This article is timeless and should be accurate for any version of the game. Getting into Europa Universalis IV can seem overwhelming for new players.

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Yet Paradox has put more effort and infrastructure into making the game more newbie-friendly than ever before. The guide has been divided into five sections for your convenience.

Where possible, this guide will tailor its presentation to highlight points for these different audiences. Europa Universalis IV EU4 is a game in which you explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate. But before you do any of that, you need to get a few basics down. It's a good thing you're here because learning how to play EU4 can be a daunting challenge.

The most important thing to realize is that you are playing as an omnipresent, immortal leader of a country in which the peoples and armies within it will follow your every command. As long as your nation exists you may continue playing till the end date of Europa Universalis IV is a grand strategy game that will take you on an epic adventure through an alternate history of Earth.

The player is controlling a nation which has armies, navies, military leaders and civilian specialists at their disposal. Though each of the start-dates is set up to be as historical as possible, as soon as the game is unpaused history will often veer off its rails and become an alternate Earth, where players will have the power to influence the destiny of nations.

Europa Universalis IV gameplay is not centered around a specific character as Crusader Kings II is. Heads of state will eventually age and die, and a new successor will take over. The player is more of an abstract controller of a country and they may for the most part do with the country as they wish until the end of the game which is January 1, During the course of the game, the player must make sure their nation is not annihilated or annexed by other powers, as this results in a game-over.

There are no specific victory conditions in Europa Universalis IV, although there is a score visible throughout and at the end of the game at the top right corner of the interface.

The player is free to take history in whatever direction they desire. They may take a small nation with a single province and turn it into a powerhouse to rule the world, take control of a historically powerful nation and cause it to crumble and anything in between.

Much of Europa Universalis IV revolves around these general concepts. Game play in general can be rather relaxed with the ability to pause the game at any time and action can be taken while paused as well. Oftentimes pausing the game to construct buildings, recruit units or conduct diplomacy is beneficial. Armies and navies may also be given move orders while the game is paused, but will not move until the game is unpaused.

Like an intense game of chess, Paradox wants the game equilibrium and the strategic and tactical player choices to be the fascinating part of the game. Much of the game play is simply monitoring all the dials and knobs of the machine of a nation.

The player can be compared to a disembodied puppet-master with an entire nation at their fingertips. This is not a pure wargame. For players looking to simply send their forces off into heroic combat without worry or care of long-term consequences, you will be sorely disappointed. Although there is a great deal of emphasis put upon the military side of things in EU4, there is a lot more that needs to be managed.

If you just rush blindly into wars, you will find your regiments shattered, your economy bankrupt, and your neighbors collectively enraged. Even the most bellicose of rulers must pay heed to the finesse of diplomacy, and the pragmatism of economics. This is not a roleplaying game. There will not be heart-to-heart chats with your advisors, and you will not see rival heads of state looking to engage you in dialogue.

Though you can have royal marriages between your country and the ruling dynasty of another, it is mostly an abstract decision. Don't expect to see any sort of romantic interludes. This is not a tactical combat simulator. Though there is a battle interface, where you can see your forces engaging the enemy, you can't really control your troops on the field. The game is focused on strategic decision-making, not battlefield command. This is not a turn-based game. At least, not quite.

The calendar ticks away equally for all nations of the world. Yet because the game can be paused and the passage of time can be controlled, it is not precisely correct to call it a Real Time Strategy RTS game either. This is not a quick-binge game. Even playing on the highest speed, most games that go from to will last about 12 cumulative hours, this is not a game you can quickly boot up, play for 10 minutes and win.

This is not a Civilization game. Many people that are unfamiliar with Paradox Interactive games will often try to connect this game to Civilization, but that is simply not the case, about the only thing that both games have in common is that you play as an ageless benevolent or malevolent being that controls the lives of whoever you choose, but the similarities pretty much end there.

Both games are good in their own right, and people like them for different reasons, but drawing a comparison is quite pointless. There are many advantages and disadvantages to playing both singleplayer and multiplayer in EUIV.

