Crusader Kings is an interesting title from Paradox Entertainment. The one thing that stand out the most is that it feels very retro. A throwback to the early days of strategy games when intelligence and gameplay held sway and economy management was still in its infancy.

With Crusader Kings you play a noble of a European province or kingdom. In this case the breadth of “Europe” stretches from Northern Africa to the North Atlantic islands, from the British isles East beyond the Mediterranean sea. We’ve all seen this type of map before, but what we haven’t seen is the sheer scope of the provinces this map encompasses. There are so many that I didn’t even bother to count. There is no way anyone can conquer all of the provinces, it’s just too vast an expanse.

That’s not to say there isn’t plenty of opportunity to quench your bloodlust. With all of these provinces, many are just begging you to gobble them up like so much hot apple pie. This is especially true if you start as one of the major kingdoms such as France, or Byzantium. However, those of you who are looking for something like a “Total War” experience had better cast you gaze elsewhere. Crusader Kings is a completely cerebral game. All of the strategy in encompassed the management of your empire.

Which brings us to the goal of Crusader Kings. All you have to do is guide your kingdom to the highest score by the time a number of years comes to an end. This can be accomplished in an almost incalculable number of ways. Certainly conquest can play a part, but so can diplomacy, marriage, and commerce. In fact, I’ve had more success by marrying off my court and beefing up my economy that I have by keeping my kingdom in a constant state of war. Oh, if you want to see what your score is, just press the ever-so-intuitive F2 key.

Make no mistake, I have taken an incredibly complex game system and boiled it down to it’s most basic elements. But this game is in fact, very deep. Each province is unique and as such needs to be treated uniquely. With a limited number of coins in your coffer you’ll need to decide what to build and where. For instance, the type of terrain for province will yield better income form a logging camp than from a fisherman’s wharf, or vice versa. Add to this the disparate social groups who can hold sway in a province and the makeup of a particular province can indeed prove unique.

You also need to manage you court, including the children of your court. The court itself is divided into different member types. These types actually have a very small part to play but can be important in determining line of succession. In general each member of the court will have a Liege, Vassals, Parents, Spouse, Children, Siblings and Successors. Obviously not all court members will have each of these types, for instance, children will obviously not have a spouse or children. In my opinion, children are some of the most important resources in your court. When the children reach a certain age you will get to decide what type of education they should receive. This is critical because these are the future of your kingdom and the better trained they become, the better than can assist your actions. Adult members of your court can be appointed to different posts. Each of these posts adds the skill of the appointee to skill in the same area. For instance, if you have a Martial skill of 10 and you appoint a court member to the Marshal role, their Martial skill is added to yours and this is the value that is used to control and command your armies. If you have a Stewardship skill of 10 and you appoint a court member with a skill of 10 to the role of Steward, then your kingdom will be managed with an effective skill of 20. Pretty simple right? This is where the kids come in. When they reach school age you can send them to a Seminary, Military school, etc. So if you need a Marshal and you have a child with aptitude, you might want to give them a military education. As if that were not enough, each court member can have a number of traits, diseases, education traits, and special traits. All of these modify the lifespan, or skills of each court member.

And of course there is religion. A rule must maintain an acceptable level of piety or become that target of other kingdoms who will seek to…re-educate your people at the behest of the church. And let us not forget that this is also the time of the great crusades. At some random point in time the Pope will call for all good Christian kings to send their finest sons to bring the world of god to the heathens and heretics. Nothing preaches tolerance, forgiveness, compassion and love like a sword in your gizzard.

On top of all that, there is also the little things like what technology to research and what laws to pass. Each affects different aspects of your kingdom in vast and sometimes unexpected ways. Changing a law is a sure way to torque on social class or another. Focusing on one military technology can make your troops extremely effective against one kingdom and extremely weak against another kingdom. You can’t research them all so you need to choose as wisely as possible.

Did I mention this game was deep? There really is a lot to it, which is why I’m actually glad the combat phase is very light. Basically you just move your units into a province, declare war and wait for the outcome. If there is a fort or castle in the province you will have to wait months for the siege to culminate, but then the province is yours and you can assign the title to one of your vassals if you choose to.

So let’s talk about the things I didn’t like. Thankfully they are very few, but for me they were considerably annoying. First and foremost, the installation of the game was hideously slow. I started the install during the first pitch of the second inning of the World Series game 1 and over a half hour later the third inning was starting and I was just finishing the installation. A massive amount of BMP files seemed to drag the installation down.