After having been introduced to the world of Paradox-gaming by the superb HoI2, i jumped at the possibility of an ancient era EU game.
Much drool was spilled over the previews and screenshots, while glorious visions of sacking Rome as a barbarian state ran before my eyes.
However, i found myself slightly discouraged by the pre-release demo, which to me seemed to mostly consist of endlessly chasing a renegade
Roman legion around the Iberian peninsula.
Nevertheless, come release day i strolled out of my dark cave and hunted down a lone copy of EU:R (an arduous task in my country).
Righty-dokey then, my first instrument of world domination was set to be the puny tribe of Arverni. All was well: i took pleasure in idling over and finally choosing a national idea (a permanent bonus to your nation) and researchers. Although being mildly surprised that i can only afford 2000 soldiers before going bankrupt, i kept on my set course and decided to secure an alliance with my neighbors to take on the might of Rome together.
From there on in, EU:Rome slowly started rolling downhill, with me staring the screen at first with disbelief, then frustration and finally with complete indifference. The diplomacy screen looked barren like a carpet-bombed middle-eastern schoolyard. I will take the liberty of listing the options available to communicate with other nations:
1. Declare war (duh)
2. Give money
3. Demand tribute (unless you have conquered half their land, you can forget about this)
4. Send agent - the only point of this is that when the enemies catch your agent causing havoc, they usually chop his melon off, giving you a Casus Belli (so you can declare war without a stability penalty).
5. Create trade route
So yes, gone are the complex diplomatic machinations of HoI and EU3.
Ok well, on with my mission. So i was sitting there with my 2000 men and one city, contemplating what to do. I couldn't "colonize" the nearby barb provinces because my civilization and population levels were too low. Neither could i declare war on anyone because my puny band of warrior would've been quickly dispatched and my little village burned, raped and pillaged (and then subsequently annexed). This resulted in me sitting and staring at the screen with the game set to max speed. Every 2 years or so i got a message saying some random bum had become a rival of some other guy (yes, this is literally how i remember it since it isn't possible to develop a connection/affection to your overly bland family members). When 60 years had passed i finally gave up the hopeless cause. A quick gaze at the strategic map revealed that Macedonia had colonized Poland and Rome was well on their way to Denmark.
Down but not out, i started another game as Epirus, hoping to recreate the Pyrrhic wars (but without Pyrrhus getting hit over the head with a brick).
My hopes were quickly crushed as Rome, using their superior numbers (14 ships versus my 4 and 27 000 heavy infantry versus my 9000 militia) mopped the floor with me (aided by Carthage, who grabbed Syracuse when i wasn't looking). I did manage to create a sizable empire later on, conquering Macedonia and some little Greek states. I eventually abandoned the campaign when boredom took me from behind after playing roughly 100 years.
I have ranted on enough, so to tie things up here is a summary of the good and bad parts of the game.
PEACETIME. Arse-numbingly boring. There is literally nothing to do. In the first few minutes of the campaign you can set trade routes and (depending on your country) create alliances. After that, you will be near-comatose as the only actions you can take is replacing governors or choosing between two equally pointless options when pop-up windows try (and fail) to give you some idea of how your generic family members get along.
WARTIME. Mildly fun, but hamstrung by strange design. Do you think your general's ability should play the most important part in battles? Or your soldiers' discipline or equipment? Or perhaps the terrain? All of them acting together? Well too bad, because Paradox says that the most important factor (that nearly makes all else obsolete) is some vague "dice roll". Yes indeed, both sides "roll the dice" (is this a D&D game?) for each round of combat, with results being from 0-9. You can have a better general, numerical superiority, more disciplined troops, and still lose because you got a bad roll. Absolutely horrifying.
EXPANDING. You can colonize or conquer. To colonize you need an adjacent province with at least 50% civilization and 10 population. Then you need to march an army into the barbarian province and let them sit there until the barbs get upset. Regardless of whether you win or lose the ensuing battle, you can then colonize that province. I'm not entirely sure what happens to the people living there because afterwards the only inhabitants appear to be your colonists. Ironically colonizing slows your research (then again, pretty much everything you do slows research) and reduces income, so it's really only useful in the very-long-run or if you want a resource of theirs.
Conquering is... quirky, mildly put. Let's say you occupy all of Egypt's cities, kill off all their armies and navies and maul their allies. Logic says you should be able to demand quite a big chunk of land if not annex them outright. Well you can't. Enter War Score (dum dum duuumm). You see, if you take all enemy cities you get 100% war score. It would be reasonable to assume that the score is evenly divided between province values. But it's not. So usually with 100% score you can demand 2-3 provinces. That's it. If the enemy has 30, well... it's going to take an awful lot of wars to annex them (especially considering there is a forced peace treaty for several years after each war). So the end result is: you have bashed the enemy to oblivion, and conquered all their land.
You say: "i hereby declare myself the ruler of these land, by right of conquest!!!!".
Enemy: "No wait you can't do that".
You: "why not".
Enemy: "Because I sayz so".
You: "oh. Well then i demand most of your land and that you become my vassal!!!"
Enemy: "let me think... no. Making vassals is not allowed and i don't fell like giving you that much land".
You: "but i already conquered... oh hell. What can i get then?"
Enemy: "Well... i guess i'll give you that random island and that out-of-the-way dump".
You: "DEAL! Hahahaaa i haz conqerd... oh wait... damn"
FAMILY MEMBERS. Paradox apparently tried to bring Crusader Kings' character system to EU, which in itself is commendable. However the result is decidedly half-assed, with there being neither motivation or reason to care about your characters, each with about 10 random traits that make absolutely no difference to how the game plays. Seriously now, it doesn't matter one bit who you assign to govern cities or lead armies, their influence is negligible.
GRAPHICS. It doesn't say much, but EU:R is certainly the best-looking Paradox games, from the 3D map to the mostly intricate UI to the little men representing your armies.
DIPLOMACY. Like already said, by far the most feeble diplomacy system in any Paradox game.
ECONOMY. Not much you can do, really. It's really of no importance if you pick a governor that gives you +0,03 gold per month or one that gives you -1% revolt risk. One part that that works quite well though is the completely new trade system that allows you to trade resources between provinces (which might give you access to new units like bowmen or elephants). Also, you have to keep and eye on your army upkeep to avoid going bankrupt. After a few decades you start getting access to (mostly useless) buildings, a few of which give you better tax income.
The population is divided to citizens (who contribute to research), freemen (population growth) and slaves (who, curiously enough, pay taxes).
Oh, and to raise your national stability you have to spend some money, which results in stabbing a pig. After the pig has been stabbed, your citizens are happy.
RELIGION. Religion amounts to giving you a bonus to invoking omens. If you have a Greek or Druidic religion, then the omen success chance quickly climbs to 90%, giving you a pretty much permanent bonus over your heathen neighbors. The omens themselves last for one year and give you bonuses to population growth, tax income, army morale etc.
Ending comments (finally ).
While the 1.2 patch fixed most of the bugs in the game, it did nothing to improve the depth of the game. Overall, EU:Rome's shallow, dull and featureless husk leaves an impression that either Paradox wanted the game to be as easy an "accessible" as possible for the dreaded Casual Gamers (y'know, the ones with the Down syndrome), or they deliberately left out features for expansion packs.
In any case, Rome is sadly a big pile of missed opportunities, and unlikely to captivate anyone for more than a few hours