After trying out EU3 and expansions, I'd have to say that it was ridiculously poor. Doesn't even feel like a game, basically just sat their waiting years for the techs and cash to roll in whilst trying to figure out a way to wage war without other nations helping them out. Can't see much depth in it either, civ4 definatley has more to offer. Agreed the graphics are poor, but I could have seen past that if it was actually a good game. imo civ 5 in it's current state is more playable than eu3.
Let down by CiV? Loving Paradox games?
- Thread starter frkhead
- Start date
Aristos
Lightseeker
I love Victoria II. It is unique that is attempt in economical/military/social simulation.
Yes, in current state game has some bugs in economy area, and some problems in social area, but even with that I found it very interesting.
If one understand some/socio-economical ideas - game is mach fun.
Or you can learn some, but you do need to pay attention
When playing EU3 - divine wind I am in some way feel like playing chess. You analyze network of alliances and try to find way to benefit form them, why trying to implement you core strategy.
Was fun for me.
Yes, in current state game has some bugs in economy area, and some problems in social area, but even with that I found it very interesting.
If one understand some/socio-economical ideas - game is mach fun.
Or you can learn some, but you do need to pay attention
When playing EU3 - divine wind I am in some way feel like playing chess. You analyze network of alliances and try to find way to benefit form them, why trying to implement you core strategy.
Was fun for me.
My problem with EU3 is that it doesn't accurately simulate historical situations at all. It just feels sort of featureless and ahistorical and gamey and wargamey after a while. Giant empires and blobbing are really all you can do, and they're very easy to do without consequence. It's an excellent game with Magna Mundi, but MM is a bit punishingly hard. It's a very fun experience if you're good with it though.
Also, Divine Wind's Japan makes me cry.
Victoria 2 is pretty fun, I haven't played it that much but it seems although the emphasis is supposed to be placed on the economy, it still just turns out very wargamey.
Hearts of Iron 3 is insanely complex and hard to figure out, and the wait from starting up to actually getting in to the war is really boring and really long.
Now, all 3 are pretty good games and I recommend both EU3 and Victoria 2, EU3 especially, but they are not historical and they are certainly not any more builder-focused than the Civ series, even 5.
Also, Divine Wind's Japan makes me cry.
Victoria 2 is pretty fun, I haven't played it that much but it seems although the emphasis is supposed to be placed on the economy, it still just turns out very wargamey.
Hearts of Iron 3 is insanely complex and hard to figure out, and the wait from starting up to actually getting in to the war is really boring and really long.
Now, all 3 are pretty good games and I recommend both EU3 and Victoria 2, EU3 especially, but they are not historical and they are certainly not any more builder-focused than the Civ series, even 5.
Highly respect Paradox and the gamers who play them. Liked the original Hearts of Iron ... I could lose with any nation! EU3 defeated me easily.
Strangely attracted to Victoria 2, but forum suggests to me maybe another year or two of patches and mods.
Magicka is published by Paradox, not developed by them. Magicka certainly breaks the Paradox tradition of spreadsheets on steroids with a thin icing of graphics! This game I do want and will get about the time the Vietnam expansion comes out. Look up Magicka TotalHalibut on Google if you do not know what it is.
Me? Yes, I own Civ 5 up on Steam. Couple years it will be excellent. Civ 4 for now.
Tastes vary a lot in games. Useless to try to make converts. Players like Galactic Civlizations 2, Master of Orion 2, and Sins of a Solar Empire Trinity or they do not. Useless really to try and figure out why.
Strangely attracted to Victoria 2, but forum suggests to me maybe another year or two of patches and mods.
Magicka is published by Paradox, not developed by them. Magicka certainly breaks the Paradox tradition of spreadsheets on steroids with a thin icing of graphics! This game I do want and will get about the time the Vietnam expansion comes out. Look up Magicka TotalHalibut on Google if you do not know what it is.
Me? Yes, I own Civ 5 up on Steam. Couple years it will be excellent. Civ 4 for now.
