Simulation for the Nation

As I begin my journey with a preview build of Europa Universalis 5, the sheer granularity of its map overwhelms me. A plethora of countries, big and small, await a hand to guide their destiny through the late Middle Ages/early modern period. Although I’m offered suggestions based on my chosen experience level with the genre and playstyle preference, I mainly split my time between playing as Portugal and the Ottomans.

I’m a relative newcomer to the series – having drawn most of my Paradox grand strategy game experience from Crusader Kings and early Stellaris – so it’s unsurprising that I continue to feel overwhelmed as I spend the first few hours getting to grips with the busy UI while wrapping my head around EU5’s intricate systems.

Publisher Paradox Interactive is straightforward about this being a game intended for its dedicated core audience, yet, as I push on inspecting buttons and helpful nested tooltips, things slowly begin to click. At the same time, my countries steadily grow and flourish.

After 30+ hours, I have plenty left to learn, but I already want to hop back in and see how far I can take things before my subjects—who may or may not have been lacking luxuries such as jewels and food for significant amounts of time—decide that they’d do a better job steering the ship and instigate a civil war.

Before I get into the thick of it, I should note that several elements in the preview build were still under active development, including parts of the UI, AI, optimization, and various systems and mechanics.

A planned Crusader Kings-style tutorial wasn’t yet implemented, so I couldn’t rely on a potentially valuable learning tool, while the in-game Europedia, which gathers all relevant concepts, had yet to be appropriately formatted. My playthroughs also mainly focused on the first 100 years, a short but nonetheless important segment of a full run.

Perhaps Paradox Interactive’s worst-kept secret, Europa Universalis 5 maintains its focus on managing a country while promising a notable change in direction for the series, shifting away from boardgame-style “mana” mechanics as it decidedly embraces simulation.

It demands plenty of patience and attention, but figuring out how its many puzzle pieces slot in proves reliably rewarding. So does reaching higher positions on the score leaderboard, and should you decide to put on your conqueror hat, the sight of your country’s color and name stretching across a larger chunk of its world map.

In building its simulation-centric gameplay, Europa Universalis V takes inspiration from across Paradox’s portfolio of grand strategy games. The most notable example lies in how it handles the social and economic layers. One of its main pillars, pops, represent the people who make up its countries. They belong to different cultures and religions, which may or may not be tolerated in your lands, and have needs to fulfill, while being central to all your efforts.

Your resource gathering operations (RGOs) and buildings require enough pops belonging to specific social classes to function, but those levies that form the bulk of your army early on are also drawn from these very same pops. Should they die in battle, slow promotion to higher classes won’t be the only cause behind your worker shortage.

Expanding your buildings and RGOs lets you obtain various resources used both to keep your pops happy and for trade. Depending on who you play as, you’ll have access to certain goods but not others. Trading plays a significant role in keeping your coffers full and population satisfied, but wars, shifting prices, and embargos can cut supplies short, requiring you to pursue them elsewhere.

Politically, you have to regularly contact neighboring countries using diplomats, who act as more of a currency that replenishes over time than individual tokens, while also managing internal matters.

Estates represent groups of people – nobles, burghers, clerics, or commoners –each with their own interests. Keeping them happy yields different bonuses, but doing so might require nudging your society towards values that don’t fit your long-term plans. On the other hand, unhappy estates can turn rebellious while imposing penalties on research, trade, or counterespionage.

A similar balancing act occurs when calling in parliaments. Regularly doing so contributes to estate happiness while providing opportunities to speed up certain improvements both during and after the debate. It’s also a means of obtaining casus belli or lessening the cost of changing laws. Taking advantage of the passive bonuses that are often available while the debate takes place is a great way to build roads at a discount or speed up pops converting to your main religion, for example.

Each proposal has an initial success rate, but you can gain additional support from the estates through various promises. They range from improving or decreasing another country’s opinion of you to enacting different laws or encouraging your society to shift towards a spiritualist approach rather than embracing humanism.

Suppose you want to take advantage of the moment to gain a casus belli or lessen the cost of changing a law. In that case, you’ll have to sacrifice some of your success rate percentage and juggle additional, potentially harsher promises, like breaking a key alliance, or risk having the whole debate fail and losing stability. It’s a simple system, yet although some of the promises can feel a little inconsequential, it carries with it some of the weight that often accompanies political negotiations.

Europa Universalis V’s systems stretch much further and tend to avoid instant gratification. Instead, they focus on how approval, opinions, and preferences for specific ideas often go through natural or forced cycles of growth and decline. You have tools to influence their direction, but doing so takes time.

