"Oldie-newbie" needs startup help

[glen55]

I'm a noob with EU3, but an "oldie" too because I played a tremendous amount of EU and a fair bit of EU2 and EU Rome.

I actually purchased EU3 a couple of years ago, and also purchased a couple of expansions, but never played more than an hour or two. Yesterday I decided to finally make the move and seriously drop in on the game, and prior to doing so I went ahead and bought HTTT and DW. All this to explain why I have a bunch of separate expansions but not Complete or Chronicles.

Everything is working fine, but I am seriously confused by the manual and interface. Is there a single manual that covers everything? I looked at the HTTT and DW manuals and they seem to cover changes, not the entire system.

But either the original EU3 manual is outdated and not really worth referring to any more, or I am having serious brain cramps, because I can't really even get started.

For example:

Just trying to build something in a province. I go to the manual and there is a nice picture of a city on the left of a province, and references to 3 big buttons at the bottom, the left of which takes you to the province build screen. Well . . . ??? When I click on a province I get the build screen, no picture of a city, no 3 big buttons, and I have gone over that interface with a fine-toothed comb (I think--go ahead and tell me the obvious thing I missed) and don't see any way to get to the picture of a city. Or the 3 big buttons. And it doesn't even appear to work as a build screen. I click on a build choice, and nothing happens.

Then I find this screen to recruit great men. It tells me they cost "cultural tradition." ??? The word "cultural" isn't in the manual PDF file. Far as I can tell, great men are fantastic, and they're free. ??? (Seems I'm missing something.)

In the past, I frankly haven't found Paradox manuals to be all that enlightening, so I am hesitant to undertake the task of reading 5 separate manuals to piece a puzzle together if the puzzle still won't make a picture.

So is there a consolidated manual, or am I just being stupid, or can anyone in any way help me get going?

 

[springel]

I felt exactly the same. Very confused by reading those manuals with content that was obsolete.

I even bought EU3 Complete (after having started with Chronicles) to start with a simpler version.
I played a couple of decades with France with this simpler system, until I started to understand this old system, and discovered the advantages of the new expansions.

Then I switched back to Chronicles, but I think I should have been able to save on those 15 EURO's by having had a good manual.

I still didn't touch colonisation, religion, HRE and the subtleties of trade (except for sending merchants to my own COT); I hope will learn about that later with different countries.

 

[unmerged(80402)]

Well manual does not covers everything, but there is EU3 Wiki

I learn't a lot of this.

But some things, you need to discover yourself. Research thru net and game files, mod forums and AAR's, old threads and multiplayer games.

And you just need to learn some things.

 

[glen55]

OK, I can accept that I have to do a bunch of independent research and play-testing to learn the finer points, but I can't even build anything! So I really don't see how I can even start. I looked at the beginner's guides on the wiki before I ever posted, but they don't cover game mechanics such as the questions in my OP.

 

[unmerged(80402)]

Well the manual is outdated, now instead of city screen, you got buildings menu. And cultural tradition is needed to spawn advisors(some of them also need army tradition or naval tradition). It is increased by cultural decisions, and some events.

 

[Killerflood]

OK, I can accept that I have to do a bunch of independent research and play-testing to learn the finer points, but I can't even build anything! So I really don't see how I can even start. I looked at the beginner's guides on the wiki before I ever posted, but they don't cover game mechanics such as the questions in my OP.

Yeah, the building screen got changed with DW.

Its like the old games where you have to wait for certain tech level to be able to build but it now has a new interface. If you click one or your provinces, there's a menu to the left that should show some pics that look like buildings. Whatever is grayed out can't be built. You just click on a non-grayed/built building and then click "yes" on the pop up that comes up.

You can do that or go up to the pop ups on the top of the screen and there should be an icon of something with ?tools? and click that. That goes to the ledger which will show what buildings in which provinces can be built.

 

[glen55]

Thanks, killerflood. For some reason I am not getting that popup. There must be some kind of tech issue, and hopefully I can figure that out now that I know I am supposed to be getting a popup. I was clicking on the non-grayed-out buildings and nothing was happening at all.

Funny, though, I just noticed I'm getting other types of popups just fine.

But so I guess the answer is to read all 5 manuals, and keep track myself of what changed? (shudder)

 

[Andy 1984]

Thanks, killerflood. For some reason I am not getting that popup. There must be some kind of tech issue, and hopefully I can figure that out now that I know I am supposed to be getting a popup. I was clicking on the non-grayed-out buildings and nothing was happening at all.

Funny, though, I just noticed I'm getting other types of popups just fine.

But so I guess the answer is to read all 5 manuals, and keep track myself of what changed? (shudder)

Non-greyed out buildings could be buildings that are already present in your cities. Those buildings have green-lines beneath them. Buildings with red lines beneath them cannot be built at the moment. Buildings with grey lines beneath them can be build. Click on the building to initiate their construction. And buildings with yellow lines beneath them are being constructed at the moment.

Reasons why you may not be able to construct anything:
- you may lack magistrates and/or money. If this is the case, there won't be a "tools" pop-up in the upper part of your screen. Your number of magistrates can be found at the top of your screens. It's one of those little heads showing next to missionaries, spies and a few others.

I personally wouldn't suggest reading five manuals. Just give things a try with an easy game once you know how to build buildings and troops, once you figured out how to do basic things (like in previous games)... and then move on to a more serious EU3-campaign.

Enjoy. It's very much worth it.

 

[glen55]

Thanks, Andy. I was just coming to the conclusion that it was because I already had the buildings, and I had noticed in some online images I saw that some buildings had green lines under them and some did not.

