A FROG IN A WELL...
Chapter 1
Welcome to Japan.
Seeing as how I spent the previous post plagiarising Japanese wisdom I thought it only fitting to begin my exploration into the wonderful world of EU3 in the Land of the Rising Sun.
*PAUSE TO LET YOU ALL YELL "JAPAN?!?! WHAT? WHY?"*
Annnnnnywaaaaaay, here's my government screen.
The sliders I recognise from previous versions of EU and For the Glory, but the rest is
neeeeeeeew. However, from what I've read I gather that national ideas are A Good Thing so with this in mind I crank my government research slider up to the max in the hope that I can bounce my way up to "4" and get my grubby paws on a national idea.
Oh yeah, I should probably point out that I have no idea of what national ideas are, which ones are good and what I can do with them, so any advice would be ace.
There's not a national idea of "Iain is a born winner" is there?
No - thought not.
Jumping back to those sliders on the government screen, I take a leap towards free trade because I'm sure previous experience tells me that if you've got a small country with not many people to tax than trade is really important, and given that I'm on an island with not much prospect of expanding in the imminent future then this probably applies to me.
Is that true or am I misremembering/making this up as I go along?
Anyway, I end up getting this which can only be good:
This nice chappy helps my merchants compete which I’d term “a good thing”. I also take the time (quite a considerable time I may add - I'm not the sharpest tack in the box at times) to locate the "auto send merchant" function because I remember in past iterations of EU that I kept forgetting to send merchants. I then set my auto send priorities thus:
Good?
Bad?
Stupid?
Flicking through the ledger I find that the little "saw" symbol at the top of the screen means that I can build something. With cash to spare I start building a fort in Ezochi.
It's my only province that is still home to boar-worshipping wierdos so I figure a fort might be a good idea in case they get stroppy about me and my flash Shinto ways.
Up next to the saw icon I find this:
No idea what this means or what I can do about it.
Nor do I have any idea about this screen although it looks busy!
With all my early decisions made I unpause and prepare to fulfil my destiny as guardian spirit of Japan (lucky them)! I then realise that they can be quite demanding people.
I wasn't aware I HAD any enemies, but I'm guessing that it's through missions like these that the game scores me, so I dutifully set around bringing my army up to its maximum support level.
My nobles then decide to demonstrate to me what a great bunch of guys they are by chucking me this dilemma.
I have the choice of taking a stability hit of moving toward plutocracy. I decide that I don't want to destabilize myself this early on so I choose to take control of the situation.
Is plutocracy bad?
I also find this little icon nestling on the right of the screen.
At first I assumed that it meant "capital" but then I saw the "capital" icon above it.
It’s round about now that I notice that my army building is going to see me hitting a deficit in the near future, so I start minting some cash. To help offset the inflation I hire an inflation busting advisor to go along with my ace trading guy and some dude that I've had since the beginning.
I'm no expert on EU3, but I'm assuming that my ruler sucks big time?
I also discover that I'm the proud owner of one and a half spies:
Is one of them really short or missing limbs or something?
Now, I'm presuming that spies only really become important when you're facing off against some enemies, but assuming that this happens in the future, what sort of funky things can I expect to send my spies to do? And what are the most useful errands I can send them off on?
As I'm pondering this, grand tidings reach me!
Apparently the succession is still disputed (does that mean civil war when my current ruler dies?) but hopefully Tsuchimikado will be a more able ruler than the current mound of feeble suckiness that sits on the throne.
I then learn two things:
Firstly, I have an army to be proud of.
Yay!
Great success!
Secondly, my religious people have very flowery ways of saying "Let's put some heathens to the sword!"
As my religious fundamentalists head north to Ezochi, branding irons in hand, I shall leave you good people with this last picture before I await your sage advice:
Yes - I'm off to beat up my neighbours in Okinama. Apparently I have a casus belli which means I can do this without taking a stability hit.
New army rising
Boats take men to foreign shores
What could go wrong now
(a haiku too - am I good value or what?)