As an amateur programmer I often find myself writing bizarre and complex programs. For a while I dreamed of writing a program (in python) that would simulate European commerce and diplomacy in the Renaissance/Baroque period. In this program, I imagined, there would be AI-driven monarchs, merchants, military commanders and colonists.
Paradox Interactive, the creators of Europa Universalis III seemed to have almost exactly the same idea in mind. I picked up Europa Universalis III because I’ve been in a strategy and administrating mood recently. Little did I know, it’s one of the deepest and most complex strategy games available.
The game is played on a global map that is divided into regions, much like the Total War games. The major difference is that in Universalis, there aren’t actually any objectives. Instead of being told to take over the world in however many years, you’re simply thrown into the game and told to go.
Things To Do
It’s difficult to enumerate all the things you can accomplish in Universalis simply because there are so many. You can, as stated in the tutorial, play the game however you want. Nevertheless, I tend to find myself gravitating toward one of the following goals:
- World domination
- Making lots and lots of money
- Colonizing absolutely everything
- Assassinating British monarchs
The game is technically real-time-strategy, though you can increase or decrease the speed of the game at whim, and you can even pause it if things get intense. With the game slowed down, you can accomplish a monstrous amount of things. You can recruit armies, send diplomats and spies, send colonists, invade other countries, and more. Each of these aspects of gameplay is affected by a pretty complex set of data.
For example, the price and time it takes to recruit an army in a given region is affected by your type of government, your current monarch, your monarch’s advisors, the buildings in that region, the amount of money you’ve invested in military technology, your country’s military history, and a whole slew of other things. Rather than force you to keep track of all these things in your head, the game provides simple-but-detailed tooltips for just about everything in the game.
One of my favorite features is that after you quit a game session (which you can, of course, save and return to later), you are given a brief history of what happened in your country. You get cool readouts like:
“In 1587, King Juan VI’s army performed valiantly in the War of Genoese Succession.”
Universalis isn’t all perfect, though. It’s desperately in need of a graphics update. Its graphics are about on par with Civilization III, even though Europa Universalis was released 6 years after. Also, the battles are resolved automatically by random dice rolls; you don’t get to actively participate as you do in Total War. This is probably a very deliberate choice by the developer so that players focus more on the big picture. Nevertheless, it can be pretty fun to orchestrate a heroic victory in battle.
Minor flaws aside, Europa Universalis III is a fun and incredibly engaging (dare I say addictive?) game. It has two expansion packs which I’ve never played, but I would certainly like to.