The game looks deep, but I am not charmed so far. I have spent my entire Saturday morning just figuring out how to build, and even yet this province building interface is opaque to me. Things like what the little numbers in circles mean, and the cost of buildings is not covered in the manual so far as I can see, and is not in a tooltip. (I did see in the Divine Wind manual that I have to have a magistrate, and I do have one.)

I presumed I would have to play a good bit to really understand the game, but I also expected that when I needed discrete bits of info such as how to build I would be able to locate the info in the manual, in a tooltip, in the interface, in the wiki, on youtube, or somewhere. I mean, surely Paradox must've explained the revamed DW province interface somewhere, right?

I'll go ahead and plunge in now, but my patience reserve is not what it was earlier.

Thanks to all for the tips and suggestions you've offered.

 

[Andy 1984]

Hover with your mouse over the not-built buildings, and you'll see what they cost and which effects they have. Should that not work, try here for a first impression. (Some of the building's effects might have changed in later patches though.) http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?510535-Divine-Wind-Buildings-Guide

On the "little numbers in circles": They're the level of that building-tree you've constructed. Each building-tree has six buildings in them. There are several building-trees: governement, production, trade, land, naval and forts. You can only build a higher level in a building-tree if you have the previous levels completed.

e.g.: You have a province with lvl1 gov-building and lvl0 prod-building. You have all the technology-, magistrate- and money-requirements for building lvl2-buildings. Then you can only build the lvl2 building in governement and the lvl1 building in production, because you don't have the lvl1-building in production yet. If you were to build the second governement building, the effects of the first building will not be lost.

 

[brifbates]

Simple answer to the buildings thing-all buildings require tech 4 or higher except for forts. Generally, all of your provinces start the game with every building you can currently build already built (in the GC at least), some even have bonus buildings to reflect historical places. This means it may well take a while for there to be any buildings to be built. The number in circle in the building section is the current level of structure so for example if you have a church in your province then the government section will have a 1.

In particular, looking at the building section of the province display:

1) if the bar below a building picture is red you are unable to build that building in that province (mouse over the building picture and there will be a pop-up with the building info including red indicators of why you can't build it-tech level, landlocked province, missing pre-requisite building, etc)

2) if the bar below a building picture is grey you are able to build the building as long as you have the funding and a magistrate available. The pop-up gives the building information (description + effect), cost information, and buildtime required

3) if the bar below a building picture is green the building is already present in the province and the pop-up gives the description and effect information only

Cultural tradition was added in Heir to the Throne as a way to allow the player to generate a particular type of adviser when desired (no more being unable to ever find a statesman when you need one for a decision). Recruiting a particular type of adviser costs a portion of your current tradition (cultural, army, and/or naval) listed as a percentage in the pop-up (which also explains what benefit they give per star). The resulting adviser's level (1-6 star) is somewhat randomly determined by the cost. For example, recruiting a master of mint adviser costs 20% of your current cultural tradion but no army or navy tradition. Doing so places a new adviser in the pool of available to hire advisers (you still have to pay hiring costs).

I personally would recommend browsing through the IN, HttT, and DW manuals (ignore the Ming and Japan sections of DW if you aren't interested in playing them). A lot of the actual interface "how-to" stuff from the original is just flat out outdated but most of the changes, as well as the systems that really changed from EU/EU2 days were changed in those 3 expansions.

Finally, when in doubt about anything, just mouseover and read the tooltips-they will really teach you a lot about what is going on in the game.

 

[idont]

I agree that Paradox does quite a poor job in providing some up to date manual for the whole game. They seem to assume that everybody buys every expansion as soon as it comes out, and so gets to learn the changes slowly.
I found that the best overview of changes are the dev diaries. Those go over all important changes, and are pretty short. Here's the one for the new building interface.

Some people already tried to explain the new interface, but just to note, you should get a fairly useful tooltip when you mouse over a building, telling you how much a building costs, what it does, and what you need to build it:

 

[glen55]

Great info here. Consistent with previous EUs that I just can't build anything yet. And I realize I was only hovering my mouse over the non-grayed out ones, which is why I was not seeing a cost. I will definitely look at the dev diaries when I have more questions.

Thanks to everybody. I am up and playing, and having some fun.

 

[unmerged(397168)]

Have you played the tutorial? It's actually quite helpful.

 

[unmerged(25273)]

Although I have to agree that Paradox does not provide a concise manual for the whole game in progress but they do cover the changes introduced in add-ons in the respective manuals and a lot is in the developers diaries. You always get a load of information via tooltips. And if these or the wiki do not help you can always ask here in the forum and you will get explanations and useful information.
But the game is very deep indeed and has developed tremendously since the days of EU I as you know. I am not aware of another game developer/publisher offering such a lot of little game enhancements and fine-tuning alterations alongside bugfixes in patches. And they do it in response to the gaming community here in the forum. Personally, I can live very well with the way it is done. If they rewrote the manual to reflect all the changes in add-ons and patches, which would only be feasable in an online document and not a printed hardcopy, we would have to pay more for the add-ons and possibly have less anhancements in the patches which come free.

Do make a point of registering your add-ons as registering gives you access to some parts of the forum that you won't have otherwise.

 

[gela1212]

Since you most likely know a lot about army management from EU:R (not sure how similar it is to EU and EU2 since they were on a different engine) I don't think you need real like super "basic" advice.

However, there's a link to a guide in my signature (sorry for the plug but it's relevant!) that covers a lot of finer points for people new to DW and/or EU3. There's a lot of helpful information in the comments in that particular thread as well.