Let down by CiV? Loving Paradox games?

I think that I keep missing notifacations from other nations resulting in lowered prestige and no alliance, as I witnessed one box down there but wasn't quick enough to click it.

Ok about this "then you can blockade them, stealing cash, and occupy their turf with spread out troops." How do you blockade and steal cash? also wouldn't spread out forces be more easier for their ful stack to come around and annihalate each of your armies one by 1? Because so far whoever has the most numbers in their army seems to win a by a huge margin.

Here are some very basic tips:

This one I picked up from an AAR and never would have thought of by myself. At the beginning of the game, a huge amount of advisors are created. When advisors are created they are tied to a specific province (and therefore the country that controls the province). After one year, all the advisors that aren't hired by the various nations are dumped into the general pool. Exactly one year from the beginning of you game, if you pause the game, the advisor pool will be flooded with all those extra advisors, but it will only last one day because if you let another day elapse a bunch of the CPU nations will hire them. Basically, at the beginning of every game you should plan to pause the game exactly one year after the start of the game so that you can hire some excellent advisors (which can make a huge difference in the early game).

Another tip is to go into your options and change the message preferences. I have many set to pop up and pause (such as when someone declares war on me or my ally). You can also change many messages to act as pop ups instead of simply showing up as flags in the bottom right so you don't miss important messages. It may take a few minutes and you may want to tweak it a little more after you start playing, but in the end it is very much worth it and your settings will remain saved for future games. Once you get it where you want it, the message system because both intuitive and very useful. You get all the access you feel you need so that you aren't missing out on important things that could drastically change the fortunes of your country.

Another very helpful tip is to set your army and navy maintenance to fairly low levels in peace time. This was a huge eye opener for me when I first started playing since I wasn't used to having to deal with army and navy maintenance. Reducing maintenance simply reduces morale. If you are playing a Portugal game, for instance, you don't need to be paying full maintenance to the army and navy that is usually just sitting there doing nothing. Even when you are playing a nation that has a handful of potential enemies nearby you'll want to reduce maintenance fairly drastically in peace time. I tend to set my maintenance so that after I put maintenance at 100%, the morale bar will max out after two elapsed months. That is usually enough time to ward off any attack while also saving you a ton in peace time. With practice you'll figure out where this level lies (roughly).

In terms of your budget and how you allocate money, the best advice is to choose to focus on one thing at once. For instance, in a 1399 game as Portugal you could put all the treasury into the government slider because at level 4 you get to choose a national idea (after you get that, you could then choose trade because at level 4 you can build marketplaces). It is also important to not that you get a negative modifier if you are researching a tech ahead of it's time. You can see if that is the case by simply mousing over the bar for that tech in the budget screen.

Also, inflation is very important here. If you have the treasury slider set to be minting money, you will gain inflation. This is a concept many beginners simply don't fully grasp (including me when I started oh so many years ago). This can be quite harmful because it not only affects the cost of buildings, but also the cost of research for all the sliders. Even a small amount early can be quite costly over the course of several hundred years. Because of this, early in the game I often like to hire a master of mint so that I can mint a certain amount of money without accruing any inflation (it is great to get a 4-5 star master of mint at the pausing one year in because that allows you to mint quite a bit of money with no inflation hit). Having a guy like that can mean the difference between losing money every month (but ultimately making a profit at the end of the year with the census) and actually making money every month (on top of the census). In the early game when you need to build up your army, navy, and possibly build some buildings, the difference between -1 ducats a month and +1 ducats a month can alter your building plan by multiple game years.

Later on you can limit inflation with buildings, but early on having a master of mint can both help you avoid inflation while also allowing you to mint a small amount of money monthly so that you may actually be able to have a monthly income to go along with your yearly census. And just to emphasize, the census is what you live by in the early game. Even if you are losing a small amount of money per month (standard for much of the game), it is fine as long as your yearly census is giving you a decent income (and remember, this a game that lasts centuries so there is nothing wrong with spending two full years of national income on one new ship in the early game if that is what is needed).

