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Playing Europa Universalis 5 as a long-time fan of Paradox grand technique video games is like going into the star gate in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Everywhere you look, whirling previous you, you see influences from its predecessors and contemporaries. “Oh, look, you may change manufacturing strategies like in Victoria 3, the rulers are like they’re in Imperator, and the levy system seems like Crusader Kings 2!”
Review information
Platform reviewed: PC
Available on: PC
Release date: November 4, 2025
Let’s begin with the time period that it covers – your game starts in 1337, a year that saw the start of the Hundred Years War, Petrarch visiting Rome for the first time, and, apparently, the founding of Berkshire’s Bisham Priory. The next few centuries are yours to seize control of, one way or another, and you can do this on an hour by hour basis, should you choose.
It starts more than a century before games in Europa Universalis 4, allowing for some extra time in the late Middle Ages, before knights give way to hussars. This also neatly allows the game to introduce situations, a new feature in EU5 that makes certain events play center stage, more than they did in its predecessor.
For example, when the Hundred Years’ War kicks off (pessimistically still named that in 1337), it’s easy to, at a glance, see the strength of each side and who is in whose alliance, which lets you check whether you can tip the balance. Situations spring up throughout the game and include such historical moments as the struggle between the Guelphs and Ghibellines and the Reformation.
This new start line additionally comes with a worth – the Black Death will begin raging its manner around the globe after just a few years. In each of my campaigns as Castille and as Holland, my inhabitants was halved by the pandemic. In EU4, a plague meant dropping revenue or autonomy; right here, it truly issues on a a lot better scale. The sport fashions your nation’s inhabitants whether or not you’re a one-province minor or an ideal energy, and every lifeless topic means one much less job, one much less soldier, one much less little bit of productiveness on your nation. It’s my favourite change within the sport, and represents a pattern away from abstractions and in the direction of extra concrete, necessary measurements of a nation’s talents.
Best bit
Fighting for brand spanking new colonies in North America with the English. They thought that they’d me, however they did not financial institution on me being allies with France, who promptly stomped them.
Abstractions had been all over the place in EU4. Your provinces may very well be developed, however that did not actually imply a lot past being barely richer and the province having just a few extra buildings. Administrative, diplomatic, and army factors, referred to as mana, functioned as your capacity to develop provinces, to advertise generals, and to analysis new applied sciences, which had been very restricted in quantity. Mana would not exist right here, past some rankings that let you see what your rulers and courtiers are greatest at. You develop provinces by directing a minister to take action, whereas analysis is now based mostly on extra concrete components like your individuals’s literacy.
The tech tree is a real delight, too – the variety of techs is boosted by a ridiculous diploma, with every of the sport’s ages, bar the very first, having greater than 100 techs. It’s far more like a tech tree that you simply would possibly discover in Civilization than the, as soon as once more, abstracted variant encountered in EU4.
Choosing a nationwide focus initially of a brand new age additionally unlocks sure particular techs, and you may give attention to administrative, diplomatic, or army techs. As you progress alongside the techs, you may unlock new legal guidelines to codify, new authorities reforms to form your state, and extra. States are extra fluid than in earlier instalments, too – gone are nationwide missions that might railroad your progress.
Here, you may form your nation nonetheless you want alongside varied axes representing issues like centralization vs decentralization, aristocracy vs plutocracy, and traditionalist vs modern. These may be modified at any level by assigning certainly one of your cupboard members to affect the nation, whereas authorities reforms characterize highly effective methods to vary your nation’s central ethoses.
Call of Ducats: Early Modern Warfare
The genre EU5 occupies is often referred to as map painting games, and, as you’d expect of a game that kicks off with the Hundred Years’ War, waging wars is integral. You can’t just let your neighbors have that tasty trade good, after all. The military aspect of the game feels like a mesh of EU4 and the Crusader Kings series.
As mentioned, you can call up levies, but you can also (and should) build a professional military, too. Capturing forts and cities gives you a zone of control, so focusing on those rather than individual provinces is the order of the day. It’s far from exhilarating, but it does interweave wonderfully with the game’s systems.