It is generally recommended for your first game to be singleplayer as one of the nations Paradox recommends new players play as, just to get a feel for the game and learn at least some of its many mechanics. But it can also be nice to play a private multiplayer game with a friend who will walk and talk you through the game, and show you things not shown in the tutorial.

If you have never played a game like this, or even if you are a diehard EU3 player, take the time to play through the tutorials, which you can find at the Main Menu. They will introduce you to the major game concepts , such as how Paradox has implemented standard strategy game systems like combat and economics and also highlight what features are entirely unique and new to EU4.

One of the first things you will need to do is figure out which country to play as. Unlike in CK2 Crusader Kings II in which you would want to pick a smallish nation with little to do with the rest of the world, in EU4 you want a largish nation.

This is because other nations like to gobble up small nations, as you will start to learn later on. Even though it would seem easier to take a single province country to start with, because of the handicaps involved, picking a One Province Minor OPM country to start with is a challenge, even for experienced players. So picking a large nation to start with gives you a few advantages: A good choice in this game is to try either Castile or Portugal.

Both of these nations are on the periphery of Europe, and although they can get drawn into wars in the distance, their large navies usually means you can be free of having to worry about combat in your home provinces. The most important button in this game is at the top left hand corner of the screen.

It will look like a shield with the flag of your nation on it. When you click this button, a window appears with many different tabs at the top, showing your leader and their stats as well as spots of vacant advisors.

Before you go along and fill them up, you need to worry about the currency of the game. Go to the third tab and it will show you the economy of the nation. Most nations start the game with an economy that is making money every turn.

You should check back periodically to make sure that your nation is always profitable. Now, it is time to go back to that first menu and hire some advisors. There are three slots for three different categories of advisors: You may only have one of each type.

If you are making less than 4 ducats per month you shouldn't hire any advisors. If you are making less than 30 ducats per month you should stick with an advisor with a level of 1. This is because advisors increase in cost quadratically according to their rank.

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It doesn't really matter what kind of advisor you pick for now, as long as you find one for each category. If you read the description on them, you can tell what sort of advisor they are.

Later on, you can pick them for a specific need, but since all of them are relatively useful, just go for the cheaper ones. Now that you have selected your advisors and are still making money, it is time to look at your nation. Your nation will be composed of one or more provinces. Your country is only comprised of land provinces. No one truly "owns" sea provinces, though you have the ability to affect naval control and trade in nearby sea provinces.

There will always be a capital province in your nation. If you know world geography, these often correspond to where the capital of the country is today. London is the capital province of England and so on. There may also be a separate trade capital , though the national capital is most often the same province as your trade capital. You may notice some figures on your provinces, such as a 3D "toy soldier" to represent your armies, or small 3D ships.

These are your units that you will use to fight wars. Your neighbors will have their own forces. Building units takes quite a while, so you should always have some units on hand. If you go to the interface screen that you were at earlier and go to the military tab you can see how many land and naval units you have as well as your force limit. The force limit is a "soft cap" which means that you can build over that quantity of regiments or ships, except that each additional unit will cost more and more.

You can click on a particular unit to select it, or drag click over an area to select multiple units. Moving units to a friendly province will result in a yellow arrow.

Moving units to an enemy province or one besieged will have the arrow show as red. If you keep a unit selected as it moves, the progress between provinces actually looks like a progress bar.

You can cancel the move until they are halfway there. Halting a move doesn't have a direct repercussion on your troops except that if you want to move to that same province again you'll have to restart the march all over again. Movement may also subject the unit to other effects, such as attrition due to supply limits, weather, or moving over hostile territory.

If you look around, you will see provinces with a different colour than yours. These belong to a neighbouring country controlled by the computer. They aren't dead weights though; they will negotiate with you and other computer-controlled nations to fulfill their goals. Speaking of goals, your nation has some too, if you're interested in following them — although EU4 will attempt to point you in the right direction, you can do basically whatever you want with your nation.

