perhaps with an end-game goal to finish off the Ottomans if your skill allows it.

It's that amout of flexibility that I really like about the Paradox series, it's not just "conquer the world" which is tedium of the highest order once you've done it a few dozen times...

The problem is that the game does not follow history that well. Greece could have tried to go to war with the Ottoman empire early on, during the crimean war, but France and GB saw to it that this didnt happen. Instead here you can just create your own crimean war very easily, which i see as a ploy.
Moreover there is another bad ploy; unlike in the EU games, in Victoria you can pretty much declare war without having to worry about BB. Infact with Greece, or any other nation that starts with very good relations to a few major powers, you can just go to war with some uncivilized nation, conquer some of its land (eg Tunis is a very easy target) and then sell to to GB for over 20.000 pounds, effectively kickstarting your capitalism.
In RL a nation which would just declare war each 5 years for so obvious opportunistic reasons would have been met with more opposition by the great powers.

Moreover i do not agree that Victoria is complicated. Surely it is more complicated than the EU series, but in reality you always end up doing the same thing; build some lucrative factories and an army; keep the people happy and expand. With some powers that is so easy (eg Japan) that the game becomes a process of endlessly expanding factories and upgrading POP's, which can become in itself very dissapointing.

That said i would be interested in playing a game of it online; anyone know any good dedicated servers? :) (i have Victoria: Revolutions)

The problem is that the game does not follow history that well. Greece could have tried to go to war with the Ottoman empire early on, during the crimean war, but France and GB saw to it that this didnt happen. Instead here you can just create your own crimean war very easily, which i see as a ploy.

The problem of this is that you have several dozen countries, each following their own agenda (such as the AI can cope with). The longer you play a game, the more alternate-history you're going to get. This is probably one of the main reasons Paradox games have multiple scenarios, starting from different years to try and reflect the time periods.

Of course, this is coming form an EU2/HoI player, I never could break into Victoria.

Moreover i do not agree that Victoria is complicated. Surely it is more complicated than the EU series, but in reality you always end up doing the same thing; build some lucrative factories and an army; keep the people happy and expand. With some powers that is so easy (eg Japan) that the game becomes a process of endlessly expanding factories and upgrading POP's, which can become in itself very dissapointing.

That said i would be interested in playing a game of it online; anyone know any good dedicated servers? (i have Victoria: Revolutions)

Keeping economy on balance is very much more complicated in Victoria. You have to adjust trade tariffs, taxes, education and army spending and still gain money.

What difficulty level do you play? I have hard times in Victoria, because I play at Very Hard.

I have only played at the normal level. Are the next two levels anything different than just a negative bonus for the human player? (ie a positive for the AI) Or is there a negative bonus for all (both human and AI)?
I suspect that it is the first case, which i do not find that appealing :/

As for trade, i mostly keep taxes + tarifs as low as possible, so that i can enlarge the population more easily. The AI from what i've seen is unimaginative (France always lags far behind every other major) and although i have only played as Greece, Japan, Austria and France, i can say that with Japan it was a calm walk, with Austria it was frustrating since i got to 1880 before i could ensure going to a 2 year war without worrying about revolutions, with Greece it was the ussual trick with selling land to Britain and destroying the ottoman empire/egypt, and with France i am only now beginning to change the political system, after a quick war against Switzerland so as to force them to pay war indemnities (one of their corporals, who also was a painter, seemed to be a bit irritated by it) :)

I think thatVictoria would be simply great if there are servers that host massive multiplayer games. The great war scen would be ideal for such a quick game i think :)

I don't know the difference between normal and VH, I started with VH after playing EU2.

I have played Austria and France, both were bit easy. I suggest that you download V.I.P, what means Victoria Improvements Project(?).

Try Sardinia-Piedmont, Belgium, Netherlands or Spain. Sardinia has a challenge of unifying Italy, Belgium fighting Netherlands and colonizing Congo(like in real life), Netherlands colonizing East Asia and fighting Belgium and Spain conquering Morocco and colonizing Africa.

I'm about to reinstall Victoria for yet another attempt at getting to grips with it. I know of the Paradox site, and some helpful guides, but I'd be interested in any personal hints and tips from any Victoria players here :)

It's without the expansion, and I'll be downloading the latest patch (1.4?)

Download V.I.P also. It improves the game nicely, for example prevents unrealistic nations colonizing.

