In the spirit of the Medieval: Total War 2 Cooperative Campaign, I thought it might be neat to run a cooperative game of Europa Universalis III in which we chose a country to play, a year to start from, and proceed to take turns building our empire, turning the reigns over to a new player each time our monarch dies. Considering how variable that can be, it may be easier to trade off every 25 years of play or somesuch… but regardless, that game supports so many different styles of play, I think it’d be neat to see what a whole posse of experienced players could do with it.
I thought it might be especially neat to start with a smaller nation, since a large number of players might quickly get tired of ripping through the world with one of the high-powered countries. (I know from experience, for instance, that playing Burgundy with the explicit goal of conquering France and Britain can be incredible fun. Evne if Burgundy does start out as a pretty darn powerful nation.)
This game is next on my list of computer games to get. I’ve heard so much about it and think I’d love the hell out of it.
As soon as I get it (when my paycheck decides to get here) I’ll get a crash course and hop on in.
Awesome! It’s a great game, but it definitely has a bit of a learning curve; I’ve had it for a couple of months, and I’m still a complete newbie compared to the really skilled players.
There’s a really great thread on EUIII if you search the archives, but a few points I’ve learned:
No matter what kind of financial straits you’re in, keep inflation at 0.
Good monarchs should never be used to lead your army. They have an extremely high mortality rate.
Never get involved in a land war in asia.
Infantry is useless for the first 50 years; until you raise your land war tech, cavalry will do everything infantry can and more.
I tried this once. Piece of advice: Do at least 50 year blocks. Novgorod is a good one for this type of game. Not too small, not too big, and lots of options on how to play. I might be interested in doing this again.
Do remember that the save files are 10mb each, so get a gmail account to accomodate.
Oh, that sounds like a good idea! Fifty’s a pretty good number; it should let everyone really contribute something. I have a gmail set up, and figure if people can’t accomodate that, we can use rapidshare or another free online file-hosting service.
I hadn’t thought about Novgorod before… I tried a short game with the Papal State last night, and it was pretty fun to try and play it as a military power. Funding is a serious problem early on, but if you can avoid ticking off France you can usually unite most of Italy within 150 years or so.
Oh yea, I was going to recommend that since I’m either a very good newbie or a very bad experienced player, we have Captain_C or another experienced player play the first block; once the country is well-established you can do a lot, but I’d worry that I’d be responsible for a poorly-planned first block that would haunt the rest of the monarchs for centuries to come.
When I did it EVERYONE played the first 50 years of the same nation (well, we played until 1500, 1550, 1600 etc just for the sake of keeping track easier). Then we all switched save games. Player A sends to B, Player B sends to C, Player C sends to A. That way everyone gets to play a bit more, and you can see how different strategies pan out over the long run.
I found it to be a great learning experience. Generally, I am the type of player who consolidates my economy and focuses on getting every building built in every province. I ended up following a guy who was heavy into military and trade, and for the first time I realized how useful Army Prestige can be. Changed the way I play into a more well-rounded strategy.
Ooh, good idea about everyone alternating! It’ll let LOUNE and any other newcomers catch up if they want, just by playing through a few older saves.
Anyway, down to business: what do we want to do? Novgorod sounds good for a starting nation, and if this works out I have my eye on somewhere in the middle east for round 2; I think it’d be neat to play a diplomacy-oriented state that had to stand between those Ming arseholes and Europe.
But anyway, I digress; should we all aspire towards the same goal (making a country, conquering some certain region, making X amount of money), or should we just pursue our own agendas, then check out what each ensuing player has done when we trade games?
I don’t have time to participate in this, but I love the EU games. I’d avoid trying to pin down players to a particular style or goal…part of the fun of co-op games is that different rulers have different goals, just like real life rulers. One guy wants to send out colonists, his replacement wants to purify the realm of heretics, his replacement wants to conquer the neighboring country, and so forth.
Awesome! It’s a lot of fun… one of my allies is trying to drag me into their war, and I’m really divided about helping; I have almost no standing military, but if I don’t help they’re bound to lose, and I really don’t want a hostile power right on my border.