Some suggested goals can be found in the 'Missions and Decisions' tab in the Shield. Let's now head back into the economy screen. You should notice some sliders on the right hand side. This allows you to pay more or less for your troops, missionaries, ships and colonies.

As a good rule of thumb, your missionary and colony sliders should always be maxed out to the right. This ensures that they take the least amount of time and can be done in a reasonable amount of time.

Only reduce them if you're desperate for income; don't be afraid to take loans from time to time instead. Note that these cost nothing if you have no active colonists or missionaries, in which case lowering them won't help anyway. Next in line is your naval slider. This will significantly reduce the cost of your navy but come at a cost of trade power from light ships and a lessened morale. It is also important to remember that the costs of reduced trade power from your light ships, which affects your trade income, can outweigh the immediate benefits to lowered maintenance spending if you possess a significant fleet of light ships.

If you have the Art of War expansion, you should mothball fleets you're not using while at peace instead. Lastly is the army maintenance slider. Units with low morale are less effective in combat, making it risky to reduce army maintenance with armies stationed in provinces with unrest or on the border of a potential invader.

In EU IV, just because your country is large doesn't mean that it has a large economy or great military strength. To extract more out of your provinces, you have to look out for two attributes: High local autonomy reduces the usefulness of a province to you in many ways. If the autonomy is high enough for you to manually lower it, you should do so. But, beware of the resulting unrest and long cooldown , and be ready to handle it.

However, each estate will ignore the penalties of local autonomy in certain attributes e. If your provinces have unaccepted cultures especially from a different culture group, which has a larger penalty and is represented by the culture's name being in red , you should also try to convert them to your culture.

This is impossible if the provincial religion is not your state religion. As religious conversion receives a penalty for non-accepted cultures, you may have to increase missionary power to achieve the conversion. Even before you unpause the game, and allow time to start ticking, you should do a few things. Check out the map. Look at some interfaces and really understand what you have in front of you.

Basic geography and history knowledge will help you here, as EUIV will usually follow along the same paths as history did, however it is not entirely impossible for something to happen that will look a little strange, such as France losing a war to Spain and having to release half the countries they've annexed, splitting the country in half and making it weak. New players will need to get an orientation to the interface, because there are a lot of choices to make and controls at your disposal.

A lot of players, when they first come to a Paradox Game, often make the mistake to start with a single small one province minor country. It may seem like your easiest way to learn the ropes since you have very little to manage, but, in reality, what it means is that you are playing under an extreme handicap.

You have limited options in terms of economics, military power and diplomacy. If you make a wrong move you will find yourself annexed in a heartbeat. Generally, it is better to take one of the larger nations. You will have more spending money, toy soldiers and boats to play with. You also have more strategic options and can play around with less worry. If you do mess up and everyone does in their first game , you can lose a disastrous war and even a few provinces and not be entirely out of the game.

In the scenario start screen, the game will make suggestions of some of the larger powers available during your current scenario. In the designer's view, these are the nations that are most interesting to start with. Once you learn the ropes, you can go back and pick a smaller nation to fine tune your skills. For now, "go big. Even just limiting your choices to the big nations, you have a lot to consider in determining which one.

Should it be a mostly land-based power to field massive armies and not have to worry about learning naval mechanics , or do you want a coastal nation to play with fleets and colonization?

Do note that not all large nations are strong: Ming , for example, starts with the risk of being imploded due to their Mandate of Heaven. Another suggestion for totally new players is to stick to European powers. There are technological handicaps and some special rules for nations outside of Europe such as the Institution.

Until you learn how to handle the challenges of technological development, it is probably best to stick with a European nation. Paradox gives players the chance to begin the game using one of 11 preset "bookmarks" or "scenarios". You can always start the game by choosing the default campaign, or choose from one of the other bookmarks. Plus, you can also choose any date in the time frame covered by the game as your starting point. If there is a specific period of time you love more than others, feel free to choose that bookmark as your starting point.

