Paradox Interactive EUROPA UNIVERSALIS 3 User Manual

Download

Paradox Interactive

President and CEO: Theodore Bergqvist. Producer: Johan Andersson. Game Design : Johan Andersson.

Lead Programmer: Adam Skoglund. Programming : Thomas Johansson, Pontus Åberg, Anna Drevendal, Johan

Andersson. Lead Ar tist : Marcus Edström. 3D A rtis t: Dick Sjöström. Nikitova Tutorial: Marcus Edström.

Original Music & Sound Effects: Andreas Waldetoft. Lead Tester: Chris King.

Sales & Acquisitions: Fredrik Wester. CFO: Lena Eriksson. Marketing and PR Director: Susana Meza.

Marketing Assistant: Keisha Salmon. Pr oduct M anager : Jeanette Bauer. Art Director: Stefan Thulin.

Business Developer: Erik Helmfridsson. Localiz ation Responsible: Florian Santer. Localization: S&H

Enter tainment Localization. Manual: Chris Stone. Strategy Guide: Ed Hanks. Editing: Robbie Graham, Digital

Wordsmithing. Web: Brian King, Simon Aistleitner, Jean-Philippe Duflot. Intro movie: Stuart Diamond, Russ Allen.

Beta Testers: Frank van Aanholt, Tom Adriaenssen, Jose Maria Aguirre, Simon Aistleitner, Markus Alahuhta,

Guillaume Alvarez, Mike Amberry, Gustav Björklund, Loic Brient, Thomas Broman, Joe Chandler, Thomas Corriol,

Luis Miguel Nunes Corujo, Tony Cristanelli, Inge Davidsen, Maarten Demeyer, David DiCicco, Jan Peter Dijkstra,

Jean-Philippe Duflot, Peter Ebbesen, Aric Ferrell, Wesley Ferris, Alexander John Fowler, Michael Girard, Stephen

Gregson, Jean-Alain Grunchec, Ed Hanks, Markus Herrmann, Jeremy Holley, Kalle Isotalo, Robert Jackson,

Simon Jäger, Nils Karlsson, Tamas Kiss, Mark Kvistgaard Thomsen, Paul Lancashire, Tony Lozina, Jacob Michael

Lundgren, Rajeev D. Majumdar, Nicholas Malouin, Carsten Mannetje, Thomas Mittelbach, Fokke van der Molen, Robert O’Regan, Anu Pakanati, Maxime Penen, Kevin Peter, Thomas Pettersen, Pent Ploompuu, Derek Pullem,

Ludovic Russo, Kevin Simmons, Jason Snyder, Jarkko Suvinen, Kevyn Taylor, Sascha Tesch, Lars Thomsen,

Douglas Troiani, Jens Van Heuverswijn, Patrick Wegerle, Gene Whitmore, Mark Williams, Emre Yigit

Partners

USA : Ezra Chen. Germany, Aus tria and Switzerland : Mario Gerhold, Susanna Mittermaier. UK: Jo Kemp, Simon Callaghan. Italy: Daniele Falcone, Tania Rossia. S candinavia: Niklas Molin, Daniel Torbjörnsson, Klas

Palmqvist. France : Eric Boccara, Geraldine Morisse, Iris Cathala, Caroline Ferrier. Benelux: Johan Dewindt,

Wouter Van Vugt, Simone Goudsmit. Spain: Juan Diaz Bustamante. Poland: Rafal Korytkowski, Joanna

Zebrowska-Kepka, Mariusz Szlanta. Australia: Ashwin Segkar, Graham Edelsten, Paul Olsen. Russia : Sergei

Klimov, Pavel Nechaev. Japan: Shinya Itoh. Hong Kong: Michelle Ho.

Thanks to our partners THQ/Valusoft ( USA), Snowball (Russia), Friendware

(Spain), Cenega (Poland) , Koch Media (UK, Germany, Italy, France), Pan Vision (Scandinavia), Cyberfront (Japan),

Typhonngames ( Hong Kong), Auran (Australia) and Atari (Benelux)

Special thanks to all our forum members, partners and supporters,

who are integral for our success.

FORZA DJURGÅR’N!

INT RODU CTI ON 6

Overview 6 For New Players

Your First Game

6 The Game Manual and the Paradox Forums

For Veterans of the Europa Universalis Series

GET TING STARTED

Installation 8

System Requirement s

8 Installing EU3

Launching the Game

Main Game Menu

Game Options

9 Game Options

9 Video Options 1

0 Audio Options 1

0 Controls 10 Settings.txt 11

Tutorials 11 Star ting a Game 1

2 New Single Player Games 1

2 Selecting a Star ting Date and Country 1

Using Bookmarks 1

The Date Selector 1

3 Loading a Saved Single Player Game 1

4 Star ting a New or Saved Multi-Player Game 1

THE M AIN I NTE RFAC E 1

The Main Map 1

5 Navigating the Main Map 1

7 The Mini Map 1

The Top Bar 1

Special Menus Toolbar 2

0 Holy See Button 2

0 Holy Roman Empire Button 2

0 Menu But ton 2

0 Ledger Button 2

1 Map Mode B uttons 2

1 Map Zoom Buttons: 2

Domestic Interface 2

Province-Related Interfaces 2

2 Province Interface 2

2 Diplomatic Interface 2

3 Colonization Interface 2

Map Units 2

Messages and the History Log 2

3 Histor y Log 2

4 Message W indows 2

4 Floating Messages 2

4 Message S ettings 2

Events 25

Alert s 25 Diplomatic Messages 2

The Outliner 2

Tool Tips 2

PROVINCE MAN AGEMENT 2

8 Overview 28 Province O wnership and Control 2

8 Province Interface 2

9 Provincial Summary 2

Province Details 2

Province Religion and C onversions 3

Province Income 3

Province Trade 3

2 Core Provinces and Provincial Claims 3

2 Province Improvements 3

City View 3

Building New Improvements 3

4 Militar y Recruitment 3

4 Other Countries’ Provinces 3

5 Unoccupied Provinces 3

DOME STIC MAN AGEMENT 3

6 Overview 36 Domestic Overview 3

National Culture 3

National Prestige 3

National Ranking 3

Special Political B odies 3

National Religion 3

Reputation 38 Diplomatic Summary 3

Relations 39 Create Vassal 4

0 Domestic Court 4

Rulers 41

Ruler Attributes 4

Ruler Succession 4

Advisors 43 Hiring and Firing Advisors 4

4 Domestic Economy 4

Income Summary 4

Budget Allocation Sliders 4

Technology Investment 4

Stability Investment 4

Treasury Investment 4

Fixed Expenses 4

Monthly B udget Balance 4

Inflation 4 8 Loans 49 Bankruptcy 50 War Taxes 5

0 Domestic Militar y 5

Unit Categories and Types 5

Preferred Unit Type 5

Changing Your Preferred Regiment

Type 52 Army/Naval Maintenance 5

Domestic Religion 5

World Religions 5

Realm Religion 5

Religious Tolerance 5

5 Religious Tolerance’s Effect on Province Revolt Risk 5

6 Religious Tolerance’s Effect on Population Growth 5

6 Religious Tolerance’s Effect on Countr y Relationships 5

Conver ting Religion 5

Defender of the Faith 5

Domestic Government 5

Form of Government 5

Changing Your Form of Government 59 National Ideas 5

Domestic Policies 6

Domestic Leaders 6

Militar y Tradition 6

Militar y Leaders 6

Recruiting new Leaders 6

Conver ting a Ruler to a Leader 6

Leader Listing 6

TRADE 66

Overview 66 Trade Goods 6

Supply and Demand 6

Centers of Trade 6

Merchant Interface 6

Competition 68 Monopolies 69 Trade Disruption 6

DIPLOMACY, WAR, AND ESPIO NAGE 7

Overview 70 The Diplomatic Interface 7

General Information 7

Initiating Diplomacy 7

Diplomatic Actions 7

Offer Royal Marriage/ Break Royal Ties 7

Offer A lliance /Dissolve A lliance 7

Issue Embargo/Revoke Embargo 7

Offer Trade A greement / Cancel Trade Agreement 7

Offer Vassalisation/ Cancel Vassalisation 75 Demand Annexation 7

Proclaim Guarantee 7

Send Warning 7

Send Insult 7

Claim Throne 7

Send Gif t 76 Sell Province 7

7 Send War Subsidies / Revoke Subsidies 7

7 Offer Loan 7

7 Request Military Access /Give Militar y Access /Revoke Military Access 7

Declaring War 7

8 Restrictions Prohibiting a Declaration of War 7

8 National Stability Effects 7

9 War Exhaustion Effects 7

9 Reputation Effects 8

0 Alliance C onsiderations 8

0 Declaring War 8

0 Allies and A lliance Leaders 8

Peace Negotiations 8

1 Negotiating Peace with Alliances 8

1 War Score 8

2 Peace Of fers 8

Annex 83 Demand Tribute 8

Offer W hite Peace 8

Offer Tribute 8

3 Preparing the Terms of a Peace Of fer 8

Province Terms 8

Core Terms 8

Vassal Terms 8

New Nations Terms 8

Special Terms 8

6 Sending the Peace Of fer 8

7 Receiving a Peace Of fer 8

7 Peace 87

Espionage 87

Espionage Modifiers 8

8 Spy Actions 8

Incite Troop Desertions 8

Assassinate Advisor 8

Sabotage Reputation 8

Incite Against the Merchants 8

Spy Ring Infiltration 9

Suppor t Revolt 9

Commission Privateer. 9

THE MILITARY 9

Overview 91 Structure of the Military 9

1 Regiment Types 9

Infantr y Regiments 9

Cavalry Regiments 9

Artillery Regiments 9

2 Ship Types 9

Transport s 92 Galleys 93

Light Ships 9

Big Ships 9

Unit Types 9

Recruiting Land Forces 9

Mercenaries 95

Army Information 9

Army Organisation 9

Assigning Army Leaders 9

Recruiting a New Leader 9

Army Basics 9

8 Maintenance and Maximum Suppor table Troops 9

8 Attrition 99 Army Reinforcement 10

0 Army Morale 10

0 Moving an A rmy 10

0 Paths 101 Movement Restrictions 10

1 Movement Speed 10

Land Combat 10

2 Overview 102 Taking the Field 10

2 Combat Resolution 10

Fire and Shock Phases 10

Regiment Combat Characteristics 104 Die Rolls 10

Leader Combat Attributes 10

Terrain Modifiers 10

River-Crossing Modifier 10

Making an Attack 10

Calculating Casualty Damage 10

Calculating Morale Damage 10

Leadership Casualties 10

End of Day “H ousekeeping” 10

7 End of Combat 10

7 Retreat 107

Sieges 108

Capturing Provinces 10

Naval Forces 11

Recruitment of Naval F orces 11

0 Fleet Information and Organisation 111 Admirals 112

Using Naval Forces 11

2 Naval Attrition 11

3 Naval Repair 11

Naval Combat 11

3 Positioning 113 Targeting 113 Damage 114 End of Bat tle 11

4 Naval Retreat 11

4 Naval Blockades 11

Naval Transport of Armies 11

EXPLOR ATION AND COLONIZATION 11

7 Overview 117 Exploring 117

Explorers and Conquistadors 11

Exploring Provinces 11

Land and Naval Tradition from Exploring 119

Natives 119

Attacking Natives 11

9 Colonies 120

Establishing a Colony 12

Expanding a Colony 12

Colonial Limitations 12

1 Colonial Conquest 12

1 Gaining Maps from Other Nations 12

SPEC IAL P OLI TICAL BODIES 12

2 Overview 122 The Holy See 12

2 The Holy Roman Emperor 12

The Emperor 12

Member States 12

Elector s 125 Becoming the Holy Roman Emperor 12

War With the Empire 12

LEDG ER 127 MULTI PL AYER 129

Star ting a Multi-Player Game 12

Preliminar y Requirements 12

Connection Types 12

Host 130 Join LAN Game 13

Join Internet Game 13

Metaserver 130

The Multiplayer Lobby 13

The Metaserver 13

1 Multiplayer Gameplay 13

2 Ending a Multiplayer Game 13

3 Where to Find Other Players 13

APPENDI CES 134

Appendix A New and Changed Feature List 13

4 Appendix B Province Improvements 13

6 Appendix C - Cultures 13

9 Appendix D Technology Modifiers 14

0 Appendix E - Religions 14

0 Appendix F Forms of Government 14

2 Appendix G - National Ideas 14

4 Appendix H - Domestic Policies 14

6 Appendix I - Trade Goods 14

INTRODUCTION

Overview

Europa Universalis III is a grand strategy game

set during the Renaissance and Reformation periods of history. You will select one of more than 200 countries that existed in the world during this time, and attempt to guide it through more than 300 years of diplomacy, warfare, trade, religious turmoil, scientific development, exploration, and colonization.

The game begins just after the fall of Constantinople in May 1453, and is played in continuous time until its conclusion in December

1789. As the days pass, you will devote most of your efforts to looking after the domestic needs of your country, negotiating with your neigh-

bours, and conducting wars of self-defence or

conquest.

Each country begins the game owning one

or more “provinces”. A province is the essential

building block of a nation; contributing vital tax and trade income to drive its economy, and supplying much-needed manpower for use in its military. The more provinces your country owns, the more powerful you will be. If you lose your last province, your country will be eliminated and you will lose the game.

There are areas of the globe where you may find provinces that are unoccupied and available for colonisation; however, the majority of the world’s provinces will already belong to other countries, and to increase your power, you must find ways to obtain them. Although it is possible to achieve this through diplomatic means, you are far more likely to extend your power by waging war. Expansion and conquest are the goals of most nations, thus creating a very volatile and potentially dangerous geo-political environment in the game. It is your goal to see to the needs of your country, to prevent your enemies from taking what is rightfully yours, and to expand your nation through diplomacy or war.

At its heart, Europa Universalis III is a game that allows you to explore an infinite range of

possible “what if” scenarios within a complex, flexible, context-sensitive historical environment. Do not expect the history you learned at school to repeat itself on your computer screen. Instead, you will begin with an accurate historical set-up and then have complete freedom to chart your own course through time. As the game world begins to deviate from history, Eu- ropa Universalis III ’s underlying engine will evaluate these changing conditions and then direct countries to react to them as their historical counterparts might have done. Nations may rise or fall, unexpectedly, based entirely on the interactions they have with one another and on the outcome of events as they unfold.

The game ends in the late 19th century when some of the most powerful nations of the world had already begun their transition into the next major period of history: the Industrial Revolution. Traditional ideas of “country” and

“realm” would be replaced with a new vision of

the “Nation-State”, and society would undergo radical revolutions spurred on by rapid advances in science, technology, and the art of war. If you have been attentive to the needs of your country and successful in your ventures, you may find yourself at a similar crossroads when the game comes to its conclusion.

Europa Universalis III maintains a ranking for each country in the world, and the “winner” is nominally the country with the highest ranking at the end of the game. You may prefer to set your own arbitrary goals, using a measure of victory that is based on the country you are controlling and the style of play you enjoy. For small countries, merely surviving until the end can be considered a victory. When playing a large and wealthy nation, you might set more lofty goals of continental hegemony or even try setting your sights on world domination.

For New Players

Your First Game

If you are new to the Europa Universalis series, you may find the complexity, scale, and sheer

range of possibilities somewhat daunting when you first start to play. You might want to begin

by doing the series of tutorials which will introduce you to the most important aspects of the game; then pick a date and country that interests you and practice what you’ve learned.

Beginners often make the mistake of trying to achieve too much, too rapidly. We would recommend that you set yourself some modest goals for your first game, and take things slowly. Begin by focussing your attention on staying relatively peaceful, conducting some research, and gradually building up your country’s economy. You may also wish to expand your army to ensure your country’s defence, and dispatch diplomats to help maintain friendly relations with your neighbours. Unless your country is very wealthy, you will probably want to send merchants out to supplement your income with trade revenue. If it’s appropriate for the country you have chosen, you could also try your hand at exploration and colonization.

Once you’re comfortable with the basic interfaces and controls, consider getting involved in a small-scale war or two. For your first war, try to find an opponent that will be fairly easy to defeat. You should try to avoid early confrontations with nations that are large, or that have powerful allies, even if this means that you have to buy your way out of the war or give up a bit of territory in surrender. By engaging a major nation, you could easily find yourself in over your head if you aren’t prepared for the onslaught.

Once you’re comfortable with controlling your armies and fleets, try tackling a more dangerous opponent, and don’t worry too much if the war does not end in your favor. You can learn as much from a colossal defeat as you would through any number of smaller victories. A word of warning: do not try to expand your realm too rapidly or allow your country’s reputation to become too tarnished. If you are too aggressive or underhanded, you could easily find yourself at war with much of the rest of the known world.

The Game Manual and the Paradox Forums

This manual contains a detailed and complete explanation of each of Europa Universalis III’s interfaces and features, as well as general tips that help you to see how each of these fits together in the overall context of play. Everything in the game is inter-related. Everything! There is virtually nothing that you do that won’t have some sort of impact on something else. Learning these relationships and using them to your advantage is what will eventually make you a master.

When in doubt, pause your game and refer to the manual. For specific issues that you may encounter, or questions that might not

be answered in enough detail for your needs, you may want to visit the Europa Universalis III public forums. It’s a friendly community of many thousands of players from around the world who would be happy to help you. It is also the place to check for any official patches to the game which will fix any bugs that are discovered after release, and may also include new or revised features. The Europa Universa-

lis III forums can be found by going to www. europauniversalis3.com and clicking on the

“forums” link.

For Veterans of the Europa Universalis Series

If you are a veteran of the series, we have provided a general overview of the major changes and new features introduced in Europa Univer- salis III which may be found in Appendix A at the back of this manual. You should find most aspects of the game fairly familiar, and we have made every attempt to ensure that all of the game’s new interfaces are as easy and intuitive to understand as possible. Even so, you might find some valuable information tucked away within these pages, so we urge you to read on.

GETTING STARTED

Installation

System Requirements

To play Europa Universalis III, your computer should meet or exceed all of the following system requirements:

• 1.9GHz Intel Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon processor or equivalent with 512MB RAM (1.0GB RAM is highly recommended).

• 128MB Video Card with Hardware T&L and support for Pixelshader 2.0 or better.

• DirectX7 compatible sound card

• CD-ROM drive

• Windows-compatible mouse. Mouse with scroll wheel highly recommended.

• At least 1GB of free hard drive space to ac

commodate game files and saved games. This does not include any space used by the Windows® swap file.

• DirectX9.0c

• High-speed Modem connection is required for multiplayer games.

• Windows® 2000 (with Service pack 1 or higher) or Windows® XP (Home/Professional/Media Edition) with Service Pack

Installing EU3

Place the Europa Universalis III CD into your CD-

ROM drive. If auto-play is enabled on this drive, the installation will begin automatically. If autoplay is disabled, use Windows Explorer to navigate to your CD-ROM drive and double-click the set- up.exe file in the CD’s root directory. Simply follow the on-screen directions to install the game to your computer. By default, EU3 is placed in a

new directory on your C drive and a shortcut will be added to both your desktop and your start menu. You may change these options if you prefer to install it to a different location.

Launching the Game

After installing Europa Universalis III, launch

the game by clicking on the shortcut on your desktop or start menu. If you choose not to install shortcuts, use Windows Explorer to navigate to the directory you specified during the installation process and click on the eu3.exe file. You can also place the CD in your drive to launch the game automatically, although it is not necessary for the CD to be in the drive in order to play.

You will see an initial menu that offers several options. You can choose to launch the game, visit our community forums, check to see if there is a new update for your game, or register the game if you have not yet done so. We periodically release patches for all of our games to correct any minor bugs that might have been discovered since release. These often offer additional performance or feature enhancements that will make the game even more interesting and challenging to play. Click on the link in the loader to see if there’s a new update avail-

able for download.

Once you have chosen

the option to play Europa

Universalis III, the game

will require a short while to complete its initial loading procedure. You will see a progress bar on the screen as the game loads, after which the Main Game Menu will be displayed.

Main Game Menu

The Main Game Menu offers a series of options, allowing you to choose a single or multiplayer game, to launch the game’s tutorials, or to alter any of the game’s main options. You can also view the game credits to see all of the people involved in the production of Europa Universalis III.

• Single Player:

Allows you to start a new single-player game or load an existing saved game.

• Multi Player:

Used to host or join a multi-

player game.

• Tutorial:

Launches a series of instructional tutorials that familiarise you with the basics of play.

• Options:

Allows you to change the game’s default graphics, sound, and game play settings.

• Credits:

Displays a list of the people who helped to design, produce, and test Europa Universalis III.

• Exit:

Click this button to exit the game and

return to your Windows desktop.

Game Options

Click the “Options” button of the Main Game menu to change any of the game’s default settings. Each tab at the top of the interface allows you to adjust a type of option: game play, video, audio, or controls. After making your changes, click the “apply” button at the bottom of the menu to save these and return to the main menu; click the

“back” button at any time

to abort. Many of these settings can also be changed

during play by accessing the “Options” menu from within the game. Please note that most changes to the graphical options will not take effect until you exit and reload the game.

Game Options

• Difficulty: You can change the overall difficulty of the game to make it somewhat more (or less) challenging than normal. Lower difficulty settings will reduce some of the game’s variables to give you an extra advantage over computer-controlled countries. Higher settings will make it more difficult to manage your realm and will make the AI harder to defeat. “Normal” places the player and AI at an equal advantage, and is the setting we use when establishing overall game balance.

• Auto-Save Frequency:

You may allow Europa Universalis III to automatically save your game every month, six months, year, or five years of elapsed game time; or you can select “never” to disable this feature.

When enabled, the game will automatically

be saved with the frequency you have set.

You will see a saved game named “autosave” and a

second one named “old au-

tosave” in your saved game

folder. This allows you to resume a game from either of the two most recent auto-save points. Enabling auto-save can be handy for trying different strategies, or to recover a game that

has been accidentally interrupted. Of course, you can also manually save a game at any time you wish; there

is no limit to the number of saves that you may have

stored for later use.

Video Options

Important: Graphical options are loaded into memory during the initial launch process, so any changes you make to these settings will not take effect until you have exited and restarted the game.

• Resolution:

Use this control to change the game’s video resolution to one of many supported resolutions, including 1024x768 and higher. The default value is determined

by your current desktop resolution. If your monitor’s resolution is not listed for any reason, you can manually edit the settings.txt file in the EU3 root directory to provide any resolution that is 1024 x 768 or higher. We do not recommend extremely high resolutions on smaller monitors as this may make some of the in-game text and controls too small to use effectively. You must exit and restart the game before any changes will be applied.

• Screen Refresh Rate:

Use this control to adjust the screen refresh rate from the default value determined by your desktop settings. Warning: an incorrect setting can cause damage to your monitor. Please refer to the user manual for your monitor before changing the default screen refresh setting.

• Gamma:

This slider adjusts the overall contrast level of the game’s graphics. For most systems, the middle position should provide excellent crispness and contrast. Shifting the slider to the left will reduce contrast, and shifting it to the right will increase contrast.

• Multisampling:

Use this control to set the level of multisampling (also commonly called anti-aliasing) used to display graphics in the game. Higher levels will produce a more pleasing visual image, but will also cause a slight reduction in game performance.

• Shadows:

Enabling shadows for objects that are displayed on the main game map will reduce the overall performance of the game very slightly, and is not necessary for

play. Enabling shadows will provide a more appealing overall image.

• Trees:

If your system is very close to the minimum game specifications, you may be able to improve your game’s speed and performance by turning off trees. You should only disable this feature if you have a very low-performance graphics card since terrain plays a very important role in movement and combat. You should first try reducing the anti-aliasing level and disable

both the decorative map info and shadows before you resort to turning off the trees.

• Decorative Map Info:

There are a number of small, decorative objects that are added to the main game map to enhance the overall visual appeal. These do not have any effect on play and can be turned off to gain a slight boost in game performance.

Audio Options

• Master Volume: This slider adjusts the overall volume of all game music and audio effects. This setting only affects the game volume and will not change your audio card’s master volume used for other system sounds.

• Effects Volume:

Use this slider to adjust the volume of any special sound effects that are played in the game. This includes interface sounds, and ambient sounds such as combat effects, naval environment effects, and other sound cues.

• Music Volume:

The original score of Europa Universalis III is designed to complement game play and will change depending on the events that are occurring in the game. You may use this slider to adjust the music volume, but you may lose some special audio cues if it is completely disabled.

Controls

• Scroll Speed: This slider adjusts the speed that the game’s main map will move when scrolling. If you find that the map is scrolling too quickly and is difficult to control, or

if you find the movement somewhat jerky, try lowering this setting.

• Zoom Speed:

This slider affects the rate that the map will zoom in and out as you roll your mouse’s scroll wheel (if your mouse has one). If you find it difficult to obtain the zoom level you desire, try using a slightly lower setting.

• Mouse Speed:

This slider adjusts the speed that the in-game pointer moves as you move your mouse. If you find it hard to accurately click on items, try a slower setting to improve your pointer control.

Settings.txt

All of the main game settings are stored in the settings.txt file located in the root folder of your EU3 installation. You can open this file with any basic text editor (e.g. “Notepad” that is included with all Windows™ installations) and manually adjust any of the above settings. You can also use this to set a screen resolution that your monitor supports which may not be included as a standard resolution in the game.

We do not recommend any resolution below 1024 x 768 as this will cause some menus and interfaces to merge or conflict with one another. You can also force the game to play in Windowed mode by changing the line “windowed = no” to “windowed = yes”; although windowed mode is not officially supported and may cause performance loss, visual issues, or crashes with some systems.

Tutorials

Click the “Tutorials” button in the Main Game menu to access Europa Universalis III’s series of tutorials. These are designed to quickly introduce you to the basics of play and to give you essential knowledge that you are likely to need when you begin your first campaign. Each tutorial will teach you critical things about your country’s domestic needs or military power that will affect your ability to survive in the game. Complete mastery of Europa Universalis III may take many, many hours of play, so do not be disheartened if your first attempts are less successful than you might have envisioned.

Starting a Game

New Single Player Games

Click the “Single Player” button on the Main Game menu to start a new single-player game, or to load an existing saved game. After a moment, you will see the main country selection menu that you will use to choose a starting date and nation to play during your game.

The central area of your screen is dominated by a large, scrollable map of the world. Moving your mouse pointer to the edge of your screen will pan the map in that direction, allowing you to move to almost any position on the globe. For convenience, EU3 uses a rectangular Mercator projection of the world and restricts you from panning too close to the north or south poles. You may use the arrow keys on your keyboard to scroll the map if you prefer.

Above the map is a red banner that shows the game’s start date. The default starting date

is May 30th, 1453, which is shortly after the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman army.

You may choose to start at a later date by ad-

justing the “date selector”, located to the left of the map at the bottom of a list of historical

“bookmarks”.

On the map itself, you will a multi-coloured patchwork of countries, with thick red lines marking the borders between each nation. Thinner black lines distinguish the separate provinces within each country, and are the primary object of conquest. If you hover your mouse pointer over a province, you will see a small tool tip that shows the province’s name and the country that owns it. Clicking on a province will select that country as being the one that you wish to play. Before doing so, you should first decide on a starting date for the game because the availability of countries and ownership of provinces is determined by the start date.

Selecting a Starting Date and Country

Europa Universalis III covers a period of great international upheaval. Countries evolved into new nations; others disappeared or were destroyed; several new states declared independence and broke away from a former state; and, throughout the era, the borders of nations were constantly shifting through war or inheritance. For any date you select, the game will consult an extensive set of history files that determine which countries are available for play, who rules them, which provinces they own, where their borders are drawn, and much, much more. You will be able to play almost any country you desire, provided that it existed at that date you have selected. There are two ways to choose your starting date: you may use one of the convenient historical “bookmarks”, or you may manually select a specific date.

Using Bookmarks

To the left of the map, you will see a set of

“bookmarks” that identify specific points in

history that we think might be interesting to play. Clicking on a bookmark will automatically change the date selector to the bookmark’s date; after a moment or two, the map will be updated to ref lect the political situation at that time. Near the bottom of the map, you may see the heraldic shields of several countries that might be interesting to control if you begin at this date. Simply click on a shield to select that country. You are not limited to our recommendations, though. You can select any realm anywhere in the world by clicking on a province that belongs to it.

The area to the right of the map will display the name of the country you have selected, as well as some basic information about the nation’s ruler and the country’s starting diplomatic situation. There is also an indication of how difficult this country might be to play when beginning on this date: our graphic art-

ist’s sense of humour made him use a skull and crossbones to show a difficult country, and a

baby’s soother for an easy one. If you change

your mind about playing a country that you

have selected, simply click on a different one

to select it instead.

Once you’re satisfied with your choice, click the “start” button in the lower right corner of the screen. There will be a short delay as all of the specific historical data for that starting date is loaded into the game; you will then see the main game map and interface appear on the screen.

The Date Selector

If you prefer, you can use the “date selector” to choose any starting date you wish. The arrow

buttons above and below the selector’s year display will advance the date forwards or backwards in increments of one, ten, or one hundred years at a time. The smaller arrows to the left and right of the month and day allow you to set a precise date in that year. You may also click a bookmark to get close to the date you desire, and then use the selector to adjust backwards or forwards from that point.

As you adjust the date selector, the game refers to its history files and updates the map to reflect any changes in national borders or the countries that are available. Once you have settled on a date, click on the country of your choice to select it and display some basic information about its ruler and political situation. When you’re ready to begin playing, click the

“start” button.

Loading a Saved Single Player Game

To resume playing a saved game, click on the

“saved game” tab that is located just above the

bookmarks, near the upper left corner of the screen. The bookmarks will be replaced by a listing of all of your saved games (including any auto-saved games if you have that feature enabled). Click on a file name to select it, click the “load” button to load this game’s current date into the selection screen, then select your country and click the “start” button to resume your game. If you wish, you can choose a different country to play when you resume your game by simply selecting it on the map.

