Wargame: European Escalation

Wargame: European Escalation is a real-time strategy game set in an alternate history in which World War III was triggered in 1975. The campaign consists of loosely linked missions which tell the course of war. The player controlled war party changes multiple times during the campaign.

The game inherits the zooming technology from Eugen System's previous R.U.S.E.: The Art of Deception which allows to zoom steplessly from a near viewpoint to a bird's eye view for a better overview. However, the battles focus on small conflicts with less units than in R.U.S.E. and (the already downsized) base building was removed. As usually, the player commands a variety of different units (no airplanes) which have certain advantages and disadvantages against other unit types. Other things to keep in mind are supply lines, line of sight or morale.

While playing, the player will receive two kinds of points: command stars and deployment points. Command stars are earned by solving mission objectives and are used to unlock new units (those unlocks apply not only to single-player, but also to skirmishes and multiplayer). Deployment points are the reward for controlling control zones and can be used to call reinforcements into certain sectors. Additionally every unit earns experience which, over time, improves its statistic values.

In multiplayer mode, each team gets the same amount of initial command points which then is evenly distributed to each team member. Those points are then used to buy the initial units. This has two effects: there can be matches between uneven teams (because the whole amount of victory points is still the same) and team members can divide the work, e.g. one player controls all the tanks and another one the helicopters. To determine the winner team, the game uses a victory points approach: every killed enemy unit gives points; the amount depends on how powerful the unit was. Players can set to winning conditions: the game either ends after a certain amount of time or when a team reaches a certain amount of points.