First off, I’m a new Mac user, and am looking for games I can play natively with my Mac (I also have Win 7 in Boot Camp/VMware, but would rather play native Mac if I have the option).
I was a huge fan of EU2 and HOI2-- still am, still play both-- but I recognized that both games took eons to patch up to playability. Like many, I have a serious love/hate relationship with Paradox (their games are great… two years after they release them. I honestly would like to sue them for putting out buggy games requiring five patches to stop crashing… I don’t even know if I’m kidding here, BTW, I really do hate them at times :).
Anyway, both EUIII and HOI3 have been out for a long time now, and presumably both have been patched up to some semblance of playability.
That said… any players out there willing to vouch for that? Are either/both worth getting now in June 2010? Any trouble with Mac versions (I’ve seen both up on Steam)?
Also-- looks to me that with EUIII I get the “EUIII complete” version, then add on the “Heir to the Throne” expansion to get the complete experience, correct?
EU3: Yes! Highly recommended. You’ll want to get the Heir to the Throne expansion as well, which was unplanned but made lots of good changes to the game.
HOI3: Not quite yet. To be fair, I haven’t tried the Semper Fi expansion, which made some big interface and AI changes. But ultimately, the measure of HOI3 is going to be whether they can hash out the supply and AI issues, which they had not fixed as of patch 1.4. Semper Fi supposedly gives you the option of turning the supply system off, which doesn’t give me a lot of hope for Paradox fully fixing it.
Definitely yes on EU3. I just got back into it with the Heir to the Throne expansion, and it is a night and day comparison between this and the original version. A lot of the game-unbalancing variables have been fixed, and I’ve only had one crash/bug in about 70 hours of play (and even that was during an alt+tab of EU3 while trying to listen to Winamp, download something, and run Ultima Online in the background)
Another big ditto on EU3 plus HTTT. I’ve gotten back into it recently myself. I’d also strongly recommend the Magna Mundi mod, though I haven’t tried the HTTT version yet. But one should note it IS rather different from Eu 2 and some purists still prefer that game to the new one ( not me, though ).
Can’t comment on HOI 3, haven’t tried it yet myself.
I do tech support on the EU3 forums. Yes, EU3:Complete plus HttT is the current offering, and has been extremely well received. There is a beta of the first patch 4.1 available in the tech support forums, no ETA on a formal release though.
But I’ve had a few negative reports of Virtual Programming’s support for their Mac port of the EU3 series; they do take a little while to bring out new expansions and patches after Paradox release them, and of course beta patches cannot be applied to the Mac version. In fact I hear VP don’t even have tech support forums any more, you have to deal with them by email only. So you may have to consider whether you really want the native Mac version or not - maybe post that question in the main EU3 forum.
Fifthed(?) on EU3 - the expansions improved it hugely and most of the bugs (and nearly all the instability issues) were eradicated in the process. It must be admitted, though, that HTTT original had some issues (mostly potential exploits and playbalance) which as a Mac user you’ll have to live with until 4.1 finally comes out of beta.
Haven’t tried HOI3 - but checking on the Paradox forums post-Semper Fi the flood of rant-threads has slowed down to a trickle. There’s a general consensus, though, that the supply system still isn’t quite right - though if you keep an eye on things and switch to manual control when the AI tries to ship your entire oil stockpile to Qingdao it’s playable.
Thanks everyone for your comments… I’ll be picking up EUIII soon, should keep me busy until I’m comfy with the state of HOI3 (or until Victoria 2 comes out… and gets patched half-a-dozen times
I will be buying Viki II as soon as it comes out, but I won’t play it probably for another year. It will be horribly buggy when it comes out, but damn it, I still play Viki 1, despite it being out for nearly 7 years.
I love Paradox games. EU2, EU3, CK, Vicky are all great. The game I really want to see is Crusader Kings 2. The original was fun, but lacked a few mechanics (inheritance needs to be by title not by individual) and it gets bogged down in long games. Interestingly, they’ve recently start a Facebook page asking for requests.
Heya, in EU3, (particularly with the expansions, etc.) can you really conquer the world? Or maybe not conquer it all, but put a big dent in it? I always love playng the Spanish in EU2 and crushing the heathens beneath my booted heels with the infinite armies of mighty Hispania! However, it didn’t look like you could really go on the offensive with Heir to the Throne, with the very limited war aims. How big a base can you build?
I think it would be virtually impossible to conquer the whole world without modding the end of the game date. You would have to reach a tipping point fairly early in time, where your manpower and military is enough of a match for your neighbors that you can fight them off if your infamy gets too high. Of course, you’d also have to be willing to play most of the game with -3 stability and high war weariness, and be vigilant about putting down rebellions, AND be capable of building a navy and/or getting colonial footholds on every continent.
But the limited war aims in HTTT don’t really limit you. All they do is provide different types of casus belli to take advantage of. It allows you to maintain a low level of skirmishing with your neighbors, and it doesn’t prevent you from starting a big fuck-off war.
K, sounds good. I don’t need to conquer everything… just CHina, India, and the entire New World. And maybe France and England. And Italy. And the Mideast. And convert them to Catholicism for world awesomesauce.
I have to say, that while I like the demo so far, the 3d is god-awful. I mean, I’m not that much for graphics, but… damn. The menus are so nicely done and the terrain so disgusting it’s sickening. Good lord, why did they go to 3d if it does nothing but copy the 2d, but looks far worse?
IMO, because you simply cannot release a game in this genre that is not 3D. No distributor will touch it. I can only agree about the implementation; a good 2D screen looks like some beautiful old map, but the best 3D can do is badly approximate aerial photography.
In the strategy genre? I mean, there aren’t that many strategy games, and they don’t use it very well. I can’t imagine anyone who’d buy EU3 at all would much care.
In base HTTT, if you start in 1399 with a major country like Castille it’s not too difficult to conquer the world provided you know how to keep your war exhaustion under control. The trick is to stay under the Infamy limit until you’re supreme in Europe, then forget Infamy and just crusade forever. The biggest enemy is boredom - you will be putting down a lot of revolts.
In one of the HTTT beta patches, they added a couple of wrecker events designed to break over-extended countries that had exceeded the Infamy limit. These make World Conquest much, much harder - I’m not sure anyone has done it since.