Starting a New or Saved Multi-

Player Game

The same general method is used for starting multiplayer games; however, only the “host” may change the date, and each player must select a country before the “start” button will be enabled. Detailed instructions for multiplayer games can be found in the separate Multiplayer chapter near the end of this manual.

THE MAIN INTERFACE

Once the game has finished loading, you will see the main interface. It consists of a large map that displays the provinces in a small portion of the world, and a variety of buttons and other interface elements that you will use frequently while playing. In this section, we will give you an overview of this interface and provide references to the chapters where you will find more detailed information about each of the game’s elements and features.

The Main Map

The largest portion of the screen is filled with a main map. The world is divided into approximately 1700 individual provinces, shown on the map with a thin, dotted grey border.

About 450 of these are water provinces which your fleets will use to navigate and explore the world. The remaining 1250 are land provinces which have various types of terrain. You may see forests, swamps, rivers, hills and mountains, all of which will have an impact on the movement and combat capabilities of your armies. We will discuss this in detail in the chapter on the Military.

Land provinces are the main building

blocks of nations. Each province generates important tax and trade revenues to support your country’s economy, and contributes manpower that is used to build and maintain your military forces. National borders are drawn on the map using a thick, continuous red line. Only land provinces may be owned by a country. Water provinces are never owned, and do not contribute to a nation’s economy in any way.

Historically, provinces usually contained

many small villages, hamlets, and towns; however, in Europa Universalis III, we pay attention only to the largest and most important city in each of the provinces. You will see the provincial capital displayed on the map, and its size will give you an indication of the overall population of the region. There will be a flag flying from each provincial capital to show which country currently owns it. If you don’t recognise the flag, you can hover your mouse pointer over the province and a small tool tip will appear to provide you with those details.

If you have the “decorative map info” graphics option enabled, you may also see some small towns and villages on the map. These are there purely to enhance the overall visual ap-

peal of the game and have no effect on actual game play. They do help to provide a visual clue about the total population of a province

-- as does the size of the provincial capital city’s graphic -- which has a fairly large effect on the amount of tax income generated for your country and the amount of manpower that it will contribute to your armed forces. We will explain the majority of this when we take an in-depth look at your provinces.

Each country has a national capital that is of vital importance to the realm. You can easily see each country’s capital by looking for a golden crown circling a province’s flag on the map. Losing control of your national capital will cause fairly significant damage to your economic situation, and will result in a loss of prestige that will impact your ability to conduct diplomacy with other realms. Prestige and the art of diplomacy are covered in the chapters on domestic affairs and diplomacy.

You may see a variety of other small graphics displayed on the map. Most are used to show that one of a variety of special “province improvements” has been constructed in the province. There will also be a number of loca-

tions that contain a special “bag of gold” symbol to indicate that the province is a regional center of trade. Provinces that are on a sea or ocean’s border will often contain a special port symbol positioned somewhere on the coastline. This is a quick way to see that it has a port suitable for a f leet to make harbour and conduct repairs. You’ll find each of these described in their appropriate sections of the manual.

While Europa Universalis III does not model individual storms or weather patterns, some provinces are subject to periodic seasonal effects of winter. This is shown graphically on the map and has three different levels of effect: mild, average, and severe. Winter conditions will greatly increase the attrition rates suffered

by any army that is on campaign outside of its nation’s borders and should be avoided if at all possible. Details of this can be found in the section on the Military.

You will notice that most of the map is somewhat darkened, except for the provinces that belong to your country and any immediately adjacent provinces. This is called the “fog of war” and it prevents you from seeing anything that isn’t immediately within your general area of control. Certain diplomatic actions will lift the fog of war from a friendly country’s provinces, but in most cases you will only be aware of your own lands and of the provinces located in the vicinity or your armies and fleets.

We’ll discuss this further in the sections on Di-

plomacy and the Military.

Many distant provinces will be completely obscured by a white, impenetrable fog. These areas are called “terra incognita” (Latin for “unknown land”) and will remain hidden from view until you have explored them or learned about them from other countries. There are also some parts of the world that are so remote and inhospitable that you will never be able to explore or colonize them. These areas are called

“permanent terra incognita” and are unavailable

during play. Parts of South America, the far north, and regions in Asia fall under this category. We’ll talk about this again in the section on exploration and colonization.

Navigating the Main Map

The world is far too large to fit on your screen all at

once, so you will frequently need to examine distant areas by simply moving your mouse to the edge of the screen, causing it to pan in that direction. You may also pan

the map using your keyboard’s left, right, up, and down arrow keys, if you prefer. If you

mouse is equipped with a scroll wheel, it can be used to zoom the map out to display large areas of the world, or zoom in to see more precise details of a small handful of provinces. If your mouse doesn’t have a scroll wheel, you can zoom the map in and out by clicking on the “+” and “-” magnifying glass buttons located on the Special Menus toolbar at the extreme bottom-right corner of your screen. If you wish to quickly return to the location of your country’s national capital, click the house-shaped “home”

button that is positioned just above the Special Menus toolbar, or press the “home” key on your keyboard. If you wish to locate a specific province, you can click the arrow-shaped

“province locator” button, type the first few let-

ters of the province’s name into the pop-up box, and then select it from the list of provinces that match your search.[

The Mini Map

Towards the lower-right corner of the screen is a small map of the world. This “Mini Map” is a handy navigation tool that

allows you to quickly jump great distances on the Main Map by simply clicking on the part of the world that you’d like to move to on the Mini Map. The portion of the world that is currently displayed on the Main Map is shown as a small white square on the Mini Map, making it easy to orient yourself if the Main Map is displaying a part of the world with which you are unfamiliar.

The Top Bar

The Top Bar is the narrow bar that extends across the top of the screen and is visible at all times. The left and central portions of the Top Bar provide a quick overview of a number of very important values that you will refer to very

frequently. Each symbol has a drop-down tool tip that will appear if you hover your mouse over it. The tool tips provide detailed information about each item and the rate that it is currently changing each month. The current game date is displayed on the right side of the bar; and beside this is the button that activates the very useful “Outliner” tool. Let’s look at each of these, one by one, from left to right:

Manpower Pool: Your manpower pool represents the number of

your citizens that are currently available to be recruited for your country’s armies and navies. Manpower is drawn from each of your provinces on a monthly basis and is used to replenish any losses that your forces may have suffered in the field. Any excess manpower is placed into your country’s manpower pool and may be used to recruit new armies of

navies. There is a limit to the size of your pool which is determined by a wide variety of factors including your country’s overall population, your domestic policies, you na-

tion’s “ideas”, and the presence of certain province improvements that you may build. We’ll look at this in detail in the Military section, although some of the factors that affect its replenishment rate and maximum size are discussed in the chapters on Province Management and Domestic Management.

Stability: This critical value represents the overall social stability of your country and can range

between values of -3 and +3. At very low levels of stability, you will be under increased risk of rebellion or may even be on the brink of civil war. At high levels of stability, your population will be very content and is unlikely to rebel or actively oppose you. Stability also affects your monthly tax income, since a disgruntled population will be far less productive than a happy one. Many of the game’s historic and random events will have an effect on your stability, as will any diplomatic actions you take that are likely to upset your population. We’ll mention stability many times in this manual, but the rule of thumb is to try to maintain a positive value whenever possible.

Treasury: The treasury is your country’s current reserve of money, which is used for a wide vari-

ety of activities in the game. We use the term “ducats” to refer to units of money, rather than anachronistic or regional terms such as “dollar” or “pound”. Every month, you will receive an income based on the tax revenue of your provinces, as well as any merchant trading you are conducting. You will probably allocate most of this income to technological research, maintenance of your land and naval forces, and a few other things that incur a monthly cost. Any ducats left over from your monthly expenses will be added to your treasury. You will need plenty of money to construct special buildings that will improve your provinces, to purchase new regiments and ships to expand your military, or perhaps to be used as

an incentive for a country to listen to your diplomatic overtures. We will look at your economy in detail in the chapter on Domestic Management.

Merchant Pool: Merchants are used to increase your country’s monthly income, and this value

shows how many are currently available for use.

You can generate significant amounts of trade

revenue by sending them out to the world’s centers of trade where they will try to compete against other countries’ merchants for a share of the profits. Competition will usually be fierce, so you will need a steady supply of merchants to replace any that have been driven out of business. New merchants will be added to your pool fairly gradually; with the rate of replenishment being determined by a variety of factors. You are allowed a maximum of five merchants in your pool at any one time. Merchants and trade are discussed in detail in the chapter on Trade.

Colonist Pool: You will need a steady supply of colonists if you

intend to explore new lands and establish colonies in any of the unoccupied provinces you discover. Colonists are needed in order to hire the intrepid explorers and conquistadors who will chart the unknown water and land provinces that are terra incognita. You will also use them to establish and expand new colonies that will increase your country’s territories and wealth. The top bar shows how many colonists are currently interested in joining an expedition. As you use them, the pool will slowly replenish itself up to a maximum of five colonists at any one time. This is discussed in detail in the chapter on Exploration and Colonization.

Diplomat Pool: No matter what

style of game you want to play, a

regular supply of diplomats will be crucial to your success. Diplomats are sent

to negotiate all sorts of agreements with other rulers; and to hire new generals or admirals to lead your military forces. Keep a close eye on this value, particularly if you are at war. As is the case with all of the pools, the rate of replenishment is determined by a wide variety of factors that are discussed throughout the rest of the manual. You may have a maximum of five diplomats in your country’s pool at any one time.

Missionary Pool: Missionaries are used to convert wayward

provinces to your country’s official religion. While you are unlikely to need very many missionaries early in the game, they will be invaluable to you if you conquer provinces that practice a different religion or if you are playing a country anywhere in Europe when the Reformation begins to take place. We will talk about religion in the chapter on Domestic Management and we cover the specifics for using a missionary in the Province Management chapter.

Spy Pool: Not all affairs of state

are honourable. Your spies will be

able to conduct a variety of clandestine missions that can hamper or disrupt an enemy. Success can reap some very interesting rewards, but failure has its consequences too. We discuss the use of spies in the chapter on Diplomacy. You may have a maximum of five spies in your pool, which will slowly replenish itself.

Date/Pause: The current date in the game is always displayed towards the right side of the Top Bar. Unless you pause, the date will continually advance one day at a time from whatever starting point you have chosen until you reach the end of the game. Most of the things you do during play will require a certain number

of days to achieve and will usually provide you with an estimated date of completion which you can check against the current game date. The display also acts as an on-screen pause button. Click anywhere on the current date display to pause the game; click it again when you are ready to resume. You may also pause (and unpause) the game using either the “pause|break”

button or space bar on your keyboard.

Game Speed: Beside the date, you will see a graphic indication

of the current game speed setting. If the game is paused, you will see two red bars. Otherwise, you will see a number of small gold arrows. The more arrows you see, the more rapidly each day will advance to the next. The maximum game speed you can achieve will depend on the power of your processor, and will vary from computer to computer. To adjust the game speed, click the “+” or “-” buttons immediately to the right of the date, or use the “+” and “-” keys on your keyboard.

The Outliner: At the extreme right end of the Top Bar is a button that

toggles the Outliner display on or off. We’ll talk about this amazingly powerful tool a little later in this chapter.

Special Menus Toolbar

The Special Menus toolbar is located in the bottom-right corner of your screen and provides access to a variety of interfaces and “map modes” that you are likely to use on a very regular basis during play. Let’s look at them one by one, starting at the top of the toolbar.

Holy See Button

Clicking on the Holy See button at the top of the Special Menus toolbar opens an inter-

face where you may try to influence the seven important cardinals that make up the Catholic Church’s curia. If you are successful, you may gain control of the Holy See which will provide a number of special benefits to your realm. This interface can only be accessed if your country has Catholicism as its official state reli-

gion, and will be greyed out if this is not the case. We will look more closely at this feature in the Special Political Bodies chapter of the manual.

Holy Roman Empire Button

The Holy Roman Empire (HRE) is the other special political body

in Europa Universalis III. Click on the HRE button to open an interface where you may review the current member states, electors, and emperor of the Empire. Countries that are members of the HRE enjoy several special ad-

vantages over countries that aren’t, and the emperor receives even greater advantages that are based on the total number of current members.

The emperor is elected by seven speciallychosen members of the HRE, each of whom will vote for the country that is liked the most when the current emperor dies. You will find this interface extremely useful when you try to plan a diplomatic strategy to become the next ruler of the empire. Further details can be found in the Special Political Bodies chapter.

Menu Button

The “Menu” button is used to display a submenu where you may save

your game; adjust many of the game options; change the in-game message settings; resign your current game and return to the Main Menu; or quit playing and return to the desktop.

• Save Game: Click the “save game” button to save your game at the current date. The default save name will identify the country and date, although you may change this to give the file any name you prefer.

• Game Options:

Click this button to access the same game options that are available from the Main Game Menu. Remember that any changes you make to the graphi-

cal options will not occur until you have quit

and re-started the game. See the “Getting Started” chapter for more details.

• Resign:

Selecting this option will stop play of your current game and return you to the Main Game Menu. You can then start a new game, or resume a previously saved one. Make sure that you have saved your current game if wish to return to it.

• Message Settings: There are a variety of different “messages” that you will receive during play that may require varying degrees of your attention. These can be displayed in several different ways, and are set to their default settings when you first install Europa Universalis III. Choose the “message settings” option to access the game’s message settings interface, where you may change the display method to suit your preference. We’ll talk about the various message types in a moment.

• Quit:

The quit button will stop play and exit directly to your desktop. Be sure to save your game first if you intend to return to it.

Ledger Button

The Ledger Button opens the game’s

extensive ledger interface which pro-

vides a wealth of information about your country, military, diplomatic situation, and a great deal more. Details of the ledger are provided in a separate chapter near the end of the manual.

Map Mode Buttons

The next six buttons are referred to as the “Map Mode” buttons. Clicking a map mode button will change the appearance of the Main Map to allow you to review various types of important information at a glance. This can save you a lot of time that would otherwise be required to review and compare that same information for each individual province. We’ll explain the meaning of each of the Map Modes in their respective sections in the manual, and simply provide an overview of them here.

Geographic Map Mode: This is the

default view of the Main Map. You can clearly see the mountains, hills, forests, swamps, and other geographic features on the map. This mode is particularly important when considering military manoeuvres where terrain will have a significant effect on your armies’ movement speeds and combat results.

Some provinces are also subject to special winter climate effects that can only be seen when using the geographic map mode.

Political Map Mode: This map

mode is the one that you see when you select a country at the beginning of the game, where each province is given a colour that is unique to the country that owns it. It is not uncommon for a province to fall under the temporary control of another country during a war; when that happens, this map mode will show both countries’ colours in alternating stripes. This makes it easy to tell at a glance when a territory has fallen to an enemy, to keep track of the progress of your wars, and to quickly review the size and extent of other countries.

Religious Map Mode: Each of the

game’s many different religions has a unique colour that is shown for each province on the Main Map when you active the religious map mode. A province does not necessarily practice the same faith as its ruling country’s official religion, and so some provinces may be displayed in alternating stripes to make it easy to see if there might be religious tensions in the area. This map mode is particularly useful when determining whether there are any provinces in your realm that should be converted by one of your missionaries, and may also be of some importance when considering potential wars or conquests.

Imperial Map Mode: As we men-

tioned above, the Holy Roman Empire is a special political body composed of a number of member states. You can use this map mode to quickly review the current mem-

bers of the HRE. The provinces belonging to the current emperor are shaded in a bright green colour on the Main Map, while the seven electors’ provinces will be shaded in a medium green, and the remaining member states will be shaded in dark green. The Imperial map mode

is particularly handy for seeing which countries should be the target of your diplomatic efforts when you are trying to arrange for your election as the next emperor. It is also useful when preparing to go to war in that region, since members of the HR E usually present a more difficult challenge than you might otherwise expect. The emperor enjoys a number of significant military advantages that should make you very wary of engaging him unless you are extremely well prepared.

Trade Map Mode: All international

trade in Europa Universalis III passes through a limited number of provinces that contain a special “Center of Trade”. A center of trade is a location where the trade goods from nearby provinces are bartered and sold by various merchants, generating additional monthly income for the countries that sent them there.

When you use the trade map mode, the Main

Map will be colour-coded to make it easy to distinguish between the provinces that contribute to each center’s value; what’s more, the tool tip that appears when you hover the mouse pointer over a province will give you detailed information about the business being conducted in the local center of trade. This is an extremely useful map mode to use when you are deciding where to send one of the merchants available in your country’s pool.

Diplomacy Map Mode: The Diplo-

macy Map Mode provides an easy way to view to review your relationship with other countries. Provinces that are part of your country will be shown using a bright green colour. Your allies will be displayed in bright blue, and any country with which you have a royal marriage will be shown in darker blue. If you have any vassals or are part of a personal union, these provinces will be dark green. Bright green stripes are used to indicate a “core province”, and red is used to show provinces that belong to an enemy. We will discuss the meanings of all of these terms later in the manual.

Map Zoom Buttons:

As we mentioned earlier, the two

small magnifying glasses at the bottom of the toolbar are used to zoom the Main Map in and out. It is unlikely that you will use these buttons if your mouse has a scroll wheel.

Domestic Interface

Near the top-left corner of the screen is a large, ornate shield that displays your country’s coat of arms. This is the same coat of arms that flies on the f lag of each of your provincial capitals, and on the banner of each of your armies and fleets. It serves as the method to access to one of the most important interfaces in the game: the “Domestic Interface”. Simply click on your shield to open it; when you are finished, click again to close it. We will spend quite a lot of time detailing the many features and controls to be found here when we discuss Domestic Management.

Province-Related Interfaces

If you click on any land province on the Main Map, one of three different interfaces will open in the lower-left portion of the screen. The interface that is displayed will depend on whether the province you selected is part of your country, part of another nation’s country, or is currently an independent province that is available for settlement by one of your colonists.

Province Interface

The Province Interface will be displayed whenever you click on a province that is owned by your country. This will allow you to review important information about the province, and to initiate a variety of different province-

based activities. You will use this interface to construct new “improvements” that will help to increase the economic or military contribution that the province makes to your country. You will also use it to recruit new regiments to serve in your armies and to build new ships to

be added to your navy. If the province does not currently share your official state religion, you will also access the province interface to send a missionary to convert the population. You will find all of the details in the Province Management chapter.

Diplomatic Interface

If you click on a province that is owned by another country, the Diplomatic Interface will open. You will see some general information about the province as well as a series of important diplomatic options that you may wish to pursue with the province’s owner. You will use this interface to suggest an alliance, declare war, settle peace, and a wide variety of other possible negotiations. Details about all of the diplomatic actions can be found in the Diplomacy chapter.

Colonization Interface

If a province is currently un-owned, clicking on it will display some basic information about the province as well as the Colonization Interface. You will use this to establish and later expand a colonial settlement which, in time, may grow into a full-f ledged colonial city. We will look at this interface in the chapter on Exploration and Colonization.

Map Units

Beyond pursuing the finer points of diplomacy and managing your realm, most of your day-today actions will probably involve moving your armies and f leets around the map to explore new provinces or prosecute your wars. Armies and f leets appear on the map as over-scale animated models that are large enough to select and move without being forced to zoom in too close on the map. Once you zoom the map out

to a certain distance, these will disappear and

be replaced by a marker that carries your country’s coat of arms. We will discuss armies and navies in detail in the Military section of the manual, but the basic approach to controlling a unit is to select it on the Main Map by clicking on it, and then right-click on the province to which you would like it.

You will only be able to see your own units on the map, or units that are located in provinces that are not currently covered by the fog of war. To move into a province that belongs to another country, you must have some sort of diplomatic agreement that allows you to do so, or you must be at war with that country. Water provinces do not belong to anyone, so your fleets may freely enter any water province you wish.

Provinces that are currently shown as terra incognita on your map cannot be entered unless your unit is controlled by a special type of leader: a “conquistador” for armies, or an “explorer” for fleets. We’ll talk about these in the Exploration and Colonization chapter. Any part of the map that is “permanent terra incognita” is too remote or hostile for your units and can never be entered at any time during the game.

Messages and the History Log

You will periodically receive on-screen messages to inform you of things that may be particularly important to you during play. This includes reports from your military about battles or sieges, messages from your diplomats about the success or failure of their missions, information from merchants about their activities in centers of trade, reports from your spies about the outcome of their missions, and many other things of importance. There will also be details of some of the commonly-known events and happenings from throughout the known world.

History Log

The history log is a scrollable record of all messages that you have received in the game. When you first load a game, the history log will be hidden from view, but you can display it by clicking the small, circular “+” button near the bottom of your screen. The button’s exact location will depend on your current screen resolution setting. If you are playing at 1024 x 768 pixel resolution, the button will be just to the left of the Mini Map. If you are playing at higher resolutions, the button will be located further to the left, towards the center, near the

bottom of the screen. If you find that it is obstructing your view, you can hide it again by clicking the small “-” button in its upper-right corner.

Message Windows

Messages that are particularly important to your realm will be displayed in a special message box that opens on the screen. The message

box will close once you click the “okay” button to confirm that you have read it. Many message boxes will also have a “goto” button that is sensitive to the context of the message. Clicking the “goto” button will either move the Main Map to a location that is relevant to the message, or it will open the interface that will allow you to react to the message’s content.

Floating Messages

Some messages that relate to your realm are of general interest and only medium importance. These are usually displayed directly on your screen as “f loating messages”. They typically provide only general information and will rarely require a specific response or action to be taken. Floating messages cause a slight increase in the processing demands on your system, so you may wish to consider changing them to display in a different way (or perhaps turn them off altogether) if your computer is very close to the game’s minimum system specifications.

Message Settings

As we mentioned a little earlier, each type

of message has a default setting that can be changed by clicking the “menu” button on the Special Menus toolbar and selecting the

“message settings” option from the menu. This

opens an interface that contains a complete list of each different message type and allows you to change the way it will be displayed in the game.

Most message types are set by default to be written to the history log. The more important ones will also open a message box, while the general interest ones will be displayed as f loating text (some of these will not be written to the history log). By using the “message settings” interface, you can toggle each of these display types on or off. Once you have saved your preferences and resumed play, the new settings will take effect. There may be some message types that cannot be displayed in all three different ways, so if you click on a toggle button and it doesn’t change, this is most likely the reason.

Europa Universalis III remembers your message setting preferences and will continue to apply them to all future games. If you toggle the setting of a message to be off for all three display types, the message will no longer be displayed anywhere on your screen and might cause you to miss something of importance. Don’t forget this when starting a new game, since you may have turned off a particular message type in a previous game that might be more critical to you in a new one.

There is also a quick way to change a single type of message’s display setting if it is currently displayed on your screen. Simply right-click on the message to open a small dialogue box

that will allow you to toggle the settings on and off directly in the game. You can do this by right-clicking on a line in the history log, or by right-clicking anywhere in a message

box. This allows you to alter the setting for that message type without going through the longer process of opening the message settings interface and locating the message type in the list.

Events

Europa Universalis III has a large number of special “events” that may occur within your country during the course of play. Events will appear on your screen in a message box and will usually require some sort of decision as to how you would like to respond to them. There are two different types of events: random and historical.

Historical events are based on the recorded past as we know it, and will occur when the situation in the game world closely approximates the situation that caused it to happen in history. Because the game situation can diverge from recorded history fairly easily, we have based these events on the root causes that are generally accepted as having contributed to the event taking place in “real life”. This means that a historic event can happen to any nation that satisfies the criteria we have established for the event.

You will be given at least two choices of how to respond to a historical event, and your decision will often have a large, long-term impact on the development of your nation. Some events are beneficial; others may be quite the opposite. Many are “neutral” and simply present you with a choice to make along your road into the future. You will often be equally as likely to succeed no matter which path you take, but the methods you will use to achieve victory will probably be different.

Random events are

somewhat more generic in nature. They provide a little added spice and unpredictability to the game, but their effects are usually not as great (in either extreme) as those you will receive

from historical events. You may receive a gift

of gold to your treasury or perhaps your peasants may cower in superstitious fear for a short while after sighting a meteor. You should be ready to take advantage of the good events, and to overcome any problems that arise from the less beneficial ones.

The type and frequency of events will vary considerably depending on what is happening in your particular game’s version of history. It is not practical to list all of them here (there are

hundreds) but each will include a descriptive text that explains the historical context of the event, and will usually have at least two possi-

ble options that you may choose when deciding

how to respond to them. Hovering your mouse over each option’s text will display a tool tip with the precise details of what will happen if you choose that action. Very few events have a

“right” or a “wrong” choice. Most simply present

two or more alternative paths, either of which may have negative implications or benefits. Just select the option that you feel is most suitable for your country in your current situation.

Alerts

You will receive a number of special “alerts” or reminders

that should help you to manage your realm. These are usually displayed when the game feels that there is something important that you might have overlooked and could require your immediate attention. Alerts appear as small red flags near the top of the Main Map. You can hover your mouse over the alert to see view the message, or click on it to

have the game take you to the appropriate location or automatically open the relevant interface for you.

Alerts will include reminders that

you can change your domestic policy, that a loan will soon be due, that your country is at war, or that your economy is currently running a deficit. You do not need to respond immediately to an alert if you are

busy doing something else. It will remain there until you have time to review it, or will disappear if it is no longer relevant.

Diplomatic Messages

Countries will occasionally send you diplomatic proposals that do not require your immediate attention and might be annoying or disruptive to the game if they auto-

matically opened a message window. Instead, you will see a diplomatic message appear as a small scroll icon near the bottom left of the Main Map. The scroll will show the flag of the country that has sent you the message and the symbol on the scroll will tell you the type of offer the message contains. You can hover your mouse over the message to find out roughly what it contains, or click on it to open the message and respond.

Most diplomatic messages will be automatically rejected if you do not respond to them within 30 days. The scroll will

blink for several days prior to its expiry, and will disappear once you have responded to it or when its time limit expires.

The Outliner

Earlier in this chapter, we mentioned that there is a button at the right end of the Top Bar that

opens an extremely powerful tool called the “Outliner.” This acts as a customisable toolbar that you can use to quickly access many of the game’s features or interfaces that you use on a frequent basis.

Clicking the button opens the outliner display in the upper-right corner of the screen. When the outliner is visible, you can click on any item on the list to immediately jump to its location on the Main Map or to open the relevant inter-

face that is normally used to control it. There are more than a dozen different categories of items that can be displayed in the list. In the example shown here, we have chosen to list each province in our country, our active centers of trade, our armies, and our navies.

Right-clicking the button allows you to customise the categories that are included in the outliner’s list when it is open. The options are:

• Provinces: Enabling this item will include a list of each of your country’s provinces in the outliner list. If an enemy is besieging one of your provinces, a small siege icon

will appear beside its name. If you hover the pointer over a province’s name, a tool tip will display the province’s culture, religion, income, revolt risk, and manpower. Clicking on a province’s name will move the Main Map to center it on the province.

• Sieges:

This option will list any sieges that your armies are currently conducting. The approximate progress of the siege will be shown beside the location’s name and a tool tip provides an estimate of how much longer the city might be able to resist you. Clicking on the province name will center the Main Map on the location

of the siege and open the Siege interface.

• Combats:

The outliner’s list can include any battles that that your armies are currently fighting. The current size of the opposing armies is shown on the list and a tool tip provides a detailed breakdown of the composition of the forces and the commanders that lead them. Clicking on the conflict will center the Main Map on its location and open the Combat details interface.

• Recruiting Regiments:

Enabling this item will list any of your provinces that are currently recruiting new regiments for your armies as well as the number of days remaining until the regiment will be ready for action. Clicking on the province name will center the Main Map on that location.

• Building Ships:

This option is the same as the “recruiting regiments” option, except it will list provinces that are currently building ships.

• Colonists:

If you are in the process of establishing or enlarging a colony, this option causes the outliner to include a list of provinces that currently have a colonist en route to them. You will see the name of the province and the estimated time until the colonist arrives. A tool tip will show the estimated chance the colonist will succeed, the current size of the colony, and the number of natives (if any) that also live there. Clicking on the province name will center the Main Map on that location.

• Buildings:

Enabling “buildings” will add a list of any buildings that are currently being constructed in your provinces and the estimated time until the project will be complete. The tool tip will identify the location and completion date, while clicking on the

building name will move to that location

on the Main Map.

• Missionaries:

If you have sent missionaries to a province to convert the population to your national religion, you can have a list of

the provinces included in the outliner. The list will indicate when you should expect the missionary to finish his task, and clicking on a province’s name will move to that location on the Main Map.

• Centers of Trade:

Enabling this option will list every center of trade where you have at least one currently active merchant. A tool tip will display the total value of trade passing through the center, as well as the monthly revenue generated by your merchants. Clicking in the province’s name will center it in the Main Map and open the Center of Trade interface to allow you to send additional merchants to that location.

• Naval Combat:

This is the naval version of

the “combats” option.

• Armies:

The outliner can include a list of each of your country’s armies. A tool tip will show the army’s current commander and location; and if is moving you will also see the intended destination. Clicking on an army’s name will center its location on the Main Map and automatically select the army.

• Navies:

This is the naval version of the “ar-

mies” option.

Tool Tips

Before we move on to look at the components of the various interfaces in detail, we should point out that virtually everything in Europa Universalis III has a tool tip associated with it. If you are not sure what something is, or what it means, hover your mouse above it for a moment and a tool tip is almost certain to appear. Many of the tool tips are two-stage tips, displaying additional details if you continue to

hover a little longer. The extended tool tips for many numerical items (such as most of the values displayed in the Top Bar) include details of exactly how the value is calculated. If in doubt, look for a tool tip.

