Europa Universalis III Divine Wind Review

If Heir To The Throne did a lot to add even more depth and polish to an already remarkable game, Divine Wind is just Paradox saying, we listen to the fans and really care about making the best strategy games. It’s quite surprising that Paradox has gone this route and released an expansion to a now 4 year old game, but it bodes well to the loyal fans of theirs. Clearly, fans were clamouring for more depth with Asian countries, and Paradox giveth!




For Those Not Familiar With Europa Universalis III


Europa Universalis is the series that introduced Paradox Interactive to the strategy genre gamers. It is their debut game that is based on a board game of the same name. Unlike other grand strategy games, Paradox went with a completely new outlook of making their games real time as opposed to a turn based fare(which was a standard for such strategy games). In Europa Universalis III, you take control of one nation between hundreds of other nations on the world map and guide them through 400 plus years of history.

Take control of any nation in the world

You could start from the middle ages of 1399 and go all the way up to the renaissance/Napoleonic era time period of 1820. Like all good grand strategy games, you’ll be tasked at balancing the nations coffers. Exactly where you’re going to invest your revenue was key. You could invest money into land, naval, government or trade technology. You’ll often have to make a loss monthly to stay toe to toe with the other nations and stay competitive.

The two major core ideas of Europa Universalis are stability and the Casus Belli system. Stability affected everything in your country. From the revenue you gain from taxes to the revolt risk of your regions. Stability is a fundamental mechanic in EU. You’ll have to often weight the cost of many decisions and events that will bring a drop in stability in your nation.

Casus Belli is Latin for ‘justification of act of war’ and in Europa Universalis, you didn’t have the freedom to go to war with anyone without reason. You had to have a reason to be able to declare war. If you didn’t have a strong reason(or no reason at all), you’ll have to pay a hefty stability penalty and all the other nations will take you for a warmonger.

You can still be a warmonger, but you'll pay the price as other nations will hate you

The beauty of Europa Universalis is the variety of ways you could shape your nation. Take hold of a small trading nation. Focus your game on investing in trade research and make your traders the best in the world. Gain a monopoly at centers of trades all over the world and gain prestige. Or choose a large powerful nation like France and use your military might and conquer Europe. It was what many people called a ‘Geo Political Simulator’.

Depending on your direction and the actions you take, certain events might or might not kick in. Unite the Germanic states into Prussia, or form the Great Britain. Your experience might differ from someone else's play through. It’s this dynamic world that makes Europa Universalis unique and alive(despite it’s world map graphics).



On to Divine Wind

Divine Wind, as I said, is the fourth expansion for Europa Universalis III. Coming in after the excellent Heir To The Throne expansion which added more depth by expanding the throne and royal family mechanic of nations. The biggest addition in Divine Wind is the unique experience Paradox has crafted for Japan and the Ming Dynasty. The entire list of changes for Divine Wind is extremely long as you can see over here. Most of these changes further polish the game to a sheen. I won’t go into detail on every single one of these changes. My review will focus on the new Japan and Ming Dynasty changes they’ve made.

Four Daimyos vie for the right to be called Shogun

Japan

Playing Japan in Divine Wind is to what playing Republican Spain was for Hearts of Iron. It gives players a mini Europa Universalis campaign to play on before opening them up to the wider world. A microcosm of Europa Universalis III if you will. An excellent way of getting new comers attuned to Europa Universalis. Because you only control a Daimyo(as opposed to an entire nation), you have limited diplomatic options with the outside world. It’s a very isolated experience as you focus on what’s happening on the Japanese Isles.

The objective here is to become Shogun. You’ll need to reduce the influence of the current Shogun, and defeat all the other Daimyos vying for the same title, and get the Emperors blessing to become the Shogun. There are four Daimyos in the Japan game and the map of Japan has been reworked to sport more regions to reflect the additional factions. Due to the limited man power and gold you get,(due to the size of your initial holdings) converting your faction leader to a general makes perfect sense.

The Shoguns influence decrease or increase based on events, how well he manages his holdings and how well he does in wars

It’s not just a domination game as you’ll have to accrue prestige to get the emperor to declare you as Kampaku. Only once you’ve become Shogun do you have the option of diplomacy with other nations. You’ll have to keep your influence up though as you can lose your Shogun title if the other Daimyos manage to lower your influence by defeating you in battle.

If you manage to hold off the other Daimyos and get a vast majority of their lands, you might trigger the unite Japan event that will create a new Japanese nation. I found the act of toppling the current Shogun to be fun. Had to ally with another Daimyo and pin him down. Watched his dominion fall into the hands of rebels. Alliances in the Japan game is definitely a lot more temporary in my opinion as all the Daimyos yearn to be Shogun, so watch your back.  

The Ming Dynasty is a VERY large nation, but fractured by the different faction in the Imperial court

China

The experience of playing the Ming Dynasty(China) is completely opposite of what’s it like to play Japan. As a large nation, you have tremendous amounts of man power and a large standing army. Well, you’ll need it to stand up against the horde armies that come knocking on your doorstep. It’s no longer a straight forward proposition playing China as you’ll be balancing the demands of the different factions.