One of the hardest adaptations I faced was accepting the fairly slow pace of the economy in the early game. One of the funnest things about the game is building up your nation over the course of 100-200 years so that money becomes less of a problem. Using the Portugal example, if you ally with Castille and build up a fairly small but decent army and navy and simply go along with their war requests (while not actually being an aggressor), you can have a very nice little isolated start. You can research government first and get your national idea. You could choose the one that allows you to colonize, or, the better choice, choose the one that gives you +10% trade efficiency (huge boost in the early game, especially when you have a center of trade (CoT) under your control). All you'd be doing at that point is keeping your CoT full of your merchants while possibly sending merchants to some of the other nearby CoTs. You can also maintain your relations with Castille so you don't lose them as your big brother. From there, you really just kind of research and wait until you get your next national idea (I think at gov tech 8) which will allow you to colonize. Once you get that you can colonize west Africa or you can try to explore into northwest Brazil. There are some good colonies in west Africa in terms of income and trade (slaves and ivory). If you get a base there you can rampage the African nations that are established and wipe them out and gain a nice little foothold that provides a good boost to your CoT (and thus your income since you should have 5 merchants there at all times).

One of the big techs is the trade tech that allows you to have a monopoly. The colonies you settle (or the uncivilized nations you take over) will trade into your main CoT. The CoT for Portugal at the beginning of the game generally goes from being the poorest in Europe to the richest. You can also establish new CoTs if the situation calls for it, which can bring in a ton of money by sucking in all kinds of trade goods from provinces that are in fairly unsettled land (North, South America and Africa).

This ended up being quite a long post, but I hope it sparked some interest. EU3 can be quite a blast when you have figured out the game mechanics. I think some of these basic tips can help to set a solid base from which to grow a nation (Portugal or otherwise). It is actually absurdly satisfying to do various things, like wipe out the Aztecs and take over their excellent gold income or send some decent gunpowder era troops with cavalry and cannons into India or China.

My favorite game was probably starting as Tuscany (2 province minor) when I unified the Italian peninsula and became Italy about 120 years into the game. From there I did some colonization, but my main goal was to take over India and China to dominate the trade goods from that area (spices and chinaware). I also had a nice little colony of about 12 provinces that started in the NE corner of Brazil and went down to the Sau Paulo area (basically a bunch of nice coastal provinces with excellent trade goods like coffee).
 
I think that I keep missing notifacations from other nations resulting in lowered prestige and no alliance, as I witnessed one box down there but wasn't quick enough to click it.

You're probably dialing the speed up too much. I usually play around three "clicks" on the speed dial, or four if I know I'm just waiting to get to something. I only go up to five if -- not only do I know I'm waiting for something, but I ALSO know that nothing bad will happen by my inaction. That's pretty rare, though.

Ok about this "then you can blockade them, stealing cash, and occupy their turf with spread out troops." How do you blockade and steal cash? also wouldn't spread out forces be more easier for their ful stack to come around and annihalate each of your armies one by 1? Because so far whoever has the most numbers in their army seems to win a by a huge margin.

Blockading comes in around Naval tech level 8. When you get that depends on your nation, I believe. But yeah, it's an ability you get in the mid-early game. The spread forces thing depends on the situation on the ground. In some cases -- like when thye don't have a doomstack -- you're better dropping siege parties at each and every province they have that you can get to. This allows you to deal with the onesy-twosy armies they'll pop out while you're sieging them. Plus, your cavalry doesn't help in sieges, so you might as well use them to roam around and beat up their smaller armies. If they have a doomstack coming, you have a few options though -- fight them straight up, or burn the land and starve 'em. I'm in a fight with Burgundy, currently, and trying to figure out how to take on their two 10K+ cavalry doomstacks with my own.

Well, I aged up with Civ III, then progressed on IV and then on V.

I bought EU3, and Victoria 2, and I know why they don't satisfy me.

Civilization games make you start on absolute zero. You BUILD THE EMPIRE. Everything is your work, your dedication. It's up to you, where to colonize, who to conquer, what to build. And when you win, you get the feeling:

we started equal... but I won because I was better than the opponents.

Vic2 and EU3 offer you 2 stiles.

