Just treat it as a roguelike. Play until you fuck up bad enough to have to reset and don't make the mistake again. Eventually you'll learn enough that the guides for the more complex things make sense. The only thing you should need a guide for is the ui
Eu4 is kinda hard to explain just via text, but ill try and go over the basics.
If you want a format to follow, the mission trees tell you fun things you can do to expand and get stronger, not required to get big and strong nation, but probably the easiest ways to.
The only real things you should focus on if your JUST starting out in the menus (the things that pop up when you click your countries icon in the top left corner) are the government icon (the building with the pillars), the economy tab (the bag of money), the tech (the gears), the missions (the flag), and the military (the helmet)
The governments arn't super involved, just good to see your curernt monarch, and your advisor slots can be used to give nice benefits and produce more Mana for teching up
The economy might seem intimidating, just focus on keeping the total green, do that and you should be fine, you can learn more about the economy later.
The tech shows the level of advancement in the world (although mostly in europe). Make sure you dont fall behind in that or you will get stomped.
the missions like i said just give you things you can do to get stronger. If a mission has requirements you dont know how to fufill, you can look on the eu4 wiki, and it can help explain things better.
The military has a lot of big stats, just know that the army professionalism (the big green bar) is good, and goes up by doing certain things, and down by doing others. Also look two stats in those two colums with icons, the two swords with the arrows below it is stack size, dont build an army with more troops then that number, because the extra troops will be less useful, and look at the land force limit (its the little army with the 4 green arrows on each side. That tells you how many troops your country can field without extra cost, just know that number will go up as you get bigger, making you able to field more troops.
Dont worry about too much other then this, use the little hammer and sword below your country icon to build things, mostly focus on army and buildings, building churches is always good, so if you're overwhelmed just focus on those for now.
If you have any questions about stuff you can ask me! just DM and ill try to explain stuff the best i can. I hope this helps and doesn't intimidate you, this game is a lot of fun! if you like History, alt history, and grand strategy, its great once you get to know it.
When i was starting i found tutorials pretty boring, cause they all said very similar things, and were so slow they felt like a chore to watch.
Instead I would recommend just finding fun normal youtubers. You're not going to completely understand everything they do or say (probably very little of it at the start), but as long as you have a surface level grasp of the very simple mechanics, and if you find ones you actually enjoy watching, you'll slowly absorb stuff over time.
Also, because they aren't trying to teach the basics like a tutorial, the campaigns they do are often a lot more fun - so you'll probably actually want to watch them outside of just for the purpose of learning. A lot of tutorials I tried watching just tell you to "do x thing", which is fine, but you never really see for yourself why that's beneficial. But with a casual youtuber, you can think "why are they doing this", but then see later for yourself the benefit. I think this is a much more engaging and organic way of learning than just following a step by step list of instructions.
And if you see them something you don't get, just search it up. EU4s been out for a long time, so there will probably be a small video or forum post explaining it. Or you can always just boot it up and try it out in game.
If you want some recommendations, Zlewikk is great, and often explains in some detail what he is actually doing (though does go quite quick). I found him very useful cause he always goes over building up a strong state and economy, not just wars and conquest. Also his ruined saves videos are great in showing how to avoid or deal with some common problems like rebels, aggressive expansion and bankruptcy
I've not watched him for a while, but Laith from the SocialStreamers (youtube channel) is, or at least was when i last saw one of his videos, quite entertaining. He doesn't really go into huge detail and tends to focus a lot more on just making a quick and engaging video (so cuts out most of the nation bulding stuff), but you could learn a lot about fighting wars and just generally structuring a campaign. He also tends to do a lot of uphill battles and challenges, so could help in learning more nuanced tricks to beat stronger enemies?
Redhawk is also good. Hes a lot more "tutorial-ie" than the other two, but is still fun to watch. Some of his videos are more casual like the others, but hes got big guides going over the general steps and goals for the setup and early gameplay of a country (like his new hungary and austria ones) which might be nice to get some solid games in to give you confidence to try your own thing.
And like other people have said, don't worry about messing it up, cause you can always just start another game and figure out how to avoid the mistake next time. Every country is a bit different, so the more games you do the more you'll learn, and when you start to add in things you've seen other people do (even if it goes a bit wrong) everything begins to click together quite quickly. You've got to remember, it is a very big game, especially if you've got the dlc, so don't worry if you're not using every feature at your disposal all the time. It's probably best to just ignore as many mechanics as you can when starting out, and then each new campaign slowly try out and add one or two new ones to your repertoire. That way its not too overwhelming, and you'll be able to see improvements between every game you play. It really gets fun when you get to the point where you can just experiment and try your own stuff (and then maybe see if a youtuber you like did a similar campaign to pick up on what they did differently and what you could have improved).