If you want challenge, then start as some small nation in Europe. They have to balance between Great Powers and small landmass. For moderate game take some nation in Americas or small European powers. I recommend Brazil, with V.I.P you have nice battles first with rebels and after that with economy. Colombia is also nice, so is Mexico. But don't take UCSA(?) in Central America, it has enormous rebellions. For an easy game take a big power.

Haven't played Vic for a while, but I remember that always set Machine Parts to Buy 1000. They are sooo rare. And don't trade techs for techs, your research points will go below zero.

I'm not really looking for a challenge. In fact, a challenge is the last thing I want when trying to learn this game :p

Playing as Sweden, as I read it was a good starter nation. Have to admit this is very true, my economy is in the green, and I managed to survive a couple of wars. One against Prussia for Denmark's sake (not really worth it) and joined the Crimean War in order to establish Finnish independance.

So far I'm enjoying it. I've kept on Britain's good side, as well as most of the major European powers, and I think I'm getting the hang of the damn game. Hopefully this will develop into a beautiful relationship!

Better control a nation that has a good steel industry. Othen than that you could also make some money by selling regular furniture. It seems that selling luxury items (lux furniture and/or lux clothes) will make your capitalists lose money, although i find this absurd (probably it has to do with the command for those items being set to "sell" which disables any purchace on your side, thus making the capitalists lose money since they have to buy them theirselves).
However the game is tiresome. Belgium looks like a nice little nation, with enough steel to be financially secure, but then it is landlocked between France and Germany. I am utilising an event for the ottoman empire which forces them to hand over Constantinople if it is captured, although i changed it since originally it had the unrealistic hand-over of the entire balcans (provided that you already controlled a part of them) whereas now it only causes them to hand over eastern Thrace. I am not keen on having the ottoman empire collapse entirely, since then there is only one nation that takes over the border, and that is Russia, which in Victoria means that you have no chance of getting it to back down from a war unless you can field massive armies.
I still am of the view that Victoria is very far away from being as good as Imperialism1, or Imperialism2. The Imperialism series were a lot more balanced, although ultimately their scope was smaller. Moreover although in theory all nations are playable in Victoria, it still is suicide to control uncivilised nations (minus Japan of course, but it becomes independent through an event). So that leaves only a handfull of nations apart from the european ones, and even less if one takes into account the german and italian unifications. In Europe the only playable nations are Greece, Prussia, Austria, Two sicilies, Piemonte-Sardinia, Spain, Portugal, France, Denmark, Sweden, Russia (well, it must be boring), Britain (boring as well i trust), Ottoman Empire and Netherlands. Possibly Bavaria too, although im not sure if it can stay out of war with Prussia, and finally i am not sure if the Papal states have any chance of unifying Italy.
Apart from them there are some latin-american nations, and then the Usa and Japan. That is not that great a number of playable nations afterall ;)
I could also add Serbia and the Hegemonies (Wallachia and Moldavia) but they start as Ottoman vassals and most probably will remain such for eternity; even waiting until the ottomans are at war with Russia can take ages.

Also i was quite surprised that Bulgaria has as its core provinces those it got to control in the end of the first balcan war. If it was so then Greece should also have Vlore as a core province, since it controlled it for a short while, but was forced to give it away due to Austrian/Italian pressure, which resulted in the creation of Albania. Overall the twenty-five provinces of the Greek core could have been a bit more; Izmir (Smyrna) and some other ones in coastal anatolia could be added, and also Varna and Burgaz could have formed Eastern Rumelia, which had been briefly a protectorate nation, before it was annexed by Bulgaria.
In the edited ottoman collapse event the ottomans are forced (if Constantinople is under greek control) to give Konstantinye, Edirne and Vlore, with the two other albanian provinces forming Albania as an independant nation, and Greece getting claims in Izmir and some other surrounding provinces.

I think that i will try the byzantine mod for Victoria, since there you have a real shot at making a huge nation in the region, although effectively it still is pretty much the same as the ottomans. However at least it allows for more interesting wars with Persia, and another block of alliance (with Russia).

Playing as Sweden, as I read it was a good starter nation. Have to admit this is very true, my economy is in the green, and I managed to survive a couple of wars. One against Prussia for Denmark's sake (not really worth it) and joined the Crimean War in order to establish Finnish independance.

:goodjob:

How do you keep your economy in balance? I had problems with it when I last time tried Vic.