PROVINCE MANAGEMENT

Overview

As we said in the previous chapter, the map of

the world is divided into approximately 1700 provinces. Approximately 450 of these are water provinces, while the balance of them will contain at least some amount of land. Land provinces are the building blocks of countries. Every country must own at least one province in order to survive, and only land provinces can be owned. When the game begins, there are usually more than 200 countries that exist somewhere in the world, although the exact number will depend on the starting date you have chosen. Each individual province contributes a number of things to the country that owns it, so before we can look at things on a national scale we must first take a close look at this critical component of your realm.

Province Ownership

and Control

Land provinces will always either be owned by a country, or be “vacant” and available for colonization. There is a very important distinction we must stress between ownership and control.

• Province Ownership:

Unless it has not yet

been colonized, every land province (including islands) will be owned by a country. Provinces that are owned by your realm will contribute income to your country in the form of monthly tax revenues. They are also the source of the manpower you will need to recruit regiments, build ships, and replace any combat or attrition losses you suffer. The residents of the province are effectively the population of your country. Other nations’ armies are prohibited from entering provinces that you own unless they are at war with you or have diplomatically obtained your permission to allow them

“military access.”

• Province Control:

Under normal circumstances, the country that owns a province will also control it. However, during times of war or rebellion, an enemy army may move into a province and overcome its defences. When this happens, the control of the province will change, but the ownership does not. Ownership can only be transferred as a result of a peace agreement, a diplomatic purchase of land, or outright rebellion of a province’s population. Unless a province is owned and controlled by the same country, it will not contribute in any way to either country’s economy or military.

• Un-owned Provinces:

Depending on the starting date you have chosen, some provinces may not be owned by any country at the beginning of the game. Any country is free to move its army into that province, and any country may send a colonist to the province in an attempt to establish a basic settlement. Ownership is not established until a settlement attempt has been successful, at which point it becomes part of that country.

Province control may seesaw back and forth between antagonists during a war, but ownership of a province can only change when it is ceded to another country as part of a peace negotiation. If a country is forced to cede its very last province to an enemy, it will cease to exist and is eliminated from play. Control of a province is immediately and automatically returned to the country that owns it at the end of a war.

We’ll talk about the details of this in the Di-

plomacy chapter. The one exception to this rule involves a colony that has not yet grown large enough to become a full-fledged colonial city. During war, ownership can be transferred immediately if an enemy gains control of the province, although this does not happen automatically. We provide details of this in the chapter on Colonisation.

Province ownership can only change in

three other ways:

• Various circumstances can lead to a province's population revolting against its owner. An army of rebels will form and attempt to gain control of the provincial capital. If they are successful and can maintain control for a period of time, the province may subsequently declare itself free from its oppressor and form a new, independent country. Ownership of the province will be automatically transferred and will become the new national capital of the fledgling realm.

• There are occasions when you will be able to voluntarily grant a province its freedom. When you do so, the new nation will become your vassal and be given ownership of the province. We'll talk about this in the Domestic Management chapter.

• One of the many diplomatic actions that are available in the game is for a country to purchase a province from another country. If the proposal is accepted, the ownership of the province will be transferred in exchange for gold.

Province Interface

When you click on a land province that you own, the Province Management interface will appear in the lower-left portion of the screen. The display is divided into approximately two halves: the left half shows a picture of the provincial capital, and the right half contains a

“Provincial Summary” as well as a few impor-

tant interface buttons. The Provincial Sum-

mary portion of the interface will be almost identical when you click on another country’s province or an un-owned province, but most of the extra interface buttons will be removed.

Provincial Summary

The Provincial Summary is divided into several distinct areas that provide information about the province’s details, religion, income, and trade. We’ll look at each of these in turn.

Province Details

The banner that runs across the top of the Provincial Summary shows the name of the province and has a small “X” button at the right-

hand end which you can click to close the Province Interface. You may also close it by clicking a second time on the province on the Main Map. You don’t need to close the interface to change to a different province. Just click on another location on the map and the display will change to the newly selected province. Below the banner you will see some detailed information about the province. Each item has an associated tool tip that provides additional details about the values displayed:

• Population:

A province’s population has a significant impact on the wealth of the province. The larger the population, the more tax income it will generate for its owner. When a country has positive national stability, a province’s population will usually grow. There are various factors that may also cause a province’s population to

decline, including very low stability or the province being under siege by an enemy. The tool tip will display a detailed list of any factors that are affecting the population growth in the province.

• Supply Limit:

Each province is able to feed and support a limited number of active armed forces. Each factor of the displayed supply limit allows the province to feed and supply 1,000 men in an active army located in that province. The supply limit depends on the base supply value of the province, its production, the terrain, and the level of fortification (if any). Forces from other countries cannot avail themselves of the full supply capabilities of a province. An ally’s army can be supported up to about 80% of this value, and an enemy army is able to forage for only a minimal amount of supply from the countryside.

• Max. Attrition:

This reflects how rapidly an army will lose men if it exceeds the province’s supply limit, and depends primarily on the terrain and its level of military technology. The value shown is the maximum percentage of the total force that can be lost due to monthly attrition while it still exceeds the supply limit.

• Revolt Risk:

This is the provincial equivalent of stability and is very closely tied to your country’s stability. Any positive revolt risk value indicates that there is a risk that this province may rebel against your country. As revolt risk rises, the province will generate less tax income than it would if there was no risk of rebellion. If the population of the province revolts, an army of rebels will appear and attempt to capture the province. If you fail to stop them from gaining control of the province, the province will then either defect and declare allegiance to an adjacent country, or they may declare independence and attempt to survive as a new independent country. The revolt risk is determined by your country’s current stability, as well as other factors such as whether your

realm is tolerant of the province’s religion, and whether it is culturally aligned to your rule. There are province improvements that will alter this value, as well as several random and historical events that may increase or reduce the revolt risk for a period of time. Revolt risk is also heavily inf luenced by war. The longer your country remains at war, the higher the revolt risk will rise. If the province is captured by an enemy, it will rise considerably further. Once the war is concluded, the revolt risk will slowly recede

back to its base peacetime level.

• Culture:

This is one of the factors that influence a province’s revolt risk. As we’ll see when we look at your domestic affairs, each country has a primary state culture and may have one or more cultures that it considers to be acceptable. If the province’s culture is accepted, there will be no penalty. If the culture is different, the risk of rebellion will

be greater and the province will contribute

somewhat less to your income.

• Manpower:

This is the amount of manpower that the province contributes to your country’s manpower pool. Manpower isn’t used directly from the province, but rather on a national level. The manpower of the province is based primarily on its population, although there are other things that may increase its value, including your domestic policies and national ideas.

• Capital:

This is strictly for historical interest and has no effect on game play. The names chosen for many of the game’s provinces are often not the same as the name of the most important city in that area, so we include that city’s name here for in case you are curious.

• Garrison:

If the province has a fortification of any size, the number of troops currently garrisoning it will determine how long an enemy must besiege the province before it is captured. If the enemy attempts to storm the walls, the garrison will rally to defend the city. Larger fortifications can house

larger garrisons and withstand longer sieges; as the siege progresses, the defenders will eventually begin to die and the attacker may eventually breach the walls and capture the province. Once a siege is lifted, or a province is captured, the garrison will slowly regain strength until it reaches its maximum level once more. We’ll talk about this again in the warfare section.

Province Religion and Conversions

To the right of the first column of figures, you will see a symbol that shows the province’s religion.

While historically there were

many instances where several faiths were practiced in the same region, we have chosen a simplified approach by restricting each province to having only one dominant religion; however, this will

not necessarily be the same as the official state religion of the country that owns it. If the provincial religion is different from the realm’s religion, there is a reduction in the income value of the province and there is also a potential for a much higher revolt risk. The level of revolt risk is determined by your country’s tolerance towards that religion. Religious tolerance is a component of domestic management which we will look at in the next chapter.

You can send a missionary from your country’s missionary pool to attempt to convert the population of a province that you own. To do this, click the “send” button that is immediately below the small missionary picture in the interface. It will often take a considerable period of time and a large investment in gold to convert a province, and success is far from guaranteed. Larger populations tend to be more expensive to convert and the attempt will usually

be less likely to succeed. Your ruler’s personal capabilities (which we will

look at in the next chapter) will also inf luence the likelihood of success.

You can see details of the cost, time, and

likelihood of success displayed immediately

below the missionary picture. The send button will be greyed out if the province already follows your state religion, if you lack the necessary funds in your treasury, or if you have no available missionaries in your national pool. You can only convert a province you own, so the “send missionary” portion of this interface will not be displayed when you are viewing another country’s province, or one that has not yet been colonized.

If you decide to go ahead with the conversion attempt, a missionary will be removed from your pool and the appropriate number of ducats will be immediately deducted from your treasury. You will see a small animated graphic on the Main Map in that province to indicate that a missionary is at work. Once the required time period has elapsed, you may be fortunate enough to have your missionary succeed and the province will change its religion to match your state religion. Should your missionary fail, there is a strong likelihood that your province’s population will object to his actions and revolt.

Province Income

Each province generates a monthly amount of income that it contributes to your country’s economy. This is shown in a box in the upper right corner of the Provincial Summary. There are two components of this income: the taxation amount and the production amount.

• The taxation amount is determined by the base tax value of the province and the size of its population. This will be modified by your country's stability, any differences between the province culture or religion and nation's culture or religion,

and any special buildings that you construct in the province that alter tax income. Some percentage of tax revenue is inherently

lost from provinces that are overseas, and may be further disrupted by pirate activities and enemy blockades.

• Production income is based on the value of the province's primary trade resource (we'll look at this in a moment) and is modified by the size of its population and the country's production technology level.

You can also build "province improvements" that will increase the amount of production income generated by the province.

Province Trade

Each province has a primary resource that it produces in sufficient volumes to have a surplus available for trade. The value of the resource is determined by the global demand for that item, which fluctuates over time. The number of units produced is based on the level of your country’s production technology, and on any infrastructure improvements that may have been built in the province. As we saw a moment ago, this results in a certain amount of production income being added to the province’s income. It also increases the value of the center of trade through which the goods are marketed.

We will talk about centers of trade in detail in the chapter on Trade. For the moment, it will be sufficient to say that this part of the interface identifies the province’s primary resource, its value, and the volume of that item it produces. The name of the local center of trade is shown on a button below this, and clicking it will automatically open a special Trade subinterface which allows you to send merchants there to capture a greater share of the market. Doing so will generate additional revenues for your country, over and above the production income you receive directly from owning the province.

Core Provinces and

Provincial Claims

At the beginning of the game, each country

will be assigned a number of “core” provinces based on the historical claims that existed at that time. Claims were usually based on dynastic inheritance rights, or on traditional national boundaries, so we use the concept of “core” provinces to indicate that a country considers a province to be a rightful, integral, core part of its realm. Countries will not necessarily own all of their core provinces when play begins, since territories frequently changed hands in those volatile times. You will often find that one (or more) of a country’s core provinces is currently part of another realm. As you might imagine, this is likely to lead to many conflicts in the game, just as territorial disputes have sparked many wars throughout history.

As the game progresses, a province may be added to the list of a country’s core provinces as a result of random or historical events. A province can also become considered a core if your country has owned it, uncontested, for a significant period of time. This process is slow and usually requires that it be part of your realm for at least fifty years. Claims will also disappear when a country that considers a province to be a core has not owned it or attempted to capture it for a period of twenty-five years.

If a country considers a province to be a core province, its shield will be displayed just below the Trade summary box in the Provincial Summary. It is not uncommon for there to be more than one shield, nor is it unlikely that some provinces will have no existing claims. If

you see a shield you don’t recognise, you can hover your mouse above it to display a tool tip indicating the nation’s identity.

As we will see in later chapters when we talk about the domestic and

diplomatic components of Europa Universalis III, there are other definite advantages for a

country to try to acquire provinces that it holds claims against, so it can be fairly important to know whether other countries have claims on your provinces, or whether you have a claim on theirs.

There is one absolutely critical effect of a

province being considered a core: you can only

recruit new regiments and build new ships in core provinces, although the province does

not necessarily have to be your core province. The ability to recruit units -- and the type of units available -- is determined exclusively by which country (or countries) considers the province to be a core. If you own a province that is not considered a core of any country, you will be unable to recruit any type of military unit there. You will have to wait until you have owned the province long enough for it to

become one of your cores. This is due to the way that regiments and ships are created and is something we will touch on again when we look at “preferred unit types” in the Domestic Management chapter, and then again in more detail in the chapter on the Military.

Province Improvements

During the Europa Universalis III time period, provinces and countries underwent drastic changes. New cathedrals and universities were

built, tax collection and many other national programs became somewhat more centralized, fortifications were enlarged, military power slowly made the transition from periodic regional levies to permanent standing armies of conscripts, ships gradually become larger and

both more seaworthy and powerful, and a host of other movements towards modernization. While most of these advances are handled by the game’s approach to the research of technologies, some will result in the availability of special new provincial improvements.

There are two different types of province improvements: buildings and manufactories. Each will become “unlocked” when you have

reached the necessary technology level to make it available. When that happens, you may spend money from your treasury and order a province to begin constructing the improvement. You can usually have as many different

buildings as you like in a province, but a province is only allowed to construct one manufactory. As you might imagine, the benefits derived from the latter are usually much greater than the former.

City View

You can review the improvements that have already been built in your province by looking at the left side of the Province Management interface. You cannot see the improvements in another country’s provinces, although the Main Map will display a special symbol in any province that contains a manufactory, corresponding to the type of manufactory that’s there.

When you open the Province Management interface, the left half of the display will show a picture of the provincial capital. Early in the game, it will probably look fairly sparse, as is the case with the upper of the two adjacent graphics. The only province improvement that

has been built here is a basic fortification (the wall at the rear of the city). As the city grows and you build new province improvements, the corresponding buildings will be added to the city view. The lower graphic shows the same city about 300 years later. The population has grown, a number of new buildings have been added, and the size of the fortifications has expanded.

Hovering your mouse over a building will display a tool tip that shows what benefits it contributes to your province. The effects vary depending on the type of building and can include such things as higher tax revenues, increased provincial production, reduced risk of revolt, better siege defence, and more. If you click on a building, the city view will zoom in on it and give you more historical details about the structure.

There are nearly a dozen different types of

buildings and six incremental levels of fortification that you can construct in your provinces, although a few of these have special restrictions that limit where they may be built, and you will first need to achieve the required level of technology to make them available. There are also six different types of manufactory in the game.

A province may only contain one manufactory,

so you will need to choose carefully when deciding which one to construct. A complete list of buildings, manufactories, and their effects can be found in Appendix B.

Building New Improvements

To begin construction of a new province improvement, click on the

left-most of the three buttons located below the Province Details information. The province information will be replaced by a new interface that shows all of the possible

buildings and manufactories that you can or-

der.

An improvement’s button will be greyed out if you are currently unable to build it. This will happen if you have not yet reached the required technology level for the improvement to become available, or if you lack sufficient funds in your treasury. There are some buildings that can only be constructed in coastal provinces, and there are a few improvements that are mutually exclusive (details are in Appendix B). As we mentioned a moment ago, you can only have one manufactory in a province, so the other five types of manufactory will be greyed out if you have already constructed one.

A tool tip will appear when you hover your mouse over one of the improvement

buttons. You will see the name of the improvement, its effects, and the cost and time required to construct

it. If the item is greyed out, the tool tip will also explain why. Clicking the “back” button on the banner will return to the city view, and clicking the small “X” at the right end of the banner will close the Province Management interface. Click on any available improvement to order construction to begin in that province. The necessary funds will be deducted from your treasury and a graphic will appear on the Main Map to show that an improvement is being built. Hovering your mouse over this graphic will show you the expected date of completion.

You may only construct one building at a time

in each of your provinces. Until it has been completed, it is also extremely vulnerable to an enemy attacks. If an enemy army besieges and captures the province before the construction is complete, all progress that has been made on the improvement -- and your financial investment -- will be lost. Once you have regained control of the province, you will be forced to start all over again.

Military Recruitment

There are two other but-

tons located to the right

of the Build Improvement button in the Province Management interface. These are used to recruit new regiments to serve in your army, or new ships to become part of your navy. We will look at these in the Military section of the manual. For obvious reasons, you will only be able to build ships in provinces that are located on a coastline

(that is why the “Build Ship” button is greyed out in this graphic); it is important to remember that you cannot recruit regiments or build ships in a province unless it is considered a core province by at least one country.

Other Countries’

Provinces

When you click on a province that is owned by another nation, the right half of the interface will be nearly identical to the Province Management interface. You can review all of the province details, religion, income, and trade information about the province, but, because you don’t own it, you cannot send missionaries to convert the population.

The left half of the interface no longer displays a city view, and will show the Diplomacy interface instead. You cannot see specific details about what improvements another country has made to it provinces, although you may see small icons appear on the Main Map to indicate that another country is building an improvement, or that a province contains a manu-

factory. We’ll discuss the use of the Diplomacy interface in the chapter on Diplomacy.

Unoccupied Provinces

A third type of interface will appear when you click on a province that has not yet been colonized and thus has no current owner. Again, the right side of the interface contains most of the same details about the province.

The right side now shows the Colonization interface which is used to send colonists to try to establish a new settlement. Even after you have

begun to colonize a province, this same interface will continue to appear when you click on the province until the population has risen to a sufficiently high level for a full-fledged colonial city to evolve. We will discuss this in the Exploration and Colonization chapter.

DOMESTIC MANAGEMENT

Overview

Now that we have looked closely at your individual provinces, it’s time to put them together and talk about your country. There are approximately 200 countries at the beginning of most games of Europa Universalis III. The exact number depends on the precise starting point in history you have chosen. Each country will own at least one province, and some very large ones could begin with twenty or more. It would

be annoying to have to control many aspects of your country by making changes in each and every province, so there is a special interface dedicated to managing the broader features that affect your entire country. This is called the “Domestic Interface” which is accessed by clicking on your nation’s shield, located in the upper-left corner of the screen.

The Domestic Interface is separated into seven sub-screens, each of which is accessed by clicking on the appropriate icon at the top of the interface. These act like “tabs” to take you to the relevant set of controls. From left to right, the tabs are:

• Overview:

An overview of your domestic and diplomatic situation.

• Court:

Details about your ruler and an interface that lets you hire special court advisors.

• Economy:

A summary of your economic situation, and a budget interface that allows you to allocate part of your income

to technological advances and increased national stability.

• Military:

Controls that affect the types of military units you will recruit, and how effective they will be in combat.

• Religion:

An interface that allows you to set your country’s tolerance towards different religions, or even change your official state religion.

• Government:

An interface that allows you to review and change your form of government, set specific domestic policies, and determine which national ideas your realm will adopt.

• Leaders:

Information about your nation’s military tradition, and an interface that allows you to hire new military leaders.

This chapter will explain each of these areas in detail. While you will probably use the Domestic Interface only sporadically, any changes you make will often have far-reaching implications on the future direction and development of your country. In most cases, there is no “right” or “wrong” way to approach them. Domestic management is usually a matter of balancing

trade-offs, or of pursuing

a particular type of pref-

erence in game play.

Domestic

Overview

The “Overview” tab is the default view when you first open the Domestic Interface. As you

play, the game will remember the last tab you were using and return to

it when you next open the

interface. There is only one interface feature that

is managed directly from the Overview screen;

however, there are quite

a few important pieces of

information displayed on this screen, several of which are not shown elsewhere in the game.

National Culture

Towards the top of the display is a scroll that identifies your current form of government and the name of your ruler. It also indicates which culture is considered to be your primary state culture. We’ll talk about your ruler and government later in this chapter, but let’s focus for a moment on culture.

When we looked at provinces, we saw that if a province’s culture is different than the state culture, there would be an increased risk of re-

bellion and a decrease in the amount of tax revenue generated towards your country’s income. A country’s culture is usually determined by the culture of the province containing the country’s capital. This very specific state culture will often be shared by only a handful of other provinces in the world; however, each specific culture also belongs to a somewhat larger “cultural group”. Any other culture that is part of this same group is considered to be an

“accepted culture” within your realm. A prov-

ince will incur a much smaller revolt risk and economic penalties if its culture is one that is accepted by the state.

From time to time, it is possible that additional cultures from other groups could become accepted by your country. This isn’t something over which you have direct control; the longer you continue to own a province that has a culture that is not accepted by the state, the more likely it is that this culture will later become accepted. This is further influenced by some of the policies that you may decide to adopt in the Government section of the Domestic Interface. If a new culture becomes accepted, it is only this specific culture that will be added, not any of the other cultures within that culture group.

A tool tip will list all of the cultures currently accepted by your country when you hover your mouse over the official state culture name on the scroll. You will find a complete list of cultures and cultural groups included in

Europa Universalis III in Appendix C. These are determined partially by language and historical traditions; however, in some cases it was necessary to make generalisations or over-simplifications when assigning cultures to a province or when placing cultures within a group. It is not our intent to offend or misrepresent any ethnic or cultural background, but rather to create a balanced and entertaining game for you to play.

National Prestige

In the center of the green drape pinned to the scroll are two circles. The large upper circle shows your country’s current prestige value which may range anywhere between -200 and

+200. Prestige has a significant effect on many

aspects of your country:

Prestige is also a self-normalising value that

is modified at the end of each month. If you

have a high prestige, it will tend to slip back towards zero; if you have a negative prestige, it will tend to rise a little each month. For obvious reasons, you should avoid allowing your country’s prestige to sink too low, and you should take advantage of its extra benefits when your prestige is high.

National Ranking

The smaller, lower circle displays your country’s current ranking compared to all of the other countries in the world. It is this ranking that determines the overall winner at the end of the game, although many players prefer to set personal goals and will pay only marginal attention to their national ranking. There are a large number of different factors that are considered when the game calculates your country’s rank, including the size of your realm, your prestige, your reputation, the size of your treasury, any special titles you hold (such as “Defender of the Faith”, “Holy Roman Emperor”, and “Controller of the Holy See”), the overall size of your military forces, your level of technological advancement, and a variety of different diplomatic relationships that you might form.

Prestige affects…

• The chance that you will gain new territories through dynastic succession.

• The chance that a diplomatic proposal you send to another county will be accepted.

• The cost and monthly salar y of any court advisors you hire.

• The rate at which your relationship value with other countries changes each month.

• The rate at which new diplomats become available in your diplomat pool.

• The chance that one of your merchants will be able to establish and maintain a share of the market in a center of trade.

• The chance that one of your colonists will succeed when attempting to establish or enlarge a colony.

• The morale of your armies and navies.

• The chance that you will be able to successfully influence one of the seven cardinals of the curia when at

tempting to gain control of the Holy See.

Prestige is gained by…

• Winning battles.

• Winning a war (when you demand peace, or an

other countr y surrenders to you) .

• Gaining a new vassal, becoming the leader of a personal union, forming a new royal marriage, or creating a new alliance.

• Establishing a new colony.

• Hiring a philosopher to serve as one of your court advisors.

• Adopting certain national ideas that increase your prestige on a monthly basis.

Prestige is lost by…

• Losing battles

• Losing a war (when you surrender to an enemy, either voluntarily or by force).

• Losing a vassal, union, royal marriage or having an alliance dissolve.

• Having your capital occupied by an enemy (monthly loss).

• Having one of your colonies destroyed.

• Having one of your diplomatic proposals rejected by another country.

• Failing in an attempt to influence a cardinal.

The national ranking should not be mistaken as a measure of military might. It is quite possible for the most powerful and dangerous country in the world to be ranked much lower than a realm that has achieved success in other areas but is relatively weak. In other words, do not use this as a basis for determining whether a country might be an easy or difficult opponent in a war. It is a measure of “game victory”, not clout.

Special Political Bodies

There are two symbols that might appear superimposed on the green banner in the overview. If you are currently the Holy Roman Emperor, you will see the Imperial seal; if you currently enjoy the majority support of the cardinals of the Holy See, you will see the Papal arms symbol. These symbols are reminders

that you hold a position of considerable power and are enjoying the extra benefits of that office. Details of this are found in the separate section of the manual on Special Political Bodies.

National Religion

Just below the drape, at the right edge of the interface, you’ll see a symbol showing your country’s current official religion. We will look

at the way that Europa Universalis III models the various religions of the world when we talk about the “Religion” tab a bit later in this chapter. On the Overview screen, the national religion symbol only serves as a reminder of your official state religion.

Reputation

The lower half of the Domestic Over-

view screen is divided into two halves. The left side provides information about your country’s reputation and any diplomatic conditions that are currently in force; the right side shows a scrollable list of countries and your current relationship value with each.

Like prestige, your country’s reputation has a very large effect on your relationship with other nations and the way that they are likely to behave towards you. Reputation is a reflection of the way that other realms regard your overall level of trustworthiness and degree of international belligerence. Your country’s reputation is displayed as text in the interface, although you can hover your mouse over the text to display a tool tip that shows the exact numerical value.

Your reputation will suffer if you declare wars without any sort of territorial claim or provocation, or if you gain ownership of another country’s provinces when negotiating a peace settlement. It will also be damaged if you make diplomatic threats, or when you are caught engaging in espionage. Forcing another nation to become your vassal is viewed as a hostile act, and the outright annexation of a realm is the most worrisome of all possible actions you could take.

Having a poor reputation will cause other realms to view your country as a dangerous threat to their security and continued survival, and they will become increasingly disinclined to accept any of your diplomatic proposals. If your reputation reaches epic depths, you could

become “despised throughout the known world” and countries may even unite in an attempt to destroy you.

As a side note, if you visit our community

forums you will frequently see the term “bad-

boy” used to describe the numerical value assigned to your country’s reputation. A “badboy war” is the result of crossing the relationship value threshold in the game, usually sparking an international vendetta to destroy your realm.

Diplomatic Summary

Any existing diplomatic conditions will be listed below your reputation. This can include alliances, wars, royal marriages, and other similar special relationships that you have with other countries. The majority of these are agreements that you may reach with other countries

by sending your diplomats there with a proposal; however, there are also a few that may appear due to other causes. The two most notable of these are an “enforced peace” and a “casus belli”.

A “casus belli” is a Latin term meaning

“good cause” (or “just cause”). It indicates that a

realm has a recognised, legitimate reason to go to war with another nation if it so desires. If another country owns one of your core provinces, you will automatically gain a casus belli against that realm. While that is the most common reason for a casus belli, there are several other diplomatic actions that can result in a country gaining a temporary casus belli. Declaring war on a country with which you have a casus belli is not viewed as a dishonourable action, so it will not affect your reputation nearly as much as declaring war without one. If you subsequently defeat that country, any territorial gains you might make as a result of the peace terms will also have less of an impact on your reputation. After negotiating a peace settlement there is a period of five years of enforced peace between the countries involved. Violating a truce is possible, but a nation’s reputation will be severely damaged for doing so. We’ll discuss this in detail in the Diplomacy section of the manual.

Relations

The list on the lower right side of the interface shows your current “relationship value” with all of the other countries in the world that you

have encountered thus far in the game. This is a numerical value that will range between -200 (the country despises us to the core) and +200 (we are a beloved friend). The middle value of 0 indicates that the country is generally neutral towards you. Over time, any relationship value

that is either positive or negative will tend to slowly return to this mid point unless there are other factors involved.

There are many things that will affect your relationship with another country, the most obvious

being any diplomatic interactions you might have with one another. Your reputation plays a key role here. A poor reputation will tend to make other countries faster to forget, and slower to forgive. A very bad reputation may be enough to slowly make other countries despise you regardless of any diplomatic attempts to mend the relationship. Religion will also affect your relationships. If you share the same religion, your countries will tend to draw closer to one another; by any religions towards which you are intolerant will tend to become your fanatical enemies. As we mentioned above, prestige is also a factor; and as we’ll see momentarily, your ruler’s skill at diplomacy will also affect the way that other countries view your relationship.

Having a good relationship with another country will make it more inclined to accept your diplomatic offers, and reduces the likelihood that it will do anything hostile towards you. The reverse is true for poor relationships. Other countries will be unreceptive to your diplomatic offers and might consider you a prime target for a declaration of war. Again, we

will look at this in more depth when we discuss the details of Diplomacy later in the manual. There are two buttons

above the scrollable list of

relationship values which

allow you to sort the list alphabetically by coun-

try, or numerically by re-

lationship value. The list can be sorted in reverse order by clicking the button a second time.

Create Vassal

The “create vassal” button at the bottom-left corner of the Domestic Overview screen is the only part of the interface that allows you to “do” something directly. This allows you to create a new country by giving it a number of suitable provinces. The country will be a vassal of your country and pay a percentage of its income directly into your coffers each month. Unlike a country that you have forced to become your vassal at the end of a war, a vassal that is vol-

untarily released will be grateful for its freedom

and have an excellent re-

lationship with you. This

action is seen by other countries as a very honourable one, thus improv-

ing your reputation.

To release a vassal,

click the button to display

a list of possible countries that can be created, and the provinces that would

be turned over to that new nation. The button will be greyed out if you do not own any suitable

provinces. Releasing a vassal is also prohibited if you are currently at war.

Select the new vassal that you would like to create by clicking on its shield. You will be asked to confirm your action, after which the country is created and the ownership of the listed provinces is transferred. More specific details about vassals may be found in the Diplomacy section of the manual.

Domestic Court

The second page of the Domestic Management interface is the Court screen, accessed by clicking on the crown symbol. This part of the interface provides detailed information about your current ruler and allows you to hire new court advisors to assist the development of your country.

Rulers

Each country has a ruler. At the beginning of your game, this will be the person who historically controlled the country on that date. Once this ruler dies, all future heads of state will be generated randomly and given a name that is suitable for that nation. While most rulers will

be male, there is the possibility that a female ruler may occasionally rise to the throne. The title of the ruler appearing at the top of the display will be appropriate to the form of government currently used by the country, as well as its region in the world.

