Europa Universalis III Review

By: Waterbuffalo65

Europa Universalis III is a game released by Paradox in January 26^th, 2007, which on top of that, as of writing this article, happy 5^th birthday Europa! Now Paradox is a company known by many for making games, such as Mount and Blade and War of the Roses, however Paradox’s biggest section of games is largely ignored, and those games being Grand Strategy. Grand Strategy is a genre of games in which you generally control a nation in the midst of a large campaign map, focusing on many aspects in detail such as politics, economics, and warfare.  Grand Strategy games are Paradox’s specialty, and I guess they don’t quite appeal a crowd as wide as say, Mount and Blade. Mount and Blade, don’t get me wrong, it’s an amazing game, I love it, in fact I even reviewed it here. However it seems odd that the type of game Paradox makes the most isn’t quite as in the spotlight, however I won’t go all hipster-y, I will say that most people that know their way around the internet have probably heard of Europa Universalis III, Victoria II, or Hearts of Iron III (more on top of that have probably heard of Crusader Kings II, that being a relatively new release). Anyway Europa takes place from about the year 1399 and extends to the late 1800’s, giving you about 400 years of conquest time. It has an extremely detailed map of the entire world and all of its territories, and you can even scroll forward the clock to start at a different date. As you move the time along, the world detail keeps up, keeping track of things such as wars that happened around that time, resulting in an extremely accurate setting of the world during the Late Middle Ages-Early Industrial Era. Anyway, something I think I should mention is that all of Paradox’s Grand Strategy Games link up together in time frames, Crusader Kings 2 takes place from 1056-1453(yeah, it goes a bit into Europa but it still connects together) Though Crusader Kings 2 is different in that it takes place during high feudalism, and there is much more emphasis on diplomacy and politics, being that you control a political family. Europa is less so, having you just in charge of your nation, there are many factors to consider in your nation, and admitted, some of Paradox’s strategy games have a tiny bit of a learning curve, but if you love history as much as I do then these games are a blast, Castile is one of my favorite kingdoms, I love the whole ‘Reconquista’ culture, and it’s cool to be able to play during that time. Also, you can start the game as any nation (even China, or perhaps the Incas over in South America), and start it at any time within the game’s time frame. Gameplay is fun, but not in an action packed sort of way, it’s a thinking game, strategy games on a complexity level of ones like this do take some thinking to do well in, but as you get better and better at the game; you’ll get better at making decisions. It will take a while to learn, and I promise you on your first campaign game you will screw up and do something stupid, but maybe you won’t be as stupid on your second campaign, and even less so on the third. I recommend at first playing a series of campaigns until you feel you’ve really screwed up, and then maybe try again at another campaign.

Graphics: The Graphics aren’t astounding by any means, the graphics on most grand strategy games aren’t. However it shows what it needs to without being a cluster of pixels, so it does the job, they’re not really ugly in any way either. I don’t think graphics should be that big of a factor if you’re showing interest in a game like this, most likely if you’re looking at a game built on decision making and thinking, you won’t need outstanding graphics for the perfect immersion experience. Anyway, the campaign map is very nice, it has hundreds (literally) of nations from whatever time period you select, and you can pick/play any one of them that you want, and its impressive every now and then to pause the game, sit back and take a look at the world.

 

Gameplay: The gameplay is that of an intense strategy game. There is always something going on, and both diplomacy and economy play a big role in this game. Both will either make you up to be great or destroy you (you can’t conquer mercilessly).  It starts you off in control of your nation, you can modify diplomacy with any nation you’ve discovered, and there is a lot to do with diplomacy. You can embargo trade, you can increase relations with them with a gift of gold, and every nation on earth that knows you has an opinion score of you, represented by a number(from -200 to 200) and many things affect this relationship. If you are a major power next to them, they will feel threatened by you, diplomacy penalty. Royal marriages, gifts of gold, trade agreements, alliances, and having the same religion will boost your relationship; however things like embargoing trade, trespassing on their soil, and a history of wars will severely hurt your relationship with them. It’s all about diplomacy in Europa Universalis III, and I learned that the hard way after trying to attack a weakened Portugal while they were allied with England and Aragon, this is a dog eat dog world, and unless you have alliances it’ll be you against 4 other dogs every single fight. Aside from that this game is amazing, it’s one of the few strategy games I can sit down and play pretty much all day. Add some additional priority to get this game if you’re a history fan. Beware the learning curve(you will play the first couple of games confused, just watch Youtube videos, play the tutorial, or keep playing, that’s what I did.)

