Europa Universalis Rome - Gold Edition (PC DVD)

This is honestly the first Europa Universalis game I ever played, and I still love it to this day. Give it a shot! Graphics may be a bit dated, at least its fun!

I bought the Gold Edition of Rome because I love most of what Paradox Games do, although ambition often exceeds playability.This is an improvement on the original, it has missions and a lot more "politics" in the real sense of the word.It really is only worth playing as one of the superPowers,Carthage, Egypt or Rome, which does add to its realism. Although the prospect of taking a small state into the big league is tantalising, its not really possible I'm afraid (thus only 3 stars for "fun")All in all though, a good representation of the period which should provide days of entertainment

Paradox Development have a poor reputation as a developer (see 2017 price hike news almost everywhere in gaming media). This title exemplifies a product being ill-prepared for release (but later patched up by a single in-house developer to make it make some kind of sense). It's meant to be played as SPQR despite 'playable' Armenia, Epirus, Ilyria and the rest. It spams you with irrelevancy every few seconds as well.Avoid.

Well... if you like this kind of strategy as much as I do, there's no reason not to get this one (!)The good thing with EU - Rome, compared to EU3, is that this period is less complex, so thatyou don't need to wrestle with so many parameters. But I do like EU3 very much as well : )The graphic may not be the best ever (compared to the latest games), but I don't see anyproblem with it. For the first I think it is far enough and for the second, the game's core isn'tin the graphic, but in the interaction between different factions, etc.

This is one of the best strategy games I've bought. In true Paradox style it revolves around grand strategy on a massive map over a massive timeframe.This time the game revolves around the Roman Republic from its early years (around 280BC) up to the beginnings of the Empire a timeframe of around 200 years. Considering a year goes by roughly once a second on normal speed this is an almighty game. You can choose to start from a number of different events as well though such as the Punic Wars against Carthage or Caesars invasion of Gaul.You control the whole Republic in assigning magistrates etc, moving armies, constructing buildings, envoking omens etc and a lot of the game is spent trying to avoid getting your senate overun by the Populist party - a group of wasters and rebels who try to cause as much trouble as possible.Along with the usual parts of strategy gameplay such a wars, rebellions, invasions, managements etc a large part of the game revolves around your 'characters' - the important people in your civilisation who have ambitions, faults and strengths that may well be at odds with your own ideas. Over the years your Republic changes with the needs and wants of your characters, you see some becoming important people with titles and money whilst others may get themselves imprisoned or killed by rivals. This adds a massive amount of new interesting gameplay to the whole premise and is unlike most other strategy games around. Ive spent hours trying to survive a massive rebellion, and then had my whole rebulic changed around by the character just after I thought I knew where it was going.Gold comes with the original Rome game plus Vae Victus which is what you need as the expansion adds a lot of atmosphere that wasnt in the original game.Its a great game, it keeps you on your toes, theres never a dull moment, the various missions from the senate keep it quite historical but you never feel you are not in control although sometimes you wonder where the game is going. The graphics are really nice and colourful, you can rotate the map and zoom in and out, alter the map to show trade or political areas etc, the music is superbly classical. The whole game oozes flavour and character and I cant recommend it enough. 10 out of 10, best Paradox game around and best strategy game I have ever owned.

Paradox usually put a lot of attention into making sure that the 'models' of each of its games work for the period. With Victoria there is a very good industrialisation and colonisation focused game model. In Hearts of Iron a very strong military model for WW2 etc. However I'm just not sure the model they chose for this game works for the Roman period. Everything from the way the economy, religion, colonisation etc. works seems to be slightly off, which adds up to the game overall being quite unsatisfying. Particularly the personal and political character elements built into the game which are clearly intended to be one of the main focuses just don't really seem to matter all that much. You just have a conveyor belt of aristocrats working their way up the ranks without any real reason to care which families or individuals succeed, unlike the much better character system in Crusader Kings.

If grand strategy is your thing, please try this. It's simpler than the rest of the Europa Universalis or Hearts of Iron series, but still very worthwhile.Don't let history fool you. You *can* achieve greatness with almost every faction available. All you need is practice and a little bit of luck.Manage your aliances well. Try not to look too threatning when you're still not ready. Unleash your fury when the time is right (as in real life, timing is everything). Colonize whenever possible.Plan your strategy right, and anything is possible. You can even take Sparta(aaaa) and rule the Mediterranian! What more could you possibly want??

The game is very indepth when it comes to politics, internal and external. Of course there is a tradeoff in military, unlike in RTW where you wage your battles in turns. This game is real time, literally. It moves from day to day, so in times of peace speeding up is necessary, slowing down during wartime to make moves. It requires individuals to be strategic, think about their goals and how to achieve them, otherwise running the risk of draining their manpower.