Note that in the later start dates there are some different nations available, many nations may have significant changes to their border over time, and each of the nations will have upgraded its technology to be contemporary to the scenario.

Otherwise, you can start with the default scenario. If you wish to play as Portugal, however, it may be wise to skip to and get colonizing straight away.

Similarly, as England, anytime after and the War of the Roses should be over, allowing you relative peace to attack France or Ireland. In this busy world many people do not take the time to do so. To make it as easy as possible, Paradox released the EU4 Manual online for free as a PDF download. You will need a PDF reader such as Adobe Acrobat , or a browser capable of opening PDFs. All major browsers including Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera support PDF viewing.

If you are using Internet Explorer, download a PDF reader or use a browser that can read PDFs. Unfortunately the manual is not very useful today, as it hasn't been kept up to date and EU4 has changed a lot in the few years since it was released. Paradox also put out dozens of Developer Diaries and videos that discuss many details and design decisions that went into the new game.

Paradox clearly aimed these at their core audience of die-hard EU3 players, and, to a lesser extent, players of Crusader Kings, which shares much of the underlying engine and infrastructure of EU4.

Players of other Paradox strategy titles, like Victoria II and Hearts of Iron III may also be able to grok much of the discussion. Less-experienced players may appreciate reading through these, familiarizing themselves with the patois of EU, though they may fail to understand many of the finer details of the statistics and interfaces discussed.

The Paradoxplaza forums is your best way to get in touch with the community of experienced players and their advice. Register your game and post your questions. You can also find a lot of good "Walkthrough" or "Let's Play" videos, and read After Action Reports AARs posted by other players. For experienced EU3 players who just want to catch up on the differences between the two versions of the game, Paradox published a free page downloadable PDF manual that describes, in great detail, the major differences between these games.

You can find it at the link below. You will need a program capable of reading PDFs to view this, for more info check the EU4 Refresher guide section. Tooltips are small popups that show up when you hover over certain areas of the interface. They usually provide more details about the game.

Though often technically written, once you understand the lingo, you'll see that they are showing you some pretty neat details of how the game works. The game also has a series of in-game hints. These are pop-up windows that will appear when you first encounter certain aspects of the game. The hint window will explain basic concepts of that game feature, which can then be dismissed.

Hints may be disabled entirely if you are tired of seeing them, or they can be turned on again if you felt like you dismissed a screen a bit too quickly and didn't have a chance to read it through. The use of keyboard shortcuts and mouse controls tips can simplify manipulation, increase accessibility, and ultimately speed up game play. Events , advisors , military maintenance , reinforcements to understrength regiments, and repairs to damaged ships can cost you money.

During peacetime, you can lower your army or navy maintenance, or even disband regiments such as mercenaries and ships that are too costly to maintain. During war, you can consolidate understrength regiments. You can also fire advisors if your budget can't sustain their employment.

You can lower monthly support for missionaries and colonists, though these will slow down or even halt their progress. Disband units until you are at least even with your force limit if you've gone above it. Even for all your cost-cutting, occasionally you will find yourself with a negative amount of money -- a debt. States in EUIV are allowed to run at a deficit to a limited extent. At the end of any month you have a negative balance the bank will automatically take a loan out for you.

You will need to pay this loan back in five years as well as pay the interest on the loan. If you cannot, the loan will be extended at the cost of a higher interest rate.

Taking a loan or two is nothing to worry about as long as you can pay it back. Taking a loan to hire mercenaries or pay for a nasty event is a perfectly reasonable action to take.

Taking out too many loans, however, may be unsustainable. In extreme cases, countries can be forced to declare bankruptcy. After a war, when trying to pay a loan back remember to dismiss your hired mercenaries and any other regiments over your force limit , and lower your military maintenance so that you can stockpile some money to pay it off sooner.

When your loans are paid off, consider investing in buildings as many of these will increase your income in the future. Europa Universalis is all about the colonization of the new world. To colonize you must have a colonist. To do this you have to unlock either the Expansion or Exploration idea group unless you already have access to a colonist like Portugal , for instance , which may first require advancing your Administrative Tech Level.

