''Europa Universalis'' is a

board game Board games are tabletop games that typically use . These pieces are moved or placed on a pre-marked board (playing surface) and often include elements of table, card, role-playing, and miniatures games as well. Many board games feature a ...

created by

Philippe Thibaut Philippe Thibaut is a French game designer, designer and video game producer, producer of several popular grand strategy video games, most notably Europa Universalis, the AGEod collection including Birth of America, Ageod's American Civil War, AG ...

and released by Azure Wish Enterprise on 27 April 1993. It is a

geopolitical Geopolitics (from Greek γῆ ''gê'' "earth, land" and πολιτική ''politikḗ'' "politics") is the study of the effects of Earth's geography (human and physical) on politics and international relations. While geopolitics usually refers to ...

strategy game A strategy game or strategic game is a game (e.g. a board game) in which the players' uncoerced, and often autonomous, decision-making skills have a high significance in determining the outcome. Almost all strategy games require internal decisio ...

in which players compete as the powers of

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located enti ...

during the period 1492 to 1792. In 2000,

Paradox Interactive Paradox Interactive AB is a video game publisher based in Stockholm, Sweden. The company started out as the video game division of Target Games and then Paradox Entertainment (now Cabinet Entertainment) before being spun out into an indep ...

released a computerized version, the first in a series of four games.

Description

This atypically long board game has an official playing time of 6 hours according to the game box, but games can last for weeks; Board Game Geek estimates the playing time to be 15 days. About 1,000 markers are used, as well as two maps: one for Europe and one for the rest of the world. The English rulebook is 72 pages long.

Gameplay

The players have extraordinary freedom of choice regarding economics, military, maintenance, discoveries, and colonial investment. One drawback is that there is a lot of calculation and management required during the game regarding computing income, price changes, maintenance and purchases of military resources.

Extensions and variants

A first official extension was released and introduced new rules for forts and missionaries, as well as a new set of objectives. A second extension has been widely circulated on the internet. It introduced yet another set of rules, such as palaces, including historical monarchs with predefined characteristics and a faster combat system that could divide by ten or more the time for one battle, as well as many new minor countries and counters. It was never published officially. Two more variants have also been circulated: the ''event rewrite'' by Risto Marjomaa and the Europa8 version by Pierre Borgnat, Bertrand Asseray, Jean-Yves Moyen and Jean-Christophe Dubacq, which introduces two more players, revised counters and maps, and is not finished yet. Both of these can be obtained for free either by download or by asking the authors. There is also a mailing-list which is quite responsive in suggestions and advice about the rules.

Reviews

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Casus Belli A (; ) is an act or an event that either provokes or is used to justify a war. A ''casus belli'' involves direct offenses or threats against the nation declaring the war, whereas a ' involves offenses or threats against its ally—usually one ...

'' #79https://archive.org/details/casus-belli-079/page/19/mode/2up

References

External links

Azure Wish Enterprise
Board games introduced in 1993 Board games about history {{board-game-stub