Audio: Soundtrack in a video game isn’t something I think is very important (as long as it’s not terrible), and some a good soundtrack can do a lot to make a game memorable (it’s the only reason at all I still remember King of Dragon Pass very well), and this game does have some nice music. It has music that you can sit back and listen to while thinking over your strategies.

 

Overall Europa Universalis III is an astounding game. If you are a fan of strategy, and like to sit down and play a game where you get to think about your strategies a bit instead of blowing through like it’s nothing, then it’s the game for you. This is an amazing game, for history fans, and for strategy fans. I love this game so much I cannot describe it in words, and you should seriously get it if you’re the kind of person I just talked about. I’m working on a Castile campaign, and a Mamluk campaign right now, and I can guarantee you I have many more hours to go on this game before I ever get tired of it.

Mount & Blade: Warband Review

Mount and Blade is a much respected series throughout gaming, and is one of Paradox’s most well loved IP’s, however, does this well loved game truly live up to the hype?

Now different to most reviews on this site, this isn’t a totally brand new game, however that doesn’t mean it isn’t quite as review worthy. Some adaptations have also been made to the scoring system, since this is a strategy game. Genre I believe is very important to rating a game, and genre’s should be rated differently (RPG’s should have a heavier focus on story and immersion, and strategy games should have less so, as well as more emphasis on difficulty)

Let’s start right off with what my favorite part about strategy games are, the gameplay.

Mount and Blade’s gameplay is its defining aspect, the open world-ness, the things to do are innumerable. You can be a merchant, you can be a lord, or a king even, get married, or perhaps become a bandit, looting and plundering villages for your own monetary gain. However I don’t like to get into what you can do in a sandbox game, because sandbox games usually have one thing that is most fun to do, mostly because it’s in the title, and because this is where they put the most content into. In this case, it’s leading a warband (don’t worry though; you’ll do most of the stuff I listed above while leading a warband.) Mount and Blade’s combat is fun, feels very medieval and generally more realistic than many other sword fighting games(you won’t usually be able to chop through people like butter, unless they have weak armor/weapons or are on easier settings), which means you’ll need to rely on troops to get through your battles (which WILL happen).

You start the game by creating a simple backstory, which will determine your base stats, don’t worry about this part too much though, as when you level up you’ll be able to put points in different fields. The game starts out with a simple quest, gather 5 men and rescue a merchant’s brother from bandits. This is a very easy quest, and may very well be your first 2 battles of the game. Afterwards, you can gather many men, upgrade their weapons, armor, and stats (yes, each individual unit, from each individual faction, from each individual troop class, from each individual upgrade tier have an entire stat list as big as the one your character has, as well as armor and weapons of the same complexity, very impressive.) Afterwards, you can increase/decrease favor from cities/villages, lords and kings, and factions in general, and all of this will play into how they treat you, or what services they will provide. You can buy hundreds of weapons, items, goods, and horses from merchants, and sell them to another using a buy low/sell high method to gain money as well. I find the easiest way, however, also happens to be the most evil way. Looting and starving poor peasants may be an immoral thing to do, but it’s countered by its effectiveness at making money. Now characters with no morals shouldn’t get away scott-free should they? Well… they don’t. Whenever you raze a village, lure cattle away, or do something generally frowned upon to it, your relation with them decreases. This will decrease your relationship with whatever lord owns that village, which in turn may decrease your relationship with an entire faction. A low enough relationship with a faction will result in that entire faction becoming your enemy, which means that the lords may attack you on sight, you won’t be allowed inside of their cities (unless you disguise your way in), the villages will report your location to all lords in the area if you are nearby, and loads of other bad stuff. However all of this bad stuff didn’t come about for nothing. A razed village can provide thousands of denars of goods, and 5 cattle herded from a village, slaughtered near a town and the fresh meat sold, can provide over 500 denars in a good situation.