Ruler Attributes

Each ruler has three individual attributes that have implications for the country: an administrative skill, a diplomatic skill, and a military skill. The ruler’s rating for each of these is shown as a certain number of stars in the interface, and the precise numerical value will appear in a tool tip when you hover your mouse over the rating.

• Administration:

This attribute reflects the ruler’s overall ability to govern the day to day administrative needs of the realm. A high administrative skill will reduce the cost to send merchants to the world’s centers of trade and improve their ability to

compete; decrease the cost to build province improvements; increase the chance to successfully establish and expand colonies; increase the chance that a missionary will be able to convert a province to your country’s state religion; contribute to the rate of recovery from any losses in stability; and will increase the speed at which you will research new improvements in government, production, and trade technologies.

• Diplomacy:

The ruler’s diplomatic rating indicates how adept he is at dealing with other countries. A high rating will help to improve all of your relationships; increase the number of diplomats available to be sent to conduct negotiations; reduce the impact of having a poor reputation; increase the rate at which you recover from having a bad reputation; make your spies somewhat better at succeeding in espionage attempts; and will reduce the provincial risk of revolt when you are at war for long periods of time.

• Military:

Your ruler’s military attribute improves the morale of your armies and navies, and helps to accelerate the research into new land and naval technologies that will lead to more potent forces. It has one further effect that we’ll talk about towards the end of this chapter: a male ruler with a high military rating will usually be a much better commander when he decides to lead an army in person.

At the beginning of each game, the ruler of each country will be the historic figure who led the nation at that time, and his or her attributes are also an approximation based on

historic records. All subsequent rulers will have

randomly generated attributes.

Ruler Succession

As was the case historically, a ruler’s lifespan is impossible to predict. Some may hold their throne for many years; others may survive for only a few short months before they die. Even your initial ruler is unlikely to die on the same

date that he died historically, because the game uses a degree of randomization to determine exactly when the next succession will occur.

The Court screen displays the date that your current ruler began his or her reign. Most monarchs, dictators and despots will have reigns that can last for many years, but there is a chance that there will be a disruptive period of domestic instability that accompanies the succession. Republics, theocracies and federations tend to have reigns that last for much shorter periods, but have stable transitions of power. When a king, queen, dictator, or despot dies, one of the following will occur:

• A new ruler will ascend to the country's throne immediately, with no issues of succession whatsoever. This is by far the most likely outcome and is the only form of succession that can occur for republics, theocracies, and federations.

• There is a chance that a regency council may temporarily govern the nation for several years, during which time there will be limitations on the country's actions. A country that is governed by a regency council does not have the authority to declare war, and cannot become the senior partner of a personal union, nor can it inherit another country. If the current Holy Roman Emperor dies, a country that is ruled by a regency council is ineligible to become the next emperor. It is also not possible to convert a regency council into a general to lead your armies.

• The country may be inherited by another realm with which it has a royal marriage; however, it is not possible for a player's country to be inherited as this would result in the premature (and annoying!) end of the game. A player's country can inherit an AI-controlled country, providing a means of expanding your realm without the need for bloodshed. Before you decide to use this as an exploit and form as many royal marriages as possible, you should consider the other possible outcomes (see below).

• If a country has a royal marriage with an

other country, there is a chance that the two realms may temporarily unite to form a "personal union" with one another. The country whose ruler has died will become the "lesser partner" of the union; the other country will be the "senior partner". The same ruler will then be listed as the head of state for both nations, though control of each country will remain independent (thus a player can become the junior member of a personal union). The only restriction placed on the senior member of a personal union is to prohibit it from declaring war on the junior partner. The junior partner may not enter into any royal marriages or form any alliances. It is also ineligible to inherit another country, become the next Holy Roman Emperor, or convert its ruler into a general; however, it is able to declare war. The personal union continues until the joint ruler dies, at which time each country will receive a new (and different) monarch and the union is dissolved.

• If a realm has a royal marriage with two or more other countries, there is also a small possibility of a succession war erupting when the ruler dies. This is a situation where the two most powerful countries will go to war to contest the succession. The country whose ruler has died must immediately decide which of the two countries to support, and becomes the junior member of a personal union with that realm. The united countries will be at war with the other claimant, and will remain at war until the issue of succession has been resolved. The conflict will only end when one of the claimants agrees to a peace term that recognises the other's right of succession.

Republics, theocracies and federations are immune from inheritance or succession crises; however, those forms of government are restricted from entering into royal marriages with other countries, thus somewhat limiting

their diplomatic options. We will return to this subject again when we talk about government types and in the chapter on Diplomacy.

Advisors

Each country may hire as many as three “Court Advisors” to provide additional benefits to the realm. Each advisor has an area of expertise and a certain level of skill. The more skilled the advisor, the greater the benefit he will confer to the country that employs him. An advisor will demand an initial fee at the time he is hired, as well as a monthly amount that you must pay as a salary to keep him. Both of these amounts are dependent on his skill level, making it more expensive to hire and maintain a highly skilled advisor than a mediocre one. There are twelve different possible advisor types who may become available:

• Philosopher:

Employing this highly respected type of advisor will increase your nation’s prestige each month.

• Natural Scientist:

This advisor will contribute an extra investment each month to your production technology research.

• Artist:

The beauty of this advisor’s work is of such magnitude that he actually helps to improve your country’s stability each month.

• Statesman:

Employing a statesman will contribute an extra monthly investment into diplomacy technology.

• Treasurer:

This advisor will help to speed

up your trade technology research.

• Naval Reformer:

You will gain new naval technologies more rapidly when you employ this type of advisor.

• Army Reformer:

Your land-based military technology will increase more rapidly with an army reformer in your court.

• Trader:

This advisor increases the rate at which new merchants become available in your national pool.

• Theologian:

Your pool of missionaries will increase more rapidly when you have a theologian in your court.

• Spymaster:

This advisor will help to recruit

new spies for your national pool.

• Colonial Advisor:

You will gain new colonists more rapidly in your national pool when this advisor is a member of your court.

• Diplomat:

A diplomatic advisor increases the rate at which you recruit new diplomats to your country’s pool.

There are also a number of random and historical events that either require a certain type of advisor to be a member of your court, or are affected by the type of advisor you have. The

historical event that triggers the start of the Reformation cannot occur to a country unless it has a theologian in its employ; and having a colonial advisor may occasionally provide you with a “free” colonist for your country’s pool, courtesy of a random event. There are many other such events that may occur throughout the game.

When you first start to play, you will probably have at least one advisor in your court if this was historically the case, and there may also be other historical figures available for

hire. All subsequent advisors that appear in the game are generated randomly, being given names that are appropriate to the region where they are “born”.

Your current advisors are shown in the three large boxes in the Court screen of the Domestic Interface. You will see each advisor’s name, type, and a summary of the direct benefits that

he gives you. You will also see his monthly salary and how many years he has been active. Most advisors have a lifespan of at least 20 years, but you should begin considering a replacement once he crosses this threshold.

You may find that the monthly cost of employing an advisor is no longer feasible or worthwhile for your realm. If this happens, you are free to dismiss him whenever you like. He will then become available to any other country who wishes to hire him, so he may not be available if you subsequently change your mind.

Hiring and Firing Advisors

Each advisor is assigned a “home province” when he is created. You will receive a message that notifies you when a new advisor appears in your realm, and will have the exclusive right to hire him for the first 30 days. If you choose not to employ him, he can then

be hired at any time by another country in the region. This also means that there may always be advisors available for you to hire from other realms without your having been notified of the fact. Once employed, an advisor will not voluntarily leave his court’s service.

Click on an empty advisor box if you wish to check who might be available for employment. You will see a scrollable list of advisors, including each one’s type, benefits, and skill level. Each advisor will demand an initial fee to join your service, as well as a monthly salary that must be paid from your treasury. To hire an advisor, simply click on him.

If you click on a box that is already occupied by one of your advisors, you will have the option to “sack” him. This removes the advisor from your court and returns him to the pool of available advisors. You don’t need to fire an advisor before replacing him. Simply click on the new advisor you would prefer to employ on your court and the exchange will be made automatically. There is no penalty for sacking an advisor, although he will demand his full fee should you decide to hire him again in the future.

Domestic

Economy

The Economy page of the Domestic Interface is displayed by clicking the tab with the sack of gold

symbol. This page contains a summary of your total provincial and trade

income which can then

allocated to researching new technologies or im-

proving your country’s

stability. The decisions you make with this inter-

face will have significant,

lasting effects on your country; this is the page that you are most likely

to access on a regular basis.

Income Summary

The scroll on the left side of the screen provides a summary of your realm’s total monthly budget. The amount displayed for your tax income is the total combined tax revenue received from all of your individual provinces. The same is true for the production income amount. Trade income has two separate components that are detailed in the tool tip that appears when you hover your mouse over the amount. A portion of your trade income comes from the sale of each of your province’s trade goods, and the balance is generated by the activities of your merchants in the world’s centers of trade. If you own any provinces that have gold as their principal trade good, this is reported on the

“gold income” line of the ledger. Your current

efficiency in collecting each of these amounts is displayed in brackets beside each item, and is determined by the level of technology that you have achieved in the corresponding area of research. Income may be further reduced if a province is an overseas colony or if any of your

country’s ports are currently blockaded by hostile f leets.

On January 1st of each year you will also receive a large, lump sum amount of per capita tax which should be thought of as a tithe. The per capita tax is not displayed in the

budget and is deposited directly into your treasury. If you have any vassals, their monthly payments will be included in the tax income line of the

budget. Europa Universa- lis III uses “ducats” as the term for money, so the total shown at the bottom of the income summary is the number of ducats that your country’s economy is generating on a monthly basis.

Budget Allocation Sliders

Below the income summary, you will see an

“investments” amount, and then a series of fixed

monthly expenses. These are deducted from your monthly income and any remaining balance is deposited to your treasury. The amount shown in the “investments” line is determined

by the settings of the seven “budget allocation” sliders on the right side of the interface. Let’s take some time to look at these, and then we’ll return to the subject of your fixed monthly expenses.

You will usually devote a large portion of your monthly income towards researching new technologies that will benefit your realm in the future. The first five sliders control the portion of your income devoted to new research in the fields of government, production, trade, naval, and land technologies. The sixth slider allows you to allocate an amount to be returned directly to your population. Doing so will result in less income for you, but will make your sub-

jects happier and thus improve your country’s

stability. The final slider controls how much of your income is taken in cash. This is the money you will use to pay your

fixed monthly expenses, after which the balance will be deposited to your nation’s treasury.

Technology Investment

In Europa Universalis

III, technology is a very

abstracted concept. Re-

search is divided into five primary fields of interest, and each field has as

many as 60 successive levels of achievement. At the beginning of the game, you will be a “level 0” in most (if not all) fields. As you invest some of your income in each area, you will slowly gain new levels of advancement. This will slowly improve your nation’s economy, enable new province improvements and forms of government, and greatly increase the quality and com-

bat effectiveness of your military forces. Let’s

look at each of these five disciplines:

• Government:

technologies will gradually make new province improvements available and will unlock new forms of government that will help improve your stability, diplomacy, and income. Even more importantly, you must usually achieve government level

1 before you will be able to choose your first

“national idea”; successively higher levels of

technology will allow you to adopt up to an additional nine national ideas. We’ll talk about these when we look at the Domestic

Government screen of the Domestic Inter-

face later in this chapter.

• Production:

technologies also lead to several new province improvements, but their greatest impact is to gradually increase the

production efficiency of all of your provinces which, in turn, will lead to significant increases in your monthly income.

• Trade:

technology level 1 is required before you will be able to send merchants out to the world’s centers of trade. As you progress further in this field of research, your merchants will become far more efficient at competing for trade and will find it easier to establish themselves in the world’s centers of trade. There are also several province improvements that require somewhat advanced levels of trade technology. Trade is discussed in more detail in the chapter on Trade.

• Naval technology:

will gradually increase the combat and operational capabilities of your ships. There are increasingly large and more powerful ship designs that will become available as you increase in level. You will also be able to travel longer and further at sea without worrying about returning to a friendly port to take on fresh supplies. We’ll talk about this in depth when we look at the military part of the game.

• Land:

technology will result in similar improvements to your land forces. As you increase in land technology levels, your infantry will replace their swords and pikes with various forms of gunpowder-based weaponry. Your cavalry will also increase in ability, but they tend to become somewhat less of an elite, infantry-destroying force than they are at the start of the game. Perhaps the most important advances will come with the development of artillery. Artillery regiments will become available once you have reached level 5 in land technology and are very effective at breaking down enemy fortifications. They are not very useful on the field of battle until the middle and later stages of the game. We talk about this in the Military chapter.

Your current technology level in each of the

fields of research is the large number displayed at the extreme right end of each slider. To at-

tain a new level in technology, you will need to allocate a portion of your income to that field until your total investment is sufficient to achieve the next advance. The exact amount that you need to invest will depend somewhat on how significant the advancement is, but it is also affected by how close the current game date is to the historical date that such a technology first commonly appeared. Europa Uni- versalis III uses a mechanism that makes it very difficult and almost prohibitively expensive to achieve technological progress that is too far ahead of history, but this same mechanism also makes it quite unlikely that you will fall too far behind it either.

To allocate part of your income to a field of research, simply set the appropriate slider to the desired position. This may be done by dragging the slider button with your mouse to make large changes, or by clicking on the arrows at either end of the slider to make very small, incremental changes. If you increase your investment in one slider, you must decrease it by a corresponding amount somewhere else in your budget. This can result in several sliders moving slightly downwards if you move another slider significantly upwards. You can lock or unlock a slider’s position by double-clicking or right-clicking on it.

At the right end of each slider, you will see the amount being allocated to this technology from your budget each month. Hovering your mouse any where over the slider will display a tool tip indicating the total investment required to achieve the next level of technology, and the amount that has been invested to date. The slider itself is colour-coded to give you an approximate view of your progress.

At the beginning of each level it will be red,

and as you invest in research it will gradually change to green from left to right. Once the green progress bar reaches the right end of the slider, you will gain the next level of technology. If you’re in a hurry, you can click the small lightning bolt symbol to the right of the slider. This allows you to make an investment of gold

from your treasury to reach the next level a little more quickly, but the rate of return is only half the investment.

As we saw in the previous section, there are also a number of advisor types that will contribute to your monthly investment in a particular field of research. The exact amount depends on the advisor’s skill level, and will be invested even if you have allocated nothing at all from your monthly budget. You ruler will also contribute a “free” investment amount each month, as determined by his attributes.

The budget allocation slider’s tool tip may also report that you are receiving a “neighbour

bonus”. This is another mechanism in the game that simulates the involuntary spread of technology across international boundaries. If another country in the region has achieved a higher level of technology than you, some of that knowledge will gradually seep into your nation and be added to your investment. This doesn’t deduct any income from the other country, nor will you lose any income if another country is benefiting from your own technological progress.

There is one additional factor that may affect your advancement in technology: your country’s technology group. This is part of the game’s design that helps to produce a more realistic overall outcome. Nations that are part of a particular technology group will receive a modifier that alters the total amount that must

be invested to reach the next level of achievement. This helps to ensure that countries tend to develop at approximately the same rate that they did historically and prevents implausible things from happening such as having your 16th century French explorer in North America encounter an army of Iroquois that are armed with advanced artillery pieces. Technology groups are not intended as disparagement to the nations assigned to “inferior” groups and are only incorporated to provide more immersive game play. Details of the exact modifiers can be found in Appendix D.

Stability Investment

The sixth slider allows you to divert a portion of your income into improving your country’s stability. You may do so at any time unless you are already at the maximum stability level (+3). As you’ll recall, high stability reduces the chance of provincial revolts and also increases the production revenue that you can draw from a province. Think of this investment as a deferral of taxes to make your public more content. The cost of improving your stability by one level depends on a variety of factors:

• Large realms will require a larger invest

ment, while small countries with only a few provinces will require much less.

• Countries with a greater diversity of pro

vincial cultures are more expensive to please, particularly when some of the provinces' cultures are not currently accepted on a national level.

• The number of provinces that do not share your country's national religion will also increase the cost.

• The type of government currently in place in your country may have either a positive or negative effect on the cost.

• The administration attribute of your ruler will automatically contribute towards regaining stability.

• Hiring an artist as a court advisor will con

tribute to the monthly investment. The exact amount of the investment depends on the artist's skill level.

• Countries that are part of the Holy Roman Empire will receive a small monthly bonus to their stability investment. The Emperor receives an additional bonus for each country that is part of the Empire.

• Each of the curia's cardinals that support your country will contribute an amount to your country's stability investment. The current controller of the Holy See gains an additional large bonus.

It would be hard to overstate the importance of maintaining a fairly reasonable level of stability. It might be very worthwhile to allocate a

large portion of your monthly budget to sta-

bility increases if your stability ever becomes too low. If you are at the maximum +3 stability level, this slider will be automatically set to a 0 investment and any previous allocation will be distributed evenly in the other six sliders. Your stability level is always displayed in the top bar of the Main Interface, as well as to the right of this slider.

Treasury Investment

The “investments” amount shown on the budget summary is the sum of the amounts that you have allocated to the five technology sliders, as well as any investment in stability. The remainder of your monthly income will automatically be allocated to your treasury allocation slider which is used to mint money. These ducats will be used to pay your fixed monthly expenses and any remaining balance will be added directly to your treasury. Investing in your treasury causes a very small but constant increase in your country’s current inflation value, which we’ll talk about shortly. The “balance” shown on the budget summary scroll is the total amount allocated to the treasury slider after the fixed expenses have been deducted and is updated automatically as you adjust the treasury slider.

It is possible to run a deficit in your monthly balance, after fixed expenses, but it is not advisable to do so for extended periods of times.

While there are no direct penalties incurred by

a negative balance, any shortfall will be withdrawn from your country’s treasury. If you lack the funds in your treasury to pay your fixed expenses, you will automatically be forced to take a loan to cover the shortfall. Until the loan is repaid, you will forced to spend an additional monthly amount in interest charges which will make it even harder to balance your budget and could eventually force your country into bankruptcy. We will look at this financial death-spiral after quickly reviewing your country’s fixed expenses.

Fixed Expenses

There are three fixed expenses shown on the budget summary scroll on the left side of the screen. The “advisors” amount is the monthly salary you must pay to retain the services of any court advisors that you may have hired. The

“military maintenance” amount is the monthly

cost to maintain your current complement of armies and navies, and is the subject of the next page of the Domestic interface. The “Interest” amount will only apply if you have voluntarily (or involuntarily) taken a loan, and reflects the monthly amount that you must pay in interest on the sum that you have borrowed [see below].

Monthly Budget Balance

Once your fixed expenses have been deducted from your treasury investment, the monthly budget “balance” is reported near the bottom of the scroll, showing the number of ducats that will be placed into your treasury each month. You will use this money to recruit new troops, hire mercenaries, build new ships, construct new province improvements, conduct diplomacy, fund new mercantile ventures, establish and expand new colonies, and many other things that involve an expenditure from your treasury. If your monthly balance is negative, it will be shown in red and this amount will be deducted from your country’s treasury. If you lack sufficient funds in your treasury to pay for your fixed monthly expenses, you will be forced to take a loan to pay for them.

Inflation

Europa Universalis III incorporates a basic

measure of inflation which reflects the trend for things to gradually become more expensive over time. The amount shown on the “inf lation” line of the budget summary scroll is the current percentage surcharge that applies to a large number of the things that you purchase. It is not a compounded value; thus, an inflation value of 10% means only that you are currently paying a 10% surcharge over the base

cost of an item, not that each item will become 10% more expensive each successive year. Your inflation amount will change as a result of a number of things:

• Inf lation increases very slowly for every ducat that is minted by the current setting of your treasury investment slider. The more gold you mint, the more rapidly your inflation value will rise, and the more expensive many of your purchases and investments will become. A small amount of inflation is essentially unavoidable, but you should avoid using more drastic settings except in case of emergency, and you should try to limit this to periods with a very short duration.

• Owning a province with gold as its trade good causes a slight monthly increase to your inflation value. The amount of the increase depends on your country's total income. If the gold income is small when compared to the country's income from other provinces, the inf lation value increase will be almost negligible. If the gold income is a significant portion of your income then the rate of increase could soar to almost unbearable levels.

• Each "Tax Assessor" province improve

ment that you build will reduce the rate that the inf lation value increases in your country. If you have a sufficient number of these they can even cause the country's inflation value to slowly decrease.

• Similarly, the "National Banking" national idea will reduce the rate that the inflation value increases or could cause it to decrease.

• There are also a handful of random and historic events that can alter your inflation value, either upwards or downwards.

The inflation value is applied to all province improvement costs, all armed forces recruitment costs, all merchant placement and missionary costs, the cost to establish or expand a colony, and to the total investment cost required to research each new technology. It is a

very good policy to keep your inflation value as low as possible and to allow only a minimal rate of increase unless there is a very compelling reason to do otherwise.

Loans

There may be times of extreme emergency where your country’s survival will depend on being able to raise a very large amount of cash in a very short period of time. You can, if necessary, elect to take a loan. You may also

be forced to take a loan if you are running a monthly budget deficit and lack the funds in your national treasury to cover the shortfall. This occurs automatically, although you will receive a warning when your treasury is very low and you are running a deficit, as well as a message notification when the forced loan is actually taken.

To take a loan voluntarily, click the “take loan” button located below the budget summary scroll. At the beginning of the game, each loan will be in the amount of 200 ducats, but this can increase to larger sums later in the game. A loan must be repaid in full exactly 5 years from the date that it is taken. During this 60-month period you will be required to pay a monthly interest charge which is shown as a fixed expense on the budget summary scroll. This interest payment does not reduce the principal amount owing, so a loan of 200 ducats will incur monthly interest charges for 5 years, and the full 200 ducats will be payable when the loan comes due.

An alert will be displayed at the top of your screen approximately three months prior to the date that the loan must be repaid. Clicking on it will take you to a page in your country’s ledger that shows the amount of the loan and the date that it is due. If you lack the necessary funds in your treasury to repay a loan when it is due, you will be forced to take an additional loan to cover this and you will be notified of this by the on-screen message. Unsurprisingly, lenders consider this to be a much higher-risk offering and will demand an additional 3%

monthly interest payment for the duration of the new loan.

The maximum number of loans that you may take at any one time depends on your ability to pay the monthly interest charges and each successive loan incurs a somewhat higher interest rate than the previous one. The base rate for the first loan is 5%, and then the interest charged on each successive loan will increase

by 2% for each (thus your second loan would

be at 7%, your third would be at 9%, and so on). As you repay each loan, the interest rate for the next loan is reduced by the same 2%.

You will be prohibited from taking any new loans if your country’s economy does not generate enough income to cover the total monthly interest requirements of all outstanding loans. This calculation is based upon the amount of money that your country would generate if the treasury investment slider was set at 100%; thus, it is still possible to take a loan when you are running a budget deficit, provided that the interest would be less than your total monthly income.

Bankruptcy

It is extremely dangerous to draw the maximum number of loans that your country’s economy can support. If for any reason you are forced to make a payment that would require taking a new loan, your country will be plunged into

bankruptcy. This can occur if you are running a monthly budget deficit; if you’ve defaulted on a loan; or possibly as a result of a random or historical event that demands a payment of some kind. If your country goes bankrupt, you will receive an on-screen message to notify you of this event and its devastating effects:

• All of your current loans are eliminated, as is the balance of whatever amount you owed that forced the bankruptcy.

• Every province in your country will suffer a +1 increase in its risk of revolt for the next five years.

• Your armies and navies will be demoralized and be much more likely to turn tail and run from combat for the next five years.

• Any new loans that you take in the next five years will incur an additional 10% interest rate charge over and above their usual interest rates.

• Your country's current inf lation value will be increased by 5%, plus an additional 1% for each loan that has been defaulted.

• Any advisors currently serving in your court will depart since you have demonstrated an inability to pay for their services.

• Any mercenaries that are currently part of your military will immediately leave your employ. This will happen even if they are in the midst of combat.

Needless to say, you should avoid bankruptcy at all costs. If your country does go bankrupt, you should probably try to avoid any wars and attempt to lay low for the full five years until the effects have worn off.

War Taxes

Wars can be fairly expensive, requiring extraor-

dinary expenditures to recruit and maintain new forces. In the periods of history covered by the game, it was fairly common for special

“war taxes” to be levied on a population. Click-

ing the “Raise War Taxes” button will provide a 50% increase to your country’s tax income and will last for one full year; however, this will also displease your population, causing an increased risk of rebellion in all of your provinces for the next 12 months. It is advisable to do this only in case of emergency; preferably, when your country’s stability is high enough to overcome its negative effects.

You may only raise war taxes when your country is already at war. The button will be greyed out if you are at peace, or if you have already raised war taxes within the last 12 months.

Domestic Military

The fourth tab on the Domestic Interface provides a summary of your country’s overall current military strength; allows you to change your preferred military unit types; and is most commonly used to adjust the level of funding you devote to maintaining your armies and navies. Since this page relates directly to your military forces, we will discuss them only briefly in this section and then cover these concepts and their implications in detail in the separate chapter on “The Military”.

Unit Categories and Types

Europa Universalis III includes a very large number of different unit types that are based upon both regional and technological differences around the world during the eras covered

by the game. In mid-15th century Europe, an army was usually seasonal and was made up of heavily armoured knights accompanied by scores of poorly-armed peasants levied for a specific campaign. The weapons in use were primarily swords, spears and various types of

bows; siege equipment was almost unchanged from the ponderous machinery in use several hundred years earlier. Within a hundred years, the transition towards professional armies and gunpowder-based weaponry had begun; by the game’s end, it would be muskets and artillery that dominated the battlefields of Europe. Technological progress occurred at various rates throughout the world and the types of weaponry and tactics varied considerably from place to place.

As we saw in the previous section, budget investments in land and naval technology will

gradually ref lect these advancements by unlocking new and more powerful types of military units. Each unit type belongs to one of seven categories: land-based units all fall under the classification of infantry, cavalry, or artillery, while naval units will either be transport vessels or one of three distinct sizes of combat vessel. Each unit has a set of combat characteristics that we’ll talk about in detail later; however, one of these is called “morale” which we should introduce here.

Morale reflects your military units’ willing-

ness to fight. When units are engaged in com-

bat, they will gradually take losses in the form

casualties, but they will also slowly lose morale.

When a unit’s morale drops too low, it will

“break,” disengage from battle, and attempt

to retreat towards safety. Few battles will last long enough to achieve the complete annihilation of an enemy, so a side’s morale is usually one of the most important factors that determines who will emerge as the victor. Units that are not engaged directly in battle will regain morale slowly over time, although this process can take months if it has become thoroughly demoralized. We will return to the subject of

morale shortly, when we talk about land and naval maintenance.

Preferred Unit Type

The upper half of the Domestic Military screen has a dual function: it allows you to review your total military strength, and enables you to change the

“preferred unit type” for

each of the three categories of land combat regiment. A preferred unit type is the type of regiment that your country has chosen as its official military unit.

As we will see in the chapter on the Military, your armies are composed of regiments that are recruited from your provinces. The type of regiment you can recruit in any specific province is determined

by the preferred unit type of any country that considers that province to be a core province. You will only be able to recruit new regiments of your own preferred unit type in provinces that your country considers to

be cores. You may also be able to recruit a different type of regiment if you own a province that is considered a core of another realm, and whatever unit type is currently preferred by that country will be the type of regiment available for you to recruit there. A province that is considered a core by no one will be unable to recruit any military units at all. The same is true when building ships in any of your coastal provinces. You will only be able to order construction of a ship if at least one country considers it a core province, and the type of ships available will be only the preferred types currently set by those realms.

At the end of each line is a summary of the total number of regiments or ships of this category that are currently serving in your military. In the adjacent graphic, you will see that our preferred infantry regiment is the “Latin Medieval Infantry” and that we have a total of five infantry regiments currently serving our country, but this does not mean that all five of those regiments are Latin Medieval Infantry. We might have only three regiments of that type, and two infantry regiments of a different type.

Changing Your Preferred

Regiment Type

As you advance to higher levels in land technol-

ogy, your regiments will gradually become more effective in combat. Occasionally, a new level of advancement will also “unlock” new and more powerful types of regiment in one of the three land unit categories. You will be notified when this happens, and may wish to consider adopting this advanced unit as your preferred regiment type.

To change your country’s preferred regiment type, click on the category to display a list of all of the unit types currently available. The combat characteristics of each are shown to allow you to easily compare their capabilities

(we’ll describe what they mean in the chapter

on the Military). Simply click on the label for the unit that you would now like to set as your country’s preferred unit type, and any future recruiting that you do in your core provinces will now be for this type of unit. This includes any recruitment that is already in progress.

Once you have adopted a new preferred regiment type, all regiments of the old preferred type that are currently in the field will also be upgraded immediately at no cost; however, this is an extremely disruptive process that makes them utterly ineffective in combat until they have had an opportunity to acclimatise themselves to their new weaponry. This is ref lected in the game by setting their morale level to 0, so you should not do this at any time that you currently have units involved in combat. The

morale will be recovered over time in the same way that morale is regained after combat.

The only field regiments that will be upgraded are the ones that were of the old preferred type. If you have recruited any regiments that are another country’s preferred type in that category, these will not be upgraded. Keep in mind that if another country owns a province that is considered your core, that realm will now be able to recruit your new preferred unit type as well; however, if they have already recruited several regiments, these will not be upgraded when you change your preference. Similarly, any regiments that you have

built that are another country’s preferred unit type will not be upgraded if that country later changes to a new type; however, if you still own one of that country’s core provinces, you will

be able to order regiments of the new type to

be recruited.