For early colonial growth overseas the Exploration idea is superior, as it allows you to recruit Conquistadors and Explorers. These function in much the same way as other Generals and Admirals do, except that they are able to explore terra incognita the unrevealed sections of the map and also are a bit weaker than normal Generals and Admirals. You will get much less taxes from overseas provinces and instead of production income you will get tariff income.

The upside of this is that you can get valuable trade goods which can bring in buckets of money through tariffs and trade.

Conquistadors must be attached to an army and may traverse and reveal terra incognita covering land regions while explorers must be attached to a fleet and may traverse and reveal terra incognita covering sea regions.

Explorers sometimes remove terra incognita from provinces adjacent to any sea region they enter. Likewise Conquistadors can discover sea regions adjacent to the land provinces they enter. Expansion is an option for countries that border uncolonized frontiers, and do not need to explore to find rich lands to occupy. If you fancy yourself as a main colonizing nation, you can unlock both Exploration and Expansion idea groups, allowing your country to have up to three Colonists, which allow your colonial possessions to grow very quickly.

Trading is vital to any superpower. The placements of your merchants and your trading fleets is the most important thing to bringing the riches from the new world and the Orient to your capital. If you switch your map view to the trade overlay it will indicate trade regions, centers of trade, flow of trade and more importantly show you which centres of trade you have trade power in.

You will always have a home node, in which your capital or trade capital will be located. Your home node is usually the best place to collect from trade as it won't have any penalty attached to it. When starting the game, it's a good idea to send your merchants to trade nodes that contain a lot of value that immediately border you.

If you have more than one merchant, the other one should be sent to a trade region where you have provinces and set him to steer the trade to your home node. If it is a coastal trade node, also assign your light ships to patrol this route. Each additional light ship you build and set on patrol will help steer trade towards your home node. Simply group your light ships together into one fleet, click the 'Protect Trade' icon the one with the coins on it , and select the node you want to protect trade in.

You can mouse over each selection to see how much more money you will make by stationing the fleet there, and opening the trade mapmode using the buttons at the bottom right will show you where each node resides in the world. Note that, of course, you can't use ships to protect trade in inland nodes, such as Kiev or Wien. Unless your navy is vast, it's usually a wise decision to check the 'Go home at war' box which you can find if you select any fleet before they go off to protect trade.

If this fleet is protecting trade, it will sail directly to the nearest allied port during war time, getting itself out of harm's way. After peace is established, it will go back to protecting trade. Each province you conquer in a trade node improves your trade power. Specifically, open the trade mapmode and find provinces which have little river or market icons on top of them.

These are Estuaries and Centers of Trade, respectively, and each gives you a massive increase to trade power in the node they reside in. If you want to go to war and expand, but don't know what you want to take, these are good places to start.

Fighting a war can be a difficult proposition. The most important thing though is numbers. This is a game about logistics and thus the one with the most units usually wins. Having a general can also be a good way to stack the odds in your favour. When fighting an enemy that is your size or greater it is almost always advised to play a defensive war, so that you can receive terrain bonuses to the battles.

Using the terrain mapmode, try to position your armies in provinces with a large mountain percentage. Unfortunately, numbers are only important to a point. Check out the Land warfare page for more indepth detail. In addition there are other factors that become increasingly vital to military survival: Some of these are increased by technology and ideas, so always make sure to carefully inspect your opponents before attacking. Overall, the best way to ensure success in war is to find powerful allies before it happens and to try not to ally those who are often invaded by great powers and constantly call you into their losing wars.

This can be one of the harder things to deal with. It is very difficult to fight a country which is significantly larger than yours, as their armies are usually larger than yours as well.

If you are stuck in a war against a superpower with no favourable alliances it is often best to attempt to surrender and give the attacker whatever it is they desire. Not doing so may result in the attacker and in some cases, the defender if you are the aggressor occupying much more of your territory and taking more than just the war goal in the peace deal.

