Europa Universalis III Complete Review

Just what is Europa Universalis 3 Complete? Europa Universalis 3 Complete (or EU3) is an interesting and complex empire-building game by Paradox Interactive. Now, when you Google this, this game might seem... boring.. right? WRONG! EU3 may have certain "crude" graphics, but the amazing game play makes up for it. For example, depending on what government form you have (despotic monarchy, tribal democracy, merchant republic, etc.) affects what advantages, stability, and overall rank of your empire. Now that I've given you a little taste of what EU3 is, let me go more into detail.

1. After you open the Single Player campaign, you are presented with a global map, displaying various provinces, empires, and kingdoms from the year 1399 all the way to the end of the 1800's! Each province has different government types and leaders. It's your job to find a decent sized empire that will lead you to victory! Ex: You're not going to rule the world with a small country as you won't have enough manpower.

2. After you have selected your preferred kingdom, you will be presented with you're empire on the gaming screen. You're empire's treasury, stability level, and country's symbol will be located on the top left of the screen. You're merchants, diplomats, missionaries, colonists, and spy's will be on the top center (I'll get more into that later). And finally the year, date, and time period will be on you're top left.

3. Now that you know all of this, you might be stuck on what to do. Well if you're empire is already at war with someone, you have you're work cut out for you, or if you choose to take the path to peace, use your early treasury funds to offer a white peace. However, take whatever chances you have as rival nations will take this time to build up more alliances. On the other hand, if you're in peace, you'll be given mission's to accomplish at any given time frame within the game. Otherwise, you're free to do as you wish!

4. On the top left will be you're country's flag symbol. Here is where you manage you're technology investments, embrace national ideas, recruit advisors, budget you're armies upkeep as well as pass religious and political laws/bills. Now, this may seem very overwhelming at first, but once you fidget with buttons and options, you'll get the general idea and often, you will be going to this screen just for the fun of it.

5. With research being #5, it's a very paramount part of the game, if not, the blood of it! Depending on you're government and with the passing of time, you'll be given the option of changing you're national ideas. These can range from Espoinage acts, to you're own personal cabinet of advisors. However, as reversing these ideas will lead to major stability drops, it's imperative to choose carefully (or have back-up cheat codes instead).

6. Finally, there's diplomatic relation's with other nations within you're known world. Again, all of this falls with what type of government you have. For example, you can claim the throne of another nation with "royal marriages" if you have a monarch, but not if you have a Noble's Republic or any other democratic rulings. This I find the most fun within the game as it's fun to declare war, force religion upon a neighbor, or annex a vassal state controlled by you, and this is where the game hits the hardest. This game is exceptionally realistic ranging from issuing embargos or raising global tariffs to support mercantilism.

All in all, this game is amazing and would make a great quick, "end of summer" game to play. There isn't any high system requirements and you could probably get away with the lowest service pack of Windows XP. Otherwise in terms of RAM and GB space, nothing major. In terms of realism, EU3 hit's a home-run and shouldn't be judged on it's graphics alone. It is relatively cheap to get as it was released several years ago and is available on Amazon for around $4.00 flat.

I hope you enjoyed this breakdown of EU3 and urge you to check it out as you'll be enjoying this game so much, you'll loose HOURS on it. : )