Is EUIII better than EUII?

[seireikhaan]

I second Jolt and Lady Froggy- if you really likle EU III, then I strongly urge a few(dozen) attempts at Vicky. A lot deeper, with much more impressive economics at play, and a foreign system that seems much more realistic than EU III.

Plus, I have one major aggravation with EU III- the AI, no matter how much money it creates, seems only to suffer from inflation if it wants to- and that is usually just a few minor factions dying to be exterminated in the first place anyways. Especially in Magna Mundi, that puts the player at severe disadvantage, as the player actually has to keep it in check. Thus far, I have not seen the Vicky AI actually cheat, as it does in EU III.

[Jolt]

Yeah, its quite common to see countries going Bankrupt in Vicky. One curious story that I have of my VIP Grand Campaign as Prussia - Germany, which I eventually grew to the "Gross Deutchland", with a Mittleeuropa of Satelites:
- Scotland with Northern England
- Belgium without their German speaking provinces
- Netherlands without the Limburg strip - had belonged to the German Confederation
- Denmark like it was pre-1918, but without any colonies (My satelite Netherlands got Greenland and Iceland was Denmark's Satelite)
- Hungary without Slovakia
- Independent Slovakia (It remained in my control until the date allowed me to create the nation)
- Venice owning Northern Half of Italy (The North Italian part plus some provinces with South Italian)
- Croatia without Trieste provinces, which is my Germany's access to the Mediterranean
- Bosnia, surprisingly didn't suffer any land changes. :P
- Montenegro with Novi Pazar or whatever the name is
- Congress Poland with Western Galicia and Krakow (Which I gently ceeded them, since it was previously part of my nation)
- The three Baltic States with Dominion Status (Representing only large autonomy inside the German nation, since the Baltic States are part of Germany due to the Teutonic Knights colonization)
- Finland without any modifications
- Ukraine with Eastern Galicia but without the Crimean Peninsula
- Crimea only with the Crimean Peninsula. Created due to the majority of Tatars in the peninsula.
I had created a nation named Galicia, comprised of that province which was inside the Austro-Hungarian Empire. I RPed as if a Ukrainian King was placed in the Galician throne, since placing a Polish King might have consequences in the Polish inhabitted areas of Germany, thus Germany decided to empower the Ukrainians. After the completely overwhelming and crushing defeat I inflicted upon the Russian Empire. (I must have destroyed around 100 divisions, and reached and surpassed Moscow, switched their satelite Finland to me) Russia was forced to give me Poland and Ukraine, which was used to create the two Nation-States. Afterwards, I wondered what to do with Galicia.

I wondered between adding Poland and Ukraine to Galicia (Since I RPed Galicia as a federal Kingdom, with Polish dominated Western Galicia and Ukraine dominated Eastern Galicia) to simulate the continuation of a federation between both peoples under a single government, OR creating Ukraine and Poland, and allowing Galicia to remain as an independent kingdom, OR splitting Galicia in two - The Polish Western part for Poland and the Eastern part for Ukraine. In the end I decided that the Congressional Polish people, having just been released from a foreign king, would never accept being led by another foreign (The Galician - Ukrainian) king, and that the Polish-Galician people seeing that, and having the oportunity to finally reunify with their country, would abandon an independent Galicia for Poland, thus leaving Ukrainian Galicia with the only option of uniting with Ukraine. Capital shifted from Galician Lvov to Kiev.

In any case, my Germany was leading exporter in the majority of the products (Practically every manufactured good), with twice as many factories as the second country (USA), leading country in export total income and obviously also leading country with export income per national capita. Besides that, I had a colossal fortune in my treasury, and since that was so, I decided to see how would the world fare if my country suddenly started stockpiling every resource and halted the exports the world market (Mostly the Civilized and Industrialized countries) were dependent on. Obviously I would take colossal expenditure due to my gigantic budget spending, low tariffs and low taxes, but nothing my treaury couldn't handle for some 9 months.

So I did it, and halted all exports. Thus the Great Depression began. I was originally thinking that since I stopped exporting the goods nations like the USA and England (Britain was history by then) were dependent on, they would immediatly start to suffer great problems in maintaining their industrial output, but I forgot about prestige. As such, the resource shortage impact fell to those countries which didn't have enough prestige to get the available goods first, while the world powers managed to keep their economies afloat initially (They started importing the goods that the lesser prestigious ones managed to make. However industrial countries which less prestige wouldn't be able to get any goods they needed for their factories since all of them were bought by the prestigious world powers. As such, their industrial oriented economies (With POPs which produced goods in factories) began to significantly slow down, and since they couldn't produce goods for export to pay for their budgets and social reforms, they started taking in deficits, which in time would lead to taking loans, which would only mean bigger deficits due to the interest of those loans. The end result would be bankrupcy.

