Europa Universalis IV

 PC
User Score
8.7

Generally favorable reviews- based on 1463 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,250 out of 1463
  2. Mixed: 115 out of 1463
  3. Negative: 98 out of 1463

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  1. wojownik133
    Jul 28, 2021
    6
    It's good game but I guess it inflated over the time and requires refreshment. The resolution is way to low for 2021. Plus I have never figured out how the trade worked.
  2. Molazza
    Jun 28, 2021
    7
    Massive game thath you can enjoy for infinite hour. The problem is always the same: with all dlc, from the release of the base game to the addiction of the monthly subscription, we have paid more than 200€. I don't like the moneygrabbing policy of paradox.
  3. jmhoffer
    Oct 29, 2015
    5
    Europa Universalis is nearly brilliant. Nearly.

    On the grand strategy level, it is beautiful; make alliances, arrange marriages, control trade, pirate your rivals' trade, colonise the primitive lands and more. But where it fails spectacularly is on the TACTICAL level. Which, if you plan on expanding by conquest, is major. The inherent problem with combat is that you have zero    Europa Universalis is nearly brilliant. Nearly.

    On the grand strategy level, it is beautiful; make alliances, arrange marriages, control trade, pirate your rivals' trade, colonise the primitive lands and more.

    But where it fails spectacularly is on the TACTICAL level. Which, if you plan on expanding by conquest, is major.

    The inherent problem with combat is that you have zero control over it. You send in some armies and then everything is handled automatically. The problem with this is that the combat is SPECTACULARLY complex. And despite being complex and difficult, the only control you have is how many men you send into battle and whether or not they have a general leading them.

    This means that you win or lose battles for entirely unknown reasons or by total random chance. The battle system is so complex that the only way people actually know anything about it is by delving into the code. Despite this, again, you have ZERO control. Worse yet, random chance can easily screw you over when you otherwise have an overwhelming advantage.

    Unless you study the battle system like you study for your college exams, you have no chance of understanding it or how to win. This completely takes away from the rest of the game to the point where it just gets frustrating and no longer fun unless you have a strange obsession or literally have no life other than working and this game.

    Of course, the combat becomes much easier when you get cannons. The secret to cannons? Get a **** ton of them. The more you have, the more likely you are to win. So have as many cannons as you have men in melee and you'll nearly always win. But until then, combat is spectacularly difficult without doing an immense amount of research and asking for immense amounts of help from people that have delved into the code.

    Either pick a start date where cannons are already available or only fight when you have overwhelming numbers on your side.    … Expand
  4. thenerdmaster
    Aug 19, 2013
    7
    This installment of the europa universalis series has improved alot of features about the game, making the game easier to play, keeping complexity but making the game less complicated. What I don't like is that the AI is still pretty bad in the EU series. While the opponent wont send troops to random suicide missions like previous installments it's basically still broken. For exampleThis installment of the europa universalis series has improved alot of features about the game, making the game easier to play, keeping complexity but making the game less complicated. What I don't like is that the AI is still pretty bad in the EU series. While the opponent wont send troops to random suicide missions like previous installments it's basically still broken. For example during a long war the enemy had stacks of 20 troops which they were just moving between the same provinces for the entire war. This ended up with me winning against a enemy that had a vastly superior military than me. By killing of his weaker stacks first and then going for the big one.

    Allies are also abit stupid and they usually end up standing around at a corner of the country that you are trying to invade instead of actually helping in the battles. This, coupled with a warscore system where the death of 1000 soldiers is about equal to the death of 10000 soldiers, kind of breaks how war works in the game. Alot of the times you will see big territories on the AI map that has been conquered by rebels due to the AIs inability to handle wars properly.

    Another thing that I found disturbing is that the game is also somewhat too european centric (yea i know its called europa universalis).
    http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?657309-IS-Europa-Universalis-3-somewhat-racist
    Where anything that isn't western is deemded as technologically backwards. This clearly ingores the fact that alot of discoveries in the 1400 where made in the east (for example gunpowder and muskets). I know that this is the world from a european point of view but it still seems to be abit baltant to devide countries into technology gropus where some are just "worse" than others. Also making poland a eastern technology group is in my opinion historically incorrect in that case.

