I'm completely lost. (Newbie)

[unmerged(9670)]

Bought the game yesterday (exchanged it for Legion actually, found that one dissapointingly simple). Never played EUI so Im a complete newb.

I just went through all the tutorials and started a game in the napoleon era and am completely lost. I cant even seem to get armies to move into friendly areas (I left-click the army, right click on the province but they don't move). I'm making negative money (Im england) and Im trying to figure out what the first step should be? In any scenario, I mean in general.. how should I get into this game? It just seems so overwhelmingly complicated =(

How do I get a foothold? Any advice at all would be appreciated. I checked the faq and newb sections but they tend to deal with specific issues, Im just trying to get a general foothold. I checked the sticky newbioe thread and didn't find it too useful except for leaning the different short-forms for in-game terms.

 

[unmerged(4135)]

Hey Newbie

Hey there newbie. Yes, EU can be very complicated; at first youll go MAD. But give it time and youll become an ADDICT. The reason it is so diffficult at first is that you can do almost anything: royal marriages, vassals, alliances, trade agreements, warnings, garantees, you name it, and this is just touching on the political side of it, never mind the economy, inflation, trade, production, taxation, census beli, foreign relations, etc, etc.
But enough with me going on and on, heres my advice to you. Firts of all you said you started with the "napoleonic era", which in my opinion isn´t the place to start. I would suggest the grand campaign,yes you read right. Even though you might think its the most difficult one, its not, its the LONGEST one. The advantage of the grand campaign is that you start at the earliest year (1419), where no real "superpower" has yet developed, and so all countries are, more or less, "starting out"/small so you wont get freaked out either by being overwhelmed by a large country nor by managing a big country yourself.
Start by forging an alliance with, or joining one, with a country that A.Has the same culture as you, and B.Is stronger than you. This way you will be protected in case some smartass neighbour decides he wants to turn you into hes back yard.
From there just experiment, go wild with the menus, go nuts...this is the best way to learn, experimment...and when you have a specific doubt, THEN refer to the manual. After some frustrating experiences youll learn what to do.
A last personal tip, and I say personal tip because some of the other guys in here might say I´m crazy for suggesting this, is to keep the amount that goes into your treasury (your spending money) each month to zero, yes ZERO. This means that youll have to wait for January every year to get your "yearly income" instead of recieving a little every month in addition to your yearly "bonus"; all this, of course, is to keep your inflation at ZERO, which might seem trivial now, but considering youll only be able to reduce your inflation up until about 1650 aprox., youll see how this will be worth it as the years pass when YOU pay $5 for every army unit while your neighbors pay $1000 per unit.
Anyway, I hope all this dribble I just wrote helps you somewhat. As for moving units right click/left click - COME ON!!! Figure it out!

 

[unmerged(9670)]

Well, Im definitely not going to give up on it =)

I'll try a GC then an easy country tonight. Hopefuly I will have some diea what to do by the end of the week Thanks for the reply. Im still pretty lost though heh.

Any other suggestions?

 

[unmerged(3999)]

Once you figure out what all the menus and mouse-clicks do (which usually doesn't take that long), I have one suggestion to help get you thinking about overall strategy.

Check out the AAR (After-Action Report) section of this site. These are people describing their games; it's how I learned how to play - reading what experienced players did, and why. (This was more helpful in the EU1 days, before AARs started getting all artsy-fartsy, with stuff like character and plot. ) Just browse around and find one that looks like a fairly straightforward game description. Good luck... and welcome.

 

[unmerged(7263)]

Originally posted by Carligula
Check out the AAR (After-Action Report) section of this site. These are people describing their games; it's how I learned how to play - reading what experienced players did, and why. (This was more helpful in the EU1 days, before AARs started getting all artsy-fartsy, with stuff like character and plot. ) Just browse around and find one that looks like a fairly straightforward game description. Good luck... and welcome.

