Crusader Kings (PC)

The scale of the map is huge. Europe is divided up into counties (there must be hundreds of them), e.g. Yorkshire and Lancashire, and as a ruler, you could rule one county (as a Count), a few counties (as a Duke), or a large number of counties (as a King). However, even this is not so simple. As a King you will probably have maybe three or four counties as your own, but the rest of your territory will be governed by Dukes and Counts, as your Vassals. A duke will have one or two counties, and a couple more vassals. Vassals are governed entirely by their ruler, but are required to give their leige lord a certain amount of money each year, and supply troops when asked. Treat a vassal badly, and they may choose to pledge their allegiance to another leige lord. Quite quickly you can end up with a very complicated situation with interlinking alliances.

The most fascinating part is the role your family play. You will probably have to let your family have titles and run parts of your realm, but that means you lose control of how that county(ies) are run. And you have to be carefull who you have them marry. If they marry a rival's family member, that rival family may try to wrest control of the county from your grasp through the marriage. The number of ways to do this is made all the more numerous by the fact you can decide on how the succession laws work, e.g. succesion only by the first born male, or by any first born, or by the strongest surviving male member of the family. It gets complicated very quickly when you also have to balance the various competing elements in the economy - Nobles, Peasants, Burghers, and the Church.

But there is only one problem. There is no decent manual, and no tutorial, which really is neccesary given the learning curve. It's like being given the keys to No10 Downing Street, having a quick tour of the apartment, shown how the shower works, given directions to the House of Commons and then been tols just to get on with running the country. I am giving it 4 stars because despite the learning curve, it is a thoroughly impressive game, but most definetly not for the weak of heart.

Crusader Kings has incredible depth in the political aspects of the game. You can play as a Count, Duke or King. You have to hold onto your territories, and gain others to add to your realm, and the number of different ways you can manage this is impressive in its scope. The politcal and economic options avaliable to you are impressive in range and scope, and show that some considerable thought has gone into designing the game.

The only problem is that there is no useful manual, and no tutorial. You are pretty much left to figure it all out by yourself, which is far from ideal, particularly given the scope and depth of the game. It would get 5 stars with a tutorial, but I still give it 4 as it is well worth the buy, and has plenty of replay value.