A New EU2 Dynasty?????

[Abe Sargent]

I've been bored lately. I finished Throne of Bhaal, installed NWN but just wasn't in the mood for more RPG'ing. FOF4 just doesn;t strike my fancy, and I have been unable to get back into CM4 since the release of EP3, which makes the game better, but still, I find CM4 a little slow at times.

I played three seasons of TCY, because I was so bored I went back to a game that was released long ago. You can see the results in the EMU thread here in the Dynasty forum.

And still I'm bored. Nothing like a good game. I have purchased, and still haven't played, GTA: Vice City, Final Fantasy X, among other games for the PS2, but I haven't been in a console mood since Monster Rancher 3.

I picked up Galactic Giv, but I haven't been able to get back into the mood since the big disappointment that was MOO3. SO I've spent about as much time played GalCiv as I did trying to figure out MOO3, which is to say, three nights.

So I'm officially bored. And when I get bored, I can't watch TV. It's just as boring, and I always feel like I'm not getting anything accomplished. I could hit my Hollywood Mogul franchise back up again. But that doesn't seem as palatable as another option.

See, when I get bored, I browse the Internet a-go-go. Last night I spent 3 and a half hours on the BBC Doctor Who website. Most of the time was spent reading about various Doctors and Companions. Did you know that the BBC is currently released a lost episode of Doctor Who written by Douglas Adams online? It's done with a cartoon and keeps most of the script intact. Spent about an hour and ahalf watching it.

And in addition to my forays into the Whovian World, I also click on every single link I have in my favorites page. I collect links like nothing else. I am a link packrat.

Anyways, I went to the Paradox Entertainment website. They are releasing Crusader Kings (YAY!!!!) soon, (hopefully), and I wanted to see if tere was an updated release. And what should I find but TWO MORE PATCHES for EU2.


And this is why I like Paradox Games. EU2 was released long ago, and they are still releasing patches. Although there were a few minor bugs left, most of the patching was done to make the game more enjoyable, add more realistic events, add leaders, clean up some exploitative gaming issues, and so forth.

In other words, they keep makign the game better after it's commercially unviable. That's very respectable.


So, with these game changes, it gets harder. I could, say, download the patches, then download the BETA patches for the next patch down the line. Maybe I could even add a few player-made patches on the side.

See, EU2 is highly customizable. Anybody can add or change the game. Add events, leaders, change values, and so forth. As such, a lot of players have worked on making the game even more engrossing and fun. I could add some of these to the latest patches.

Summation - more EU2 fun.

I think I'll do it. Now I just need to figure out what country to play.....


To read my old EU2 dynasty, click on that bad boy in my sig.


-Anxiety

[The Afoci]

Ummm, you tried masterbation? I heard it was fun.

[The Afoci]

[Airhog]

definately make it harder to play, even though you didnt take over the whole word, you still took a big chunk out of it. I would suggest playing a land locked country this time

[Abe Sargent]

The list of changes in the last two patches is massive. However, here are the major gameplay ones that will seriously impact the way that I have played EU2 in the past. I will be quoting directly from the FAQ release of the patch. Those with the symbol ***** are major, massive changes to my playstyle, and present interesting challenges:


Patch 1.06 - Released January 2003


- Starving of garrison from sieges now work as originally intended, so a fort can be starved into submission.

- Prices of Cloth, Cotton, Fur, Ivory, Chinaware, Spices & tea increased

- Prices of Sugar and Tobacco dropped.

- The manpower effects from the quantity/quality slider is now half of the previous.

***** The penalty cost of having more than maximum supported units have been tripled.

***** Default maintenance costs for troops doubled.

- +3 stability no longer gives +25 income, but just +20% income.

- Early trade income is now much lower.

***** Upgrading mayors now costs 100$ and takes 2 years. (Used to take $50 and a month!!!)

- Gold will now affect your inflation if its above 25% of your income instead of 33%.

***** War exhaustion is no longer magically cleared when at peace.

- Maintenance costs for units are no longer affected by slider positions in domestic policies.

- The peace system have been completely rewritten to allow better negotiations between alliances.

