MEIOU, a Content Extension Mod for Paradox Interactive's Europa Universalis series

In February or March 2011, a player started a discussion on the MEIOU subforum of Paradox Plaza about the category of mods that MEIOU should be placed in : map mod or total conversion mod. To be honest, neither of the two labels satisfied me :
Although the initial aim of MEIOU was changing and improving the map, given the work I've put into, the amount of script fuzzbug has corrected, improved and added, and the interface and graphics built by Solo_Adhémar... well, "map mod" comes quite short when attempting to describe MEIOU.
In my opinion, the main examples of total conversion mods are Magna Mundi (MM), Rising Nations (RN) and The Dark Years (TDY), and there are a few others. RN and TDY change the scope of the game, by changing the era (to, respectively, the 20th century and Medieval Age). MM has a completely different vision of the game, that eventually led them to make their own game based on the Clausewitz engine used by EUIII. Although we have set the start date slightly earlier, converion mod is not the intent of this mod.

In that discussion, a player came up with a label that I like : Content Extension Mod. What does it mean ?
I love Europa Universalis III, otherwise I wouldn't have even thought about spending countless hours on it since january 2007. I, and the other members of the MEIOU team, feel that it falls a little short on some aspects, and some other features had some room for improvement.
When Europa Universalis III came out in January 2007, many players complained about the loss of the historicity of EUII, that Paradox had made a sandbox game along the lines of Civilization, with just a historical setting on a real world map. I, along with many others, saw it as an opportunity, an opportunity for "historical plausibility". I remember being frustrated several times in EUII because, playing as Spain, with a sound economy and stable nation, I'd go bankrupt, just because Spain historically did.... however, in history, Spain had overextended itself, had relied too much on the gold of the Americas, and had pretty much ruined its own economy. So one of the goals of the MEIOU team is to understand not just why and how an event happened, but also how the situation could change to make it not happen.
All in all, MEIOU is a mod for EU that aims to provide an experience which is both more realistic, detailed and varied than vanilla. It aims to achieve more realism by modelling more of the forces in play in the world, not by forcing the game into paths that real history happened to follow.
The greater detail gives the player (and the AI) more choices to make, thereby making each game more varied, and, ultimately, more interesting.


MEIOU Section on the Paradox Plaza Forum[forum.paradoxplaza.com]
MEIOU on Facebook[www.facebook.com]