Tastes vary a lot in games. Useless to try to make converts. Players like Galactic Civlizations 2, Master of Orion 2, and Sins of a Solar Empire Trinity or they do not. Useless really to try and figure out why.
krasny
Prince
- Joined
- Jul 19, 2002
- Messages
- 576
Civilization 4 and Europa Universalis 3 are my first and second favourite games of all time.
EU3 has the greatest verisimilitude of any game I have ever played.
All other Paradox titles are somewhat suspect, either because they are dumbed down, nonsensical fluff like EU: Rome or clunky and inscrutable like Hearts of Iron 3.
EU3 has the greatest verisimilitude of any game I have ever played.
All other Paradox titles are somewhat suspect, either because they are dumbed down, nonsensical fluff like EU: Rome or clunky and inscrutable like Hearts of Iron 3.
HOI3 was a big steaming pile of crap. Far more disappointing than Civ V ever has been. HOI3 was actually unplayable upon release from a performance standpoint. I mean, for all but the top 1% of systems. You think there has been whining and vitriol here? Check out the HOI3 forums in late 2009. Once they got some of the performance issues worked out then you had to deal with the gameplay, which was about an eightfold regression from HOI2.
I loved when the HOI3 demo came out and the Paradox Forums set up two threads - positive feedback and negative feedback. Well, five hours later the first had 3 pages and the second something like 50. So Paradox CHANGED THE THREAD TITLE to something like "HOI3 - Issues and concerns." True story.
HOI2 is still an extremely satisfying and enjoyable game some 6 years after its original release. The engine has been licensed to multiple third-party developers who are still releasing modified versions of it.
Only reason I don't play HOI2 now is because I have played it so much over the years that it has become too easy for me. That is the biggest criticism I can offer of the game, and whenever that's the case you are talking about an excellent game.
I loved when the HOI3 demo came out and the Paradox Forums set up two threads - positive feedback and negative feedback. Well, five hours later the first had 3 pages and the second something like 50. So Paradox CHANGED THE THREAD TITLE to something like "HOI3 - Issues and concerns." True story.
HOI2 is still an extremely satisfying and enjoyable game some 6 years after its original release. The engine has been licensed to multiple third-party developers who are still releasing modified versions of it.
Only reason I don't play HOI2 now is because I have played it so much over the years that it has become too easy for me. That is the biggest criticism I can offer of the game, and whenever that's the case you are talking about an excellent game.
Well, if you try to play EU3 as if you're playing a Civ title, yes, you're going to lose and lose badly. You'll overextend yourself, you'll try to gobble up provinces too quickly, you'll crank up your BB and get the "Dishonorable Scum" CB thrown at you, at which point EVERYONE will declare on you and gobble YOU up. You'll kill your tech development by minting too much cash at once, and cranking up inflation to beyond recoverable levels. You'll kill your stability declaring wars on people without a CB, which will kill your tax revenues, which -- at the start of the game -- are already pretty low, and you'll likely end up with revolts on your own soil.
EU3 is a slower paced game than Civ, in many ways, but it's modeling DAILY changes rather than "Click next turn and advance 20 years." I'd also ask what nation you were playing as to start. Castille, Portugal, England, France, Burgundy, or Sweden are good starting nations.
If you can't see much depth in the game, you honestly have not explored the game. There's plenty of depth, but it's a different kind of depth than Civ4. I also can't help but question what you mean by"gamey."
To me, a "gamey" game is one where mathematical abstractions are imposed for the sake of making the game "work" or "be balanced" or something like that, without regard to anything involving how nations, empires, or history operated. It's also where success at the game is gained by manipulating the GAME elements, rather than having any kind of deeper understanding of history. A "gamey" game to me is one where, like with a test in school, you succeed by understanding HOW to take the test, rather than understanding what the test is actually asking you questions about.
