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Comment by lordnacho | Hacker News Reader

I learned an incredible amount from this series. Pretty much every Civ, tech, religion, civic, or unit with a special name ("Hoplite") is a story in itself worth reading about. Not just the civilopedia, which is a good start.

I may have spent more time playing this game than reading actual history books.

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I love the moments you keep Alt-Tabbing out to check wikipedia. 40 minutes later I remember there's a game still to play.

No wonder this was the first game where I played all night and after a few hours wondered who turned the light on. Then it dawned on me.

That was a wikipedia-less age though.

> Then it dawned on me

Good one!

If you want to go into overdrive, try Europa Universalis 4. It's basically Civilization, turned up a notch.

Up a notch? Only if "notch" is code for orders of magnitude. Unfortunately, the same applies to hours sunk. Compared to the paradox sims, civilization feels like something you can play through in your lunch break.

I'd say it more like compare an arcade flight sim to a hardcore military flight sim. From a distance one might just look like a more advanced version of the other, but they're fundamentally very different games that appeal to different audiences (despite there being some obvious overlap).

Always surprised by the love EU gets, for me it's way too slow and starts to get really boring after a few games.

I find Victoria 2 much more interesting, and Crusader Kings 2 is just amazing the way it makes you think and play with the mindset of a feudal lord :)

Agreed, Crusader Kings 2 is even better for this.

Whoo, boy, I lost way to many hours to EU 3 & 4 when I was in college. The worst part is that I think it actually helped my studying, as I was a history major.

I always wanted to get into EU3, but it seemed massively obtuse for a beginner and since I was running it on a Mac through Steam, the tutorials didn't work properly so I couldn't figure anything out.

And then I read how much of a time-sink it is (compared to Civ) once you get going and I think that I was probably lucky it didn't work in a lot of ways!

I played EU3 for a while and its great, but over all I found it too slow at the start and too hard later on to the point where I didn't play enough to get good at it. I do love a lot about the game, but I could never quite get into it enough.

Crusader Kings 2, on the other hand, I've played to death and love :) especially the Game of Thrones mod.

That's how I learned what "Casus Belli" means...

Unfortunately, Paradox games use that term slightly differently than is standard. It doesn't mean any justification for war, but any act that then starts a justified war. (e.g., "reclaim our land" is not a casus belli, but the initial conquest of that land was a casus belli.)

combat is too annoying, with remnants of vanquished foes roaming your country faster than you can follow giving provinces the pillaged effect.

They changed that up with the new fortification mechanic where only some provinces have forts and they block hostile movement through adjacent provinces. It had some pretty major gameplay ramifications.

Hearts of Iron if you haven't played that will teach you WW2 history too. I've learn new countries like Estonia; and history of china.

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