I've gone insane on Europa Universalis 3

The Game Room
1

Anyone here still play Eu3? I love this game (specially now that I have Divine Wind 5.1), and had such a great time I started setting ludicrous goals for myself. I love playing as Castille (I’m a colony-whore). However, after I got lucky one game back and got a Personal Union on France and Milan, I never quite recovered. Now I’m starting games and trying to do crazy nonsense, like conquering Morocco in 1400 with 20 units (No, it really isn’t going to work as long as Algeirs is involved), or trying to get simultaneous personal unions on France, England, and Milan.

Sadly, I’ve never once been able to declare myself as Spain by 1492, and necver once managed to peacefully annex Aragon. Anyoen else have some crazy stuff they try?

2

I don’t have DW. It’s been awhile since I played, but I love to form France starting as England :D.

My next goal is probably going to be a WC as either Switzerland or Bohemia (and I will not form the bloody HRE); thinking about it, I really do love the idea of Swiss colonials all over the Americas and Indies. I’m doubting the Swiss get anything like England’s occupy Paris mission, so getting those first coastal cores will be annoying, but I bet I can take Portugal before Castille looks in that direction.

3

God bless those cheat codes, that’s all I can say.

4

Right now I’m doing an insane psycho conquest in Crusader Kings, planning on controlling the entire southern Med by 13590, and hopefully conquering France, too. Granted, I staretd as Cstille which is no minor power, but dealing with the political mess at home such that my personal heir inherits all of Castille, Leon, and Galicia, as well as conquering all of Muslim Spain in the first generation, was a challenge.

I’ve gotten the impression, however, that the AI does not actually use money like the player does. It’s easy for the player to go broke - Were I to raise my full troop strength at once, I could conceivably be paying out a thousand ducats a month. The most I’ve ever had at once is 3000. You do the math. I have single province armies which take me from +100 to -200 income when in the field. Yet the AI seems to have no problem raising everything at once and fielding armies indefinitely. Now, this wouldn’t be a problem… except that crusading in the Middle East costs a fortune: it can take a long time to get soldiers from Europe anywhere near Jerusalem. Yet the AI doesn’t seem to care.

5

It does not. It’s my understanding that the AI never goes to minus, just zero. So it can fight indefinitely without financial penalty. This was a deliberate cheat implemented for balance reason, because otherwise the AI proves just too stupid to manage their money and will run themselves right into the ground, crippling any challenge.

It’s somewhat similar to the AI in EU III never losing ships to attrition ( I believe this is still the case, it was last I checked, though I don’t have the latest expansion yet ). They’re cheats that put you at a relative disadvantage, but somewhat necessary ones for the poor retarded AI.

6

Seriously.

I’ve barely figured out how to keep Great Britain from going in the negative. I’m a little bored by that game so I wanted to start a new one but I couldn’t figure out who to play.

I’m against Castille because I just did the colony thing but I’m not good enough to play anyone else.

7

Thanks for the tip, Tamerlane. Kinda sad, really, though I understand the neccessity. Annoying as all get out, though. I’m still waiting for someone at Paradox to actually implement logistics in a worthwhile fashion. It could answer so many problems.

8

EU3 still has no naval attrition, which tends to result in everyone from Portugal to the Ottomans owning territory in the Baltic. It does have army attrition and costs and you can run the AI out of men and money.

If you can program an AI that can handle semi-realistic logistics (or semi-realistic anything) without making repeated blind-wombat mistakes, I’m sure Paradox would love to hear from you. It is not an easy challenge - particularly as it has to run 200 times over on a home PC.

RandMcnally - England can be tricky in DW5.1 - they raised naval support a lot and England starts with a huge navy. Don’t be afraid of a little (<20%) early inflation.

If you want a relatively easy country to play, I’d suggest Burgundy (the early missions are an armchair ride) or Portugal (make nice with Castile and just colonise all game). Or you could try outside Europe - an Indian major like Delhi or Vijayanagar can be a fun bloodfest.

I’m not a good enough player to do the really crazy things - I tend to stick with turning Asian minors into superpowers. Conquering China with Khmer or the Indian Ocean with Malacca.

9

I was thinking of giving each country a “logistics” score.

It represents the practical resources you have available to do fun stuff like invading other countries and sending ships around. Having troops outside your core would drain your logistics score until you had nothing left, while getting your defensiveness high could actually increase the logistics burden on people attacking you. In theory, you could keep all attackers out excepting your border provinces with a supreme defensive strategy, although this would wreck your own logistics score. Meanwhile, high logistics scores could actually improve the effectiveness of your soldiers in battle.

Waters defined as coastal wouldn’t have a cost, but otherwise the AI (and the player) would be forced to return fleets once they were runnign low. This also would give a neat new mechanic to balancing invasion - you can’t just go racing across the enemy country at will, but must pick and choose where to invade. Since hilly and mountainous provinces have higher

Friendly/allied provinces would have a very low logistics cost. I further think you should be able to use a decision or temporary structure to create forward supply bases (yes, it sounds modern, but the idea isn’t) as you conquer. The human player would probably need a “logistics” map like the relational map.

The upside to me is that this appears as though it would require fewer processor cycles (it’s one score per country, and doesn’t matter in peace much), and be more useful for AI decision making. it would not be that hard to, though the AI will still be a little predictable. I’d probably develop a few AI options for high-logistics/aggressive, mid, and low countries, with increasingly daring moves for the AI at higher levels.

Low risk AI would tend to stick near the border and invade on the most congenial ground. High-risk AI might try to dash troops in deeper and attack tastier targets with more loot, and which hurt you more.

However, I tend to favor some things which go with it - like breaking provinces up a bit, into somewhat smaller groups which can individually be fortified (so that not every inch of Europe is a fortified bastion). This would open up invasion routes and give players options as to what they want to fortify, etc. The developers can also strategically choose what to put forts on so as to limit all countries based on reasonable historical outcomes.