EU3, in my opinion, takes efforts (and mostly succeeds) to make their game conventions track to how history operated in at least a general sense. The Civ games -- especially Civ5 -- seem FAR more concerned with making the game work as a game. In both games you obviously have to learn the interface, but once you do, I find that success at EU3 can come more from understanding history and the overarching concepts, than understanding things like "If you move your troops to this location first, the AI never attacks." With Civ, and especially Civ4, success was a matter of number crunching and game interface minutiae rather than getting the "big picture" of some grander historical concept.
None of this is to say that one way is BETTER or WORSE than the other, mind you. THAT is purely a matter of preference, and I'd be lying through my teeth if I said I didn't enjoy both games quite a bit. But I don't think you can really fairly compare them because they do such wildly different things and do so in wildly different ways. Still, if you approach one game like the other...yeah...it won't be pretty.
As for graphics, I don't give a crap. I'll take fugly old graphics and solid gameplay over pretty pictures and unsatisfying gameplay any day. But you're talking to a guy who (if I could get it running on Win7) would STILL play the old X-wing games, and is loving Good Old Games because they let me play the old Tex Murphy games again.
Hmm...ahistorical.....well, I think it CAN be in the sense of "history will not play out exactly as it did," but I question the value of a true "history sim" in that sense. Take Rhye's Civ4 mod. It always irked me that, if I played as England, I could settle the Netherlands....for about 100 turns and then >POP!< here come the Dutch, so you lose all your Netherlands cities. Oops.
I don't see it as gamey or wargamey. I mean, it CAN be, obviously. If you keep getting the "Reconquest" or "Conquest" CB as your missions, yeah, you can go on a war rampage for a bit, gobbling up provinces here and there. But you can also find yourself getting seriously smacked down. I'm playing as England currently, trying to gobble up bits of France and its minor states, but Burgundy (with it's damn 40K cavalry stacks...) has guaranteed the entire area, and has allied with several of the minors. Gah. End result? I have to figure out a way to neutralize Burgundy if I'm going to complete my Conquest mission and annex Armor over in Brittany. Those types of missions can be gamey, yes. Also "ahistorical" in that "that's not what really happened." But you can always advance history to where you want to hop in during the Grand Campaign. You don't HAVE to start in 1399.
Still, like I said, you can't just declare war on people willy nilly or you'll effectively destroy your own nation. I played a game a few months ago where, again, as England, I took out France AND Burgundy.....and simultaneously KILLED my economy (this was before I really understood inflation in the game). I cranked my minting slider all the way up, and was throwin' down the ducats left and right, buying up army after army, and SMASHING the French and Burgundian doomstacks. Take that, ya garlic eating buggers!!
Of course, then Castille and Portugal were gobbling up colonies in North America, and giving me the stinkeye, and now they had a major tech advantage on me....so yeah, that game didn't go so well, in spite of my best efforts to be a warmonger.On this point, I agree. EU3 is not a "builder" game. I think it's more "historical" in the sense of "game concepts are designed to basically map to historical concepts at work during the time," but the flow of the game isn't necessarily rigidly tied to history. But yeah, "building" in the Civ sense is not what EU3 is about. EU3 is more about....administering. Managing. Not exactly the same thing. That's what I meant earlier about it being more "hands-off" than Civ. You can build buildings in provinces....slooooooowly...but the real "building" comes into play with the use of magistrates and DEVELOPING your provinces via provincial decisions (FYI, I haven't switched to DW yet -- I'm iffy on many of the changes, and am happy with HTTT and how it operates...mostly). You can develop a far better imperial administration by shifting your national focus and spending a few years conducting censuses, promoting land reform and land enclosure, and building up your population and tax base. Maybe also getting rid of pesky defunct kingdoms by promoting cultural unity.
But as a "builder" game it's not really about that. Well, unless you count colonizing and/or trade. But I don't think of those as "building" in the Civ sense.
THAT is what I think EU3 does better than Civ. It's not about perfect historical reproduction, but the game is more tied to a sense of verisimilitude than the Civ series is. Again, that's merely MY preference currently, and it doesn't mean I don't ALSO enjoy Civ. But it's really just that -- preference. One game is not BETTER than the other across the board.
