Europa Universalis III – In Nomine

I'd never played this series before getting my review copy, but I'd always felt the line filled that interesting gap between Civilization and the Total War series.  I was both right and completely wrong.  While all of these games are about taking control of a government and navigating it through history, their focus and scope are very different.  Unlike Civilization, Europa Universalis (EU) is focused on the Medieval and Renaissance periods, with an earliest possible start date fixed at 14th October 1399 (coronation of Henry IV of England) and the game ending on the 3rd February 1821.  There are over two hundred playable countries, which makes Medieval: Total War's twelve factions look rather inadequate.  The depth and detail in Europa Universalis is on a completely different level.
The most noticeable game play difference is that, unlike Civilization and Total War, it's not turn based.  It's a real-time strategy game – as soon as the the pause button is taken off you might have to deal with a revolution on one side of the world while negotiating a royal marriage on the other.  Of course you can speed up and slow down the pace of events, but you're going to find yourself hitting pause, issuing orders and then un-pausing to discover their effects.  This means that you can't say “just one more turn” and the game is so absorbing and detailed that you may find you need to schedule your bathroom breaks.
In many ways EU is to Total War what Championship Manager is to FIFA Manager.  In the FIFA or Total War games, the focus is on controlling the players/soldiers during the match/battle.  In Championship Manager and EU you have no direct control over the actions of your players/soldiers during the match/battle and the focus is what happens before and afterwards.  The combat section of EU shows its roots as a board game – you even get to see dice rolls, making it feel a bit like the world's prettiest game of Risk.  I don't see this as a bad thing, but some people might find it irritating.
War is only a small part of EU.  In one game, beginning as England, I never went to war with a neighbour, but gradually created the British Isles and then the British Empire by a combination of enlightened diplomacy, colonisation and cracking the head of the occasional native.  In this sort of game, it's all about the options and EU certainly gives you lots of options.  Each country is given missions (like conquering Ireland) and national or religious decisions that focus your game play and give you something to aim for.
I know it's called Europa Universalis, but it still feels too Europe-focused.  Non-Latin cultures receive penalties for all forms of research which can become crippling.  Sure, some of these cultures tended to be insular, narrow-minded and conservative – which is part of the reason why Renaissance Europe gained technological domination.  However, the game allows you to tweak these characteristics (Innovative vs. Narrow-Minded, Serfdom vs. Free Subjects or Centralization vs. Decentralization to name three) and it would have been fairer to have had these cultures start at the extreme ends of some of these sliders.  This is another example of the details that's built into this game – events can move these sliders; moving these sliders can trigger events, etc. etc.  Everything makes a difference and there are no obvious optimal settings.  There's a couple of other strange restrictions: a male ruler can be converted into a battlefield general, but a female one cannot.  While no historical Medieval and Renaissance army was ever led by a queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine and Joan of Arc came damn close and I can certainly imagine Ranavalona I or a less decadent