Europa Universalis IV

The thing is, it's a game, not a simulator. It cannot - and should not - attempt to represent every aspect of the era in the deepest detail; it should start with a strong concept of one aspect of the era it want to capture, and build the game around that, adding the rest for realism.

Hence why CK is the dynastic game, Rome the internal politics games, Victoria the economic game, HOI the grand warfare game. EU3's role in that scheme is to be the nation-building game. They're not just different timelines, they're different games with different feels to them.

Each will have some limited elements of the rest (in some case more limited, in others less so), but each will focus on its core identity and won't try to bring in the core identity of the other games.

Turquoiside said:

I've never understood how people find EU3 a difficult game. cIV is by far the harder one to learn. After having the game for 5 years I've only ever advanced two difficulty levels in cIV, while the procedure for any/all nation in EU3 was easy enough to learn in about a month. So what part of EU3 do you thing is more complicated than Civilzation? And I'll admit that obviously EU3 > CiV (but what isn't?), though I don't think EU3 will ever be > cIV.

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Civ is really, really easy. Especially Civ 5 to which I am principally referring. Civ 4 is a less severe example, but I haven't played it in years, so I don't remember. The AI is terrible at it unless you allow it to cheat to the max, and even then it's not great. At least with Civ 5, it's basically just build the most cities and then eventually win. If you make it out of the classical era, there are few if any plausible threats. Civ 5's endgame is particularly brutal; I find there is absolutely nothing to do in the end game. Just cock your head and wonder why the AI keeps suicide DoWing you.

EU is if nothing else a more immersive experience. There are simply more mechanics to keep in mind, even if they don't always make a ton of sense; including culture and rebels at all is a step up. EU also has navies that kind of matter. The AI is also sometimes capable of beating you in a battle, which creates a genuine underdog feeling (for the first 200 years anyway). Depending on where you start in the world, each game can feel very, very different. And the AI at least knows it's supposed to blob to compete, even if it's bad at it (unlike the Civ5 AI, which can, but doesn't even try). The EU colonization aspect is nice too if you're one of those countries, whereas in Civ, overseas colonization is just annoying, and there is little to no reason to do it.

EU also has the benefit of a much better modding community than Civ 5 does (ironic place to post that I suppose).

Leonel said:

It's the mindset. The fact that with Civ, you can take your time with a turn whereas with EU3 you pause and progress and it's unfamiliar with a lot of Civ players.

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I've heard this too, and I find it quite odd. EU3 is basically just a turn based game, except that the turns are fast and there's a lot of them.

History_Buff said:

I've heard this too, and I find it quite odd. EU3 is basically just a turn based game, except that the turns are fast and there's a lot of them.

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You know the unfortunately thing now? I can't remember why I thought EU3 was hard now. It's so easy for me now, but perhaps needing justifications to wage war, the idea of infamy and stability and the relative difficulty of keeping the population happy were entirely new concepts that Civ players hadn't grasped.

Oda Nobunaga said:

The thing is, it's a game, not a simulator. It cannot - and should not - attempt to represent every aspect of the era in the deepest detail; it should start with a strong concept of one aspect of the era it want to capture, and build the game around that, adding the rest for realism.

Hence why CK is the dynastic game, Rome the internal politics games, Victoria the economic game, HOI the grand warfare game. EU3's role in that scheme is to be the nation-building game. They're not just different timelines, they're different games with different feels to them.

Each will have some limited elements of the rest (in some case more limited, in others less so), but each will focus on its core identity and won't try to bring in the core identity of the other games.

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Oh, I agree for the most part, but the time period covered by EU really isn't a very good one for the idea of nation-building. The EU time period best lends itself to trade and dynastic conflict, which were a substantial part of early modern history. It's just exceedingly disappointing that Paradox did such a shoddy job with those concepts in EU3.

I don't agree. The early modern era is precisely the time of the emergence of the country/nation out of the former feudal system. Centralization, absolute monarchy, expansion and consolidation of national borders and national institutions, etc. Yes, there were still dynastic politics, but they were secondary compared to the rise of nations.

Oda Nobunaga said:

I don't agree. The early modern era is precisely the time of the emergence of the country/nation out of the former feudal system.