Soldiers and sailors are people, so calling up either land or naval levies reduces the population in their home area. This means that for each levy called up, local food production and raw materials output drop, and troopers lost from your levies are lost from your wider population. If your military is professionalized, you won’t be calling up big Bjorn the farmer anymore, so he can keep tilling his land, making them a potentially better value proposition.
War is more expensive than it’s ever been in the series, and not only because of the effects on population. You also need to factor in upkeep costs and the ability for your soldiers to find food, a new resource, while doing their grim duty. How you do this isn’t particularly well-explained (one of the game’s few pain points), so until you figure it out you can expect to wind up with quite a few of your men dropping dead from attrition. The Clausewitz quote that “War is the continuation of policy with other means” is made very plain here, and it affects your country to a massive degree.
A map that’s truly off the charts
What a map it is to paint, though. Just staggeringly enormous, with a dizzying number of countries to play as, from the Aak’u to Zutphen. Everywhere you look, you notice little touches. Some are obvious, such as the way that all but the smallest nations will be made up of multiple locations, allowing for more development options for small countries, with each area having a good that you extract with a Resource Gathering Operation (RGO).
Others are more subtle, such as the increase in the size of the Holy Roman Empire, which is made up of many more states than it was previously, or that zooming in on a location shows individual buildings that you’ve built, and hovering over them will tell you what they are.
The only problem that I’ve noticed is that native peoples seem to be underrepresented; there’s really not that many of them, particularly in North America, and that’s a real shame. I imagine it will improve over time with DLC, but at the moment, they’re thin on the ground.
In addition to the traditional fare of grand strategy games, that is, landed powers, you can also play as landless nations for the first time. You can, for example, play as the Bank of Peruzzi or the Hanseatic League and be a kingmaker without ever actually owning any land directly. Landless nations are pretty sparse in terms of options at the moment, but I still appreciate it, as playing a bank seems like ‘playing tall’ (developing your nation rather than conquering others’ lands) taken to its logical conclusion.
Whichever type of nation you play as, you’ll be up against AI that feels more aggressive than in previous games. In multiple games, I saw France (and it is always France) conquer chunks of Aragon or gobble up German provinces by the pfund. Whether I was fighting them as Spain or allying with them like a remora fish allies to a shark as Holland, they had been a serious power to be reckoned with. I used to be at one level capable of break EU4 over my knee, however the identical methods do not appear to work right here, so be ready to study it once more.
Speaking of studying, EU5 is each essentially the most accessible and most advanced that the sequence has ever been. New automation options let you hand off management over taxes and commerce to the AI, do you have to select, and it is fairly darn good at it, too. This is fairly essential, as till you’ve got paid your deposit, measured in, conservatively, tens of hours, you are going to have some bother studying the UI.
It’s typically not significantly clear find out how to do sure issues or which menu it is advisable open to do them (I’m you, RGO building menu). The tutorial is noticeably higher than in earlier Paradox titles, however nonetheless leaves some issues unexplained, which is irritating.
The solely different small nitpick that I’ve with the sport is that it recycles an excellent variety of occasions and achievements from EU4. I admire that finishing, say, the Lion of the North achievement goes to be completely different on this sport, however I’d have most well-liked some recent challenges. Similarly, as you roll from month to month as an skilled EU4, you may recognise a few of the occasion pop-ups and their choices.
Despite these small points, Europa Universalis 5 represents an enormous leap ahead for the sequence. While penning this overview, I’ve been pondering who I want to play as subsequent, which financial approaches to make use of, and what different elements of the world I need to see. Monumentally advanced however extra accessible than ever earlier than, it’s already a grand technique basic and already a worthy substitute for its predecessor.
Should you play Europa Universalis 5?
Play it if…
Don’t play it if…
Accessibility
Accessibility features are pretty lacking in Europa Universalis 5, but there is a colorblind mode, which is likely the most important accessibility feature for a game like this. A high-contrast map mode would be a great addition, as would the ability to change the game’s font.
How I reviewed Europa Universalis 5
I played as both Castille and the Netherlands, and also tried playing as the Bank of Bardi, giving me a good look at several different nation types. In addition to this, I took part in colonisation and exploration, the Reformation, and several other key events throughout the game. I played the game on my PC, which has an Intel i7 12700f CPU, 32GB of RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card.
First reviewed October 2025