{"id":313,"date":"2006-02-16T17:19:00","date_gmt":"2006-02-16T21:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/?p=313"},"modified":"2006-08-18T16:06:40","modified_gmt":"2006-08-18T20:06:40","slug":"europa-universalis-iii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2006\/02\/16\/europa-universalis-iii\/","title":{"rendered":"Europa Universalis III"},"content":{"rendered":"

I know that the dismal Diplomacy means that I shouldn’t get too excited about Europa Universalis III<\/a>. The fact that they plan to use some of the stuff from the ambitious kluge Victoria should give me even more pause.<\/p>\n

Add that they are cutting the number of years by at least thirty – now starting in 1453 instead of 1419 – and all of us who like to have more, more, more should go over to the Paradox forums and rant for a while.<\/p>\n

And many will.<\/p>\n

Not me though. This is great news. Europa Universalis II is as close as you can get to a perfect strategy game not designed by Sid Meier or one of his disciples. It has a lot going on at any one time, but it only takes a little practice to realize that not everything needs to be done immediately. Fighting, diplomacy, exploration…it’s got the works.<\/p>\n

So a sequel is always welcome news. EU is Paradox’s marquee title, the one that made their name synonymous with deep historical strategy game. I can’t resist the urge to buy another one.<\/p>\n

The decision to start the game after the fall of Constantinople is a sensible one. Though I love the Grand Campaign of EU2, the weak starting positions of France, the Ottomans and the future Mughal Empire (the Timurids) meant that much of the world we know never took shape. 1453 gives people a familiar starting point without plopping you immediately in the rush for colonies that a 1492 start would (at least from a European perspective).<\/p>\n

No release date yet, though serious beta testing begins this summer, and there is nothing but concept art<\/a> to work from so far.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I know that the dismal Diplomacy means that I shouldn’t get too excited about Europa Universalis III. The fact that they plan to use some of the stuff from the ambitious kluge Victoria should give me even more pause. Add that they are cutting the number of years by at least thirty – now starting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5GFeQ-53","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}