Need some help/tips.

[Sir Og]

I asked LOTM because he seems to like the current model and is finding it historically accurate. I pointed in my previous post why I don't like the model (I am going to have to work with it however)

[Dinner]

It's not just Christians but any of the old world religions that can avoid the turbo annex. Pagans are alone in that dubious honor. As time goes on pagans tend to convert to other religions so it is best to hurry up if your goal is to conquor an empire. The African pagans get random events which allow them to convert to Islam while any pagan can be forced to convert as part of a war treaty. That is a stupid thing to do though because if you convert a pagan provence then they take on your state culture and religion.

That makes conquoring pagans so worth while.

[Micha]

Originally posted by Oerdin


They get an option when they capture Constantinople. Either they keep it in Adrianopol and get nothing or they move it to Constantinople and get two provences changed to Turkish culture four provences converted to Islam and a follow up event which opens a COT in Constantinople.

That´s wrong. In the standard game the capital of the OE is at Bursa, not Adrianople. Bursa in located in western anatolia, on the other side of the dardanelles.

I don´t want to argue about the historical correctness, but in the vanilla EU2 it is that way and we all like to know why it´s located in Macedonia in this game... The reason why Paradox didn´t put the cap in Mac is for gameplay. With Bursa as throne city, the OE might lose its European holdings and still become a great power in Asia. With Mac, they need to be stripped of their heartlands to lose Europe...

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Sir Og
I asked LOTM because he seems to like the current model and is finding it historically accurate. I pointed in my previous post why I don't like the model (I am going to have to work with it however)

reason 1 - game balance - this is supposed to be a game about europe conquering the world, not european nations devouring each other and becoming blobs. (note the name) the rule pushes you in that direction
reason 2 - accuracy, in the macro sense. In this period european nations destroyed entire pagan states. destroying a european state of any size was less common, and usually happened in stages (see Poland)
3. accuracy in the micro sense - look at what hapened to the Aztec state. despite its relative sophistication, it just collapsed. The incas resisted a bit longer, but essentially were swallowed whole. empires that lacked literacy (as the new world peoples other than the Aztecs or Mayas did) or that had religions easily manipulated by outsiders, were simply not all that resilienent.


problems with the Paradox solution -
1. this should be expressed in gameplay, not in an arbitrary rule. For ex make nationalism and BB points so much higher if i force annex an non-pagan multi prov state - so I can try it, and take the consequences.
2. should old world pagans be treated like new world pagans for these purposes?

[Sir Og]

As you pointed out Paradox should study the factors that lead to history unfolding the way it did and then implement them in the game engine/model.
The main idea in these games IMO is to be able to take one country and try do change history, not try to repeat it exactly the way it was. That is why I don't like very much the way EU forces historical realism. It is a good game but just not my cup of tea
I have abandoned my Bulgaria game and am now eagerly awaiting civ4 .
BTW i greatly oppose unique units and civ traits for the very same reasons that I don't like rule about millitery annexation of non pagan countries in EU.

[Dinner]

The reason you have a hard time is because you were playing Bulgaria.

Try one of the larger powers and see if it doesn't go better.

[Sir Og]

I was not doing that bad. I had almost conquered all orthodox provincess in the Balkans and Asia Minor. I had a relatively good economy and I could support a big army. I did this with cheating (loading saved games when things did not go the why I have planned ) but it is justified because I was still learning the game
My research was awfull though. The knights had land tech 11 while I was researching land tech 4 and they only had Rhodes while I had more than 10 provinces.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Sir Og
As you pointed out Paradox should study the factors that lead to history unfolding the way it did and then implement them in the game engine/model.
The main idea in these games IMO is to be able to take one country and try do change history, not try to repeat it exactly the way it was. That is why I don't like very much the way EU forces historical realism. It is a good game but just not my cup of tea
I have abandoned my Bulgaria game and am now eagerly awaiting civ4 .
BTW i greatly oppose unique units and civ traits for the very same reasons that I don't like rule about millitery annexation of non pagan countries in EU.

I agree about the ideal open alt history approach (and i was vociferous against UU and traits in Civ 3, way back before it was out). But there are realistic limits to what the programmers can actually incorporate - as it is EU is a huge complex game, and this was an easy way out. PErhaps they will change it in EU3, but i cant complain - EU2 is still very openended and often produces very interesting alt historical results.

