In Nomine - What does the Betas Think ?

[Maximilian I]

With IN I can finally retire EU2. IN gives me what I´ve been missing in EU3 - more historical context. And I must say in a more elegant way than its been done in EU2, events have really been awkward at times. If the Wittelsbacher´s are given the mission to secure the Frankonian inheritance or to secure their holdings on the upper rhine, I feel like being in and not like playing a game for blobs

[smn]

I haven't enjoyed Paradox games in SP for a few years now. Until In Nomine.

EU3 was a relief compared to EU2, throwing away the straightjacket of monarch, leader and event files. As a price of that EU3 introduced genericness and blandness and of course some gameplay problems and balance issues.

IN addresses this beautifully. The numerous tweaks to gameplay and interface solve quite a few sources of frustration and add a number of nice detail, while the missions & decisions add the missing flavour. This is a truly great expansion.

[Jarkko Suvinen]

From the point of a player who plays only multiplayer games. I can't honestly understand why some people prefer to play games alone without any social interaction, so please excuse me for taking this point of view

Europa Universalis 3: In Nomine is *the* Multiplayer game. There is only one thing missing to make INN the perfect MP game: There is no hot-joining, but this is off-set by the fact that INN is stabile beyond any reasonable belief in MP. In the test games we have seen in the hours and hours of MP gaming, with ~10 players, only a couple crashes, both times apparently due to non-game factors (router died, electricity lost).

In addition I would like to highlight the following for MPers especially.

1) INN *feels* good. It is an all new game with an all new feel, even in SP.

2) INN has many new "gimmicks" improving the MP experience. For example, a counter for number of players in lobby, increased fog of war in the MP game, no space-bar pause in MP (WOOHOO!) etc.

3) Isolationistic hypertechers will not get to have such an easy time, but actually have to make an impact in the game (prestige, missions, changes to income from colonies and over-seas etc).

4) Blobbing will not be that easy (see point 5 too). You'll see many more vassals around, which makes it possible to execute new strategies in MP.

5) Rebels need attention now, and with attention I do not mean "whack the mole" game. Means you will often times be forced to released vassals instead of letting your whole country go pear shaped.

6) Combat, attrition (in hostile lands) and WE (if your provinces are controlled by the enemy or your ports blockaded) are brutal now. It means there will be lots of short wars with limited goals.

7) HUGE mega armies are not the (only) way to go in MP wars. Artillery suuport from second rank, mercs have been tweaked etc.

[G'Kar]

There are too many improvements in IN to even get started here. So let me just say one thing: I played much more Beta-IN than EU 3 and NA combined. It's definitely the best expansion Paradox has made so far.

Instead of writing more I'll work on the IN feature list in case that it might be used.

[Letar]

I wouldn't consider myself as a history geek, so I don't particularly have problems if some country does something it really didn't do back then, if some country grows "too big" etc. But still, I very much like what INN brings to the game, and the main thing it gives me is flavour.

1) Missions. Missions, generic or not give some guidance to players and AI alike. For new players and players seeking for some goals besides their own crazy plans, missions are great. Of course, you can choose to ignore these if you want to. I mostly play SP and doing missions suits my playing style quite well.

2) Decisions. National, provincial and religious decisions also give some guidance and more importantly gives something that differentiates countries from each other. One thing I also like is that now you can actually see what you need for example creating a new country, lets say Scandinavia, in game without fiddling with event files.

3) Rebels with a cause. No more generic troops just raising up for some reason, but rebels who really have a goal and try to achieve it. Also spices up MP guite a lot.

4) Numerous small changes to, e.g., HRE, Papacy, diplomatic screens and so on are sugar on the top and generally give more atmosphere to the game.

In addition to these features giving more flavour there's so many good changes to original game mechanics (changes to combat, navies, colonization, the list is long ...) that it is really really hard to skip INN if you like EU3 even a little bit.

To sum up, INN should give something to every player, to SPers, MPers, history fans, guys like me and everyone else.

EDIT: And note to all of you modders out there, there should be quite a lot new goodies for you. I truly hope that someone makes a balanced mod that tries not to change everything, but increases the flavour even more, by introducing reasonable decisions, missions and events.

[Grosshaus]

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/...d.php?t=355737

Really, I've play...ehh...tested very keenly the past week or few. Although I strongly supported the more generic gameplay to make equal options for all nations, the historical flavour with the decisions and missions are just plain immersive.

The interface is a lot nicer now as well with things such as the culture and regions maps.

I think there is also a lot good added with the new slider effects. Earlier they were balanced to the bone, but just too complex for my liking. For instance it was too hard to say when one should centralise or not, so I mostly bothered not to touch the slider really.

