Recently i've tried playing EU 3 for the first time. I finished two games - one for Muscovy->Russia and the other for Brandenburg->Germany. I wanted to share some thoughts about this game. On one hand, it's a pretty decent game and i certainly had fun playing it, but on the other, some aspects of gameplay are so annoying that i don't really want to start any more campaigns.Rebellions. At times EU3 feels like a rebellion suppression simulator. You get rebellions in provinces you recently occupied. Rebellions in provinces with different religions. Rebellions when you have a bit of war exhaustion. Rebellions when you have low stability. Rebellions in occupied territories of your enemies. You'll get rebellion events when moving govt sliders and you'll have random rebellion events. And all of these things are pretty fair, right? People would rebel in these conditions. The problem is there's just SO MANY of rebellions that it quickly becomes a chore not even to suppress them, because you can set your armies to auto-supression, but to even close pop ups with battle results and notifications about the 7th rebellion of Polish Nationalists over the course of 2 previous years. And there are no ways to at least temporarily prevent rebellions from happening. It's just too much.Vassals. The vassalisation system is bad. First of all, you can't vassalise anything bigger than a 1-3 province minor. It's ridiculous when i, the richest and the most powerful country in the world with 50+ provinces can't vassalise 4 province Bohemia because it takes 125 percent of war score. And even if you somehow get a certain country to be your vassal, it's a chore trying to annex them, because to annex your vassal you have to get your relations with them to 190, get a royal marriage, wait for 10 years and then ASK them to be annexed. (cont)
Most of the time they refuse and your relations decrease, so you have to spend half a year and a lot of money to get them to like you again, and then you ASK again. It's incredibly annoying when one province Hannover refuses to be annexed by Germany for the 5th time. Honestly, at certain point i got tired of it and would just reload the same save file until they accept annexation.Diplomacy. Diplomacy in this game is awful. It's impossible to stay allied to any major country for more than a couple years, because even if you don't miss a call to arms notification they inevitably break the alliance anyway. Also good luck convincing them to join your wars. The entire diplomacy system is based on money. Even if your relations with a particular country are -200 you just have to spend a year pumping them with money, and you can easily get them to +200. There's a trust system, but it doesn't do anything. AI is suicidal and would declare war on you for no reason, when i was playing Germany Bohemia would constantly attack me, even though i didn't have any of their cores and was much more powerful than them. And you can't even do anything at the end of "6th Bohemian war of aggression" to prevent them from attacking you again when the truce expires - you can't vassalise them, i didn't want to annex Bohemia, and there's no way to cripple your enemy in the peace deal because the peace deal system is very awkward and allows you to do very few things besides blobbing. You can't even ask for war reparations.I could also talk about the insane HRE modifies which practically completely prevent you from expanding inside the empire until you dismantle it, but it's probably fair (although the "unlawful imperial territory" modifier is too powerful).All in all, EU 3 is not a bad game and i enjoyed my two games, but i probably won't play it anymore because of how few options to have fun besides blobbing you have and how annoying some parts of gameplay are. What do you guys think?
>>1759730>The entire diplomacy system is based on moneyIs that a real world reference?
>>1759729Your infamy impacts annexation acceptance too. If you wait until it drops down very low then they'll almost definitely accept.>>1759730>i didn't want to annex BohemiaBecause you're a faggot?Anyway, I do agree that the game itself is pretty clunky, and I remember that the last time I myself played it I did a Brandenburg->Germany like you, with Death&Taxes if I remember right. After blobbing like a retard and building as many buildings as I could I started to get bored since there was nothing else left to do, and quit when Korea attacked me for no reason and called its best friend China into the war. Maybe try playing with mods next time? Personally I feel that Eu3(and at this point any GSG) is more of a game that should be played to scratch a specific itch every once in a while, not to sit down and play everyday for 10 hours a day and months straight.
I played eu3 back when it was new and I barely remember anything about it besides the random time based coring and merchant spam and magistrates being fucking annoying. I have the music stuck in my head now. Imo, a modded 2 (AGCEEP) or early EU4 (first few years) were better than 3. I had fun with it at the time but I would never go back and replay it.
>>1759729That's beyond border gore, it's border snuff.
>>1759788Half a century before Castile owned half of Sweden and England had provinces in North-Western Germany before i kicked them out, you can see the remains of their continental possessions in the Netherlands. Yeah, bordergore is also a common problem in EU3.>>1759748>Your infamy impacts annexation acceptance too. I know, but even with 0 infamy i had "unlikely" chances to annex a one province minor as OP pic Germany and had to reload the game 4 times.
>>1759729yeah there's a reason nobody plays eu3
>>1759788>That's beyond border gore, it's border snuff.Isn’t Austria or Bohemia supposed to be snaking across Ukra*ne? That’s how I recall eu3
>>1759729>>1759730Like most Paradox titles EU3 is a game that feels frustrating to play if you don't understand the game mechanics and pretty easy once you do and know how to exploit them or to play around them.>rebellionsUnless you have negative stability or high war exhaustion you shouldn't have problems with rebellions. Try to always be at +3 stability and keep your WE low while fighting wars and you shouldn't face revolts that you can't handle, unless you conquered or inherited huge swathes of uncored land that have the nationalism penalty.>vassalisation You can vassalize 5+ province nations if you just occupy them for a while. After 5(?) years of occupation the value of provinces start to drop and IIRC it takes 10 years of no action in a war before a white peace in enforced so you have a few years to just let the vassalization cost tick down, alternatively you can leave one province unoccupied so they produce some troops every now and then to keep the war 'hot' so it won't default to a white peace after a while. Pretty useful for vassalizing semi-large nations like Switzerland early on. If you want to diplo-annex them then you only need to do two things: keep your infamy low and increase your diplo stat, which you can do by expanding your sphere of influence. It's really cheap early on and if you fight a lot of wars you should be swimming in prestige anyway so there's no reason not to have 10-20 countries in your sphere, which should make diplo-vassalizations and diplo-annexations a piece of cake.>HRE modifiersYou're not supposed to take uncored land inside the HRE, you expand through personal unions (if both states are part of the HRE then you'll core their territory even if you're not part of the same cultural group which is neat) if you don't intend to form the HRE tag itself.Overall EU3 is an old game with some dated mechanics but much like a game like Oblivion it's alright if you know how to play around them.
>>1761887Very useful tips, thanks anon
>>1759799but it looks comfy. I never got around to trying it but this thread made me thuink otherwise
>>1764194If you do end up trying it, download CanOmer's Mapmod. It doesn't make any gameplay changes but it significantly improves how the game looks. 1453 start is more balanced than the 1399 start.
>>1759729>because to annex your vassal you have to get your relations with them to 190, get a royal marriage, wait for 10 years and then ASK them to be annexed.yeah totally unlike uhh eu4
Europa Universalis 2 is better
I prefer EU3 over EU4 personally. I like that there's no mana. It's stupid that I can save up mana and dump it all when needed in EU4. Nations have inertia. If anything, not being active militarily, i.e. saving up military mana, should make me less prepared for war, not more. And I like how many events have some randomness to them. In EU4, it makes no sense that I can know exactly what day some province in bumfuck Albania will finish being converted or whatever. These things should be somewhat unpredictable.
Vassals need to be nerfed, I tried EU3+ and it was pretty refreshing not to be able to mindlessly turn all of the diplo map green after a few wars. They even rebel against you unlike vanilla vassals.