    But im really focusing on the bad bit the game has alot of positivies also, if you are willing to spend hundreds of hours on this game then you will probably have alot of fun (and also neglect work and family).    … Expand
  5. swammerdam
    Feb 19, 2015
    5
    Good strategic game with lots to take care of. But way to much negative point, the tutorial mission are useless which make it really hard to understand that complex game. There is a lots of grammar mistake in the French version, and the text is way to small in 1920 p .
  6. Refar
    Sep 2, 2013
    5
    Somewhat disappointing. My expectations were quite high, and unfortunately the game did not live up to them. From the mechanics point of view there are a couple of steps back or things missing compared to the previous EU3. Probably leaving space for future DLC (and there are already a dozen of them out, the game being a month old).
    And then there is the issue with the ancient    Somewhat disappointing. My expectations were quite high, and unfortunately the game did not live up to them. From the mechanics point of view there are a couple of steps back or things missing compared to the previous EU3. Probably leaving space for future DLC (and there are already a dozen of them out, the game being a month old).
    And then there is the issue with the ancient engine/interface. Barely any options to setup the graphical detail, bitmap fonts not scaling with resolution and other small things like that.

    I think with time, patches and DLC content, the game might some day become really good, bit it is not there yet.    … Expand
  7. mekane84
    Dec 11, 2013
    5
    This game was really cool at first, but by the end of my game (after 60 hours of game play or so) the game has lost all of the fun and interesting elements to it. The strategy in the game seems very limited. By comparison, I feel that Civ 5 has WAY more strategical depth and important decisions to make throughout an entire game.

    -Technology is a joke: its impractical to take    This game was really cool at first, but by the end of my game (after 60 hours of game play or so) the game has lost all of the fun and interesting elements to it. The strategy in the game seems very limited. By comparison, I feel that Civ 5 has WAY more strategical depth and important decisions to make throughout an entire game.

    -Technology is a joke: its impractical to take technologies ahead of time, so you end up at the same technological ability as all of the other top rivals. The only real difference would be through the Idea groups. That's basically you're biggest economic strategical decision to make in the game which Idea groups to invest in. However, these aren't exactly overly influential to the game play.

    Decisions on money spending: You basically have to choose which buildings to build, or how many troops to raise. I don't feel like this decision is generally very difficult, or even that important. Usually you get as big of an army/navy as you need, and spend the rest on buildings. The buildings don't do much though, and its usually not tough to figure out where or what buildings to build.

    Combat: Combat is really annoying more than strategical. The AI is very pesky and it forces you to constantly pay attention and combat their movements with your own. Its very tedious because they can be very hit and run style, and unless you pay very close attention and turn down the game speed, they will take advantage of you. And even when you do pay close attention, its not difficult to figure out where you want your troops, its just tedious work.

    Diplomacy: Annoying. I am allied with England, but if I go to War with France and their allies Burgundy and Scottland, England won't really help me, they will only attack Scottland and leave me to die via huge armies from Burgandy/France. Also, when they call me to war, and I help them by taking over all of France, they will then sign for peace, and I get no new territories, wtf...

    Random Events: powerful but uncontrollable? no thanks.

    Positives:
    -I do like the UI, its fairly easy to do things in this game mass build, queue units, get to different screens, transport units.
    -Music is really good, though if you don't like it, it could get repetitive.
    -First 100 years were pretty exciting, more things to do at that point.

    I am definitely disappointed in this game. It is not fun. This game is complicated because it has a lot of different components to it, and hard to figure out how they all work, but it is not complicated from a strategy perspective, i think you'll see how simple it really is after you figure out how all the components of this game work. Like another reviewer said, its basically Risk with a thin layer of economy and diplomacy attached.    … Expand
  8. Mikimax
    Aug 21, 2013
    7
    This game is gonna make your head, eyes and back hurt, it's gonna eat your life away and give you insomnia. If you have a life, stay away, if you have time to waste, this is the game for you!
  9. tbas11
    Sep 10, 2013
    5
    This is not a bad game but it is a significant downgrade from EU3.

    My biggest problem is that the gameplay feels extremely game-y. The technology system is beyond ridiculous. A country that invests heavily in colonial technology will exhaust all of its "diplomatic points" and will have terrible ship technology, which is absurd. Likewise a country that constantly goes to war will    This is not a bad game but it is a significant downgrade from EU3.

    My biggest problem is that the gameplay feels extremely game-y. The technology system is beyond ridiculous. A country that invests heavily in colonial technology will exhaust all of its "diplomatic points" and will have terrible ship technology, which is absurd. Likewise a country that constantly goes to war will exhaust all its "military points" and end up with terrible military technology, which is the opposite of what should happen in reality.

