plz combine europe universalis: Rome and dom 3

[Aezeal]

I haven't played those older EU games, I read some reviews and heard you could conquer part of the world with most nations. In Rome you are somewhat limited (maybe a bit too much) to what could realisticly happen. a small nation (which starts with one province) won't grom much larger than a few provinces in a 100 years (and that is a few hours of playing)

yesterday I started playing a barbarian tribe.. lol.. basicly I could do nothing.. not enough civilization to colonize surrounding lands, not really able to gather enough military to conquer anything (it was a tribe in portugal, only neighbour: cartaghe (?) which started with about 20 provinces and high civilization compared to my 2.

Zeldor: rome seems historically accurate. you can start on any DAY you want to in the period between pyrric war and the first emperor and some reveiw checked a few things and those seemed to fit. but I admit the game is a bit slow which is why combining it would be nice..

but it is kewl that for example my general send otu to conquer far away lands (another weak country) suddenly decided to keep those far away lands for himself (I hadn't payed attention to his loyalty in a while.. then I noticed he wouldn't split his troops anymore (make a 2nd army) and later I got a message that he had started a rebellion...

hey sombre.. let me know when you are ready

[Zeldor]

Aezeal:

Yeah, EU series is fun unless you are a Dominions player or someone that wants to spend more time on it. Dom3 of cousr is far from being balanced but in EU what do you have? 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.
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.
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.
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.

So the thing that you want is dominions with historical races, technological research, more resources and more buildings. So you'd need to replace magic sites with constructable things and magic gems with wood, iron etc. But doing normal research that would increase efficiency, upgrade weapons for units etc etc would be impossible with that engine.

[Humakty]

I used to play EU2, and I did not like the cultural penalties. Sadly, in EU3, it is even worse, as they added units difference, wich increase the penalties if you don't play west european.
In the same time, they stripped off all the historical details and events of EU2, making of this game a sort of random pseudo-historical simulator.
The final touch, and what makes this game a total wreck, are the numerous bugs : I have played 5 EU3 games, and all of them ended with a fatal bug.
So, why would someone want to have dom 3 look like EU3 ?

[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

[Sombre]

Aezeal said:
hey sombre.. let me know when you are ready

I started yesterday, it should be finished tomorrow.

[Twan]

Note that, if someone (with huge c++ knowledge) want to try, Paradox is now releasing the sourcecode of their old engine (the 2d one of eu2/ck/hoi etc) to members of their community who want to make their own versions and sell them on gamersgate.

But I rather doubt the engine is usable for a dom-like pausable real time game. Considering the years of patching Paradox needed just to make some of their games playable, I can't imagine how many a game of the complexity of dominions and using their kind of code would need.