Is EUIII better than EUII?

[seireikhaan]

Well, bought EU3:Complete for a twenty with shipping. Should arrive on Friday. Any recommendations for a first campaign to learn with? Eventually I think I'll try to restore the glory of Byzantium from 1399.

CR

Byzantium is a REALLY tough game, from my own experience. Others may have done better than me, perhaps, but I just could not get over those Turks.

As for a recommendation.... I would say Spain starting around 1500 would be the ideal, as they start with a big edge on colonization, have a large base to work with in Europe, and you can start getting an idea of what the politics of Europe in the game are going to look like.

[Xiahou]

Byzantium is a REALLY tough game, from my own experience. Others may have done better than me, perhaps, but I just could not get over those Turks.

As for a recommendation.... I would say Spain starting around 1500 would be the ideal, as they start with a big edge on colonization, have a large base to work with in Europe, and you can start getting an idea of what the politics of Europe in the game are going to look like.

My long running on again/off again campaign has been with the Byzantines. It took a lot of work and more than a few lucky breaks, but the Ottomans no longer exist, Asia Minor and much of Southeastern Europe are again in Byzantine hands. Here was an earlier post I made in the screenshot thread of it. Since then, I've taken more provinces in Asia Minor and the three Venetian provinces that are shown on the map. We're currently the #3 nation and what a ride its been.

[Monk]

My long running on again/off again campaign has been with the Byzantines. It took a lot of work and more than a few lucky breaks, but the Ottomans no longer exist, Asia Minor and much of Southeastern Europe are again in Byzantine hands. Here was an earlier post I made in the screenshot thread of it. Since then, I've taken more provinces in Asia Minor and the three Venetian provinces that are shown on the map. We're currently the #3 nation and what a ride its been.

Impressive. Makes me wanna give them ago, even knowing how tough it will be.

[TinCow]

Impressive. Makes me wanna give them ago, even knowing how tough it will be.

The Byzantines aren't actually as hard as they look from a 1399 start. At that point, the Ottomans are in a lot of trouble. They have massive unrest in their Balkan territories and they're in a war they can't win with the Timurids and others. All of their armies will move to Anatolia to deal with this, which makes Balkan rebels a serious problem for them. It also makes it easy to keep their large armies away by blocking the Bosporus with ships. If the Ottoman navy comes to chase you away, just slip back into port and then pop out again as soon as the enemy fleet is gone. Several of the other small Baltic orthodox states are very happy to ally with you at the start of the game. Grab a few of those guys as allies and then declare war on the Ottomans when they're looking strained by the Timurids/rebels. You will have very good odds of capturing and holding a lot of the Balkans until the Ottomans will accept a peace. Since you have cores on all those provinces, this instantly will bump you up to a medium power nation that's capable of dealing with the Ottomans with fewer tricks in the future.

I actually think that playing the Ottomans from 1399 is much harder than playing the Byzantines.

[A Very Super Market]

I have tried Magna Mundi, and found myself turn Castille (Of all factions) into a one region monarchy based in Galicia. In the vanilla game, I did well enough with them, making myself a grand North African empire, but I had the maximum amount of war exhaustion in MM, as well as 5 loans, and a 5.9 inflation rate, and still couldn't maintain the forces needed to defend from Aragon and Portugal, who always seem to declare war a month into the main campaign.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Well, got the game today, and aside from some mind boggling frustration at how a game could *(*@&$ up a simple thing like tutorials, I found downloading a patch allowed me to actually use the tutorials, but with the problem of the (@&$(@$*@() game crashing to desktop whenever I try to open a second tutorial. Oh, joy.

I suppose I'll finish the tutorials and then wait till tomorrow before starting the actual game, so as to keep a lid on my vexation.

CR

[Xiahou]

Bah! Tutorials shmutorials.
Honestly, when I first installed the game, I couldn't play them either. I assumed that the expansions broke the tutorials since they were likely made with the vanilla version, so I gave up on them and moved onto the main game.

If they won't work for you, just jump in a game. You'll learn quickly enough.