With the new rebels nations start to look as they should. Isolated provinces are quick to revolt off, tribes get devastated in inheritance wars and holding more than few heathen wrong-culture provinces needs attention. Earlier peace was boring, but now I've actually enjoyed keeping rebels at bay after new conquests. Those nasty buggers that increase nationalism RR if you let them win a siege are on my permanent to-kill-fast list.

[SirGrotius]

EU3's latest expansion is entitled In Nomine. The one word I'd use to characterize the achievement is "smart." The changes, which are too numerous to list here, all are logical, give the AI a feeling of deviousness, and most importantly are much fun. I've experienced moments, where I literally questioned, "the Timurids didn't just do that, did they?"--it's almost eerie how life-like they may seem. In addition to relations, nations have a level of trust toward one another and have spheres of influences where certain nations can be considered rivals. Rebels have a purpose and can be given in to. Countries have historical missions, specific national decisions, as well as provincial-level decisions, which add context while keeping the player free to re-write history if one so chooses. The immensity of features keeps the player busy even while at peace, which is the route I often choose to play, since my namesake is the master of international law and tranquility. Of course, warfare is enhanced with new features, such as an improved mercenary system, changed national ideas, and a much more enjoyable peace system. In summary, In Nomine is probably the "smartest" purchase a potential player can make.

Edit: Oh, and did I mention Byzantium is in it...with the imperial purple!

[dharper]

For the first time since Europa Universalis came out I'm enjoying the game without any mods at all. It's obvious that Paradox has been listening to what players said about the game - it shows in the many elegant new features in it that make it fun and challenging to play - dozens of them, the kind that could only have been developed after months of playing and playtesting the original game. In Nomine is more than an expansion; it turns EU3 into an entirely new game!

I'm in the Beta, but I've already pre-ordered my copy. It's worth it.

[Veldmaarschalk]

I could just repeat what everyone has said so far, but just let me put it in one sentence

In Nomine: The Perfect Game !

[Jinnai]

From the point of a player who plays only multiplayer games. I can't honestly understand why some people prefer to play games alone without any social interaction, so please excuse me for taking this point of view

I'm don't have the fastest reaction times...in fact i'm on the low end.
----
Review:

IN is basically EU 3.5. It's not quite a new game, being as much of the underlying mechanics are still the same, but it's been enhanced a huge proportion, in virtually every direction, from the AI to War Exhaustion. New elements never before seen in any previous game, such as an active supply and demand economy where the descions you make will effect economies around the world, rebels with a cause that will demand their voices be heard, unless you're able to crush them under your heal (which isn't as easy), the ability to make decisions that could take your country in a bright future, or leave yourself left behind....

[Brent15]

The series takes its next great step with the addition of EU3: IN.

If I had to describe my experience as a beta in one word I think it would be "wow!"

Nearly everything has been revisited. Johan and his team have been incredibly receptive to our input as players and beta testers (and I think its safe to say we're a critical lot).

Top this off with a grand addition of new features and you have IN. The new features are fun, immersing, and add alot of flavor. Its hard to pick a favorite, but I've really enjoyed the addition of national decisions. I was skeptical of a new Mission system, but it doesn't intrude into your gameplay if you don't use it and they certainly give added personality and historical feel to your adversaries.

Speaking of personality, as you play through IN you're likely to notice real quickly that the AI behaves in new unique and historically plausible ways. That's not to say that its in a historical "straight-jacket" or that everything the AI does makes sense in a historical context. But the historical "feel" is greatly improved and the AI makes better use of the diplomatic options at its disposal.

Sometimes its the little things. Expansion packs bring a great opportunity to refine a game, and thats something this expansion does. Whether it be the changes in warfare, such as the ability to isolate and eliminate armies without endless chases, or the revised Peace AI, all the way through to the improvements on national ideas and domestic policy sliders. Its a new ball-game, less work and more fun.

IN has really taken my enjoyment of EU3 to a new level. I expect this expansion will bring many of the older fans back to the series and will be the icing on the cake for those who never put it down.

[Eissi]

What can I say, pretty damn finished product. I think this is what EU3 was supposed to be when it shipped, or should have been, now the game is just almost perfect (I can't really imagine anything to add to the game, but surely there must be something?).

The missions, rebels and overall game balance tweaks address those, like me, who liked EU2 for its more historical approach than EU3's open ended approach.

Me likes!

