The strategy game Europa Universalis IV has become a mammoth work in 2024 with its 16th expansion “Winds of Change,” which leaves our strategy expert Schuhmann in awe. Those who want to own the entire game on Steam must pay €370. But is it worth it?
What kind of game is Europa Universalis IV?
- Europa Universalis is a classic 4X global strategy game like Civilization: You have to explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate. “Exploring” is rather pointless because we play on historical Earth, and everyone should know where France, Spain, and England are located.
- In Europa Universalis, you can steer the fate of every country from 1444 to 1821, roughly from the fall of Byzantium to the Industrial Revolution. The game is not limited to Europe; you can become the Mongols and invade China, seek your fortune in the Japan of the Samurai and Shogun, or decapitate and sacrifice your opponents as a Maya prince.
- Europa Universalis was released in 2013 and is the epitome of a service game that has been continuously expanded over 11 years with new gameplay systems and improvements in comfort.
Europa Universalis was once described by a human rights activist as follows:
In Sweden, they make games that consist only of maps. No one knows how to play them, and people just stare at the maps for hours, watching the colors change.
Europa Universalis IV is the deepest strategy game on Steam
The special thing about Europa Universalis is: The uniqueness lies in the extreme variety and depth of the game. While the fundamental principles are the same in every match, the conditions vary significantly depending on the country you choose.
This is not like Civilization, where every country is essentially very similar and just has slightly different bonuses; the specific traits and starting conditions of a country require completely different playstyles:
- If you play as the Ottomans, basically as the Turks, your gameplay revolves around the military, constant warfare, and world domination.
- If you choose Castile, the later Spain, you will drive the Moors out of Granada and discover new worlds.
- If you play as the Incas, the focus of the new DLC “Winds of Change,” you start in the New World and must ensure you get your country under control before the damned Portuguese show up.
The AI forms alliances to protect itself
This is how Europa Universalis IV plays: In every game, you will approximately do the same things: build an economy, forge alliances, and conquer provinces. But you also have a rigid mission tree that you should follow.
For the Turks, for example, the objective is to conquer land in the east towards Egypt and make progress in the west towards Austria-Hungary. However, that is not easy because the AI in Europa Universalis is good at forming alliances and securing itself.
Anyone who thinks they can go through the wall with their head will inevitably fail and become entangled in multi-front wars and be mercilessly crushed.
Since you must play on “Iron Man” to earn achievements, save scumming rarely helps you out of a bind: Once-made decisions like “I’ll quickly conquer Moldavia, and I’ll deal with Hungary and Russia at the same time” can quickly lead to frustration.
The best way to play Europa Universalis IV is like a schoolyard bully
The promising playstyle of Europa Universalis is that of a schoolyard bully: You look for the smallest, isolated child on the playground and take their pocket money, meaning their lands.
Because the art in Europa Universalis is not to start world wars and win them at great personal loss that you then have to recover from for years, but rather to conduct wars as effortlessly as possible, win, grow stronger, and secure yourself.
This makes Europa Universalis a considerable challenge even for experienced strategy gamers because expanding at any cost, the usual strategy in every game, doesn’t work that easily.
Europa Universalis knows its weaknesses and has been addressing them for years
This is the weakness of Europa Universalis: Like every 4X game, Europa Universalis tends to “bloat” as the playtime increases: At the beginning, there are few armies, few provinces, and rarely a significant decision made, which consumes a lot of time.
You are fully immersed in the game, see everything, and have a clear view of what matters.
As you play longer, you inevitably have more armies, more land, and many more decisions to make, which you click through disinterestedly. Everything becomes cumbersome and seems to lose significance. It turns into a chore to command and send out 10 armies.
Suddenly, it becomes a tedious task to ensure that your 40,000 soldiers don’t starve in barren areas or stand idly around.
The special thing about Europa Universalis is that the developers at Paradox recognized all of this years ago and introduced a multitude of quality-of-life improvements and automations to make it easier for players to manage their empires. Troops can be automated, regions can be expanded and improved with just a few clicks.
Europa Universalis is impressive, but I don’t love it
Is Europa Universalis good then? The reviews on Steam for Europe Universalis are “very positive” – 86%.
For me, Europa Universalis IV is an impressive game, solely because of its complexity. But it is also a technical, hard-to-read game.
There are technical decisions hidden somewhere in the mission tree that grant bonuses when you complete an obscure task: Nested, hidden modifiers that simulate historical events:
- I love Crusader Kings 3 by Paradox; that’s the game I know well and feel comfortable with.
- In Europa Universalis IV, I always feel like a stranger. The game offers me so many opportunities to engage with world history. But with many tasks, I feel overwhelmed.
Yes, you can play 1444 Utrecht and become the vassal of Burgundy, having practically no decision-making power. And yes, somewhere there is a brilliant guide on how to overwhelm the lord, maybe by cleverly marrying into the Spanish royal family or claiming overseas territories in the Caribbean for yourself.
Sure, that may exist somewhere.
But ultimately, I keep returning to my comfort states: the Ottoman Empire, Castile, and the Incas, which I know how the first few decades will go and what I need to do.
Either pay €370, wait for a sale, or grab the subscription
Is it really that expensive? At full price, the game alone costs about €40, the starter edition with some expansions €50, and the entire bundle with all expansions indeed costs €370.
However, there is currently a sale until May 23, which allows you to get the base game for €12, the starter edition for €22.50, and the ultimate bundle for €157.
You can also subscribe for €8 a month (via gamestar).
If you want to catch up on Europa Universalis IV 11 years after its release to fill a knowledge gap, you certainly have something to look forward to, but also something you can become frustrated with. The more personal and accessible game by Paradox for me is Crusader Kings 3: Steam: I started as a lonely Viking – 400 years later I control half of Europe, have 12,300 descendants, and a problem