I agree with you about the AARs. When I was learning how to play I checked some of the stories to get an idea of what to do but they were mostly devoid of storyline that they weren't much help at all. They were interesting but not much help to the beginning player or someone researching a country to play. Perhaps we should seperate the creative writing AARs from the gameplay informative AARs? The first is for interest and the latter would be for helping people see how a game progresses.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

Originally posted by Anatolia


I agree with you about the AARs. When I was learning how to play I checked some of the stories to get an idea of what to do but they were mostly devoid of storyline that they weren't much help at all. They were interesting but not much help to the beginning player or someone researching a country to play. Perhaps we should seperate the creative writing AARs from the gameplay informative AARs? The first is for interest and the latter would be for helping people see how a game progresses.

The problem with the gameplay informative ones, is that they often get boring both to read and to write (not to mention very, very long - 'and then I arranged a royal marriage' written 18 times within a decade does get repetitive ), unless they are simple log-style, in which they are just boring to read.

(Although ws2_32 did give a dissertation on looting in his Benin AAR, and for WC see the WCfD AAR, though that is for the advanced student who knows the basics by heart)

On the original topic:

1) play one of the larger nations for some time

2) turning on the automerchants

3) Invest in stability whenever it falls below 3 (the best strategy to start with while learning the game, and usually the case later on as well)

4) When not investing in stability, invest in one research area at a time

5) Join or create alliances, declare wars, send gifts to your friends, and arrange royal marriages with everybody you don't expect to end up in wars with, taking in account your current alliance and the animosities of its members.

6) Attempt to colonise somewhere.

7) Remember that you have plenty of time to play in. Building up for a war, for instance, can take several years to raise the armies, arrange a favourable alliance, and preposition your forces,

8) When you run into problems, go to this forum and see if it is covered in one of the FAQs. If it isn't, try using the search function. If you are still unenlightened or just need further explanations, ask away.

9) Actually reading the FAQs now, or at least skimming them, will save you many questions in the long run - but you already did that, come to think of it.

 

[unmerged(9081)]

5) Join or create alliances, declare wars, send gifts to your friends, and arrange royal marriages with everybody you can.

No no no, that arrange royal marriages with everybody you can bit was for 1.04 and below, not the latest version (1.05) as we all know, everytime you "accidentally" goes to war against a nation which you have a royal marriage with, you take a stability hit.
so mostly just marry to your own alliance.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

Originally posted by natt och dag


No no no, that arrange royal marriages with everybody you can bit was for 1.04 and below, not the latest version (1.05) as we all know, everytime you "accidentally" goes to war against a nation which you have a royal marriage with, you take a stability hit.
so mostly just marry to your own alliance.

As a newbie he shouldn't accidentally go to war But ok, you're right. A newbie probably will accidentally go to war. I'll edit the original post.

 

[unmerged(9583)]

As one newbie to another

I've been playing for about three weeks now and over the initial learning curve - which I think is pretty steep.

I would recommend England in Age of Exploration - just play for 50 years or so and take out Ireland, guard Calais and make friends with Scotland. It's fairly self contained and you learn quite a bit.

Also get a few explorers to head over to America.

Play this scenario a few times to get the hang of it (and don't worry too much about the policy sliders to start with - that can wait). Get the hang of placing merchants, making a few alliances, and a few battles.

Post questions here - I've found this a great forum with almost immediate responses, and patient ones, from all members.

Good luck

 

[unmerged(9670)]

Thanks for the replies all!

After work today I'll try to figure some more of this game out =)

 

[unmerged(6668)]

Ethelred's got a good idea. I did the same after buying EU1. Starting in 1492 (that was the GC then), England had a decent navy already on station, and with the exception of Scotland shared no land borders with any potential enemies. So you have time to mess around and can make mistakes and not get killed for it. You can start a war with Scotland and learn the basic military crap, including effects of terrain on attrition and combat. Even if she has allies, just use your navy to keep them away from your shores. When youre done, offer peace and check out all the options there. Make good use of the numerous rollovers!

