Hey, what happened to Infamy Unlimited?
Don’t worry, everyone’s most loathed City of Villains super-criminal group is still around. But as they haven’t gotten up to much worth writing about lately, I’ve decided to push their exploits to the side for now, and lend this blogspace to gaming tales of a different nature.
Specifically, I’ll be chronicling my progress through a full game of Europa Universalis II. And you get to watch!
Released in 2001 by Swedish publisher Paradox Interactive, EU2 is a strategy game spanning four centuries of world colonial expansion. And you can play as any nation during that period, from Austria to the Zulu. The Grand Campaign, which I’ll be playing, covers the full scope, from 1419 A.D. (the midst of the Hundred Years War) to 1819 A.D. (the end of the Napoleonic era). During this time, technology will advance from the age of pikes to cannons and rifles, wars will be fought, lands will be colonized, religions will splinter and spread, and the political map of the world will be redrawn in various amusing ways.
EU2 has a gigantic map, hundreds of playable nations, and is enormously complex, so I’m not going to try and explain the whole deal up front. Instead, I’ll cover the relevant game dynamics as they come up during my recaps. For now, it’s enough to mention that the game uses a victory point system, and while I will be keeping track of those, I’m going to hold myself to a less quantitative standard of success. Broadly, my goal is to grow my chosen nation from a small-time player into a major power – not merely in Europe, but also in vast colonial holdings across the globe. My nation will be the core of an empire upon which the sun will never set.
And what nation is that? It’s that friendly little emerald isle called:
IRELAND.
Since the game covers 400 years, my plan is to provide a 20-part recap, each chapter spanning 20 years of alternate Irish history. Let’s all hold hands and pray that I can succeed in holding to a weekly posting schedule.
For now, stay tuned as we take a peek at the state of Europe in 1419 A.D., and the tough row Ireland has to hoe in the centuries ahead.
January 14, 2008 at 2:14 am
Long live the Irish!. And please take care of the potato crops.
January 14, 2008 at 3:54 am
That’s cool! I’ll stay tuned for more.
January 14, 2008 at 9:12 pm
Silly Yank! Potatoes are a New World crop and unknown in Europe at this time.
But it sure would be wicked cool if Ireland could put itself in control of Peru, origin of the plant, and so monopolize the world potato market. I think I’ll put that on my “to do” list for this game.