Won't be perfect english or 100% accurate, but should do it. Damn it was long.
Europa Universalis: Rome takes the players to the age of Roman empire
Paradox's Europa Universalis strategy games along with their close relatives are the favorite games of a wide and passionate playerbase. Their alternative realities are so close to the events of the real world and history, but still the player can leave the mark of his iron first to the events and world history. Do you want to change the world? It's possible.
Even though history is a familiar subject to Paradox, Rome still is a new frontier to this Swedish game producer because the company has never ventured this far in the history. How will the Roman empire's time of growth and greatness suit to grand strategy?
eDome was there with the eyes and the quill ready when Paradox presented it's new game the first time for the representatives of the press.
To the power (precisely it'd be something like to the grip of power)
To the fans of Europa Universalises, Hearts of Iron and the other historical Paradox strategy games Rome's base system will be familiar. It offers real-time strategy where the player is offered a huge sand box world to play with. Even though the game's name is Rome, and the Roman empire is highlighted due to the timeline, the game isn't restricted to Rome.
In the best Paradox-style the player can take control of any state, nation or tribe that is portrayed by any of the different scenarios. As examples of the bigger playable states are for example Babylonia, Egypt, Carthago and Macedonia. When you go down in the scale, you can for example find some small gallian and celtic tribes. I bet it won't take long before someone mods in a single small gallian village, which decides to go on to a path of conquests.
The first starting point is before the punic wars, when Rome still is a local powerhouse in Italy. But if Rome plays it's cards right, it can become a global grand power. Atleast in the game.
Player's biggest goal is naturally to lead his country to the greatness, but that's naturally not possible with all countries. Sometimes it's a personal victory for the player to survive from decades to centuries in the shadow of the bigger states. It sure can be satisfying to be a local power too.
New stuff (An idiom, literally "New things to the pipe")
Even though the appereance of Rome is basically familiar, it has a lot of new things. It naturally uses Europa Universalis 3's modified and modernized engine, which shares only about 50% with the older Paradox historical strategy games. The content isn't just copied from any specific Paradox game, but ideas suitable for the Rome-theme have been snatched from different games, and the rest of the 50% has been completely rewritten.
The surface of the game impresses with modernized visual effects and a mix of 2D and 3D graphics. An old fashion gamer likes to watch the world from the orbit like a space hawk with a fashionable 2D map, but if you want some classy modern effects, you can also zoom and rotate the map.
Even though Rome is an RTS-strategy game, this term isn't as conclusive as in the worst clicking games (meaning RTS games like C&C, Warcrafts etc). You can speed the game time up and down in addition to being able to completely stop it while giving orders. This way no-one can sweat in pain.
What about the content itself? What does the game contain? Well, atleast history - so damn conclusively. The game area is measured to the borders of the historical Roman empire so that all areas governed by Rome are in the game. In addition areas beyond Rome's borders have been noticed so that there's challenges and threats to the player. For example the germans are always a threat, while if you go far enough to the east, the Babylonians are a potential competitor.
The situations and events in the game are in some level historical or atleast plausible. While it has been relatively easy for Paradox to collect information from the history of second world war or the recent centuries, finding information about the nations of the times of Rome has required real work. There's a lot of information available from Rome itself, but many of the smaller states have withered away from the pages of history, either by themselves or because of competitors. In any case Paradox has been able to build potential event chains that are either historical or atleast plausible enough. Coups, disasters and civil wars can change the political map by surprising ways.
In addition the civilized states have the continual threat of the barbarians. Those evil people who invade to the maps of the civilized worlds from their poor conditions can make life really nasty. Sometimes german tribes decide to test their powers, sometimes barbarian hordes invade from Ukraine's direction or Africa. Damn those vandals.
We asked if the game was historically accurate. Johan Andersson, the head developer answered:
- It is historically possible, not accurate. The start up situations of the different scenarios are accurate, but the decisions of players and the AI will take the events to a different direction.
In addition Johan specified, that the game has no historical campaign.
- It wouldn't be possible. In the game history heads to an another way and forks right from the first decisions. It'd be impossible to show a solid story or sensible campaign in it.
Political intrigue inside the surface
In the familiar way the player is offered a lot of information, but it's still easily controllable. Different menus message information to the player logically and controlledly. A micromanager can entertain himself with them, while a more shallow player can mostly leave them without attention.
In practice controlling the game happens in three levels. On the uppermost level the player controls everything and looks his domain from a general level. In province level you can directly affect different provinces, and in the warrior level the player controls his armies.
The player moves to the province level simply by clicking any of his provinces, when an information and action window appears on the screen. How many people live in there? What's the tax level? Who's the governor? The player can for example build new beneficial buildings in the province or determine new trading routes, which allow two provinces to trade their products. This way a state gets tax income, and the bought products enrichen the province and for example allow building new unit types. Trade and products bring other considerable upgrades, as long as you take care of the infrastructure they require. For example a road network is good for the business.
Using and commanding characters is a nice thing. Each state has many computer controlled characters, which player can recruit to work as for example governors, generals or diplomats. The characters however have their own ambitions, which can sometimes considerably affect how the state works. For example a warchief who has gotten rich due to war campaigns and has a is liked by the general population might want to become the new leader and could execute a coup. That'll make the player confused when the policies of the state suddenly change direction.
The player himself is in control of his state throughout the decades and centuries, but the states' leaders change. By elections, by coups, by hereditage and by just dying due to old age. Each of the leaders has their own charasteristics, which control what the state is like and where it's headed to. The player can however control this by laying national ideas to the leader. You can have one idea per category, which are for example militaristic ideas, religious ideas and civic ideas. The national ideas are a crafty way to customize leaders and give them clearer goals which affect the whole state.
There are other interesting tricks too. Naturally there's diplomacy and research, even though research is quite different from the ordinary. State's sponsorship on science in those times was atleast questionable, so the player can't directly push different sciences forward, but sponsoring research will bring small improvements when the time comes. Maybe for example aqueducts become a bit better - a bit longer and able to carry more water. Maybe the gods become a bit more powerful. Yeah, the research isn't only scientifical, but also contains religious and civic studies.
Religion was an important and a regular part of lives, so a pious leader naturally sacrifices to the gods regularily to ensure the people's liking.
New, but still familiar
It seems that there's a lot of interesting things in Rome, which will bring a lot of difference in terms of content compared to the Europa Universalis-series and other Paradox games. Even though the gameplay clearly has roots in the familiar Paradox-games, it still has many original ideas.
In any case Rome is a good subject - Is there anyone who has kept his eyes or ears open and doesn't know anything about the Roman empire? Gladiator-movie and Rome-series have for sure made the subject familiar even to the less civilized people.
The subject should be familiar to the gamers too due to Rome: Total War games. You shouldn't mix Paradox's Rome with that game though, since Total Wars are tactical games, where the strategic part is mostly weaving tactical battles together. In Paradox games the situation is opposite. The battles are shown as numbers and you can't effect them. The point is grand strategy.
And it seems to be good grand strategy. Not yet though, since you have to wait until the spring of 2008 for this delicacy.
--------------
I'm rather surprised by all the praising of accurate historical strategy in the start. Also, sad that there weren't any promises about a more plausible AI or anything