It is very worth to defend Denmark, if you support them in both wars and select twice Scandinavian Surge and if you manage to get a white peace from both wars with Prussia, an even will appear in 1862 i think that will let you form Scandinavia...

General luck, so far. This is my my first game in which things are generally going the way I want. I'm no expert on Victoria. My general impression is that you simply sell everything on the trade market, except stuff that you need. This however, is the area I'm weakest in, so if anyone has any other suggestions I'd be most welcome.

Finnish independence isn't as great as it sounds. It's just three provinces in the north (including two that should belong to Russia). I'm trying to buy off two British provinces that they claimed in the Crimean War, but I'm hoping to have an opportunity to attack Russia sometime in the future. I can't do it alone though, so I'll have to bide my time.

Are you playing Revolutions or Vanilla?

Vanilla with latest patch.

Well, the best way to get Finland is to buy it via techs and a bit money, but you must have +190 relations with the bear...

I had a marvellous time when I returned back to Vicoria after a major hiatus (spent playing EU2). I can't really compare the two games, but Vicky was so much easier on the eyes!!

Pity I couldn't find VIP anywhere, anywhere at all... just vanished, not a trace- so I got revolutions instead, and I've never felt better about an online purchase...

I'm glad you like it, one of the best games!.

I am changing its graphics a bit, since i do not like the original ones at all.


http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/36763/madparadox.PNG

Does it really matter? The real thing is to see the world COLORED IN YOUR COUNTRY'S COLOR! :p :D

Peck, V.I.P can be found at Paradox Entertainment Forums. At least there I found it.

I picked up Hearts of Iron II: Doomsday today (along with Red Orchestra)

I haven't tried it yet though due a certain FPS game! :D

Just started a new HoI2 game as the Soviets. I think I've discovered how the Spanish Civil War works - whichever side you support will lose.

Also using a new half-patch which updates the AI. How well it works remains to be seen. Also putting some restrictions on myself in order to force myself to test some new strategies that I learned in my German AAR :)

Kan (or anyone for that matter), do you have any simple tips for someone who has never played a Paradox game before? Thanks :)

Seeing as you got HoI, I'll focus on that.

First up, the tutorials are if I remember rightly, pretty decent, so go through them. By 'decent' I mean 'better than the original HoI tutorial, which I'm fairly certain someone designed to be as user-unfriendly as possible.'

Play one of the big nations in the 1936 campaign- in particular Germany, USA or the Soviet Union - to begin with. They allow for a lot of trial and error games, and you can pretty much make any mistake and still recover. The USA is particularly well protected by two oceans, but it will mean an extra layer of micromanagement with your navies. These three nations mean that you essentially have no need to worry about resources at all, let alone trading.

As I say, work through the tutorial first then try out the campaign. Feel free to ask anything more specific and I'll be happy to answer :)

Cool

Thanks, I'll probably give it a go tomorrow.

Good luck with it :goodjob:

One specific tip - when researching, Industrial Techs first, all else follows after that. And never research anything that has it's historical breakthrough date more than a year beyond whatever year it is ingame :)

I just managed to unify Germany in EU2 (AGCEEP). Do anyone know if I get more cores as time goes? The number of cores I have now isn't very impressive :(

Where do you have cores? And what nation you used to unify Germany?

I think you should get cores to every German province, but maybe not to Austria's provinces.

I played as Brandenburg. Here is a pic right after the unification:
http://img473.imageshack.us/img473/5342/screensave2cr8.jpg
Missing cores on Anhalt, Sachsen, Mainz, Pfalz, Köln (and Pommern). Getting cores on Austria would be good :) Well, even if I don't get cores, I will go to war sooner or later anyway.

I was pretty boring to unify Germany btw... Too much diplomacy, and too little war :) Had only two quick wars over 80 years.

You can get more cores if you own certain provinces. I think its described on their website.

Thanks for the info!

Edit: Yeah, found it on their website now...

I think you should conquer Anhalt, it may give you cores to Anhalt and Saxony. Also Anhalt is painful to conquer if you let them build a Medium-fortress there.

Do you have core to Savoie?! :eek: Great permanent CB against France!

I played some more, and diploannexed Saxony and Mainz after a while. Pfalz was allied to France, so after a war I got Hessen, Hannover, Oldenburg and Lorraine (had core on that province too :))

Burgundy owns Baden - it will be easy to conquer that, but it doesn't give me enough warscore to get it permanent. That means I have to go for their capital. To get there I need access through France, which is only possible during war. Unfortunatley Burgundy has 72k troops in their capital, so it could take a while to beat them :undecide:

Burgundy will disappear soon anyway?

