Praetorians (video game)

Unlike most Real Time Strategy titles, Praetorians focuses on military strategy and tactics, rather than building or resource management. Units are trained from a garrison, which is built on a town or village which requires a garrison to be built, and a commander to be sent there to oversee recruitment.

Each civilization comes with its own unique unit pool with units that have different strengths, abilities and weaknesses. Some unit types are simply re-skinned for all the civilizations, but the variety in units offers different strategic ideas depending on which civilization the player is using. Light infantry units are generally weaker than heavy infantry units in hand-to-hand combat, and are very susceptible to arrow fire, but are the only units in the game that can act as builders; the possible buildings they can construct range from wooden bridges and defensive towers to war machines and siege equipment such as towers and ladders. Heavy infantry units are strong in hand-to-hand combat and quite resistant to arrow fire, but generally much slower around the map, and cannot travel over watery terrain. Archer units are poor in hand-to-hand combat, especially against cavalry units, but can set fire to damage buildings and siege equipment. Spear units are generally competent in hand-to-hand combat, particularly in their defensive 'stationary' formation when they form a spear-wall, but are susceptible to heavier infantry units and arrow fire, and cannot travel in forests. Cavalry units are quick, can easily outmanoeuvre most troops and will fare pretty well in hand-to-hand combat with most other units, but they are quite susceptible to arrow fire and most cannot travel in forests.

Each civilization also has access to three highly specialised units that are superior to their 'normal' counterparts. For example: Roman civilizations can field Gladiators - infantrymen that are hand-to-hand specialists - who also carry a dragnet which they can use to temporarily immobilise enemy troops, rendering them completely defenceless; Barbarian tribes have access to German Cavalry who are the only cavalry unit in the game that can travel in forests but who also have a devastating charge; and Egyptian civilizations can recruit specialist archers from Nubia who can fire poison arrows that steadily drain the health points of enemy units. Each civilization also has access to scouts to act as a form of reconnaissance, as well as doctors who can heal their troops; each civilization's doctor also carries a unique ability specific to that culture.

There are multiple types of terrain in the game. Forests can be used to hide infantry units, and to spring ambushes against troops out in the open. Watery terrain prevents heavy infantry units from crossing, unless it is a site where a wooden bridge can be built. Grassy terrain which can be lit on fire, and can kill troops that cross the fire.

Members of an alliance may not attack one another, though it is still possible to attack an allied building or village belonging to an ally. 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. The only resource you need to recruit stronger soldiers are honour points. Honour points are earned by fighting and killing enemy troops. There are also troop control points and unit control points; The former will limit the number of troops a player may have in their army, and the latter limits the number of individual soldiers and army men that can be used.

Praetorians features three game modes: Skirmish, Campaign, and Multiplayer:

After the Pyro Studios producer of the title, Javier Arévalo, and Eidos' Jason Walker talked about sorting out a flaw in the multiplayer game that was being exploited, an unofficial patch was released in October 2004. This helped catapult the game back up the GameSpy Arena charts.

The latest version of an unofficial extension, called MoD 4.1, became available 2004; it adds three new factions and many new maps. MoD 4.1 contains the unofficial patch to fix the multi-player game. The next official extension is called MoD 5.0 released in 2013 by Pyro Studios. It sorted out a number of flaws, decreased the hit points of some troops, updated the start screen of the game, added brand new music and sounds, presented 40 new maps for battles.

In 2008 an unofficial map editor for the PC game Praetorians was released. The map editor is programmed in the C++ programming language and uses the OpenGL computer graphics API. In the same year, the game continued to sell well, maintaining a place in the Top 20 Budget PC Titles on ChartTrack at the time.

On May 31, 2014, GameSpy servers were shut down, thus ending the official multiplayer for Praetorians. However, it is possible to use unofficial third-party clients to run and maintain servers for Praetorians.

In June 2019, a remastered version was announced by Kalypso Media for a targeted release in fall 2019. It includes higher resolution, better textures, re-activation of the multiplayer mode. The game is developed by Torus Games and was released on January 24, 2020 for Microsoft Windows and for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on September 18, 2020.[20][21]

• Praetorians at MobyGames