[Verenti]

If anyone had grown cynical about EU3 it was me. Victoria was, to me, the best Paradox game made, not because the endless complexity, but because it felt like you were playing history. If you followed the events pretty closely, things would roughly turn out how they were supposed to, but if you strayed, sometimes the events would take you down alternate historical paths. The Expanded Canada if Great Britain demanded the 42nd parallel instead of taking the 49th parallel, or the releasing of the Dominion of Columbia.

EU3 promised, in my mind, one better: Hundreds of events which although completely unhistorical, would keep the game feeling historical. This didn't exactly work out how I thought it would. In the early days you would hardly ever see an event, and if you did, it was likely just to be a random event which you saw all the time in EU2. Playing a monarchy was pretty much the same as playing a Republic as well. It all left the game rather bland.

I wanted in EU3 to be playing History, but a history I created: I wanted Spanish Revolutions and Civil wars. I wanted Boer wars of Independence and more warring states periods in China. I wanted new history. EU3 didn't do that very well.

EU3 didn't let you move your capital or name colonies. If rebels sacked your homeland, which mostly didn't happen, unless you let it happen, the worst that would happen is that some revolters would declare independence. You didn't even get a change in ruler, let alone a new government. There was nothing to change your government if you didn't change it yourself. If rebels held the island of Newfoundland for the entire length of the game, nothing would happen. The game was very dynamic in some areas, but completely inflexible in others. I recall many Multiplayer games where I would hold onto all of the territory to unite a country for a hundred of years, waiting for the new country to form, and it never happened.

Napoleon's Ambition some of these, adding in events for the "French" Revolution (as well as many others), and naming colonies, and moving capitals and establishing trading posts. In Nomine makes this all look like a patch. In Nomine takes the abstract art form of EU3 and turns it on its head and makes it completely reconisable for most of the population.

Without breaking the original features of EU3, namely non-determinism, it sucessfully adds back in historical flavour with a few new additions: "country" specific decisions and missions, which will give benefit to playing like England as England and Prussia as Prussia without straight-jacketing the player or AI to do so. The Missionary and Colonist Model has also been fixed. Gone are the days of micromanaging your colonies to make sure they develop into thriving cities. You now pay a maintainence cost and the colonies continue to grow and missionaries continue to preach. This is beautiful, but it also means less colonists are gained in any given year.

"Rebels with a cause" is a catch phrase that was thrown around quite a bit in the early days. While I may think this is a corny phrase, it is an important feature! Rebels now matter. Say it with me, Rebels now matter. Rebels now require you to garrison conquered lands, because if you don't (sometimes if you do!) they will kick you out of their homelands. If you mistreat your colonies, you will see separtist revolts, If you send missionaries to the Holy lands, you will see fanatically revolts, If you are generally are a jerk, you may see Republican revolutionaries! Instead of 5k infantry to dispose of at your leisure, Rebels are now 12k armies led by leaders who know how to assault and retreat. They are now a proper army, and if you ignore them they will do serious harm. If nationalist rebels pop up in a province, You can no longer say "well, there isn't a core, so I don't need to deal with them right now" because rebels don't need cores anymore, and may infact create them!

On top of these, new events have been added, namely a few that deal with what type of government you have. Flavour events that flesh out and create diversity for governments. On that note, each government has a period to define how long it's rulers stay in power.

All in all, In Nomine is a huge overhaul of EU3 and makes the game so much better than it ever was. I had lost mostly all of my love for EU3 and the earliest builds of the beta restored them and then they only built on it from there. If you were like me and had given up hope of EU3 being the game you wanted it to be, then you owe it to all the hours you've devoted to other Paradox games to pick up In Nomine and give EU3 another shot.

[Kriegsspieler]

I thought I would just post a note here, not that I have anything so very dramatic to say:

Like Verenti, for me the eu series have always been my least favorite among Paradox's games. That's not to say they are bad, far from it. But I have always been more drawn to Victoria, HOI, and Crusader Kings, in that order.

But this game is fantastic. History is back in a BIG way, and unlike eu2, it does not require that you follow the straitjecketed path of historical navigators and rulers. The introduction of decisions has brought a tremendous level of flavor to playing different countries, and their local geopolitical situations continue to be modeled with considerable attention to detail.

I also want to give a huge pat on the back to Johan for the AI. It is tough, intelligent, and even though one can still expect to do reasonably well against it, I find that playing even on normal level gives me a satisfying game. Let me give an example: when a country begins the game or gets pared down to a single province, as is the case in Italy, the AI starts forming a web of supporting alliances and guarantees of freedom to prevent it from being picked off too readily. That doesn't mean that you will never get a chance to steamroller it, but it does likely mean that you will have to be patient and wait for your chance, durng which time someone else may get it before you. It's wonderful.

