"but there's no choosing in the each branch (that's what Vicky has, though)."

Lol thanks guys! Although the above quote lost me, sounds very much like jargon - although I presume Vicky is Queen Victoria.

I am only mildly/moderately involved in the game, but this is what I have to say.

It starts off as a 100% historically accurate world gamemap, with thousands of territories and a few hundred nations (most in Europe). From there on it deviates from history. There are several different dimensions of this game - Religious, Diplomatic, Technological, Colonial, Economic, and Military.

You have 6 types of characters to do "work" Diplomats, Merchants, Colonists, Magistrates, Priests and Spies. Diplomats start/end wars, negotiate for loans, gifts, embargoes, royal marriages, etc. Merchants go to a center of trade and compete for a share of the market. Colonists can establish a colony on unsettled land (I usually kill the natives there first, else they can destroy your colony). Magistrates are used to build improvements in provinces, (there are 6 categories corresponding to tech categories). Priests are used to try and convert a territory or win favor with the Pope. Spies can be used to support revolts, assassinate advisors, etc.

You can use your money from taxes (after paying interest on loans, upkeep for military, colonists, and priests) to invest in a few tech areas: Government, Production, Trade, Army, Navy, Stability, or you can just put it back into your treasury (at the cost of high inflation).

Attacking nations and taking territories earns you infamy and too much can lead to other nations attacking you. Stability and legitimacy are important too, as mismanagement of this increases revolt risk and lowers the taxes you collect.

And that's just a taste. So much more. You can micromanage the hell out of the game if you wish.

Vicky is what nerds call Victoria, another game made by Paradox. Named after Queen Victoria of course. It takes place from the beginning of the industrial revolution up to the first world war and its aftermath.

Vicky is Victoria, which continues from where EUIII leaves off in 1820.

Victoria 2 really isn't that good, but it's still fun and I love making every nation I play social democratic. Including when I played Afghanistan. Gigantic Sino-Central Asian blob pumping out cars and social reforms. Screw historical correctness.

And battles depend a lot on luck, geographic terrain, tech levels, and how good a general you buy (based on army tradition you build up). A great army that has the bad luck of crossing a river can be screwed. Or a massive army with no general can easily be destroyed by a lesser army with one.

Oh man, nerds, that hurts! I would preffer "those acquainted with Paradox Interactive" :) The company itself isn't so small anymore though. Currently, it has 17 games out that are still supported by the developers with patches, feedback etc. and nowadays, a big portion of its games are not made in-house but by contracted indie developers. The core series Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, Victoria and Hearts of Iron are still made by Paradox itself but the rest is mostly not. Which is also great, because it doesn't mean Paradox outsources the work, just that they help the indie devs with publishing and stuff or they lend them rights to use some of their engines.

As you can see, I use Vicky all the time too. I don't mean anything bad by nerd. I'm one of them.

Compared to most game companies, they're still rather small, but of course I'm glad to see them growing. And yes, it's great how they help indie developers. It was really fun when they had a forum competition for the best "Remake Europa Universalis II" idea, and contracted the winner who actually produced a game :)

Strange how people can be more sensitive than others when they read typed script.

I read Vaftrudner's 'nerds' and didn't think anything of it!

Also, +1 for changing the history of Afghanistan, nice idea. Very Swedish.

Sarg, every nation has the same system for technological advance (except that the military one gives different units), but the cost for every level of advance is different for different cultures. Western is the fastest culture with technology advance of 100%, eastern Europe has 90% I think, East Asians somewhere around 50%, and Native Americans/Sub-Saharan Africans 10%. This means that if it costs 2000 gold to progress one step in any tech, it costs 20000 for Native Americans. One of the most rewarding and difficult ways to play is to attempt to westernise, which are moves to emulate westerners and earn technological bonuses. It requires experience and careful planning, though, but you can do some crazy shit. One of the best moments in games ever was the first time I invaded the UK as a Hindu nation, with the biggest fleet the world has ever seen. Plus fucking elephants. ELEPHANTS.

"One of the most rewarding and difficult ways to play is to attempt to westernise, which are moves to emulate westerners"

To be honest, that sounds awful to me. Eurocentrism turns me right off.

It sounds a fun game though :)

Sure, eurocentrism sucks, but it's not a fantasy game and the Renaissance happened in Europe, and they did have the best technology in the time period. It doesn't mean that you have to adapt to their culture or their religion, you can still be a sunni arab while fully westernised. It just means stealing their technology and killing them with it.

They might have changed the term to modernisation though to clarify that it's only technological, I can't remember now.

The modification of Europa Universalis that was mentioned in the thread before, Magna Mundi, gets rid of this ridiculous culture-determined system and uses a system of modificators to handle the state of your country – foreign contact, socioeconomic structure and diversity and change. So Incas research slower but only because they are Isolated, Subsistence Farmers and Innocent Savages, not because they are Incas. You can gradually get rid of these modifiers (Spaniards came, poof you're not Isolated and Innocent Savages anymore).

Yup, just another way Magna Mundi makes a deep and thought out system where EU3 vanilla slaps on a rough generalisation for playability. It's a much better system too, that simulates the chaos in social and economic change rather well, instead of the vanilla consequences of modernisation, where you can basically go from subsistence farming to advanced pre-industrialism in 10 years.