- AI is now better at avoiding bankrupcty.



1.07 Released March 2003


- Economical resources now affects how much ships you can have.

- Placing privateers now only have a 10% chance of increasing badboy, however, all nations nearby get a CB for 3 months.

- Offensive/Defensive slider now affects prices of fortresses.

***** There is now a -1 penalty to dierolls when attacking across rivers or when landing from ships.

***** Each trade agreement you have now reduces trade efficiency with 1%.

***** Only naval nations get random explorers now.

- Large fortresses now need a much larger revoltrisk to be automatically lost to rebels.

- You can no longer have fortresses bigger than the base income tax of the province. ie, one with base 3, hold a maximum of level 3 fortress.

***** Badboy recovery speed have been changed completely, and is changed gradually each month. There is no difficulty modifier to it in MP. The Diplomatic ability of the ruling monarch affects how quickly badboy is recovered.

- Annexing Pagans as a non-pagan no longer increases the badboy.

***** Badboy now effects on stability costs, with a scaled effect, and most severe when above the badboy-limit. The effect is capped at 100% though.

***** High badboy values makes it more difficult placing merchants in foreign Center of Trades.

***** - Colonial success have now been rebalanced, conquistador bonuses are bigger, early timeperiod gives a penalty, the first attempts gives penalties, the production efficiencies gives bonuses and the number of current colonies gives a penalty. Basically, the ADM value of the monarch affects how many colonies can be maintained at the same time below colonial city status. This is only valid for colonies not attached to the mainland of the nation.


- The MIL value of a monarch now affects the morale of troops in combat, ranging from +0.25 with a 9 MIL monarch to -0.125 with a 3 MIL monarch.

- You no longer lose stability from cancelling a trade agreement.

- Blockading a port under siege now increases the supply limit severly for the siegers, as they gain extra supplies.

***** Establishing a trading post in a province where the natives have been killed off is now much harder.

- You can no longer gain a complete victory against a nation which controls any cities.

***** War exhaustion will slightly decrease even when at war, if there is no military action going on in the wars a nation is participating in.

***** You can no longer place colonies or tradingposts in provinces which you can not trace a discovered and unblocked path too.

***** Sharing maps will never reveal uncolonised provinces.

- Improved AI for inflation management.

- Improved AI for tech research.

- The AI may now default on loans.

- Improved the AI for accepting loans.

- Improved the AI for refusing trade.

- Improved colonial and exploration AI a little bit.

- AI will now take war exhaustion into account a bit more before declaring war or honoring an alliance.



There are some major changes there. Previously, BB points meant that other countires felt more inclined to dislike you, break treaties, etc. until you achieved a certain threshold at which time Every country that has land on your continent declares war against you. Not a good thing. Now, in addtion to all of that, BB will get you harder stability costs and harder merchant establishment. That makes it harder to expand via war.

And colonization is also harder. First of all, you have lost the ability to become close friends with the native countries and then trade maps, getting access to uncolonized areas and settling them. Now, that no longer happens. Seconldy, iuf you acquire maps by, say, sacking a nation's capital, then you have to also have discovered a route to get there or else it does you no good. And the chanes for colonization early, before the major European powers are funlly into their colonization eras is now harder. Plus, if you exterminate locals, its much harder to set up a Trading post and claim the land.

If you are playing a small nation, then the only way you can get an Explorer, who can discover sea unknown sea lanes, is through a random event. And now, you only get those random evetns if you are Naval in your policy sliders. That hurts your army significantly.

In the military, the default costs of units is doubled. Maintainance cost penalties are trebled if you go over your manpower maximum, which is always insufficient. And you can't make the units cheaper by using your Domestic Policy Sliders. So, you have more expensive uints, with a higher upkeep, guaranteed.

The cumulative effect of these changes is that expansion, either by war or colonization, should be much harder than previously. and defense will be harder as well.



-Anxiety

[sachmo71]

How about Austria? That country has always interested me in EUII.

[Abe Sargent]

Here are the notable changes in the Beta patch. I'll have to decide if I want to use it or not.


- You now only gain census tax from provinces with a tax-collector.