Damn! I managed to overwrite the save :( Oh well, the purpose of the game was only to see how hard it was to unify Germany...

I started again my old save in Crusader Kings. I started as Apulia, small duchy in the Italian peninsula. Now I have provinces in Russia, Balkans, Italy, Spain, North Africa(only one-two), Iceland, Georgia and Middle East, including Jerusalem.

Pretty good, eh? :smug:

http://www.picspirate.com/img/47ae49a98d175971ab60e86373dfdb7e/tCK.jpg (http://www.picspirate.com/links/my-empire)

Great empire there! :goodjob:

I expanded in to Veneto a minute ago, I vassalized them.

Apulia is a fairly easy country, easiest among duchies. You just have to first rush to Sicily to get Kingdom-title and then fight against Muslims/Pagans everywhere. Just make sure you don't get to Golden Horde's way, in my game they have conquered Bohemia.:eek: And they are at war with Ayuubids, so they may expand to Middle East. :eek:

Here is a pic of my progress as Germany in HoI:

http://img384.imageshack.us/img384/1963/hoimapdf7.png (http://imageshack.us)

I think it's going well so far, it's 1939 and I've annexed Austria, Checkoslovakia and Poland...next step is to invade either France or Russia.

It took me a while to figure out how you move divisions from one army to another, but apart from that it's all good. :D

You declared war on Poland early? That could lead to some problems with the USSR, so watch your border there :)

Usually, there's an event in August '39 in which Germany and the Soviets agree to split Poland, then the 'second world war' events trigger at the end of that month. It keeps them off your back while you take on western Europe.

Yeh I got Austria and Checkoslovakia via events but I went for Poland under my own steam

Yes, I'm sure it will lead to problems for the USSR. ;) :p

Those sound like words I'll be eating in a couple game-years....

:lol: We'll see, I've never tried attacking Poland early or going against the USSR in such a fashion - in all German games it's the big enemy. Many other players have though, but keep that border well-guarded.

Does anyone else here have Crusader Kings? If yes, then someone wise could tell me how to prevent vassals loyalty decreasing? About 10 of my vassals have broken free, though about 7 have came back, 1 I have conquered and 2 were so far away/poor, that they weren't worth a war.

If I remember correctly it's good to keep the vassals taxes low and have a good reputation. Long time since I played CK, so not 100% sure.

I keep my scutage at 0. Maybe I fight too much...

Golden Horde conquered Germany. Uh-oh.

Waiting still for Il-Khanate in Persia...

Just started a new HoI2 game as the Soviets. I think I've discovered how the Spanish Civil War works - whichever side you support will lose.
Not true.
It depends mostly on what territories both sides get with the start of the civil war. And it happens that some countries don't intervene while they normally do and otherwise.
As Sweden I managed to get the republicans to win with massive aid of supplies. But it helped that Germany didn't send the Condor legion. :eek:

I was joking with that post ;)

Usually as Germany (and most other nations) I see the Republicans win, when I want the Nationalists to. When I played as the Soviets I wanted the Republicans to win...and they lost quite spectacularly.

I was joking with that post ;)

Usually as Germany (and most other nations) I see the Republicans win, when I want the Nationalists to. When I played as the Soviets I wanted the Republicans to win...and they lost quite spectacularly.
Oh, OK... :blush:

Have you had problems with the screen size on EU2? It is installed on laptop, but the game is about 1/4 of maximum.

I play it on a laptop, and have never had any problems with the graphics. Have you tried to change the screen resolution?

I changed screen resolution to 1024/768(?), which is max resolution of EU2. But the laptop is "widescreen", so that may cause the problem.

Same problem with CK.

And FM07, though it started only a while ago. :eek:

I've had graphical glitches on the normal "not-laptop" computer after removing MyMap. Then I tried to re-install it but it freezes when copying core files. Maybe I should re-install MyMap and remove it again, I think some of the files are still there, I messed with the uninstalling. :rolleyes:

Too bad it didn't work :( Graphical problems is always frustrating.

Yeah, I have also experienced big glitches with the map after removing both MyMap and WATK - first I tried to remove the maps-folder, and then paste in the backup folder of the old maps. The map got fine again, but then other problems came up. So the only solution was to do a complete reinstall... So now I only stick to ACGEEP :)

HAHA! The uninstalling works!