1. You pick a super-power and eventually gain a few lands here and there and perhaps some colonies. And that is that. Ofcourse you put in hours and hours in politics, trading and diplomacy, but when you finish, you basically don't accomplish really a lot if you are a casual player. Yes I know experts could rule the world with secondary civilisations at the end but those are exceptions.
You just feel like half of it was already done, you just made it through not screwing everything up with one click.

2. You ofcourse can play a random small nation, and build it as an empire
And even all the guides start with:
To actually do anything you will need tremendous luck:
"first do [something]. It can fail and if it does: start new game"
like: "be allies with Russia. If they don't accept it, start new game. Start a war, if your allies don't anhialate your enemy, start new game.

Well, I totally understand how some people like these games and I deeply respect them, but I just can't like those games, I just can't squeeze any fun out of them.

A fair point. EU3 is NOT about building, or at least not the way Civ does it. It's just a different style of game, and if the style isn't for you, well, you have nothing to apologize for. That's why there's chocolate and vanilla, as my grandmother used to say. :)

I don't know why so many people recommend playing Prtugal and allying Castille.....just freaking play Castille IMO.

Ah, but Castille can act as a buffer zone to keep your butt safe, while allowing you to AVOID warfare altogether (if you choose to do so), and focus on trade/colonization.

The way I see it, there are certain nations that you can play at the start to get the hang of different aspects of the game.

Portugal is GREAT for trade/colonization and learning those systems.

Castille is great for conquest early on, as is France and/or Burgundy.

I suspect that Bavaria and/or Bohemia are good to learn the ways of the Holy Roman Empire.

Muscovy and/or Novgorod probably give you a sense of eastern european politics and dealing with the various hordes.

England seems good to develop a somewhat balanced approach, although initially it's a bit weaker on trade (no center of trade in its own borders, for example).


I've been playing since I started (a few months ago) with England exclusively. You get some early conquest/vassalization missions (taking out Scotland and Ireland to form Great Britain), you deal with shifting your government type early, and you have the option of playing EITHER isolated OR with a hand in continental politics as you try to fight for your continental domains. I do, however, recognize that I've been trying to juggle a LOT of balls at once, probably, by playing as England, and may not be getting particularly good at any one of them.

Here are some very basic tips:

This one I picked up from an AAR and never would have thought of by myself. At the beginning of the game, a huge amount of advisors are created. When advisors are created they are tied to a specific province (and therefore the country that controls the province). After one year, all the advisors that aren't hired by the various nations are dumped into the general pool. Exactly one year from the beginning of you game, if you pause the game, the advisor pool will be flooded with all those extra advisors, but it will only last one day because if you let another day elapse a bunch of the CPU nations will hire them. Basically, at the beginning of every game you should plan to pause the game exactly one year after the start of the game so that you can hire some excellent advisors (which can make a huge difference in the early game).

Wow! I've noticed that before, but I didn't know the timing of when the CPU starts snatching up the advisors! I'm gonna have to check this out next game I play. Thanks for the tip!!

Another tip is to go into your options and change the message preferences. I have many set to pop up and pause (such as when someone declares war on me or my ally). You can also change many messages to act as pop ups instead of simply showing up as flags in the bottom right so you don't miss important messages. It may take a few minutes and you may want to tweak it a little more after you start playing, but in the end it is very much worth it and your settings will remain saved for future games. Once you get it where you want it, the message system because both intuitive and very useful. You get all the access you feel you need so that you aren't missing out on important things that could drastically change the fortunes of your country.

Can't stress this enough. I've set a TON of missions to popup-and-pause, and it REALLY helps avoid some nasty situations. That said, eventually you may just switch them to "pop-up." God knows I don't need to pause the game when we've competed away someone from one of the one-province imperial minors.

Another very helpful tip is to set your army and navy maintenance to fairly low levels in peace time. This was a huge eye opener for me when I first started playing since I wasn't used to having to deal with army and navy maintenance. Reducing maintenance simply reduces morale. If you are playing a Portugal game, for instance, you don't need to be paying full maintenance to the army and navy that is usually just sitting there doing nothing. Even when you are playing a nation that has a handful of potential enemies nearby you'll want to reduce maintenance fairly drastically in peace time. I tend to set my maintenance so that after I put maintenance at 100%, the morale bar will max out after two elapsed months. That is usually enough time to ward off any attack while also saving you a ton in peace time. With practice you'll figure out where this level lies (roughly).

