Europa Universalis V (EU5) was released back in early November by Swedish game studio Paradox Interactive. It is the much-awaited sequel to Europa Universalis IV (EU4), released all the way back in 2014, and a new addition to Paradox’s already impressive catalogue of historical game strategy games. The studio is a linchpin of the genre, responsible for franchises such as Crusader Kings, set in the Middle Ages; Hearts of Iron, covering the Second World War; and Europa Universalis, which spans early modern history.
EU5 is Paradox’s most ambitious game ever, charting the progression of human history over five centuries from 1337 to 1837. Its scale is unprecedented, not only for the genre but for visual media itself. There are three hundred different religions, two thousand cultures, historical and dynamic works of art, responsive goods and markets, roughly a thousand playable countries, visual environmental changes, and, most importantly, 450 million interactive people.
Historical grand strategy games attempt to present a model of history that is both authentic and engaging. Good games in this genre should immerse players in the challenges of statecraft without compromising a fun experience. Games should not appear as either a history film that documents history as a news reel or a random generator of outlandish historical events. This is the balance that EU5 strikes much more successfully than its predecessors, with such complexity and specificity that it requires a textbook to understand.
EU5 feels less like a digital board game than its predecessor and more like an actual living, breathing historical simulation, with people as the “lifeblood of the nation,” each with their own aspirations, social classes, and belief systems. Every number in the game has an amplitude and a level of detail that reflect authentic, lived experience. It is laced into simulated, incremental gameplay rather than floating in abstract layers of code. Each number is interwoven into a vocabulary of systems – interconnected parts working together for a purpose within a boundary – that allow players to immerse themselves in the practical issues and constraints of governance throughout this period.
A truly people’s history
Paradox’s latest release is arguably its most successful yet in achieving a strategic simulation of a ‘people’s history’: a core design philosophy which sought to capture the average human experience. Grand strategy games are perennially caught between making gameplay engaging and capturing a sense of semblance, specifically historicity. This is crucial to the central dilemma of developing a game based on top-down player actions. An honest game studio which details centuries of history needs to synchronise captivating gameplay with the historical sophistication necessary to simulate the everyday human experience. So how should one construct history in this way?
In most games of the genre, the player is playing as the ‘state’. Of course, the concept of the state has changed drastically over time. Yet here you play as the abstract sovereign political entity itself, as a mover that guides policy across diplomacy, warfare, the economy, religion, and internal administration. You decide what gets built, who gets recruited, which estates are favoured, which colonies are explored, who you go to war with, what laws you table, who you cement royal marriages with and so on.
In EU4, the playing experience was defined by a gameplay autocracy, in which the player emerged as the dominant hegemon in a nation’s state-building efforts. The players could recruit skilled ‘Great Men’ to lead armies as advisors, or roll the dice to get an epoch-defining ruler, some of whom are historical.
EU5’s ‘state’ is different; it is a historically grounded polity whose internal structure matters, with population, estates, classes, and local power structures. The player’s authority, the Control Value, is not evenly distributed across the state’s territory but instead depends on proximity to political power-centres. The state no longer feels teleological, moving towards a centralised modern nation. Centralisation, bureaucracy and national identity are processes, not defaults. ‘States’ at the starting date feel fragile, negotiated and uneven, reflecting the medieval statecraft. The state becomes modern rather than starting halfway there, and acts as an evolving social and institutional organism rather than mana-points placed in spreadsheet abstraction.
Historical Determinism or Agency?
The synthesis of sandbox freedom and historical fidelity reframes the narrative of agency or determinism within history. Such an argument features heavily in understandings of historical development.
Meta-historical narratives of strict determinism have been popularised by none other than Jared Diamond, famed polymath and pop historian. He argued that geography, climate, and ecology are the primary determinants of a nation’s ‘success’, specifically the ‘victory of the West’. His theory, as elaborated in his 1997 book Guns, Germs and Steel, served as one of the main inspirations for the design philosophy of EU4. The notable exclusion of ‘states’ in Africa and North and South America, their lack of ‘development’, and their inability to compete with the European colonial nations underscore how the game casts colonisation as a result of ‘lucky’ or ‘unlucky’ geographical parameters. Similarly, Resource Gathering Operations (RGOs) in the New World are restrictive in both EU4 and somewhat improved in EU5. In the previous release, all raw goods, save for coal in the last of the game’s four historical ages, were not only Eurocentric but also static within each province, unchanging over 500 years of gameplay.