    I understand why Paradox did this to prevent big countries from getting to much momentum and eating all the little ones. However, it doesn't work, since all the same countries that dominated in EU3 will still dominate in EU4. Likewise, it forces the player to spend a lot of time sitting around doing nothing, since the points system rewards passiveness and punishes any sort of player action. This is especially true with non-European countries who get hit with -1 tech points.

    The game also weakens the player's ability to control his country's direction, compared to EU3. No longer are there sliders. Much of your nation's success will come from your monarch's statistics (pure luck) as well as luck with the CONSTANT random events.

    It also suffers from the exact same major problems as EU3, none of which Paradox bothered to fix: easily abusable enemy AI and "blobbing" by countries like France and the Ottomans.

    Pros:
    + Easy to learn for new players
    + Good music

    Cons:
    - Less intuitive technology system than EU3
    - Same AI problems as EU3 (especially with regards to troop movement)
    - Historically unrealistic domination by the same countries as in EU3 (France, Ottomans, Ming)
    - Too many random events take control out of the hands of the player
    - Lack of any significant gameplay improvements from its predecessor, in fact a downgrade when playing non-Western countries
    - Game rewards passive play through the points system    … Expand
  10. OllyNorton
    Dec 9, 2013
    6
    Picked this up in a recent steam sale. I hadn't played any of the previous EU games and gave the reviews a read before jumping in and was overwhelmed by how positive they are.

    The best word I can use to describe this game is obtuse. It is extremely unforgiving of any early players. So what anyone, who hasn't played the early versions, needs to know is that this game requires a lot of    Picked this up in a recent steam sale. I hadn't played any of the previous EU games and gave the reviews a read before jumping in and was overwhelmed by how positive they are.

    The best word I can use to describe this game is obtuse. It is extremely unforgiving of any early players. So what anyone, who hasn't played the early versions, needs to know is that this game requires a lot of time to get to grips with. I personally picked this up for a laptop game to play whilst travelling and just can't be bothered to master it's overly complicated UI and subtle nuances. For those willing to invest the time I'm sure all these 10s are deserving but if you are looking for something Enjoyable right off the bat keep looking. This game will mock you with it's overly complex UI and seemingly inane strategy system.

    Im still at the point after about 5 hours where everything feels random earlier today an army of 20k English troops got decimated by a Lancashire revolt of 6k. I met them on a plane and they just fought through me like I wasn't there. It's unexplained stuff like this that gets me. The game requires you to go hunting for the stat that caused this battle to go so very wrong, it won't show you or tell you why you lost that would be far to straight forward. As I say this is obtuse.

    I imagine the 10s are from those who have managed to master it's subtleties but for anyone looking to jump in and play know you are in for a very hard time at first and if you aren't wiling to invest that time it will be an ultimately poor experience. That is how I have graded this game, no doubt I will have a fair few people moan 'how can i judge a game when i haven't committed to learn it blah blah blah blah). However there are probably others like me out there considering this game and I will say only buy if you have the time.    … Expand
  11. Imperius147
    Aug 22, 2019
    7
    Pro+
    - best grand strategy
    - alternative world history... transforming my country to the World Empire

    Cons-
    - tons DLC
    - DLC politics
    - expensive DLC
  12. Mynameispingu
    Aug 25, 2013
    6
    If you liked EUIII you're going to like EUIV.
    However on the contrary the game's been out for a week and there's already DLC, which is slightly disgusting in my eyes.
  13. Yazah
    Sep 7, 2013
    5
    This game is your standard micro-management world domination type of game. It has a demo, so check it out and see if it is worth buying.

    Two things I don't like: 1) Almost all the 10 star reviews on here are from people who have never reviewed another game, and they all use pretty much the same language. So be suspicious. 2) The game itself has tons of DLC so if you want the    This game is your standard micro-management world domination type of game. It has a demo, so check it out and see if it is worth buying.

    Two things I don't like:

    1) Almost all the 10 star reviews on here are from people who have never reviewed another game, and they all use pretty much the same language. So be suspicious.

    2) The game itself has tons of DLC so if you want the "full experience" it costs closer to $70, not the $40 you pay initially.

