Europa Universalis 1492-1792 (PC) > Reviews > Its very rare that a game like this comes along

Author's product rating:   

Playability & Enjoyment
Graphics
Sound
Difficulty & Complexity

Advantages:	Incredibly rich historical simulation, Includes military, diplomatic, trade, exploration, technology and religous factors,Very well presented with rich graphic quality and detail .
Disadvantages:	Documentation lacking,A lot to keep track of, but realistically so .  .  . ,Perhaps too much detail for novice strategy gamers

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

It's very rare that a good, deep historic strategy game comes along. If you ask people to name such a game, most will answer Age of Empires, but that's no more an immersive, historically accurate strategy game than Pong is a realistic portrayal of tennis. There's just too many factors missing, and the game is on a local, not a global scale. Of course Civilization is the classic historic game of world conquest, yet it favours military muscle ahead of other means of conquest; it's amazing just how much of the ancient world can succumb to wandering chariots.

Until now, the best historic strategic wargame has been Imperialism 2, a game that was sorely underrated by many people and which represents marvellous value in many bargain bins the world over. But the arrival of Europa Universalis has upped the ante in many ways. While it lacks accessibility and mainstream appeal, it will reward the effort you invest into it by sucking you in to a most beautifully crafted game world.

Select from 10 main scenarios with detailed periodic maps.

Europa Universalis is a game of primarily European, but also world-wide strategy set in the period 1492 to 1792. There's two notable features that you'll notice early on. First, the amazingly rich detail of the game world - there's hundreds of provinces, hundreds of historically accurate leaders, and a wide variety of factors that drive the game system, including military, religious, trade, technological, exploration, diplomatic and economic ones.

And second, rather than the traditional turn-based system, Europa Universalis runs in "real-time", allowing time to pass at a rate of the player's choosing, pausing either on demand or when a significant event occurs. One of the game's best features is the highly customisable message system that allows you to decide which events you want to stop the game for. Given the range of actions available at any one time, being able to issue orders while paused is very important.

Explore unchartered seas and lands, and attack where you dare.

Unlike Civilization, Europa Universalis places you in accurate historical situations through a choice of ten scenarios, which can be played as any one of a number of nations. Thanks to some excellent fan sites that are springing up, and the highly customisable text configuration files, you can also tweak the innards of the game to your liking too, if you're feeling adventurous. But there's no random mission generator at the strategic scale. Instead, the game rewards you with victory points if you carry out the short-term missions offered to you by the leader of the country you're playing as. Sometimes these will conflict with your own goals, so you have to decide where to put your priorities.

The complexity of the game reduces its accessibility, and one might also assume that it makes a credible AI opponent harder to develop. But to Paradox's credit, the game AI is quite robust, and the actions it takes are usually both sane and in keeping with the setting. Unfortunately, the manual, while pleasantly thick at 128 pages, lacks an index and an intuitive structure, but a table of contents can be found at some of the fan sites. The in-game tutorial is disturbingly long, taking 3-4 hours to complete, and only with the latest v1.08 patch can you save your progress in the tutorial scenario (the main scenarios let you save anywhere).

Respond to historic events and make diplomatic initiatives.

But just how complex is Europa Universalis? Well, it's a port of an existing board game, though one I never played. I can't imagine how anyone could ever manage to finish the board version, given it took me 20 hours to play out a scenario in this one, and I didn't have to do all the book-keeping myself.

Many players will initially try to play Europa Universalis as a game of military conquest. While this may work in some scenarios playing as some nations, it will invariably lead to ruin if you don't consider the other game factors. An army sent out on a mission to conquer neighbouring lands, and to explore beyond, will suffer horrendous losses to attrition unless kept in supply by having settlers follow up to create trading posts or settlements.

And even then, it's a very expensive business financially. The "Civ chariot" technique is pretty much doomed to failure. Likewise, naval missions can sink without trace, until you develop sufficient technology to increase your maritime prowess. Your military land forces are represented by generic infantry, cavalry and artillery, equipped to whatever "technology level" you're currently at. Battles are resolved without player intervention, with many factors, including morale, determining the result.

Wage wars and sue for peace on your terms.

The heart of your nation is its economy. To raise armies, expand cities, explore and build new settlements and build navies, you'll need cash. Each province you own will generate a certain income depending on the goods it produces and its population level, but real gains are made by sending merchants to compete in centres of trade. Such centres encompass a number of provinces, spanning political boundaries. By getting your merchants "entrenched" into a trade centre, you can draw quite a significant income over time. But if you get too rich, you can find inflation rising, which in turn can affect the stability of your nation.

Many events, most notably wars and changes of religion, will reduce your stability, which causes knock-on events such as provinces being more likely to go into revolt. If you focus on fighting battles, it's very easy to let your ecomony slide while you're doing so. Of course, historically, many leaders did bring their nations to ruin by ignoring certain critical elements of their country's operations. It's easy to overlook remote colonies that should be bringing in valuable trade income when the enemy are at your gates with 50,000 men.

Diplomatic relations are of course important. Your relationships with other nations will determine who is likely to gang up in an alliance against you. Many nations will have permanent grounds to go to war with you, just as you will have with them. Leading and managing an alliance can be a tense affair. Favours can be won with royal marriages, with token payments. But annexation and vassalisation are also common. Religion and historic events add to the tapestry. As a Catholic nation, you'll find it easier to go to war with a Protestant country, and in that light, "random" events like the Reformation can be very important; you then have to decide which path your country will take, for short-term or long-term gains.

Fight on the trade markets as well as on military fronts.

As the sceenshots here illustrate, the game's presentation style is very colourful and quite lovingly crafted. At 800x600, there's enough room to fit the salient details on screen, with a variety of options and zoom levels allowing the important areas to be viewed at any time. Political, trade, diplomatic and financial views are all easy to navigate, and illustrate very clearly the information you need to know. However, many of the menu buttons are quite small, and you often feel that there's one click too many to achieve certain things. It takes a fair while to grasp the full extent of what's possible with the game interface, but once understood, it's quite effective. One of the most handy features is being able to double click on an event message and jump straight to the source of the message.

Focus on the events that matter by tweaking the game options menu.

Europa Universalis is something of a monster game. It challenges you to master it at many levels, through many facets - religious, economic, diplomatic and military. The rich vein of historic flavour that permeates the game helps suck you into the period atmosphere. The game design forces consideration of all aspects of gameplay, not just the military ones. The real-time system works well, thanks to the ability to pause for orders and to specify in great detail when the game should automatically pause for you. The AI is strong enough to maintain the illusion that you're an active part of a historically accurate simulation, and deciding whether to obey your own national ruler's whims is a novel twist. While there is always an action to be taken somewhere in the game, you feel like every decision is important.

It's only the game's somewhat inaccessible wrapping, and the feeling that sometimes the game is a little too ponderous in its pace, that deters me recommending the GDR Gold Award. In comparison, Imperialism 2 is a more lightweight and accessible offering. But Europa Universalis is a great game, whether you'll take to it depends not necessarily on your bent towards historical strategy gaming, but more to the effort and patience you're prepared to give it, because it will reward the more dedicated gamer many times over.