Differences with EU II?

[Enric de Vimon]

I never played EUI and I wonder what are the differences with EUII? EUI is quite uknown to me. Thanks for the answers

[Rytsar Karzhavi]

After playing EUII for enough hours to qualify for a degree in it, I finally got EUI for 1 USD while ago during a sale on Gamer's Gate. I've only recently started to play, and here's are the differences that are most apparent to me:

- The timeframe for EUI is 1492-1792, vs. 1419-1819 for EUII.
- EUI has fewer provinces and countries on the map. Many provinces which exist in both games have different names (e.g., one province is called "Pripet" in EUI, but "Volyn" in EUII.)
- EUI only lets you play as the default countries for a scenario, where EUII lets you select from any country that exists.
- EUI has fewer historical events then vanilla EUII (comparing it to AGCEEP would be ridiculous. )
- EUI has some different random events, such as "Ahistorical Regency", which replaces your monarch with a regency.
- EUII has a slicker interface (e.g., easier to access the religion map mode, historical text integrated into event text, etc.)
- EUI does not have missionaries.
- EUI does not allow slider changes.
- EUI has fewer religions (e.g., China and most of India are pagan instead of Buddhist or Hindu.)

There are also dozens of differences with the game engine that I'm sure I haven't found yet. It seems to me that battles in EUI are much bloodier than EUII - armies frequently lose 10K+ soldiers in a single battle.

Overall, I'd say the biggest difference is that EUI feels like playing a very well-designed board game (gee, I wonder why? ), in that it has simpler mechanics and faster play. EUII feels more like playing an abstract simulation to me. Both are fantastic games, and I'm still enjoying them a decade after release.

[Nikolai II]

EU I allows you to play as any country, but you have to edit the scenario files manually or use IGC to do it.

You can change religious tolerance sliders in EU 1, but not country specifics. All "noname" generals have set values depending upon which country they belong to.

EU I can convert provinces with colonists if they have less than 5000 people.

EU I doesn't really have historical events at all, but the monarch can trigger random events, as long as you do not reload the game during his reign.

EU I can zoom longer out. It also was simple enough that the AI could manage the game quite well, at least as long as the human would not intervene. The much harsher peace treaty system also meant it was quite difficult to become overwhelmingly powerful fast. (Unless you went for annexing the entire country in one go, which worked regardless of size)

Anyway, Spain and Portugal would actually managed to conquer and colonize the new world, something which Spain has never been able to do well in EU 2 or later. So there it was really a challenge to get in before Spain.