So, after re-installing, I'll install MES(Mongol Empire Scenario, I highly recommend) and AGCEEP. After patching, of course.

My problem was and useless video file. When I selected "Repair" it installed another avi-folder. I removed other one, but then uninstallation froze. So I took it back from trashcan.

You know EU2, am I the only one that finds the massive gaps in the map really, really crap?

I started again my old save in Crusader Kings. I started as Apulia, small duchy in the Italian peninsula. Now I have provinces in Russia, Balkans, Italy, Spain, North Africa(only one-two), Iceland, Georgia and Middle East, including Jerusalem.

Pretty good, eh? :smug:

http://www.picspirate.com/img/47ae49a98d175971ab60e86373dfdb7e/tCK.jpg (http://www.picspirate.com/links/my-empire)

What game is that?

Crusader Kings, I highly recommend it. You can buy it pretty cheap now, I think.

And rossi, I don't find large gaps in the map as crap.

No? Even when they are small gaps like on the Indonesian islands, or near Bangladesh?

There are gaps in real life too, though you can mod land bridges in it. Or just use mods(AGCEEP!).

No, I mean massive holes in the map, such as Himalayas, Central USA, central South America and most of Australia. They are bloody annoying.

Oh, you mean those. Those are because of people didn't know what there was, or ever explored it.

And what use would deserts of Australia, prairie of USA and jungles of Amazon give you? Deserts: nothing. Prairie: almost nothing, maybe cotton or something like that. Jungles: Native tribes, diseases and los piranhas!

I would still like to see it, rather than holes.

AI would be keen to colonize those empty, poor lands when the coastline is taken, so it would mean unrealistic colonization of deserts and jungles.

But they could be shown, you could go through them but maybe not colonize.

Here is my current progress in HoI (currently it is February 1941):

http://img375.imageshack.us/img375/687/hoiwl5.png (http://imageshack.us)

The USSR declared war on me in June 1940, which I suspect was a mistake on their part as the war thus far has not gone especially well for them.

The Axis currently is made up of:

Germany
Italy
Hungary
Yugoslavia
Bulgaria
Greece

Apparently the Soviets have around 130-150 divisions, to my 230ish :D So currently in the planning is a spring offensive towards Moscow

Also, I have a question; is it possible to gift provinces to another nation?

Yes, but only up to five at a time and only to nations allied with you. Go their diplomacy screen, then click 'open negotiations.' It will one of the tabs that you can bargain with :)

Ah cool, thanks :)

Have any of you experienced weird problems in AGCEEP with fortresses? In my game as England Pest, Maine, Limousin, Brabant, Castille and Aragon are without fortifications...

I think there is a slight risk that the fortress level drops after a successful seige. So a province with minimal fortress can in fact lose all protection after a siege.

I noticed that when I conquered Alexandria, it's fortress dropped to small.

Hehe, I have an alliance with Austria, Holstein and Palatinate. Holstein declared war on Otto, and 5-7-6-2 Marlborough liberated delta of Nile. Now I own Egypt, Delta and Alexandria. :smug:

August 9th 1941, Moscow is captured by Germany!!

Pretty good going even if I say so myself. :smug:

Though I have to admit to two semi-major reloads and turning the difficulty down to 'easy'.:blush:

And another question: How come I can't seem to combine loaned divisions into armies? It is annoying having stacks and stacks of one-division armies sent to me by my allies...:ack:

Is there anything you can do to increase the tax value of a province with all the buildings possible? For instance, I can't build a shipyard in Apulia, yet I have built all the buildings in it, yet still can't build a shipyard. Is there anything I can do to raise the tax value of the province so I can?

What game are you playing?

If CK, then Apulia hasn't researched the tech needed to shipyards.

EU2 Agceep mod.

Oh.

Do you need a high tax value for shipyard? I didn't know that. Maybe you tech level isn't high enough yet.

No, I have all the requirements apart from the tax value of the province. I want to know a way in which to increase it.

If you mean base tax value, then your situation sucks. It raises only in events. If you mean just the amount of taxes, then your situation sucks. It depends pretty much on base tax value.

Yes, that sucks. Does that mean then, that loads of overseas provinces are not able to have shipyards?

Here (http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=211565) you can see what base tax value the provinces have.

Edit: Is the minimal required for building shipyard tax level 6?

Edit: Is the minimal required for building shipyard tax level 6?

Yes. tenka.

