{"id":550,"date":"2007-01-30T15:59:47","date_gmt":"2007-01-30T19:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2007\/01\/30\/review-puzzlement-of-the-day\/"},"modified":"2008-05-06T12:56:45","modified_gmt":"2008-05-06T16:56:45","slug":"review-puzzlement-of-the-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2007\/01\/30\/review-puzzlement-of-the-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Review Puzzlement of the Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Ian Morris’s review of Europa Universalis III<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n

\nFor the sake of this example, let’s presume we’re playing as sleepy old England. To invade another country, you must first declare war on it, which is done by clicking a button. After doing that, you must then find a way of amassing an army and getting your soldiers onto enemy soil. As each of your provinces can only build one unit at a time, and building a unit takes at least 70 days, you could be in for an incredibly long wait before you get a chance to invade.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, you could build the army first, you know. And there is a speed button.<\/p>\n

He concludes with:<\/p>\n

\nIt’s just, without anything there to hold your hand through the first few years, a game with this much depth will be completely inaccessible to the average gamer, and because of this it’s hard to recommend.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, but did you like it, Mr. Morris? Apparently not (5\/10), but I wonder how much work you put into it if you complain there is nothing to do and only talk about making war. Colonization? Conversion? Sure, it’s not for everyone, but you were playing England, man.<\/p>\n

Part of the problem with the review, I think, is that it buys into the idea of EU as an RTS series, and then applies RTS logic to the game (“You can’t arrange your squads, and you have no command over the battle at all<\/em>.”) EU3 is not an RTS, except insofar as it happens in pausable realtime. This is why genre definitions need to be bigger than “turn based”\/”not turn based”.<\/p>\n

None of this means that his opinion is useless. It is useful to be reminded of the uphill climb in most Paradox games, and games should be penalized for being tough to figure out. EU3 is the most transparent Paradox grand strategy game yet but I can see how some people wouldn’t get it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Ian Morris’s review of Europa Universalis III: For the sake of this example, let’s presume we’re playing as sleepy old England. To invade another country, you must first declare war on it, which is done by clicking a button. After doing that, you must then find a way of amassing an army and getting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"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":[11,27],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5GFeQ-8S","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550"}],"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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}