I’m also contemplating this jump. I may just wait until the Summer Sale.
EU3 is fun, but the way they’re rebuilding the system CK2 would likely be the better training for EU4. That said, I do like a lot of features of EU3 and had a blast playing it. Got a little disappointed in my inability to prevent any country from ever colonizing anything except me (I love playing Castille). I came close some times, but never quite managed to own all of the Americas, let alone block Africa. My real goal was to effectively spread my culture all over the globe.
It was odd seeing Savoy (or was it Croatia?) getting a colony-monopoly in the Caribbean.
I couldn’t grasp EU3 the first time I tried it, but after playing CK2 I found it was actually quite easy to get into. Some concepts are the almost same though many others are quite different. For $3.75 it’s worth giving it a shot.
Vicky2, on the other hand, I still can’t wrap my head around. Maybe I haven’t found a good starting location.
I checked this out (Despite the age of teh post) because the game sounds interesting. Price now is $127.76 for the bundle. Or you can buy it individually for $125.72. :dubious: Guess I’ll check out Steam and wishlist it.
It used to be allowed through the first half dozen patches or so, hence all the well-meaning advise. But the developers decided too many people were gaming the Gavelkind system and put the kibosh on that little dodge.
While I do agree it was gamey as hell, more a bug than a feature, on the downside now I find it frustratingly untidy. I rather ahistorically like all my duchies neatly under a single ownership. The new system of frequently scrambling counties to heirs, while actually sorta more historically accurate for a lot of areas, upsets my need for zen-like balance ;).
If and when the Steam summer sale begins, I’m sure it will be heavily discounted again.
I am guessing it will be cheaper, but if not I can afford to wait. Looking at the system requirements, my desktop can’t come close to running it and I have several months before I can replace it. I hope. 
Paradox usually has a pretty good sale regularly, either at STEAM or Amazon. SO it’s usually not that long of a wait.
Currently on sale at Amazon, although it looks like you’ve got to buy the various DLC separately. Works out to $22.50 without Sunset Invasion or Old Gods. $25 with Sunset Invasion, and $40 with all of that and Old Gods.
Frankly not as good a deal as it was (and probably will be again eventually) on Steam, where the Crusader Kings II collection (including everything but Old Gods) was at $20 when I got it. That also includes a bunch of the little graphical fluff DLC that’s not part of the price I quoted for Amazon’s current sale.
It’s currently on flash sale on steam for 75% off, that’s $10 for the base game or $20 for the collection which includes everything except for the latest release. Sale ends in about 6.5 hours as of this posting.
Just a note for those of you playing this game-- the savegames are big files (40 to 60 megabytes) and they can really pile up if you’re using quicksaves or the “save and quit” function. I just deleted six gigabytes of old savegame files. Worth checking out.
Well, I managed to get it when it was on flash sale. (Along with a few other things that have caught my eye.) Now I just need to get a computer that is capable of running it.