Yeah, always hated that thing myself. Turned it off everytime in previous versions.
That, I would pay for. The non-deterministic weirdness? Not so much :-).
I played a game as Wallachia as a lark once. I got myself into the top 10 victory point total pretty quickly. “Keep Wallachia” missions every 5 years for 20 points a pop add up pretty quickly.
Doesn’t the Napoleon expansion for EU3 add a historical mode?
Historical monarchs and leaders but not historical events. And by using them you forgo a lot of other game stuff. Royal marriages are disabled (since they trigger a bunch of other diplomatic stuff like Personal Unions). You can’t use military tradition to buy generals (for some reason I don’t quite get) and you can’t change your government type since that is tied to the historical progress of the monarchs.
It’s a list of leaders and advisors that breaks a lot of the rest of the game and little more.
Troy
Hearts of Iron 2 is definitely one of the better grand scale type WW2 games. Research is a fun slant. For some reason the AI and scripting, even modded, is fairly weak, and I end up abandoning the game a quarter of the way through.
Europa Universalis 1 and 2 and CK were uninstalled fairly rapidly.
Something about Europa Universalis 3 has really captured my attention. It seems much more polished. The AI and events with the Magna Mundi mod are surprisingly good. I have played Venice and I am in the process of playing England.
EU3 Map Mod
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?p=7782052#post7782052
EU3 Mod List
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?p=7782052#post7782052
Magna Mundi Gold 1.792 (A good HOI2 mod is also here.)
http://www.terranova.dk/viewforum.php?f=78
In Nomine may be enough to get me to finally go back and try EU3 again … though that mod sounds pretty sweet too.
Where would one find the Swea Rike games? Were they distributed outside of Sweden?
Peter
This is a bad VM attempt right?
I am with Sarkus. I love the concept, hate the execution.
EU1 was awe inspiring in its scope, and frustrating as hell to actually play. Once you got past the considerable learning curve, you realized two things first the game was impossibly long to play with another human being, and second the AI was pathetically stupid.
The research on HOI I, was terrific. Imagine a grand strategic game, where you could reproduce the Germany deadly combination of developing extremely accurate and powerful anti tank guns (e.g. 88 MM flak) marrying them to tank chassis and producing killer anti tank guns or assualt guns. You then take these weapons and research armor doctrine, logistics, add great generals, the result is killer Panzer divisions just like real life. Unfortunately the rest of the game was unwielding bug ridden mess. (To be fair Paradox does a very good job of providing post release patches)
HO2 was a lot more playable (partly cause the research was dumbed down). The AI was improved but at the end of the day the AI still sucks, since you could win the game with virtually any country.
The great paradox (pun intended) of their games, is that the company makes innovative sim style sandbox games. But it is ultimately pointless to make a sandbox wargame, and without competent AI they just are challenging/fun.
I have to really disagree on this. The research on HOI1 was a grognard’s dream but a nightmare for actually playing a game. You literally had to research drive trains and transmission types before building a tank. It was a ridiculous level of overcomplexity. HOI2’s research model, where you just researched a level of tank technology is actually playable.
One of the Svea Rike games was distributed together with EU2, I believe. There was also a game on the same engine based on the Hundred Years War.
No need to be sorry to have missed them though, unless you feel a need for a complete collection. From the one copy I picked up used while I lived in Sweden + what reviews I’ve seen, they seem to have been essentially stripped down version of EU. And not in the particularly positive sense.
I’ve played a bit more of Hearts of Iron 2 and I’m liking it. I’m starting to see a lot of the benefits of the “realtime” per-hour processing. It can still result in nasty information-overload scenarios, where you want to key your eye on X but your attention is dragged hither and yon by all the pop-ups and notifications. Putting a great deal of effort into designing more streamlined UI for monitoring spatially-separated events would help this game tremendously.
Still, the timing element makes for some pretty dramatic plays. You can be on the edge of your seat trying to see if your armoured corp is going to make it to the coast in time to cut of the enemy’s retreat.
For instance, playing as the UK, I made a pretty risky move of trying to take Tobruk away from Italy via amphibious invasion behind the lines. It was the first amphibious invasion I’d tried, and I screwed up the timing of it. Instead of facing one division, the Royal Marines encountered another two divisions that were rushed to Tobruk while they were attacking. They managed to overcome all the defenders and make a beachhead, but their organization was almost worn out. The Italians were launching a counter-attack and I couldn’t pull the Marines out because the only available transport was locked into return-to-base orders.
My armour corps had already forced an Italian retreat in one of the adjacent provinces and now they were racing to occupy the province and open a retreat corridor for the Marines. Alas they arrived only two hours too late and all three divisions of the Royal Marines were lost.
I did get my revenge though, as within a week my forces surrounded 21 Italian divisions in Tobruk (mostly retreated from adjacent regions). This time, the Mediterranean fleet (reorganized around a core of 9 battleships) cut off their retreat by sea. I managed to capture another 5 divisions a week later. Overall, Italy has lost over 30 divisions in Africa in the summer of 1940. A few weeks later, Tripoli fell with barely a shot fired in anger.
Actually, I do need to see both games for a project I have in the works. If anyone in Scandinavia can put me on to someplace complete boxed copies are for sale, I’d be grateful!
Peter
You know there is a board game Svea Rike. Quite fun (at least for Swedes) in a “take-that” style of play.
For the PC games, maybe they sell it through Gamers Gate, or whatever the Paradox online shop is called. Otherwise, I think you’ll have to scour the bargain bins, and be pretty lucky. Its a very long time since I last saw any of those games.
Alas, no. Gamer’s Gate was my first stop. :(
Peter
An English version of Svea Rike was released by Paradox as Europa Universalis: Crown of the North.
It was pretty lousy.
Thanks, Raife. I have that one, so I just need the sequel. :D
Peter