***** Census taxes revised. A core province gives 25% base, while a non-core gives 0% base. Then a tax collector adds 75% and each step of centralisation gives 2.5%. This is all capped at 100%.

- Alliance leaders will now become leaders of the war, whenever they honor an alliance call.

- Orthodox techgroup is now at 90% of latin instead of 80% as previous.

***** Tax collectors and Legal Counsels are now removed from a province when it is conquered.

***** Inflation effect from mayors have been changed completely to not make them a super-weapon for only gigantic powers. Now the ratio of mayors versus cities affect a yearly deflation, which is 0.25% when all cities have mayors.

- The AI is now aware of the importance of certain buildings.

- Improved the peace negotiation AI.

- Improved AI for building tax-collectors.

- Pirate ships should no longer succumb to attrition within a few months, as they raid the countryside for food and repairs.

- AI will now always try to colonise provinces it already has if nothing else is available.

***** Revoltrisk is now on a yearly basis instead of a monthly basis.

***** Revoltrisk now modifies provincial taxes and production instead. Each RR gives a -5% penalty.

- Recruiting troops now increases your war exhaustion, where recruiting your entire yearly manpower increases it by 1.

- War exhaustion is now calculated as a malus on stability investment as originally designed

- Raising wartaxes no longer decrease stability by 1.

- You will no longer get the truce-breaking penalty for answering a defensive alliance call during the first two months of the war.

- Increased the chinese and moslem tech groups quality now. Moslem is now what orthodox used to be a few weeks ago, and chinese is now at the previous moslem level.

- Loans no longer increase inflation.

- There is now a penalty when painting the map with level 1 tradingposts. You must now develop your tradingposts to be able to have large amounts of them.

- Culture in conquered colonies will now change to an accepted one after the nationalism has faded.


***** Colonies now require at least 1000 population before they are considered colonial cities.

- There is no longer any possibility of stealing maps from pagan nation

- Annexing pagans will no longer give you maps.

- Yearly merchants, shipyards, number of ports and naval manufactories now affect naval support limit quite a bit more.




Hmmm... Sounds even more difficult. I like it!



-Anxiety

[Abe Sargent]

Originally posted by sachmo71
How about Austria? That country has always interested me in EUII.

Austria is way too easy. Latin Tech group + massive number of events = pretty easy go of it.



Airhog: Yeah, we'll try to make it much harder. Plus, I haven't even loaded the game for a half a year. So, that's important too.


-Anxiety

[Abe Sargent]

Alright, so, now that I have the two latest patches plus the Beta patch, what next?

I could play it straight up, but why? Why not add some more? I want a brand new experience.

There are several viable routes to take here.

We could start with the EEP. The Event Exchange Project is headed up by several players of the game. They take submissions from people for events to include in the game. The total work is then published as the EEP. EEP 1.4 is available for d/l.


It includes a major shake-up of the Africa breakdown, hundreds more events, changes in what provinces are and are not ports (just because a province is beside water does not indicate that it is a port in EU2).

The people on the forum claim that EEP 1.4 does work with the Beta patch as well. Excellent.

The other option is the Alternate Grand Campaign (AGC). various people have reported different positives and negatives to the AGC and 1.07 or the Beta patches. The AGC and EEP are not compatible with each other, at least, not without going through your events, leader, and other files and changing things around. As such, I have an interesting choice. The AGC is more of a fantasy option than an list of events. It includes some pretty nifty choices, however.

I do, however, quickly d/l the GUFSM mod - a 24 bit accounting off all the flags in the game. It's also a more realistic rendition of the flags in the game as well. Most of the muslim nations in the normal game, for example, are symbolized on the map by the Islam symbol on a different colored field.

So, I now have the GUFSM mod. One down.


After reading about them both, I decide upon the EEP. It seems to have less issues with the patches and appears to be a more polished mod.

Two mods down.

Let's see if it works.....


-Anxiety

[Abe Sargent]

With the EEP under wraps, here is the issue -


What country do I play? I really liked Mataram. I've won the game as Trebizond, Oldenburg, and Mataram. What country should I use this time?

I really don't know what the EEP has done with the world, so it's kind of exciting....

