Switching to another engine/support

[Meneldil]

I've been playing Paradox games quite a lot lately, from EU3 to Victoria, and I thought, "wow, an EB mod on this engine would kick ass".

I'm specifically talking about EU3, because it is IMO the Paradox game that offers the best balance between the economical, diplomatical and military parts (Victoria is more economy-oriented, HoI more military-centred, EU:Rome is just bad).

This would obviously have a downside: EU3 doesn't offer highly detailled and randomized units and doesn't have anything like Total War battle maps. Knowing that the EB team is doing its best to model and skin beautiful and realistic units, I can see some reluctance to move to this engine (though it would allow make the whole developement faster, as it seems finding people who can skin and model unit is a pain).

But on the other hand, EU3 basically has many things the EB team has been trying to reproduce over RTW: a slower paced game (as in you usually don't conquer half the world through a gamey rush), a working and realistic diplomacy, various government systems and decisions.
Furthermore, scripting is quite easy, making possible all kind of dynamic events, it allows for an almost infinite number of states/factions, religions, cultures and what not. I don't know how hard map editing is, but I'm fairly sure the part of the map not used (far east, africa, the americas) could be covered with permanent terra incognita.

Is it something the team considered at some point, or is still considering?

[Ludens]

There was the intention by several team member to create an EB for EU (don't ask me which version). If you search the Paradox forum, you will find their thread. I haven't checked recently, but it's my impression the project never got of the ground.

[DaciaJC]

This would obviously have a downside: EU3 doesn't offer highly detailled and randomized units and doesn't have anything like Total War battle maps.

That is Total War's greatest assest, is it not? A battle map with thousands of individual detailed units? I wouldn't give that up even for a stellar campaign map/diplomacy/etcetera.

[Krusader]

An attempt was made, but nothing came out of it.
Plus isn't there already a Paradox game set in the era? Wouldn't there be mods for that game?

[Jolt]

That is Total War's greatest assest, is it not? A battle map with thousands of individual detailed units? I wouldn't give that up even for a stellar campaign map/diplomacy/etcetera.

RTW is more focused on battles. An EB expansion to Paradox would allow the team to develop the larger scope of political organizations of the time much better: Society, politics, economy to a certain extent, trade, and strategical warfare.
RTW is a game simply about battles and wars. Europa Universalis is much more vast than that.

[Meneldil]

RTW is more focused on battles. An EB expansion to Paradox would allow the team to develop the larger scope of political organizations of the time much better: Society, politics, economy to a certain extent, trade, and strategical warfare.
RTW is a game simply about battles and wars. Europa Universalis is much more vast than that.

That's it. Dynamic events, a better diplomacy and a huge amount of cultures/factions/religions/units/decisions available would pretty much blow RTW battles away. To be honest, though I find some of M2TW mods to have beautiful units (Broken Crescent, TATW and EB seems to be heading this way), I more often than not simply autoresolve all battles after a certain points, because they always feel the same.
Fire with longe-range units.
Pin-down the ennemy army with your spear infantry.
Charge from behind with cavalry/heavy infantry.
Enjoy.

Then, even the campaign map part gets boring when you have to build the same building in your 50th province, and fight 5 full stacks per turn. EU3 doesn't suffer from this (though it obviously has its own issues).

An attempt was made, but nothing came out of it.
Plus isn't there already a Paradox game set in the era? Wouldn't there be mods for that game?

That blows :-/ There's indeed an Europa Universalis: Rome, set roughly in the same era (I think it starts around 280BCE), but honestly, it's not nearly as good as EU3, nobody plays it, and thus only a few people mods it.
I know a few guys started ancient age mods for EU3, but AFAIK, not a single mod has been released so far. In any case, I'm not talking about a half-arsed mod, but something made with as much dedication as EB-TW.

[bovi]

The Paradox game in question was EU:Rome. Obviously it would offer a different set of features to mod and play with than the Total War engines, creating a quite different EB experience (if not objectively better), but as Krusader says it never really got started.

[Bucefalo]

I completely disagree, for me the thing about Total war games are about recreating battles. You can command troops in battles, apply tactics and strategies (ex. ambushing an enemy). EU is a game about managing an empire/nation, but not about commanding battles. That´s the big difference. IMO total war games make the campaign map decent enough, and i always play all battles because that is why i am playing a total war game in the first place.

What i mean is that some people love the politics of the era, but most people who play tw games love the military. They want to command their troops, see them fight and die, and ultimately win. The campaign map is only there to give you a feel of history and not only be random battles with predone armies. So in summary, if you don´t care much about the battles per se, then total war games are not for you, because they are all about commanding virtual small tiny soldiers. A similar thing to historical wargames.

[antisocialmunky]

If you mashed Civ and TW up, that would be the one game to rule them all(4x).

[Meneldil]

I completely disagree, for me the thing about Total war games are about recreating battles. You can command troops in battles, apply tactics and strategies (ex. ambushing an enemy). EU is a game about managing an empire/nation, but not about commanding battles. That´s the big difference. IMO total war games make the campaign map decent enough, and i always play all battles because that is why i am playing a total war game in the first place.

What i mean is that some people love the politics of the era, but most people who play tw games love the military. They want to command their troops, see them fight and die, and ultimately win. The campaign map is only there to give you a feel of history and not only be random battles with predone armies. So in summary, if you don´t care much about the battles per se, then total war games are not for you, because they are all about commanding virtual small tiny soldiers. A similar thing to historical wargames.

Oh, I loved total war games until RTW and its ridiculously fast-paced battles and mindless AI (which, despite all efforts, have never been completely fixed by any mod I've heard of). I love commanding soldiers and stuff. I also do love to zoom in and out during a battle, to look at all the details of every single unit (this is even more true with M2TW and randomized body parts).

But I'm more attracted by the whole empire building and alternate-history part of the game, and on that departement, EU has much more to offer than TW will ever have (even ETW and all its shiny new features don't even come close), despite the lack of VnVs and other RPG elements.

In any case, I was merely inquiring, dreaming about the pure awesome-sauce an EB for EU3 would be. But yes, EB was first and foremost an attempt to make the game more accurate by getting rid of the vanilla game's silly skins and models. Moving to an engine that doesn't have such skins and models would be far-fetched.

[The General]

If you mashed Civ and TW up, that would be the one game to rule them all(4x).

As I've said before, gief a game with a mash-up of Civ and EU diplomacy, domestic politics and trade, a mixture of strategic gameplay of Civilization and Total War with a tinge of EU, and top of that the glorious battle scenes of Total Wars - with a slower pace and more realistic feel (... yesh, like in EB, duh ;( ) and you should have a pretty good game at your hands.

As it is now, you have to choose between empire building of the Civilization series, empire management of Europa Universalis series and the oh-so-delicious battles of Total War series.

Thankfully, EB makes the battles more realistic and I love history, so it makes the otherwise rather dull R:TW playable - however, the battle AI is what it is, the diplomacy doesn't work, the AI factions cannot manage themselves and are suicidal at best, there's quite a few glitches, et cetera.

Oh well, one can always dream.

[Cyclops]

Yep EU has that brilliant and noob friendly story engine in its events.

If you could strap the excellent looking modded battles from EB onto a modded EU engine with its fabulously story machine, now that would be the one game to rule them all.

I can see the events now.

Rome:

A New Man

{only activates if the Cimbri Raids event occured}

The peril of a massive invasions prompts a thorough reform of the Roman military.

A. Hail Marius! (stab -3, land +2, quality +2, activate Marius leader, enables Demagogue! event)

B. Cautious reforms (stab -1, innovation +1)

C. Same old same old (stab +1, innovation -3)