Licking my wounds quickly from my ass end of an ass-kicking in Shogun II on legendary, I'm going to be doing a liveblog of a game I'm even more inept at; Europa Universalis, a game whose difficulty is based more on your position in the world than on the actual difficulty setting. Now you can go any concievable faction in the world in this game between 1399 and 1821, including the Incas, Aztecs, their neighbours and the tribes of north America, so I'm not going to be giving the full selection. That would take a full week of work to catalogue, and some of the nations frankly aren't viable (try surviving as the emirate of Granada, go on, just try. Though I have stopped their annihilation as England a few times by guaranteeing them right off the bat and then thrashing Spain in a war.)
Now, how this is going to work is this. We're first going to pick a starting date, then we'll go to faction select, and finally, I'll put up a few options as to how you want me to play; is my goal world domination (and, a very distant possibility of world conquest?) or should I play global peacekeeper, either for the selfish reason of keeping my enemies divided or to protect all the little states out there? Some nations may have specific aims in mind. England may wish to take the British Isles and keep them, maybe take its historic lands in France and perhaps even seize the French throne as seemed possible during the Hundred Years War. Any major European faction may try to unite Europe forcefully. The Golden Horde will want to conquer China again, or seize Europe. Byzantium will have no choice but to bring final battle to the Turks and Venetians, the Teutonic Order will wish to survive, but also continue to press east; now that Lithuania has been converted, perhaps the Order can redeem itself for its atrocities by being Europes shield against the Mongols and Turks? There are hundreds of faction specific goals.
A word of warning; while I will be playing on Normal, I've never actually got off Very Easy. Nonetheless I've generally been successful as a major faction and even achieved success as Byzantium. I've also never really been outside the early years of the game. So treat this like a rookies liveblog, albeit a rookie who has played a bit as some of the factions.
I'll be back once I have described the different factions.
One final thing to decide is how to present it. I might do it as a diary, either of the rulers or of their advisors. I might go down the route I ended up in Europa Barbarorum and make a rather tongue-in-cheek alien intervention via satellite cameras being granted to medieval China to explain away the Easy Communication. One thing this is not going to be is a dry After-Action Report, I had a score to settle with Shogun II and it has been thoroughly settled now... in Shogun I Is favour. :( So I will try to breathe some life into this one. (I'll also try to complete it this time without something horrific happening to the file. If I do choose to end it early it will be in a deliberate and final fashion.)
Be back soon.
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