Yeah, the only thing I'd adjust with this is a statement that if you are in one of those "five years warring, five years of peace, now five more years warring" situations to gear up for a fight in advance. But this does make a HUGE difference in early game management.

In terms of your budget and how you allocate money, the best advice is to choose to focus on one thing at once. For instance, in a 1399 game as Portugal you could put all the treasury into the government slider because at level 4 you get to choose a national idea (after you get that, you could then choose trade because at level 4 you can build marketplaces). It is also important to not that you get a negative modifier if you are researching a tech ahead of it's time. You can see if that is the case by simply mousing over the bar for that tech in the budget screen.

Also, inflation is very important here. If you have the treasury slider set to be minting money, you will gain inflation. This is a concept many beginners simply don't fully grasp (including me when I started oh so many years ago). This can be quite harmful because it not only affects the cost of buildings, but also the cost of research for all the sliders. Even a small amount early can be quite costly over the course of several hundred years. Because of this, early in the game I often like to hire a master of mint so that I can mint a certain amount of money without accruing any inflation (it is great to get a 4-5 star master of mint at the pausing one year in because that allows you to mint quite a bit of money with no inflation hit). Having a guy like that can mean the difference between losing money every month (but ultimately making a profit at the end of the year with the census) and actually making money every month (on top of the census). In the early game when you need to build up your army, navy, and possibly build some buildings, the difference between -1 ducats a month and +1 ducats a month can alter your building plan by multiple game years.

Good lord, yes. I played ONE game as England early on, and beat the snot out of France and Burgundy, basically taking over all of that region.....at the cost of irrecoverable inflation. I TOTALLY screwed myself by cranking out gold.

The way to think of that slider is NOT as a "gold slider" but rather as a "coin slider." You have a finite amount of gold in your empire. (Not a measurable amount, most of the time, mind you.) Every time you mint coins, those coins have a certain gold content to them, meaning they have a certain value to them. If you mint more coins, that naturally means that each coin has LESS gold per coin than if you minted fewer coins, and is therefore less valuable. If you mint too many coins, your currency will be worthless and you'll need wheelbarrows full of it just to buy a turnip.

My advice: set your minting slider to ZERO. Learn to play the early game with it set at zero. This will slow you down some, but it'll make you more durable in the long run and teach you budgeting discipline.

Later on you can limit inflation with buildings, but early on having a master of mint can both help you avoid inflation while also allowing you to mint a small amount of money monthly so that you may actually be able to have a monthly income to go along with your yearly census. And just to emphasize, the census is what you live by in the early game. Even if you are losing a small amount of money per month (standard for much of the game), it is fine as long as your yearly census is giving you a decent income (and remember, this a game that lasts centuries so there is nothing wrong with spending two full years of national income on one new ship in the early game if that is what is needed).

One of the hardest adaptations I faced was accepting the fairly slow pace of the economy in the early game. One of the funnest things about the game is building up your nation over the course of 100-200 years so that money becomes less of a problem. Using the Portugal example, if you ally with Castille and build up a fairly small but decent army and navy and simply go along with their war requests (while not actually being an aggressor), you can have a very nice little isolated start. You can research government first and get your national idea. You could choose the one that allows you to colonize, or, the better choice, choose the one that gives you +10% trade efficiency (huge boost in the early game, especially when you have a center of trade (CoT) under your control). All you'd be doing at that point is keeping your CoT full of your merchants while possibly sending merchants to some of the other nearby CoTs. You can also maintain your relations with Castille so you don't lose them as your big brother. From there, you really just kind of research and wait until you get your next national idea (I think at gov tech 8) which will allow you to colonize. Once you get that you can colonize west Africa or you can try to explore into northwest Brazil. There are some good colonies in west Africa in terms of income and trade (slaves and ivory). If you get a base there you can rampage the African nations that are established and wipe them out and gain a nice little foothold that provides a good boost to your CoT (and thus your income since you should have 5 merchants there at all times).

