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Buyer Beware

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 29
Date: December 14, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I purchased the original EU and found it to be quite enjoyable, though the most stimulating aspect of game play came through playing the free scenarios and a modified form of the game that was created by some fans of the game.

It is a very intellectual game and the historical aspects can be quite informative as well as stimulating.

Upon release of the sequel, EU2 in early December, I purchased a copy. The first patch 1.01 is out and available at the official website, however even with this patch there are a vast number, of bugs, admittedly most of these are not game breaking, but will significantly hinder your enjoyment of the game. A second patch, which supposedly will fix many of these issues has been promised for Jan 02.

There is a small but dynamic EU community that resides at the official website forums. Normally this community is eager to help you with problems, offers ideas to improve the game and upcoming versions, and is generally a nice place to visit.

However, recently, and no doubt as a result of the games poor condition, an aura of nastiness has pervaded the forums. Many people are upset that the beta testers did not inform the community about the serious issues with the game pre release. A certain amount of blame is also being put upon the game company, Paradox, for releasing a half finished product, and basically forcing the paying public to beta test for them. To top this off, the forum moderators are using their powers to insult, demean, and terrorize those in the community who try to debate these legitimate concerns.

In short, do not visit the official site of this game, or any game, for that matter to learn if it is a good buy. I would recommend you pick up a copy of EU if you can find it, it should be cheap, and see if you like the style of game. Wait at the least till Feb 02 to buy EU2, if you plan to do so, its not a finished product yet.

If the upcoming patches actually make a large difference in the gameplay, I will come and post an updated review reflecting this.

Edited 01Jan02

Happy New Year to all ...shoppers. Well its a new year and sadly to say a patch for EU2 was released shortly before Christmas, it was itself flawed, and so while the game itself is slightly improved, it is not yet a 'finished' product IMHO. This review has caused some consternation on the game forums, and moderators have even hinted that members should make counter-reviews. Use your heads guys, don't pay out your hard earned money till the game is finished, plenty of other great titles to be had here at....

Refuse to spend more money on this game.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 38
Date: November 29, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I owned the first version of this game and found it a major disapointment. Although the game had been in Europe for many months, the English version was very buggy and had several major game issues. It was only through reading the online support rooms that I was able to figure out why the game was acting in certain ways. Once I did I wish I hadn't. Then the game became too easy. I found myself handicapping myself more and more just to make the game interesting. Are you a francophile and want to play as France? Forget it! The game started in 1492 and by 1600 you could rule the world. Someone even did it as Etheopia (although that did take several more years). Sadly games aren't returnable since I'd like to see if this game is the one they should have put out with EUI but I wouldn't risk my (money) on it.

It could have been great, but...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 5
Date: April 20, 2002
Author: Amazon User

EU2 could have been a great game, but if you enjoy playing online, don't even consider buying it! Due to the numerous bugs and lack of developer support, the multiplayer function is just useless. Sweden-based developer Paradox does not seem to be working on a patch that would fix the problem. This is terribly frustrating, since such a game would really reach a new dimension by introducing decent multiplayer capabilities.

Plus if you have Windows XP, you won't be able to see the cinematics due to a compatibility problem.

I'm fed up with these developers or publishers promising things to convince you to buy their products, and not delivering these things. I just cannot imagine what it would give if drugs or car companies did the same.

One of the most boring games made after 2000!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 16
Date: May 07, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I was hoping for another great stratagy game that I could add to my large collection of PC games. I usually love Stratagey games, but this game is an exception. The game is very buggy and feels cheesy. For example, when you try to click on something, it takes many clicks before it gets the messgage. And no it isn't lag.

I forced myself to play it for several hours thinking that if I gave it a chance, I'd learn to like it, but I just hated it more an more with every waking moment. This game reminds me of a much downgraded civilization 2. Trust me. There a many good stratagey games out there. This just isn't one of them.

Not for the casual gamer

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 47 / 59
Date: November 27, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I can apreciate the work that went into creating a game with this degree of complexity, and I really wanted very much to love this game. However, I have to give it 2 stars for an overall rating of how fun it is to play. I get the impression from the on-line discussion boards that in order to do well at this game, you need to devote yourself to it on a more-or-less full-time basis for months, if not years. If you don't have the time to make that kind of committment to make to a computer game, you might find this rough going.