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Depends on the part of the early modern period your talking about. I much prefer that 16th and early 17th century part of it, during which it only really starts to play a hand at the tail end. You can make more of an argument for the late 17th century, and especially the 18th century, but I usually stop playing eu by the time I hit that period.

I disagree with your assessment of how late the phenomenon began. It certainly had started by the early 17th century part (see: Richelieu). Arguably, the consolidation of nations had begun significantly earlier, at least in France, with the end of the great quasi-independent vassals in the late 15th century.

All that said, Paradox explicitly make their game about a certain era, and both the seventeenth and eighteenth century are part of that era. You cannot just say the game should not consider them when deciding its themes.

And if there's one unifying trend from 1500-1800, it is in fact the consolidation of actual states. end of the independent vassals, centralisation, the rise of absolutism: these are (overall) the growing trends of that timeframe.

Oda Nobunaga said:

And if there's one unifying trend from 1500-1800, it is in fact the consolidation of actual states. end of the independent vassals, centralisation, the rise of absolutism: these are (overall) the growing trends of that timeframe.

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What a peculiarly French viewpoint.

Francophone viewpoint, but otherwise true. France was the model I had in mind, because it was the model most of my books were focused on when I was reading about the era, which is a long time ago (before I was this bilingual). In general, my interest since then has shifted to Native American, Colonial North American, and Subsaharan theaters, so I haven't dug further in the subject.

You can certainly argue that the trend was not universal, especially in its finer details (ie, while there were absolutist-esque tendencies in many places, they went in many directions, were checked in some places, were not in others, etc). And it being a trend does not mean it was "progress" or anything of the sort.

However, we're not writing a history book attempting to accurately capture all the nuances of history in the era. We're talking game design. A game has to focus on certain aspects of what it tries to represent, otherwise it just ends up losing itself in being too ambitious (see: Magna Mundi, Hearts of iron III). It has to have a central focus.

In that light, I still feel that the creation, expansion and consolidation of nations (and the European worldwide expansion) is a very suitable theme to focus a game on in the 1500-1800 timeframe.

New gameplay video.

http://www.gamespot.com/events/gamescom-2012/video.html?sid=6391927

Highlights:
-Agents (Merchants, Diplomats) are now named characters, not an expendable/renewable resources.
-The trade system is explained in some details.
-There will be an Atlantic Trade Shift
-Other things, watch the vid

EU IV appears to start the day after the Battle of Varna, where the Ottomans defeated the Christian forces and began increasing their control over Eastern Europe.

I think I like the new trade route system. Good to see navies play a big role in trade, finally.

And Johan want to make a CK II converter.

Oda Nobunaga said:

And Johan want to make a CK II converter.

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Yeah, they say that now but we'll wait and see. I wish they would have followed through with the V2 -> HoI3 converter. Out of all the possible converters, this is the only one I'm interested in (and I don't know why).

Oda Nobunaga said:

In that light, I still feel that the creation, expansion and consolidation of nations (and the European worldwide expansion) is a very suitable theme to focus a game on in the 1500-1800 timeframe.

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And I mostly disagree with this, but it is becoming abundantly clear we aren't going to change each others' minds on that.

On the video, the trade system does look a lot better, which is nice. And the map looks pretty, so there is that.

Oda Nobunaga said:

New gameplay video.

http://www.gamespot.com/events/gamescom-2012/video.html?sid=6391927

Highlights:
-Agents (Merchants, Diplomats) are now named characters, not an expendable/renewable resources.
-The trade system is explained in some details.
-There will be an Atlantic Trade Shift
-Other things, watch the vid

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Interesting that the video seemed aimed at CK2 players: that game must have sold really well if Paradox are considering it the game that people know.

Apparently the Steam sales were quite impressive.

All right, a CK2 converter! Hope they also have one planned for Vicky 2, unless V3 isn't that far off.

This sucks, it was the same thing with Vicky 2 and they still can't even get their maps right!

For comparison:

Isn't that just a point-of-view and map projection difference? ... Their map seems projected slightly differently from the extremely flat and square Google projection.