Last, EU2 is probably a bit easier to get into, which should also be taken into consideration. This makes the game loose a bit as it was fun to read about the historical events and decide if you would move your capital or open a center of trade, but it also puts development more into the hands of the player, which is ultimately a good thing in a strategy game. Also the protestantism will not spread historically, and so on. The historical decisions do not play the same role anymore, for better or for worse. However, EU3 have also lost some things that I found fun in EU2, namely the historical flavour that was so apparent in EU2. The graphics are still worse than EU2 in my opinion, and while a lot of central gameplay-elements like the war-system have stayed virtually the same, there are a lot of small improvements to areas like politics, diplomacy, colonization and development of you nation. You have much more choice of doing different things in EU3 than in EU2, and ultimately, choice if what defines a strategy-game. Now, I would say that EU3 is finally the better game as the possibilities have been greatly expanded. So I played EU2 for a few more years until I think two or three expansions down the road, when I got back into EU3. Also, the new 3d-engine looked terrible compared to the boardgame-feel of the old games, and it also did not run very well on my new computer bought specifically for that game. Now, when EU3 arrived in spring 2007 it was a complete mess, buggy as hell, and with a lot of strange decisions (a bit like the way Civ5 is now imo). EU2 did nothing revolutionary, but simply made small improvement on everything that was already good in the first one, and it made the first one feel more like a beta-version. Historical events, deeper politics, more provinces, nicer map. However, Europa Universalis II, who run on the same engine, was everything the original Europa Universalis was - and then some.
The original Europa Universalis was great when I got it on release back in 2000, and was finally a game that brought some fresh ideas into the rapidly stagnating strategy-marked who was dominated by real time strategy-games like the C&C-games and -craft-series. I have played all three of them a lot (being one of my favorite franchises and all), and I would say that EU3 have finally become better than EU2 with the latest expansions (and is probably going to be even better with the Kamikaze-expansion this december).
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