plz combine europe universalis: Rome and dom 3

[calmon]

Zeldor said:
Aezeal:

In EU:Rome there are probably 2-3 playable nations. Remaining ones are pretty much useless. You need 1-2 hours on fastest game speed to be able to colonise one province.

I played the illyrians and got a decent empire after ~100 turns. I'd some problems on the start (against macedonia) but thats all. Colonisation wasn't a problem. I got all the land in the north very fast (grain growth bonus traded to border provinces)

Rome needs some patches to be good. Atm its just somehow boring and there are many bugs. While i do very well most of the other big nations like rome fight an endless civil war and failed to expand much.

But this is always a problem with wargames. They just need some time to be good!

Zeldor said:
EU3 has also only few playable nations. And there are some nations that have hidden 'lucky' tag. And France and England are always there. People would of course say that nations were not equal in history but EU is not historically accurate.

I'm not sure what you mean here with playable nations? Its very easy to play the big once like france, england or castille. You get some challenge by playing a 1 province land but if you know the mechanism its not a big deal to make a great empire out of grenada for example.

I like the Magna Mundi Gold Mod which put in some difficults in the game.

Zeldor said:
EU series pretends to be historical, but only people with quite limited knowledge can be fooled by that. Province names are fine as it concerns western europe. Where you need to spend at least 5 minutes to verify and look at historical atlas they tend to be really strange. Also you get science penalties for belonging to non-western tech group. And you also get weaker units if you are not that group. So it takes you more time to research weaker troops. And it is quite common knowledge that in eastern europe cavalry was really better than in west. And here west has everything better and faster.

Well the western tech groups reflect the fact that european countries did develope better than rest in the world in this timeframe. For example urbanizing was one factor, but there are more.
Eastern tech group aren't that much worse than western. The cavalry is even better! You just have to live with a 0.9 tech factor but you get manpower and much land to expand quite good.
And again I'm revering to the fabolous magna mundi mod where all the details better explained and you can modernize with every nation in the world.

Zeldor said:
And you can go on and on with interface, diplomatic system, peace signing mechanics etc etc. Dominions is far from perfect but still 3x better than EU series.

Well they are 2 different games. I would never play dominions in SP mode as i play EU and viceversa for MP.

[Zeldor]

calmon:

France and England get 'lucky' tag which is totally unnecessary. That would be like giving hidden Luck+3 scale to MA Pythium in Dominions.

In eastern tech group cavalry is worse than western. So they have everything worse. You can find tables with unit stats somewhere on EU3 forum.

Research groups - some countries are in bad groups, for example Poland was always latin culture with later parts conquered of eastern culture.

Research speed - in some cases it is of course true. But there were also different factors. I can understand that in EU2 with historical accuracy, but not in EU3. I will use example of Poland again. The thing that slowed down it's progress was acquiring a lot of land on east, really huge amounts. And that mechanism is present in EU already. And then they get additional punishement for different culture. Also China in old times was much more advanced than Europe. Not even mentioning huge superiority of Middle East during Dark Ages.

Manpower - I think someone picked it randomly Russia got really nice manpower boost, but countries around didn't.

[calmon]

Well the 'lucky' tag give just some AI boost. Every competive player is still miles better than the AI so whats the problem with it?
AI got some bonus and uses some lines of very limited code and you got Trillions of brain cells, isn't THAT unfair?

For the cavalry (taken from FAQ, maybe not the most actual version):
This is western Tech 5 Cav.
Unit Techgroup/Techlevel/Type/Maneouver/Morale Off./Morale Def./Fire Off./Fire Def./Shock Off./Shock Def.
Hungarian Hussar latin 5 cavalry 2 3 2 0 0 2 1

Eastern got 2:
Mongol Steppe eastern 5 cavalry 2 2 2 2 2 2 1
Ottoman Spahi eastern 5 cavalry 2 2 2 2 1 2 1

For me the east cavalry with aditional fire is better than the western. The next step for better better cav start with tech level 14 which happens later in the game where cav start losing importance and even there i can't see much difference.

[Zeldor]

calmon:

Compare them at higher level, at 50% research, 75% and 100%.
Polish hussars were the best cavalry units that ever existed. Something like fear aura & mirror image heavy cavalry in dominions

[calmon]

To be fair, i can't really say which cav was superior in the years 1600-1750 but if you don't like the polish hussars in vanilla play the MMG2 Mod for NA 1.2. Like i said its really good!

Compare the MMG2 version

# Polish Hussar

type = cavalry
technology_group = eastern
technology_group = eastern_europe

maneuver = 2
offensive_morale = 5
defensive_morale = 2
offensive_fire = 0
defensive_fire = 2
offensive_shock = 5
defensive_shock = 2

with the vanilla:

# Polish Hussar

type = cavalry
technology_group = eastern

maneuver = 2
offensive_morale = 4
defensive_morale = 2
offensive_fire = 0
defensive_fire = 0
offensive_shock = 2
defensive_shock = 2

[Zeldor]

Maybe there are mods that help with that. I know that vanilla game really sucked when it comes to balance etc and I uninstalled that before serious mods came. Anyway EU3 caused really bad problems with my graphics drivers.

[Cerlin]

Well Being a historian, the joke is EU really isnt historical like people say but that is ok. One plays it for the potential to build the old empires or make your own.

The old EU games like EU2 were more historical with its historic events, now that they dont have those, sometimes I feel that Dom3 is more historic haha

[Zeldor]

For me, when playing Poland, it was easier to conquer whole China [Ming in eastern Europe on year 1470!] than getting one province from one of german states

[Omnirizon]

That's what the Treaty of Westphalia is for. YOu can't conquer Germany, you just have to hack it up geo-politically.

[LeSquide]

I'm a fan of both EU and (unsurprisingly) Dominions 3. Both games have their high points...and their flaws.

The problem with making EU (or any linear game set in the real world) 'historical' is that once the player takes control and a random element is introduced into the equation (much less AI), anything that happens is going to be a-historical. And you know what? That's a -good- thing.

It's boring when the game does things to cleave closely to the timeline; the German example's a good one. With proper military force and political backing, you shouldn't need the Treaty of Westphalia to carve up Germany like a turkey.

I actually like the way that the oft-maligned Total War games do things; events are randomized across a reasonably plausible period, rather than set in stone. Given the general player-driven deviations, I think that gives a far more genuine experience than trying to hard code in 'historical' events happening.