Of them all, I enjoyed playing Hearts of Iron II the most.
For folks wanting a Victoria stream from Tom, show up to his stream next Monday and request it for request Wednesday.
Yikes, I can’t imagine being thrown back into Victoria 2. It’s been a long time since I’ve known what I was doing in a game of Victoria 2!
That said, everything is fair game for Request Wednesdays!
-Tom
Reported for spam.
I was looking forward to request it, as I’d love to be able to finally enjoy that game thanks to some high-quality explaining. Reading it won’t happen is heartbreaking!
Oh, I’m not saying I won’t stream Victoria 2! Request Wednesday is between you guys and the random number gods. I’m just along for the ride!
-Tom
Speaking of EU IV, the latest 3MA podcast is about the state of the game.
The days of the Winters of Wargaming seems long gone.
Conception II is better than it seems to be. Just saying.
Thanks, I just spit my coffee out onto my monitor and keyboard. :)
Well, in Conception II, doing so might end up giving you a few new Star Children! Don’t ask. ;)
I love Starchild!
What’s the best way to learn EU4? I’m going to cave and purchase, but I really don’t want to get bogged down in not knowing what I’m doing or what’s going on and end up never really being able to get into it.
Pick a small nation with a clear, narrow historical path (I always used to say Portugal specialising in colonisation and sea trade, but it may not be the best these days). Follow that path, taking the missions that will lead you to your long term goal. Don’t worry much about the systems that aren’t relevant to your goal (eg with Portugal, you can just ally up with Spain and basically ignore land combat and trade, and the HRE, altogether). You can learn about them on your next playthrough.
Portugal is a great way to get your feet wet, but it tends to be a very mellow game (which is why it’s a good starter). Ally Castile and focus on colonization and trade.
If you want to get more into the war and conquest portions of the game, select the Ottomans. Grab the mission to capture Constantinople and go from there.
Most importantly, don’t be afraid to screw up. Save scum if you feel the need to, the game autosaves every year and keeps the last three years, so there’s plenty of opportunity to rewind and take a different tack.
If you are looking for Let’s Plays or anything like that, they are out there but I don’t watch them myself so I don’t know who to go watch.
EDIT: Also, as a real time grand strategy game, don’t be weirded out if “nothing is happening”. When I first got into EU3, it took my brain a while to get around the 4X TBS training. I kept feeling like I was missing something and there was something I needed to be doing, but if you’re in a waiting period that’s when you turn up the game speed. It will auto-pause whenever an event fires.
I learned by going through this Tutorial Series by quill18:
I think it was actually recommended by someone on Qt3. If you really want to go all out, you could watch this series:
I’ve been slowly going through this (watched the first 14) and it’s definitely got details that Quill passes over, but at 136 videos it’s a bit long! It’s essentially Arumba playing EU4 with a friend that doesn’t know how to play and Arumba explaining the mechanics as they play.
I wouldnt do those, I would do …Sweden, the best starter country, you have no big bad neighbour, you got cool stuff coming your way, and you can invade Norway and make them your bitches quick.
They are the best starter country, Portugal and Spain deal with plenty of distant wars, colonizing and other stuff, with Sweden you can go trade or war all the way and have some simple fun.
Also, you get a coherent block of land to deal with.
I wanted to try Sweden as a learning game but I was put off by the whole Kalmar Union business - I felt like I would have to get up to speed on some complex diplomatic stuff but I wanted to get a feel for the game in terms of econ and geopolitics first.
I ended up doing (badly) as Scotland but at least that was educational. I’m now trying France but man, France has so many potential enemies. I’m doing OK but I feel… paranoid.
I think you misspelled “victims” here.
France is a big dog but they’re also surrounded by some very dangerous enemies. As powerful as they are, it’s easy for things to go off the rails for them in the beginning!
Just don’t do Kalmar Union, it requires some very specific things to happen anyway.