So Manhattan is one of the few what can have a shipyard in America. Roanoke, San Bernardino and maybe Stadacone are some others.

Hmph. AGCEEP has really evil event bugs.

I played as Ak Koyunlu, the little nation next to Otto. Well, I went through few years of peace, until I conquered Kurdistan from Kara Koyunlu. Then; 60 years of peace. After that Kara Koyunly got "Jahan Shah" events, which occured a war between me and Kara. Perfectly realistic. When I luckily got a peace treaty(they had 60k troops, I had 13k, but no provinces were anymore occupied). Then Jahan Shah died, and "growing Ak Koyunlu conquered Kara Koyunlu."

So I controlled provinces between Trabzon and Hormouz. Nice. Early 15XX I got an event, where my empire split between two heirs, Ahmad and Murad. Realistic, Iraq got in event the whole Persia. But then. I got an event about rise of the Safavids. 30k revolt in Azerbaijan. But I won with my 35k cavalry army. Then I got an event, where Safavids got independence BECAUSE I LOST THE BATTLE!? Man, there were no rebel survivors! In that event all my troops, which were in Azerbaijan, disbanded.

Nice. Well, a good reason to change the game I play(LBA2, here I come!).

I have also tried to play as Ak Koyunlu in AGCEEP. Experienced the same problems as you - and found it very frustrating, so I quit. Really hope EU3 will be better with events like this.

I think the problem is with event triggers.

Will the whole map be displayed in the new EU3?

I'm not sure, I think not.

Those gaps aren't that annoying if you don't focus on them. If there would be provinces their base tax would be 1, so they would be almost useless.

But actually colonizing Siberia as Tibet sounds fun! :öpö:

I think there will be gaps in EU3 too.

Edit: Crosspost...

I think it should just be displayed at least. I think it's really annoying. Half of America, most of Africa, not there.

You must remember that these areas that have PTI (permanent terra incognita) were areas which pretty much were too prohibitive for settlement, at least until the mid-1800s.

^^True. Increase the timeline.

No need, then you move onto Victoria :)

Is that Good?

Depends who you speak to. I can see it being a great game, but at the same time I consider it to be the most difficult of the Paradox Games (that I've played). You start at 1836, and the timeline (with expansion) goes up to 1936, with all the joys of that time period in between.

I'm not a fan, but I'm sure someone who is will be in to describe it better.

Is the same sort of game as EU2? ie, colonisation of these gaps in eu2 and stuff?

Yeah, colonisation is a big part of it. The whole map is now available and visible from the start.

Cool. What nations can you play as?

Any nation. Though it is very boring to play as some small Indian, British vassal nation. So nations that can be enjoyed are maybe all(in Grand Campaign) except African nations, small Asian nations and minor German nations.

Can you still form Italy; can you colonise any lands?

Yes and yes. Italy can be formed as any Italian nation(not sure about Papal States). And Africa is almost empty, like in RL.

What Italian states are there?

Well, maybe these are not all of them but:

Sardinia-Piedmont
Two Sicilies(Napoli and Sicily)
Papal States
------------ These are the three strongest
Lucca
Parma
Modena
Veneto(appears later)
some other small powers.

How good is it compared to EU2? Worth getting?

Also, I looked on amazon.co.uk for it. It says the timeline is 1836-1920. Is that correct because some people say it's 1836-1936. Also also, what should the timeline be for EU2?

IMO Victoria is really good when you get into it. And that's the hardest part. It has a difficult financial system, which is hard to control. If you get it for cheap, then buy. If it's not that cheap, then think about it and maybe read some comments from it elsewhere.

Timeline is to 1920 without Revolutions-expansion.

Do you mean that what should IMO be the timeline of EU2? Currently it is from 1419 to 1820. And it's OK for me.

Timeline for EU2 is 1419-1819, if I remember rightly.

Victoria on it's own is 1836-1920. There's an expansion pack (Revolutions?) that extends this to 1936. I stated this one as I wasn't sure if newer editions of Victoria came with the expansion already (like Hearts of Iron 2 now comes only with the Doomsday expansion).

Timeline for EU2 is 1419-1819, if I remember rightly.

Victoria on it's own is 1836-1920. There's an expansion pack (Revolutions?) that extends this to 1936. I stated this one as I wasn't sure if newer editions of Victoria came with the expansion already (like Hearts of Iron 2 now comes only with the Doomsday expansion).

