Europa Universalis: Rome Vae Victis

For the roughly eight of you who bought Europa Universalis Rome when it came out back in April, you may not be aware that Paradox Interactive has released an expansion pack for it, titled Vae Victis ("woe to the vanquished" in Latin) and available exclusively as a nine-megabyte, ten-dollar (or ten-euro) download at their GamersGate.com portal (or, as I like to call it, "EuroSteam".) They're actually offering the core game and expansion together for only twenty-five bucks, so is it worth the bargain-basement price?

Well, your answer to that will depend entirely on how you feel about Paradox's body of work. Developer Johan Andersson and rock legends AC/DC have a lot in common. The latter has been playing the same three chords since 1975, stopping only to replace their lead singer when he took a trip on the Highway to Hell. The former has been releasing the same grand strategy game since 2000 with only variations on the theme for the Crusades, the Romantic period, and World War II, stopping only to add the amazing third dimension of depth to his graphics. Much like AC/DC, you either like Paradox or you don't and you've probably made up your mind by now.

Paradox games are all about control, control over every minuscule detail of your chosen nation's operation, and this is where Vae Victis justifies its ten dollar price tag a dozen times over. In point of fact, this is what EU: Rome should have been all along. The character system no longer feels tacked on; it's as integral to the game as the system was in Crusader Kings. The mission-and-decision system from Europa Universalis III's sublime In Nomine expansion makes an appearance and I pray to the gaming gods that Paradox implements something like it in next year's Hearts of Iron 3. The minor tribal governments, from the Pictii to the Aedui to the Rhoxolani, actually get a fleshed-out raison d'être, a direct result of their active forum community's near-constant bitching about how one-province minors are the whole fun. Yes, I was one of them; I've played an entire Victoria: Revolutions campaign as Haiti and actually managed to colonize Africa, and routinely play EU: Rome as the Picts. The minor nations have a small but fanatical following.

EU: Rome has always been about being more accessible than most of Paradox's offerings; it's nowhere near as obtuse as EU3 was and makes Victoria look like even more of a cross between a Sphinx riddle and a Gordian knot than it looked in 2003. Lost in the shuffle, though, was the complexity Paradox gamers know and love. It was to EU3 what SimCity Societies was to SimCity 4, and that wasn't a good thing. With the expansion, Paradox has pretty much said, "Ten bucks and we give you the hardcore version." At least from the six hours I've spent with it on release day, I'd say the hardcore version is more than worth the ten bucks and I'd recommend the twenty-five dollar twin bill as a perfect introduction to what Sweden's best-kept gaming secret is all about.