Europa Universalis II 1419 - 1820
$19.95		(Win95/98/2000/Me/XP) (Retail Box) (EUROPAU2PR)

Publisher: Paradox Entertainment / Strategy First

- Mild violence

Ratings:

9.0 from IGN

The Struggle Can Begin

Europa Universalis II is the sequel to one of the greatest strategy games ever made. It invites you to a global struggle for supremacy from the dark times of Joan of Arc to the flaming wars of Napoleon. More than 400 years of Gameplay!

Lead any of over 200 playable nations and guide domestic and foreign policies. Engage in religious struggles, set up expeditions to claim the New World and lead your country to prosperity and victory. Send your privateers to roam the seven seas, muster mercenaries to bolster your defenses and send missionaries to convert infidels to your State Religion. Interact with true historical events and persons through the course of history.

You Will Change the World and Create History!

Take control of any nation in the world - from Feudal Japan, America, Russia, The Ch'ng Dynasty of Manchu to the traditional countries such as Spain, France and England. In Europa Universalis you can lead any of 200+ nations with historical leaders and national research!

400 years of historical gameplay! Play the medieval campaigns of Joan of Arc to the massive wars of Napoleon. 600+ highly detailed events for you to decide the fate of the world.

Huge map spans the globe with more than 1600 land and sea provinces. Detailed and historically accurate art of buildings, armies, and navies changing over time.

Optimized for Multiplayer - Europa Universalis II enables players to easily meet over the net. Several scenarios are specifically designed for multiplayer games.

More than 2 hours of quality recordings of period music and new sound effects truly bring this massive era to life.

Intuitive interface, tutorial and manual - a great gaming experience for Novice and Hardcore gamer alike.

This realtime game can be set at pause at any time or any given event to give players time for planning, creating a `semi real-time' environment

Multiplayer allows up to 8 players to battle for world domination over LAN or Internet

Requirements:

Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP: Pentium II 266 MHz (Pentium II 450 MHz recommended), 64 MB RAM (128 MB RAM), 2 MB DirectX compatible video card, DirectX 8.

Reviews:

IGN by Jason Bates

"As strong as the first game was, there was room for improvement, and shortly after the initial release, the developers began work on number two. Now, less than a year later, that game has arrived. Europa Universalis II is here. The good news is that EU 2 is packed with new options, decisions, and playable countries. The game's been broadened and deepened in many ways. The bad news is I'm still not convinced there's enough here to justify a full-priced sequel, so that's something you'll have to decide for yourself."

"...The timeline has been extended all the way back to 1419 and Joan D'Arc, and forward to 1820, the Age of Napoleon. The scope of the game has increased too -- hundreds of new provinces and playable countries have been added to the map, and much of the non-European world, previously inhabited only by non-competitive natives, has been beefed up with full-blown kingdoms and empires. Furthermore, all these countries are playable, so it's possible to carve out an empire using the Incas or Dahomey or the Chinese, well before the European explorers ever arrive..."

"...And what's impressive is that even though you only control one country, all the others are in play too -- an AI traffic control nightmare, I'd have to imagine, which is why this game is so good. I don't know of another strategy game that has as many countries acting independently during a game. You may have anywhere from fifty to a hundred countries all engaging in trade, warfare, and diplomacy all at once, and what happens in one country can have a ripple effect throughout the world elsewhere."

"Probably the biggest new feature of the game is the addition of domestic policy sliders. Before, every country was hard-coded in many ways -- Russia always had cheap but plentiful troops, because presumably serfdom never went away there. Now serfdom and freedom can be set along a sliding scale, along with about ten other factors from free trade vs. protectionism to army-centered vs. naval power. What's best about these sliders is that you can only move one slider once every ten years, and doing so costs a stability point. That really makes you plan ahead, and it's more realistic. So yes, pretty much everyone in Russia is a serf, but if you want to change that it you can, gradually and realistically over time. That's cool!"

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