Europa Universalis III (PC)

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You got your Machiavelli in my Sun Tzu! - Review by Thomas Kinnebrew

A new release for those with a penchant for world domination, Europa Universalis III is the latest grand strategy title from Paradox Interactive. This impressive game allows you to rule in intricate detail virtually any nation that existed during the Age of Discovery.

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Based on a strategy board game, the original Europa Universalis was released in 2000 and successfully introduced the series, followed in 2001 by EUII, which further improved on the solid gameplay.

EUIII is a quality title and will be loved by aspiring dictators everywhere. This game takes a while to learn, and if this is your first time with the series you should definitely go through the tutorials and at least skim through the 148-page manual (available as a free download from Gamers Gate if you order EUIII online).

You can spend hours on tiny aspects of the game

Or, you could decide that you're a genius and just jump in like I did. I found out I wasn't as smart as I thought I was and it took some time to grasp the huge amount of options at my disposal. I spent the first hour just tinkering with every menu and button I could find. In the process of playing for a while and resenting the difficulty, I somehow found myself completely immersed in trying to keep my Portuguese empire alive, and this was just the demo. I had to get this game.

EUIII looks like your beloved Risk board; presenting you with a map of the known world for the period you've chosen to play. There are over 250 countries you can rule and over 1,700 provinces and sea zones. There are thousands of historical characters and rulers and you can pick any starting date from 1453 to 1789. Seven 'bookmarked date' scenarios are included, including the discovery of the New World, the Thirty Years War and the American Revolution. To say there is a lot to do is an understatement.

You'll control your nation as if you were looking over this world map, with various display filters to show national borders, terrain, religious influence and so on, allowing you to assess the global situation with a few clicks. An army is represented by a single soldier (like a game piece), regardless of the size, and navies are similarly indicated by a ship piece that graphically indicates the best boat in the fleet.

Graphics are simple but give the appropriate board game feel familiar to the EU series, with nice water effects and visual representations of any construction that may be occurring in a province. You move your armies with the familiar left select and right click, and the controls are intuitive in most cases. Menu buttons unobtrusively line the edges of the screen, with further details of your empire available by clicking on your country's flag to open your national menu. This allows you to set research, impose even more taxes on your unfortunate subjects, hire and fire your court and military leaders, and even set your national religious preferences.

You're the ruler of an empire and have no business personally commanding filthy peasants. That's what your generals are for; you're responsibility is to keep an eye on the big picture.

EUIII feels like a turn-based board game, but it's real time. You can pause and give commands, and if you're like me you'll find yourself doing that often as you try to think of some way to keep the aggressive (almost angry) AI off your back. There are five different speed settings but I wouldn't recommend going faster than the third setting if you are at war, as you may find yourself on the losing end of an unexpected battle if you're slow hitting the spacebar. Fortunately, you can set autosave to yearly, bi-yearly, or monthly in case you forget to save the game.

At first this hybrid TBS/RTS system didn't feel right for a big strategy game but it grew on me. If you're not at war you can just hit the fastest speed setting and keep sharp for interesting occurrences. While it can be aggravating to monitor your speed to suit the situation, there is in my opinion one huge advantage over most games of this scope - no turn processing time. After playing Civilization IV and more recently Dominions 3, this is a refreshing change. It feels like it is turn based but without the turn processing wait.

At times it can be slow-paced and uneventful but that won't last for long. Short periods of peace are suddenly broken by huge wars involving many nations. One minute you're busy building improvements, fine-tuning your tax policy and research, and exploring uncharted territories, while the next you're frantically trying to deal with a multinational war of alliances. Now there's too much to do and you're making diplomatic deals to secure your eastern front, sending spies into enemy territory to cause trouble and raising more troops than you could ever afford using loans from greedy bankers.

Battles are resolved in an abstract fashion like CIV, where the board pieces get into a simple fight animation and the fight can take months of game time. An info panel reveals the terrain effects, various combat values, troop or ship types (of which there are many) and the amount of men or boats remaining on each side. Of course I wanted more control but that's why I play strategy games to begin with - I have control issues. Thankfully, this does provide me with a lot of 'alone time' in which to play strategy games.

That controlling urge soon passes as there's so much more to do that a war is often just one of many worries. In a popular RTS like the Total War series strategy takes a back seat to tactical control of your army during a battle but EUIII is the opposite. You're the ruler of an empire and have no business personally commanding filthy peasants. That's what your generals are for; you're responsibility is to keep an eye on the big picture.

The complexity is perfect for grand strategy fans

Despite having a great time, I had some minor issues with the game. Some controls were difficult to figure out, for example using ships to transport your troops. The ship must leave the port and go to the adjoining ocean province before troops can board, just like in TW. You then right click with your army to board the ships and right click to unload your men at your own port. Good so far. However, if you are invading an enemy province, you don't right click to disembark, you have to left click on the 'troop tab' of your navy panel and then right click on the province. This should be simplified to right click board, right click disembark. It's perfectly possible that someone might load their troops, attempt to invade an enemy province with a right click, and figure that it's just not possible to do without a marines upgrade or something. You could even play the game for days under this false assumption before figuring it out. Besides this little quibble, I found the controls to be pretty simple and only had to refer to the manual a couple of times. I think an advisor would have been a nice touch and will probably be needed in the future if the series is to reach new players.

Another portion of EUIII that seemed unusually difficult to accomplish was the trade system. However, I didn't devote as much time to this aspect as I did to other areas of the game and I haven't tried out all of the research. Lastly, multiplayer has some stability issues and is probably a patch or two away from being viable for large games.

I've sunk a lot of time into this title and I've only scratched the surface. This game has a lot more to it and really can't be given justice in a short review. If I had to describe this game to someone who was totally unfamiliar with it, I would say it's a combination of the board game Risk and Civilization. The graphics and sound won't wow anyone but, given the incredible scope of EUIII, this is understandable. I'd encourage any interested new players to download the free demo to try it out and if you're a fan of huge strategy games just go buy it - you know you want to.

The overall score for Europa Universalis III takes the two reviews into account.

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