For me, one of the perennial pleasures in PC gaming is clicking new game on a fresh Paradox grand strategy game, and having that big ol map unrolled before me, freighted with promise and overwhelming complexity.
If you ve not played one of these before – and for all its glories, Imperator: Rome is very much an iteration of the formula established by Europa Universalis in 2000 – the premise of the game is as simple as playing it isn t: you re presented with a map of the world at a given point in history, where you can browse every single discrete political entity that existed in that moment, before choosing one to pilot onwards through time.