Playthrough – Part I – Getting in touch or Damn Ottomans!
Last week I told you I decided to switch to something a bit more modern and I started playing Europa Universalis IV.
First thought: [heart-shaped eyes] Oh my, AWESOME!!!
Second thought: Ok, now I have to learn how to manage a nation with its 34697 parameters and possible things to do.
Even in at a glance the game looks hard to handle, after carefully following the tutorial (really useful) you will know how to rule a nation, obviously is the easiest. The fact is that when you approach the first game the very first thing you know it’s like “ok, I don’t have my safety net anymore, now everybody will kill me”.
But then all the worries disappear, you start to play slowly, whithout upsetting anybody, then year after year you start ti improve so you can fully enjoy EU4.
As an italian I choose to start my first campaign with Venice. I have fond memories of me playing with the “Serenissima” in EU2: my own personal goal was to unify all Italy from the Alps to Sicily. Being EU2 way easier than EU4 and having acquired years of experience my mission was easily accomplished and I remember I finsished in 1821 not only with all Italy on my feet but I also conquered the dalmatian, yugoslavian and balcanic regions to the Ottomans, part of the African coast, Austria, Hungary, a big slice of France, Cyprus, Rhodes and a swarm of colonies and trading posts.
Even if I knew this time would have been more difficult I decided to pick Venice again and the first thing I noticed is that the game is more slow than its predecessor. While in EU2 you can go at maximum speed without any problems, here the maximum speed is like a turtle. But this is good because you have so manu thing to care about that with a faster game you will lose all the best.
It’s wonderful how it’s improved the way you can expand and fortify your cities with a lot of beautiful buildings, all the new units, the detailed trade department, how you can ifluence the Holy See and the importance of the Holy Roman Empire, the improved diplomatic side of the game and so on.
After almost 30 years (I’m more or less in 1470 now) I’m glad to have enlarged my Republic conquering Dalmatia and Albania. I also started a war that is draining all my wealth against the Ottomans, but it looks like they’re too busy to settle the revolts in their provinces to fight me so I’m slowly capturing their balcanian region.
On the diplomatic side I improved my relations with France, Portugal and Augsburg. The goal is to drag them in a war on one side against Austria to realize my goal to conquer Trento I already claimed (even if with some difficulties, my spies suck a bit) and on the other side against Hungary to take control of the coastal provinces in order to uniform all my domains from Veneto to Albania without interruptions. I think this could be very hard since Austria is not properly the weakest state in Europe, so I have to prepare diplomatically my enterprise.
Let’s see how it will end!
I ❤ Old Games! 