Every empire starts with a village. Build your own in this walkthrough for Magna Mundi...

Partis d'un mod pour Europa Universalis 3, les créateurs de Magna Mundi ont décidé d'aller plus loin en créant leur propre titre évidemment inspiré de l'illustre grand frère.

For some, Europa Universalis 3, the popular grand strategy game from Paradox Interactive known for its depth, complexity, and general aura of intimidation, still isn’t complicated or historical enough. For those grognards of grognards, EU3 is a mere casual jaunt through history – along the same realism spectrum of Panzer General; a true beer and pretzels game.

If you fall into that category, Paradox has heard your complaints and commissioned a former mod team for EU3 to produce a strategy title worthy of the name: Magna Mundi....

Last week I was in New York, eating pizza and inventing all-new comparative metaphors for how cold it was (“colder than Bobby Kotick’s eyes”, “colder than a Game Gear’s battery”, “colder than a handjob from an eel”). Why? Because last week was the yearly Paradox Convention, where journalists are invited to meet a whole bag of developers and look at all of Paradox’s upcoming releases.

In short, we’ve got even more to look forward to in 2011 than we thought. I’ll be going through these at top speed, so put on your protective goggles and we’ll take a look. Do I have to remind you of the boy who once read a succinct article of mine and lost an eye? No? Good....

Magna Mundi will be a new grand strategy game developed by some of the most dedicated hobbyist fans of Europa Universalis--specifically, the creators of the Magna Mundi modification for Europa Universalis III. But this new game won't be a mod. It'll be a fully stand-alone game that will model nearly four full centuries of history and let you lead one of 400-plus different nations as you struggle to emerge from medieval times to become a 19th-century world power. While Europa Universalis III was already a huge grand strategy game, the developers of Magna Mundi intend to make something even huger. Lead designer Carlos Gustavo explains.

Magna Mundi will let you command one of hundreds of nations through hundreds of years of history.

GameSpot: Give us an overview of Magna Mundi. The game sounds absolutely enormous.

Carlos Gustavo: Yes, as the name implies, it is a real-time grand strategy game where the scope is the entire world. We definitely don't lack ambition.

What we have to offer that was never offered before is a narrative over the strategy layer of the game that makes each game different, yet plausible....