History YMMV / EuropaUniversalis

** For ''IV'', anything which increases a nation's capacity for more states, since states are just so darn better than territories. On the other hand, expanding towards trade company regions where one's nation can form trade companies is almost mandatory because territories which are added to trade companies do not contribute to corruption AND used to have a minimum autonomy of ''0%'' (the same minimum as states) [[note]]This was later removed in patch 1.30; trade company provinces now have a minimum autonomy of 90%, same as territories.[[/note]].

** Go on and try playing ''IV'' without picking Trade ideas. It's even less of a no-brainer choice, given its necessity. Short of playing a country that has default bonuses to trade and number of merchants, it will be flat-out impossible to participate with the entire trade part of the game, and if you have innate bonuses to trade, your best course of action is to strengthen them with that set of ideas. Trade ideas are less important with recent patches, as most countries can get along with just two merchants steering into their home node fairly well (even becoming rich if they grow to dominate their home node), and additional merchants can be easily gained via trade companies. Trade ideas do still provide a massive boost of income, but often other idea groups can provide greater benefit.

** In ''IV'', attacking Byzantium without a [=CB=] as a country near them is commonly used to break the Ottoman AI and preventing them from snowballing, making them easy to defeat fairly early.

** While the fandom is extremely divisive about ''Europa Universalis IV'', at least one thing can be agreed upon - the mana system is just badly implemented. Or rather not mana itself, but the way it is gathered. To perform pretty much ''any'' action in the game, you require specific amounts of administration[=/=]diplomatic[=/=]military points, with growth based on skills of your ruler - ''which are randomly generated and you have zero influence about''. You can increase the amount of points generated by appointing advisors, but they cost ''a lot'' over time and you also have zero influence on how good they are or what bonus they will grant [[note]]You can spend ducats to retire a potential advisor so that the game generates another one in its place, but that is about it. [[/note]], often hiring absolutely useless people for loads of money just to mitigate the atrociously bad monarch. Republican governments in theory allow you to pick what kind of ruler you want, but they are almost always [[CripplingOverspecialization one-trick ponies]]. ''Rights of Man'' slightly improved the situation with certain types of governments and giving the general ability to abdicate and disinherit your oldest child (saving your country from truly incompetent monarchs), but it's still about managing absolutely random outcomes and thus far from perfect. And there is nothing worse than being stuck with string of bad rulers, over which you have no influence.
*** It was proven a long time ago that life expectancy of a character depends on their skills - the better they are, the shorter they live. Which means you can end up with bad rulers lasting for well over ''70 years'' on a regular basis and completely forget about keeping all those great historical rulers alive pass their late forties, even if they often enjoyed long lives in real life. Starting as Spain under [[RoyallyScrewedUp Carlos II]] can in fact have ''worse'' results than it happen to have in real life.

** From ''Europa Univeralis 4'': "You can never have too much grain". Cue threads and threads devoted to the awesomeness of grain and grain-inducing puns.

** ''Golden Century'', released with the 1.28 update, was criticized for being unfocused on Iberia, despite being touted as an immersion pack for it. Instead, many of its features were centered on pirates. This resulted in the DLC being seen as too shallow to justify its price tag. Furthermore, some of the mission trees included in the mod were seen as overpowered, most notably Spain's, which can easily get many Personal Union.

* TierInducedScrappy: Playing as a land-locked nation removes roughly a third of gameplay from your experience and in the long run, makes the game unfun, as it cuts you off from all the interactions with naval mechanics and exploration. Even just having a single port is more engaging than having none, not to mention the passive effects it has on your nation in ''II'' and ''III''.

** Though not yet released, this sentiment has only grown with the previews of the content coming in the 1.31 patch. Initially though to be a free patch providing flavor for the underdeveloped southeast Asia region (as Poland was in 1.27 and Northeast Asia was in 1.29) the DLC appears to also contain a grab bag of random mechanics to justify charging for another DLC. It appears to contain a cut of ''Golden Century'' (slightly different types of colonial nations), a slice of ''Emperor'' (reworked regencies and a controversial favor mechanic) and a grab bag of other ideas aimed at tall play (pillage capital, expand infrastructure, and centralize state).

** Though not yet released, this sentiment has only grown with the previews of the content coming in the 1.31 patch. Initially though to be a free patch providing flavor for the underdeveloped southeast Asia region (as Poland was in 1.27 and Northeast Asia was in 1.29) the DLC appears to also contain a grab bag of random mechanics to justify charging for another DLC. It appears to contain a cut of ''Golden Century'' (slightly different types of colonial nations), a slice of ''Emperor'' (reworked regencies and a controversial favor mechanic) and a grab bag of other ideas aimed at tall play (pillage capital, expand infrastructure, and centralize state).

* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter: The Tay Son Rebellion in real life was a military powerhouse that united Dai Viet from bickering warlords and repelled invasions from the Qing and Siam in the process. The resulting Tay Son dynasty is often considered by many Vietnamese to be the last great dynasty of the nation, vastly beating out the Nguyen. The rebellion in-game, on the other hand, is relegated to a simple event (not even a crisis) that spawns generic peasant rebels. There is no option, like Russia's Time of Troubles, to let the Tay Son take over as they did historically.

* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter: The Tay Son Rebellion in real life was a military powerhouse that united Dai Viet from bickering warlords and repelled invasions from the Qing and Siam in the process. The resulting Tay Son dynasty is often considered by many Vietnamese to be the last great dynasty of the nation, vastly beating out the Nguyen. The rebellion in-game, on the other hand, is relegated to a simple event (not even a crisis) that spawns generic peasant rebels. There is no option, like Russia's Times of Trouble, to let the Tay Son take over as they did historically.

* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter: The Tay Son Rebellion in real life was a military powerhouse that united Dai Viet from bickering warlords and repelled invasions from the Qing and Siam in the process. The resulting Tay Son dynasty is often considered by many Vietnamese to be the last great dynasty of the nation, vastly beating out the Nguyen. The rebellion in-game, on the other hand, is relegated to a simple event (not even a crisis) that spawns generic peasant rebels.

* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter: The Tay Son Rebellion in real life was a military powerhouse that united Dai Viet from bickering warlords and repelled invasions from the Qing and Siam in the process. The rebellion in-game, on the other hand, is relegated to a simple event (not even a crisis) that spawns generic peasant rebels.

* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter: The Tay Son Rebellion in real life was a military powerhouse that united Dai Viet from bickering warlords and repelled invasions from the Qing and Siam in the process. The rebellion in-game, on the other hand, is virtually indistinguishable from generic peasant rebels.

** ''Leviathan'' and its 1.31 update were outright nigh-unplayable at launch [[ObviousBeta due to the sheer quantity of glitches]] affecting even parts of the game that weren't modified by 1.31 and some dangerous enough to [[GameBreakingBug stop a campaign entirely due to repeated crashes]] or even ''[[UpToEleven wiping out its savefile]]'', giving the impression that despite having taken one year in the making, QA was essentially nonexistent[[note]]which, given [[http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/paradox-interactives-qa-staff-allege-poor-treatment-low-pay-and-mismanaged-layoffs the closure of Paradox's QA department and alleged mismanagement]], might be literally true[[/note]]. The content of the DLC itself was lambasted for being badly unbalanced [[note]]Among some of the worst offenders, the Alhambra monument gave 15% admin efficiency at launch for a mere 2000 ducats, the pyramids of Gizah gave -15% technology cost to pagan nations, concentrate development/pillage capital allowed you to easily build a megacity of 60 dev and more by 1500, and tribal development was given too generously, causing the whole of North America and Australia to be covered in ludicrously well-developed provinces rivaling Rome or Beijing, some reaching to up to ''80 development'' in just a few decades.[[/note]], unfocused [[note]]more idea groups for North American tribes, but no unique ideas for the Iroquois to explain why they're "interesting nations" in the region. Some new formable nations stripped away the previous unique ideas and replaced them with the most generic "national ideas" group[[/note]], and sometimes outright unfinished[[note]]Many Polynesian missions had generic art or sometimes even no art at all, Sikhism religion tab had obvious placeholder art, Zoroastrianism and Alcheringa could not hide their origin as (haphazardly) reskinned Copticism and Fetishism. The horde idea group icon was obviously a cut-and-paste job from a historical painting and does not blend in at all with other idea groups.[[/note]]. All that caused an overwhelmingly negative reaction of the fanbase against Paradox and the DLC, with the user review of ''Leviathan'' reaching the abysmal '''7%''' and becoming ''the worst-reviewed product on Steam.'' This, combined with the controversial "reorganizing" that led to the end of development for ''VideoGame/ImperatorRome'', made some question the very future of Paradox as a game studio. Even studio manager and game director Johan Andersson later admitted in a statement that PDS had dropped the ball as early as ''Golden Century''.

* In ''IV'', attacking Byzantium without a [=CB=] as a country near them is commonly used to break the Ottoman AI and preventing them from snowballing, making them easy to defeat fairly early.

** Though not yet released, this sentiment has only grown with the previews of the content coming in the 1.31 patch. Initially though to be a free patch providing flavor for the underdeveloped southeast Asia region (as Poland was in 1.27 and Northeast Asia was in 1.29) the DLC appears to also contain a grab bag of random mechanics to justify charging for another DLC. It appears to contain a cut of ''Golden Century'' (slightly different types of colonial nations), a slice of ''Emperor'' (reworked regencies and a controversial favor mechanic) and a grab bag of other ideas aimed at tall play (pillage capital, expand infrastructure, and centralize state).
* UnfortunateImplications: With the rework to migratory tribes, they now cause devastation in their capital province (attributed to "tribal grazing"). If colonisers decide to develop said provinces after conquering them, it comes across as perpetuating the "mighty colonizer saving the land from ignorant natives" stereotype (even if said development is entirely self-serving by removing devastation, which makes the province more useful).