Preferred ship types are handled differently. Your preferred ship type will always be the most powerful ship type you have researched in each of the four categories of vessel. When a new type is unlocked, any new ships you build in your core coastal provinces will be of the new and improved variety. Existing ships of the old type are not upgraded since the technological advancements usually reflect new hull designs and rigging. To take advantage of a new naval unit type, you will need to build a new f leet of ships and scuttle any antiquated models.

Army/Naval Maintenance

Each month, there is a cost associated with maintaining your military, reflecting the need to feed them and ensure that their equipment is in good working order. This maintenance cost can be quite expensive if you decide to keep a large army in the field or a sizeable fleet in your navy. When a regiment has suffered combat casualties or a ship has received damage, the maintenance cost is also used to automatically replenish the losses or repair the damage.

Each month, every regiment and every ship costs a small, fixed amount of money to main-

tain. The combined total of all land and naval maintenance costs is the “Military Maintenance” value we saw on the budget summary scroll on the Domestic Economy page of the interface. If you wish, you may reduce your funding to either facet of your military by adjusting the maintenance sliders at the bottom of the Domestic Military page. The slider’s range runs from a minimum of 50% to a maximum of 100% of the necessary monthly expenditure to keep it in perfect condition. Setting a value

below 100% will reduce your monthly mainte-

nance costs, but has two detrimental effects:

• The maintenance setting limits the morale level of your units to that percentage of their maximum possible value. A unit that receives only 50% funding will be much more likely to break in combat; however, after the combat is over, the rate that morale is regained by that unit is not affected by the maintenance setting.

• The land maintenance setting also reduc

es the rate that regiments will be replenished after sustaining casualties. Similarly, the naval maintenance setting will reduce the speed that repairs are made to your ships when they have been damaged. Neither maintenance setting affects the total combat strength of a unit. Both land and naval units will eventually return to full strength.

When your country is at peace, it is generally

advisable to adjust your maintenance settings to lower values since this will free up part of your monthly income to be used for other things. You could invest more heavily in research, or perhaps build up a large treasury amount that could be used to purchase improvements for your provinces or other such expenditures. During this time, your forces will be at only a portion of their potential morale level and will take longer to repair if they are not currently at full strength, so you will be more vulnerable to a surprise attack. If you feel that war is imminent, you should immediately return the sliders to their maximum levels to

give your forces a chance to reach their maximum possible morale levels and finish regaining any missing strength.

You will receive an alert at the top of the

screen to remind you that you are fighting at

below optimum maintenance levels if your country becomes involved in a war. Clicking on the alert will automatically open the Domestic Interface to this page, allowing you to adjust the maintenance levels to a desired level. Remember that increasing maintenance only increases your units' maximum morale level and that it will still take some time for your forces build up the additional morale.

Domestic Religion

The subject of Religion is arguably one of the most potentially explosive ones in the history of our species. Countless wars have been fought over religious differences or misunderstandings during the ages, with no small number of them occurring during the very eras covered in Eu- ropa Universalis III. To omit religion from the game entirely would introduce a fundamental flaw in the design, and yet to include it also risks the unintentional misrepresentation or trivialization of the beliefs of our customers.

We decided that the importance of religion in this era is too great a factor to ignore, so it is included as an element of the game. While there have been hundreds of different belief systems throughout history, the practical limitations are too great to represent them all. We have therefore incorporated a very simplified version of religion that inherently requires a high degree of generalisation and the

omission of many well-recognized world religions. We wish to assure you that this is done purely in the interests of game play and that we intend no disrespect to any creed or culture.

World Religions

Europa Universalis III includes four fundamen-

tal religious groups that had extremely large fol-

lowings and concentrations of during this era: “Christian”, “Muslim”, “Eastern Religions”, and “Paganism”. We have, admittedly, approached

this from a decidedly Eurocentric viewpoint

since European nations are the predominant

focus of the game. Each of these major groups

is then subdivided into two or more religious “subtypes”, and each of these has its own unique

characteristics that affect play. Not all of the

religious subtypes will be enabled when you

begin a game in 1453, since some of them did

not come into existence until later in the peri-

od. The complete list of religious subtypes and

their effects may be found in Appendix E.

Realm Religion

Each country has a specific religious subtype

that it recognises as the

“official” religion of the

realm. The nation will also be aware of the distinction between any other subtypes that exist within the same major religious group; but will treat all other major religions’ subtypes as being indistinguishable from one another. Let’s provide a specific example:

The adjacent screen shot is taken from a game we were playing as France and our official realm religion is Catholicism. As a subtype of the Christian religious group, a Catholic France is able to dis-

tinguish between the other Christian religious subtypes: Protestant, Reformed, and Orthodox. France does not understand that there is a difference between “Sunni” and “Shiite” religious subtypes, and simply treats them a “Muslim”. Only a country with one of the Muslim religion’s subtypes would be able to recognise the difference, but it would treat the four Christian subtypes simply as “Christian”.

Your country’s official realm religion will

be shown on the banner at the top left of the page. This is the same religion that is shown on the first page of the interface in the Domestic Overview. In addition to the unique game play modifiers given by each religious subtype, there are a number of important issues related to your realm’s official religion. We’ll list them here, and then look at each of them in turn.

• Your must decide how tolerant your coun

try will be towards each of the other religions in the world. This will affect the risk of revolt in some of your provinces, as well as your relationship with all of the other countries in the world.

• In some cases, it may be possible for your country to convert from one official realm religion to another. Although this is highly disruptive in the short term, there may be long-term advantages to considering such a change.

• You may be able to gain the title of "Sole Defender of the Faith" for the religious subtype that your realm officially supports. While the cost of doing this is substantial, it confers a number of special bonuses that may make the price worthwhile.

• Your country will only be able to enter into a royal marriage with another country that has an official realm religion in the same major religious group. We'll talk more about royal marriages in the chapter on Diplomacy.

• There are a number of special historical events that you might receive if your country has a particular realm religion. Some of these are beneficial, while others are

not. The series of events that pertain to the Reformation are a good example of this. We won't reveal any more about them here since they are part of the "fun" you are likely to encounter while playing the game.

• You will only receive less tax income from any province whose provincial religion is not exactly the same religious subtype as your official realm religion. The exact amount of the penalty is reported in the province's tax income tool tip.

• You will find it much harder to regain any lost stability if you have a religiously diverse realm. Each province you own whose provincial religion is not exactly the same religious subtype as your realm religion will cause an increase in the amount you must invest to increase your stability, although the penalty is not as large if a province's religion is within the same major religious group.

You can eliminate these last two effects by sending a missionary to attempt to convert any province that you own. Although this can be an expensive and time-consuming process, and carries no guarantee of success, the advantages of maintaining a religiously uniform country will often make this a very worthwhile venture.

Religious Tolerance

Religious tolerance has two main areas of effect: the internal stability of your country, and your ongoing relationship with the other countries in the world. Both of these are controlled by a set of sliders that adjust how tolerant your realm will be towards each of the world’s religions.

Each religion that your country has encountered is represented by a slider in the Domestic Religious interface. There is one slider for each subtype in the same religious group as your realm religion, and an additional slider for each of the other major religious groups that you have met. If you become aware of a previ-

ously unknown religion, or if a new one (such as the various forms of Protestantism) is created, a new slider will be added to the page.

You can move each of the sliders to any setting that you wish. Choosing a position towards the extreme left will cause your country to be hostile towards anyone of that faith. A setting that is towards the right end of slider will make your country quite tolerant of that religion. There is one restriction to the slider settings: the sum of your tolerance settings must

always be neutral. If you wish to be highly toler-

ant of one religion, you must either be equally intolerant of another, or somewhat intolerant of several. You can adjust a slider by dragging the tab to the desired position, or by clicking the arrows at either end of the slider. As you do so, you’ll notice other sliders moving in the opposite direction to automatically maintain the required overall balance. You can prevent a slider from moving by locking it in place. Right-click or double-click the slider to lock it, and repeat this process to unlock it again. Because you must always have an overall neutral

balance, you will only be able to adjust your tolerance towards a religion if at least one other slider is also unlocked.

Religious Tolerance’s Effect on Province Revolt Risk

Your religious tolerance settings have a large

effect on the revolt risk in any province that you control. If you are tolerant towards a province’s religion, it will be much less likely to revolt than it would if you were intolerant. This effect is entirely dependent on your tolerance settings and not on your official realm religion. It also applies to any province that you control, not just to provinces that you own. This can be a very important distinction during war.

We discussed the difference between ownership and control in the chapter on Province Management; but a quick reminder might be a good idea. Any province that is part of your realm is one that you own and will also usually

be under your control. During a war, control

of a province will change if an enemy is successful in defeating the province’s defences and occupying the provincial capital. When this happens, the province will have an increased revolt risk, which simulates a population’s natural tendency to resist an enemy’s occupation. The revolt risk will be much greater if the enemy is also intolerant towards the province’s religion. You should keep this in mind when you are fighting wars against religious enemies. It might be worthwhile to make a few temporary adjustments to your religious tolerance settings to prevent too many rebellions from springing up in any provinces that you occupy.

Religious Tolerance’s Effect on Population Growth

The rate at which a province’s population grows is also dependent on whether the country that controls it is tolerant towards the province’s religion. High tolerance will increase the rate of growth, while low tolerance will reduce it and can even result in a gradual population decline.

Again, this effect is determined by control, not

ownership.

Religious Tolerance’s Effect on Country Relationships

The effect of your country’s religious tolerance preferences extends far beyond your own borders. Your relationship with each and every other country in the world receives a monthly adjustment based on your respective settings. Being tolerant of another country’s religion will tend to improve your relationship, while being intolerant will cause your relationship to erode. It is quite common for two countries to have different religious tolerance settings. It is their combined effect that determines the monthly change in their relationship. Countries that are intolerant towards each others’ religions may see their relationship deteriorate rapidly, which can easily lead to war.

Converting Religion

At some point in the game, it is almost certain

that a special chain of historic events will begin to unfold. These simulate the start of the Reformation and may occur in any Catholic countries that meet a special set of requirements (we won’t reveal those here, though, because we don’t want to spoil the surprise). The events will usually begin sometime in the 16th century, and the conditions that trigger them will correspond very closely to those that prompted Luther, Zwingali, Calvin, and others to initiate the historical Reformation. Once started, the Protestant and Reformed religious subtypes of Christianity will be enabled and are likely to begin spreading throughout any parts of the Catholic world that are ripe for religious change.

If it is possible for your realm to voluntar-

ily convert to a different national religion, the

“convert” button beside an available religion

will be highlighted in gold. This won’t happen until your realm has a fairly high level of stability. As you would expect, officially adopting a new religion will result in a period of extreme social upheaval. Before converting, make sure you are ready for the immediate drop of -5 nation stability levels and the possibility that some of your provinces will revolt.

Keep in mind that changing your official realm religion does not cause the conversion of any of your country’s provinces. You must send a missionary to convert any province that does not share your new faith. In the interim, you will probably need to carefully manage your religious tolerance settings to avoid too much internal rebellion.

Voluntary religious conversion is limited to the few religions where nations historically made a relatively peaceful conversion. You will only be able to convert between the Catholic, Protestant, and Reformed subtypes using this interface. The only way for realms with any of the other religious faiths to convert is as a result of a forced conversion or a special historical or random event. Forced conversion is a term that may be imposed upon a country as a condition of peace, and can only be used to force con-

versions within the same major religious group.

We’ll leave the historical and random events as

a surprise for you to experience in the game; they provide the only means for a country to convert to a different major religious group.

Defender of the Faith

Each religious subtype may have one country that is recognised as the “Defender of the Faith”. If there is currently no country that holds this title, the “Declare Sole Defender of the Faith”

button on the Domestic Religion interface will

be highlighted in gold. The 1000-ducat cost of making the declaration is high but the advantages may make it worthwhile considering:

• The Defender of the Faith gains an auto

matic casus belli against any country that is at war with another member of the faith. You will not suffer the usual damage to your reputation for declaring war if you do so in support of another member of the faith. This applies even if the country you are declaring war against also shares the same faith.

• The armies and navies of the Defender of the Faith receive a modest boost to their morale, making them far more likely to emerge victorious from battle.

• The Defender of the Faith is a prestigious position. The realm will receive extra prestige on a monthly basis for holding this title.

• The revolt risk due to war exhaustion will be much lower for the Defender of the Faith. A country's subjects tend to become tired of wars that last for any great length of time, and will only slowly regain a willingness to enter into war again once peace has been achieved. This reluctance is less for the Defender of the Faith, as the population expects a certain amount of bloodshed to go hand in hand with the country's responsibilities.

Beyond the exorbitant cost, there are two possible disadvantages to declaring yourself the Defender of the Faith. Your realm's focus

on spiritual matters diverts a portion of your

budget away from investments into production and trade technologies. This is reflected in the Domestic Economy screen by applying a 20% surcharge to the investment amounts required to reach the next level of technology in those two fields. You will also experience an increase in the revolt risk of any province that does not share the realm religion.

Once you have declared yourself the Defender of the Faith, you will retain the title until your country either loses a war, or you fail to win a war that you initiated. Wars can end when one side surrenders to the other, or when both sides agree to a cessation of hostilities called a "white peace". If you surrender to another country you will cease to hold the Defender of the Faith title, regardless of who started the war. If you agree to end a war in a white peace, you will only lose the title if you were the country that made the initial declaration of war. If you went to war as a result of a request from one of your allies, you will only lose the title if your ally is the country that initiated the war. As we shall see in the chapter on diplomacy, an alliance leader can arrange a peace that affects all of the members of his alliance. If you are not the leader in a war, it is possible that a peace arranged by your alliance leader could cause you to lose the title unexpectedly.

Domestic Government

Earlier, we looked at the way in which your ruler and court advisors contribute to your country. The court represents the ruling elite of the

nation, whereas the Domestic Government represents the entire bureaucracy and structure that runs the day-to-day business of the realm. There are three distinct and important aspects to your country’s government: the form of government currently used by the nation, the domestic policies that the government has been instructed to pursue, and any special “national ideas” that will help to chart the course of the nation through the decades. All three of these are controlled from this page of the interface.

Form of Government

Near the top of the screen is a gold button that indicates your country’s current form of government. There are 17 different types available

in Europa Universalis III, each of which has its own special bonuses and limitations that we discuss in detail in Appendix F. You can also see the specific information about your current form of government by hovering your mouse over the button. Each form of government can be generally classified as being some sort of variation of either a monarchy or a republic. The important distinction between the two is whether the form of government has an elected or hereditary head of state, which, in turn, is the second of two factors that deter-

mine whether a country is able to enter into a

“royal marriage” with another country.

It was common in this era of history for nations to form bonds between one another by arranging marriages between members of the royal household. This often helped to improve the relationship between realms; but could also lead to a surprising number of issues in future

generations when the line of succession came into question or dispute. We refer to the creation of a dynastic tie using the term “royal marriage”. The two main prerequisites for creating a royal marriage are that both countries must belong to the same major religious group, and both countries must have a form of government that has a dynastic head of state. We will discuss the method for arranging a royal marriage in the chapter on Diplomacy.

Countries that are able to form royal marriages will benefit from the short-term advantages of improved relationships, but also open themselves up to possible strife in the future. We saw this potential earlier when we looked at the things that might happen when your ruler dies. This includes the possibility of inheriting another country’s territory, becoming a junior or senior partner in a personal union, or the dangerous turmoil of a succession war. Most governments that are a form of republic with an elected head of state cannot create a royal marriage (since there is no “royalty” formally recognized), thus they limit their diplomatic options somewhat in exchange for somewhat greater longterm security.

Changing Your Form of Government

Clicking on the form of

government button will

display a list of all the

other government types

that are currently avail-

able to you. Early in the

game, you will have very

limited choices (or even

no choice at all) because

most advanced forms of

government must first be

researched by investing

in government technol-

ogy. As you reach higher

levels of technology, you

will have a wider range of

options.

There is a small loss of stability whenever you alter your form of government, reflecting the fact that such bureaucratic transitions rarely go smoothly. You must

have a nation stability level of at least 0 before

you will be allowed to

select a new form of government. You will also be prohibited from making a drastic change in a single step. If a form of government is greyed out on the list, it will be neces-

sary to change to one or more interim forms of government before it will

become available. The al-

lowed government transitions are included in the

listing in Appendix F.

National Ideas

Immediately below the

form of government button are ten “National Ideas” boxes. A national

idea is a fundamental policy decision that you can instruct your country to pursue. It helps to define the overall character of your realm. There are thirty different, unique national ideas included in Europa Universalis III which may affect your land and naval military capabilities, your focus towards exploration and colonization, your state’s business and trade, or your state’s culture.

Each country may adopt as many as ten ideas; however, you may only adopt as many ideas as is allowed by your current government technology level. When you begin a game in

1453, it is likely that you will not yet have suf-

ficient government technology to adopt your first national idea. In most cases, you will need only a modest investment over a short period of time before reaching the necessary government technology level 1, which unlocks the first box. You will see an alert appear at the top of the Main Map to remind you when a slot is available, and as you achieve higher levels of technology, you will be able to select additional ideas. It is possible that your country will be advanced enough by the end of the game to have ten national ideas in effect.

Once a new national idea slot becomes available, one of the ten national ideas boxes in the Domestic Government screen will be highlighted in gold. Click on this box to display a list of all the available national ideas. Hovering over an idea will display a tool tip that shows each one’s effect on your realm. All of the ideas will be available to you throughout the game as there are no restrictions or prerequisites imposed upon their selection. There is also no limit on how many ideas you may choose from any one particular category. You are free to choose any national idea you like. Once you have decided on an idea, click on it

to adopt it in your realm. You will see the idea’s graphic displayed in the box, and its effects will be applied to your realm immediately.

You should choose your national ideas with care. Adopting a new national idea is not at all disruptive to your country, but it is a very different story if you decide to change from one idea to another. You may, if you wish, click on a national idea that you have already adopted and select a different one, but there is a -1 stability penalty incurred for making the change.

You will not be able to change a national idea at

all if your realm is unstable.

The full listing of national ideas and their effects can be found in Appendix G, but we should draw your particular attention to the

“Quest for the New World” idea in the Explo-

ration category. This national idea allows you to recruit explorers and conquistadors who can then be sent out to discover any uncharted provinces. Until you have adopted the Quest for the New World, you will be unable to explore any provinces that are terra incognita. If you have visions of building a vast, colonial empire, you should choose this idea fairly early in the game.

Domestic Policies

At the bottom of the Government page of the

interface is a series of eight “Domestic Policy”

sliders. Domestic policies are general

trends or areas of

interest that your country will pursue. Unlike the investment and tolerance

sliders we saw ear-

lier, domestic policies can only be changed very slowly and in-

frequently because they represent fairly drastic shifts in overall government policy in the running of the country.

Each slider offers a sliding scale of 11 dis-

tinct steps, allowing your country to determine

its political stance towards two opposing points of view. Most domestic policies have incremental penalties and rewards that become greater as you approach the minimum or maximum settings of the slider. As you move towards an extreme, you will gain a greater benefit in one area of your country at the expense of a corresponding penalty on another. As is the case with most fundamental decisions in Europa Universalis III, there is no “right” or “wrong” domestic policy. You should pursue the policies that best meet the needs of your realm and the type of game you wish to play.

You can review the effects of your current policy setting by hovering your mouse anywhere over the slider; and you can preview the effects of changing the policy by one step in either direction by hovering over the arrows at either end of the bar. There is a table in Appendix H that provides details of the effects of each slider.

To change your domestic policy, first decide which policy you would like to change and in which direction; then click the arrow at the appropriate end of the slider to move it one step in that direction. A change of policy is disruptive to the realm, so you will lose one level of stability each time you adjust your policy and you cannot adjust it if you are currently at -3 stability.

You may only change your domestic policy

by one step once every decade or two, so rapid shifts of policy are nearly impossible. The exact period of time between changes will depend on your current form of government and is in-

cluded in the information displayed in the tool tip that appears when you hover your mouse over the form of government button. Once you

have changed your domestic policy, the tool tip for each slider will also indicate when you may next change your domestic policy. If you forget, an alert will appear at the top of the Main Map to remind you that you can make an adjustment. Domestic policies may also be changed as a result of random or historic events. Sometimes, these will allow you to make large shifts in policy without incurring as great a stability loss as would be the case for doing so via normal means. Any changes to policy made by an event will not affect or reset the period of time you must wait until your next regular policy change interval and the event’s tool tip will indicate whether there will be any loss of stability for making the change (the event overrides the normal stability loss for changing domestic policies).

Some forms of government will place a limit on the minimum or maximum allowable setting for one or more of your domestic policies. This is shown on the slider as a red arrow that points towards the range of acceptable settings. If you exceed this range -- either voluntarily or as a result of an event -- every province in your realm will receive a +1 risk of revolt for each policy step beyond the limit. This revolt risk will continue to be in effect until you have either adjusted your policy back within the allowable range, or have changed to a form of government that does not impose a limit.

Domestic Leaders

The final page of the Domestic Interface is the Leaders screen. This is the interface that you will use to review your country’s current levels of military tradition; and to recruit and review the various leaders who will command your military forces.

Military Tradition

For the most part, the leaders that will command your armies and navies are recruited from within your country’s existing armed forces. It’s easiest to think of them as new, young generals and admirals who have been “promoted” from a lower echelon of your existing military forces. Europa Universa- lis III doesn’t keep track of individual soldiers who serve in your military, so it is impossible to tell who might be the most qualified individual to assume the new command. Instead, we use the concept of “military tradition” to reflect how active your military has been over a period of time. This, in turn, determines the likelihood of there being a new leader of exceptional talent available to be recruited when you need one. Each leader you recruit will have a set of attributes that determine his skill at leading your forces. The higher his skill levels, the more effective he is likely to be. For almost all of your commanders, the skill level is heavily influenced by the military tradition that your country has in his field. If you have very high land tradition, you are much more likely to recruit a highly skilled general. If you have a poor naval tradition, it is unlikely that you will be able to recruit an admiral that will give your fleets much of an advantage in combat. We

will discuss the precise meaning and effects of a

leader’s attributes in the

chapter on the Military.

Military tradition is gained primarily by engaging in combat, since that is the situation where your potential recruits will gain the necessary experiences to become effective leaders in the future. Each land battle that your armies fight will result in an increase of your land tradition that is proportional to the number of enemy soldiers they kill and the size of your force. Your naval

tradition will increase each time you engage in a naval battle. There are also province improvements that you can build to increase your tradition, as well as several national ideas that have the same effect.You will gradually lose both land and naval tradition when your forces are idle. This will happen even if your country is at war, though the monthly rate of loss is considerably less than it will be when your country is at peace. Even if you have adopted all of the beneficial national ideas and built many province improvements to try to sustain your levels of tradition, there is a maximum tradition level of 50% that is imposed during peacetime. If your tradition is higher than this level, you might wish to consider hiring a new leader or two, even if you expect to be at peace in the near future.

A final method of increasing your military tradition is through exploration. As your naval explorers chart new waters they will increase your naval tradition; and when your conquistadors map new lands they will boost your land tradition. Neither of these activities will allow your country to exceed the 50% peacetime cap.

Military Leaders

(Note: We will be introducing a few terms in this section that you won’t have seeen yet if you are reading this manual from cover to cover. Although this will undoubtedly be somewhat confusing, we won’t explain the meaning of them here since they won’t make much sense unless explained in the overall context of the way that land and naval combats are handled by the game engine.

You may want to refer back to this section after

reading the chapter on the Military.)

The combat capabilities of your armies and navies are determined by the type of units you have, and your current level of land or naval technology; however, they will usually be far more effective in battle when commanded by capable leaders. Europa Universalis III allows you to recruit four different types of commanders:

General: A general is a leader who

specialises in land combat and will be assigned to command one of

your armies in battle. His fire and shock capabilities will be added to the attack and defence capabilities of each of your regiments, making them far more deadly in com-

bat. A general’s manoeuvre rating is not added to the regiments’ rating. Instead, this is used to give a movement bonus to the army he commands. A general’s siege rating will give a bonus to his army’s siege capabilities, allowing them to breach any enemy’s provincial fortifications more rapidly. You will need to use one diplomat to recruit a general, and there is a

base cost 100 ducats to hire him, which is subject to any surcharge resulting from your country’s inflation value.

Admiral: An admiral is a naval of-

ficer who will command one of your fleets in battle. His fire and

shock values are added to the attack and defence capabilities of each of the ships under his command. His manoeuvre rating will

provide extra naval positioning bonuses to his fleet during combat. This allows the ships to

begin their attack on an enemy fleet a little sooner, and will improve their ability to target an enemy vessel. You will need at least 100 ducats and one diplomat to recruit an admiral.

Conquistador: Named after the

famed Spanish explorers of the New

World, a conquistador is the only

type of leader who can command an army and be ordered to move into a province that is terra incognita. No other force may ever be ordered to enter a land area that is unknown (obscured from your map by a white

blanket of fog). It will take a conquistador’s army much longer than normal to enter an unknown province as he must spend considerable time mapping it while he moves. In all other respects, he functions exactly as a regular general. You will not be able to recruit a conquistador until your country has adopted the “Quest for the New World” as one of its national ideas. You will also need one colonist and at least 100 ducats to hire him.

Explorer: An exporer is the naval

version of a conquistador. Only a fleet commanded by this type of leader is able to enter a sea area that

has not yet been charted by your country. There is also a chance that an explorer may

“discover” and map an unknown land province

as he sails by it, although the chances are slim. In combat, an explorer functions exactly like a regular admiral. You will not be able to recruit an explorer until your country has adopted the

“Quest for the New World” national idea. You

will also need 100 ducats and one colonist.

Recruiting new Leaders

There are four buttons located immediately

below the military tradition information that allow you to recruit each of the four types of military leader. As long as the button is a gold colour, you may click on it to recruit the corre-

sponding leader. Recruiting a general or an admiral will cost a certain number of ducats from your treasury and requires the use of one of your diplomats. If you do not have a diplomat in your pool or sufficient gold in your treasury, the button will be greyed out. There is a similar cost to recruit a conquistador or explorer, except that a colonist is consumed instead of a dimplomat. The “recruit conquistador” and

“recruit explorer” buttons will be greyed out if

your country has not yet adopted the “Quest for the New World” national idea since this is a prerequisite for their use.

When you recruit a leader, your military tradition in the corresponding area will be reduced by 20% or its current value to reflect the fact that one of your most promising candidates has been removed from the “pool” of junior officers. The primary attributes of the newly recruited leader are determined randomly, but are heavily influenced by the country’s current military tradition. Having a high land tradition does not guarantee that a general will have extraordinary attributes but it does greatly increases the likelihood that he will have at least one or two fairly high values. If you are very fortunate, you might receive a leader who is truly gifted. Similarly, it is still possible for a respectable admiral to be recruited even if your current naval tradition level is low, although it is quite unlikely.

Once recruited, the new leader will be added to your country’s leader pool and will

be included in the list of commanders at the

bottom of the page. Later, we will show you how to assign a leader to command one of your armies or fleets and how he will influence that force’s combats.

A leader will continue to be available for use

by your country for a number of years, but he will eventually reach a point when he decides to retire. The normal length of service for most leaders will range between 15 and 20 years, although some leaders may retire sooner and others may continue to serve your country for considerably longer periods. There is also the

risk that a leader may die gloriously in battle, sacrificing his life to the service of the realm.

Converting a Ruler to a Leader

There will be times when you are in urgent need of a new general but don’t have an available diplomat, or have too little money in your treasury. You may also be reluctant to recruit a new general when you have an extremely low land tradition, particularly if you expect to send him out immediately to face a dangerous enemy force. You may, if you dare, decide to send your country’s ruler out to lead an army personally.

To convert your ruler into a leader, click the

“convert ruler to general” button. He will then

be available for immediate assignment as a general from your country’s leader pool. There is no cost to do this, nor will it reduce your land tradition. The button will only be greyed out if you have already converted your ruler into a general, if your realm is ruled by a regency council, if you are the junior member of a personal union, or if your ruler is female (Europa

Universalis III does not allow female rulers to

lead armies directly, just as no queen was ever permitted to lead her forces into battle in person).

When a ruler is converted into a general, his combat attributes are determined randomly but are heavily influenced by his military attribute

(the third of the three ruler attributes) instead

of by his country’s land tradition value. A high military attribute won’t necessarily guarantee that the ruler will be an excellent field commander, but the chances are quite a bit greater.

There is considerable risk associated with converting your ruler into a leader. Your country will experience an immediate loss of stability if your ruler dies in battle. It is also fairly likely that some form of succession turmoil could occur if the realm is a monarchy. It is entirely possible that your realm could be ruled by a regency council for a while, or that it could become the junior partner of a personal union. There is also the possibility that his death could

trigger a succession war, although the chances of this happening are still fairly low.

Assuming that your ruler survives any com-

bats he leads, you may wish to return him to your leader “pool” by assigning a different general to lead his army as soon as possible. You cannot remove him from the pool, but he is not at risk as long as he is not currently commanding an army. When your ruler dies of natural causes, he will also be removed from your leader pool.

Leader Listing

The lower half of the Leader page of the Domestic Interface displays a scrollable list of all of your leaders. If the leader is currently assigned to an army or fleet, the name of that

force will be listed below his attributes. If there is no f leet or army indicated below his name, the leader is currently in your country’s leader pool and may be assigned as desired.

Each newly recruited leader will be given a random name that is appropriate for his country. A ruler is not given a random name when

he is converted into a general. He retains his own name. To the left of each leader’s name is a symbol that indicates whether he is a general (a glove), an admiral (a blue “Nelson” hat), a conquistador (a silver Spanish helm), or an explorer (a spyglass). To the right of his name is a graphic representation of his leadership attributes. You can also hover your mouse over

his name to see a tool tip with the numerical values for each attribute.