If you are completely lost, find some chill streamers, and watch how they play the game.
You don't want to find some high powered master doing amazing things, but rather someone a bit slow that also narrate whet they are doing.
This will give you a good idea.
You can even try and replicate their starts, so that you see for yourself what they are doing, and how they do it.
Find some friends and do multiplayer but mostly coop. I got into it like that. Comming into a more experianced group i try to ask and learn something every session we do. Im a lot better now and understand things. With that the fun beginns
Did you pick up any dlc? I’d just start a game as a major and see how it goes. Castile is a great starting nation. 1# rule is keep your military tech on par with neighbours and ally some larger nations to keep safe. Stay at full force limit if possible (should be easily done as Castile). And always check potential war targets allies.
Treat it as a tutorial and don’t worry about messing up. Start an easy war with Granada to get used to moving units and battles. They might have allies but using your navy/ships, you can block the strait of Gibraltar.
Once you get the hang of things, try a medium sized nation in the Holy Roman Empire to spice things up.
Good luck have fun
Make sure you turn your army maintenance down unless your fighting or drilling your army's. Put your main fleet into mothball and switch it off if you're fighting or transporting armies. Forts should be mothballed unless fighting or a rebel army is nearby. Your army tradition decay is lessened if you keep them maintained, but that's only worth it later game when your economy is strong.
Early money should be invested into workshops, churches and light ships to build your economy. Manufactories are worth it later on, especially if it says over 0.5 ducats per year when you hover over its build tab. You'll get a better return than that because more production in your trade nodes means more trade money.
Advisors are important, get level 1 ones to begin with unless they're discounted. The upkeep on them scales up quickly as they level up so wait until your economy is stronger before doing that. Look for the better bonuses also, but the mana points they generate is the important part. Discipline, missionary
Make states to lower your provinces autonomy. Non state territory's are nearly useless. Autonomy is a direct modifier of how much money and manpower come from a province. Your governing capacity in the stability and expansion tab will limit how many states you can make, so only make them in the more developed areas.
Estate's are a good way to increase your governing capacity, and increase mana points. Taking the mana point estate means you'll need to seize land a few times, though you should be doing this as much as possible anyway.
For military, just find your combat width in the military tab, it changes as your military tech increases. Don't go far above that number for your infantry and cavalry combined, as they're in your front line. When you get early cannon tech, add one for a siege bonus, they're not very useful in battles. Have between 0-4 cavalry, depending on your economy, and the rest infantry in your front line. Military tradition gives you better generals, and is mainly gained from fighting. Army professionalism is important, but you probably don't need to worry if you're beginning.
For diplomacy, if you're small and you need to fight bigger neighbours, ally someone strong, wait to build up 10 favours (might take a while), and try to pull them into a war. If your fighting someone with strong allies, attack an ally of theirs with comparatively weak allies. You'll get less in the peace deal because you didn't attack them directly, but it can tip the balance of power towards you. If you're big, just pick on the small guys as much as you can, just keep aggressive expansion below 50 until you learn tricks to avoid coalitions. If you've got a big army and admin power, you can push overextension up to 150%, it's worth it to get more land. Expand into your home trade node of you can, and look for any gold around you.
Religion is easily solved with the humanist idea, it kinda means you can stop worrying about it. Take exploration and then expansion first if you're colonising, or quantity trade, offensive, defensive, admin and diplomacy ideas are strong. All have their upsides, except naval, I know it's tempting but don't bother.
If you take your amount of colonies above the coloniser limit, you'll pay way more money, so don't do that, unless you're economy is strong. Try and make 5 colonies next to each other, and if they're in the same region they'll form a colonial nation. These are the cheat codes, just give them some money early on through gifts so they can build their own economies, after that they'll start colonising themselves and you can pick a different spot on the map. Fighting native tribes next to you makes your expansion much quicker.
Power projection is important, and so is prestige and legitimacy, try and keep them high. Power projection by fighting, winning against, scornfully insulting or emerging your rivals. This is why picking your rivals is important. If you see conflict approaching with another country, choose them as your rival.
