The biggest reason for the strength of diplomacy is EUIII’s concept of casus belli, or cause for war. Attack a neutral country without provocation and you will not only risk attracting the hostile attentions of other nations, but your own national stability will drop. Kings that behave badly by breaking treaties or invading their neighbors without provocation are not trusted.

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Of course, in the time of Machiavelli, you don’t have to wait for your neighbor to insult you before you unleash the dogs of war. The game allows for dirty tricks. Rummaging through your dungeon one day, you find ancient documents that prove your dynasty should also rule your neighbor’s lands—never mind that the ink on this document is still wet. Raise an army and have at them! Of course, your department of dirty tricks might get caught and the plot exposed, but that is a chance that a strong prince must take.

Nations also have goals and fears. So the French player might be flattered to find that Burgundy fears the might of France and is desperate to marry one of their daughters into the French royal family. The player’s nation will also have national goals, like the unification of Ireland under the English Crown. These goals are based on history, and tend to keep the flow of the game away from Risk-like free-for-alls. But despite national goals, EUIII is still an amazingly open-ended game, and the player has a great deal of freedom in choosing a path.

While diplomacy works best in the long run, warfare in EUIII is a very important part of game play. But as in history, warfare is really just diplomacy by other means. Unlike most games, peace treaties must be negotiated. Simply taking enemy territory, or even occupying the entire nation does not mean that you can take over that country. Usually the victor can walk away with a few regions, or be able to make the loser a vassal-state. In practice, only smaller nations can be annexed outright.

The warfare model in EUIII hits all the right notes. Military units are built by raising infantry, cavalry or naval units from the player’s controlled regions. The player will find that he has limited population and funding to build these units, so they should not be wasted. As technology advances, new unit types become available, and this may give him some advantage over potential opponents. If the player has exhausted his own population, or needs troops immediately, he can also hire expensive mercenaries.

Once troops are recruited, the player then organizes these units into armies and navies. He can also hire commanders to give these units bonuses. Historical personalities like Cortez or Hudson are a special type of commander that can push units into exploring the unknown. An interesting option is to let your king don armor and take to the field himself.

Once armies are established, the player moves them by simple clicks. The player must watch each army’s morale and strength. While in enemy territory, even the best commanders will lose as many troops to attrition as they will to battle.

When your forces enter a region that holds an enemy army or navy, combat occurs. The player has no direct control over the conduct of the battle, but can add troops from other regions, or force a retreat. Morale is just as important as the number and quality of troops. Eventually, one side will break and retreat.

But even when the player has run off any defending enemy troops, he still has to besiege the region. Sieges are realistic in that they can sometimes take years of game time to win. Attacks on the walls may incur a tremendous cost to the attacker. Unless the besieger has overwhelming numbers, he is often forced to wait for the enemy to surrender. As time passes, the morale and number of the defenders will drop due to lack of food and water. Of course, the attacker has risks as well. The longer the siege, the better the chance the defender has of raising an army to break the siege.

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