We're a little more than a week away from EU4's release, and I am super excited to finally play this. Crusader Kings 2 was my first real introduction to Paradox's grand strategy games and I cannot wait to give this a try. How many Giant Bomb duders are planning on picking it up? Hopefully we can maybe plan some online shenanigans together.

Most definitely. I might give up more of my time looking at maps than I would care to admit...

I will, can't wait to carry over my Crusader Kings 2 save.

At some point, haven't got the time to play it right now, so I'll wait and maybe get it a little cheaper.

I so am. Gonna colonize North America as Finland when I convert my CK2 game over. Then I'm gonna... I don't know. Japan? Somewhere in Asia? The Mamluks looked interesting? the world is my oyster.

Also @branthog and @equitasinvictus according to my steam friends list.

Been doing an EU3 playthrough as the Ottomans and have 95% of Europe conquered or vassalized; suppose I could do that again. Lately I've been watching a fair amount of CK2 here and here.

@fredchuckdave: the Idle Thumbs playthrough of CK2 is so good, even if I get supremely aggravated when they forget things.

There's a sweet spot in CK2 when I break out of my original starting location and start conquering my smaller nearby neighbors that I really enjoy myself, but before that point and after, when I'm large but so is everyone else nearby, and I'm not willing to enter a hundred year war over the two territories I have a de jure claim to, I lose interest. On the one hand, I bet a lot of this is different in EU IV due to the changing nature of conquest at the time. On the other hand, if the mechanics are similar but just in another era, I think I've gotten my fix for this type of gameplay for another year or so.

@veektarius: they're really quite different. This has a lot more to do with the economical side, more in depth with the technology side, and of course the colonization game, which I always found a whole lot of fun.

There should be a demo later this week for you to try out though.

@animasta: I actually did play EUIII to some extent as Spain, went ahead and colonized South America, like I'm supposed to. The economic aspects of that game (read: inflation) actually ended up being a bit too much for me to deal with.

well like I said the demo will tell you one way or the other, but the economic system has been completely re hauled.

Looking at this I really dig the 1444 start date. Byzantium still exists as one single province; the Hundred Years War is still in full flux and various other interesting events that have otherwise been exempt from previous EU iterations are present.

Actually, Byzantium has Achaea and Morea too. Plus they get a bunch of missions to liberate islands and stuff. There was a beta AAR where he reformed the empire pretty handily by 1500, but he seems to be really fucking good at the paradox game (he's done WC with OPM's etc.)

I've been going hard on CK2 for the last month and a half or so, and finally managed to keep a dynasty going all the way to the end last night. I ended up as the king of Finland, Denmark and Norway. As soon as I heard about the save game converter, I knew I would have to preorder EU4. I'm really looking forward to continuing things from there in EU4 so I can finally take down Sweden. Using CK2 to mix up the starting conditions of the world for EU4 is also a really cool idea.

I've never played any of the other EU games, but CK2 really got me into the idea of this sort of grand strategy game. I've been watching a lot of preview footage of EU4, and all the unique goals and mechanics for the various civilizations are really interesting. It's clearly a different style of game in a lot of ways, with a focus on nations instead of rulers, but it still looks totally rad.

I'm excited about this game. I can spend hours on end playing these games.

Yeah. Waiting for Rome 2 I'll pick this up for sure. I've been going through the original Rome, playing in the usual style of automating all combat.

Edit: Man Japan looks crazy, definitely trying that out first.

I'm super late to this (was out of town for the last few days), but yes! I am totally going to be on top of this!

In fact, I might as well say goodbye to the rest of my free time this summer!

Pre-purchased already! I also recently got into CK2. I will probably go back and forth between these to for the rest of summer/fall. Currently in a game as the Umayyads conquering much of Europe, however it is probably a boring start to convert, since only a few major powers remain. But even converting the standard start dates from CK2 into a EU 1444 start will be fun. Next, I want to play as the merchant republic Amalfi!

Rome 2 is fine, but I still haven't played much of Shogun 2 or Napoleon, so this can wait until a massive steam sale.

yeah i cant wait .. playing another old gods game as duke ned of flanders (created ruler) and plannign to take frisia and get in a nice position to transion to the netherlands in eu4 , and the hre formed up early and even has aquitaine and spain/italy are fallllling apart ... not to mention england is almost all "skotland" now .... im bettin the world will be in a pretty interesting shape if i make it to the end

PRE-ORDERED MOTHERFUCKAAAAaaaaa

I have no idea how to play this game (like, at ALL) but I'd be totes down if some duders wanted to get a multiplayer thing going...

I wish there was a discount on Green Man Gaming; I'd order in an instant if this was the case. I did the "Call to Arms" and got 10 referrals because I wanted the strategy guide. I'm rather disappointed, I figured it would be an in-depth guide of each of the various nations and some actual suggestions on how to play... instead almost every page is "a good player will know when to do ____", but not go into any detail.

I'm now even more intimidated, especially since I am a crappy CK2 player.

@chiablo: the tutorial is the best they've ever been. It actually says when you might want to do X and why, which is a problem most people have.

Also, yes, we should set up a multiplayer game; and with the new multiplayer stuff, hopefully it'd be easier to set up.

@animasta: Cool. If we are gonna do this though, I should probably ask: how does the multiplayer work, exactly? I assume all the players have to be on at the same time, but can we leave and come back to it over a period of time, or are there limits so its just a short one-nighter type deal?

well the way most of these things work, we decide on a time and a day and then everyone who wants to join shows up then.

They've added hotjoin, though, so you can join and leave as much as you want without breaking sync. and yes, we can leave a game and come back to it; it just takes a bit of time after that cause the game has to transfer the save of the game creator to the others.

@animasta: ok yeah, i meant in-game mechanics, not 'how does multiplayer.' Cool cool cool. Time to learn how to play this game or something.

Pre-ordered it, and started a whole new CKII play through just to make a good import save.

Count me in.

Got it, love it, even though I think my game as Spain is pretty boned, might need to start over (over extension is pretty brutal). Regarding multiplayer i would definitely be up for that.