[QUOTE=smiling bandit]
Playing though a historical scenario can be nice, but it does run into trouble after a few years: the conditions no longer make any sense. I was playing the Spanish when Belgium abruptly and for no reason (and with no warning) revolted. ince they had no taxes and had a high happiness rating, I never did find out what pissed them off. It was impossible for me to raise troops fast enough despite my large income, since those locals basically got huge free armies without paying for them. It was all over long vefore I could move an army over there across the Channel.
[/QUOTE]
The point to the game got totally lost on most people who played it. We are so used to empire building games, that we approach a game like EU with the same mindset as we would use for any other game: build it up as big as possible!
EU was never about building a massive empire per se. It was a historical simulator, where you could make minor adjustments to what happened in history, as the “power behind the throne.” You weren’t expected to totally change history; indeed, the game was set up not to allow that to a large extent.
The computer game had its genesis in a table-top wargame of the same name. The computer game pretty admirably executed the original table-top game in design, look, feel, etc. Most of the rules of the original computer game are taken directly from the table-top game, or are very close approximations (such as the combat resolution tables). This is important because the table-top game, like most such wargames, was intended to simulate actual history.
Of course, even Peter Ebbeson, the man behind the computer version, enjoyed playing empire builder. Most multiplayer games are all about reducing the world to the domination of anywhere from 5 to 10 players. But the “historicity” of the game, an admittedly artificial aspect which has little bearing on such games, was what made it different from playing a game like Civilization or Age of Empires.
And, as noted, the game is easily modded, and there were so many mods available that it was hard to choose what mods to use. One of the very first projects was called the Event Exchange Project, where people could add events with the intent of offering a more realistic flavor: treat the Dutch correctly as Spain and maybe they don’t spend the whole damn 16th Century trying to revolt, for example. This eventually merged with the Alternative Grand Campaign, another project attempting to increase the historicity while offering alternative time lines. Playing the AGC-EEP mod is a unique experience as a result.
And, of course, if you don’t like the historical events, it’s not that hard to remove them, as well as removing the historical leaders, etc. Of course, if you do, the game is quite boring. Trust me, I know. 