    Beside that, rebels in the game are severely overpowered, and so world domination becomes more of a "whack-a-mole" challenge with rebels that magically arise from poor and remote provinces with 10 armies. Sure, keep your people happy, give them what they want, expand slowly I get it. But if you want anything resembling a "quick" game (under 30 hours) this is not it. And the 30 hours aren't fun it's just waiting for things to build, hoping nobody declares war on you for the things you did 500 years ago, and totally disrupting your empire's stability.

    Also, research: It penalizes you for getting ahead, which basically takes away any incentive for a technological type victory and instead forces you into the cookie-cutter "gentle wars and diplomacy" approach that this is built around.

    Overall, game design needs a bit of diversity, and more strategic options to make it replayable.    … Expand
  14. Megatanis
    Aug 28, 2013
    5
    uhm..ok this is a tough one. I am a huge fan of the EU and CIV series, been playing since EU2 and the very first civ game, pure genius. They did with EU4 more or less what they did to the civ series: streamlined. If this is good for you, then you'lll ike EU4. Personally, I consider civ5 to be one of the worst pieces of crap to have ever graced my HD, an insult to intelligence.
    With EU4, I    uhm..ok this is a tough one. I am a huge fan of the EU and CIV series, been playing since EU2 and the very first civ game, pure genius. They did with EU4 more or less what they did to the civ series: streamlined. If this is good for you, then you'lll ike EU4. Personally, I consider civ5 to be one of the worst pieces of crap to have ever graced my HD, an insult to intelligence.
    With EU4, I am not very sure. To understand why, one must have some sort of previous knowledge/experience of EU titles.
    The game is playable, and moderately enjoyable. Many dynamics have been completely changed, such as economy sliders (economy sliders?), the ever present money vs inflation vs tech investment "thing" (gone), trade is a sort of mystery I still have to figure out (but it's waaaay less relevant than in the older titles) and a very heavy reliance on a sort of point system determining tech progress and national ideas development (points generated are determined by your leader's skills, so you basically pray for a good leader).
    Everything is easier, simpler and more direct than in the older titles. Which does'nt mean I think it's better. I had perfectly accustomed to the old system, so these changes I view as unnecessary at worst and marginal at best. What I may say is that certainly the game tries to play like a classic EU title, and ends up being a slighlty less interesting "adventure" than in the previous installments.
    Of course there will be mods and patches, so I guess the game is going to change a lot.
    Suffice to say that my very first game at EU4 I chose to play the Pope, 3 starting provinces and lousy economy. Anyone who has played a EU game knows what I'm talking about. Well, after 50-60 years, I had all of Italy from Modena to Palermo. Core status and culture can be changed rather effortlessly, making expansion easy. I found all very very easy.
    Oh and of course, welcome to steam. I hope you are not bothered by things like not being able to play a LAN game with your brother sitting next to you without passing through steam, or having to read every time you start the game things like :"BUY NATIONAL MONUMENTS NOW!! ENTER OPEN STORE!!" which is kind of lame in my book especially in a strategic title (and btw, so I don't get national monuments if I don't pay?).
    At the end of the day, right now EU4 is a blander, less interesting and VERY streamlined version of EU3. A completely modded EU3 is a much more "mature" game.
    Time will tell if this game's aim was to change the genre and revive it in a constructive way, or to allow people to play EU on their iphones or something.    … Expand
  15. Relian
    Jun 1, 2014
    5
    Tried playing this game and just couldn't get into it. I kept getting wars with 8+ factions against me, and it just took forever to get anything done. Boring.
  16. Tubey
    May 16, 2015
    7
    Hmmm what to make of this... on one side of the coin, this is an absolutely majestic bit of game making with an unparalleled amount of attention to detail. But on the other side, it is horrifically dictated by RNG random events and has the smallest UI text known to mankind; which is bad because this game lives and dies by its' massive amount of menus and sub menus.

    Intricate is the    Hmmm what to make of this... on one side of the coin, this is an absolutely majestic bit of game making with an unparalleled amount of attention to detail. But on the other side, it is horrifically dictated by RNG random events and has the smallest UI text known to mankind; which is bad because this game lives and dies by its' massive amount of menus and sub menus.

    Intricate is the buzzword here. It is a horrid game to try and get into, and a lot of players will turn it off within 30 minutes because not since the likes of X-Com (the old one) has a game been this reliant on literally hundreds of micro options. So it's crucial you get the UI and navigation right - EU4 does and doesn't in equal measure. The menus are strategy gamer porn - but you need a magnifying glass to see them. So it makes the game a pleasure and a chore in equal measure.