The Ming Dynasty’s Imperial court is broken up into three faction that fight for the attention of the Emperor, the eunuch who have a vested interest in expanding Chinas territory and colonising foreign lands, the temple faction who are interested in persecuting the heathen religions and defending the faith of the nation, and the burocrats who are interesting in building up the provinces of the nations.

Whenever any one faction dominates the imperial courts, you’ll be restricted into doing only their bidding. Which means no trading, colonising or declaring wars(unless it is for religious purpose) if the temple faction comes into power. Or only being able to build up improvements in provinces when the beurocrats take control. Or sending out traders when the eunuch is in control.

Being shoveled into only doing one thing or another because of the factions puts a lot of restrictions on your strategies.  A major challenge for anyone who takes on China.

Depending on which of three factions holds dominance in the courts, you will be forced to accept some limitations or penalties for having one faction dominate over the other. You’ll have to keep an eye closely on what’s transpiring in the imperial court.

The way to influence one factions rise and fall is by adjusting your domestic policies(also your emperors attribute affects this too). For example, promoting more innovativeness in your nation will reduce the influence of the temple faction or promoting mercantilism will strengthen the Eunuchs. This sort of models the fractious nature of the imperial courts of China and the jostling for power of nobles in the palace. What this ultimately means is that Chinas progress is slowed down.

It is sometimes frustrating that you are restricted to only a certain set of mechanics in the game.You can’t do what you planned to do. On top of that, some of the events play out in ways that may go against your strategy and further exacerbate your problems. For instance the temple faction completely restricting you from building up your province and then receiving an event that if you allow it, means increasing the influence of the temple faction further or taking a huge hit in stability and prestige. You’ll often have to tailor your strategy depending on which faction controls the Imperial court.

And since buildings now cost a magistrate as well as gold to build, you can’t abuse your wealth as a large nations to create an exponential increase in wealth with spamming buildings in every province. It is a real challenge playing the Ming Dynasty now, something that is a welcome change to anyone that has played China in Europa Universalis(which tends to be a juggernaut and rolls over everyone).

The dreaded Golden Horde. Can you drive your horde deep into central Europe?

For the Horde

While not entirely new, horde nations have been tweaked to better reflect the nomadic nature of how they operated. As one of the horde, you’ll either be duking it out against the eastern European nations or the Ming Dynasty. You’ll have to be watchful of other nations colonising your lands or sending in priests to convert local populace.

As the horde, you will always be in a state of war with your neighbours(unless a truce is declared). You wont be able to take cities for yourself or annex nations in peace negotiations. The idea here is to conquer regions and demand tribute in peace negotiations.

You gain legitimacy, prestige and support from your men by conquering regions so warfare will be a staple of a nomadic hordes game. There are a bunch of hordes from the dreaded Golden Horde, Timurids, and lesser known Kazakhs and many more. I’m not sure how fun it would be to play a horde for 400 years though. Perhaps it depends on your play style, but being a warmonger all the time isn’t my cup of tea.



In Summary

Europa Universalis III Divine Wind is exactly what you wanted or an iterative improvement over the base game depending on your expectations. If you wanted more interesting Asian nations, you get just that, but if you wanted massive new gameplay mechanics, you’d be a little bit disappointed. It still improves upon the base game by tweaking building costs, improving the alliance system and cleaning up the UI(plus not forgetting the gorgeous Atlas like map style) but nothing like what Heir To The Throne brought to EU3.

However, I have to take my hats off to Paradox though. Divine Wind is a tribute to what the fans wanted and it’s great to have a developer who listens to their fan base. You get two new and unique Europa Universalis III experience with the Ming Dynasty and Japan. Essentially, Europa Universalis III is a better game with Divine Wind. I find no reason not to recommend this expansion to anyone who has Europa Universalis III(in other words, you should get this).

If you are new to Europa Universalis, I’d suggest getting the entire Europa Universalis III package, all the expansions and Divine Wind. Sadly there isn’t a complete bundle at the moment(you’ll have to buy EU3 Complete, Heir To The Throne and Divine Wind). Hopefully Paradox rectifies this. Go forth! Conquer the world! Build your empire!


Pros

• Added variety to how these Asian nations play, namely Japan and China
  
• Lots of news events specific to these Asian nations
  
• Further improvements to minor UI elements such as the message system notifying you of what's happening(now not as annoying), the peace negotiation windows etc.
  
• Japan is an excellent choice for new comers with it’s smaller scale and the single minded focus of the game forcing you to fight for the right to be known as Shogun.
  
• Added more historical flavour for Japan and China thanks to the new unique mechanics introduced.
  
• War leaders can decide to call in allies when declaring wars
• New changes to how buildings are categorised make more sense
• Trade now nets you an extra bonus for trading in a major center of trade. Also you can only send traders to CoT's that are within your trade range(which you can increase by investing in trade research)
• The graphics has been spruced up a bit with a cool Atlas look when zoomed out.

Cons

• Not a problem with the expansion itself but the fact that you’d have to get Europa Universalis III Complete(which is really no longer complete) and Hear To The Throne to be able to play this makes it a little bit more difficult for new comers. Here’s to hoping Paradox makes a new EU3 bundle with all the expansion packs in them.
  
• The restrictive aspects of the new mechanics with the three factions in the Ming dynasty may not be to everyone's liking.

Verdict: The Best Paradox Game Gets Even Better