You install the game like you do any other Steam game.

Now here's the tricky kicker. If you have Divine Wind, you'll have to get the 5.2 Beta patch for some reason. You don't have to, but just do it because it's better. Without the patch there are some multiplayer problems.

You have to make an account on Paradox Plaza and do some stuff to get the patch. Oh wait, no you don't. Here it is on Mediafire.

Patch:
{LINK REMOVED}http://www.mediafire.com/?w528kdx4o3deemd

Extract the contents of the patch to the main Europa Universalis III folder located somewhere in the Steam stuff. Mine is D:\Steam\steamapps\common\europa universalis iii - complete

If you're a stupid nerd who's afraid of getting a virus or whatever from my link you can get the patch from the Paradox forums by making an account. It's not like I care or anything, i-idiot.

Once you launch the game, you gotta wait for it to load. In order to keep you entertaned, the game puts up pictures of disfigured historical people. There's a fat George Washington, there's Napoleon with a huge left leg on a fat horse. All while it has the gaul (Get it? Gaul is like old old BC France and this is a history game) to tell you it's MAKING THE GAME LOOK PRETTY. What a joke.


Ok so now you're on the main menu. There are like 6 choices. 3 of them are useless. The tutorial's garbage, no one cares about the credits, and you can exit the game from within the game. So only Single Player, Multi Player, and Options are going to be of any use. And you probably won't even use Multi Player because none of your plebeian friends are going to want to play this game.



In the options you do options stuff like change resolution and volume settings. One thing you can't do in the options is change it to windowed mode. You have to go to the text files for this. Look for the settings.txt in the main Europa Universalis III folder. Then find fullScreen=yes and change it to fullScreen=no. You can change the resolution here too by changing the x and y values in the

size=
{
x=####
y=####
}

portion.

Ok so now that you're happy with your settings, you can start playing the game. Go into Single Player and choose a country. Scroll around the map by moving your cursor to the borders of the map. Find a country you want to play. Try picking France because it's a good country to start with. It's pretty easy to play and you'll learn a lot of things like annexing vassals early on. For this guide I'll be using France.

Now that you picked your country, you can change the in game settings by clicking options at the bottom right below the PLAY button. Here you can change some in-game settings like inflation and the cost of advisors. In the start you might want to change the settings to make things a little easier. To make things super easy set Leaders, Colonists, Missionaries, and Spies to "free," Inflation to None, Spread of land provinces to "25 years," Lucky Nations "none," AI aggressiveness to "Low," and Difficulty to "Easy." After your first playthrough (or however long it takes for you to get a hang of it) change those settings to whatever you want.



The moment you jump in you'll see a text box, a bunch of green, and some toolbars. First thing you want to do is pick a map mode you're comfortable with. Political is a good one. Map modes can be changed in the bottom right area just above the mini map. There are 22 options available. Most of them are only to be used for a few seconds in certain situations like finding out what trade goods your provinces produce. You can also change map modes using the Q to P keys.

After picking the map type of your preference, turn your attention to the top bar with all of the icons and numbers.

From left to right:


Three blue-clad men - Manpower: The number of able-bodied men ready for military service. Used to recruit new troops and let damaged regiments regain lost men

Scale - Stability: How stable your country is. This effects the overall revolt risk, tax modifier, and other stuff. Goes from -3 to +3. - is bad + is good. Read the guide titled "The Invisible Fortress" for more info on Stability

Stack of coins - Money: It's just money. You use it to buy things.

Red crown - Prestige: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Red flag - Infamy/Reputation: Indicates how aggressive you are. The higher you go the harder things involving other countries gets. Diplomacy gets harder, gaining support in the Holy Roman Empire gets harder, becoming Papal Controller gets harder, and your merchants aren't well-received in foreign ports. If you go over the limit, everyone will hate your guts and people will just start declaring war on you to wipe you off the map.


Squid Girl's father - Merchant: You send them to trade centers to bring in ducats. They have a percent chance of a successful successfully competing in that trade port. The percentage is affected severao factors.

Indiana Jones - Colonist: You send them to non-wasteland grey provinces. Each colonist is worth 100 population by default (more if you changed the setting in the options when selecting a country). Once the area reaches 1000 population either by constant bombardment by colonists or by population growth after sending in a colonist or 9. Colonists are also used to take land from horde nations (Golden Horde, Nogai, Timurids, etc.) after conquering provinces. More on that later

Diplomat: These are used to interact with other countries. Used for anything from declaring war to calling another country's ruler a ♥♥♥. sodomite You can also marry that ♥♥♥ sodomite.

Missionary: These are used mostly to convert heretics and heathens in your provinces (either conquered from heretic/heathen lands or conversion due to protestant reformation). Religious ideas also use up missionaries.

Sagat from Street Fighter II - Spy: Spies are used to cause ruckus tuckus in other countries. The most fun use for them is causing nationalist or patriot revolts on other countries. They can be used to bribe defenders to speed up a siege, assassinate an advisor, or get a casus belli on a chosen nation. Some options are only available when a spy is used on the capital of a country.

Magistrate: These are used for building, most provincial decisions, most national decisions, cultural decisions, and other decision stuff.

It tells you the date. If you click it you pause the game. Plus and minus speed up and slow down the game.