TRADE

Overview

In this chapter, we finally begin to look further afield and consider things beyond our country’s

borders. Trade can be an integral part of your realm’s income, particularly if your country is somewhat small and lacks wealthy provinces. Some of the most powerful nations during the Europa Universalis III period of history were based upon enormous trade revenues that would fill the country’s coffers, allowing it to wield wealth as a weapon that was almost as effective as a sword. The Dutch, Venetians, Genoese, and many others -- to various degrees

-- would use trade to secure their place in the world and finance armies that could never have

been supported on internal wealth alone. The colossal might of England, France, and Spain was derived at least in part from their colonial and oriental trade. Had it not been for the importance of trade to the nations of Europe and the closure of the traditional routes by hostile forces, it is entirely possible that North and South America would have remained undiscovered for several more centuries.

Europa Universalis III does not seek to provide an accurate and detailed model of the highly complex trading network that existed and evolved during this time. That would almost be a game all by itself! Instead, we have sought to distil this era’s burgeoning global trade into a system that is fairly intuitive and easy to use, but still conveys the importance that it held for all nations during this time.

Each province in the world produces a primary resource that is available for trade. This

“trade good” is then distributed through a near-

by “Center of Trade” where merchants may compete for a share of the business. You will send a new merchant from your country’s pool to a center of trade where he will attempt to establish himself in business. If he is successful, a portion of the trade center’s total value is returned to the realm as a monthly source

of trade revenue. Competition can be fierce, but the rewards can be great! This chapter describes how the system works.

Trade Goods

As we saw in the chapter on Province Man-

agement, each province has a specific resource that it produces in sufficient quantities for there to be an excess of that item available for trade. While each province historically produced many items in different quantities, and these would change over time, it is easier for our model to consider each province as having only one item and to keep that item constant throughout the entire game. The quantity that a province produces depends on the production technology of the country that owns the province, and on the province’s population. This information is shown by clicking on the province and looking at the trade good summary at the right of the interface. This is the resource that will be sent to a nearby center of trade for distribution abroad.

Supply and Demand

There are about twenty different trade goods in the game, all of which are listed in Appendix I. You will see a base price listed for each item but the actual price that is shown in a province’s trade summary will fluctuate depending on how much of that resource is currently being produced and traded in the world, and the global demand for that item.

As the production technology level of a country reaches higher levels, and as a province’s population grows, the province’s ability to produce more of a trade resource will increase. This is shown in the summary as an increase in the number of units being traded and an increase in global supply. Higher supply levels will reduce the price of an item as there will be less competition.

Some province improvements that countries can build will increase the demand for a resource, resulting in a higher price for that

item in trade. As more are built, the price will continue to rise and the country that owns a province that produces that resource will generate even more trade revenue from it.

There are also a number of resources classified as “New World” goods that result in a demand for another resource: slaves. While we in no way condone the slave trade and horrors imposed upon those peoples who were forced to work in the New World plantations, this was too important a “resource” to ignore in a game that is set in this era. While the initial value of slaves will be very low, the demand and price for slaves will increase as the New World is colonised and provinces begin to produce the

“new world” resources.

Gold is a special resource that is never traded. It is sent directly to the country that owns the province and is added to the country’s monthly income. This also results in a small amount of inflation that depends on what percentage of a country’s total revenue is derived from the gold.

Centers of Trade

There are a number of special “centers of trade” scattered across the globe. Each acts as a collection and distribution point for the primary resources of nearby provinces and generates extra trade revenue that is distributed amongst the merchants who are active in that center. A province that contains a center of trade will have a significantly increased monthly income and is also a location where countries may send their own merchants to attempt to establish themselves and capture a share of the market. A

successful merchant will then send a monthly trade profit back to his sponsoring country. This is shown as the trade revenue in the budget summary in the Domestic Economic screen, and may be a sizable portion of some countries’ income.

The easiest way to locate a center of trade is to switch to the “trade map mode” by clicking the trade button in the special menus tool-

bar at the bottom right of the main interface. Each province will then be given a colour according to the trade center that is distributing its goods. A tool tip will identify the province that contains the center of trade, the total value of the trade passing through that center, and the value of trade that any of your merchants are contributing to your coffers. If you already

have at least one merchant in a center of trade, you can also use the outliner to jump directly to that location. A third method is to click on any province to display the standard province information summary. The name of the local center of trade will be shown as a button that is part of the trade summary for that province. You can click on that button to display the Merchant Interface.

Merchant Interface

The Merchant interface shows the total value of monthly trade currently passing through this center of trade, as well the share of that trade that is being conducted by your merchants.

The value of the trade will grow as provinces produce more resources, and each merchant will receive a share of that trade based on the total number of merchants active in the center of trade.

A maximum of 20 merchants may hold a position in a center of trade at any one time. Each shield displayed in the interface shows the nationality of the merchants, and the shield’s position on the chart indicates the number of that country’s merchants who are in business there. A country with only one active merchant will have its shield displayed on the bottom row; a country with two merchants will be on the second row; and so on. Normally, a country may have a maximum of five merchants active in a center of trade at any one time.

To send a merchant to a center of trade, you must have a merchant available in your country’s pool. You will also require sufficient cash in your treasury to finance a new merchant’s attempt to establish his business. The cost required to establish a new merchant and his chance of establishing himself are shown beside the small “send merchant” icon to the left of the chart. There is an additional requirement that the center of trade must be on the same continent as your capital or you must have a province in your country that is coastal. A landlocked country cannot conduct trade in distant centers. Assuming that you have an available merchant and a sufficient amount gold, click the “send” button to instruct your merchant to make the attempt.

It will take some period of time for your merchant to travel to the center of trade and attempt to establish his new business. This can range from less than a week for a trade center within your own borders; to more than a month if the center of trade is distant. There is no guarantee that your merchant will be successful, since competition is often very fierce. You are far more likely to succeed if the province containing the center of trade is part of your realm, or if there are fewer than twenty active merchants in the center. The more remote the location, and the more merchants that are active, the harder it will be for your merchant to succeed. We’ll look at several other factors that affect this in a moment.

Once your merchant makes the attempt,

you will receive a message from him to inform you whether or not he succeeded. If he failed, the merchant (and the cost to send him) is lost. If your merchant succeeds, you will begin to receive trade revenue each month from that merchant and will continue to do so as long as he is able to remain in business. You will also gain a small amount of prestige for having successfully expanded your trading network.

Of course, other countries will probably attempt to send merchants of their own, so it is possible that one or more of your merchants could be displaced by another. This will result in a small loss of prestige for your realm, and you will cease to receive any trade income from that merchant. A displaced merchant will not return to your nation’s pool, though you may always send a new merchant in the hopes of reestablishing your lost revenue. This is all part of the cut-throat process of competition.

Competition

Establishing and maintaining a merchant in a center of trade may not be easy if there are many other countries attempting to do the same. There will be continual competition for the limited number of spots available in each center, particularly if there is a large volume of trade passing through the center or if there are many nearby countries who might wish to capture a share. Your merchant’s ability to compete is based on your country’s trade efficiency.

The primary factor that determines your trade efficiency is your country’s current level of research into trade technology. The more advanced you are in trade, the more successful your merchants are likely to be. This can be further enhanced by certain forms of government, by adopting the “National Trade Policy” national idea, and by your domestic policies. You can also enter into certain diplomatic agreements with other countries that will affect your chance of competing against their merchants. And finally, it is usually easier to establish and maintain a merchant in a center of trade that already contains at least one of your

own merchants, and it is often quite difficult to displace a merchant in a center in which you have not previously been trading.

As you might imagine, another country will not be particularly pleased if one of your merchants dislodges one if its merchants since this represents a loss of income to that nation. Each time you put another country’s merchant out of business, your relationship with that country will suffer a small penalty. You can avoid unintentionally angering a country in this way

by diplomatically arranging for a trade agreement between your two nations. This guarantees that your merchants will never try to dislodge one another. A more drastic step that will give your merchants a competitive edge in your own trade centers is to diplomatically em-

bargo another nation’s merchants. This denies that country the right to expand its business in any centers of trade that you own. Issuing an embargo is a somewhat drastic step that will cause your relationship with that nation to sour, and will give that country a casus belli to go to war with you over the issue until you lift the embargo.

Monopolies

There is a special level of trade that you attain in a center of trade: a monopoly. You will need to have researched at least trade technology level 7 before you can even attempt to achieve a monopoly, and you must already have 5 merchants active in that center. You may then send a sixth merchant to try to gain a monopoly. If you succeed, you will gain a disproportionately large bonus in the value of trade that you derive from this center each month, and your merchants will be even harder than usual to dislodge. Also, fledgling merchants will be impressed in your achievement and will be more inclined to make themselves available to you,

resulting in one extra merchant being added to your pool each year for each monopoly you

hold.

Trade Disruption

Income derived from overseas centers of trade can be precarious if you are unable to maintain control of the seas. Your trade income will be reduced from any overseas source if any of your coastal provinces’ ports are currently blockaded by enemy fleets. The amount of trade lost is proportionate to the percentage of your ports that are blockaded, and the lost revenue is transferred to the owner of the blockading fleet. You would be well-advised to ensure that you have the naval muscle to protect your coastline if your economy depends heavily on trade.

Europa Universalis III does not trace specific trade routes, province by province, from their source to your capital. Even if the waters immediately adjacent to an overseas center of trade are blockaded, or if a “trade route” is obstructed by enemy f leets, it will not reduce your trade income as long as the coastline immediately adjacent to your country are free of enemies.

There are roving f leets of pirate ships that may periodically appear on your coastline. Some of these are created randomly, while others may be the result of another nation’s efforts at espionage. These will have the same effect as an enemy’s blockade, but any revenue they capture is simply lost. It is not transferred to anyone else. Of course, if you have a very powerful navy you might wish to engage in a little piracy yourself. Any trade income that an enemy loses as a result of a blockade by your fleets will be transferred directly to your treasury. This is a great way to have a careless enemy help to finance your war effort.

DIPLOMACY, WAR, AND ESPIONAGE

Overview

Now that we have discussed most of the details of managing the internal affairs of your nation, it is time to turn our attention beyond your country’s borders. In almost all games of Europa Universalis III, you will devote the majority of your time and effort to your interactions with the other realms in the world. At the beginning of the game, there are in excess of 170 countries scattered across the globe. At times, this number can climb to more then

200. You will not be aware of all of them yet, as many are located in parts of the world that you will not have explored, but unless you have chosen a very remote and isolated country you will almost certainly have at least a couple of neighbours and will be aware of the existence of many more nations. It is your interactions with these realms that will shape and define the character of your game.

Depending on the country you have chosen and the style of game you prefer to play, you will engage in various forms of diplomacy to further your goals. You may wish to secure your

borders by making close and friendly ties with your neighbours, perhaps seeking an alliance whereby you and a neighbour will come to one another’s aid if attacked. If you are somewhat more belligerent, you might declare war and attempt to expand your realm by defeating the enemy and demanding that provinces be ceded to become part of your country. You may wish to alter the trading relationship you have with another nation to avoid relationship-harming competition between your merchants, or you could take offence to a nation’s aggressive trading and deny his merchants the right to conduct business within your borders. There are many other options, all designed to alter your relationship with other nations in one way or another. If diplomacy or war doesn’t achieve all of your goals, you might also consider trying

your hand at the less honourable side of international affairs: espionage. You may order your spies to undertake a variety of clandestine actions against other nations, although there is always the risk that they could be caught and expose your involvement in the operation. Diplomacy, war, and espionage are the subjects of this chapter.

The Diplomatic Interface

To initiate any diplomacy with another country, click on any province that belongs to that realm. An interface will appear that shows the usual provincial summary on the right side of the screen; the left side contains the Diplomatic Interface that you will use to communicate your intentions to that realm’s ruler.

Considering its size, the Diplomatic Interface packs a lot of useful information into a remarkably small space. While just under half of the area is used to display a scrollable listing of diplomatic option, the balance presents many of the things you should recognise from your own Domestic interface.

General Information

We won’t go into great detail about any of

the general information scattered around the Diplomatic Interface, since all of it has been covered in previous chapters. Above the list of diplomatic actions is the national shield of the country. To the right of this is the country’s name, and form of government. You will also see its national stability level, ranking, and prestige.

Their ruler’s name and attributes are shown at the top left of the screen. Below this you will see their current relationship with your real, as well as any diplomatic details that are pertinent to the relationship between your two realms.

You will be able to instantly tell if you are at

war, or allied, or have a royal marriage, or have any other special relationship with that nation.

You will also see their current reputation. The

symbol of country’s official realm religion will appear to the left of its state culture, and its current level of military technology is shown just below. You will then be able to review any other diplomatic relationships that the realm has with other nations, including a list of any casus belli.

The boxes that extend from the top to the

bottom of the center of the interface will show any national ideas that the country has adopted, and the boxes at the bottom left of the screen will identify any great men currently employed in its court. Almost all of the information on the interface has tool tips that will provide further details, and even more is available by consulting the various pages of your ledger.

The icon in the bottom-left corner is one

that you haven’t seen yet. This is the “send spy”

button that opens the Espionage Interface that we’ll talk about towards the end of this chapter. Before we do that, let’s roll up our sleeves and dig into the list of diplomatic actions.

Initiating Diplomacy

The right side of the Diplomatic Interface contains a scrollable list of the diplomatic actions that you can initiate with that ruler, provided that you have a diplomat available in your country’s pool. Each action you take consumes

a diplomat, so all of the buttons will be greyed out if you do not have one available. Once you

have clicked on an option, the diplomat will be removed from your pool and will travel to the other realm to convey your message. If the action you have initiated requires a response from the other country, there will be a delay before you receive an answer. The length of the delay depends on the distance between your two capitals and it might be several weeks before an on-screen message is displayed to tell you the ruler’s reply. Other actions, such as a declaration of war, require no response from the other realm and will take effect immediately. Regardless of the time required to complete the action and receive a response, you must always wait for one full month to elapse before you will be able to initiate a new action with that nation, and all the options will be greyed out. Some actions have prerequisites that must be met before they are available. If the button is greyed out, either you do not have a diplomat available, or you have already conducted diplomacy with the nation within the last 30 days, or you do not meet all of the criteria necessary to be able to take that action. If you hover your mouse over an option, a tool tip will appear that describes the action, its effects, and any prerequisites or costs involved.

Diplomatic Actions

This section contains a complete list of diplomatic actions, their requirements, and their effects. Although the first option on the list in the menu is “Declare War,” we’ll save that one for last since it is somewhat more complex than the others and has certain aspects that depend on other diplomatic actions that you might have taken.

Offer Royal Marriage/Break

Royal Ties

In the Europa Universalis III time period, it was fairly common for dynastic ties to be formed

between the nations’ powerful ruling families. These ties helped to form bonds and cement relationships, avoid undesirable wars, and generally help the geopolitical stability of both realms. Unfortunately, sometime this would lead to unforeseen problems in the future, where questions of succession could lead to unexpected conflict. This is represented in the game by the diplomatic action of forming a royal marriage. There are several criteria that must be met before you will be able to offer a royal marriage to another county:

• You cannot already have existing royal ties to that country.

• Both countries must have a state religion that is part of the same religious group. You may arrange a royal marriage between Protestant and Catholic realms,

but not between Protestant and any non-

Christian nation.

• You cannot be at war with that country.

• Both countries must have a form of gov

ernment that allows a royal marriage to be created. You will not be able to offer a royal marriage if either country is a merchant republic, an administrative republic, or a constitutional republic. Theocracies and the Papacy are also prohibited from form-

ing royal marriages, for obvious reasons. If the "Offer Royal Marriage" button is highlighted in gold, you may click on it to send a

diplomat from your pool to propose the marriage. After a brief delay, you will receive the other country's reply. An AI-controlled country will base its decision of whether to accept your proposal primarily on your existing relationship, your ruler's diplomacy attribute, and your country's reputation and prestige. A refusal causes a slight reduction in the relationship between your countries. Acceptance results in large one-time increase in the relationship between the realms, and there is also a slight monthly increase in the relationship for the duration of the dynastic ties. During this time, the countries are much less likely to go to war with one another as the country that declares war will be given a -1 stability penalty.

A royal marriage can come to an end in several

ways. The most direct of these is for one of the countries to arbitrarily decide to end the ties by selecting the "cancel royal ties" diplomatic action that will replace the royal marriage button once the tie is created. Doing so will result in a -1 drop in the stability of the country that cancels the marriage, and will seriously damage the relationship between the two realms. It will also be cancelled automatically -- without penalty -- if either country changes its form of government to one of the types listed above where royal marriages are not permitted. In all other cases, a royal marriage ends when the ruler of either country dies. As we saw when we talked about succession, there are several things that can happen if there is an exiting royal marriage:

• In most cases, the royal marriage will end without penalty, and a new ruler will ascend to the throne.

• There is a small chance that one of the two countries involved in the marriage will be "inherited" by the other, merging both realms into one. While a player's country can inherit an AI-controlled country, a player can never be inherited

by another country since it would result

in the end of the game.

• There is also a small chance that two

countries with a royal marriage will form

a "personal union" when one of the rul-

ers dies. This is a situation where both na-

tions are governed by the surviving ruler for the remainder of his lifespan. The

country whose ruler has died becomes the

"junior" member of the union and cannot

make any new alliances or royal marriages

during this time. It is also unable to con-

vert its ruler into a general for use in combat. Otherwise, each realm continues to

operate independently; during this time,

they will have a superb relationship and are prohibited from declaring war on one another. When the surviving ruler dies, the personal union is dissolved and each

country will receive a new, independent

ruler.

• There is also a very small chance of a suc

cession war breaking out when a ruler of a country that has two or more royal mar-

riages dies. The country will immediately decide to form a personal union with one of two competing nations and a war will ensue to attempt to enforce this. The nor-

mal penalties and restrictions on going

to war are ignored in this situation, since

it is an issue of dynastic disagreement;

however all diplomatic ties between the competing factions (such as alliances or

royal marriages) are immediately cancelled. The war will continue until one

side agrees to a peace where it renounces

its claim to the vacant throne.

Offer Alliance/Dissolve Alliance

Alliances were another form of relationship that could be created between realms in this time period. Although these would become far more complex at the beginning of the 19th century involving large multi-national pacts that operated as “grand alliances”, for our purposes each alliance is treated as a bilateral pact to come to one another’s aid during times of war.

Click the “offer alliance” button to send a

diplomat to propose the agreement. There will

be a delay as your emissary presents the offer; the country’s decision will be based primarily on your existing relationship, your ruler’s diplomacy attribute, your country’s prestige and reputation, and to a lesser degree on your economic and military might.

There are no general restrictions placed on which nations may form alliances, though it is less likely that an offer will be accepted if you

have conf licting religions. If the alliance is refused, there will be a small reduction in the relationship between the two realms. If accepted, you will now have a commitment to assist one another in any wars that might ensue.

There are two situations where an alliance

will be impossible:

• A country that is a vassal to another coun

try may only form an alliance with its

"overlord". It cannot offer an alliance to any

other country; nor may another country (other than its overlord) send an offer asking it to become an ally.

• A country that is the "junior" member of a personal union cannot form new alliances or accept offers of alliance. Only the "senior" member of a personal union may do so.

Allies share a great deal of information with one another, resulting in the fog of war being lifted from provinces that are controlled by an ally. You will be aware of the exact locations of an ally's armies, and will be able to see any other nations' troops that might enter an ally's provinces; however, this relationship does not automatically grant permission for each country's armies or fleets to enter the other country's territory. You will need to use a separate diplomatic action to request military access to your ally's realm.

When a country becomes involved in a war, any allies of that country will be required to decide whether to support that ally. AI countries will make this decision automatically based on a variety of factors that include the relation-

ship between the realms, the strategic value of supporting the ally, and on the reputation and prestige of the protagonists. If one of your allies goes to war, you will receive a notification to this effect and will be required to make a decision as to whether you wish to support your ally. If you choose to do so, you will be making a declaration of war which could result in a loss of stability (see the "declare war" diplomatic option below).

When an alliance is cancelled, either by refusing to support an ally or by selecting the diplomatic action to terminate it, there will be a large drop in the relationship between the two realms. In addition, both the reputation and the prestige of the country that breaks the alliance will suffer.

When one or more allies join a war, a temporary "grand alliance" is formed -- even if all countries are not allied to one another -- with the largest and strongest of these becoming the

"alliance leader". There are two exceptions to

the alliance leader rule:

• In a succession war, the two countries vy

ing for the crown will always be the alliance leaders.

• If a player declares war or is the subject of a declaration of war, he will always be the alliance leader of his side, even if a more powerful AI-controlled ally joins the war. However, if a more powerful player-controlled ally also joins the war in a multiplayer game, this country will become the alliance leader. This is designed to prevent an unexpected and undesired peace being negotiated by an AI ally. The player will not become the alliance leader if he joins a war in support of an ally unless the player is the most powerful member of that side of an alliance.

We will discuss the importance of the alliance

leader later in this section when we discuss peace negotiations.

Issue Embargo/Revoke Embargo

Your merchants enjoy a bonus when competing

for business in centers of trade that are part of your realm, but there may be other countries that have domestic policies or ideas that given them an even greater advantage and who seem to be pushing your merchants out of business.

When this happens, you have the diplomatic

option available to you to issue a trade embargo against that country.

A trade embargo is an action that denies a country the right to send merchants to compete in any center of trade that is part of your realm. Any existing merchants that the country has in place prior to this edict will continue to ply their trade, but if they are lost due to competition, their country will not be allowed to send any new merchants to the center to replace them.

Issuing an embargo causes an immediate drop in the relationship between your two realms, as well as a small monthly reduction in your relationship. Furthermore, denying a country the right to trade in your realm gives it a casus belli against you for as long as the embargo remains in place. Be sure that you are able to back up this diplomatic action with steel, if need be.

An embargo remains in place until the country that issued it decides to revoke it as a diplomatic action, or the revocation may be demanded as a term in a peace treaty if the two countries are at war. Once revoked, the casus belli is removed and the monthly relationship loss is discontinued, but the relationship isn’t improved in any special way by taking this action.

Offer Trade Agreement/Cancel

Trade Agreement

A far less disruptive option exists when trying

to resolve issues of trade competition: the trade agreement. This diplomatic action proposes an agreement whereby neither country’s merchants will compete with one another in any of

the world’s trade centers. Each may attempt to compete against other nations’ merchants, but will never attempt to dislodge one another’s merchants. This can be useful to avoid damaging relationships with another country, or as a means to avoid being forced to compete with a nation that is more adept at trade than you are.

Offer Vassalisation/Cancel Vassalisation

There are two ways that a country may become a vassal of another: by being forced to become a vassal as a result of peace negotiations, or

by accepting a diplomatic offer of vassalisation. This is a special relationship between two realms whereby one country accepts the other as its overlord and pays half of its tax revenue as a tithe.

If you wish to pursue the diplomatic approach, you may send a diplomat to propose that a county become your vassal. There are several prerequisites that must be met before this option will be available:

• You must have a royal marriage with the country.

• You must have an alliance with the coun

try.

• You must have an extremely high relation

ship (+190 or more) with the country.

• You must be part of the same religious group as the country.

• Both countries must be at peace with all nations.

Even if you meet all of these requirements, the likelihood of the country accepting will usually be extremely low. Your chances will improve if your monarch has an excellent diplomatic attribute, your country has very high prestige, your reputation is good, or you are considerably more powerful than the country. If the country refuses, your relationship will drop noticeably. If it accepts, the country will become your vassal.

Once the vassal-overlord relationship has

been established, there are a number of imme-

diate effects:

• The vassal will now pay one half of its tax revenue to its overlord.

• The overlord automatically gains military access to any provinces that belong to the vassal; however, this relationship is not reciprocal. A vassal must make a separate diplomatic overture to its overlord to request military access.

• The vassal and overlord share detailed mil

itary information, removing the fog of war for both nations.

• A vassal cannot enter into an alliance with any country other than its overlord. Any existing alliances that a country might have are immediately cancelled when it becomes a vassal.

• Similarly, a vassal cannot enter into a royal marriage with any country other than its overlord, and any existing royal marriage that a country has will be cancelled when it becomes a vassal.

Once a country has become the vassal of another realm, it will remain so, permanently, until the relationship is voluntarily or forcibly ended. This may happen in one of three ways: an overlord may voluntarily release the vassal from it service, a vassal may attempt to declare itself independent, or the overlord can be forced to release a vassal as a peace term in surrender.

Releasing a vassal voluntarily is considered an act of kindness, and is done by sending a diplomat to inform its ruler that you have cancelled the vassalisation. The country will be freed from its obligation to pay you a percentage of its monthly income and will be free of all the restriction of being a vassal. Your relationship will show a marked increase and both your reputation and prestige will also benefit from this action.

A vassal who wishes to become free of its servitude may take the risk of declaring its independence by sending a diplomat to its overlord to declare that the vassalisation has been cancelled. As you might imagine, this ruins any positive relationship that might exist between the two countries. It also results in a drop in

the stability of the former vassal and the former overlord will gain a casus belli against its former vassal for the next five years.

If you are forced to release a vassal as a peace condition to end a war, the relationship value between your two realms will remain at the same level that existed prior to the surrender. It will neither increase or decrease and you will not gain a casus belli against your former vassal unless one of its provinces is considered to be a core province of your realm.

Demand Annexation

Once you have a country that is your vassal, it will be possible after a period of time to demand that the country be diplomatically annexed into your own. This effectively ends its existence and absorbs the nation into your realm. This action will not be available unless the country has been your vassal for at least ten years and you enjoy an extremely good relationship (+190 or more).

In most cases, a country will be very reluctant to comply with your demands unless you are much more powerful, or you have very high prestige, or your monarch has an excellent diplomacy attribute. If the country refuses, your relationship will be significantly damaged. If it agrees, all of its provinces -- and its entire treasury -- are added to your realm. This is an action that other nations will consider somewhat aggressive, thus slightly tarnishing your reputation.

Proclaim Guarantee

This diplomatic action is one method of manufacturing a casus belli against other nations. By proclaiming a guarantee of a country, you are warning all other nations that you consider yourself that nation’s protector. Your relationship with that nation will improve slightly, and for the next ten years you will gain an immediate casus belli against any nation that declares war on the country that you have guaranteed.

A casus belli gained in this manner will last for

one year from the date that war was declared.

Proclaiming a guarantee is immediate and requires no response from the country, nor are you under any compulsion to come to its aid in the event of war. This is simply a means of manufacturing a claim and, perhaps, to send a subtle warning to other nations that it might be ill-advised to prey upon one of your friends.

Send Warning

This is another diplomatic action used to warn a country against hostilities, and potentially to manufacture a casus belli. By sending this message to a country, you are warning it to remain peaceful or suffer the consequences. For the next ten years, you will gain an immediate casus belli against this country if it declares war on any other nation. Again, you are not compelled to act if the nation chooses to ignore your warning, and the casus belli will last only one year from the date that war was declared.

As you might imagine, sending a warning to

a country will cause damage to your relationship.

Send Insult

This is a hostile diplomatic action that attempts to goal another country into declaring war on you. Sending an insult will damage your relationship with that realm and will give it a casus belli against you for one year.

Claim Throne

If you have a royal marriage with a country, you may manufacture a temporary, one-year casus belli against it by claiming its throne. Not only will this ruin the relationship between your two realms, but it will also damage your relationship with all other countries with whom you have a royal marriage.

Send Gift

If your relationship with another country is poor, you may attempt to improve it by sending that realm a gift of gold from your treasury. The amount of the gift you must send is determined by the size or your realm, and the

extent that the gift will improve your relationship will depend on your monarch’s diplomatic skill, your prestige, your existing relationship, and your reputation.

Sell Province

You may offer to sell one of your provinces to another realm. This can only be done when

both you and the prospective buyer are at peace, and you may only offer a province that is not one of your core provinces. Click the “sell province” button to display a list of the provinces that you are allowed to sell, then click on a province’s name and set your asking price. After sending your offer, the other country will consider whether the purchase is worthwhile. If the arrangement is acceptable, the money will be deposited to your treasury and the province’s ownership will be transferred to the buyer. There is no effect on the prestige or reputation of either country, nor will this alter the relationship between your realms.

Send War Subsidies/Revoke Subsidies

This is a very interesting diplomatic option that allows you to offer financial support to another country that is at war. Clicking the button will display a secondary interface that allows you to specify an amount to transfer from your treasury to the other country. This subsidy will continue until the other country is at peace with all of its enemies or until you cancel the subsidy via the “revoke subsidy” diplomatic action.

Every month that you subsidise a country, your relationship will improve with that country, but it will also harm your relationship with any country with which it is at war. There is no other effect of offering a subsidy, and there are no penalties for cancelling it.

Offer Loan

In addition to the loans that a country may receive using the Domestic Economy interface (or be forced to take if its treasury is exhausted),

a country may also be offered a loan from a more wealthy country. If you have an excess of gold in your treasury and wish to make such an offer, select the “offer loan” diplomatic action from the list. You will then see a secondary interface that allows you to specify the amount of the loan, the interest rate you will charge, and the loan’s duration.

When a country receives a loan offer, it will

decide whether the offer is worth accepting

based on its current financial needs, the interest rate it would receive by taking a loan from the “bank” instead, and the total cost it will pay during the course of the loan period. If the offer is reasonable and it is in need of the cash, it may agree to your terms.

