REVIEW: ‘Europa Universalis V’ Is A Wild Journey Through History

Europa Universalis V (Europa Universalis 5) is a historical grand strategy game developed by Paradox Tinto and published by Paradox Interactive. Set in 1336, players select a country to guide and play out over the next 500 years, until the end of 1836, to see how their decisions and choices will change world history through economic, expansive, and political decisions. 

Europa Universalis 5 is the fifth iteration in the Paradox Interactive franchise, and much like Paradox’s other history strategy game, Victoria 3, released in 2022, Europa Universalis 5 will be the first release in twelve years since Europa Universalis IV in 2013. 

Europa Universalis 5 begins by allowing players to choose a nation from anywhere in the world and embark on their journey through world history. There are no game modes in EU5, players choose whether they would like a guided experience where players choose from a handful of recommended countries (this includes a walkthrough, and settings are already preset) or a non-guided experience where players have the full sandbox game experience where players can select their own rules such as have missions packs or how historical events occur and/or other flavor additional aspects to choose from.

Selecting a nation seems like a simple task, but in reality, it will most likely be the most important decision anyone makes in Europa Universalis 5. There is no standard starting point, meaning that how that nation was in 1336 is how they are, for the most part, in the game. This also means each nation will have its own set of unique strategic challenges and historical profile. Along with these unique challenges are the historical events that arise, and not every nation will be involved or even see every historical event that takes place within the timeline. 

There are a few set-in-stone historical events—unless changed via settings—that occur at the same time each playthrough, such as The Black Death. However, more localized events are more randomized and can trigger or not trigger at various times within the historical timeline. This can lead to some interesting turn of events, as sometimes multiple events can occur at the same time if triggered. 

Europa Universalis V embraces historical events, making country choice a heavy task.

Players begin in the Age of Traditions and progress through various eras, or Ages, as they move through history. There are six distinct periods of time that players will move through: Age of Tradition, Age of Renaissance, Age of Discovery, Age of Reformation, Age of Absolutism, and finally Age of Revolutions. Each of these time periods is accompanied by its own unique set of historical events, institutional advancements, government reforms, and even market prices.

EU5 showcases history and incorporates historical events. One of these ways is also through the advancement trees, which allow players to research new advancements within their nation. How far a player gets within these trees depends on many factors, such as the literacy of their population, their initial starting point, and when their nation learn of the institutions that unlock each advancement tree. 

You may want to build up your economy, but if your nation is unaware of the “Institution of Banking,” well then, you may have some trouble, since you won’t be able to research anything within that development tree. Over time, as players encounter new nations and explore more of the map, they will eventually become aware of these. Still, depending on their location and national power, it may take longer than expected to begin development for specific, crucial national structures.

So you have looked at the nations, factored in some personal variables, and finally selected a nation, so now what? That is really up to the player and the decisions they make. 

Europa Universalis 5 is a strategy game that relies on players analyzing information, making decisions based on this information, and it is a large “sandbox” one at that, allowing players to do whatever they please. Players control almost all aspects of their country, including deciding cabinet members, enacting laws, their relations with other countries, and even arranging royal marriages if they choose to.

Unfortunately, this isn’t as pleasant as it sounds, as many factors will hinder you. The main one being The Estates. These Estates function mostly like national Interest Groups in that they want power and say within the government. There are four main Estates, and they are named differently based on the nation, religion, government, and time period, but all function relatively the same. To simplify things, I chose the easiest identifiers for these Estates: Nobles, Clergy, Burghers, and Peasants. 

These Estates have their own goals and ambitions for how they would like the country to be run. The player’s job is to keep all these Estates happy while giving them nothing at the same time. Each Estate has its own set of positives and negatives, depending on how you decide to run your nation. For the most part, the Estates do not like it when one of the other Estates appears to be content.

All of the Estates have a satisfaction equilibrium that they need to maintain, or they may potentially rebel if their satisfaction drops too low. Additionally, their positive or negative bonuses are dependent on how much higher or lower they are than this equilibrium. 

Outside of doing events that the Estates like, there are two methods that players can use to help boost the Estates’ satisfaction levels: Bribes and Privileges. Bribes are basic “donations” of money to the Estate that give a boost. The other is the privileges that give special benefits to these Estates. Now, these privileges could be beneficial to your nation; however, players must be aware that these privileges come at a cost of political power to the Estate.

The Estates are the central population feature that requires close attention to navigate in EU5.

So, given enough political power, an Estate can gridlock any nation if it decides to do something that a specific Estate does not like. However, a player can remove these privileges, but it can be expensive and will cause destabilization of their nation and its population. This makes players must be very mindful when granting and removing these.

Over my course of playing Europa Universalis 5 I would say balancing the Estates was one of the most important and sometimes difficult thing to do. Players want all the bonuses they can get, but when the Estates are sometimes direct opposites of each other, this can lead to real consequential decision-making. This can become quite challenging as players change policies, enact new laws, and unlock additional laws, etc.

This isn’t to say the Estates remain the same throughout your session, as they will change over time with advancements and new government reforms; however, they will still retain their basic core values. The Burghers, for example, function for the most part as basic capitalists, and they are good at helping a player build and expand their economy. Still, they also want to exploit everyone and don’t believe commoners should have rights and should just work in the mines all day and night.

The Estates are not the only thing players will need to manage, of course, within their nation. The economy is another major component of Europa Universalis V that needs to be managed, encompassing trade, budget management, and the development of production and manufacturing. Players will need to be aware of and make sure their population needs are met, along with improving and developing their provinces.

