Reviewed: April 21, 2003
Reviewed by: Dave Larson

Publisher
Eidos Interactive

Developer
Pyro Studios

Released: March 11, 2003
Genre: Strategy
Players: 1
ESRB: Teen

9
9
10
10
9.0

System Requirements

Praetorians is a breath of fresh air in a slowly evolving RTS market. The most notable difference is the lack of economics fueling the empire of your choice. Praetorians is solely military; no more mining for gold or ore, chopping wood, or producing the vital yet feeble peasant or worker unit. Possibly the only aspect of Praetorians that is considered economic infrastructure is taking towns, which can produce troops. Otherwise, your skill in choosing battlefields, formations and troops will dictate your glorious march to victory, or your fall to ignominious defeat.

Past RTS games have followed a fairly predictable pattern. Building your infrastructure, disrupting your enemies’ economics, having the best technology and elite units, and having a powerful ranged unit supported by a protective cavalry or infantry unit was pretty much the status quo. Here, elite units are still as important as always, but the lack of economics changes the focus of the game completely. With actual tactics at play, Praetorians takes into account higher ground and defenses, and ambushes in forests or high-grass areas, and troop formations and placement. Scouting also has taken a much more vital role in successful campaigns. Suffice to say, marching blindly into a pass is as wise as playing squash with medicine balls.

Praetorians is obviously based upon the age of the Roman Empire, however there are three different cultures you can play. In addition to the Romans, who specialize in defense and organization, you may play the Celts, kings of offense, cavalry and ambushes, or the Egyptians who have special healing abilities and elite archer and chariot units. The Romans are obviously the emphasis of the game, but the other guys are fun to break up the monotony of constant Legionnaires.

As mentioned above, tactics are paramount to this game. Finally, a RTS game has taken REAL tactical variables into combat. To begin with, archers are not all-powerful. Used properly, they can certainly be devastating, as they should. However, all too many games have made it possible for a horde of ranged units protected by a minimum of protective units to dominate the battlefield. Try that in Praetorians, and you might as well craft the world’s largest noose out of all of those sodden bowstrings lying on the field and hang yourself. A good charge of cavalry or even infantry will knock down those archers like pins in the PBA championship. In concurrence with this new aspect of ranged units, units actually match up against other units as strengths and weaknesses dictate. For example, set spearmen decimate cavalry, just as cavalry chew through light infantry.

The units are not the only change, though. Now, the high ground is very valuable. Archers get nice range bonuses, and defending units at the top get bonuses, while units charging up the hill get exhausted quickly. High ground also increases the range your troops can see, and that difference actually matters. The way that many boards are set up in Praetorians; it can be easy to slip a nice assault force around your troops if they don’t have good visibility.

Perhaps the coolest aspect introduced in Praetorians is the interactive terrain in combat situations. Assuming you don’t have pikemen or cavalry, you can hide troops in the forest to ambush armies coming along the nearby passes. It’s really great—your troops appear to you in red silhouette, and then they charge out (or shoot) at the unsuspecting troops taking their leisurely stroll through your woods. Not only can you ambush out of forests, but any infantry or archer troops that you have hold still in high grass get the same effect, allowing some very Vietnam-like ambushes that Kubrick would have loved to add to Full Metal Jacket.

Troops are all arranged in groups automatically. Instead of having 300 individual units, you will have 10 pre-divided squads of 30. As units in that squad get killed off, the squad obviously shrinks accordingly. At that point, you can join or equalize your squads, as you see fit.

Additionally, the special commands for units are an easy one-click command. You can have your archers “set formation” to increase their range or have your Legionnaires “turtle” to protect them from missile fire. This emphasis on simplicity makes it easy for you to command large armies, and perform relatively complicated moves with them, like pincer moves or waves of charges on the enemy lines.

While it is nice to be able to handle a huge army, more complexity would be an asset to Praetorians. Specifically, formations are very limited. You can’t form wedges, broad lines or spread patterns, and you can’t combine units well. For example, spearmen have a “protect” command that lets them march with their spears pointed up and out. However, you can’t combine this with the turtle to have the tactic that made the Romans both famous and implacable: the spear & shield wall. The shieldmen would form a “roof” of sorts and a front wall, with the spearmen holding their spears out. Enemies literally melted before the approach of the wall.

Furthermore, since economics have been done away with, really advanced commands should be considered. Some possibilities include trigger commands, such as “Charge in when is attacked” or movement commands that let your army move at one consistent "group" pace, rather than having your cavalry blithely charge far ahead of your plodding footmen.

One really awesome aspect of this game is the ability to have the same unit in more than one preset grouping. A preset grouping is simply a hot key shortcut that lets you group a bunch of units under a number. For instance, you can have a group of archers and three infantry as group 1. Well, Praetorians lets you use one of those infantry in more than one group. While this can be confusing for many, for experienced players it is invaluable. One “super grouping” lets you move your entire army, and smaller groupings lets you maneuver particular units as necessary on the battlefield. Also, you can have smaller groups be a scout or ambush-springer, moving it ahead of the vanguard of your army to catch any would-be ambushers or other nasty surprises.

The eight-person multiplayer is also very interesting. While still new, the flavor of multiplayer Praetorians is already different than other RTS games. Instead of having those prodigies that dominate games based on their economic control basing the military, now new stars shine by handling their military units with skill and finesse. Games are also quicker, and great thanks are given to the programmers for including an inferiority-ending clause. If one side controls no towns and has 10% or fewer units than the opposing side, it automatically loses. This prevents the annoying circumstance of having poor sports or smartasses hiding individual units in a remote corner of the map just to prevent the end of the game.

However, when those units move, they look a little bit like marching weebles-wobbles. Okay, that might be a bit of an injustice, but something looks just a little…wrong. The most amusing error is the wolf graphic. There are no legs on the wolf, so your wolf scout just hovers along the earth as he prowls for enemies. In addition to the movement, the buildings and towns are just a little sub-par of the average for current games. The last and perhaps most disappointing thing is the lack of movie sequence. Come on! With Gladiator still fresh in moviegoers’ minds, this was a perfect opportunity to really grab gamers with some fierce and fantastic scenes.