

Steam Workshop support also means there are tons of mods available to customize the battle experience. And when the game works, it has the Civ effect of pulling you in for just one more turn, until you've spent all night managing your economy and beating off barbarian hordes with a small force of veteran Hastati. The campaign map runs more smoothly and battlefield AI isn't completely worthless. Creative Assembly may have gone too big and launched too quickly, but the developer owned up to Rome 2's problems and has released 12 major patches since launch. When Rome 2 launched last September it had some significant issues with performance and enemy AI. The Creative Assembly's latest 4X strategy epic is discounted to $20 from its $60 high perch, and that's a great price for a game as vast as the Roman Empire. Paradox has the base game on deep discount here, as well as seven different pieces of DLC on sale-though Wealth of Nations, its newest expansion pack, is not. This is a game that you can spend 300 hours with and still discover new surprises. As we said in our review, it worked, and while EU4 is by no means an easy game, it's way easier for new grand commanders to learn.

Paradox Development set out to make it slightly less so, by refining EU4's interface and presenting every important bit of information a ruler could need in clear, concise alerts.
