Europa Universalis III Complete > Video Game News, Inc.

Friday, October 03, 2008

Europa Universalis III Complete
By kpilkington @ 10:08 AM :: 3091 Views :: 2 Comments ::

:: PC

The Europa Universalis series of games are all about grand strategy. Thinking ahead a few years into the future and dealing with problems on a global level. All while taking care of the issues concerning your provinces. The third in the series doesn’t change much but improves in every area making it another hit amongst serious strategy gamers.

When starting a new game you are given a lot of options to customize your game. Its very impressive how they managed to fit over 250 countries, 1700 provinces worldwide and a timeframe of over 300 years. When changing the start date of your game you will see the world map update, showing you the changes in national borders and what countries currently exist for the picking. Bookmarks for famous moments in the time 1453 – 1789 let you jump straight into interesting events. When you enter the game you will control the pace of time. You’ll speed things along during years of peace to build up your wealth and provinces while slowing things down during war so you never miss anything.

Just as it is huge in scale the Europa Universalis series is renowned for its historical accuracy. The game is programmed with hundreds of major events in history that will affect the game. Things like the Reformation and the American Revolution and smaller ones are all included that will change the course of your game. All of your favorite historical figures make appearances with over 5000 historical monarchs and leaders. People such as famous artists, scientists and philosophers will also be in the game as advisors that you can hire to add their bonuses to the kingdom.

If you’re wondering why I haven’t mentioned warfare yet it is because this isn’t like most strategy games where warfare is just a shortcut to winning the game. While many games say they have economic or diplomatic paths to success they are rarely more than just a single menu to buy and sell resources or to form basic alliances. You will rely upon your economic and diplomatic policies to succeed in this game just as much as you will with warfare. The game’s combat is similar to Civilization. You move your army into a province that is occupied by an enemy army and they will do battle, the defeated army will either dissolve or retreat to a neighboring province. Provinces are captured by laying siege to them over a period of time. You can assault the walls but you will most likely want to wait it out and occupy the province until it surrenders to you. Before you go to war you try and obtain “Casus Belli” or a reason for war. Good reasons are religious conflicts, an ally that backs out of the alliance or an economic embargo against you. Without this you will lose Prestige points which are a measurement of how seriously the other nations will treat you. If your prestige is too low then you shouldn’t expect anyone to trust you or enter into any diplomatic agreements.

The AI of this game is absolutely incredible and that makes all the difference in a strategy game. You will have to use merchants to obtain monopolies in global trade centers, form bonds with other kingdoms using royal marriages and even make an oath to protect another country from attack. Keeping your word with other nations enhances your trustworthiness rating to the AI controlled kingdoms and will benefit you in a lot of ways.

The weakest points of this game are the graphics and sound. While I feel they don’t pull the game down much they certainly give the game a very old feeling and not in a good “retro” kind of way. To be honest you won’t notice how bad the graphics and sound are as you’ll be focusing on the more important vital stats about your country. The user interface doesn’t feel very good too but doesn’t ruin the game either.

There are two expansion packs for Europa Universalis III and both offer different things. In Nomine is the latest of the two and is by far the better one to have. In Nomine adds so many great things that deepen the strategy of the game. It adds the colonial system, adds intelligent rebellions that will have clear goals for themselves, Papal authority and will introduce national/provincial decisions. The colonial features are the most important as you will be able to colonize unclaimed provinces and begin reaping lots of cash from them. Eventually they will become regular provinces and you can end up having outposts all over the world and that sets you up to interact with far off kingdoms. The revamped rebellion system forces rebels to attempt clear goals like reuniting their ethnic group under one nationalist banner and spliting off from the conquerors. Other rebels will make a claim to your throne and attempt to take over the entire kingdom. The best part is you can fund these rebels in other countries to destabilize them. For example I was in a war with France as England and losing badly. I knew that if I got them into a peace deal they will turn over all the occupied English provinces back to me so I would suffer only some net military losses. I couldn’t raise anymore soldiers to fight even though I had the cash so I started paying nationalist rebels in the provinces that France had taken from Austria and funding a Pretender King. These rebels started laying siege and France had to turn their attention over to that problem and accepted peace with me. After a few more months the nationalist rebels ending up losing out to the Pretender’s forces and France had a government which was friendly towards me. I never planned for regime change in France but it arrived and came with great benefits for me.

The other expansion pack is Napolean’s Ambition and isn’t too exciting other than it expands the timeline just like In Nomine and adds the French Revolution and Napoleanic Era battle events. So if you care to unite France into a superpower you should think about getting this.

There is no “winning” the game other than what dreams your imagination can think of. Maybe you want to become an African superpower and colonize the New World or just survive in Asia Minor as a tiny single province kingdom. Being able to pick underrepresented countries like Mali or Brunei, extremely deep strategy and the realism make Europa Universalis III and the In Nomine expansion a must for all serious strategy gamers. You might find the game to be too complex but you can always pick a more isolated country that is more focused on economics rather than global domination.

9 out of 10

Comments

By Video Game News, Inc. @ Friday, October 03, 2008 10:32 AM

Comments from the following blog entry: Review: Europa Universalis III Napoleon's Ambition and In Nomine Expansions, located at: http://www.videogamenews.com/Home/tabid/36/ctl/ArticleView/mid/625/articleId/695/Review-Europa-Universalis-III-Napoleons-Ambition-and-In-Nomine-Expansions.aspx

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