If you must fight, attempt to stay in advantageous terrain such as mountains which will reduce the combat width combat width refers to the maximum amount of regiments that may take part in a battle at one time and lower the importance of their greater numbers by allowing only a certain portion of their army to fight at one time, although generally it is still advisable to avoid a battle you cannot afford to lose.

If at all possible, besiege territories they are unable to defend such as islands if you have a navy capable of fending off your opponents navy. Your goal in this war is to drive their war exhaustion through the roof.

This will drive their war enthusiasm to a low and allow you to peace out in a better deal. This is a very risky strategy, however help may arrive in the form of other AI nations declaring war on your opponent in order to further their own goals. If things are beginning to go your way, do not become too greedy.

Even if an opponent may seem weak at the moment, it may be possible that they are recruiting units out of your sight or bringing far-off armies in to reinforce their position. If your goal is simply to survive, white peace may be the best option.

Your best bet for stopping a large country from attacking you is to maintain as many regiments as you can afford as well as securing powerful alliances. Good relations with your neighbours will also lessen the chance that they will attack you when you are weak. Where a larger country can whip together some allies and win by superior force, a smaller country needs to be smarter. Allying larger countries and letting them do the fighting is generally a good plan.

Ensure that your ally is ready for war can be seen on the Declare War page , and always check that your opponent does not have strong allies or invisible allies like the HRE. Scavenging weak er countries is also a good strategy, and fits well with the constant vigilance a small country needs to survive. If you can't find any meaningful allies early and you instead find a hungry Great Power declaring war on you, don't be afraid to reload an autosave or even just restart.

Monarch power is essential to EU4 and represents one of the largest changes from EUIII. It is a measure of a ruler's influence and ability to govern his country.

It is a central mechanic in Europa Universalis IV, influencing how effective a country is at technological improvements, diplomatic relations, and infrastructure investments. The ruler's skills are the main factor affecting how many monarch points the country gets each month. Administrative Power is used:.

Diplomatic Power is used:. Military Power is used:.

Europa Universalis IV Tips and Strategy Guide - How To | SegmentNext

You can increase ducats in several ways. One is to cut costs in the budget window. You can lower your army, naval, and missionary upkeep using the slider bar. However, do this only during peace time since it will lower your morale which can cost you a battle.

Also early on, only use advisors where your monarch is weak, as they cost money to keep in your court. Income generating buildings will increase your income over time and are a necessary investment.

Use light ships to increase your trade power where you have a large presence.

Check for cultures and autonomy in your country. HRE stands for Holy Roman Empire , depending on where your country is in the world, the HRE can be a very important factor, or not a factor at all. Generally if you're playing as any country in Europe or the surrounding area, then the HRE does deserve at least a little bit of your attention.

A good rule to follow is that the closer to Austria you are, the more influential the HRE will be on you. If you are playing as any of the OPM countries in Europe then the HRE should be a really big deal as you are most likely a part of it, and certain countries in Europe can even influence who gets picked as the emperor. It is equally possible that Austria will stay as emperor for the entire game as it is that another HRE member like Brandenburg or Bohemia will become emperor.

If you are playing as any Asian, African, or American country, then the HRE should be of little concern to you at all as none of the start date HRE members are colonial nations unless one of the Low Countries forms the Netherlands and manages to stay in the empire.

The HRE is a complex political system and it takes time to fully understand its many mechanics, but one general rule is that taking land from the HRE is generally a very bad idea unless you're playing as an expansionist France and you are very confident in both you and your allies' abilities.

For more information about the HRE, see its article. From Europa Universalis 4 Wiki. Retrieved from " http: Navigation menu Personal tools Not logged in Talk Contributions Log in. Views Read Edit View history. Navigation EU4 Wiki Main Page Paradox Wikis Paradox Forums Recent changes Random page. Tools What links here Related changes Special pages Printable version Permanent link Page information. This page was last modified on 10 June , at Content is available under Attribution-ShareAlike 3.

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