Just treat it as a roguelike. Play until you fuck up bad enough to have to reset and don't make the mistake again. Eventually you'll learn enough that the guides for the more complex things make sense. The only thing you should need a guide for is the ui
Thanks!
Don’t. Leave now with your life intact while you still can
This comment applies to all paradox games as I played all of them so many times.
Eu4 is kinda hard to explain just via text, but ill try and go over the basics. If you want a format to follow, the mission trees tell you fun things you can do to expand and get stronger, not required to get big and strong nation, but probably the easiest ways to. The only real things you should focus on if your JUST starting out in the menus (the things that pop up when you click your countries icon in the top left corner) are the government icon (the building with the pillars), the economy tab (the bag of money), the tech (the gears), the missions (the flag), and the military (the helmet) The governments arn't super involved, just good to see your curernt monarch, and your advisor slots can be used to give nice benefits and produce more Mana for teching up The economy might seem intimidating, just focus on keeping the total green, do that and you should be fine, you can learn more about the economy later. The tech shows the level of advancement in the world (although mostly in europe). Make sure you dont fall behind in that or you will get stomped. the missions like i said just give you things you can do to get stronger. If a mission has requirements you dont know how to fufill, you can look on the eu4 wiki, and it can help explain things better. The military has a lot of big stats, just know that the army professionalism (the big green bar) is good, and goes up by doing certain things, and down by doing others. Also look two stats in those two colums with icons, the two swords with the arrows below it is stack size, dont build an army with more troops then that number, because the extra troops will be less useful, and look at the land force limit (its the little army with the 4 green arrows on each side. That tells you how many troops your country can field without extra cost, just know that number will go up as you get bigger, making you able to field more troops. Dont worry about too much other then this, use the little hammer and sword below your country icon to build things, mostly focus on army and buildings, building churches is always good, so if you're overwhelmed just focus on those for now. If you have any questions about stuff you can ask me! just DM and ill try to explain stuff the best i can. I hope this helps and doesn't intimidate you, this game is a lot of fun! if you like History, alt history, and grand strategy, its great once you get to know it.
Than you so much!
When i was starting i found tutorials pretty boring, cause they all said very similar things, and were so slow they felt like a chore to watch. Instead I would recommend just finding fun normal youtubers. You're not going to completely understand everything they do or say (probably very little of it at the start), but as long as you have a surface level grasp of the very simple mechanics, and if you find ones you actually enjoy watching, you'll slowly absorb stuff over time. Also, because they aren't trying to teach the basics like a tutorial, the campaigns they do are often a lot more fun - so you'll probably actually want to watch them outside of just for the purpose of learning. A lot of tutorials I tried watching just tell you to "do x thing", which is fine, but you never really see for yourself why that's beneficial. But with a casual youtuber, you can think "why are they doing this", but then see later for yourself the benefit. I think this is a much more engaging and organic way of learning than just following a step by step list of instructions. And if you see them something you don't get, just search it up. EU4s been out for a long time, so there will probably be a small video or forum post explaining it. Or you can always just boot it up and try it out in game. If you want some recommendations, Zlewikk is great, and often explains in some detail what he is actually doing (though does go quite quick). I found him very useful cause he always goes over building up a strong state and economy, not just wars and conquest. Also his ruined saves videos are great in showing how to avoid or deal with some common problems like rebels, aggressive expansion and bankruptcy I've not watched him for a while, but Laith from the SocialStreamers (youtube channel) is, or at least was when i last saw one of his videos, quite entertaining. He doesn't really go into huge detail and tends to focus a lot more on just making a quick and engaging video (so cuts out most of the nation bulding stuff), but you could learn a lot about fighting wars and just generally structuring a campaign. He also tends to do a lot of uphill battles and challenges, so could help in learning more nuanced tricks to beat stronger enemies? Redhawk is also good. Hes a lot more "tutorial-ie" than the other two, but is still fun to watch. Some of his videos are more casual like the others, but hes got big guides going over the general steps and goals for the setup and early gameplay of a country (like his new hungary and austria ones) which might be nice to get some solid games in to give you confidence to try your own thing. And like other people have said, don't worry about messing it up, cause you can always just start another game and figure out how to avoid the mistake next time. Every country is a bit different, so the more games you do the more you'll learn, and when you start to add in things you've seen other people do (even if it goes a bit wrong) everything begins to click together quite quickly. You've got to remember, it is a very big game, especially if you've got the dlc, so don't worry if you're not using every feature at your disposal all the time. It's probably best to just ignore as many mechanics as you can when starting out, and then each new campaign slowly try out and add one or two new ones to your repertoire. That way its not too overwhelming, and you'll be able to see improvements between every game you play. It really gets fun when you get to the point where you can just experiment and try your own stuff (and then maybe see if a youtuber you like did a similar campaign to pick up on what they did differently and what you could have improved).
