On the strength of your recommendations and the excellent AAR, I am going to try the demo. If it's all good (and not tooth pullingly buggy), I might buy the game soonish. I guess it depends on whether I want to have a social life. Otherwise, this looks like a game after my heart.

EU3 is good fun (despite its idiosyncrasies) but the sight of those pop screens from from Vicky2 makes EU3's slider based control of most things in "domestic" policy look crudely infantile. I will probably regret this frequently over the next month but: bring on the detail!