I would also add that due to its shorter teime period, it makes sense for EU2 to be much less openended than Civ. Given a 1419 start, somethings just weerent possible, and some things were likely.

Take the Reformation. Ideally that would be part of a relgiion model - but EU2 represents religion fairly abstraccly - we know what the religion of the majority in a province is - we dont know how many catholics, are say, sceptical of the efficacy of sacraments given by a sinful priest, or how many priests are corrupt, etc, etc. And to add that would be a MASSIVE increase in code, and in complexity. It much easier to simply have the reformation fire automatically.

There are always tradeoffs.

[Capt Dizle]

Originally posted by Sir Og
I was not doing that bad. I had almost conquered all orthodox provincess in the Balkans and Asia Minor. I had a relatively good economy and I could support a big army. I did this with cheating (loading saved games when things did not go the why I have planned ) but it is justified because I was still learning the game
My research was awfull though. The knights had land tech 11 while I was researching land tech 4 and they only had Rhodes while I had more than 10 provinces.

Your tech cost goes up the more provinces you have, and in terms of effect, the smaller you are the faster you can tech. This is unlike CIV of course, but I think it is more realistic. Keep in mind that this concept is outrun by truely wealthy large empires.

[Sir Og]

This doesn't make much sense. Why would a smaller nation advance faster than a large one. There a fewer people and less resources it just doesn't make sense. Maybe they are doing it for game balance but it still does not make much sense IMO.

[Nikolai]

It's historical actually. Big empires stagnates after a while. But as said, if you are big and wealthy enough, this is no problem. BTW, do keep in mind that what affects research is wealth of your provinces, the number of them(wealth together with number that is, so that many poor provinces is no good, but many wealthy is), what culture they are(homogenolus is better), what religion they are(again, homogenous is best), stability, domestic slider settings(very important), how advanced you are compared to the historic time of the advancement(so that if you are researching a 1700s tech in the latre 1500s the tech will be very expensive), your tech group(latin, orthodox, muslim, exotic. All except latin has penalites. This is because historically speaking the West became to dominate). And probably a lot more things I've forgotten.

[binTravkin]

EU2 Wiki - find much info there while Paradox is down.

This doesn't make much sense. Why would a smaller nation advance faster than a large one. There a fewer people and less resources it just doesn't make sense. Maybe they are doing it for game balance but it still does not make much sense IMO.

There are 2 types of research:
1.The directed centralised research (or the modern one) - most of the advances are made in big laboratories which have huge resources. NASA is a good example in the field of spacecraft and some other fields related to it.

2.The random decentralised research (or the historical one) - an invention pops up time by time by someone and then slowly spreads to other areas (if it's not killed by religion or lack of usage or any other historically abundand factor)

These are two extremes.
First is presented in Hearts of Iron series (of the same Paradox entertainment).
Second is presented in Crusader Knights (of the same Paradox entertainment).

EU2 and another Paradox game - Victoria uses a little different scheme.

EU2 research is an amalgam of the 2.kind of research and concept of capital investment.
That means if you're researching 'infrastructure' in EU2 you're building roads, industries and other things to encourage production. This further results in more new inventions related to infrastructure, which further help to improve the situation.

Victoria's research is pretty much the same except it has bigger 'centralisation', it's closer to modern research (1. type), thus if you're large wealthy country you'll have equal better success than small wealthy in Victoria.
(it's reversed in EU2 - if you're equally wealthy per province but bigger you will have slower research unless you come to a province threshold where more provinces give you better research - research costs raise slower than the income.)

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Sir Og
My research was awfull though. The knights had land tech 11 while I was researching land tech 4 and they only had Rhodes while I had more than 10 provinces.

The Knights are in the Latin tech group so they will almost always be ahead of an Orthodoxed country (while the Orthodoxed will be ahead of the muslims).

If you are learning the game then try playing Austria since you'll do better and have interesting historical events.

[binTravkin]

Actually in early game the Knights are the leaders in the military tech research, followed by Milano later and at last France which takes over in Renaissance techs.