Heavy infantry units are strong in hand-to-hand combat and quite resistant to arrow fire, but generally much slower around the map, and cannot travel over watery terrain.

For example, Roman civilizations can field Gladiators – infantrymen that are hand-to-hand specialists – who also carry a dragnet which they can use to temporarily immobilise enemy troops, rendering them completely defenceless; Barbarian tribes have access to German Cavalry, who are the only cavalry unit in the game that can travel in forests and who also have a devastating charge; and Egyptian civilizations can recruit specialist archers from Nubia who can fire poison arrows that steadily drain the health points of enemy units.

In most real-time strategy games, items such as wood, food, gold, stone, and glory must be collected, to be spent during the creation of troops; in Praetorians, the only resource the players need in order to recruit stronger soldiers are honour points, which are earned by fighting and killing enemy troops.

Players may participate as Julius Caesar commanding forces of varying sizes against various hostile tribes of barbarian, Egyptian and, nearer the end of the game, Roman origin.

The first section involves leading Caesar's new legions to Gaul to investigate the recent surge of bandit attacks in Aeduii country.

The fourth section focuses both on Crassus' defeat at Carrhae in 53 BC and the subsequent retreat - two of the most difficult campaign missions, with challenging initial starting positions whilst being significantly outnumbered by the Parthians - along with Vercingetorix's revolt.

The final section focuses on the civil war against the Senate and the battles to aid Cleopatra in her succession dispute.

After the Pyro Studios producer of the title, Javier Arévalo, and Eidos' Jason Walker talked about sorting out a flaw in the multiplayer game that was being exploited, an unofficial patch was released in October 2004.

It sorted out a number of flaws, decreased the hit points of some troops, updated the start screen of the game, added brand new music and sounds, and presented 40 new maps for battles.

In the same year, the game continued to sell well, maintaining a place in the Top 20 Budget PC Titles on ChartTrack at the time.

"[4] The game ultimately received a "Silver" award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA),[5] indicating sales of at least 100,000 copies in the United Kingdom.

[7] In the German market, Praetorians debuted in third place for March 2003 on Media Control's sales charts for full-price computer games.

[22] GameSpot praised the graphics, tactical depth, and AI, but the limited camera (lacking the ability to turn 360 degrees), audio (particularly the sound effects, and voice acting), and poor multiplayer matchmaking services were criticised.