User Guide

6
GETTING STARTED
Installation
System Requirements
To play Europa Universalis III, your computer
should meet or exceed all of the following sys-
tem requirements:
• 1.9GHz Intel Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon
processor or equivalent with 512MB RAM
(1.0GB RAM is highly recommended).
• 128MB Video Card with Hardware T&L
and support for Pixelshader 2.0 or better.
• DirectX7 compatible sound card
• CD-ROM drive
• Windows-compatible mouse. Mouse with
scroll wheel highly recommended.
• At least 1GB of free hard drive space to ac
-
commodate game files and saved games.
This does not include any space used by
the Windows® swap file.
• DirectX9.0c
• High-speed Modem connection is required
for multiplayer games.
• Windows® 2000 (with Service pack 1 or
higher) or Windows® XP (Home/Profes-
sional/Media Edition) with Service Pack
2.
Installing EU3
Place the Europa Univer-
salis III CD into your CD-
ROM drive. If auto-play
is enabled on this drive,
the installation will be-
gin automatically. If auto-
play is disabled, use Win-
dows Explorer to navigate
to your CD-ROM drive
and double-click the set-
up.exe file in the CD’s
root directory. Simply fol-
low the on-screen direc-
tions to install the game
to your computer. By de-
fault, EU3 is placed in a
new directory on your C drive and a shortcut
will be added to both your desktop and your
start menu. You may change these options if
you prefer to install it to a different location.
Launching the Game
After installing Europa Universalis III, launch
the game by clicking on the shortcut on your
desktop or start menu. If you choose not to in-
stall shortcuts, use Windows Explorer to navi-
gate to the directory you specified during the
installation process and click on the eu3.exe
file. You can also place the CD in your drive
to launch the game automatically, although it
is not necessary for the CD to be in the drive
in order to play.
You will see an initial menu that offers sever-
al options. You can choose to launch the game,
visit our community forums, check to see if
there is a new update for your game, or register
the game if you have not yet done so. We peri-
odically release patches for all of our games to
correct any minor bugs that might have been
discovered since release. These often offer ad-
ditional performance or feature enhancements
that will make the game even more interesting
and challenging to play. Click on the link in
the loader to see if there’s a new update avail-
able for download.
Once you have chosen
the option to play Europa
Universalis III, the game
will require a short while
to complete its initial
loading procedure. You
will see a progress bar on
the screen as the game
loads, after which the
Main Game Menu will
be displayed.