I found the overall design to be satisfactory, and I like the way you can easily group, ungroup, regroup, and maneuver your armies. It would be nice to be able to exert more control over what your armies are doing once they engage in combat (the only combat control you can exercise is to choose to flee; the resolution of battles occurs automatically, without your control), but that is minor point for me. You can also exercise considerable control over many aspects of your society, such as your tolerance for other religions, the degree to which you want to specialize in land or naval power, whether you want to be innovative or closed-minded, and so on. There is a lot here to like.

However, there are two big issues that reduce the fun (and the replayability) for me. The first is the constant problem of revolutions. As another reviewer pointed out, you should plan to spend hours of real time endlessly shuttling your armies around trying to stamp out one revolution after the next. This is astoundingly tedious after awhile. The second is the fact that you are completely locked in to the real history of your country. If you are playing China, and China historically suffered a huge government scandal in 1699, when 1699 rolls around you are screwed no matter how you've played so far. It occured to me that the point of the game is not really to expand your empire, but to try your hand at re-playing actual historyy. This does have its interesting moments, but it zaps the replayability to 0. Do I really want to play Spain again and go through all the exact same historically driven events over agin? Not really.

This locked-in history also really limits the number of countries that you can expect to play enjoyably. Yes, it's often said that there are 200 countries, and you can play any of them. However, the historical inevitability built into the game limits the fun factor for most. Few countries are even able to explore the world beyond their known lands, because you need special exploring units to all you to venture into new map zones, and the historically colonial countries just have a built-in edge in the number of explorers they receive. You can play the Inca empire if you'd like to spend several hours staring at the same 20 provinces, with no way to explore beyond them.

Overall, I have to say that I don't really consider this to be a "game." It is more like a very detailed history sim. Judging from the positive reviews here and the on-line message boards, there are plenty of people out there who love this, and I can see how that might be possible for someone who has lots and lots and lots of time to spend learning it, and who does not mind the built-in history. I would have preferred something a little less pre-ordained and labor intensive.

I hate those rebels

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: October 12, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Europa Universalis II has a large cult following among players of Paradox Entertainment, the Sweden-based company that has produced strategy games like "Hearts of Iron," "Crusader Kings," and "Victoria." One of their first big games, it has a lot to offer. It takes place during the time period of 1419 to 1820, taking players through the ages of exploration, enlightenment, the Renaissance, and well on to the Napoleonic Wars. You can play ANY nation during this time, from France to England to the Ottoman Empire, even any minor nation in Asia or Africa. (I actually played a decent game as Zimbabwe)

Diplomacy is fairly advanced, compared to other games in this genre. You can offer other nations royal marriages, you can improve relations through various diplomatic efforts like a "letter of introduction," and you can even sign trade agreements. (don't get too excited, all this means is your merchants won't compete as much) The trading aspect of the game deals with regions of interest, such as the major trading area of Venice, and placing your merchants in the hope of gaining wealth from profitable business. Monopolies are even possible, depending on how high your trade technology is. Speaking of which, technology is based on researching your army, navy, stability, (how stable your nation is, which can affect income and battle results) trade, and infrastructure. The higher the go, the more advanced your nation is in each regard. Higher infrastructure can allow you to build improvements like refineries, and depending on the resource of the province you build it in you can earn more income.

Religion and government also take affect. Every ten years or so you can choose to change your government's standing on ideas like plutocracy or innovativeness. Religion plays a big part in this time period, and if your government is a different religion than your people you will find yourself dealing with religious revolts. You can set the tolerance towards the different faiths to ease people's anxieties, or you can hire missionaries to

From what I've described above, one would imagine this would be an amazingly fun game to play...but as much as I try my hardest to get into it, I keep getting disappointed. I have to say my main aggravations are towards the general game system as well as Paradox's own lack of skill in perfecting a game.

As others have described, the game attempts to follow historical accuracy a little too much. Native countries are SOL as far as exploration goes, while major nations of the time period will have lots of events that give them the chance to explore new lands. (sometimes you get explorers through random events, but these are rare) And, as another reviewer pointed out, your gameplay doesn't affect historical events at all. If you play a nation your best, make friends with all your neighbors, and generally play a peaceful existance, but your nation had a massive political/economic crash in that time period, then it's going to happen any way. One really notices this playing as America and trying to stray away from what happened historically, only to get events that are irrelevant to how you've played thus far.

