Europa Universalis (board game)

Europa Universalis is a grand strategy board wargame published in 1993 by Avalanche Press's predecessor company, covering the political and military history of Europe and its colonial empires from the fourteenth through the eighteenth centuries on a large hex-based map. Players control individual historical powers, moving armies and fleets, managing colonization, trade and diplomacy, and pursuing national objectives across a multi-century campaign scale rare among tabletop wargames of its era, requiring long, multi-session play among dedicated groups. The board game predates and lent its name and general historical scope to the later, unrelated Europa Universalis series of computer grand strategy games from Paradox Interactive, which built an independently designed digital ruleset around the same broad setting and title rather than adapting the board game's own system.