Latest EU3 expansion circumvents the loan magic (AI will never take loans from a human, even if bankruptcy is imminent). I love this game so much.

EU is awesome.

Just last month I got Crusader kings 2 (same company) and it's even better imo. It's both easier to have success with a small country, and harder to dominate everything that moves if you get big.

There still needs to be a bit of fine tuning done to it imo. Like if Milan is getting the shit beaten out of by Austria and I, as France, offer an alliance to Milan, Milan should take it....but they never do :(

It can get boring at times though. However, when shit goes down, shit goes down and it just gets uncontrollable. I end up having like 5 years of crazy fun and then sitting around for the next 20 or so digesting my bad-boy points. But if you play as smaller countries you can get much more out of it. I saw an AAR of a guy who took over all of Europe in the Grand Campaign...and he started as Serbia. It was the most intense thing.

Does anyone know if War of the Roses is out of beta testing? That's the next Paradox game on my list

goldie yes the BB system in EU is kinda irritating. I usually play only to DoW if I have valid cause. Instead of conquering territories I have no claim on, I break up the empire and vassalize/protect the free states (its funny forcing france to split into its components over the course of a few wars).

Makes for a better game. If you just play for conquest you will get bored.

lol y'all so mad about BB

quick'n'easy conquest of almost any major power:

(1) beat it up in a war
(2) force it to release as many conquered states as possible (works best with states like Burgundy or France, *especially* France, since it has so many possible released states that don't exist in 1399)
(3) use spy mission "Fabricate Claims" on released state
(4) win succession war against conquered state, force it into PU
(5) on monarch death, inherit for 0 BB, possibly with cores

Haha never did it that way, PE, I never used fabricate. Sounds like an easy way to get lots of cores without BB though :P

I never played for WC, as above, I just get bored when I get too big.

Must . . . resist . . . temptation to play Europa.

The best EU3 AAR:
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?486346

PrawnStar is incredible. I'm not sure whether that's his best though, my preference was the Iroquois game

EU is a great great game but it gets too easy after a while.

That's why you have to set yourself challenges, uly. Like I tried to play Muscowy as historical as possible - not Westernizing until 1697 or so, not taking Crimea until 1700 or so, etc - and it was both stressful and a blast.

Also, I usually break up nations like that, but I don't do the "Fabricate Claims" as I usually don't have many spies since I set the bar to Free Trade. I'm also having trouble since I don't have many missionaries because I set the bar to Innovative. The way I do it is I try to vassalize the nations I break up and eventually annex them.

Well, I do that of course but the internal politics are rather bland in vanilla EU so the periods without external involvement are basically a preparation for the next expansion, burning WE and BB, stuff like that. Although I haven't really played vanilla since In Nomine, I preffered the Magna Mundi experience until it got discontinued because of the stand-alone that didn't make it as its head dev ubik was something of a Sargmacher.

War of the Roses was published in September.

haha large i'm loving that AAR, only on page 10 but ima keep going.

I started a "diplomacy AAR" for my first games, but didn't think anybody would be interested so I let 'em die.