    A key part of the game is a stat called Stability, and it is this that is very much in the hands of the RNG gods, as random events pop up at... well, random, to undo your best laid plans. Rather than add to the game an element of dynamism, they serve to by and large annoy.

    You can pore hundreds of hours into this, then look back with satisfaction but also an element of "what the hell did I just do all that for?" It's fun and tedious, compelling yet labour intensive.

    In summary, if you love Civilisation and want an extra challenge (albeit an overstated one; when you get the hang of this, it's positively easy), then EU4 is for you. If you haven't played Civ, consider picking up Civ4 first and getting your feet wet before delving into this, as it's a game where even the tutorial takes pleasure in complicating you.    … Expand
  17. gracjanski
    Mar 12, 2018
    6
    I dont know, how people can give this game 10/10. For me this means, this game is at least almost perfect and there are only little mistakes. In my view this game has more than just little mistakes.

    First of all, this game is 5 years old and it costs a lot of money (over 200€), because it has countless DLCs. Some of the content should be in the base game, so this politics makes me very    I dont know, how people can give this game 10/10. For me this means, this game is at least almost perfect and there are only little mistakes. In my view this game has more than just little mistakes.

    First of all, this game is 5 years old and it costs a lot of money (over 200€), because it has countless DLCs. Some of the content should be in the base game, so this politics makes me very suspicious. In addition there are 2 DLCs with metal soundtrack, in most of the cases to find out later, that you dont want it...you cant make it more obvious how commercial EU4 is.
    In addition you cant buy everything retail, only on Steam...what I will never do.

    Another big problem with EU4 is the tutorial and manual. After completing them you still dont know the details of the game mechanics, maybe you just know the basics. For a complex game this is unacceptable. You need to research in internet to understand how this game works and you will need a lot of time. It means also you will loose a lot of your life time to be able to enjoy this game, before that you are often searching for informations to solve a problem you have in your campaign.

    The 3rd problem is the boring graphic and presentation of the game. The fun factor is low, this game looks like a visualisation of an excel table. Look at Civilization 4 or 5 how it works. In EU4 there is no intro, no videos at all, nothing special happens, just some texts from time to time, some numbers are changing. And to get that, you need to research in internet for informations like mentioned above...I lost my motivation for that.

    Of course this game has some strengths. The most obvious is the amount of data about history of the world. You get many historical events and missions to play a country more or less like in reality and not only countries from Europe or North America, but also from Asia, Africa and Middle / South America. Perfect.

    The gameplay is very complex, like wrote earlier. So there are many possibilities, many mechanics to discover. We have enough games for the masses, so the more complex games we get, the better.    … Expand
  18. jblac02
    Nov 28, 2013
    6
    Before I get into my thoughts about the game I'd like to state that this is my 2nd Paradox game after Victoria 2(V2) and my opinions will be biased based on the hundreds of hours I've spent on playing V2. I read alot of glowing reviews before buying EU4 and even more before writing this which makes me feel like they either have very little experience with gs games or they didn't playBefore I get into my thoughts about the game I'd like to state that this is my 2nd Paradox game after Victoria 2(V2) and my opinions will be biased based on the hundreds of hours I've spent on playing V2. I read alot of glowing reviews before buying EU4 and even more before writing this which makes me feel like they either have very little experience with gs games or they didn't play very much before writing the reviews.

    The first thing I read was that a new player could pick any little nation and jump right in with the potential to become a world power; this couldn't be further from the truth. Even after extensive reading and testing(and I'd consider myself a veteran of strategy games), I found it basically impossible to play anything other than a european great power if I wanted to accomplish anything other than sitting there passively building up points for decades at a time. The "monarch points" system is a major design flaw in my eyes and seriously hurts the flow of the game; all of the points are linked to at multiple different uses and really affects your ability to experience control of your nation without giving up other aspects. What this basically means is that if you declare war alot, your navy will fall behind because its linked to diplomatic points while the same idea holds true for administrative points because you have to use it for administrative technology and "ideas" which are basically traits you can pick for your nation plus all the points are linked to different buildings forcing you to pick over another choice. When you compare this to the system in V2, all of these things are on their own point system and aren't shared with other actions meaning research points are strictly for new research and you aren't forced to use them to acquire territory or perform anything else.

