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Europa Universalis 2

by James Sterrett

Article Type: Review
Article Date: February 19, 2002

Product Info

Product Name: Europa Universalis
Category: Real Time Strategy
Developer: Paradox Interactive
Publisher: Strategy First
Release Date: Released
Minimum Spec: P200, 64 MB RAM, 180 MB hard disk space
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Time Flies!

It seems like it’s been less than a year since Europa Universalis (EU) was released—and it has been. Europa Universalis 2 (EU2) is here, bringing several improvements to the game. While the list of new features seems sparse at first glance, extended play tells a different story: the improvements are very well thought out. EU was far deeper than the average strategy game. EU2 has plunged past the continental shelf.

So much of the basic game mechanics are retained that rather than recap “What is Europa Universalis all about?”, those of you unfamiliar with the basics of EU can read my COMBATSIM review and find a much more detailed answer to that question. Instead, let’s concentrate on what’s new and why it makes a difference.

1470, and France is riding high

What's New

One feature is actually rather useless: you can change the screen resolution to something higher than 800x600. The menus and text, however, get smaller when you do this, and it’s harder to see what’s going on in the world even when zoomed-in as far as possible. Go easy on your eyes and leave the game at 800x600. You can still zoom out to get a wider view, and the interface text will still be readable.

Part of that interface is diplomacy, which has a couple of new options. The one you’ll notice most is the "Military Access" option, which grants the right to move your troops through another country without a war. This does not permit a sudden backstab, since you must break the agreement before declaring war. Less obvious is the option to form a "Trade Agreement," under which two countries cease competing in centers of trade. This allows countries to split up the pie without losses, and avoids friction as traders are competed away, but it also can prevent you from forming as valuable a monopoly.

China not only begins as a regional superpower, it has its own private Balkans next door

Nations can also plonk down $1,000 and declare themselves "Sole Defender" of their faith. Sole defenders get an immediate "Casus Belli" [which allows a declaration of war with little or no loss in stability] against any nation that declares war on any other nation that shares their faith, but lose the title if they ever lose a war. Why would you want to do this? It’s helpful if you want to go on a spree of conquest, and a number of countries can get victory points for being the sole defender. You can also "Warn" a country, so that you get a casus belli against them if they attack anyone else, or choose to issue a "Guarantee" of another country, so that you gain a casus belli against anyone who attacks it. Better still, the AI understands the use of these new tools. If you watch what the AI states are doing to each other, you can see alliances and guarantees and warnings steadily fly back and forth as they compete.

The peace negotiation process has also been revamped. Gone are the stars and gravestones, replaced by a much more finely graded percentage system. Controlling every enemy province gets you 100 percent and the ability to make sweeping demands. If you only want low income provinces, you can often demand more than three provinces now. In addition, you can demand that your enemy allow you military access in the future, or demand that they become your vassals. Once Martin Luther nails his theses to the door and the European wars of religion start up, many states can also demand that the loser change national religion to be the same as the winner’s. You cannot, however, annex outright countries that have more than one province. This slows down the pace, in theory, but conversely the option to force vassalization speeds it up.

France begins scattered into a weak central state with several vassals

Culture and Domestic Policy

Vassals are also more useful because of culture. Every province has its own culture. Provinces with a different culture from their rulers produce fewer taxes, less manpower, and are more likely to revolt. Thus, for example, if you are playing as Spain, with an Iberian national culture, not only will the Basque provinces give you trouble, you may be better off with them as vassals. Vassals only pay 50 percent of their income to you, but it is entirely possible for a bad cultural alignment to wind up paying you even less. Keeping your vassals happy and in line can be like herding cats, but it’s an attractive enough option that the game will allow you to split off provinces of a different culture you already own into small vassal states. The importance of culture also reinforces the importance of colonization, because your colonies always share your culture. You can change culture, along with a province’s religion, with the new Missionaries. However, using them is expensive, time-consuming, prone to failure, and the province revolts if the process fails. Missionaries, like colonists, diplomats, and traders, are accumulated at a yearly rate that depends on your domestic policies.

In adding the ability to set domestic policy, Paradox added a whole new layer of complexity and depth to EU2. Your domestic policy is represented by the location of the pips on a set of sliders set between such opposites as Centralized and Decentralized, Free Trade or Mercantilism, Offense and Defence, and Freemen or Serfs. Moving the pips about is a slow process: you can change one pip by one tick once every ten years. Nor are the directions to move them no-brainers. For example, moving towards “Narrow-Minded” provides your country with better stability, but at the cost of slower technological improvement, while moving towards the “Innovative” end of the slider improves your rate of research at a cost in stability. Moreover, you can’t start out the Grand Campaign with a roadmap in your head of exactly where those sliders are going, because of "Events".

