Europa Universalis: Rome

Europa Universalis: Rome takes the proven grand-strategy formula two thousand years back, to the era of ancient Rome, the Greek city-states, and the Punic Wars. Instead of Renaissance Europe, the player here manages an ancient civilization – running the senate, forging alliances between tribes and city-states, and leading legions into battles that decide the fate of the entire Mediterranean. The game's map stretches from the British Isles across all of Europe to the Middle East and North Africa, so even smaller tribal territories have room to grow into regional powers.

The game was developed in-house by Paradox Development Studio, which for the first time in the series worked in detailed management of individual politicians and their family clans – a similar system of characters, intrigue, and inheritance was developed much further by the studio a few years later in Crusader Kings. Rome also simplifies some of the later mechanics of Europa Universalis to better match the ancient context, where states did not yet know mercantilism or colonial trading companies, while republican politics, consul elections, and the struggle for influence among senatorial families play a far bigger role here than in other entries in the series. The military system also treats legions and their commanders as characters in their own right, who can gain experience and ambitions that threaten the republic itself, so the player has to watch not only enemies beyond the borders but also their own ambitious generals within the state. The game also offers Greek and other perspectives on the same period, so antiquity can also be experienced from the position of a smaller city-state fighting to survive among larger neighbors.

Why play: Europa Universalis: Rome will appeal to players who enjoyed the political dimension of Crusader Kings but want to experience it in an ancient setting without having to learn a completely new game system. It is more of a peripheral experiment for the series than its flagship, and that is exactly why it's interesting for anyone who wants to see how Paradox tested ideas about families and intrigue that it later used elsewhere, and much more thoroughly.