I also have to say the battle system is extremely aggravating. Peasant rebels, traditionally poorly armed militia, are somehow far superior to your own troops, as if the cyborgs from "Universal Soldier" went back in time and were hired as mercenaries. I also cannot understand how I can have a superior army rating, a good government, good stability, an organized rating for my forces, and full army funding, yet I am constantly defeated by smaller and weaker enemy armies. I also agree with other reviewers that the constant revolutions can get on your nerves. I realized that it depends on your "Free Subjects" or "Serfdom" rating, which means if you don't want any peasant revolts at all you have to at least get a middle rating towards Free Subjects. As a result, you waste your first few government reforms just to avoid those annoying revolts. They wouldn't be so annoying if they made sense - you could have a good government and you'll still get a revolt event that basically justifies it with "Revolts happened a lot back then, so ha!"

The economic system also fails to keep your interest. It's difficult to raise funds, and even if you get a good economy you will still have problems as soon as things go a little bit awry. Sometimes I'll be sitting there staring at the computer screen, just waiting for my coffers to fill up. This limits not only how much you can use your military, but even your diplomacy and trading - all three need money to be used. While this is expected in "the real world," in the game system of EUII it limits how much you can really do. If your nation's economy goes down the toilet you might as well quit the game and start a new nation, unless you want to watch your treasury increase by 1 gold every ten years.

I also have to say there are few nations you can really have fun with. Even though it brags about the 200+ nations, the non-European nations, with some few exceptions, will stay backwards most of the game and raise their technology at a slower rate. (even with government reforms to make it go faster) Because you're not allowed to explore undiscovered terrain without an explorer or conquistador, many nations with a lack of map knowledge are stuck in their own isolated world, which is great for historical accuracy but terrible for gameplay. It makes one look for the cheat code to reveal the entire map.

My other aggravation is towards Paradox's inability to perfect their games. Their games as of late have been getting buggier and are feeling more rushed. Europa Universalis II came out nearly a decade ago, and at the time of this review has been patched nearly 9 times...yet the game STILL CRASHES ON ME!! Paradox apologists often say, "Oh, just turn the music off" or "Just save a lot." Those are absurd excuses. Every other game I've played has never crashed because music was playing, and I should have to save every second because any small reform I do might be dashed because a Swedish beta tester was lazy.

I have had fun with this game, admittedly. When you play European nations, even smaller ones, you can have fun, and some of the bigger uncivilized nations are fun as well. The game system does allow for creative gameplay, such as forming alliances against your foes and attempting some serious political play on the international scene. I have to also admit that the AI never does the same thing twice in terms of long-term strategy. I've seen things happen like Poland conquer all of Germany, only to have the Germans rebel and liberate themselves, and I've seen England fall into chaos and the British Isles become various small city-states. These aspects are enough to make me load the game up every week or so to give it another go.

Europa Universalis II will interest the people who enjoy this time period, or those who want to play a different type of strategy game. Casual gamers are advised to stay away, and people first hearing about this game should be warned some of its hype has been overblown. I give it three stars for fun, but two stars for overall.

Great concept with some problems

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 51 / 67
Date: May 28, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Europa Universalis II is one of the most compelling strategy games for the PC to be released in the last decade. Its combination of economics, politics, and warfare provides a much richer experience than the typical build and conquer style strategy games.
Here are the high points:
* Large scale conquest is impractical and difficult. You won't find it easy to win the game by wiping out the competition. This means you actually have to think!
* The political system is rich and diverse, allowing you to actively make efforts to improve relations.
* The large number of nations makes realistic alliances possible.
* The economic system is simple enough to be playable, but diverse enough to be interesting.

Here are some problems:
* The game is supposed to be historically accurate, but it defies this in two serious ways:
1.) The nature of exploration is unrealistic. Because all military units have an attrition rate that increases with time, you cannot send out long expeditions (making circumnavigation impossible). Also, you can't bring ships into a safe harbor in unknown lands to refresh the crew.
2.) When you discover the new world empires (Aztecs, etc.), they are treated exactly the same as the old world countries politically. This means you have to have a valid cause to attack them. In history, the cultures of the new world were exempted from the rules of war.
* The focus on history also limits your choices. As far as I can tell, you only get explorers (which allow you to move into uncharted map spaces) that correspond with actual famous explorers from the country you are playing. Some countries will therefore get a big advantage that others don't have.

In conclusion, EU II is a good game with a lot of fresh ideas, but it has some limiting factors that can easily turn you off. It is worth a look if you are a thinking strategy fan, but is probably not a good choice if your interest in strategy is limited to traditional (War Craft style) real-time games.

I found that, after playing this game for a while, I went back to Imperialism II, which is a much superior game.

Universalis or Revolutionalis?