Bibor
Doomsday Machine
If I wanted more spreadsheets with a randomizer engine, I would've invested more time into mastering the Croatian Tax Return system.
Oh yeah? Well MY dad can beat up YOUR dad. Also, my monkey troupe is better than yours, my beer tastes better than yours, my local sports collective is better than yours, and these colors over here are better than those colors over there, outlander.
King_Course
Prince
- Joined
- Oct 6, 2010
- Messages
- 465
Paradox actually made a pretty good game in King Arthur. Think Heroes of Might and Magic meets the Total War series. Alot of praise they get for taking the BS out even. Not a bad game surely:
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?576-King-Arthur
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?576-King-Arthur
Aristos
Lightseeker
typical attack from someone that has not the willingness, and/or the skills to go to a deeper level... no offense. But you should stop attacking other people's preferences with fake arguments like the above; we all know of your love with "streamlined" versions of a once deep game, but we are not calling your game "a kindergarten child toy" nor anything like that, do we?
As I said before, the EU series, and specially the latest iteration, is a game for "PhDs", in spirit, mind or reality. It won't appeal to the masses... specially to the streamlined masses...
I decided to play as Palantine twice. the first try I just sat there watching my tech/money increase, while the game seemingly played on without me even needing to do anything. Soon got bored of that and started again, built a big army nearly bankrupting myself and took over a few regions whilst the AI took mine and gave them back in a truce..I then got bored and kept randomly declaring war and throwing insults around.
Do agree with you on the fact that It's a slow game, but that's about it.
Bibor
Doomsday Machine
Says the person bashing or approving of bashing a game on its own forum. Approving of a link to another forum for another game, no less. No offense, but that's just ridiculous.
Besides, my post was actually a prank. I guess Paradox games are srs bizness.
With all due respect, I don't think you really have an understanding of the game, then.
You started playing the game using a two-province minor member of the Holy Roman Empire. You start off with relatively little power, so that basically all you CAN do is bide your time until you can build up trade networks, maybe secure a few extra provinces by minor wars, improve your administration, and pray that Bavaria and Burgundy don't get pissy with you. If you build your army too fast, as you saw, you'll bankrupt yourself. If you take over too many provinces too quickly without good reason, you'll piss off your neighbors AND bankrupt yourself AND maybe incite revolts in your own provinces.
You judged a game you'd never played before based on a set of VERY limiting starting variables which don't really allow you to even see what the game can do. Try playing as one of the major powers first to at least get a sense of what the game can offer before you casually condemn it.
I mean, I get it if the style of gameplay isn't your thing, but it doesn't sound like you gave the game a fair shake. If it's the interface you don't like, hey, fair enough. You can figure out that you don't like it in about 15 min. But if you're saying "There's nothing to do in the game" based on what is essentially a neutered start that doesn't leave you with a lot of early-game options (well, short of basically suiciding like you did), it doesn't sound to me like you really know what you're talking about.
Like I said, if the STYLE of the game -- the hands-off administrator approach -- isn't your thing, hey, fair criticism. It's not for everyone. Maybe you prefer the micromanagement of Civ. I enjoy that sometimes, myself. But the game's got plenty to do in it. Even if you're playing a two-province minor, provided you're willing to be patient enough to let it play out to a point where you can actually do something interesting.
Its apple and oranges IMO. Its like comparing MS Flight Sim to Red Baron on the Amiga. One is catered to the sim crowd who crave realism, the other is a true to form game.
I bought EU3 at the suggestion of various threads on this site, and I'll admit that its not for me and I'm not a total idiot. I spent two days exploring all the features and options, and I ended up feeling the same way about it as I do MS Flight sim: I'm impressed with all the options and things the "game" tracks, but for me it is in no way fun to play. I'm clearly not willing to expend the time and effort to "give it a chance" by filling my mind with all the idiocycrasies of this type of game play.
To me, a game is to escape reality, not mimic it. Any emulation should go towards gratification only.
