Europa Universalis III

[Permanent Revolutionary]

I have a very short question about this game: Is it worth buying?

[James Connolly]

Yeah, just buy Divine Wind along with getting this Mod (http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?634475-RELEASE-Death-and-Taxes-8.5&). EU4 is apparently coming out next year.

[CryingWolf]

http://fireden.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/GSG.jpg2.jpeg

This infographic should help.

[Hermes]

Wow, that's actually an incredibly useful image, thanks.

[#FF0000]

Buy EU3 Chronicles, not Complete.

Complete doesn't have the latest expansions. Chronicles has all of them.

And yes it's worth it.

[Permanent Revolutionary]

Alright then. I'll give EU3 a go ;)

[marxistcomrade]

it is a brilliant game. i have had it for a couple of years now and i can't stop playing it

[IAmNotTamerlane]

I have a very short question about this game: Is it worth buying?

A very short answer would be yes. It's wonderfully open-ended. The premise is pretty much 'Here are some countries around in 1399. Choose one. Go.' You want to re-store the Byzantines? Sure. Unite Japan? Be my guest. Create a Portuguese empire which expands beyond it's limits and eventually collapses to become an animist tribal federation which rises from the ashes to unite a Pagan Holy Roman Empire? Go nuts.

And there are plenty of mods - MEIOU and Death and Taxes in particular - or you can quite easily mod it yourself. Learning to create new countries and nations will take about a night.

You have to keep at it at first though, because you will be completely lost. Paradox's tutorials tend to be not all that good.

I have a good chunk of Paradox's most popular Grand Strategy games (I also have Mount and Blade, an open-ended RPG of theirs, set in 13th century Eastern Europe), and I'd recommend them all.

[Princess Luna]

http://fireden.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/GSG.jpg2.jpeg

This infographic should help.

With regards to the the recommended starting countries in the info-graphic, I would replace Brandenburg with Bohemia, not only do you start out as the Holy Roman Emperor and have 25000 troops (though I always get rid of 6000 of them to help with the economy), if you form an alliance with Austria early on and make sure to maintain it at all costs, and let Austria become the HRE (which unless you try really hard is what is most likely going to happen anyway) you will be unstoppable. The only down side is getting a port is next to impossible, unless you want to slowly carve your way to the Baltic, and then you end up with a extremely funky looking country.

[Grenzer]

I fucking hate EU 3. Divine Wind added some incredibly stupid system of rolling alliances where people can call in their allies, and their allies can call in their allies, and so on. I can't invade Scottland as England without being invaded simultaneously by France, Novogorod, and the Seljuk Turks or some dumb shit like that. I'll just admit I'm a newb at the EU series specifically, but the alliance system makes it pretty difficult for a newcomer to get into. I prefer Crusader Kings 2 or Victoria 2 over EU any day.