At a glance...

Europa Universalis: Rome review

I have long possessed an interest in Ancient Rome, though classical history teaching in modern Britain is rather limited if you're in a state school. So while I was aware that the assassination of Julius Caesar played an important role in the creation of the Roman Empire, it required a browse through Wikipedia to realise that the "AVC" time period referred to often in Paradox Interactive's Europa Universalis: Rome actually stands for Ab urbe condition. This means from the founding of the city of Rome, which is about 753 BC by today's measurement of years. However, while Wikipedia can teach me the facts about the founding of the Roman Empire, it has been Paradox's game that has taught me how to run it.

Like the three Europe Universalis games before it, EU: Rome sees you take control of one of the ruling powers of the era and try to make your mark on the world. However, while the previous games have begun around the end of the Middle Ages and continued through to the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, this one goes firmly back in time to the age of the Roman Republic. This isn't even the height of the Roman Empire, with Britannia firmly under the control of Rome; this is when the Republic was just beginning to expand, moving out of modern-day Italy to the likes of Greece and eventually to Egypt. That's not to say, of course, that you can't take over our very own lands, it's just that they aren't likely to be the focus of your exploits.

In fact, EU: Rome has the curious notion of not actually having any direct goals to speak of. Instead, there's the natural ones; survive and expand. You get to control a whole variety of powers, not just the Romans, starting from one of the pre-chosen points in time, and sometimes all you really can do is try your best to survive. The lack of a definitive end point may be a bit daunting for some, but on the other hand the continual movement of forces and the ever-changing battlefield draw you in until you realise you probably should have gone to bed an hour ago.

But it's not just conquering other lands that takes up your time in EU: Rome; I spent most of my time in a three hour session fending off rebellions within the Roman Republic. These grass root revolts were coming from people dissatisfied with my regime, demonstrating the other issues you need to consider when planning your expansion. This isn't just a war game; it's one of politics too, and pleasing the people plays a big part of your role. Declaring war on nations unprovoked will increase the chance of revolts across your empire, though another threat also comes from others gaining popularity over you, and choosing loyal governors and military leaders is also vital to maintain stability. It's a careful balance, and the complicated nature is a bit much for the casual gamer, but this is just right for those who like their strategy games to contain a sense of realism.

The ten minute tutorial is there to introduce you to the game's interface and how to play. It could have benefited from being more interactive, rather than the need to read reams of text, though that text was useful, and unlike some of Paradox's other strategy games, you probably won't need to look at the manual after going through it. The gameplay itself is that of a real-time strategy title, with events happening day-by-day, but it is one which you can pause, speed up, and slow down as much as you want. This means it plays out like the more traditional turn-based strategy titles, and it's deep and complex nature is again a divide between those who like to just send in 10,000 tanks, and those who actually think about the consequences of their actions.

However, that complexity (generally) hasn't translated to the interface, which has received noticeable improvements over the previous titles, with an emphasis on simplifying the way you are presented information, and how you deal with it. You are no longer crowded by an array of pop-ups, and everything immediately useful can be reached via icons along the top and bottom of the main display. We welcome these improvements but the interface could still have been more streamlined. It doesn't always feel intuitive, and some areas, like the complicated nature of assigning each individual trade between provinces, would certainly have benefited from improvement. At times, there are still too many obscure sub-menus, but overall it goes a good way to making the game more accessible.

The game should also be credited with its attention to history. While the series has always been based on accurate knowledge of the period involved, the longer time-span and greater area of the previous games led to some strange and unlikely situations taking place. However, with the focus firmly on Ancient Europe, the balance of power will likely led to things to follow a realistic course, even if they will differ from the actual events that occurred based on your own successes.

Like many of Paradox's games, EU: Rome is very open to modding. The official forums contain some of the early developments, though as the game hasn't been out long, it will take a while for some of these to fully come to fruition. A Middle Earth setting is particularly interesting, and hopefully this will add value to the game in months to come.

There are, however, some important issues with the game, which limit our recommendation. One of the most annoying issues is movement resetting. When you send your units off to another territory, an arrow appears showing their progress, and a mouse over the unit themselves reveals their arrival date in the next territory. Knowing when they would reach the final location would be useful, but the main problem here is that if you change their destination then their progress is lost. Even if they are just one day away from the next territory, changing where they are going to that territory will cause them to reset and begin the journey again. This is particularly frustrating considering the time it can take to move troops, and how the military situation can change so much in the time the troops are moved. The territory I was heading to may no long be needing assistance, or somewhere else may be under greater threat, but unfortunately I now have an extended wait to get to where I was already going. The combat could also do with some work, and although a clear decision has been taken to avoid you having to get involved with individual military strategies and practicalities of the war, it would be good to know more about what is going on. You do get an indication of morale and how many troops you have left, but the actual process is automatic dice-rolling, and is really locking you out of the process too much. If I'm conquering lands, it's not as much fun to just send in troops to an area and hope for the best all the time.

Multiplayer is another source of criticism, though it's inclusion is welcomed. It supports up to 32 players, and would be great for like-minded gamers to get together on a LAN for multi-hour matches (in the way I've seen this happen for Supreme Commander. The internet support, however, could do with some work. One of the options is for a direct connection to the host, which requires exchanging IP addresses like this is 1998. The "metaserver" allows you to bypass this requirement, however, and is a system set up by Paradox that allows you to connect, browse games, etc. in the way you might normally expect. However, when choosing the option it requires you to log in, with no immediate details of how to get a login. A look through the manual suggests you register the game, though to do this I had to find the topic on the official forums, which told me I had to register on there, and then enter the serial key on a page on that system. I then take that forum login and log in to the metaserver. Not only is this awkward, and somewhat difficult to find, but it means you can't realistically play online without signing up to the forums, even if the method is a way to check whether you've actually bought the game. Hopefully Paradox can make the system a bit more user-friendly in future.

Those criticisms, however, shouldn't be enough to deter those looking for an enjoyable, realistic, and deep strategy game set in the era of the Roman Republic. Many people following the series will have been looking forward to this shift in time period, and they shouldn't be disappointed by what they find in EU: Rome.

This review was based on the freely-available version 1.2 patch.

Ratings

Click here to buy Europa Universalis: Rome from Amazon.co.uk.

Copyright Information

Website design and content (c) 1999-2011 allaboutgames.co.uk.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License, except where otherwise noted.

Smileys taken from Crack's Smilies.