Is EUIII better than EUII?

[Monk]

I can say with confidence that I have gotten hooked on EUIII, in a similar way I was hooked on STW many years ago. I feel as if I've discovered an entire new genre of games and am going to start looking into much more paradox games the moment EUIII becomes boring. The only catch is I don't foresee EUIII getting boring anytime soon!

When I first started playing, I found the game to be a little intimidating- but in a good way. I really enjoyed the challenge of trying to find out how the various game mechanics worked.... how to conquer territories, forge alliances, keep inflation low, ect. I'd say that playing a few hours a day, it took me about 2 or 3 days to get comfortable enough with everything to feel like I was doing well. I mainly used trial and error, combined with the EU3 wiki and some Googling when all else failed.

I think the biggest change of pace, going from TW to EU was the fact that you can't just declare war against everyone in sight like you can in Total War. That alone took a lot of getting used to. You have to balance your realm's stability, economy and revolt risk factors all while trying to deal and wheel in order to obtain just causes for war so your people won't revolt if you get into an offensive war! At first it seemed contrived and far too difficult, but thanks to a friend who knows the game and a few nights of just playing with buttons I developed a good understanding of its features.

Once I got the understanding I found a very fun game. The tutorials helped a lot in teaching the interface, but not really so much with the features. For that I just played a few throw-away games and learned by doing. Annexation and diplomatic dealing was also another hurdle, but I have to say that once I got used to it it felt very fluid and straight forward (even though it didn't seem that way from the outside looking in).

I will repeat what I said in the screenshot topic. For $10 EUIII -Complete is a steal, and if you have the time to devote to learning the game it will reward you greatly with its hours of gameplay. The only downside is how much time it can suck up.