    One thing I noticed was that no matter who I played, unless I was playing a great power I could never seem to field more than a tiny army in comparison to some of the enormous million man armies I've fielded in V2. Even playing as spain while being the 1st great power with an enormous empire spanning most of south and north america nearly 70% through the game I had a laughably small army of maybe 120-150k men while barely breaking even and almost all of it was required simply to keep France and its allies at bay leaving little opportunity to attack anyone elsewhere or even to really defend most of my empire. In comparison to V2, I just feel like I'm almost better off not fighting anyone simply because I'm losing points for capturing territory and having different resources from territories means basically nothing since none of the units require anything specific to build. In V2 there are certain provinces that contain extremely valuable resources like rubber and coal which are required for many military units/buildings and it just doesn't feel like there's any real urgency to capture anything in EU4 in comparison.

    Another major issue I have with the game is the huge amount of random events;they are pretty much just there to make your life more difficult; Some of them were just minor nuisances like a bit of lost prestige and some of them were major crippling events like losing tech points or like stability loss during early wars putting my fragile economy negative in an already gold starved game. Buildings are also mostly pointless because of the incredible cost sink and the relatively tiny gains(+0.01 gold per month in most cases) meaning it would take decades or more just for them to pay for the initial investment while random events can cost you even more gold.

    While I really enjoyed the idea of having to explore the "new world" and not knowing what each colony even had to offer this too was flawed because of the goofy colonial design. Because of the way the naval distance works and the fact that you have to use technology points for the idea traits required to colonize, only portugal, spain and possibly france via north west africa(though i haven't tested it) can even attempt to colonize anything until much later in the game. The only way to really colonize is a linear path to brazil(or south into africa) via cape verde or one of 3 unclaimed west african provinces, and because of the distances and locations this either locks most european nations out of the colonial race entirely or until they have enough tech to completely cross the ocean without a bridging colony. While this may hold some historical truth it doesn't make alot of sense in a game that basically encourages you to change what happened historically.

    While I've said alot negative about the game it wasn't my intention to bash the game, just to describe my griefs and it's mostly nitpicking from a strategy game autists PoV. The game is still decent and I especially enjoyed the music, it just could have been so much more given a few mechanical direction changes.    … Expand
  19. some_gamer
    Jan 12, 2014
    7
    This is the first EU game I've played. At first I liked it (once I got past the steep learning curve), but then the flaws started showing- there's way too much randomness in this game which is not bad in itself, the problem is that this randomness has huge, tremendous impact on your game- it can turn it into a boring snooze fest or completely break it depending on what random events youThis is the first EU game I've played. At first I liked it (once I got past the steep learning curve), but then the flaws started showing- there's way too much randomness in this game which is not bad in itself, the problem is that this randomness has huge, tremendous impact on your game- it can turn it into a boring snooze fest or completely break it depending on what random events you get and by random events I mean also the stats of your ruler, whether he dies prematurely and you end up unable to declare wars for a very long time or worse- your heir dies and then your ruler and it can literally mean game over. There are many more examples of why this is all bad design and not fun at all.

    Then you get to the late game, once your nation has reached a certain size it becomes a pain to expand. There are all sorts of terrible mechanics in place to make late game expansion as painful (not difficult, just boring, tedious, repetitive and painful) as possible.