Chinese Domestic Policy-Making

Events

EU also had events, but they are a pale shadow of the events that arrive in EU2, where events are not only more common but also potentially far more powerful. At the small end of the scale are minor events that improve your diplomatic reputation, or provide you with a small windfall of cash. The most dramatic events can completely change the way your country works. For example, early in the Grand Campaign, China faces the question of what to do about Admiral Zheng He (who, historically, lead an exploration fleet all over South-East Asia, India, Eastern Africa, and parts of Polynesia before he was grounded by Chinese politics): continue in his dreams of exploration and expansion, or turn inwards as China did historically? Follow Cheng He, and you keep him as an explorer, your domestic policy settings are radically changed, your stability is wrecked and China faces years of revolts—but if you can survive the turmoil, China can emerge as a superpower. The safe option closes off the doors to the outside world but preserves domestic peace. Like many such events in EU2, the option that leads to more effective power comes at a price, and you cannot follow it unless your country is in good shape.

Shatter your country and then expand, or play it safe and be sorry later?

Every election in the fledgling American Republic is an event, in which the player must choose who gets elected, with appropriate effects matters such as stability and domestic policy sliders. Often, the choice you’d rather take in these events is obvious, but carries more penalties, such that you can only follow your desires if your country is doing well. Thus the resistance of the nobility and old cities to increased centralization are events in which they force you to choose between accepting a move towards decentralization, or facing down a loss of stability; while the church resists innovation by forcing you to choose between instability or permitting a move to greater narrow-mindedness. Because the domestic policy sliders and stability are so powerful and important in the game, twisting through these events as you weigh your long-term goals against the short-term costs and benefits is an amazingly immersive experience. Just seeing an event window pop up will increase your heart rate slightly, wondering what new disaster or opportunity beckons.

A generic random event: suppress the heresy or lose stability?

Nations

Alert readers will have noted the significance of “China” a bit earlier, too. You may now play as any nation, at all. If you want to play as China, go ahead. Venice? Fine. Byzantium? Go for it. The Lenape Indian Tribe? Timurid Empire? Incas? Dai Viet? Tibet? Not a problem. If the nation exists in the game, you can play as that nation. Moreover, you can change every time you load a savegame! The one exception is the American Revolt scenario, which only allows you to play as the Americans.

The American revolt, round one completed with the loss of the Chesapeake

How did Byzantium get into EU2? The game runs from 1419 to 1819, 100 years more than its predecessor. The 1819 end of this allows you to play through the Napoleonic wars (and, yes, Boney kicks ass as an army leader!) The 1419 start means the game begins 4 years after Agincourt, when Europe looked very different from what it did in 1492. France and Spain were a patchwork of feudal principalities, while the real major powers in the world were in Eastern and Central Asia. EU began the game as Europe was at the cusp of beginning its march to world power. EU2 begins when Europe is still working towards that point. And Byzantium, the last remnant of the Roman Empire, had not yet fallen in 1419 (it fell to the Ottomans in 1453, ending well over 1500 years of conflict between the Roman Empire and various Turkic/Persian states). Byzantium is on its last legs, but clever and determined play may see it through to yet another revival.



AI Improved

The AI has also been improved. It can still be beaten, but it puts up a better fight in wars and is better at arranging alliances to suit its goals (be those aligned with or against the human player.) For example, the AI is sometimes able to bring Byzantium back from near-death. A friend who had been playing EU found EU2 initially so much harder that he went back to the first incarnation for a while! The AI does retain the inflation cheat, however, meaning that the inflation levels of the AI countries will tend to track that of the human players.

By default, the computer choose a mission for you if you don't choose one yourself

Music

The music deserves special mention. Paradox decided to use period music, and proceeded to cherry pick some of the finest, choicest tidbits from four hundred years. You’ve likely never heard of the composers of the earlier pieces, but the later group includes such luminaries as Bach, Beethoven, and Vivaldi. As a result, the soundtracks for EU2 are an absolute delight (unless you hate classical music), and they are all MP3s so you can listen to them when you aren’t playing, as well.



Documentation & Tutorials

The manual is better than that of the original game, though still often short on particulars. It also suffers from a background that interferes with your ability to read the text. The overall result is much the same as the manual for IL-2 Sturmovik: small text plus interfering background equals hard to read. The tutorial, however, has undergone a much needed reworking. In place of the original’s overlong and often directionless tutorial scenario, EU2 offers a set of short, to the point, and carefully commented tutorials on specific aspects of the game. They aren’t perfect but they are a lot better than what went before. The game also includes a moderately large fold-out map of the world, which helps in learning where things are.

There are problems with the game, since it still occasionally collapses to the desktop without warning (though setting the game for a yearly autosave makes this mostly painless). It also has yet to run well on our home LAN, though people out on the 'Net report playing multiplayer EU2 games quite happily, so our troubles may be specific to us.

Nonetheless: Europa Universalis II is the best grand strategic game out there. Nothing else boasts its combination of ease of play, immersion, and depth of historical simulation. The list of new features is narrow, but they are both deep, and deeply integrated, in a game that already boasted incredible historical depth and integration. Europa Universalis has come of age.

[Author's note: squishing the screenshots to 640x480 has made the text fuzzy. The text is quite readable in the game.]


Europa Universalis 2




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