Europa Unversalis: What's the big deal?

Downloaded the game (I know my bad blah blah, I'm the type of guy who will download it and buy it if its an A+ game, no one's gonna rip me off).

Anyway downloaded the game and played a wee bit of it, but I found it reeaally hard.. It seems to be in real-time and I am finding it hard to catch up with everything. But the really annoying thing is that millions of windows popup all the time, saying this and that happened, by the time I've read and gone thru them all, the events or whatever have already passed and long gone, so it's all useless to me. Before I know it, I'm beaten!

OK now I KNOW that it's probably because I don't know how to play the game, I remember when I first played Civ..I remember when I found out that you can mine hills with settlers. When I found out that, I mined every damn hill on my massive huge land, there were countless hills mined, far as the eye can see, and all I had were about 2 cities. So it's funny when I remember things like that, doing silly things like that, trial and error and watching whats going on to see whats actualy happening. But I am not finding EU to be addictive because its TOO annoying, its TOO fast, so I can't play the game the same way I did with Civ in order to learn whats going on.

How do I play this damn game? Is it worth it? Or is it just for diplomatic freaks?
Don't get me wrong, I like diplomacy, I want the realistic stuff, but this is just too annoying to play!

If its too fast then slow it down with the +/- keys and use the pause botton. At least get the hang of the game before you bash it, its a great game the most addicting I've played since Civ 2

[Steve Clark]

Thiefs are not worth the time of day.

[John-SJ]

The best way to learn to play this game is to buy it and read the manual, cover to cover. This is one deep, intricate, and engrossing game. You could ask questions here for a month and still be missing 80% of what this game has to offer.

Bottom line, if you liked Civ, chances are GREAT that you'll like this game. Don't waste your time on a warez game, it will just sour you to the real thing because you'll always be missing so much of what makes EU a fantastic game.

John-SJ

[Leonidas]

All those pop-up windows can be turned off in options screen.

There is a pause button.

The game can be slowed down - it's not really real-time ala AoE - time is just continuous which adds tension when you are planning things.

This is a deep, engrossing game - the manual MUST be read and studied. There is a great deal of subtlety to the game.

This is not a FPS type game. Those who are into RTS click-fests should look elsewhere. This is a game that is fun and educational at the same time. The sheer scale of the game is amazing.

This is a big, strategic game - at last! It will take a long time to master this game well.



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Go tell the Spartans, passerby:
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.