    On the bright side, it's a one of a kind game with huge potential and a must try for every fan of strategy games. It's also very cheap so it's still worth getting IMO despite the flaws I've pointed out earlier. I'll give it a 7 because of good, frequent patches which have straightened some issues and might fix some more in the future.    … Expand
  20. Heraldofmyself
    Nov 28, 2018
    7
    Still absolutely stoked to see which insta-power buttons the Indonesians will get in the 2019 "expansion".
  21. longuigon
    Feb 12, 2019
    7
    I am impressed with Paradox's work. A complex game that makes you learn something new about it every time you play it. It may take hundreds of hours of gameplay to master the harder difficulties.
  22. vvmax
    Jan 29, 2019
    7
    This game is good and has potential, but many of the features baffle my head. I love the idea of colonialism in Grand Strategy Games, but most of the games that use the mechanic add too much to the idea, making it way to confusing. Overall, EU4 is a game with great potential and a great battle system, but many mechanics make it confusing.
  23. Spartan91
    Nov 29, 2018
    5
    This game is a huge meh, and definitely the WORST paradox game I've played. Compared to HoI and Crusader Kings this is just awful. Mostly boring and trying to give the impression that there's actually a lot of options, while having very little actual substance. In the end the whole thing still feels unfinished and lazy.
    It really doesn't help that just like so many other games it still    This game is a huge meh, and definitely the WORST paradox game I've played. Compared to HoI and Crusader Kings this is just awful. Mostly boring and trying to give the impression that there's actually a lot of options, while having very little actual substance. In the end the whole thing still feels unfinished and lazy.
    It really doesn't help that just like so many other games it still basically boils down to fighting wars, therefore battles, which like so many other games just comes down to luck. Although this is especially lazy by just determining it through literal dice rolls which it shows you    … Expand
  24. WCM320
    Feb 6, 2021
    7
    It's a fantastic game, but its also a game were your either goingt o like it or your not.
  25. YukineUchimaki
    Nov 8, 2019
    6
    Tanto Europa universalis como Crusaders kings II son juegos que me gustan mucho, Pero la politica de Dlc's de Paradox es muy fuerte y eso jode mucho la experiencia de jugalabilidad.
  26. Wrathzo
    Mar 21, 2022
    7
    Europa Universalis IV is a grand strategy video game in the Europa Universalis series, developed by Paradox Development Studio and published by Paradox Interactive as a sequel to Europa Universalis III (2007). It is a strategy game where players can control a nation from the Late Middle Ages through the early modern period (1444 to 1821 AD), conducting trade, administration, diplomacy,Europa Universalis IV is a grand strategy video game in the Europa Universalis series, developed by Paradox Development Studio and published by Paradox Interactive as a sequel to Europa Universalis III (2007). It is a strategy game where players can control a nation from the Late Middle Ages through the early modern period (1444 to 1821 AD), conducting trade, administration, diplomacy, colonization and warfare.… Expand
  27. Bad_Reviewer
    Jan 4, 2022
    5
    The game feels so empty without $300-$400 of DLC. The game has fun nation RP but it will cost you $400. I like the game but it needs to add the DLC to the base game.
  28. HusoBabush
    Dec 17, 2020
    7
    Good strategy game which supported with DLCs but has too much bug and unbalanced stuff
  29. Frost_Cube
    Feb 1, 2021
    6
    It may be a good game however there is one critical flaw. The text in the game (and this is a text heavy game!) is difficult to read at a resolution of 1900x1200 (native monitor resolution).
  30. KevLooney
    Feb 28, 2021
    7
    The game is too inaccessible to get a higher rating. I got bored because I didn't know up from down. It would be a 9/10 if I didn't get bored first.
  31. Yaav13
    May 9, 2022
    7
    My truthful honorable incorruptible conclusive rating of this considered game: 7.
  32. Rnoviok
    Dec 4, 2021
    6
    in my opinion one of the most difficult games i have ever played with high entry threshold

    and with thousands of dlc's .......
  33. HeitorCampos
    Mar 13, 2023
    7
    It´s fine, you need most if not all dlcs to have fun with it. But it is a good game, even if some mechanics are bad.
  34. OniGioRi
    Sep 7, 2023
    7
    Score: 7/10

    Europa Univeralis IV is an awesome game for people who enjoy playing history/strategy games. While I don't really play strategy games this game still managed to have me invested for couple hours. It has a huge variety of playing styles which can easily entertain you for many hours.

Awards & Rankings

11
#11 Best PC Game of 2013
34
#34 Most Discussed PC Game of 2013
1
#1 Most Shared PC Game of 2013

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
87

Generally favorable reviews - based on 34 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 31 out of 34
  2. Mixed: 3 out of 34
  3. Negative: 0 out of 34
  1. DarkStation
    Dec 12, 2013
    80
    Once players overcome the initial learning curve, Europa Universalis IV will prove a memorable strategy experience that provides as much fun stories as it does sheer tactical complexity.
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  2. PC PowerPlay
    Oct 28, 2013
    90
    Somehow retains the series' trademark braininess and complexity while being clearer, simpler and far more fun. [Nov 2013, p.92]
  3. LEVEL (Czech Republic)
    Oct 24, 2013
    100
    The ultimate strategic simulator of an early modern history state with wide options for both success and failure. Do you want to unite Britain under Scotland, thwart the Spanish Reconquista or maintain the Inca empire? Suit yourself. [Issue#234]
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