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| Europa Universallis II |
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I downloaded this game from VP on Monday or Tuesday, I think. Its been kind of hard keeping track of days since then, let alone night. I was pretty optimistic with this game, after all, I've always loved playing the map strategy part of Total War. However, this was also my first Grand Realtime Strategy Game, so I was a little foggy on what to expect.
After installing, I booted up the game and decided to play the tutorials. I went through the first one, where it took me through how to use the controls and what all the menu bar numbers meant and such. I started the second one, and three minutes later quit out of it. I was impatient, and wanted to start playing a real game.
I forget exactly what age I picked to play in (there are six or seven different time periods you can choose) but I chose the English, thinking that if I was horrible at it at least I wouldn't have to have so much territory to defend. After all, England is just an island right?
I started up the game and was lost......
My first bone with the game appears here, and that's that it is impossible to tell what what your countries are. If I didn't know where England was, I would have been lost entirely. After a little clicking around, I found my capital, and about nine other provinces that supposedly belong to me.
Thankfully, there is a political map built in, where you can switch the map into a color-coded mode based on who owns what. However, you can't make any army movements in this mode, which I thought was a little ridiculous. There is a colored line indicating your borders (and your enemies' as well) but there are just so many provinces and other things on the map that it just gets swallowed up in there, and I found myself flipping back to the political map quite often.
I notice up top that the time is just flying by, like a month every thirty seconds or so (it depends on which pace setting you choose), so I decide to get crackin'. Three months into the game I'm presented with a popup window that stops the timer and so I decide to read it. Its a long, thorough explanation of some historical event, and at the bottom I have two choices. I hover the mouse over them, and see that with the first option I'll get -100 gold (ducats) and +1 stability. Thinking that nothing can be worse than losing gold, I immediately click the second option without even looking at it. For all of those who've played the game and are laughing hysterically at me right now, you've earned it. Apparently the second option involved five or six of my provinces starting up a rebellion against me.
Now that I'm in a civil war, I'm presented with the opportunity to do a little fighting. I had qued up a few thousand soldiers at the start of the game just to see how it was done, so adding the army I had at the beginning I have about ten thousand men. A quick scan of England shows me the five rebelling provinces, and I count a total of about 23,000 traitors. I'm tempted to just charge in and lay waste with my army, but I don't exactly have the advantage of numbers. Wisely (ha ha) I open up my capital and que up an extra 14,000, and 3,000 cavalry.
Here is another little quirk of the game: building time. When creating units, it doesn't matter at all how many you've qued up. It can be a thousand or 50,000, it takes the same amount of time. Whatever, on to the rebels!
I sweep away the first two rebel armies with ease, but the remaining three have already conquered the province they were attacking, which means that I have to siege them individually now and take the province by force. Naturally, I grew bored with the siege, and ordered my men to attack the walls. This method is ten times faster than a siege, but you also lose ten times as many units. After I finally took the province, I had to que up another 14,000 units as replacements.
War in this game is a little weird, and departs from the norm of conquering. In normal games, when your troops take an area, it becomes yours by right of conquest. That doesn't happen in this game. Unfortunately for me, I made the French angry about something (it must have been all those pirates I commissioned in their waters) and I, being the great general that I am, started landing troops in Normandie (yes, that's how its spelled in the game), which quickly fell to my invasion. I laughed maniacally, ready to enslave the foolish peasants which had chosen to resist me and...... I couldn't. Not out of softness of the heart, but because until I demand Normandie at the peace table or France decides to give it to me to make me leave them alone, I can't do squat with the land except look at it and maybe station some troops there. At first I thought this might be clever, but at a certain point it becomes unrealistic.
A hundred years later or so, after much fighting, I finally conquer the last French province. I pump my fist in the air; victory! I opened up the Diplomacy window, started the peace talk, and demanded the full annexation of France. Well, it didn't happen like that. Here I am, with all fifty of their provinces in my control, and they offer me Normandie, Brittany, and some other little pipsqueek province to try and buy me off. I'm sorry but thats just a little whack to me.
Overall, I'm having fun with this game. The games quarks can make you say "Arrrgh!" every once in a while, but aside from those moments its fun to try and manage such a vast empire. You really have to pay attention to the political undercurrents in the game too, because there are so many shifting alliances and the like. Attack the wrong country, no matter how insignificant, and you may find all of Austria, Spain, and Italy descending on you like a pack of rabid dogs. And when that happens, there just isn't enough men in your nation to stop that. You can pump out tens of thousands of troops to try and stem the tide and still get swept away.
Fun, so long as you enjoy intricacies.
Posted on December 2, 2005 at 8:21 am
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