You bought only one thing, and that was Victoria with the expansion pack?

What is Hearts of Iron 2 like? What timeline does it cover? Worth getting as well?

So many questions. :crazyeye:

The games are likely to be cheap if I find them anywhere. (amazon doesn't have victoria at the minute)

You bought only one thing, and that was Victoria with the expansion pack?

Not quite sure if I understand the question, but I bought Victoria quite early on, and well before the expansion pack. I haven't gotten the expansion yet :)

What is Hearts of Iron 2 like? What timeline does it cover? Worth getting as well?

It covers the Second World War period, from 1936-1949. It's more focused on war and military strategies rather than the economies of the time. It's among my favourite games (as some may have guessed by now :p ), and very much worth getting if you're interested in the period.

It also has an expansion, called Doomsday, though they're sold together now. It takes the game up to 1953(?) and covers a fictional Cold War-gone-hot scenario, with the US and Russia duking it out immediately after the end of the Second World War. I haven't purchased it yet, though I probably will at some point :)

The two are on my list to buy now. :D What about Crusader Kings? Have you got that?

I have just been researching, and found that that is the first one, if you like. With all the games and expansions, you can apparently play as a nation from 1066 to 1953, which sounds fun!

Muhahahaaa! Another one purchasing HoI because of me! :scan:

Haven't played Crusader Kings, so can't comment. The 1066-1953 does intrigue me, but the problem that I've seen is that by the end of EU2 at the latest, you've essentially won the game and it's not worth carrying over to the next game. That's unless you hold yourself back :)

Your 5000th post! If I have 20 quid going spare, I will try to get all of them for that. Hopefully :sad:

About the holding back: we all do it at some point don't we? ;)

Me and Kan should get money from Paradox for introducing others into their games!

Crusader Kings is fun. It hasn't got any historical events, though, but it is very good. Royal Marriages and alliances(comes with patch) give a nice flavour to the game. And of course crusades. Problem is that you can build a nice, widespread empire easily without others making and alliance against you.

I have heard that multiplayer with CK is great fun.

Hitti, have you done a game from 1066-1953?

Nope. I don't have HoI. And I'm not sure if AGCEEP can handle CK saves. But I may try that if I get an addiction to CK again. Maybe I'll continue my glorious Napoli-save, and in EU2 unite Italy.

Can you do that though? I didn't think Napoli could unite Italy.

Why not? In EU2 you can unite Italy with every Italian nation except Papal States and Venice. At least I think so.

Why not? In EU2 you can unite Italy with every Italian nation except Papal States and Venice. At least I think so.

No, only the northern provinces of Tuscany, Modena, Mantua, Parma, Savoy and Milan, I think.

http://perso.numericable.fr/~yodamaster/AGCEEP/FAQ.htm#KoI

It also has an expansion, called Doomsday, though they're sold together now. It takes the game up to 1953(?) and covers a fictional Cold War-gone-hot scenario, with the US and Russia duking it out immediately after the end of the Second World War. I haven't purchased it yet, though I probably will at some point :)It used to be for sale for £7.99 on Play.com, but now it's sold out.

It used to be for sale for £7.99 on Play.com, but now it's sold out.

I see it in GAME from time to time, usually as part of the "Buy 2 for £25" deals. If it were part of the "Buy 3 for [price]" deals, then I might get it, but I don't see much point in it right now :)

You actually see it in GAME?

I do! I even saw it in HMV once! :eek:

Was a bit strange really, as I got my copy of HoI2 on release day, then never saw a copy again. Now I see copies of HoI Doomsday pretty regularly. I guarantee that when I actually want to get a copy they'll be sold out.

I never see it anywhere, except for once (without the expansion) second hand for about £25.

25 quid is too much for a second hand pc game.

I see 1 copy all the time of all PE games, usually at my local EB.

I guess I'm just lucky. :p

I saw copies of Doomsday a couple of months ago at EB. I haven't seen a single copy since then. If I were to find a copy of it though, I would buy it.

I saw Europa Universalis 2 a while ago in ePlay for £3 second hand. It was the only time I ever saw it for sale. I bought it.

EU3 coming out soon, can't wait to finally get a paradox game. They're releasing a demo in a week too.

EU3 coming out soon, can't wait to finally get a paradox game. They're releasing a demo in a week too.

A demo! I didn't realize they were releasing a demo! I'm definitely going to check that out.

Ooo, finally time to cash in on my christmas present. :)