Then you can try Ireland and learn how to shuttle troops with your fleet, get a feel for revolt risk and how to deal with it, etc. Since playing as England takes alot of the pressure off you, you can improve your provinces as you wish and see the effects that has on revolters, production, tax income, and so on. You dont need to worry about diplomacy so much until youre ready.

Point is you have the time & the relative security to tackle one aspect of the game at a time and then move on to the next when you want. By 50-100 years into the game, you'll be itching to start over and apply everyhting youve mastered. EU really is quite intuitive once you get over that initial learning curve. The beautiful thing is never gets old...

 

[unmerged(9456)]

I just got the game about 2 weeks ago and I'm just starting to "get it!". The best thing I've noticed id that when I play the Grand Campaign, I usually pick Saxony, I just law low for the first 10 years or so, stabilizing my economy and strengthening up my trade income. Then I slowly start to build an army up, but not too large as it gets costly, then every 5 years or so I provoke someone into starting a war with me and I try to annex a province or too, growing slowly, but I was getting alot of victory points.....

 

[Castellon]

You mentioned that you are having trouble with the game mechanics, (moving troops) if this is still the case try playing the tutorial! it can at least help you with this aspect.

 

[unmerged(3408)]

Welcome to the Forum Opyate!

Keep asking questions. That's why everyone shows up, to help.

 

[unmerged(6440)]

For what it's worth:

Start the 1419 Grand campaign, and choose something easy, such as Castile. Do not choose England, Burgundy or France because you will then have to wage a war immediately.

As Castile, go to the Trade screen and set 'autotrading'to on. You can always jump in 200 years later. Using diplomacy, give money to Aragon, next month make a royal marriage, and then try to get them to sign a military pact with you. Spend the rest on the army.
Set monthly allowance to very low or zero, and do not spend evertything you get on January 1 on January 2. When you have enough of an army, attack and conquer Granada. Try to get others into your pact, etc.

An easy way to start is to try to stay out of trouble on the continent and to get some colonies going. Build a sizable army, keep your military pact together and conquer the rest of the world.

By the way, as a beginner I would not hesitate to simply play the same stretch of game a few times in a row: load a saved game, play it with a slightly different strategy, and see what happens.


Good luck!

 

[unmerged(7991)]

Originally posted by Opyate
Bought the game yesterday (exchanged it for Legion actually, found that one dissapointingly simple). Never played EUI so Im a complete newb.

I just went through all the tutorials and started a game in the napoleon era and am completely lost. I cant even seem to get armies to move into friendly areas (I left-click the army, right click on the province but they don't move). I'm making negative money (Im england) and Im trying to figure out what the first step should be? In any scenario, I mean in general.. how should I get into this game? It just seems so overwhelmingly complicated =(

How do I get a foothold? Any advice at all would be appreciated. I checked the faq and newb sections but they tend to deal with specific issues, Im just trying to get a general foothold. I checked the sticky newbioe thread and didn't find it too useful except for leaning the different short-forms for in-game terms.

hehe try the tutorial maybe? that covers the obvious part of the game
btw when you say "friendly" province do you just want to move your army into a any foreign province? say as england move them into castille? i dont think castilians would like that very much

 

[Cat Lord]

I have started w/ France, 1492 scenario (Age of Exploration).

It is a very powerful country, easy to play with, and interesting because there is loads of events.

I am still in my first game, but I have made a few try w/ other small countries w/ various different level of difficulty to give it a go.

You'll make LOT of mistake, but being a major colonial power is very forgiving. Don't be afraid though, I personnaly continue to make some and I am know in 1700~something [the last dummy ones: flooding three minor vassals w/ money for years and wondering why I cannot diplo-annex them, when they were not part of my alliance ]

Play for a while, get back to the forum, read the manual while commuting, etc, etc...

Have fun...

Cat