I bought EU3 at the suggestion of various threads on this site, and I'll admit that its not for me and I'm not a total idiot. I spent two days exploring all the features and options, and I ended up feeling the same way about it as I do MS Flight sim: I'm impressed with all the options and things the "game" tracks, but for me it is in no way fun to play. I'm clearly not willing to expend the time and effort to "give it a chance" by filling my mind with all the idiocycrasies of this type of game play.
To me, a game is to escape reality, not mimic it. Any emulation should go towards gratification only.
Lance of Llanwy
King
- Joined
- Mar 10, 2006
- Messages
- 710
Paradox titles are quite odd, tend to have interfaces that are, at the very best, mediocre, and they seem entirely blind to their own short-comings(I remember Johan trash-talking E:TW for being awful at release about a week before HoI3 was released in a similar state). Nonetheless, I find EU3 and Crusader Kings quite fun. Though I wouldn't recommend getting any of their games upon release ever, as they tend to be terrible, unplayable messes and some never recover(EU:Rome can safely be filed in that pile).
Plus, the modding community isn't nearly as vibrant as a modern Civ game's. Take Magna Mundi for instance: it is overall a great improvement on the base game, but it also jacks piracy to such a level of strength and importance as to lead one to believe that pirates were unstoppable supermen who regularly and easily brought European powers ranging from Venice to Spain to their knees(they'll still do this even if you eradicate all the Barbary states, the Ottomans, and the Mamlukes), among other extreme annoyances of questionable accuracy.
Plus, the modding community isn't nearly as vibrant as a modern Civ game's. Take Magna Mundi for instance: it is overall a great improvement on the base game, but it also jacks piracy to such a level of strength and importance as to lead one to believe that pirates were unstoppable supermen who regularly and easily brought European powers ranging from Venice to Spain to their knees(they'll still do this even if you eradicate all the Barbary states, the Ottomans, and the Mamlukes), among other extreme annoyances of questionable accuracy.
SHaW1986
Prince
I love paradox games. I do really wish that they would create much more in depth tutorials as the games do tend to get pretty complex. Victoria 2 does a good job with it. Thing is, i really enjoy the ancient time frame (pre Rome) and nothing paradox puts out touches on that time period.
You basically chose to play a nation only a very experienced person should choose, and you predictably had no fun and lost.
Play as a major power or a smaller power with potential like Portugal or Venice so you actually have a chance to reasonably experience the game. With Portugall you can usualy become allies with Castille to keep yourself safe allowing you to focus on colonization and trade. Castille will call you to war when they are at war, but you can generally just sit back and guard your coasts with a solid navy while having a small standing army in your provinces. The defensive wars are generally quite easy (and profitable since they allow you to collect war taxes and you often aren't even at risk of being attacked), and becoming a colonial power is a lot of fun (west Africa is a good start, then Brazil and the Caribbean). As Venice you can becomes a trading powerhouse with the goal to take over the Italian peninsula within a few hundred years. In either case, there is a clear goal that will allow you to jump from minor power to major power over the course of a few centuries, and maneuvering towards that goal is generally a lot of fun.
I've played hundreds of hours of EU3 and even I wouldn't want to play the nation you chose. There just isn't enough to do.
Try a game as Portugal. It is the perfect beginner nation because you can ally with Castille, who is a major power, who will draw you into wars that you can selectively take part in. You also can fully take advantage of colonization and you have a nice economy with a trade center.
I didn't fully appreciate EU3 until I played Portugal and built them into a true powerhouse over several hundred years of play. I even eventually wiped out Castille and formed Spain, which is one of the highlights of my paradox gaming career. I was also a colonial powerhouse controlling most of the Caribbean and north and central america. Once I took Castille I was basically the most powerful nation on the planet and I could take on anyone. It was fun to grow Portugal from the little slice on the Iberian peninsula to a powerhouse that could expand any way they wanted. I actually ended up taking over India and much of China in that game (massive trade in those areas and huge populations).
Also, new players should definitely read some AARs. Without them, I may not have truly gotten into EU3, Vicky, and CK like I have.
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?360-EU3-After-Action-Reports-(AAR)
Similar threads
