Europa Universalis: The Price of Power

The best historical strategy game bar none. Yes, it requires a huge amount of time - but don't worry, it is not due to the downtime, you actually do have a lot of stuff to do!

Essen 2022

Game is good (deserve a 8) but I removed 5 points because this game is a scam... super expensive for the content + an entire part of the game is locked behind deluxe version that is absurdely expensive or a expansion as prohibitive..... welll paradox business model... and I don't want this kind of business model in that hobby.

This rating is a warning to say that such business model and pricing is not welcome here.

However the game is good not great but really good (8/10)

The down points are :

• Rulebook while being complete, some rules are spread all over the place making some of those rules very hard to understand.

• Religion add quite a bit of complexity but have very little impact and added value in term of gameplay, a real missed opportunity. Giving more incentives for non catholic religions would be verymuch welcome.

• No playing tall ... a 4X without a viable way to play tall will always be a big miss to my eyes.

• You lack quite a bit of freedom on the way of playing your nation. The Missions being a big source of VP you kinda have to follow them and therefore play your nation the way the author wanted you to play them. Consequence being a lack of freedom and nations having little replayability each.

• Ideas are very underwhelming, very few being researched each game, this doesn't help to create replayability for the nations.

• lack of efficient "engine building"

So good game but with significative weakpoints, however the good thing being that those weak points are quite easy to fix ... hope they will ... the potential to become a great game but for now Worth an 8.

Someone in my group get this game. He was thrilled by the components and the epic, grandeur and pomp of the edition.

For me this was A slog and a painful experience. +30 hours dedicated with 3 campaigns at three players. Genuinely interested in getting into the fascinating historical period of Modern Age with Europa Universalis... Initially I thought it was a reissue of the 90's title but with update, refined and more straighforward euro mechanics. I was wrong. This edition is a boardgame version of the computer game of the same name (that i never care to play). Procedurally intrincate, heavy and slow, with players having to manually implement what was automatic in the PC game. The game requires more than superficial knowledge of the rules and specific conditions of the scenarios. It's not for the casual gamer. After several plays Players keep wandering about actions. The rules are written in hieroglyphic and color coded format which makes the experience even more painful (I drop the rulebook in the middle). The mechanics are euro based with resource (cubes) management to make actions. Each action has an unlimited number of prerequisites that drags the whole process to a crawl. Boring and frustrating.

Battles are resolved with bucket of silly big dices. Armies and fleets are stupid wooden meeples!

I suspect that the high ratings given to the game are due more to the components and the high purchase price.

Probably my favourite boardgame ever. So thematic, fun and addictive, but also extremely long and huge. Not for everyone: it needs self-sacrifice, perseverance and dedication, but it repays all the effort.

As a long-time fan of the EU computer game series, I was apprehensive of a board game iteration.

The Good

• This is a work of love. The game just exudes the designer's passion for EU and the historical kerfuffle it represents.
• The core mechanics is brilliantly transferred from PC to board game. This must have been a lot of work, because the original PC game is very, very complex.
• Individual game mechanics are simple and interlock with each other into a greater whole. Great depth.
• Not much down time. The game is long, but once you know what you are doing, a player action goes relatively fast.
• Great historical theme.
• Great production value.

The Bad x The game is very, very long, requiring constant focus. Expect major cognitive depletion. If you enjoy Twilight Imperium levels of time commitment, this game will be for you. x A LOT of multiplayer solitaire. Each kingdom starts in their own little box and keeps tinkering around until some major calamity happens hours later. I would wish for more interaction between players. There were moments when I thought that if we're interacting that little, then I could as well play the PC game. x This is what I feared - transferring complex computer mechanics to a board game requires a lot of mechanism distillation and abstraction. Here, I often felt that not enough abstraction was done -- there is a little bit too many tiny elements. You end up with a lot of cross-referencing tidbits, which leads me to my final point.

The Ugly XXX The rulebook. We're experienced wargamers and we can hold a lot in our heads, but we still ended up constantly looking for rules entries and found them spread over two or even three places. The rulebook is in itself clear and well written, but it is a LEARNING book, after which I will get the concepts, but it is a bad REFERENCE book. The two page reference sheet for players is not enough. A properly indexed reference text AND a four-to-six page procedural rules reference are necessary for a game of this weight.

Summary 4/10 My full respect to the designer and the testers for making this work. Interesting experience, but rather not for me due to length and too much multiplayer solitaire. I will maybe play this again at some point. The lack of a clear procedural reference is a deal breaker for me, though.