One of the big techs is the trade tech that allows you to have a monopoly. The colonies you settle (or the uncivilized nations you take over) will trade into your main CoT. The CoT for Portugal at the beginning of the game generally goes from being the poorest in Europe to the richest. You can also establish new CoTs if the situation calls for it, which can bring in a ton of money by sucking in all kinds of trade goods from provinces that are in fairly unsettled land (North, South America and Africa).

This ended up being quite a long post, but I hope it sparked some interest. EU3 can be quite a blast when you have figured out the game mechanics. I think some of these basic tips can help to set a solid base from which to grow a nation (Portugal or otherwise). It is actually absurdly satisfying to do various things, like wipe out the Aztecs and take over their excellent gold income or send some decent gunpowder era troops with cavalry and cannons into India or China.

My favorite game was probably starting as Tuscany (2 province minor) when I unified the Italian peninsula and became Italy about 120 years into the game. From there I did some colonization, but my main goal was to take over India and China to dominate the trade goods from that area (spices and chinaware). I also had a nice little colony of about 12 provinces that started in the NE corner of Brazil and went down to the Sau Paulo area (basically a bunch of nice coastal provinces with excellent trade goods like coffee).


The game does offer a LOT of fun ways to play, but it also demands a certain level of understanding the mechanics. The thing is, once you get the mechanics, you realize that they're more about general concepts and management rather than "Ok, two turns in, you need to switch this tile to producing blah, and then switch it back two turns before you finish the unit. This will maximize your shields/hammers output, and you won't have any overflow that gets unused..." I prefer the style of gaming that EU3 offers in that regard.

Still, just remember to play the game that you find is the most fun. I'm currently getting the hang of developing the tax base in my nation by moving the national focus, conducting land enclosure and land reform, and conducting local censuses to boost tax income and (hopefully) the population of my provinces. Basically, that's the form of "building" you do in EU3. It's less "building" and more "development."

Oh, one other thing. When you finally end your game, the game gives you a little history pop-up that describes the history of your nation. Like, "Henry VII united the French kingdom in 1441, after his defeat of Auvergne at the Battle of Poitou...following his death in 1460, Louis VI developed the first French colonies in the Caribbean, with the settlement of Bermuda..." and so on and so forth. It's a fun way to look at what you've accomplished. :)
 
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 don't know about him but I have nothing against a deep game. The problem isn't the depth its that the interface works against gameplay, its a big cludge to work through, things are numeric when it doesn't make sense for them to be simply because the game designers didn't figure out another way to handle those certain factors, and there's more micromanagement than you'd expect from a game that aims at realism.

So in my view it isn't that its too complicated and needs to be dumbed down, its just bad as a game. My impression is that people who love the history and depth represented tolerate its shortcomings.
 
Thanks for the insight fellas, all very good tips. Could you explain what minting means? and how I can stop/lower inflation, do you keep you balance at 0? Right now I've got about 900 ducats saved, recently bankrupted myself and now I have around 21 inflation. Also one last thing I gained a land tech a while back that said it unlocked men at arms and something else, yet it hasn't given me them, but I'm now seeing castille producing one.
 
Thanks for the insight fellas, all very good tips. Could you explain what minting means? and how I can stop/lower inflation, do you keep you balance at 0? Right now I've got about 900 ducats saved, recently bankrupted myself and now I have around 21 inflation. Also one last thing I gained a land tech a while back that said it unlocked men at arms and something else, yet it hasn't given me them, but I'm now seeing castille producing one.

not supported money printing, exactly as in real life... when the money the central bank prints is not supported by an increase in productivity (or gold in the era of the gold pattern), you have inflation. The EU series models this in a simple yet precise way. You can mint, and you will in dire times, but if you mint constantly, your overall level of prices will go up the roof and you won't compete with chances in the mid-late game.

What is a nice surprise though, is that the AI manages to control all these concepts acceptably well... here me, Shafer?
 
Nice discussion here. EU3 is great.

