Historical strategy

[JarlFrank]

Question: Any good historical mods for Europa Universalis 3?

 

[Araanor]

Magna Mundi Gold.

 

[dagorkan]

Can I get a third opinion on Magna Mundi?

Some people say it sucks, some say it's a must have... is it at least better than default EU3?

 

[spacemoose]

...a vast image out of "Magna Mundi"
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

 

[KazikluBey]

Victoria+Revolutions is the best of Paradox's games by far, lots and lots of depth and great music. I can't think of a better historical strategy game from any company, in fact. Just try it, and you'll see.

Agreed.

Isn't MM the EU3 mod? It was awful if you ask me. It just seemed to add a lot of random events with choices like "have a revolt with either 20, 50, or 100 regiments, because peasants grow tired of having to wear turbans.", which would happen every other month. While surely it made things more lively, it also made the game slow down to a crawl (and the fucker wasn't exactly well-made anyway, I just couldn't believe how such a shitty looking game could be so insufferably slow while any other game works just fine).

Someone might be interested in knowing that EU3's performance was greatly improved with the Napoleon's Ambition expansion.

If you try Magna Mundi looking for an AGCEEP for EU3 you will be disappointed - they have different aims. Magna Mundi contains no real-history events, instead it continues further in the EU3 direction, that is, it aims to be historically plausible rather than simulating history as it actually happened. Personally, I think it's a must have as I find plain EU3/NA a bit too bland. It changes and adds a lot of things, and simple touches like giving every nation three starting NI's and many culture spheres things like "turkish/russian/french/etc ethos" give the states some additional flavor. And while DS exaggerates the amount of such events, yes, there are more bad events without an easy way out that keeps you on your toes.

 

[mlc82]

What are the best historical strategy games out there?

A lot of appeal of strategy games to me is their historical aspects. If the game is about a specific era I have a particular interest in, I'll definitively be interested. I played a lot of Rome : Total War with the Europa Barbarorum mod, even if the game is basically tedious masturbation and you can't possibly loose at it. Since the era really interests me and it is quite well depicted I almost don't mind the gameplay at all.

Almost, because of course I'm not playing that game anymore, it's a waste of time. There's Europa Universalis : Rome which will come out and that will be awesome.

Speaking of, the Paradox games are the most deep historical games I know of, but the eras they depict don't really get to me for now. The Civ games do what they're good at but their very concept goes against historical coherency so they obviously can't fit the bill (not to say I don't enjoy them).

Anyhow, I was wondering if anyone had any input on this.

Check this out, and try EB for Rome with the included Darth Formations (NOT the 2nd edition darth!)- it makes the AI less retarded during battles, and can actually be a challenge in field battles with equal forces.

http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=90313

I could go on and on about the dumbing down of the TW games, I still play Medieval 1 to this day, and if you aren't careful, the AI can and will hand you your ass. RTW and MTW2 are near-impossible to even lose a battle in, let alone an entire campaign.

 

[mlc82]

Actually the number of mods for RTW/MTW is turning me off. I guess the current generation of TW players must be going insane trying to keep track.

After MTW2 collected dust for more than a year, I have finally dowloaded Broken Crescent. The scenario really interesting, but I haven't played so far. Maybe I am really fed up with the TW system. But like JarlFrank says, they put in a lot of detail in these mods.

Another one I am still waiting for is Ran No Jidai (which is a Sengoku Jidai mod for RTW), though I doubt I will be playing it a lot.

Anyway, any interest I had for the TW franchise seems to have died. It was unbelievable wen it was new (around 2000 when STW came out I was in heaven), and I was still enjoying RTW, but now I can't stand it any more.

An amusing twist is that while CA kept making "AI improvmements" version after version, patch after patch, in the end the AI in MTW2 is less competent than the one in STW. Strange.

Honestly, RTW and MTW2 were pure crap out of the box, and the mods are the only things that kept them from going the ebay route for me. Europa Barbarorum for Rome cannot be beaten and is my favorite mod of all time, and Deus lo Vult for M2 (I play the older version which I created a unit file ported from the RealCombat mod for- I can't play without RC since trying it) is the only reason to even consider buying the damn game. DLV has a "garrison script" that auto-drafts an army for any city you attack relative to the city's size- without this you'll be besieging capital cities left and right which the dumb AI will garrison with a single spear militia unit, while sitting a full-stack army right outside that is content to just watch as you rape and pillage with glee. That fucking game could have been a classic, but CA had to cater to the Xbox crowd instead- pretty graphics, and challenge-free gameplay. When the AI actually becomes DUMBER with each iteration, it should be obvious that there is a problem.