Each month thereafter, the interest payment will be deducted from the income of the country and deposited in the treasury of the country that offered the loan. At the end of the term, the country must decide whether to repay the principal amount. It will default on the loan if it lacks the funds in its treasury, or if its relationship with the lender is very poor. There is no way to request repayment of a loan prior to the expiry of its term, and only the bankruptcy of the borrower will cancel the loan and monthly payments while they are in effect. The

borrower does not have the ability to voluntarily default on a monthly interest payment, even if it must take out a bank loan to make a payment.

Offering or accepting a loan has no effect on the relationship or prestige of a country; however, defaulting on a loan will result in a drastic drop in the relationship between the two realms, the borrower’s prestige will be damaged, and the lender will be given a one year casus belli against the country that defaulted.

Request Military Access/ Give Military Access/Revoke Military Access

Normally, unless you are at war, you are not allowed to move your armies through another

country’s territory, nor may your ships enter that nation’s ports. This restriction can be removed by sending a diplomat to the country to request that the ruler grant you military access. Once access has been granted, you may freely move your forces through that country’s provinces and your f leets may enter that country’s ports in order to take on new supplies or repair themselves. The agreement is not reciprocal. If you have granted another country access to your realm, you will still have to make a separate request before you will have military access to its provinces.

A request for military access is far more likely to be granted if you have a good relationship with that country, and if you have a good reputation, high prestige, and a monarch with a high diplomacy attribute. The country will respond once you diplomat has journeyed there to convey your request. You may, if you wish, allow another nation’s military forces to enter your territory by voluntarily giving it military access, even if it has not requested this privilege. This will not improve your relationship with the country, but will allow its forces to move through your territory which might have some strategic value in the future. The other country may, if it wishes, respond by declining your offer.

Beyond granting permission for forces to enter another country’s territory, there is a special condition that is placed on the country which has been granted access: you cannot declare war on a country with which you have a military access agreement. If you wish to declare war then you must first send a diplomat to cancel the agreement, and then wait for one month to elapse before you will be able to declare war. This creates a strategic advantage for granting access to your territory, since you are then guaranteed at least a 30-day warning

before that country could declare war on you. Beware! This is not a reciprocal condition so there is no restriction that prevents a country from declaring war on you, even if it is currently granting you military access.

A military access agreement is permanent. It will remain in effect until one of the nations decides to cancel the agreement by sending a diplomat with the message that military access has been revoked. Doing so will harm your relationship, and is often interpreted as being a preliminary step towards a declaration of war.

We should point out that the access that a vassal automatically grants to its overlord is not treated as a military access agreement. The overlord is allowed to declare war on its vassal, although a hostile action of this type will damage both its stability and reputation.

Declaring War

Declaring war on another nation is the most hostile diplomatic action available, and should not be done lightly since its effects are immediate and irrevocable. Issuing a declaration of war will instantly plunge your realms into a war that can only be concluded by subsequently negotiating a peace. There are a variety of restrictions and effects that you should carefully consider before embarking on a campaign.

Restrictions Prohibiting a Declaration of War

There are a several special diplomatic relationships that can be created between realms that must first be broken before you will be allowed to declare war. If the “declare war” button is greyed out, it will be due to one of these restrictions and the button’s tool tip will identif y the reason that you cannot declare war.

• You cannot declare war on a country with which you have a "Personal Union" since this would essentially mean that you are declaring war on yourself. You must wait until the current ruler dies and the personal union is dissolved. This restriction applies to both the senior and junior partner of the union.

• You cannot declare war on an ally. You must first dissolve the alliance between your realms (unless it has been broken as a result of some other action) and then wait

for at least one month to elapse before you will be able to send a diplomat with your declaration.

• You cannot declare war on a country if you have a military access agreement allowing your forces to enter that realm. You must first revoke the access agreement and remove any forces from within its borders. Once you have done so, you will be able to declare war, although there will be the mandatory one-month delay before you will be able to send the second diplomat with your declaration so your intended enemy is likely to anticipate your intentions.

• You cannot declare war while your nation is ruled by a regency council.

National Stability Effects

Your own population generally prefers to be at peace. If you disrupt that peace by declaring war, you may experience an immediate drop of stability in your realm. The extent of this drop depends on several factors:

• If you have a

casus belli against the other country, your public will be somewhat sympathetic to your cause; however, if you declare war without a casus belli, you will immediately experience a -2 drop in stability.

• Your public dislikes it when you declare war against nations who have a similar national religion to your own. You will experience a -1 drop of stability if you declare war against a country that has a state religion that is in the same religious group, even if the religion is a different sub-type of that group.

• Declaring war on a country with which you have a good relationship will confuse and upset your public. You will receive a -1 drop in stability if you declare war if you have a good relationship, or a -2 penalty if you have an excellent relationship.

• Declaring war on a nation with which you have a royal marriage will anger your people, resulting in a -1 drop in stability.

• Declaring war on a vassal will result in a -1 drop of stability since your public will not be impressed that you are being aggressive towards a nation that is already subservient to your realm.

• If you conclude a war with a country by either surrendering or forcing a surrender, a truce will come into effect between your realms for the next five years. Although you may break this truce and declare war prior to its expiry, this will anger your public and result in a -2 drop on your stability.

When a war concludes in a "white peace",

there is no period of truce and you may declare war at any time you like.

If your country is already highly unstable, your public will simply refuse to go to war. You may not declare war at all (the button will be greyed out) if your current national stability is at -3. You may declare war if you are at -2, but if the resulting loss of stability due to the above factors is greater than -1, this will spark an immediate revolt in at least one of your provinces. It would be much safer to bide your time, invest part of your budget in improving your stability, and then declare war at a later date. Of course, you will experience no loss of stability at all if another country declares war on your nation, since you are not the instigator.

War Exhaustion Effects

Not only may your population react negatively upon hearing the news that you are at war, they will also resent a war that lasts for any length of time. For each month that you remain at war, regardless of whether you were the instigator, your provinces will experience a slight increase in the population’s “war exhaustion”. This value is one of a variety of factors that affect the chance of a province revolting, and will continue to increase as the war drags on. A lengthy war could result in widespread internal revolt, forcing you to divert a portion of your military strength simply to deal with organized rebel armies that rise against you in your provinces. Once a peace has been negotiated, the public

will gradually forget the times of adversity and the war exhaustion will recede, although it may take many months to do so if it has reached very high levels.

Reputation Effects

Declaring war is a hostile act, and the other nations in the world will become increasingly suspicious and resentful of you if you do it often. Each declaration of war will damage your country’s reputation, although the damage will

be greatly reduced if you have a casus belli to justify your actions. Many peace terms that you demand will also damage your reputation, particularly if you force a realm to cede territory to you, or if you annex a realm outright.

While your reputation will slowly recover over time, it is generally best to wait until you have a casus belli or to “manufacture” a claim via one of the other diplomatic options first. If you allow your reputation to sink too low, the nations of the world may begin to view you as too serious a threat to their security and may unite to rid the planet of your existence.

Alliance Considerations

While you will obviously want to consider

whether you actually have the military muscle to prosecute a war with a potential enemy, you should also carefully consider whether there are other countries that might add their resources to either side of the conf lict. A llies are usually somewhat less inclined to support an aggressor of a conflict, and are considerably more inclined to come to the defence of nation upon whom war has been declared. You should carefully check to see if your potential target has any powerful friends that might come to its aid and you might also want to consider whether your own allies might be inclined to involve themselves in a war. We’ll talk more about allies in war in a moment.

Declaring War

If, after considering all of the factors above, you decide to declare war on a country, simply

choose the “declare war” button on the diplomatic interface. You will then be given a summary of any stability disruptions you will experience, and you will be asked to confirm your intentions. After doing so, any stability and reputation penalties are applied immediately, and your nations will be in a state of war. You will then be free to send your military forces into your enemy’s territory, defeat his armies, and attempt to seize control of his provinces. The war continues until both sides agree to cease hostilities either by one side surrendering to the other, or by agreeing to a “white peace” where the war is concluded without a victor.

Allies and Alliance Leaders

Once war is declared, any allies of either country will be notified of the hostilities and be given a choice of whether or not to involve themselves in the conflict. This occurs automatically, even if the nations involved in the war do not necessarily desire their allies’ aid. Refusal to support an ally will terminate the alliance, while agreeing to do so will incur the same stability penalties that would apply if the country had made the declaration itself. This is a factor that you should carefully consider before supporting your ally, and is a component of the decision-making process of the AI in such situations.

Only the direct allies of the two countries involved in the initial declaration of war will be notified of the war and be asked to decide whether to join in the conflict. If an ally decides to join the war, this will not result in any of his other allies being asked to join as well.

Unlike a normal declaration of war, a declaration in support of your ally is not restricted by your current stability level. You are permitted to support an ally even if your current stability is at -3. Also, any conditions that must be met (such as cancelling military access or breaking another alliance) will occur automatically as part of the declaration. All of the corresponding penalties will be applied, but they will happen immediately without the need to

send diplomats first to advise the nation of your intentions.

If one or more allies become involved in a war, each side will have an alliance leader which is treated as the principal leader of the alliance. The alliance leader is determined by comparing the size, wealth, and military power of each country involved on that side of the conflict, with the strongest being appointed as the leader. The leader will not necessarily be the country that initially declared war, or was the target of the declaration of war; nor does the alliance leader necessarily have to be allied with all other countries on the same side of the war.

As we mentioned earlier, there are two exceptions to the rules that determine who is treated as the alliance leader. In the special case of a succession war, the two countries involved in the struggle to contest the crown will always

be the leaders of their respective alliances. Also, a player who declares war on another country or has war declared upon him will always be the alliance leader of his side, even if a more powerful AI-controlled ally joins the war on his side. The exception to this rule can occur in a multiplayer game if the most powerful country on a side is also human-controlled. In this instance, the normal alliance leader rules would apply.

The alliance leader does not control the forces or actions of any other country on that side of the conflict. Each country is free to act as it desires, and may even choose to remain inactive if it prefers. The only purpose of an alliance leader is to act as the principal decision-maker when negotiating a subse-

quent peace. An alliance leader is able to agree to peace terms that are binding on all members of the alliance. A country that is not the alliance leader may still negotiate a peace; but the peace only affects the countries involved in the negotiations, and not the entire side of the alliance. We will talk about this in detail in the next section on peace.

Peace Negotiations

Once a war has been declared between nations, the only way to bring it to a close is to negotiate a peace settlement. This process begins when you select a province that is owned by an enemy and select the “sue for peace” action from the diplomacy interface. You will see a preliminary menu of peace options displayed on the screen, allowing you to choose between several types of peace offers, and at the top of the interface you will see a “war score” value. At the

bottom of the interface is a button that allows you to cancel the action and go back to the diplomacy menu. Before we discuss the meaning of the “war score” and the options on the inter-

face, we must first make a very important distinction about which countries are involved in negotiating the peace.

Negotiating Peace with

Alliances

In the previous section, we

indicated that when allies become involved in a war,

each side of the conflict

will have an alliance lead-

er. The alliance leader is

the most powerful country involved on that side, and

only the alliance leader has

the authority to negotiate a peace that will affect all

of the participants on that

side. This is a crucial dis-

tinction that is best made by describing each of the possible effects of peace negotiations from your perspective:

• If you are the leader of an alliance and ne

gotiate peace with the leader of the enemy alliance, any peace you agree to is binding on all countries on both sides of the conflict. You will be able to make offers that affect your allies, or demand terms that affect the other country's allies. If the enemy alliance leader agrees to the terms of the peace, the war will end and all countries will be at peace.

• If you are the leader of an alliance and ne

gotiate peace with any enemy country that is not the leader of that side's alliance, any peace you agree to is binding on all countries on your side of the conflict, but applies only to the country with which you are negotiating. You can make commitments that affect your allies, but you can only offer or demand terms that affect the individual country. If the offer is accepted your entire alliance will no longer be at war with that country, but you will remain at war with all other countries that are part of the enemy alliance.

• The reverse is true as well. If you are not the leader of your alliance and are negotiating peace with the leader of the enemy alliance, you can only offer terms that directly affect your country; but you can negotiate terms that will affect the entire enemy alliance. If the enemy alliance leader agrees to your proposal, you will be at peace with the entire enemy alliance but your allies will remain at war.

• The final possible scenario is one where you are not the alliance leader and you negotiate a peace with an enemy who is also not the alliance leader. In this case, you may only request or offer terms that apply to your respective countries. If the deal is agreed upon, you will still be at war with the other countries in the enemy alliance,

and the other country will remain at war with all other members of your own alliance.

As you can see, the critical thing to be aware

of when negotiating peace is which countries are the alliance leaders, as failing to do so may lead to unexpected consequences that may be hard to resolve.

War Score

Your war score is an indication of how much

success you have had thus far in the war. Your war score will increase when you win battles and capture provinces, and will decrease if you lose battles or when an enemy gains control of your provinces. A positive value usually indicates that you have gained an advantage over your opponent; a negative value usually means that you are losing the war.

The war score is an important factor in determining the terms of a peace proposal, and is also a component of the enemy’s decision as to whether he agrees to your proposal. A high war score will generally allow the victor to issue more punitive demands, and if the victor’s demands are less than the war score would dictate, the loser is far more likely to agree to surrender. In fact, a country that declines extremely favourable terms may experience a loss of stability since its public will be angry at its obstinacy.

There are other factors that inf luence an enemy’s likelihood of accepting a proposal. You ruler’s diplomacy attribute plays and important role; as does your country’s prestige, reputation, size, and remaining military strength. These factors can make it possible (although somewhat unlikely) that an enemy might accept an offer that exceeds the basic war score “value” of the proposal.

Peace Offers

There are four different types of peace offer that you can initiate when suing for peace. Two of these lead to a secondary interface where

specific terms are assembled to be included in a proposal, while the other two require no additional information and are sent immediately to your enemy.

Annex

This option will send an immediate demand that the other country be annexed and made part of your realm. In most cases, it will be greyed out because there are strict limitations to this demand.

• You may only demand annexation when you have a 100% war score.

• You must currently occupy every province that is owned by the enemy country.

• If the enemy owns more than one province, you can only demand annexation if it is a pagan tribe.

• If the enemy is not a pagan tribe, you can only demand annexation if the country owns only one province.

Unlike all other peace agreements, if the enemy agrees, you will still remain at war with any other members of the enemy alliance, even if the country you annex was the alliance leader. If the enemy refuses your demands, it will suffer a loss of stability. If it is already at a stability of -3, it will be forced to accept your demands.

Forcible annexation of a country is the most hostile act possible in Europa Universalis III. Word of your cruelty will spread throughout the world, causing serious damage to your reputation. The extent of the damage will be somewhat less if the war was initiated by the enemy, or if the enemy is a pagan tribe. Even so, it is often more prudent to allow the enemy’s continued existence and opt to force it to become your vassal instead.

Demand Tribute

If you are winning the war, you may demand the enemy’s surrender by selecting this option. Click the “demand tribute” button to open a secondary interface where you will chose from amongst a wide range of possible terms that may be part of your demands. We will look at

this interface in detail in a moment. Once you

have prepared the proposal, you will send it the

enemy and await his response.

The likelihood of your demands being accepted will depend on the enemy’s evaluation of the terms compared to your war score and its ability to turn the tide of the war back against you. In general, your foe will be far more likely to comply if your terms are lenient, or if he lacks the resources to make a successful counter-attack to regain the lost ground. Issuing a demand for tribute when you are losing

Offer White Peace

If the conflict is still largely undecided, you may send a proposal to suggest that the war end in a white peace. Selecting this offer will immediately send a diplomat with your proposal to cease all hostilities and end the war in a draw. Neither side will be considered the victor, and there will be no form of compensation at all. If the enemy agrees, you will then be at peace once more; however, there will be no truce in place so war could be declared, without the truce-breaking penalty, at any time in the future.

The enemy’s decision of whether to accept the proposal will depend on the circumstances. If you have a significant advantage in the war score and offer a white peace, he is likely to accept it. If the war has been raging for a long time and war exhaustion is becoming a dangerous issue for him, he may accept your proposal even if he has a slight advantage. If war exhaustion is an issue for you, or if your enemy feels that he may have the upper hand, it is unlikely that he will agree to your proposal.

Offer Tribute

When the war is going badly for you and you

wish to surrender, you do not need to wait for the enemy to make his demands. Instead, select this option to open a secondary interface where you will chose the terms you would offer upon your surrender. If the enemy agrees to accept your terms, you will be at peace.

As is the case with the “demand tribute” option, the enemy will evaluate your proposal and compare it to the terms he feels might be able to achieve if he continues to prosecute the war further. If the offer is appealing enough, he may agree. If not, he will continue to press his advantage.

Preparing the Terms of a Peace

Offer

If you selected the “annex” or “white peace” option in the peace offer interface, the proposal requires no additional information and is immediately sent for your enemy to consider.

When demanding or offering tribute, you need

to provide additional details about the specific terms of the agreement. This is done using a

secondary interface that allows you to select from a wide variety of different terms that may be included in the agreement.

Peace terms fall under five different general categories: provinces, cores, vassals, new nations, and special terms. We will look at each of these in turn in a moment; however, each term that you add to the proposal will have a war score value associated with it. As you add each new term to the proposal, it will be added to the summary box at the bottom of the screen and its war score value will be added to the total that appears in the bottom right corner.

By comparing the war score value of your terms to the actual war score displayed at the top of the screen, you will have some idea of the likelihood of the enemy accepting the proposal.

When you are winning the war, demanding a

lower total value of terms than the war score will make it far more likely that your enemy will agree to them. Since you are being lenient with your offer, it will also add to your prestige and is less likely to tarnish your reputation. When offering to surrender, you will probably need to propose terms that amount to at least as much as the current war score to have any hope of the plea being accepted.

Keep in mind that the comparison between the offer value and the war score is not the only factor that is considered when the enemy decides how to respond to your proposal; however, if the enemy declines a proposal that is very generous (at least a 20% difference in his favour) he will almost certainly experience a loss of stability if he refuses your offer. Also keep in mind that your enemy will include the potential impact of any of his allies (and yours) on the future progress of the war, so even if he is on the brink of defeat, he may reject your overture if he feels that his allies might be able to help him achieve a more desirable set of conditions.

Now let’s look at each of the categories in turn. The first four categories are arranged in tabs across the top of the screen since they involve lists of possible terms and benefit from referring to the map that is included in the interface. Click on a tab to access that category of terms. The special terms are arrayed as a series of buttons across a bar, just above the summary, and will be visible at all times.

Province Terms

Province terms allow you to specify that the loser cede ownership of one or more provinces to the victor. A scrollable list of provinces that can be ceded will be displayed to the left of the map, and the map will highlight them as they are selected. The list of provinces will not necessarily be a complete list of provinces that the country owns. You may include any province that is considered a core province of the nation who will receive it, a colonial province that has not yet achieved colonial city status (we’ll talk

about this distinction in the chapter on colonization; or a province that is not a core but is currently controlled by the victor.

If you are an alliance leader, the range of

provinces listed will be greater since you will

have the authority to cede provinces belonging to an ally. You will also be able to demand that a province that is under the control of one of your allies be ceded permanently to his nation. If you are negotiating with an alliance leader, you will have a similar increase in the number of provinces listed since your enemy will have the authority to include those in the negotiations as well.

Each province name in the list will have a war score value beside it that ref lects its value towards the war score. Wealthy and populous provinces will have a higher value than poor or largely-empty ones. Provinces that the enemy considers to be core provinces will also have a much higher value than provinces that are not normally part of its realm.

Click on the province name to add it to the list of terms in the summary. If you are an alliance leader or negotiating with an alliance leader, be careful to check which country will

be ceding and receiving the province since this can sometimes affect the likelihood that the proposal will be accepted.

Each province that changes hands as part of a peace negotiation will damage the reputation of the country that receives it. Territorial demands made during war -- particularly core provinces -- are usually regarded as being a

hostile action, and even more so if the country receiving the province is on the side of the aggressor in the conflict. It is easy to gain a very

bad reputation if you fight a series of wars and demand territory when making peace.

Core Terms

A far less punitive series of terms can be found under the “cores” tab. This will display a list of provinces that are currently considered core provinces of the loser, and they do not need to be occupied to be included on the list. By

selecting one of these, a term will be added whereby the loser will agree to relinquish its core claim on the province.

Relinquishing a core claim does not transfer the ownership of the province if the peace proposal is accepted. If the province remains under enemy ownership, then at some point in the future (usually in about 50 years) it will likely

become a core province of that country once more. This term is more often used to force an enemy to relinquish its claim on a province that you or an ally owns, since this removes the casus belli that a core province provides for a future declaration of war.

Because no territory is actually changing hands, the war score value of this term is much lower than the value of ceding a province and there is no damage to the victor’s reputation.

Vassal Terms

Clicking the “vassals” tab will display a list of the loser’s current vassals. By including one of these as a peace term, you are negotiating the release of that vassal as a free, independent country in its own right. This will occur immediately if the peace offer is accepted. Neither the vassal nor the former overlord will receive the normal effects of the diplomatic action of releasing a vassal. The vassal-overlord relationship will be broken with no other effects.

This term is often included as a means of weakening an enemy by depriving it of its vassal’s economic tithe, and possibly its military support as well. It also prevents the future diplomatic annexation of the vassal by its overlord.

New Nations Terms

When we looked at the domestic overview in-

terface, there was an option for a country to release a portion of its territory as a vassal if it owned a group of provinces that would normally form a smaller country. The “new nations” tab allows you to propose a term where a country that could be released as a vassal is immediately released as a free, independent

country instead. Although it usually involves a high war score value, this peace term is often an excellent choice if you are on the winning side in a war. You do not gain any territory so you will not tarnish your reputation; however, your enemy will be permanently weakened since he will no longer be able to draw tax income or manpower from the provinces he has been forced to give up.

Special Terms

There are a variety of special terms that appear as buttons near the bottom of the interface. Most of these have a very high war score value, are usually only included when you are the victor in a war (you would not normally volunteer to sue for peace under these terms), and some may not always be available.

• Force Religion:

If accepted, this term forces the enemy to convert its national religion to match your own. Unlike voluntary conversion, this is not accompanied by a -5 stability drop. You may only force the conversion of a country that has a national religion that is within the same major religious group as yours.

• Force Vassalisation:

This term forces the loser to become the vassal of the victor. This is the only way to obtain a vassal if the conditions required for diplomatic vassalisation cannot be met. You can force a republic or theocracy to become your vassal, which would otherwise be impossible since they can never enter into a royal marriage. You can also force a religious enemy to become your vassal which would also be impossi-

ble due to the religious requirement. If this term is accepted, it will in no way improve the relationship between your countries, so do not be surprised if your vassal attempts to declare independence at some point in the future unless you are prepared to invest heavily in diplomatic gifts to improve your relationship.

• Force Union:

This option will only be

available if you are fighting a succession war

and the negotiations are being conducted

by the two principal countries contesting the succession. As you may recall, when the ruler of a country with two or more royal marriages dies, there is a chance of a succession war between those countries. The war is concluded when one of the countries acknowledges the other’s right to be the leader of a new political union with the country that lost its ruler. This is the peace term required to force that claim. If accepted, the junior country of the personal union will enter into a personal union with you (if it isn’t already) and the defeated contestant will relinquish his claim.

• Reparations:

The last of the special terms is an agreement for the loser to immediately pay an amount of gold to the victor. If the victor is an alliance leader, any gold received from the peace will be distributed evenly to all members of the alliance. If a peace is agreed to by an alliance leader on the losing side, any reparations must be paid entirely from the treasury of the alliance leader (the other members of the alliance do not contribute to the cost of reparations). Unlike the other special terms, reparations are commonly included in peace negotiations. The war score value is determined by the amount of gold being paid, and a country may only agree to the terms if it is able to pay the full amount of the demand without taking a loan.

Sending the Peace Offer

You may include as many terms as you like in a peace offer. Once you are satisfied with the proposal and feel there is a reasonable chance of the enemy accepting it, click the “send” button. Your diplomat will convey your message and sometime within the next month you will receive the enemy’s reply. If you change your mind, you can click the “cancel” button to return to the diplomacy interface.

Receiving a Peace Offer

When an enemy sends you a peace proposal, a

message alert will appear near the bottom left of the screen. You will have 30 days to click on the alert, review the proposal, and respond. If you fail to do so, the offer will be automatically refused. Be sure to read the terms carefully before agreeing to them, particularly if you are part of an alliance.

Peace

Once a peace is accepted, the terms of the peace are immediately applied and the war will end. Except for a white peace, there will be a period of truce between the two realms that lasts for five years. While it is possible to declare war on that country before the truce has expired, it will greatly upset your public and result in a drop of your nation’s stability.

During the war, your provinces will have experienced a slow increase in the risk of revolt due to war exhaustion. Once the war is over, this risk will slowly decrease as memory of the trials and tribulations recede in the memory of your public. This will take some time, though, so be careful to check the war exhaustion value

before initiating a new war.

As soon as peace is concluded, any provinces that are controlled by a former enemy are immediately freed and returned to full control of their owner. Any armies that are in the former enemy’s territories must withdraw, unless they

have access as a result of the peace.

Espionage

There are a variety of hostile actions that you can take towards a country without directly declaring war. This

is the cloak-and-dagger world of the spy. Most people would not consider espionage to be a part of diplomacy, but we will discuss it

here since the Espionage Interface is accessed by clicking on the “send spy” button that is lo-

cated in the Diplomacy Interface.

If you have a spy available in your pool, you

may send him to another realm to perform a

special covert operation for you. The spy will attempt to carry out the mission with the utmost discretion, but there is always the possi-

bility that he will be uncovered during the attempt. A mission might succeed, even if your involvement is revealed. Similarly, a mission might fail but as long as your spy’s attempt is not detected, the target might be none the wiser. The effects of being discovered depend on the type of mission involved, as do the chances of success.

Espionage Modifiers

Each spy mission has a specific degree of difficulty, but there are several addition factors that will modify the likelihood of success and detection. Some of these are “local” and apply only to individual provinces that could be a target of a mission; while others are “global” and apply to all espionage activities within a country.

• Any province that is considered "overseas"

-- one that is not on the same continent and directly linked to your capital by land

-- will receive a penalty to its ability to defend against the actions of a spy.

• A province's tax income has a small effect on its ability to defend against espionage. A province is more likely to be able to detect a spy and prevent his success if it has a high tax income value.

• A province's current revolt risk contributes to a spy's chances of success. If there is a high risk of rebellion, a spy will be much more likely to find people sympathetic to his cause and will probably be able to carry out his mission and remain undetected.

• The overall stability of a realm also affects the ability of each province in the country to detect and thwart a spy's attempt. If your country is very stable, enemy spies are far less likely to succeed. Similarly, a highly unstable realm will be far more susceptible to espionage.

• A ruler's diplomacy attribute plays an im

portant role in determining how adept the country's spies are at infiltrating a target,

but does not contribute to the defence against covert activities within the realm. Spies sent by a ruler with very high diplomacy skill will find it much easier to carry out their missions and remain undetected.

• The spies of the Holy Roman Emperor will enjoy an additional advantage when carrying out their missions.

• The "Enlightened Despotism" form of government gives all of your provinces an additional bonus in defending against enemy spies.

• A country with a domestic policy that leans towards centralisation will tend to be better at espionage than a country with a decentralised policy.

• A country with a domestic policy that pro

motes free subjects over serfdom will have a better ability to defend against enemy spies.

Spy Actions

In this section, we will describe each of the possible missions that can be given to your spies.

When you click the “send spy” button, the Es-

pionage Interface will be displayed in place of the Diplomacy Interface. Each currently available option will be highlighted in gold, while unavailable missions will be greyed out. A mission will be unavailable if the province you have selected is not suitable for the mission, or if you lack the necessary funds in your treasury to pay for the attempt.

Adjacent to each mission on the list, you will see the cost that you must pay the spy from your treasury to fund the mission, as well as an estimate of the likelihood that the mission will succeed. The cost of missions is affected by your current inflation value, so the actual cost displayed in the interface will be higher than the base cost listed here unless you currently have no inflation whatsoever. The chance of succeeding depends on the difficulty of the mission and on the modifiers listed above.

When you click on an option to select it, you will be asked to confirm that you wish

your spy to proceed. If you go ahead with the operation, the cost will be deducted from your treasury and the spy will depart on his mission. It will take a little time before you will know whether the attempt was successful.

Incite Troop Desertions

If this operation is a success, the province will experience a temporary increase in its attrition and maximum attrition rates, resulting in greater potential losses to a large army that is located in the province. This effect will last for the next five years and can be very useful as a means of hampering an enemy’s ability to field a large army. You should avoid sending your own armies to this location, though, as they will experience the same increased attrition rates as well.

Inciting troop desertions is an inexpensive venture and is fairly easy to achieve. The base cost of the mission is 25 ducats and if your involvement is discovered, you will lose only a small amount of prestige.

Assassinate Advisor

You may attempt to assassinate an advisor that is currently serving in the court of another country. This mission will only be available when you have selected the capital province of

the country, and will also be greyed out if the realm is not currently employing any advisors.

When there is more than one advisor serving in

court, the choice of target is made randomly.

Assassination is a moderately difficult venture that will require 100 ducats to attempt. Because murder is a nefarious act, you will suffer a loss of both prestige and reputation if your involvement is detected.

Sabotage Reputation

If you are wealthy and willing to take your chances, you may instruct a spy to go to another country’s court and attempt to tarnish the nation’s reputation. Since this mission takes place in court, it will only be available when you select the capital province of a country.

The base cost to sabotage another country’s reputation is 200 ducats and the chance of success will usually be very slim indeed. If your smear campaign is discovered, you will lose a substantial amount of prestige and will end up tarnishing your own reputation as well.

Incite Against the Merchants

This mission instructs your spy to visit the local businesses within a province and attempt to incite anger against the wealthy merchants who are making all of the profit from the sale of the

province’s primary resource. If your agent is successful, the merchants will be despised by the population, resulting in a 75% reduction in trade income from that province for the next

10 years.