I'm having a lot of fun industrializing Mongolia in Victoria II at the moment and building up a formidable army to retake Inner Mongolia from the Chinese. Revenge! ;)

Just waiting for the proper time when China pisses off a Great Power then all hell's going to break loose. :D

It's nice to play and set my own win conditions. It'll be tough to regain Inner Mongolia but it's certainly doable.
 
Paradox games certainly bring something unique to the market, something you can't really experience anywhere else. And I enjoy most of them. That said, they are not without flaws: for games dependent on handling massive amounts of diverse information, their interfaces are simply never, ever up to the task. The ability to create a complex system really needs to be coupled with ability to design fluid, functional and informative interfaces: Paradox has made no real headway since the days of Europa Universalis II...

Also, they have never made an AI capable of much more than basic locomotion. A typical problem with complex games, but all the same: once you get a grip of the system you might think you're in for a second, FUN, challenge, but even Hearts of Iron devolves into Sandbox mode all too soon...

EU3 with the latest expansion, Divine Wind, is a masterpiece. With that said, EU3 is a game for PhD's, like it or not. It is not for the masses. It's that simple.

The nice thing about Paradox is that they did not surrender (yet? :( ) to the massification for the sake of easy money (a.k.a. streamlining, shaferization, whatever you want to call it). That in itself deserves a lot of respect as compared to other developers that sucumbed to mediocrity lately...

"You see, I only like games that smart people like, because..."
 
Also one last thing I gained a land tech a while back that said it unlocked men at arms and something else, yet it hasn't given me them, but I'm now seeing castille producing one.

You have to go to your military sceren (where you also set their maintenance) and change your preferred military unit type. When you do this all units of that type (infantry, etc) will have their morale set to 0, so don't do it when at war unless you know you have a month or two buffer before your forces meet.
 
I have no intention to whine here. But since many seem disappointed by the game so far, and by the way the franchise has evolved in the last many years, I opened a discussion thread on the Paradox interactive forum. For those of you who love Paradox games... and for those who don't know them of course :) You are all welcome.

Here's the link to the discussion (if i'm not allowed to post outside links here, sorry Moderator. Erase it). I believe people can easly find it on the Paradox Interactive general discussion page.

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?p=11680889#post11680889

Thanks

I used to be a Civ4 addict and bought Civ5 on release day. :nuke:

I have been playing Paradox games exclusively since well before Christmas.
 
Thanks for the insight fellas, all very good tips. Could you explain what minting means? and how I can stop/lower inflation, do you keep you balance at 0? Right now I've got about 900 ducats saved, recently bankrupted myself and now I have around 21 inflation. Also one last thing I gained a land tech a while back that said it unlocked men at arms and something else, yet it hasn't given me them, but I'm now seeing castille producing one.

I didn't understand the term "minting" when I first started playing and was reading the forums.

2-02.jpg


The treasury slider in this picture deals with minting. If you have it set to anything but zero, inflation will be created. If you mouse over the slider, a tooltip will show you exactly how much inflation is being created. The "master of mint" advisor type negates some inflation which allows you to move the slider up a bit without actually gaining any inflation. Later in the game, there are buildings that also allow you to reduce inflation every month which allows you to set the treasury slider even higher without incurring any inflation.

For much of the game you will actually lose money on a monthly basis, but that will be compensated for by the end of year census tax. The census tax is what you live on. The monthly budget is what you have to manage, and that is generally operating at a loss.

The player in the picture is operating at a -9.6 monthly budget, but is making up for it with what is likely a nice chunk every year on the census tax. In you game, you can hover over your treasury at the top of the screen to see how much you gain at the end of the year in census taxes.
 
I didn't understand the term "minting" when I first started playing and was reading the forums.

2-02.jpg


The treasury slider in this picture deals with minting. If you have it set to anything but zero, inflation will be created. If you mouse over the slider, a tooltip will show you exactly how much inflation is being created. The "master of mint" advisor type negates some inflation which allows you to move the slider up a bit without actually gaining any inflation. Later in the game, there are buildings that also allow you to reduce inflation every month which allows you to set the treasury slider even higher without incurring any inflation.