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 13 / 23
Date: July 11, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Having gone through the Age of Empire's series with nothing more than disappointment I have been searching hard for an Empire building game to end all games. The search goes on. Europa Universalis has all the elements: grand scale, multiple societies; military,religious and economic scope...Unfortunately the one thing it lacks is ease of use. The game promises that the player will have control over how the society evolves and there are many aspects of economic,religious and military development one can invest in (providing the resources are available which they often aren't). The problem is that despite one's best intentions investments tend to have one overwhelmingly negative effect...REVOLT! Consequently the game quickly disolves into an annoying counter-insurgency role rather than an "Empire building game". How is it possible to expand when the greatest threat comes from within your own borders. For a game which purports to be based upon an historically accurate model it lacks credibility. Revolts were rare (at least popular ones as compared to aristocratic) and infrequently led to the overthrow of the state. The game developers have spent too much effort into exploiting this aspect of the game to the detriment of all others. Despite maintaining a lasting peace, economic stability and/or religious tolerance (and even investing wisely...which I still have to learn how to do by this model)the developers have thrown in random and frequent occurrences (some historically based and others mere fantasy) which negatively effect your stability and revolt risk. Kissing and making up is not an option. No amount of money will resolve the outcome (even if you had it which you frequently don't). So the programmers have forced the player into a battle of survival against one's dominions. It would not be too harsh to characterize the game as "Europa Revolutionalis". That's not what I was looking for in the game.But for me the game comes unstuck in the garnering of resources, namely gold. It costs a small fortune to establish colonies and trading posts. Historically these were never costs absorbed by the state. Indeed the English goverments became rich granting charters whereby settlers would pay them to emigrate in exchange for free land which would eventually be quite heavily taxed. Most colonies operated on this system. "Europa" makes countries bankrupt by establishing colonies, absolutely mindboggling! The rate at which resources are garnered is tediously slow, hence the four hundred year time scale. After reading the manual I fail to detect any way of speeding this up. The most obvious way is to monopolize a trade center ( which I have never done though others -computer controlled-seem to manage it too frequently, or to conquer another state and to force tribute from them. Here is another let down. Once a nation agrees to award you tribute a lasting peace is signed which you cannot break. Too frequently the peace is signed but the tribute never materializes, mindboggling! Bankruptcy soon follows. Some of the campaigns have real promise. The Napoleonic Era is very good but alas too brief. The earlier the timeframe the harder the game gets to play as without knowing how to build the ecomony the resulting lack of funds impacts your ability to compete in the game. Hey people at Stragety First, "Give us a break already!" why fill the game with setbacks. If playing against human opponents I can foresee that the game will be more fun but the computer AI cannot be beaten (at least in the economic domain which is where the game is won or lost).This game has the potential to be the best of a weak bunch (Empire builders) which is high praise given that it lacks a proper combat simulator, Shogun Total War still rules the roost.

Fun intro to European history

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 8 / 10
Date: January 08, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I have played this game extensively since purchasing it last Spring. The historical accuracy is both its greatest strength and weakness.

It is a strength because you are immersed in something like the world of the 15th century and beyond. You can follow even obscure states through 300 years of their history.

But the weakness of historical accuracy is that the game forces you into the groove of actual history. It does this using several more or less hidden factors. First, innumerable historically based, programmed events will give you unique opportunities or shock your country out of tranquility with little regard to what you have done to merit them. Second, your territories have cultures that are entirely inflexible, as does your government. If you hold territories that have cultures different from those of your government you will never have peace, no matter how many centuries you have held them. This gives you a strong incentive to steer clear of them in the first place. Finally, your government belongs to one of five technology groups, all with different rates of technological development. If you are in a slow (i.e., non-European) group, you will eventually be overwhelmed by European conquerors.

The game is fun and replayable. But the more or less determined outcomes for individual states makes playing anything but a medium to large European power either boring or frustrating. The game also lacks any tactical aspect. On the whole, much better than anything else in strategy, and in tactics and resource management very poor compared to offerings like Medieval Total War or Age of Kings.

Buggy multiplayer

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 6
Date: April 22, 2002
Author: Amazon User

People have to know that this game is buggy concerning multiplayer cessions. While you can decently play with one other player, trying to run a game with 5 or 6 players is impossible, despite what it is said about the game.
Patches don't correct that fact. Even, it can worsen it (patch 1.03 made multiplayer impossible).
Furthermore, Paradox Entertainment is telling you can use their valkirie.net service to play internet game. That's a lie because valkirie.net is almost alawys down and is limited to a chat area, not a gaming area.

That's pretty sad and Paradox, obviously, doesn't care of the multiplayer community.

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