EU5 still retains provinces with their own static raw goods, but adds many more along with hundreds of unique buildings that can produce consumer goods. In EU4, slaves were an unchangeable raw good in certain provinces concentrated mainly in West Africa. This game choice raises a few issues, particularly with how transatlantic slavery was not determined through access to slaves but was manufactured over centuries. Similarly, both European and African actors adapted economic institutions, political authority and social meaning to entrench the slave trade as a mainstay in the global economy. In EU5, the “Slave Centre” building can be built, but within specific geographic parameters and with an adequate supply of Burghers, the game’s name for the social class that represents the emerging bourgeoisie.
Looking Inwards, not Outwards: Demography and Development
A mainstay of the Victoria franchise, pops, from nobles, commoners, to burghers, have their own culture, social classes, and privileges through estates, and are a consistent feature that limits how you can grow your realm. EU5’s focus on demography adds additional depth and complexity compared to previous iterations of the franchise. Pops – a shorthand for ‘population groups’ – change the face of play, inviting an actual human presence in history. History is made less “clean” when historical agents not in the player’s control have their own agency. EU5’s grappling with this allows gameplay to be not only more intricate or richer but also more amenable to changes driven by external events: geography, disease, economics, and, of course, independent demography. This closes the distance in time by allowing you to think more like a ruler, immersing you more deeply in the historical period. The gap between the East and West, as illuminated by historiographical argument for the Great Divergence, remains throughout the game. Yet, the unique granularity offered to nations allows players to see trends and details that real-life rulers – from the New to the Old World – failed to understand.
Historical hindsight of the player base is something that grand strategy games must always accept.
It is in the name of the game after all – Europa Universalis. Players know that Europe will usually be at the helm of major technological and economic transformations that will render it more “successful” than the rest. Yet the complexity, historically contingent events, and autonomous estates necessarily restrict player freedom, perpetually crafting narratives that are not accurate but genuine. Meanwhile, previous static features are now malleable. Markets, a key component of a nation’s income, are now dynamic and can be moved, created, or even destroyed by players to reflect changing economic modalities. Here we have a game with much better tools to generate a living, breathing history.
A gross materialism?
EU5 focuses on demographics and class, and shares mechanics developed for Victoria 3, set in the 19th Century. The game improves upon its predecessor by serving as an intermediary between medieval and modern history in its mechanics and narrative. The diverse range of goods – from food to mass-produced commodities – is tied to market mechanisms, forces that are evolving as the game progresses. Supply and demand become the main determinants of economic value in a growing globalising economy. Each class, or consumer base, has its own needs for goods, whether those be luxury goods or necessary foods. This adds a layer of dynamism to the values, desires, and wants of demographic groups and how they operate as agents – with their own logic – that can mould or be moulded into the individual gaming experience. Still, EU5 selectively borrows from Victoria: pops support institutions rather than constituting the central mechanism; the economy becomes an expression of power rather than the game’s primary driver; and history is understood as elite-mass negotiation rather than as class conflict.
How should one define victory?
With the plethora of new tools and precision in mechanics, victory is not defined solely by warfare and conquest. Demographics, geography, and so on limit, or at least check, the player’s ability to set the terms of their victory entirely by territorial expansion. States are not unchanging entities that aspire solely to expansion, but instead adhere to a version of progress that fits within historically defined borders. “Success” or “Victory” can be regarded as expanding your market without conquest, spreading a given denomination of a religion or even the potency of state policy through centuries of gametime; thus, success is subjective and even more multifaceted, not confined to the limits of territorial expansion. Even acquiring new customer bases to increase your country’s prosperity can be achieved through trade or conquest. In this sense, you, the player, are forced to be creative in generating your own narrative for your nation. You innovate by recognising that the historical system the game has constructed is composite, where you can exploit gaps or knock-on effects of interlocking mechanics or events to your own advantage.
EU5 is still in the early stages of release. Regarding historicity, many of the game’s problems stem from the 1337 start date, when many medieval polities remain, and early modern ones do not develop in ways that seem ‘historical’. Many of these changes are minor compared to what is truly remarkable about this game, especially for inexperienced players. It is definitely a necessary improvement in the historical grand strategy genre. The developers clearly sought to treat the history of this period not only with detail but with respect. The game compels players to operate within an architecture of living, interacting systems and structures that evolve organically over the course of play. Sacrificing eligibility for complexity has helped create a more accurate simulation for historical casualty and conditional outcomes that unfold over centuries. Engaging gameplay – or player agency – comes less from bypassing limits through abstract resources and more from managing contingency and constraints. Players are encouraged to look inward and engage with social and institutional feedback loops. ‘Success’ and ‘failure’ emerge from building capacity and understanding systemic incentives rather than from simply overcoming structural limits. The message is clear: history is something that emerges rather than something that is unlocked.
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