Quote Originally Posted by frogbeastegg View Post
It does? There's some good news; EU3 kicks off at the point where my historical interest peters out and dies so it's harder to find a nation I want to play. To then have many of the ones I'd like to try lumbered with a research penalty is still more off-putting. I'm a researcher/builder/trader at heart, with a sideline in conquest.
I know exactly what you mean. I am pretty much the same and EU3 really doesn't give you options to play the merchant, research, builder game. (Research is really slow, Merchants don't have much chance, Buildings are too expensive)

Not necessarily more historical, just not so "Hur hur, you dumb [insert tech group label] are so stoopid you can't understand court houses, hur hur!" I can understand and agree with limiting access to the obviously western research outcomes (e.g. scientific revolution) but the approach taken by the game is blanket, heavy-handed and outright tedious in its effects on gameplay. I don't want to mod the non-western nations into becoming western nations with a different colour and name either; I want to see them keep some individual flavour.
You can make Japan into a Western tech-group. In a game, I forced Japan into it just to see what happens. The most noticable thing was they suddenly had access to all the area of Europe, but in Europe, they didn't have the FoW lifted from Japan, which I found weird.