I spent a good chunk of Saturday playing a game I’d meant to get to for a while now: Europa Universalis III. I took the easy way out and played as Britain, which can largely keep to itself and avoid the conflict in Europe. First priority was to sell off the provinces near France, then I conquered Scotland, and then absorbed Ireland into the empire.

From that point on it was mainly a matter of economics, trying to get as much money and research as I could. Around the 1460s I finally got the Quest For The New World national idea and started colonizing North America, beginning around the Newfoundland and Nova Scotia territories. It’s slow going from that point on though due to colonial range restrictions and slow colony growth.

At that point I started a new game and flipped things around out of curiosity, playing as the Huron instead, with a goal of just seeing how long I could survive as soon as the Europeans arrived and what the state of Europe was at that point. It was tougher than expected though, since they start off next to the Iroquois, and it wasn’t long before we found ourselves at war.

Beating the Iroquois militarily wasn’t that tough, but what makes combat among native tribes annoying is that they can take over territories instantly, turning it into a game of whack-a-mole as they take over a couple provinces, you beat them and take one back, they retreat to another province and take it over, repeat… And then even once you’ve beaten them, the revolt risk in the captured territories remains high, and the instant any rebels appear they reset the revoltrisk-raising nationalism flag on that territory. It took a lot of luck and reloads before they finally settled down and I’d fully assimilated them into the Huron nation.

It was calm from that point on, and once I hit around 1530, I finally noticed the border of another new nation nearby, though it’s still an unknown territory and they haven’t yet revealed themselves.

Both games are still in progress though, as there’s still a long ways to go until 1820…