Europa Universalis Rome

[lionhard]

So i went on my usuall shop with the mrs today and i saw this game on the shelf, i asked the boffins behind the desk how it is compared to Rtw and they had no idea, so i just bought it. Has any 1 played it and whats it like? Doesnt look like theirs a battle function looking at the case, id install it but havnt got the time this w.e.

[Nachtmeister]

This is only my personal opinion, but I would recommend cashback if it is an option.
I have EU-Rome and I was briefly entertained but quickly bored with it; most of it comes down to understanding game mechanics and manipulating them efficiently - no immersion. There is no tactical element to the game, so you can not really compare it to RTW at all.
It is real-time strategy (again, *no* tactics), all on the campaign map but with much emphasis on diplomacy. Not that the diplomacy were very realistic; it is not at all influenced by personal charisma (as far as I have seen, there are no "characters" in the game at all), rather a bureaucratic system with fixed, complex rules. Those appear very much like what history books tell about how things were done in the late medieval/renaissance. You need a "casus belli" to declare war on anyone, and if you declare war on Rome (or, more likely, they declare war on you), they just spam you to death with heavy infantry. The only "tactics" involved are all in army composition but limited to basic troop types (heavy/light and infantry/cavalry/missile). You can't set up ambushes or anything, so if you end up at war with a faction with a bigger army than yours, you are just screwed/must sue for peace, usually giving up territory and the related income/influence in the process or be annihilated.
More realistic than RTW in terms of win/no-win situations, but very restrictive to *playing* as a consequence.
Fun if you prefer developing trade networks to fighting wars but very frustrating when the Romans end the game for you. Probably historically accurate in this respect, a bit too much so for my taste...
Oh and the factions' *flavour* is a severe let-down after all the beauty in EB. EU-R looks very love-less and plain by comparison; just a colored political map of the mediterranean as you might find it in a geography book without any details at all.
But give it a try. This is, after all, only my personal opinion...

[Marcus Darkstar]

You can get the demo for free. Should've tried it out first. Its like Nacht said. not really fun. No tactics just .. Empire stat building.

[Hannibal Khan the Great]

I do like its mods, especially Magna Terra (which expands the game map to east Korea and down to Somalia).

[ertai1987]

well it's a completely different gamegenre. Paradox Interactive specializes in the so called Grand-strategy-risk-clones-games. The depth in strategy is immense but tactics are limited; I remember playing an early demo of EU Rome and being bored to death, on the other hand Europa Universalis III and Hearts of Iron 2 & 3 are definetely worth a look, alas they are not in the ancient rome time frame.