Praetorians is a real time strategy game for PC/Windows, set in Roman Europe around the time of Julius Caesar. The game involves almost no resource management and is focused on tactical battle with a ability to capture villages and recruit additional troops. Praetorians includes three civilizations - Romans, Barbarians and Egyptians - the later often take the role of other 'Arab' tribes. The main campaign is based on Romans. The game's name is inspired by the Praetoriani (Praetoriae Cohortes), an elite cohort formed to protect the general of the Roman army. Units in the game reflect those that existed, but there are many concessions to gameplay balance, such as the equal availability of war machines to all civilizations. Similarly, while the storyline is set against a backdrop of events circa 50BC, the actual missions and battles are somewhat contrived. Praetorians is not intended to be a perfect historical re-creation. It should be regarded as a Roman themed real time strategy game, rather than a traditional historical war-game. A summary of the game's features can be found at the official website.

Pyro Studios, based in Madrid, Spain, wrote the game. They are better known for developing the Commandos series of games. Praetorians was published by Eidos Interactive. Originally intended to be released in 2002, the game finally appeared in February/March 2003.

The absolute minimums are: Pentium III 500MHz, 128MB RAM (256MB for Windows 2000/XP), 16MB graphics card (DirectX 8.1 compatible, 32MB recommended), display resolution 1024x768, 600MB free hard drive space, Windows 98/2000/XP, quad-speed CD-ROM drive, keyboard and mouse. Multiplayer requires a slightly faster processor (at least 700MHz) with at least a 56k modem connection (broadband recommended).

Two demo versions are available - a single player version (which features the campaign mission Crossing the River Arar) and a multiplayer version (which features a single multiplayer/skirmish map). Demos can be found at our TAFN Downloads dB, Eidos and several other gaming sites. Installing both the demo and the full game on the same machine may cause to video glitches.

The most recent official patch at the time of writing is v1.04, 24 April 2003. It can be found at several locations, including our very own TAFN Downloads dB, Eidos, FilePlanet and Pyro Studios. The patch is 2.7MB. However Jare, one of the game's developers, released an unofficial (unsupported) patch v1.05, 22 October 2004. This patch "fixes the bug with troops becoming invulnerable after splitting them". It can be downloaded from our TAFN Downloads dB. There is no need to apply earlier patches first - v1.05 can be applied to a freshly installed game. The game's current version number is displayed in the bottom left corner of game's main menu screen.

Written by timski