Well done, folks! You've really done a great job with this one.

[ubik]

In Nomine, hum…?

But In Nomine of what?





The Europa Universalis product line has been touted among the best strategy games on the market. In my humble opinion the main secret of it lies not in the armies that march, the diplomacy that talk or the markets that trade. No, the cornerstone of it all is the huge number of nations all playing at the same time. Only this can convey to the player the sense of immersion, of not being THE nation, but simply ONE MORE nation. Often intangibles like these make all difference between a good work and something to behold.

This feeling was fortunately never lost through the series, in fact being expanded with each iteration. Of course, the magical combination of several mini games, at their core simple challenges to be integrated with complex possibilities and used to advance a nation’s goals plus the open endedness of the experience, decisively contributed for the title to achieve some sort of cult status among the stategy fans and grudgingly aknowledgement at more mainstream latitudes.

Europa Universalis III, released more than a year ago, scrapped the concept of deterministic events that made it relatively easy to keep the game within some rails of plausibility, at least on a very basic level, instead offering the capability to turn events contextual, meaning, what was being described was not what happened in History anymore, but what could happen given the right conditions were set. So far, so good. In fact, so far… Excelent!
The problem was the original game had the unwelcome tendency to generate random conquering sprees where some nations started gobbling up the others, forcing the player “to blob or die”. This lead to completely unplausible results that caused a large number of Europa Universalis cultists to watch in dismay.

Then, in August of last year the first expansion, called Napoleon’s Ambition, was released. While being a step in the right direction with some elements that were clearly geared towards the barrage of critics received, it mainly added functionality to the game, turning it far faster, adding some nice interface touches and an extended timeline to cover Napoleon’s Age...



...And here we are. Looking at In Nomine and trying to be as detached as possible to provide the reader with an honest review of it. I can only tell you the following lines are not from a fanboy. In fact, if any of you have read someplace in these forums my previous opinion about Europa Universalis III, I suppose nobody can call me a fanboy.

At a glance, the game you will soon see has not much to do with the flawed gem released more than a year ago. Only the graphics and the ever present elements described in the first paragraphs remain. The rest of the game was totally revamped with new design features, useful information and an incredible depth from a game mechanic perspective.


The experience is now much more structured without being intrusive in the freedom one has to set his own path. There are now missions that will be offered to each country and in this way countries can be partly steered through their own historical objectives based on contextual elements that can be present. This feature also gives lots of character to each nation as missions will obviously be different depending on who you play or where you play. Finally, these missions add some narrative back into the game taking out the “mechanic grind” of the past and turning the whole experience into a dynamic adventure, different every time you start. This is story telling at its peak.

In a game with a scope as large as Europa Universalis, it always stroke me as wrong some micromanagement the engines forced sometimes. Fortunately, Napoleon’s Ambition finally added a sorely needed auto send system for merchants which was a step in the right direction.
In Nomine welcomes us to a new colonization model. Micromanaging colonies will be a thing of the past. Your decision as the guiding hand of the country is not about who will you send where in an almost infinite cycle of waiting for the next colonist to appear, checking the bank balance and send it.
No, now you will be confronted with the overall strategy of your colonial empire. How strong is your economy to support its growth? Will you claim more provinces at the same time but spread thin due to the huge costs involved or would you tread a more secure route but cripple you expansion? How will you balance it all with your domestic and international policies? This is streamlining at its greatest.


Decisions, decisions… The new concept of “Decisions” introduced by In Nomine will empower the player and the AI with the capability to apply a myriad of decisions based on country, province or religion that furthers the depth and the possibilities of any nation. In short, the player has the capability to call certain events, or event pools, once certain conditions are met. Again, the capability is at the player’s fingertips. The decision, that is in his head. This is game design at its highest.

The previously three chapters present the biggest highlights of the expansion for me. However, allow me say here the huge amount of new stuff not covered by them could very well be included in TWO expansions and still turn them into two unavoidable additions.
Stuff like far improved AI, the impact of the naval resources on the country performance (now, for the first time, having a navy in some strategic instances is a must), new ideas, the new rebel types and their associated mechanic, battle mechanics, all the new religious approach (yes, the annoying tolerance bars are a thing of the past!), the huge increase of advisors, elections and so much more turn this expansion into an experience that must be played to be fully understood in its scope. This is game depth at its deepest.




In Nomine, hum?

But In Nomine of what…?


- Story telling at its peak
- Streamlining at its greatest
- Game design at is highest
- Game depth at its deepest



Enjoy a Masterpiece.

[Balor]

And a little bump when moving it to public..