So, I load up the game and take a look at my options.

I could play one of the new countries that the EEP added.....

County of Holland - Boring.

Dahomey - Ont of the new West African states, two province Dahomey has Ivory and Slaves. Weathly she is.

Foix - Situated beside English mainland holdings, Castille, Aragon, and France, shoud be interesting. But, once you get a handhold, should be easy from there. One province of wool is not good, however.

Styria - South of Autria, west of Hungary, north of Naples. Taht puts One Province Styria in a bad position, but they are a gold province, which gives them a great income. Not as hard as it sounds.

Hausa - One of several new West African states. Three province Hausa has slaves, grain and grain.

Oyo - Another of the West African states, one province Oyo is grain only.

Mossi - Yet another one province WA state. Just grain and very poor.

Livonian Order - Three grain provinces nestled against the Baltic Sea.

Ramazan - Another Turkish province, one province Ramazan is north of the Mameluks, and south of the Ottomans. Not an easy place to be by any means.



I'll take a look at other prospects later.



-Anxiety

[atatange1]

I think you should go for something in Europe just so you are, in the thick of it, so to speak.

[Abe Sargent]

Sorry, I had to cut out last night. GF came by and wanted to go see Italian Job and spend time wit the Anxiety. Not a bad movie, but very simplistic plot.

Anyways, the other countries that are new to the EEP 1.4:


Malindi - Found in East Africa, Malindi is one of several new East African countries. Three province Malindi is all slaves.

Kilwa - Another new E. Africa country, Kilwa is ideally situated. It has the Island of Zanzibar, a Center of Trade. Five land provinces includes three slave centers, iron, and ivory. Nice and rich. Pus it only has neighbors to the north - the south is Terra Incognita.

Mombasa - Two province Mombasa is another of the new E. African provinces. Spices and Copper are the goods of Mombasa.

Mogadishu - The last of the new E. African countries, three province Mogadishu is hs Spices, and two slaves.

A few of the provinces here are Trading Posts, especially the mines - Copper and Iron.


MeiBen (The "B looks like an essset.) - One province MeiBen is nestled in the Iron mines of the province of Sachsen in East Germany. West of Bohemia, MeiBen is fully in HRE territory and surrounded by a lot of one province countries. A bit too similar to Oldenburg for my tastes since I have already played there.

Ternate - Ternate is a new Indies country!!! Ternate in on the island of Tindore east of Makassar, Mataram, and Brunei. Another islamic country in the Indies. Ahh, my old stomping grounds. I know the area well.

Tyrol - I'm not sure if I recall Tyrol from the regular game or not. Another small European state, Tyrol is due north of Venice, and east of Styria. Province of Iron.



Well then, here are the new provinces. Do I want one of them?


-Anxiety

[Abe Sargent]

There are several changes to the map I know. India now longer has colonization potential except for the two provinces on Ceylon (Sri Lanka). No Arakan, large Vijayanagar and Hyderabad. Atjeh has three provinces instead of the two I know. Mataram is now fully on Java, and loses Bali. Bengal is bigger then I remember. The North American CoT has been moved from Manhattan to Hindua below the Great Lakes. The Lenape have been completely removed, as a matter of fact.


Interesting stuff all around.

Whom to choose?

I think here are the characteristics that I need:

On the fringe of the major European powers so that I can come into conflict with powerful European technology and military.

Not a Latin tech group, but something slower.

A poor, one province nation would be ideal

Unfortunately, none of our new friends really fits the bill.

Here are some who might:

Wallachia - One province of grain. Next to three provinces of the Ottoman Empire, and next to two provinces of Hungary. Also beside two province Moldavia and Serbia. Only four Romanian provinces in the world, so control of other provinces will be difficult. Orthodox tech speed.

Albania - One province with very poor wool. Albania is the only province in the world with Albanian culture, thus making control of any other province harder. Orthodox tech speed. Adjacent to major Ottoman province Macedonia. However, all other adjacent states are minor, plus a port next to the Adriatic Sea for ship and troop movement.

Ducky of Athens - Has same positives and negatives as Albania except has Greek culture which quite a few provinces have.