Graphics: The graphics are nothing to write home about, however it is impressive sometimes to see 50 troops bashing it out all with unique armor and weapons, as well as very nice combat animations(though they can seem kind of clunky sometimes when swinging a sword or blocking.) The overworld map doesn’t have amazing textures or graphics either, however that isn’t as big of a deal, because I don’t think you’ll be paying attention to how a bush on the overworld looks.

Depth: The depth in Mount and Blade is very impressive overall, the amount of detail to each city, tavern, and building is astounding, not individually but adding all of it together it is quite a marvel. The battle depth, however, isn’t very impressive in terms of strategy. The strategy of each battle is very straightforward, and I find the best thing to do is the following:

A- Put archers on top of hill

B- Put infantry on slope of hill, so that they’ll have a hilltop advantage in battle, and also so that they’re protecting the archers. As for cavalry, I don’t like to have them rush into battle alone, so keep an eye on them or follow them around so that you can make sure they don’t all run into an overwhelming party of spearmen or something, dismount them if the fight is on mountainous terrain, and have them rush forward in flatter areas, as infantry doesn’t stand a chance against cavalry on level terrain, if the enemy has a very high concentration of cavalry, make sure you put the archer/infantry formation on the steepest slope you can for the cavalry, though a hill too steep may prove a disadvantage against infantry due to the difficulty of blocking their legs, however I would still put them on the steepest hill I can find because the steeper it is, the harder the journey up will be, especially with those archer’s up top raining hell on their army as they try to climb.

I could get more in depth, but the strategy doesn’t boil down to very much, and will as doing the above will help you not lose as many guys, it’s more about numbers and troop quality(more troop quality, as before I got Warband, I played the original, my army of about 20 Swadian Knights, some mid tier Vaegir archers/high tier Swadian Crossbowmen, and Swadian Sergeants all adding up to about 50 men have singlehandedly taken a castle with a garrison of 130 men, and defeated an army of 160 people with some minor assistance).

All of those battles above were done because the enemy generally had lower tier troops, and I used the hill formation above. However in warband, it is extremely essential that you stay alive, because after you die, you can only send your troops to run in alone, meaning they’ll take no strategy and probably get tons of them killed. If the battle is going to be long, don’t fight on the front lines, stay with your men in the back and try to avoid as much damage as possible.

As far as troops, take this chart into future reference as it is very useful for building the most powerful army you can

• Swadians: Best cavalry in the game
• Vaegirs: Best archers in the game
• Rhodoks: Best crossbowmen in the game
• Nords: Best infantry in the game (seriously, Nord Huscarls wreak complete and total havoc on everything.)
• Khergits: Pretty comparable to Mongolia for the most part military wise, horse archers are a big plus from these guys as they can harass enemy troops like crazy (In my original save file, as a Swadian whose main enemy were the Khergits, I have spent an upwards of half an hour chasing bands of about 5 horse archers down.)
• Sarranids: Pretty comparable to Arabia, they have horse archers as well as Mamlukes, which are pretty good cavalry, these guy are slightly more archer based but I’m not too sure of what they’re proficient in.

Customization: I have already heavily covered customization, with the upgrades you can acquire for your troops, as well as customizing your own armor/weapons, weapon proficiencies, and skills/stats.

Replay Value: As a sandbox game, this game has heavy replayability, and with the customization and things you can do, you can put thousands of hours into this game given you play it over a long period of time.