So, given that it's largely the offseason- spring practice is soon, but I'm feeling the doldrums already. So, I figured I'd fire up one of my favorite computer games, and play some Europa Universallis IV. For those of you who don't know, EUIV is a deeply detailed historical grand strategy game. If you've ever played the Civilization series, then complained about it being overly simplistic, then Paradox's series of historical games might well be for you.
One thing that you can do is make custom nations, and then play out their history in the game. I'd never done that before, since I didn't really have much inspiration to put together a nation. And then, well, I figured that, since we started talking about ESports earlier today, perhaps Buckeye Nation would be appropriate. (That may not make sense to anyone but me.) Maybe people will like it, maybe people won't, and I'll just stop. Let me know.
So, let's do this thing!
The first thing we need to do is figure out where we're going to go. Needless to say, we're going to go find Ohio on the EU4 Map. This'll preclude playing with a random New World, but that's okay, under the circumstances. To a certain extent, we're going to build an empire to challenge whoever decides to cross the Atlantic. In some ways, this will be easy because of the choices we will make. However, to start, let's get the map in the right place...
Bam! There we go. We have 200 points to spend to build our empire, but, since this is Buckeye Nation, we're going to stick to Ohio, to start with, and build out from there. Perhaps to conquer The! Whole! World! Or just our neighbors.
So, you've may have noticed that we've actually added in all the provinces in Ohio, and one in the State Up North. The reason for that is simple: That province contains Ann Arbor, and we owned them good tonight- and last November. It's been annexed. (Also, that province is fantastically wealthy for the region, and we're going to need its production and income and so forth.) We also get to pick our coat of arms, which I've done to be aesthetically pleasing to me, because I'm playing the game, that's why.
Next, we need to fill out some important parts of our nation. Because, in the end, Ohio is part of 'Merica, we're going to be a Republic. This means we'll have to deal with all the mechanics of being a Republic in the game, which I'll talk about as we go along. I picked an Ambrosian Republic for mechanical reasons- they get bonuses we may way. Ohio was settled largely by Germans, so I picked a Germanic culture that has good beer. The game's start date precludes choosing Lutheranism as a religion, so we'll go with Catholic, for now. And then, we spend the bulk of our points to get Western Technology- this is going to give us fantastic bonuses on the technological front, and is going to be the biggest deal in the game as it unfolds, I suspect. I think it's fair, though, because Ohio State is a fine university and a technological center. So, we're good at that.
Finally, we get to choose our ideas. These break down into traditions- game modifiers we get at the start of the game- national ideas, which we get as we develop as a nation, and our ambition, which we get as a culmination of our gaining ideas. This will make more sense as we go forward, but these ideas are geared to a militaristic campaign, since Ohio has produced a lot of notable generals, soldiers and military officers. Also, wars are exciting.
Alright, game time! For next time.