I just finished my last game yesterday. When I diploannexed Castile to form Spain my badboy went through the roof and everyone started attacking me. And then while I was invading Swahili intending to vassalize them their government collapsed and I ended up with every province except their capital and my badboy went up to 80. At that point I couldn’t stay out of wars…I’d get DOW’d over and over, grab a few provinces, reputation would go up, they’d DOW me again. It got so I’d expect every neighbor country to DOW me the minute the truce expired. Even newly independent one-province minors were declaring war on me. Except I’ll be damned if I’m going to let them get away with attacking me without paying the price, and with the new warscore rules in 1.3 you really can’t vassalize major powers anymore, so I’d grab a few provinces each time and the reputation climbs and climbs. I couldn’t win for winning. By the end of the game my reputation was over 110.
That’s outstanding… my main gripe playing with Novogrod is Riga and the Teutonic Order. I was planning on playing it as a monetary power, hoping that if I kept my prestige low and maintained enough defensive forces as a deterrent, nobody would want to go to all the trouble of invading me. Unfortunately, ever time I’ve tried to start up one or both countries declare war within a month, and half the time Sweden decides to get in on the action themselves. I suppose I could try deploying more spies, in an attempt to keep both nations unstable enough to discourage them from invading.
Update: nobody cares about Riga anymore, and the Teutonic Knights are quickly sinking into obscurity. I practically crippled myself with war loans, but since I’ve fought both nations off and captured a few smaller countries, nobody’s bothering me. I think Sweden’s looking at me funny, but I’m trying to dominate their economy in order to discourage them from doing anything rash.
I chose to center most of my merchants (other than the ones giving the finger to those darn dirty swedes) in the middle east and western asia; once the silk road starts up I’m hoping that it will give me a head start monopolizing the ming markets, and as an added bonus I’m not likely to be effected by embargos, since none of my markets are anywhere near my military rivals.
That’s pretty much it, for now. I’m going to be drowning in debt until the 1470s, when I pay off my loans from the Teutonic Incident, but once I’m clear of debt I’m going to throw together a few fleets and make for the new world as if it were going out of fashion. I’m hoping to establish a friendly diplomatic relationship with the native groups on the east coast, and re-enforce them against conquest by other nations. If this works out like I’m hoping, I’ll be able to spread out along the eastern seaboard and retain a military and economic monopoly for as long as possible. (If I have time, I’ll send diplomats to the Aztecs and Maza and try to talk them into keeping Europe out of Brazil, but I really don’t think I’ll be able to maintain a northern and southern presence.)
Okay, so I’ve had a couple hours to poke with this game. I’m really digging it. It’s like the old games that I used to play on Nintendo, like Genghis Khan.
It’s complex, which is good. I get what you mean about the learning curve. Never fear. I’ll find the weakness!
I just…need…to find a way to…make money…just minor things getting in my way.
Heheh, now you see why I was so adamant about keeping inflation down. As you continue to pour funding into Government research you can get access to some National Ideas that’ll increase your tax revenue, or reduce inflation (thus allowing you to moderately debase the currency without any penalty). Really, the game is set up to support a number of styles. If you want to play a merchant nation, like I’m doing in Novogrod, you can invest in a bunch of markets and orient your slider and national ideas to maximize merchant output, whereas you can just demand indemnities as part of the peace if you you’d rather play a military game. (I highly recommend being conservative with your military, by the by; military conquest is fast, but it pretty seriously undermines your country’s stability, and it costs a boatload.)
I’m thinking it would be really neat to try playing a “lost continent” game, where you take a given landmass (north america springs readily to mind) and try to build your navy up to such insane standards that none of the other nations ever manage to actually make landfall.
Yeah, I’m getting the feeling that you can really impact your nation in several different ways. Also, about war, it’s pretty fast and unceremonious, which is fine.
I assume you can take countries over by subterfuge, thereby eliminating the need for an offensive army. Am I correct?