Two months into the Great Depression, the first bankrupcies en masse started appearing (I was taking tens of thousands of pounds of losses each day). Italy, Sweden, Netherlands, Portugal and Spain and other countries followed. By the three months a dozen had already sunk into bankrupcy. Coupled with that, we see the first revolutions (Hungary fell to Fascism, presumably not only due to the crisis, but also since Slovakia was independent; Croatia fell to Communism, Estonia and Lithuania became Socialists as well) Up to the end of the forth month, the first big power crumbled to the crisis. France, the eternal enemy of Germany had declared bankrupcy. I presumed the USA might be keeping itself afloat, but I wasn't so sure England would resist the continual collapse of countries, as countries without money cannot import the goods England (Or any other country for that matter) creates. So I laughed at the prospect of seeing England in financial shambles. By this time some of my satelites were already under. I suppose what a keeping the world afloat was the industrial "might" of the USA, which managed to keep the world market flowing. I doubted my great depression would collapse the USA, but if it did, I was pretty sure most civilized countries would drop. Of course, some uncivilized countries also declared bankrupcy, but those were few, as their exporting goods still were being bought (I think) by the civilized countries. In the middle of the fifth month, one of the nations I didn't expect to go under, actually did. Russia probably couldn't resist a crushing defeat at my hands followed by the goods shortage for their factories. I expected Russia to stay afloat since they were a large country which had many unmanufactored goods to use for themselves and keep the industrial chain going. Apparently it wasn't enough. That was coupled by some pretty neat rebellions all over the Great Bear (War militancy on top of not having daily goods sucks, I suppose) At the sixth month, the Ottoman Empire did also go bankrupt and that was about it. My treaury was already quite low (Still big enough though), and thus the stockpiled goods in Germany started flowing freely once again to the world. In the end, around 30 went down. It was quite fun. England did keep itself afloat. Shame. I still do wonder how Russia did collapse. If I did it before taking Ukraine and Poland, I suppose the extra number of factories plus having another 100 divisions on top of what they already did in the East (Which were some 50 or more) to maintain would have toppled them sooner.

Anyways, there you go knowing a little bit more about my favorite Grand Campaign. :)

[Xiahou]

Plus, I have one major aggravation with EU III- the AI, no matter how much money it creates, seems only to suffer from inflation if it wants to- and that is usually just a few minor factions dying to be exterminated in the first place anyways. Especially in Magna Mundi, that puts the player at severe disadvantage, as the player actually has to keep it in check. Thus far, I have not seen the Vicky AI actually cheat, as it does in EU III.

Have you played the IN expansion? You can turn off "lucky nations" iirc.

[seireikhaan]

Have you played the IN expansion? You can turn off "lucky nations" iirc.

Yes, that's all I play. Its really aggravating when I sit there to myself wondering how on earth Austria funds a super-gigantic army, full time infrastructure upgrades, has tons of spare cash, AND has zero inflation. Lo and behold(and I've checked this out a multitude of times in different games to make sure it wasn't a one time fluke), when I try and load up the game as Austria/other major powers, they are printing enough cash to create .3 inflation per year, yet their total is still zero.

[Jolt]

One word: Fugger.

[Xiahou]

Yes, that's all I play. Its really aggravating when I sit there to myself wondering how on earth Austria funds a super-gigantic army, full time infrastructure upgrades, has tons of spare cash, AND has zero inflation. Lo and behold(and I've checked this out a multitude of times in different games to make sure it wasn't a one time fluke), when I try and load up the game as Austria/other major powers, they are printing enough cash to create .3 inflation per year, yet their total is still zero.

So did you turn off Lucky Nations when you started the campaign?
"Lucky Nations" is literally an AI cheat for certain nations depending on their historical strength or even just their proximity to you- it grants the AI nation all kinds of bonuses. Turning it off disables those cheats.

[seireikhaan]

So did you turn off Lucky Nations when you started the campaign?
"Lucky Nations" is literally an AI cheat for certain nations depending on their historical strength or even just their proximity to you- it grants the AI nation all kinds of bonuses. Turning it off disables those cheats.

....

Now I just feel silly.