Grenada - Unite the Iberian Peninsula under Moslem rule? Two province Grenada has Copper mines in its capital and fish in Gibraltar. A port is nice, but it is surounded by Castile by land. Plus, Portugal and Aragon are right by. Also has Berber culture, which no other province in Iberia has, so control will be difficult. Not an easy place to start. However, the gold mines of Toledo are immediately north of Granada. Take them, and the game swings tremendously. Does not start with Casus Belli against any Iberian province other than its own two. Also starts game as a vassal of Castile.

Cyprus and The Knights of St. John - Both of these start in islands in the Mediterranean. The Knights have Rhodes, which is Orthodox while they are Catholic casuing problems from the start. Cyprus is Orthodox through and through.

Island countires are harder to invade and also allow a port. So, I'd say this is not the way to go, but it would be interesting.


Another possibiulity would be to go north to one of the Russia minors. Ryazan, for example, begins the game as a vassal of the Golden Horde. And, it's only one province of wool. However, little Ryazan has Casus Belli for all of the provinces in the area. That means war and expansion is much easier.

Pskov is another one province Russian minor. Pskov is adjacent to it's leige Novgorod. Lithuania and the Livonia Order are also next door.


Anyways, these each strike me an interesting plays.


-Anxiety

[Abe Sargent]

I played around with the Knights for a year and they get an event in May of 1419 entitled The Knights of Rhodes where they build a castle on the isle for the Knights. They get a lot of benefits with various states, some diplomats, plus Rhodes gets +3 taxvalue - a massive increase. So, Rhodes is not as poor as it may look on first glance.

I am really liking the idea of Wallachia. Hmmm.....

I am going to look up Granada online to see if the EEP implemented any fantasy events for it. I know some people were talking about implementing specific events for Granada if they took control of Iberia, so I want to see what's up.


-Anxiety

[RonnieDobbs]

GET TO THE MONEY!!!!!

In all seriousness, Mataram was during my lurking days but that was one bad-ass dynasty. Hope this one is even half as good, I'll be happy.

[Abe Sargent]

Thanks! Anyways, I'm narrowed down to Granada or Wallachia. Any opinions?


Which is cooler, fighting with Vlad Tepes or Restablishing Al-Andulus and a Caliphate of Cordoba? Muslim Iberia? Fighting off Turks and Ottomans and Hungarians?

-Anxiety

[RonnieDobbs]

Personally I think Grenada sounds more interesting, but I'm no EU2 expert. I like the thought of trying to establish a Muslim stronghold on the European continent. But, whatever you think will make a more compelling dynasty sounds like the right way to go.

[ice4277]

I think somebody on here did a Granada dynasty before...it may be kind of interesting to compare your results to theirs. Oh, and I also thoroughly enjoyed your previous EU2 dynasty

[Abe Sargent]

Originally posted by ice4277
I think somebody on here did a Granada dynasty before...it may be kind of interesting to compare your results to theirs. Oh, and I also thoroughly enjoyed your previous EU2 dynasty

Thanks a bunch.. I'm leaning towards Granada, but I have to admit I have a certain fascination with Wallachia. However, one stroke in Granada's favor is the religion factor. I have played and won the Grand Campaign with Trebizond (Orthodox), Oldenburg (Catholic) and Mataram (Hindu). Never an Islamic country. Wallachia, however, although in a weaker position than Granada, is Orthodox.

-Anxiety

[bosshogg23]

Anxiety I am most interested in hearing you play the HARDEST route possible.

I have never been able to master the game by any means....hell I dont even know where my CD is....loved the idea of the game but in between 2 moves it is lost among boxes. Would be very interested in seeing how you make out. Very much enjoyed your 1st dynasty on the old board!

[Calis]

Anxiety- Haven't read your Mataram dynasty yet(Frightened to, because it could very well lead to me purchasing EU2. Played the first one for quite a while, the little things got to me though) I think I'll end up caving in soon and reading it.

Anxious to see how this one goes also, and I personally would vote for Grenada also.

[Abe Sargent]

Go here:


Granada Dynasty


And enjoy!!!



-Anxiety