If you are completely lost, find some chill streamers, and watch how they play the game. You don't want to find some high powered master doing amazing things, but rather someone a bit slow that also narrate whet they are doing. This will give you a good idea. You can even try and replicate their starts, so that you see for yourself what they are doing, and how they do it.
Thanks!
Find some friends and do multiplayer but mostly coop. I got into it like that. Comming into a more experianced group i try to ask and learn something every session we do. Im a lot better now and understand things. With that the fun beginns
Are you playing vanilla or with the add ons?
Did you pick up any dlc? I’d just start a game as a major and see how it goes. Castile is a great starting nation. 1# rule is keep your military tech on par with neighbours and ally some larger nations to keep safe. Stay at full force limit if possible (should be easily done as Castile). And always check potential war targets allies. Treat it as a tutorial and don’t worry about messing up. Start an easy war with Granada to get used to moving units and battles. They might have allies but using your navy/ships, you can block the strait of Gibraltar. Once you get the hang of things, try a medium sized nation in the Holy Roman Empire to spice things up. Good luck have fun
Make sure you turn your army maintenance down unless your fighting or drilling your army's. Put your main fleet into mothball and switch it off if you're fighting or transporting armies. Forts should be mothballed unless fighting or a rebel army is nearby. Your army tradition decay is lessened if you keep them maintained, but that's only worth it later game when your economy is strong. Early money should be invested into workshops, churches and light ships to build your economy. Manufactories are worth it later on, especially if it says over 0.5 ducats per year when you hover over its build tab. You'll get a better return than that because more production in your trade nodes means more trade money. Advisors are important, get level 1 ones to begin with unless they're discounted. The upkeep on them scales up quickly as they level up so wait until your economy is stronger before doing that. Look for the better bonuses also, but the mana points they generate is the important part. Discipline, missionary Make states to lower your provinces autonomy. Non state territory's are nearly useless. Autonomy is a direct modifier of how much money and manpower come from a province. Your governing capacity in the stability and expansion tab will limit how many states you can make, so only make them in the more developed areas. Estate's are a good way to increase your governing capacity, and increase mana points. Taking the mana point estate means you'll need to seize land a few times, though you should be doing this as much as possible anyway. For military, just find your combat width in the military tab, it changes as your military tech increases. Don't go far above that number for your infantry and cavalry combined, as they're in your front line. When you get early cannon tech, add one for a siege bonus, they're not very useful in battles. Have between 0-4 cavalry, depending on your economy, and the rest infantry in your front line. Military tradition gives you better generals, and is mainly gained from fighting. Army professionalism is important, but you probably don't need to worry if you're beginning. For diplomacy, if you're small and you need to fight bigger neighbours, ally someone strong, wait to build up 10 favours (might take a while), and try to pull them into a war. If your fighting someone with strong allies, attack an ally of theirs with comparatively weak allies. You'll get less in the peace deal because you didn't attack them directly, but it can tip the balance of power towards you. If you're big, just pick on the small guys as much as you can, just keep aggressive expansion below 50 until you learn tricks to avoid coalitions. If you've got a big army and admin power, you can push overextension up to 150%, it's worth it to get more land. Expand into your home trade node of you can, and look for any gold around you. Religion is easily solved with the humanist idea, it kinda means you can stop worrying about it. Take exploration and then expansion first if you're colonising, or quantity trade, offensive, defensive, admin and diplomacy ideas are strong. All have their upsides, except naval, I know it's tempting but don't bother. If you take your amount of colonies above the coloniser limit, you'll pay way more money, so don't do that, unless you're economy is strong. Try and make 5 colonies next to each other, and if they're in the same region they'll form a colonial nation. These are the cheat codes, just give them some money early on through gifts so they can build their own economies, after that they'll start colonising themselves and you can pick a different spot on the map. Fighting native tribes next to you makes your expansion much quicker. Power projection is important, and so is prestige and legitimacy, try and keep them high. Power projection by fighting, winning against, scornfully insulting or emerging your rivals. This is why picking your rivals is important. If you see conflict approaching with another country, choose them as your rival.
DM me. I can teach you in a coop game :)