Europa Universalis (board game)

"Europa Universalis" is a board game published by Azure Wish Editions and authored by Philippe Thibault. It covers the 1492-1792 period and allows six players to play the various powers of Europe (Spain, France, England, Ottoman Empire, Portugal/Russia, Venice/Holland/Austria).

It was later turned into a video game by Paradox Entertainment under the name "Europa Universalis".

Description

This atypically long board game is announced with having a playing time of 360 minutescite web| url=http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/4102| title=Board Game Geek description of the game| first=| last=| accessdate=2006-11-24] , but games typically can last for weeks.Fact|date=March 2008

Material

About one thousand markers are used, as well as two 22"x34" maps (one for Europe, one for the Rest of the World). The English rulebook is about 72 pages long.

Gameplay

The players have an extraordinary amount of control on what they do: economics, military, maintenance, discoveries, colonial investment. The drawback is that there is much accounting during the game (computing income, price changes, maintenance and purchases of military resources).

Extensions and variants

Official extensions

A first extensioncite web| url=http://www.boardgamegeek.com/viewitem.php3?gameid=5069| title=Board Game Geek description of the extension| first=| last=| accessdate=2006-11-24] was published bringing (essentially) new rules about forts and missionaries and also a new set of objectives.

A second extension is widely circulated on the internet. It brought yet another set of rules (like palaces), including historical monarchs (with predefined characteristics) and fast combat system (that could divide by ten or more the time for one battle) and many new minor countries and counters. It was never published.

Variants

The mailing-listcite web| url=http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EU-list/| title=Yahoo groups mailing-list| first=| last=| accessdate=2006-11-24] is quite responsive in suggestions and advices about the rules.

Two variants are quite circulated also: the "event rewrite" by Risto Majormaacite web| url=http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EU-list/files/| title=Risto's rewrite| first=| last=| accessdate=2006-11-24] and the Europa8 versioncite web| url=http://bamgames.free.fr/Europa/EU8/| title=Europa 8 variant| first=| last=| accessdate=2006-11-24] 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 freely obtained either by download or by asking the authors.

References