Due to natural resentment of the wealthy, this action is fairly easy to accomplish and requires only a modest 25 ducat investment. You will lose only a very small amount of prestige if your hand in the attempt is detected.

Spy Ring Infiltration

If you find yourself the frequent target of another nation’s espionage activities, you might consider sending one of your own agents on a mission to the capital to attempt to infiltrate that country’s spy ring. If successful, your spy will remain under cover and spend the next 15 years subverting all espionage attempts made

by that country. This makes it 25% less likely that any further attempts at espionage by that realm will be successful.

Although the mission involves only moderate difficulty, it is an expensive venture that will require a 100 ducat investment, and you will suffer a large loss of prestige if your attempt is detected.

Support Revolt

One of the more interesting and potentially productive missions for your spies is to go

around stirring up trouble in other countries’ provinces. You can send an agent to any province where he will attempt to cause a scandal to incite rebellion. If he succeeds, the province will experience a 3% increase in its revolt risk for the next 30 years.

Human nature being what it is, this is a fairly easy mission that carries a modest base cost of only 50 ducats. Even if your spy is caught red-handed, you will suffer only a tiny loss of prestige.

Commission Privateer.

The last of the espionage missions involves hiring someone else to do your dirty work for you.

You can send your spy to any coastal province

where he will attempt to locate some of the seedier local sailors who might be interested in becoming privateers. If successful, he will supply them with a ship (or more than one) and they will begin to operate as pirates off the coast of the province. This will disrupt a portion of any overseas trade and taxes flowing into the nation until they can arrange for their navy to dispatch the unruly mariners.

Although you will lose only a tiny amount of prestige if your attempt is discovered, this is an easy mission to accomplish and requires a fairly small investment of only 25 ducats.

THE MILITARY

Overview

We have spent a long time talking about interfaces and displays, war and peace, domestic affairs and diplomacy; but we haven’t yet talked directly about the nuts and bolts of one of the more important aspects of the game: the creation and control of your military. This chapter will teach you how to raise an army or a f leet, assign generals and admirals to lead them, and then how to control their actions in the field or at sea. We begin with a basic look at the structure of your military, and then we’ll proceed to a series of sections that discuss everything you need to know about recruiting and using your land forces. We will then shift our attention to naval forces and conclude the chapter by looking at a situation where you may need to use a combination of the two. Although many of the same considerations apply to the subject of exploration and colonisation, we will discuss this separately in the subsequent chapter.

Structure of the Military

Your country’s military is divided into two distinct parts: land forces and naval forces. Land forces are used to defend your provinces, fight

battles, put down rebellion, lay siege to enemy cities, and conduct any other military operations that occur on solid ground. They are usually controlled as armies, which are composed of a series of regiments of varying types and abilities. Naval forces operate only at sea and consist of ships that are assembled into fleets. Your fleets will engage enemy ships, sink the occasional privateer, and may also be used to

blockade enemy ports or transport your land forces overseas.

Regiment Types

The regiment is the basic unit of your land forces, with each regiment being composed of

1000 soldiers. Each regiment will have a spe-

cific area of expertise that will classify it as either infantry, cavalry, or artillery. A series of regiments with then be assembled into an army, assigned a general, and used to accomplish your military goals. Putting together an effective army will be essential to your chances of success, so it is vital that you understand and consider the distinction between each of the regiment types.

Infantry Regiments

The infantry regiment is the basic foot soldier. In the early stages of the game, they are armed with swords or spears, or sometimes with bows or javelins. Infantry move fairly slowly, and are not terribly effective in combat. As the game progresses and you advance in land technology, these will be replaced with increasingly powerful forms of gunpowder-based weaponry and will become more and more dangerous to encounter.

Infantry is at its weakest in open fields, particularly when faced with an opponent who is mounted. They are far more effective when fighting in unfavourable terrain, or treacherous ground. Infantry is especially dangerous

-- even early in the game -- when defending in heavily forested or mountainous provinces.

Once of the most important aspects of the infantry regiment is its ability to assault a city during a siege. If your army lacks infantry, you will have almost no alternative but to wait for starvation to eventually force a city to surrender. This can take long time, giving the enemy an opportunity to assemble an army to counterattack and break the siege.

A final advantage to the infantry regiment is that it is fairly inexpensive to purchase and quite quick to recruit. If you are in need of a large, inexpensive force in a short period of time, the infantry regiment will be your unit of choice. They also require a much lower monthly maintenance cost than any other type of regiment.

Cavalry Regiments

These mounted warriors are the most powerful regiment available for field combat at the beginning of the game. Their mobility and fearsome charges will often cause an enemy to break and run from battle. They lose much of this advantage when the terrain or weather inhibits their speed, and they are utterly unsuited for siege warfare. They will, if absolutely essential, participate in the assault of a city, but you should anticipate heavy casualties and rapidly falling morale if you press them into this service.

Western knights in shining armour and mounted Mongol cavalry archers will slowly give way to a new breed of cavalry as land technology levels increase. Like infantry, they will trade in their weapons and armour for gunpowder-based weapons, but their distinct advantage over infantry in the open field will slowly diminish until they are only slightly more effective by the end of the game.

Cavalry regiments take much longer to recruit than infantry regiments and are often as much as triple the cost. Their single greatest advantage throughout the game is their speed of movement. If you need to get a regiment rapidly from one place to another, cavalry is the regiment to select. While large cavalry armies might seem appealing, be sure that your economy is strong enough to support the high monthly maintenance cost of keeping the regiments ready to do battle.

Artillery Regiments

Artillery regiments will not be available to most

countries at the onset of the game, but will start to make their appearance towards the end of the 15th century when nations begin to reach the necessary land technology level (level 4 in most cases). Although each regiment is shown as being composed of 1000 men, this is not to suggest that there are that many pieces of artillery in the field. Instead, the regiment represents a smaller infantry regiment with artillery support (along with the men required to oper-

ate, load, and transport these fearsome pieces of machinery).

Early forms of artillery were heavy and unwieldy, making them highly unsuited to field combat. For the most part, this weapon’s function was limited to siege work where the constant bombardment of an enemy’s walls would eventually create a large enough breach for the infantry to pour through. By the beginning of the Napoleonic era, artillery had undergone a drastic technological change and was becoming devastating on the field of combat. This is reflected in the game by the ever-increasing damage caused by these regiments.

Until the later stages of the game, artillery’s most effective use is to greatly reduce the length of time required to conclude a siege. Used in concert with regiments of regular infantry, you will be able to breach the walls and assault a city much more rapidly than would otherwise be the case. You will gradually want to increase the number of artillery regiments in your armies as the years go by, but brace yourself for the high cost to purchase and maintain them. They aren’t cheap. They also move very slowly, so don’t expect an army that has a regiment or more of artillery to get anywhere very quickly.

Ship Types

Turning our attention to the sea, your naval forces will be made up of ships that are usually assembled into fleets, each of which will be commanded by an admiral. As was the case with regiments, ships come in a variety of different primary classifications:

Transports

This is the most basic form of ship. As the name suggests, a transport ship is used to transport land forces across the seas, allowing you to conduct military operations far away from home. Transports have no armaments and are quite easily sunk during naval combat. This is the only ship type capable of carrying land

forces, so they are indispensable if you intend to extend your country’s borders across water. You should ensure that transports are placed in f leets that include other vessels more suited to combat unless you are certain that they can complete their voyage unmolested.

Galleys

A galley is the smallest class of combat vessel. These ships carry somewhat limited armaments and cannot withstand very much damage before being sunk. Their advantage is that they are quite inexpensive and quick to build, and are cheap to maintain on a monthly basis. Galleys gain a significant bonus when involved in a

battle that occurs in an inland sea zone such as the Baltic Sea and the Mediterranean Sea; however, they also receive a rather nasty penalty in combats that occur in the open ocean.

Light Ships

This is a larger ship than a galley, carrying a more powerful armament and able to withstand considerably more damage. Light ships are more expensive to build and require a longer time before they will be ready. They also carry a higher monthly maintenance cost. The greatest advantage of a light ship is its excellent blend of speed, firepower, and tolerance to damage.

Big Ships

These are the largest class of ship, carrying the greatest possible armament and able to withstand tremendous amounts of damage while still remaining af loat. They tend to move quite slowly at sea, and are extremely expensive to

build and maintain.

Unit Types

There are many different possible unit types for each of the regiment and ship types we outlined above. There is not simply a single “infantry regiment” that is used for everyone in the game. Instead, there are a many different types of infantry regiment, each of which has

slightly different combat characteristics and appearance. The types that will be available to you will depend on the country you play, the level of land technology you have achieved, and who considers your provinces to be their core provinces. The same is true of cavalry regiments, artillery regiments, and all of the various ship types.

Each unit type has a series of basic combat

characteristics that affect its performance in

battle. Some units are excellent at defending

but may not inflict much damage on an enemy. Other units are geared towards inflicting maximum casualties on an enemy, but may be somewhat less likely to win a closely contested battle. This tends to emphasise a strategy where spending a bit of time to carefully plan the composition of your armies and f leets can lead to military success, even against an opponent that appears much stronger at a casual glance.

Land combat is handled differently than naval combat, so you will not be surprised to learn that the characteristics for regiments are quite different from the characteristics of ships. To avoid confusion, we will explain and describe each of these characteristics in detail in two separate sections -- one on land combat and one on naval combat -- later in this chapter. For the next few sections, let us focus our attention on your land forces.

Recruiting Land Forces

You will usually begin the game with an army located in your capital province. The number of regiments in the army will depend on the size and economic strength of the country you

have chosen to play, and the exact type of each regiment will depend on the starting date and your location in the world. It is common for the army to be quite small, so to ensure your security or to begin contemplating war, you will almost certainly need to expand the size of your military. To do this, you will need to recruit some new regiments.

Each regiment is composed of 1000 men

and is recruited in one of the provinces in your realm, and each province is capable of recruiting one new regiment at a time. The soldiers that will form the regiment are drawn from your country’s manpower pool which is shown at the left end of the Top Bar. Each of your provinces contributes a number of men to the pool each month, and once you have at least

1000 men in your national pool, you will be

able to begin recruiting a new regiment.

You will begin by deciding where you would like to recruit the regiment. You might select a province that is near the location that you expect to need your future army or you might select it based on the type of regiments that can

be recruited there. This final consideration is the one that is likely to play the largest role in your decision.

As you may recall, when we looked at the Domestic Military interface we stressed the fact that the type of regiments that can be built in a province are determined by the preferred unit type of each country that considers that province to be a core province. You will only

be able to recruit regiments of your country’s

preferred unit type in your own core provinces.

Any provinces you own that are not yet your

own core provinces will not be able to supply this type of regiment.

If another country considers one of your

provinces to be one it cores, you will be able to recruit that nation’s preferred unit type. In fact, unless that province is also one of your cores, the only type of regiments you will be able to recruit will be the other country’s preferred type. If no country considers a province a core, no

regiments can be built there at all!

Once you have decided on a suitable province, click on it to display the

Province Management interface, and then click the “recruit regiment” button below the summary information. The recruitment interface will replace the province summary information on the right side of the interface. This displays a list of the regiments that can be recruited in the province, as well as any mercenary regiments that might be available for hire (we’ll discuss mercenaries in a moment).

Beside the name of each regiment type is a graphic representation of the unit’s primary combat characteristics. For each combat category (fire, shock and morale) there is an “offensive” value displayed in the upper half of the box, and a defensive value displayed in the lower half. If you hover your mouse pointer over a star, you will see a tool tip showing the exact value for the regiment. The way that these are used is described in detail later in this chapter,

when we look at the way in which combats are resolved.

At the end of each line is the cost that must

be paid from your treasury to begin recruiting this type of regiment, and the length of time it will take before the unit is ready for action. Clicking anywhere on the line will issue the order to begin recruiting one of these regiments. If the line is greyed out, you either lack the necessary 1000 men in your manpower pool, or you don’t have enough cash in your treasury to afford the unit. It will also be unavailable if you are already recruiting in this province, because a province is only able to recruit one new regiment at a time.

As soon as you issue the order for a unit to be recruited, a graphic will appear in that province on the main map to indicate that a regiment is being recruited. A bar beneath the graphic allows you to monitor the progress at a glance, and hovering your mouse pointer over the graphic with display a tool tip indicating the type of unit and expected date that it will

be ready. The regiment will have no ability to protect the province until it has been fully recruited and trained. If you lose control of the province before the regiment is ready, the recruitment will be cancelled, and you will lose the money and manpower you spent.

When the recruitment process is complete, the new regiment will appear on the main map and if you wish, you may place a new order for the province to begin recruiting another new regiment. Although the new unit can be given orders immediately, you will almost always want to wait for a while before sending it into

battle because a new unit will have extremely

low morale when it first appears.

Mercenaries

If you are in urgent need of military forces, you can check to see whether there are any mercenaries available for hire in a province. If there are, the available mercenary regiment types will be displayed in the lower portion of the recruitment interface. Unlike your own regi-

ments, a mercenary regiment has no recruitment delay and will be ready for service immediately. It will be placed on the main map as soon as you decide to pay for it; however, like your own regiments, it will have an extremely low morale when it first appears.

While having a regiment become available instantly can be handy, there are several disadvantages that you should consider before employing mercenaries:

• A mercenary regiment will only contribute one-third of the normal amount to your military tradition when it participates in combat. This will make it much harder for you to gain the high levels of tradition necessary to recruit the best possible generals.

• Unlike regular regiments, a mercenary reg

iment is never upgraded when you change your preferred unit type. Once it has become outdated, you will need to disband the regiment and hire a new one that has more advanced weaponry.

• Mercenary regiments require double the normal monthly maintenance cost of a comparable recruited unit.

Each geographic region in the world has a limited number of mercenaries available for

hire, and they are provided on a "first-come, first-served" basis. Each time a country hires a mercenary regiment, it is removed from the

"regional pool" that supplies all of the provinces

in the area. The pool will slowly replenish over time, so if there are no mercenaries available when you check a province, it is possible that one will become available later.

Army Information

When a regiment is recruited and placed on the

main map, a new army is created that contains only this unit. The regiment is automatically given a name that indicates its province of origin, and the same name is given to the army. If you click on the unit, the army information

box will appear near the upper left of the main map.

At the top of the

box you will see the name of the army. If you would prefer a different name, click anywhere on the

brown label and type in whatever you like.

You can do this with

any army’s name, and may change it as often as you wish.

To the right of the

name are several small

buttons. Clicking the skull and crossbones

button will order the army to disband. This eliminates any regiments that are contained in the army, and should only be done when you are certain that you don’t need them any longer. The second button is used to split an army that contains more than one regiment into two smaller armies. We’ll look at how to do this shortly. The circular “X” button closes the box when you have finished reviewing the information.

At the extreme left of this upper area is a vertical bar that gives a graphic display of the army’s current morale. This represents its willingness to fight, and will be very low when a regiment has first been recruited. Over time, the green indicator will slowly rise to the top of the bar to indicate that the army’s morale is high and it is ready for battle.

Immediately below the army’s name is the name of the general who commands the army. If an army has no leader, it is much less likely to prevail in combat, so you should avoid involving it in battle until you have assigned it a general. We’ll show you how to do that in a moment. Below the name of the general is the name of the province in which the army is currently located.

The total strength of the army is shown immediately to the right of the general’s name.

When an army suffers casualties due to combat

or attrition, this value will decrease. Over time, manpower will be withdrawn from your country’s pool to replenish these losses, and each of the regiments will eventually be reinforced and the army will return to full strength. The maximum size of an army is 1000 men for each of the regiments it contains.

If the army is experiencing any losses due to attrition, the rate of loss will be displayed as a percentage value shown immediately below the army’s current strength. This is the percentage of men that will become casualties for each month that the army remains in this location. Attrition can cripple an army and act as a constant drain on your manpower pool, so you should avoid locations that have high attrition rates unless your army needs to be there for strategic reasons. Attrition is caused by the size of an army exceeding the amount of supply it can obtain from its current location.

The area below this will list each of the regiments currently contained in this army. You will see each regiment’s name, type, and current strength. Hover your mouse pointer over a regiment to display a tool tip that details its combat characteristics.

Army Organisation

An army that contains two or more regiments

may be divided into two smaller armies, and multiple armies located in the same province may be combined into a single larger army or may exchange regiments if you would like to rearrange their composition.

To split an army, select it and click the “split army” button. This will

display the Army Reorganisation interface where each of the regiments in your current army are listed in the army on the left. Use the arrow buttons to move some of the regiments to the new army. If you change your mind, you can return a regiment to the original army. Once you are satisfied with the composition of the two armies, click the “close” button.

If two armies are in the same province, you can select them and then either quickly merge them, or open the reorganise army interface to move regiments between them. To select more than one army, click and drag you mouse pointer on the main map to draw a box around each of the armies. When you release the mouse button, all armies within the box will be selected and listed near the upper left of the screen. When two or more armies are selected, the army information displayed will not include the detailed list of their individual regiments.

To combine the ar-

mies into a single larger army, click the “merge” button above the listing.

This will place all of

the regiments into one army which will be led by whichever of the armies’ leaders is the best overall commander. If you

click the “split army” button, the Reorganise Army interface will be displayed, allowing to more regiments back and forth between the two.

You may simultaneously select as many armies as you like. If your selection includes an army that you would prefer not to include in a merger, click the small “X” button for the army to remove it from the listing. This is also necessary if you have accidentally selected an army that is not located in the same province as the others. You can merge as many armies as you like --- provided that they are in the same province -- but you may only reorganise two armies at a time.

Assigning Army Leaders

Before sending an army off to battle, you should assign a general from your country’s pool of leaders to command it. Leaderless armies will usually perform very poorly in com-

bat, and take considerably longer to conduct a siege. Some countries may begin the game with one or more generals already in their leader pool; otherwise, you will need to recruit one. Provided you have a general who is not currently leading another army, simply click on the leader name line of the army summary. A drop-down box will display a list of available generals and their attributes. Click on the general who you would like to assign to command this army.

Recruiting a New Leader

We have already seen how to recruit a new

leader when we looked at the Domestic Leaders screen. Click on your country’s shield in the top left corner of the screen to open the Domestic Interface, and then select the “Leaders” tab. Any generals currently serving your realm will be listed on the screen. If they are currently leading an army, the army’s name will also be shown.

To recruit a new leader, click on the “recruit general” button. This carries a cost of 100 ducats, uses up one diplomat, and reduces your current land tradition by 20%. The new general’s attributes are determined largely by your country’s land tradition value. You are far more likely to gain an effective leader if tradition is high.

If you lack the necessary requirements to recruit a general, you may also convert your ruler into a general. This is “free”, and his abilities as a general are determined by his military skill attribute. Be careful, though, as your country will lose stability and prestige if he is killed in

battle, and it is far more likely to experience a period of regency or even be forced to become the junior partner in a personal union when this happens.

Army Basics

During peacetime, armies have extremely limited uses. If you experience a rebellion in any of your provinces, you will need to send an army to deal with the offenders; otherwise, they will usually do little other than to act as a deterrent to any of your neighbours who might desire your territories. You will probably want to position your forces in the most suitable locations to minimise any attrition they might suffer, and to be able to respond rapidly to any threats.

A neighbour will be much less inclined to declare war and attack you if it feels that your military is large enough to repel the attack; of course, when you do eventually go to war, those same armies will be the ones that will engage your enemies and hopefully conquer new lands. While this would make it seem tempting to create a large number of gigantic armies, there are two issues you must bear in mind: the maximum number of troops that your nations can afford to support, and the attrition they will suffer when too many are stationed in the same location.

Maintenance and Maximum

Supportable Troops

When we looked at the Domestic Military

screen, we noted that there is a limit to the number of troops that your country is able to support without incurring any penalties to the cost of maintaining them. This number is determined by the size of the realm and the wealth of your provinces.

Each regiment in your military will incur a monthly maintenance cost, ref lecting the basic supplies and equipment it needs to remain in good fighting condition. The larger your military, the higher the monthly cost. This can be reduced somewhat by decreasing the amount of maintenance you are willing to allot it, but your armies will suffer a corresponding loss of morale and will be much less eager to fight for you.

There is also a threshold called the “maxi-

mum supportable troops”, which, if exceeded, causes their maintenance cost to be considerably higher than would normally be the case. This acts as a mechanism to prevent a country from being able to field an unreasonably large army for any length of time -- something that was very much the case during this historical era.

When your country is at peace, it is usually safe to reduce your maintenance level to a degree to help keep the cost of supporting them from consuming too much of your income. If you are experiencing rebellion, or if you anticipate a declaration of war from an enemy, you would be well advised to return your payments to the full maintenance value so your troops’ morale will be high enough that they will be willing to fight.

As a rule of thumb, you should never exceed the maximum supportable troop levels unless you are urgently in need of the additional forces and have a large enough income and treasury to support them. You might recruit a few extra regiments or hire some mercenaries to carry you through a particularly difficult war against a more powerful enemy, but you should disband any excess forces as soon as it is safe to do so. Otherwise, you will find yourself paying a very large percentage of your monthly income to simply maintain your military, which will leave very little for the crucial investments in technology that will keep you on a par with your neighbours.

Attrition

Every province has a limit to the total number of soldiers that it is able to feed and supply at any one time. If more men are stationed in that province at any one time than it is able to support, some percentage of the force will be lost as a result of attrition. This reflects the real-life issues of desertion and disease that historically plagued large armies when they took to the field.

At the beginning of each month, the game checks each army to see if its location is able to

support the total number of soldiers stationed there. This total includes not only your own forces, but also the soldiers belonging to any other country that has an army in that province as well. This could be an enemy army that you are currently fighting, or possible an ally’s army that also happens to be there. If the total number of soldiers exceeds the province’s support capabilities, a percentage of your soldiers will be lost.

As we saw above, the army information box will indicate whether you are suffering any attrition and the percentage of the army that you will lose as a result of a shortage of supply. You can also click on a province and look at the summary information to see how many of your men it can support, and the maximum attrition rate you will suffer if you exceed this. Provinces that belong to your country will usually be able to support many of your men, and the attrition rate for exceeding this will be quite low. The values will be somewhat worse for a province that belongs to an ally and are usually quite bad for provinces that belong to an enemy.

Many provinces will experience seasonal

“winter conditions” that will be mild, moderate

or severe and can last for several months. You are far more likely to encounter severe winter conditions in extreme latitudes (northern Russia), or in somewhat more temperate provinces that have very high elevations (the Alps). This is the only form of weather-related condition that is considered in Europa Universalis III, as the scale of a grand strategy game does not lend itself well to shorter, periodic weather patterns.

When you are in your own provinces or in a

province belonging to a country that is granting you military access, it is assumed that the necessary supplies are still available; when you are in hostile or un-owned provinces, you will experience a much higher rate of attrition during winter conditions. Attrition is the only effect of the seasonal winter effect. There are no additional penalties applied to movement or combat.

Army Reinforcement

Any casualties suffered by a regiment due to

attrition or combat losses will be gradually replenished over subsequent months by drawing available soldiers from your country’s manpower pool. There is no additional cost for this reinforcement, although it will take some time to replace heavy losses. The rate that soldiers are replaced is determined by your current monthly maintenance level but will otherwise happen automatically.

Army Morale

When a regiment is first recruited and placed

on the map, it will have a very low level of morale. Morale reflects a soldier’s willingness to stand up and fight instead of dropping his weapon and running from the field. Over time, an army’s morale will slowly increase until it has reached its maximum possible level. This maximum is determined by your land technology level, but will be reduced if you are supplying anything less than 100% maintenance to your forces.

During combat, some of the damage in-

flicted on your soldiers is in the form of morale.

When an army’s morale level becomes too low,

the regiments will break and retreat from battle. In fact, most battles will end in one side’s withdrawal rather than its elimination, unless there is an overwhelming superiority of numbers on one side. After retreating, the army’s morale will slowly recover until it is confident enough to fight once more.

Moving an Army

To order an army to move to a different location, begin by selecting it. You can click directly on it on the map, or use your mouse to drag a box around it. An army can also be selected directly from the outliner and the ledger or by clicking the “go to” button on some messages or alerts. When an army is selected, you will see the army information box at the top left of the screen and a gold circle will be drawn around its base on the map. You can deselect it by clicking anywhere else on the map, or by clicking the circular “X” button to close the

army information box. Once an army has been selected, right-click on the province to which you would like it to march. You will see the outline of an arrow drawn from its current location to the intended destination. As the army marches, the outline will gradually fill with white to indicate its progress. The army graphic on the screen is also animated to indicate that it is marching.

For the purposes of engaging any enemy forces, the army will still be considered as being in its original province until it has completed the movement. If it is attacked in the midst of moving, it will stop to fight the battle; if it is victorious, it will resume its movement after the battle from the point where it was interrupted.

If you deselect an army after ordering it to move, the arrow will disappear but the army will still continue to march. If you wish to cancel the movement, you must select it and then right-click on its current location.

To make it easier to assemble multiple armies from nearby provinces, you can draw a large box to select all of them and then rightclick on the province to which you would like them all to move. Although you can select armies that are in different provinces, you will not be able to merge or reorganise them until they have all reached the same location.

Paths

You are not limited to ordering an army to move to an adjacent location. You can right-click on a province that is a considerable distance away and the game will calculate the fastest available route that the army can use to march there. The movement arrow will display the path it has chosen and the army will follow that path, province by province, until it arrives. If you would prefer it to use a specific path that is different from the one it has chosen, you can issue the movement order in a series of steps. Select the army, hold down either “shift” key on your keyboard, and right-click on each province along the path you would like it to take.

Movement Restrictions

There are a number of restrictions placed on the movement of your armies.

• You can enter any province that is owned by your country or any neutral province that you have discovered that does not currently have an owner.

• Your armies can cross rivers, but they can't walk on water. If you wish to move your army across the seas, you will need to use naval transport vessels to get it there.

• You are prohibited from entering any prov

ince that belongs to any other country unless you are either at war, or they are granting you military access. Vassals automatically grant military access to their overlord; otherwise, you must obtain permission via diplomatic means.

• You cannot enter a province that is consid

ered terra incognita. Until it has been added to your country’s map, only an army commanded by a “conquistador” may move there.

When an army is currently selected, your mouse

pointer will indicate whether the army is able to move there. There will be a small green arrow added to the pointer if the cursor is over a province to which it can move, and will have a small red X if it cannot. When issuing an order that requires an army to move through a number of provinces before it will arrive at its destination, the game will attempt to find a path that allows it to move there. If there is not valid path, you will be unable to move, even if the destination is legal.

Movement Speed

The length of time it will take for an army to march from one province to the next depends on the distance it must travel, the types of regiments in the army, the commander’s manoeuvre rating, and the terrain. You can check the expected date that an army will arrive at its destination by hovering your mouse over the army’s graphic on the map. You will see the total force composition, its intended destination,

100

and the date that it should arrive.

Europa Universalis III ’s provinces have a wide range of sizes. When determining how long it takes an army to march to an adjacent province, the game bases the calculation on the exact distance between the two provinces’ capitals and compares this to the movement speed of the army. Movement is always based on the assumption that the army begins its movement in the provincial capital’s location on the map, and completes its movement when it arrives in the destination province’s capital.

An army’s movement speed is determined

by the speed of the slowest regiment in the army.

An army that is composed entirely of cavalry

will move much faster than an army that contains a regiment of infantry, and an army that includes artillery will move the slowest of all. If speed is an issue for your strategy, you may wish to split an army into a fast-moving vanguard and have a slower main force follow behind. Just be sure that your vanguard is strong enough to survive any combat it encounters before the main force arrives to assist it.

Each factor of your leader’s manoeuvre rating will increase the movement speed of every regiment under his command. The speed is also affected by the terrain. Armies move fastest through open plains, and will be slowed down to varying degrees by forests, desert, swamp, hills, and mountains. Crossing a river also requires additional time.

Land Combat

Overview

A land combat is initiated whenever an army

enters a province that contains an enemy army. Combat is highly abstracted in Europa Uni- versalis III, where each engagement represents an attacker’s campaign to gain control over an enemy’s entire province. Combats frequently last for a period of weeks and should not be thought of as a single battle, but rather as a series of battles that eventually determine which side has gained the upper hand in the area.

During each day of this contest, the invading force will make an attack against the defender and then brace itself against the enemy’s counterattack. The damage you inf lict on an enemy is determined by the type and size of your regiments, the general that commands them, any terrain or river-crossing modifiers, your land technology level, and a certain amount of luck. The two armies will continue to exchange blows until one side has been completely eliminated or one army’s morale level is so low that it breaks and retreats.

Once the battle is over, the victorious army will remain in the province and the loser will be forced to retreat. If the province is currently controlled by the side that lost, the victor will then lay siege to the capital and attempt to gain control of the province. The attacking force will only gain control of the province when the siege has been successfully completed. Ownership of a province only changes when it has been ceded as a condition of peace.

Field combats and sieges are handled differently by the game, so we will begin by looking at former and then proceed to the latter.

Taking the Field

A field combat occurs whenever two oppos-

ing armies are located in the same province, at which point you will receive a message that notifies you that your army has encountered a hostile force. There are no tactical decisions for you to make. The battle will occur automatically and will be resolved after the armies have battled against one another over the ensuing days. The only action you can take that will affect the course of the battle is to order your army to withdraw. Otherwise, the battle is entirely in the hands of your general and the outcome will be determined largely on the strategic decisions you made before sending it to the province.

Although you have no control over the combat, Europa Universalis III allows you to watch its progress if you like. To do so, click on the

“go to” button on the message, or select the army

Paradox Interactive EUROPA UNIVERSALIS 3 User Manual

Specifications and Main Features

Frequently Asked Questions

User Manual