Europa Universalis (Jewel Case)

Rating:
Summary: Meglomania?
Review: Based on the famous (infamous?) French wargame by the same name, Europa Universalis turns the unplayable boardgame into something manageable. It is a very ambitious grand strategic game which generally works. If you are a grognard you don't me to recommend this game - you would of already bought it.

If you are not a wargamer but have an interest in the period covered or want to see if you can beat historical Russia to the Pacific (historically 1659) this is the game for you. Be warned that the game has a steep learning curve and will take a few tries to truly master.

Be aware that you are very limited in terms of what you can do (limited by history). You are not totally forced into a historical mould but you are limited. It is almost impossible for Russia to compete in the new world, but you can get Siberia earlier then historical. Essentially, if the nation you are playing did something historically, you can usually do it earlier. If you try and do something a-historcal for that nation, it will be almost impossible.

Rating:
Summary: Meglomania?
Review: Based on the famous (infamous?) French wargame by the same name, Europa Universalis turns the unplayable boardgame into something manageable. It is a very ambitious grand strategic game which generally works. If you are a grognard you don't me to recommend this game - you would of already bought it.

If you are not a wargamer but have an interest in the period covered or want to see if you can beat historical Russia to the Pacific (historically 1659) this is the game for you. Be warned that the game has a steep learning curve and will take a few tries to truly master.

Be aware that you are very limited in terms of what you can do (limited by history). You are not totally forced into a historical mould but you are limited. It is almost impossible for Russia to compete in the new world, but you can get Siberia earlier then historical. Essentially, if the nation you are playing did something historically, you can usually do it earlier. If you try and do something a-historcal for that nation, it will be almost impossible.

Rating:
Summary: Don't they play a game before releasing it?
Review: This is, down underneath, a deep and fascinating game, as many reviewers say. But before we can appreciate these depths, we have to put up with several serious annoyances that compromise practical playability, and hence fun, in a major way.

The worst feature can be summarized in one word: pirates.

When the game is well along, one is continually distracted by the appearance of these vermin all over the globe. If you don't deal with them, you lose income from every maritime province next to which they hang out. Furthermore, if one of your fleets runs into a pirate on the way to a destination, it may stop to fight the pirate, win, and just sit there forever, forgetting where it was supposed to go. You can lose a large fleet this way if you don't discover the amnesia soon and remind it.

At first your warships may be simply too weak to take them on. Fair enough. Eventually, however, you can safely beat any number of pirate ships with one of yours. But this does not stop the little bastards from multiplying like flies.

You may discover that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure: post just one ship in every sea sector next to your provinces, and they seldom give you trouble (in fact, this is useful even before you can beat them in a fight). However, your ships die of attrition when kept at sea. So you need to go around periodically, return each of them to the nearest port, and post it again. You must do this every few months at first. When you have done all your naval research, you can safely leave them out for a year and a half. Nevertheless, it's a major nuisance. You might need almost a hundred ships all over the world on pirate patrol, and if you miss returning any of them to port-- DISASTER! This micromanagement is, aside from tedious, totally unrealistic. I doubt that the King of Spain needed to give orders to each little ship in the Caribbean exactly when to stop at the nearest port for supplies.

What really rankles is that one of the research advances is said to be unlimited time at sea: in other words, you shouldn't have to worry about attrition. However, THIS IS A LIE. You can never overcome the problem.

Two other occasional inanities: you might have to engage natives in battle as much as thirty times (that's two or three mouse clicks each) to eradicate them from a province. You win each battle easily, but they're still there. Sometimes you can't see that you have made any progress at all. The click fest gets quite mindless and stultifying. There are, of course, hundreds of provinces in the world. Sixty clicks per province to clear out natives, times 400 provinces, equals repetitive stress syndrome.

Finally, events occur at more-or-less random times. You may be watching important action at one location, and suddenly a message pops up needing your attention somewhere else. You might forget to return to your first location after you have dealt with the interruption; and even if you remember, it's sometimes a chore finding it again.

We should be able to deal with these interrupts the same way a computer does: in either a stack or a queue, including being able to save where we were before one occurred.

With these improvements, I'd give the game a much higher rating. As it is, life is too short and patience limited.

Rating:
Summary: Don't they play a game before releasing it?
Review: This is, down underneath, a deep and fascinating game, as many reviewers say. But before we can appreciate these depths, we have to put up with several serious annoyances that compromise practical playability, and hence fun, in a major way.

The worst feature can be summarized in one word: pirates.

When the game is well along, one is continually distracted by the appearance of these vermin all over the globe. If you don't deal with them, you lose income from every maritime province next to which they hang out. Furthermore, if one of your fleets runs into a pirate on the way to a destination, it may stop to fight the pirate, win, and just sit there forever, forgetting where it was supposed to go. You can lose a large fleet this way if you don't discover the amnesia soon and remind it.

At first your warships may be simply too weak to take them on. Fair enough. Eventually, however, you can safely beat any number of pirate ships with one of yours. But this does not stop the little bastards from multiplying like flies.

You may discover that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure: post just one ship in every sea sector next to your provinces, and they seldom give you trouble (in fact, this is useful even before you can beat them in a fight). However, your ships die of attrition when kept at sea. So you need to go around periodically, return each of them to the nearest port, and post it again. You must do this every few months at first. When you have done all your naval research, you can safely leave them out for a year and a half. Nevertheless, it's a major nuisance. You might need almost a hundred ships all over the world on pirate patrol, and if you miss returning any of them to port-- DISASTER! This micromanagement is, aside from tedious, totally unrealistic. I doubt that the King of Spain needed to give orders to each little ship in the Caribbean exactly when to stop at the nearest port for supplies.

What really rankles is that one of the research advances is said to be unlimited time at sea: in other words, you shouldn't have to worry about attrition. However, THIS IS A LIE. You can never overcome the problem.

Two other occasional inanities: you might have to engage natives in battle as much as thirty times (that's two or three mouse clicks each) to eradicate them from a province. You win each battle easily, but they're still there. Sometimes you can't see that you have made any progress at all. The click fest gets quite mindless and stultifying. There are, of course, hundreds of provinces in the world. Sixty clicks per province to clear out natives, times 400 provinces, equals repetitive stress syndrome.

Finally, events occur at more-or-less random times. You may be watching important action at one location, and suddenly a message pops up needing your attention somewhere else. You might forget to return to your first location after you have dealt with the interruption; and even if you remember, it's sometimes a chore finding it again.

We should be able to deal with these interrupts the same way a computer does: in either a stack or a queue, including being able to save where we were before one occurred.

With these improvements, I'd give the game a much higher rating. As it is, life is too short and patience limited.