For much of the game you will actually lose money on a monthly basis, but that will be compensated for by the end of year census tax. The census tax is what you live on. The monthly budget is what you have to manage, and that is generally operating at a loss.

The player in the picture is operating at a -9.6 monthly budget, but is making up for it with what is likely a nice chunk every year on the census tax. In you game, you can hover over your treasury at the top of the screen to see how much you gain at the end of the year in census taxes.

Great picture.

Operating at ZERO minting is not ideal though. Inflation is not a monster if you don't let it become a monster. It is a necessary evil in dire times, specially when playing initially weak countries (try Teutonic Order in the 1399 campaign, surrounded by potential enemies which almost always have some mission related to the TO). You will need the minting to cover war expenses and army operation expenses and maintenance only to keep your country alive in the beginning. While you consolidate and use your diplomatic abilities to keep everyone at bay, you need some extra money to keep a small but powerful army watching your borders. After you consolidate and expand, you may start to reduce the minting, specially when you get those nice inflation-killing buildings...

Inflation is not the devil, not even in real life. It has been demonstrated in Economy that inflation ZERO is impossible (because it would come at a huge cost of unemployment). In this game, the same is true; inflation ZERO can cost you your country.

Enjoy one of the best strategy games of this time! :goodjob:
 
I used to be a Civ4 addict and bought Civ5 on release day. :nuke:

I have been playing Paradox games exclusively since well before Christmas.
Oh, god, that is an exact description of what happened to me. I hate CiV with a flaming passion and EU3 has washed that all away. I can't get enough of the game.

I'm currently playing a game as the Ottoman's that is proving very successful. I've forced personal unions upon both the Mamluks (really tough) and the Jalayirids (not very tough since I had the Mamluks at my back. :P), I've reconquered all Turkish lands, and seized almost all of the Greek lands. The Hordes have proved troublesome, but after they had succession crises, everybody surrounding them swarmed them, including myself. I took a fair chunk out of the Golden Horde and I completely took over Qara Koyunla.

To those who say Portugal is a great starting nation, I'd like to throw my recommendation of France into the pot. As France, you're a powerhouse in almost every way. You've got your CoT (which is actually kinda poor, really, but it's better than nothing) and tons of military power, including the backs of all your vassals. Wars with France in the early game will have you swarmed if you choose someone else, because all of their vassals armies are bloody hell to round up. That's France's greatest military asset. And as France you're simply not isolated from the rest of Europe, there's always stuff you can be doing.

As France, your best place to start colonization is Greenland or Africa (if you beat the Iberian nations). Greenland is a great jumping off point into Canada and the rest of North America down the line. The American coast is lucrative with Tobacco, Cotton, etc. that can be used to fuel your CoT at Ile de France, or the CoT at Huron/Iroquois, should you choose to take them.

Anyway, enough of that, I want to ask you Ayt, what nation is that Waldemar from? I've never seen that name before. It looks like it might be Lithuanian . . .
 
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.

Ah, you misunderstand me. I'm not one of those EU2 on-the-rails types; I don't DEMAND that say, Castille inherit Aragon every game to form Spain. What I think is the problem with the game, and let me just say that I think EU3 handles this far better than Civ, is that it doesn't accurately simulate the historical circumstances that lead to certain things happening in history, which is why you get silliness like Portugal colonizing Newfoundland as soon as it opens. Once you start to look in to real history (or read about or play Magna Mundi) you realize that Portugal wouldn't have colonized Newfoundland because their primary goal was to get to India, exploration to Newfoundland from Portugal would be more difficult than Portugal hugging Africa, and Newfoundland is too dirt poor to bother settling anyway.

Now, I think it's probably good if the player can personally bend history a little bit, and it's also certainly good if there's some variation - maybe 1 out of 30 games some viking-loving Portuguese king might redirect all his efforts to discovering and colonizing newfoundland, but the problem is when it happens every game, other examples of this being ahistorical conversions in Lithuania and Ottoman Greece, Iberians regularly terrorizing North Africa, and up until Divine Wind France collapsing 2 out of 3 games, Scotland getting destroyed in the first 30 years, and also just straight ahistorical things even at the Grand Campaign's start like various fictional countries in Asia, the most egregious example being the travesty that is Japan.

