Praetorians (game)
Encyclopedia
Praetorians is a 3D real-time strategy game developed by Pyro Studios
Pyro Studios
Pyro Studios is a video game developer based in Madrid , that was founded in 1996 with the purpose of developing quality video games. A consequence of this commitment was the development of Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines, which was released in 1998...

, based on Julius Caesar's campaigns.

Gameplay

Players are given two options. Players may participate as Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....

 commanding forces of varying sizes against various barbarian tribes. Alternately, a skirmish can be chosen in which the player first chooses a difficulty level (easy, medium, hard or expert) then chooses up to 1 character and up to 7 AI players, commanded by the computer. These can be Roman, Egyptian or an anonymous barbarian tribe. Once this is completed, alliances may be created by joining two forces on the same team.

Members of an alliance may not attack one another. In times of crisis team members can call upon each other via the message line: "We need help." Allies will normally offer spare troops in assistance. 'Praetorians' differs from other games of its genre in that resources do not play a part in it. In most real time strategy games, items such as wood, food, gold, stone and glory must be collected, to be spent during the creation of troops.

GameSpot cites the difficulty of the zoom function and limits of the camera (For example, the camera is unable to turn 360 degrees.) as negative aspects of the game. However, GameSpot does praise 'Praetorians' for its gameplay and tactical depth, as well as its beautiful graphics. You also do not need resources, this is purely military.

Marketing

The game continued to sell well even into 2008, maintaining a place in the top 20 Budget PC titles on ChartTrack.

Development

An unofficial patch was released in October 2004, after the Pyro Studios
Pyro Studios
Pyro Studios is a video game developer based in Madrid , that was founded in 1996 with the purpose of developing quality video games. A consequence of this commitment was the development of Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines, which was released in 1998...

 producer of the title Javier Arévalo and Eidos' Jason Walker talked about sorting out a flaw in the Multiplayer game that was being exploited by gamers. This helped catapult the game back up the GameSpy Arena charts.

Mods : The actual unofficial Extension is called MoD 4.1 from the year 2004, it adds three new races and many, many new maps. MoD 4.1 contains the unofficial Patch to fix the multiplayer game.

Maps : 2008 a unofficial map editor for the PC game Praetorians comes up. The map editor is programmed in the C++
C++
C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...

 programming language and uses the OpenGL
OpenGL
OpenGL is a standard specification defining a cross-language, cross-platform API for writing applications that produce 2D and 3D computer graphics. The interface consists of over 250 different function calls which can be used to draw complex three-dimensional scenes from simple primitives. OpenGL...

 computer graphics API.

Reception

Reception of Praetorians was positive. GamePro noted that the game is "a healthy mixture of Medieval: Total War and WarCraft".

External links

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