Holy crap this is good.

Let’s preface this by saying that I enjoy Europa Universalis 3. It wasn’t as fresh as EU2 or as captivating as Crusader Kings. But it was an attractive, stable and often enjoyable coast through history. My big problems were connected to how colorless it was. Every major nation was subtly encouraged to follow the same strategy time in and time out, so England and Austria and Aragon were more names on the map than anything else.

And, to be honest, there is still a lot of that in In Nomine, the newest expansion. Though some of the missions and decisions are particular to a single nation (only Castile can “form Spain”, only Portugal gets “discover the Azores”, etc.) more of them are generic “royal marriage with X” or “conquer Y.”

But because these generic missions are random with a nice little reward (if your mission is to conquer a province, it will become a core province, for example) there is a built in pressure to complete them, steering your nation in a direction it might not have gone if you had faced other missions.

Because the game is about choice, you can ignore the missions if you like. They add color and direction to what was otherwise an aimless sandbox, a race to global domination that pushed you in the same direction. They serve the role of the Senate and Papal missions in the recent Total War games, asking you to make nice or make war with your neighbors offering you a cookie for your troubles.

The changes to the missionary and colonial systems are brilliant. Religious conversion, for example, is now a matter of placing a missionary and waiting. The priest sucks up a little bit of cash and dramatically increases the revolt risk while he’s at work, and you could wait decades for anything to come of it. But it’s a damned sight better than the micromanaging of spending hundreds of ducats on a missionary who has a 25 per cent chance of success and then fighting the rebels that spawn when he fails. And doing that again and again. It also means that you don’t have to stay near the narrowminded end of the spectrum all the time just to make sure you have enough missionaries to convert a small heathen empire.

The rebellion system is great. You can see it in action around the world as rebels force overlords to recognize their independence or the tribal states of Central Asia fall apart in pretender wars. They are more of a threat now, even to the human player, meaning that you can’t just dial down the maintenance for your army if there is a chance of the Welsh proving to be a nuisance.

There are some problems. I don’t think it was a good idea to remove the stability hit for declaring war on a different religious group (Christian, Muslim, Eastern, Pagan). Though this makes sense historically, it also gives a great territorial bonus to anyone lucky enough to live on the edge of Christendom or the Ummah. And few of the new advisors really bring anything to the table; if I don’t have many loans, why would I bother with somebody who can reduce my interest payments? The tribal states fall apart a bit too quickly and easily, I think. Though it’s nice to see the Golden Horde struggle for once, the constant succession crises these nations face throws them onto the “why bother playing these guys?” heap with the Creek and Huron.

Still, this is a major, major improvement in the game. Considering how unimpressed I am with Rome, kudos to Paradox for bringing me back and getting me hooked again. And just when I had a lot of work to do.