Depending on the power behind your PC you might also want to leave extra details off as EU4 can be surprisingly tough on your PC, especially starting up the game. You can add extra detail like trees and landscape whether you'll want those will depend on if you don't want the little details getting in the way. For a game about managing the countries through menus and soldiers though it manages to make it look good. Visually EU4 is lots of looking at a map of Europe and America and menus. There's enough scenarios to try out and different sides of these historical scenarios to play to provide some variety and challenge. Making it that far has to be its own reward and it does feel good when it happens. All of the arrangements have their catches, it just depends on what you're willing to do to keep the peace.Īfter all your scheming and expanding and you finally succeed, you won't be rewarded with any cutscenes or congratulations. Alliances can come in a few different forms such as military alliances or royal marriages.

War is difficult as it involves being able to keep your armies funded, and it tends to upset people. I found that I often had a fair share of enemies, or at least people not wanting to help out in my path of expansion through Europe and the soon to be America. Appeasing so I could do business with the providence, or to keep them from joining my ever-growing list of enemies. Most of my time playing EU4 I was either trying to appease the other providences or destroy them (conquering). I recommend seeking out some of the online videos to help explain the game, mechanics and UI, as they go a long way to fill in the gaps the in-game stuff doesn't really address. But once I leapt into a proper game I felt that none of the tutorial information stayed with me! I wound up learning by a combination of trial and error, and some help from online tutorial videos. I started off with the tutorials, which kind of help make some sense of all the numbers. I'm no stranger to strategy games but without playing the previous games in the franchise, I was immediately overwhelmed with the numbers and statistics that control countless aspects of your country. You will find plenty to enjoy here as you micromanage your state to a crazy level. This is great if you find the Civilization games not complicated enough. If that sounds too boring, you can create your own alternative version of history and watch how the rest of the world reacts. In EU4 you control a state in Europe, and are responsible for playing out history. Europa Universalis IV (EU4) follows on in recent years from another historical simulator Crusader Kings II to the point that you can transfer data from it to EU4.

Europa universalis 4 review