Although there were many constants while playing as both countries, ruling over the Ottomans felt quite different to leading Portugal.

For starters, I had access to the Rise of the Turks situation. This special event acted as both a source of guidance and a means to expedite taking over territory in the region, thanks to the ability to more easily gain casus belli on neighboring countries. Several other events nudged me towards potential objectives, highlighting key provinces while delving into the country’s cultural and religious aspects.

In terms of succession, the Ottomans preferred fratricide, which involved killing other potential successors, over peacefully passing down titles to eligible members of one’s dynasty. Their estates are more numerous and challenging to rein in, while Ottoman society is far more fragmented, with Turks, Greeks, and other groups belonging to different religions.

My soldiers swept across Anatolia, taking territories from weaker neighbors in battles reminiscent of pre-Victoria 3 warfare that give you control over both the composition and formation of your armies as well as where they move.

While integrating newly conquered land, I used diplomacy and marrying off daughters to create bonds that would hopefully speed up my pursuit to unify the region. I secured a personal union with one of my neighbors threatened by the Byzantines and Genoese but even when focusing on expansion, absorbing everyone around me would take a longer amount of time, at least without meticulous pre-planning.

My economy suffered, so I never built up a proper navy, but the option was always there, as was hiring privateers to raid on my behalf. This blend of short and long-term objectives, alongside events that derail efforts, requiring you to adapt, works effectively.

I constantly considered who to attack next and how long to wait between wars so I wouldn’t entirely neglect my country’s development. I pondered whether or not I could peacefully gain new vassals or annex those already under my control, as well as how I could deal with coalitions formed in response to my hunger for territory.

By comparison, my playthrough as Portugal was far more peaceful but no less exciting. Lacking a dedicated regional situation, I mainly focused on dealing with the Black Death while avoiding fully isolating my country, a strategy which worked fairly well if you discount the spontaneous downsizing of my population.

The Hundred Years’ War did trigger later on, but rather than get involved in the struggle between England and France, I pursued maintaining good relations with Castille, pledging my armies to safeguard the Iberian peninsula from Muslim incursions while bullying Granada occasionally.

I also sent explorers on expeditions to distant shores, having them uncover new parts of the map that could house future colonies. I also built a road network across my whole country and increased my trade capacity.

Although Castille effortlessly outpaced me in just about every facet, I found enough satisfaction in focusing on building things up in my provinces while paying more attention to my society’s needs and showing everyone the occasionally violent light of Catholicism.

Lacking a tutorial, I actively used Europa Universalis V’s automation system, which puts the AI in charge of managing parts of your country. You can freely turn it on and off, delegating trade and building responsibilities while you focus on wars or picking a single market to automate while you deal with the others. Managing laws, estates, taxes, calling in parliaments, alongside army or navy construction, also count among the parts that you can automate.

Turning it on and off as my focus shifted, allowed me to learn specific systems and mechanics without my country burning to the ground.

Although it lacks CK3’s more stylized touches, Europa Universalis V’s map remains quite eye-catching. It offers a multitude of filters that provide information on anything from nations to population numbers, the rate of development or control, and the main resource present in provinces.

Its varied soundtrack surprises by inserting traditional music fitting to the region you’re playing in between more traditional, western orchestral tracks. As the Ottomans, I was pleased to hear microtonal elements in a track, while my brief time in the Ashikaga Shogunate’s lands treated me to the lovely sounds of the shamisen.

The UI could use some streamlining, especially since navigating diplomatic and economic options sometimes requires too many clicks, but a good chunk of relevant information is readily available. Nested tooltips return, doing a great job of providing instant reminders on key concepts by simply hovering over them and waiting for a few seconds.

My time with Europa Universalis V’s preview build leaves me eager to see how the game evolves in the latter ages. Its new framework takes some getting used to, but seems sturdy enough to support its lofty ambitions.

Paradox’s simulation-focused gambit does make interacting with some parts of EUV—like markets and trade—a bit too dry for my taste, yet the shift away from “mana” does a better job of giving actions proper weight. In addition, it more faithfully represents the shifts that take place in society while encouraging careful planning across all its facets.

If developer Paradox Tinto takes its time to polish these systems while giving more countries around the world a similar amount of specific flavor as the Ottomans currently have, the next entry in its storied series could, indeed, prove quite special. Europa Universalis V is set to launch on PC and doesn’t currently have a release window.

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