Checking your supply and demand isn’t as easy as market supply and demand is for the entirety of the market, and if your market is made up of multiple nations, all of those nations are taken into account. The issue lies in that there isn’t a quick way of seeing your “local market” or just your nation’s supply and demand.

Due to this, you might be getting multiple notifications pinging you over and over about a lack of something within the market, but when you check your populations, it shows that your populations are, in fact, fine and not lacking anything, but the overall market and some other country within the market are lacking this. 

Now, being able to increase the supply for the overall market is good, but unless your nation has specific buildings or populations lacking specific items, there is no need to go make sure all of this demand is met. However, unlike the other Paradox Interactive historical strategy game, Victoria 3, actual supply chain management is not as big an ordeal. Production methods of your manufacturing actually start already automated, and unless it’s something you really want to mess with, there really isn’t a reason to turn it off. 

Automating parts of your economy isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially if trade or production methods are not your main focus. In the general walkthrough, it is recommended that you actually automate your Estate taxing. There are plenty of other automation options, so players can automate all of their trades or just parts of their trades, and the same applies to managing their budget. There are plenty of moving parts going on at all times within a playthrough of EU5 that I can understand having these automation options for players. 

This is not to say that focusing on production and trade isn’t complex or an enjoyable part of the game that should just be automated, but as much to say that if you just want paint the map through war then not having to worry about if your lumber trade is still profitable or if I should increase taxes on my peasants by 0.12% is nice option to have. 

Automation streamlines processes players may not be interested in managing, and it’s up to the player to choose where to simplify and where to be challenged in Europa Universalis 5.

Politics and diplomacy are another major component of Europa Universalis 5. This is the Middle Ages, and with everyone grasping for more and more power, knowing who to be aware of or who to ally with is vital information. For anyone who has played a strategy game with diplomacy should know all the usual bells and whistles are there, such as forming alliances, improving opinions, and espionage.

Nation-to-nation relations are one thing, depending on the size, but the politics of dealing with historical international organizations is another. Between the Holy Roman Emperor and the Catholic Church, there was plenty of politicking to go around. 

Bloodline dynasties and royal arranged marriages can be useful or used against you. In one of my playthroughs, no one wanted to marry one of my rulers, so I finally made the decision to just have him marry a peasant, and then that peasant gave birth to gifted children, and thus I decided to start my own personal dynasty with this new lineage. This is just an example of possibilities and choices players can make that affect their nation and change their historical profile over the course of history. 

Now, for anyone who has read my writing on various other strategy games knows I tend to use economics and politics to make my way around the map, and that I am not a big war person in general. However, not everyone is like me, and some players may just want to rule the world through bloodshed. Ultimately, war is inevitable in Europa Universalis V, whether you want it to be or not, because at some point, most likely someone will come for you. 

Players will be able to build their armies and navies as large as they choose, so long as they have the gold to maintain them. Players will be able to assign generals and admirals to help boost their armies and navies, forming different strategic formations for battle.

Units will become upgradeable and become more advanced as time passes and players research these advancements. Building infrastructure is vital to an economy, but it is also vital for armies, as having roads and military buildings spread around allows armies to move quickly and refill supplies throughout their travels. 

Players don’t actually fight, so battles are won and lost on how large and advanced your army is compared to another’s. While it is not my favorite part of Europa Universalis 5, the war systems were more enjoyable than I thought they would be, and being in war wasn’t just the worst feeling in the world or giant confusion that I know some other strategy games can be when it comes to battle systems.

Europa Universalis 5 is a very complex and deep game; there is so much information and data being processed both by the game and the player themselves. Players are managing armies, diplomats, trade, making countless decisions, and much more, all at once. There will be plenty of reading involved in playing this game, whether it is reading and learning about historical events or just in general, on how to manage trade capacity. 

All of this information and decision-making, one could say, is the foundation of the game, and this is where I ran into issues. For all the enjoyment I had with Europa Universalis 5, I also ran into quite a few performance and mainly UI issues. During my playthroughs, I had quite a few crashes, and this was also disappointing, as the game, for the most part, ran very smoothly, but would then just crash.

EU5 isn’t without its bugs, primarily where UI and crashes are concerned.

The biggest issues I ran into, however, were UI-based. The filter system did not seem to work properly with some of the filters, as I would try to filter out buildings I could not construct, and it would not. Some of the text would overlap when looking at things, and I couldn’t read what was actually happening. When looking at something, I did not meet the conditions, so it wouldn’t properly display what those conditions were, and you would have to use multiple tooltip pop-ups to see the actual conditions displayed.

No matter what I did with the settings the messages would not go away and would be there permanently at all times so it was either see them or don’t and it wouldn’t even keep up as it would just stall in a place so even if just wanted to see what was happening around the global depending on the last time I looked, I would have to scroll all the way to see what recently happened.

Anyone who has ever played an Europa Universalis game or any Paradox Interactive game, for that matter, knows that most of these bugs and issues will be fixed over time, so I don’t want to just throw everything out, but still, there were plenty enough that were detrimental to my overall experience.

For all the UI issues I dealt with, I did want to mention that the Europa Universalis 5 soundtrack is fantastic. Totally understand why Paradox Interactive decided to release the original soundtrack for players to listen to at any time.

Overall, Europa Universalis 5 is a fantastic addition to the franchise that will likely only improve over time as bugs and UI issues are addressed. There are so many different possibilities for replayability, not only from the selection of nations, but even playing the same nation over again will result in a different game. The automations allow players, if they choose to, to focus on what they really want to and not get tied down in aspects they personally don’t want to mess with in a playthrough. Whether you choose to spend countless hours trying to win the 100 Years’ War or rush for Western colonization, there is something for everyone.

Europa Universalis V releases on PC via Steam on November 4, 2025.