Have you ever managed to play a successful campaign as a native American in Magna Mundi, ulytau? I think that I've collapsed every time I've tried. They come and push you right into social chaos, with cannons and a fucking plague of diseases. Redefines the word "fun".

I played successfully as Aztlan and Cuzco (so both regions represented in the game). It really is vital to convert to Christianity to get the Euros off your back (which is reasonable). You will lose any head on battles with them no matter the skills your generals have and National Ideas you take but they can be surprisingly friendly when you're Christian. Portugal is typically peaceful so an alliance with Spain is more important. It also doesn't hurt when Spain undergoes some internal turmoil, as it usually does in Magna Mundi. So the Cuzco campaign I played was very peaceful once I gobbled all the other Southern Americans and formed Incan Empire. It's good to beat Spain to Panama or Venezuela so you get an access to Atlantic, Portugal usually colonizes Brazil too early.

Aztlan has the problem that there are events simulating the conquistadors so you have to fend off the initial Spanish invasion (plus the obligatory plagues that come with the removement of the Isolated modifier). Then there's the problem with England, which usually goes Protestant and is therefore comparatively less friendly than your fellow Catholic powers. If they declare war and you're on your own, you cannot practically win other than scorching earth whenever possible and sieging quicker than them and hoping the AI won't outmaneuver you and force you into battle. Still, I managed to colonize Kamchatka via Hawaii as Aztlan so everything's possible I guess :)

To further elaborate, I immediately reneged some National Idea for Colonial Ventures in order to not be bored to death once all my neighbours were conquered and to build some nice empire (Incas have some historical colonization decisions though). You cannot compete with Euros in research even after modernising because either you don't colonize and therefore you have really high income from Gold provinces and inflation grinds your progress to a halt or you colonize and then the rule "more provinces, more expensive research" applies and you're bogged down as well.

Ah, changing ideas. I have a friend who shares my Post-Magna Mundi Stress Disorder, when we play vanilla, he changes an idea every time he gets a positive stab event. Even if he doesn't need to, or want the new idea. Just because he can. His relief is palpable, it's very therapeutic.

That's impressive though, well done. The most extreme thing I've done in MM is probably reaching North America with a couple colonies as Khmer, but I've never made it as a native American.

Yes, Reneging the Past is probably the second trademark event-pool of Magna Mundi, after the Framed!! one :)

Reaching other continent as a initially less-developed country is really a question of hiring the right advisor. Navigators are usually the unloved sore losers who always stay in the universal advisor pool so I picked 1 5-star and 2 3-star ones IIRC which greatly helped with the colonial range necessary for reaching Hawaii from California and in the ensuing island hopping (getting to Kamchatka directly from the Aleuts is a longer way than from Guam and similar islands).

A hotly debated topic among my friends, Jewish advisors - yes or no? As a rule, I always offer refuge to the Jews and try to integrate them if I can. I'm too much of a softie to kick them out for cheap stab.

Offering refuge immediately at the start is virtually a no-brainer, stability is not so vital then and if they decide to settle around, you're provinces become much better. The advisors themselves are good as well, definitely more than those other special guys, Knights of Saint John. But I would lie if I said I never kick them out as the time goes by. Especially the combo Restrict rights->Expulsion gives a neat +4 stab which is sometimes necessary to cushion the effects of the more crazy stuff players may try.

I also like the native system. It's not necessary to exterminate the natives when you colonize, unlike in vanilla as goldfinger described. Although there's the risk of them getting upset and rising up, the population bonus you get when you integrate them makes a huge difference – it's virtually impossible to build the more advanced cash cow building like staple ports without assimilating the locals.

Yes, the colonisation system overall in MM is vastly superior. Vanilla has absorbed some of those ideas though, in a watered down version, but still. In Divine Wind, keeping the natives alive does give you positive events, increasing tax base and such. It's fun to see how they learn from their community and implement things, such as the horde mechanics, clearly inspired by mods.

Okay I'm probably being incredibly stupid, but here goes. Playing as Huron again for a couple decades to get the hang of military play (since there's an immediate punching bag around). I can't go take Sault, northwest of my land, even when I move an infantry regiment there and beat up the Natives. what do?

You have to colonize Sault, Eden. Send a colonist there and then you can start building a population.

This looks like a rather interesting game, so I thought I'd download the demo and see if I wanted to pick up a copy.. Unfortunately the demo doesn't seem to work, and I have yet to find any worthwhile tech support help for the demo. Anybody have any suggestions or tips? I'm running an intel I5 with an ATI HD5650 graphics card and windows 7 home SP1 so shouldn't be any system specs issues. The error I'm encountering when I try to run the executable is "Failed to create a graphics device. Exiting." Anybody else get this or have suggestions where I should look?

I love this game. I played my first game as Venice, and it's one of the ones I enjoy the most (Republics, in the early game, are actually really quite good, despite the lack of royal marriages). I ended up controlling the entire of South America, western & central North America, the area around New York, the western coast of Africa down to the cape, southern India, Indonesia, Australia and the Pacific Islands, while only controlling the Italian peninsula in Europe, before I formed Italy.

I ended up modding my game myself to make it more challenging, mainly because I hated how far behind the Ottomans and whoever won in Russia became, plus I made The Mamluls a Despotic Monarchy rather than a tribal federation at the start, meaning Castille didn't just run away through North Africa every game

I made every nation closer to the westerns, and added a bunch of new culture groups.