I have played turn-based strategy games for a long time and can win easily at the hardest difficulty levels in Master of Magic, Civ II, Imperialism and Imperialism II. I had heard good things about EU and decide to try it.
My first effort was a total failure. I fired up the tutorial and attempted the first mission. I went to my tent, clicked on the highlighted up arrows to build an army, and absolutely nothing happened. After much clicking, I gave up and quit. I tried to see if there was a patch that fixed the problem, but I had the latest version of the game. I set EU aside for a while and played other games.
I fired up EU again and started the tutorial. I discovered that you click the DOWN arrow to build an army. Bizarre interface choice. I played a lot of the tutorial and enjoyed it. I discovered another annoying interface issue - I would be monitoring the progress of an army's march on an unknown province. I would then right-click on another province to see how it was doing. Suddenly, my army is marching towards the province I was trying to check on. Eventually, I had run through all of my cash and after playing the "Find your neighbor" mission for a while, I decided it would take too long to find my neighbor. I was ready to start a scenario.
I decided to play a short scenario to really get my feet wet. However, I quickly discovered that the screens describing scenarios are woefully inadequate. I eventually picked what looked like the shortest scenario - The Great Northern War. I choose Denmark because the strategy hint seem to suggest that it is a position with a slow start. I planned on building up my economy for 10 years and then start thinking about war.
Firing up the scenario, my first frustration was just trying to figure what provinces I had where. I eventually found page 13 in the red book. I never knew the Danes had St. Thomas. I started with only 80 gold, and I spent 65 of it upgrading my baliff to a tax collector in Jylland. I was concerned about if I had enough defenses for my provinces, but I decided that I didn't have enough resources to worry about it. I also was running a deficit with no money in the bank. I reduce my research in order to generate some positive cash flow.
During my first year, I didn't move any military units. I was then playing the game as a turn-based strategy game with each month being a turn. What I did was turn the game speed on high, and then hit the pause key at the start of every month. With no money, all I could do was place merchants. I was placing my merchants in Russia, but eventually discovered that I could place them in England for less. I would make less money in England, but break even point was much shorter.
At some point, I got a diplomat. I tried to send him to England, but that apparently requires money, which I didn't have. So I let him lounge around the capital.
I played to January of 1 of the next year and then assessed my progress. During my first year, I got messages that I ignored. The first was that pirates appeared somewhere. Not knowing how that could effect me and not having much military resources, I ignored it. The second message was that England had changed religion and had declared war on me. In trying to assess my first year, I noticed that Sjaelland had locks on its numbers when I viewed the colony, and its tax revenue and trade revenue were half of what they were when I started the game. I guess that I am under some type of embargo from England. Also, promoting the baliff to tax collector in Jylland resulted in the tax income increasing from 19 to 21. That was money poorly spent. Time to restart.
My first effort was a total failure. I fired up the tutorial and attempted the first mission. I went to my tent, clicked on the highlighted up arrows to build an army, and absolutely nothing happened. After much clicking, I gave up and quit. I tried to see if there was a patch that fixed the problem, but I had the latest version of the game. I set EU aside for a while and played other games.
I fired up EU again and started the tutorial. I discovered that you click the DOWN arrow to build an army. Bizarre interface choice. I played a lot of the tutorial and enjoyed it. I discovered another annoying interface issue - I would be monitoring the progress of an army's march on an unknown province. I would then right-click on another province to see how it was doing. Suddenly, my army is marching towards the province I was trying to check on. Eventually, I had run through all of my cash and after playing the "Find your neighbor" mission for a while, I decided it would take too long to find my neighbor. I was ready to start a scenario.
I decided to play a short scenario to really get my feet wet. However, I quickly discovered that the screens describing scenarios are woefully inadequate. I eventually picked what looked like the shortest scenario - The Great Northern War. I choose Denmark because the strategy hint seem to suggest that it is a position with a slow start. I planned on building up my economy for 10 years and then start thinking about war.
Firing up the scenario, my first frustration was just trying to figure what provinces I had where. I eventually found page 13 in the red book. I never knew the Danes had St. Thomas. I started with only 80 gold, and I spent 65 of it upgrading my baliff to a tax collector in Jylland. I was concerned about if I had enough defenses for my provinces, but I decided that I didn't have enough resources to worry about it. I also was running a deficit with no money in the bank. I reduce my research in order to generate some positive cash flow.
During my first year, I didn't move any military units. I was then playing the game as a turn-based strategy game with each month being a turn. What I did was turn the game speed on high, and then hit the pause key at the start of every month. With no money, all I could do was place merchants. I was placing my merchants in Russia, but eventually discovered that I could place them in England for less. I would make less money in England, but break even point was much shorter.
At some point, I got a diplomat. I tried to send him to England, but that apparently requires money, which I didn't have. So I let him lounge around the capital.
I played to January of 1 of the next year and then assessed my progress. During my first year, I got messages that I ignored. The first was that pirates appeared somewhere. Not knowing how that could effect me and not having much military resources, I ignored it. The second message was that England had changed religion and had declared war on me. In trying to assess my first year, I noticed that Sjaelland had locks on its numbers when I viewed the colony, and its tax revenue and trade revenue were half of what they were when I started the game. I guess that I am under some type of embargo from England. Also, promoting the baliff to tax collector in Jylland resulted in the tax income increasing from 19 to 21. That was money poorly spent. Time to restart.