And what I mean by "wargamey" is not that war is too easy, it's that I personally find war to be the most fun aspect of the game by a long shot, and the rest of the game just isn't very fun, with some exceptions.


Also I started with Castille and I think it's a really good starter nation, as it has a little bit of everything. You can play around a bit just checking out the buttons, then in a year or two maybe declare war on Granada which teaches you a bit about warfare in a situation where you almost can't lose. In that same war, you can also play around with your navy (as I recall I parked my ships in an ocean province and lost my entire fleet) because Granada starts allied with Morocco and they have a decent fleet.

After that, you can test out diplomacy with the other Iberian nations, and eventually prep for a large war with Aragon, your first real challenge in the game beyond figuring out controls and not making a total wreck of the economy, which Castille helps with as it's very economically powerful, and the gold really helps. Anyway, if you can beat Aragon then you'll probably have to go up against France, if not you're free to go conquer Italy, and if France collapsed swallow some of the successor states, and either play nice with Portugal if you want to go the historical route, or conquer it mercilessly if you want to have a huge head start on the Americas. In my castille game, I never colonized anything probably partly because I didn't know how and partly because France was beating the poop out of me on a regular basis.

P.S. I play Divine Wind, so I might have said something that's not accurate for earlier expansions. My first Castille game was in IN, where France was an unstoppable monster that the community called "The Big Blue Blob," but in HTTT France is pathetic and usually collapses, and in DW it's pretty balanced.
 
not supported money printing, exactly as in real life... when the money the central bank prints is not supported by an increase in productivity (or gold in the era of the gold pattern), you have inflation. The EU series models this in a simple yet precise way. You can mint, and you will in dire times, but if you mint constantly, your overall level of prices will go up the roof and you won't compete with chances in the mid-late game.

Well, kind of. It isn't really minting, you are just putting more of the collected taxes into the treasury, rather than spending it. That it causes inflation makes no sense, but it works gameplay-wise.
 
EU3 with the latest expansion, Divine Wind, is a masterpiece. With that said, EU3 is a game for PhD's, like it or not. It is not for the masses. It's that simple.

The nice thing about Paradox is that they did not surrender (yet? :() to the massification for the sake of easy money (a.k.a. streamlining, shaferization, whatever you want to call it). That in itself deserves a lot of respect as compared to other developers that sucumbed to mediocrity lately...

Wow slow down there... I have to call BS on that one. Are you implying that EU3 is a complex game, that most "consoletards" wont ever come close to comprehending? I played it, loved it, and I still play it, along with Divine Wind. But pleasing your self too much. EU3 is hardly complex. Its just a different game so people dont understand it at first. What exactly do you see as complex or only playable by the so called "PhD folks"? Get off your high horse, and stop confusing people who like history with the people who got PhDs, or confusing "not for the masses" for "for geniuses". HoI3 is a complex game, not EU3.
 
Wow slow down there... I have to call BS on that one. Are you implying that EU3 is a complex game, that most "consoletards" wont ever come close to comprehending? I played it, loved it, and I still play it, along with Divine Wind. But pleasing your self too much. EU3 is hardly complex. Its just a different game so people dont understand it at first. What exactly do you see as complex or only playable by the so called "PhD folks"? Get off your high horse, and stop confusing people who like history with the people who got PhDs, or confusing "not for the masses" for "for geniuses". HoI3 is a complex game, not EU3.

IDK, I think EU3 is complex. It's certainly more complex than the game we should be discussing in this forum. I haven't played HOI (any of them) though, so they may very well be even way more complex than EU.

...I don't think you need a phd to understand the game though. It just takes a lot of familiarization because of all the numbers and interactions of variables you have to deal with. Totally loving the game btw. ;)
 
I tried EU3 again and I just couldn't get into it after several hours of play.

But I think my new vice will be Shogun 2...picking up this afternoon. It got nothing but praise so far....
 
That is general discussion. Good the place to discuss everything, including other strategic games.
 
Top Bottom