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Europa Universalis is a series of historical turn-based / real-time 4X Grand Strategy games for the PC and Mac (based increasingly loosely on a licensed French Board Game). Starting in the Late Middle Ages, it focuses greatly on the Early Modern Period. The games are produced, developed and published by Paradox Interactive.

Thus far there are four main games and a spinoff in the series:

  • Europa Universalis (2000)
  • Europa Universalis II (2001)
    • A more Asian-themed version, Europa Universalis: Asia Chapters was released separately for the Asian gaming market.
    • For The Glory: A Europa Universalis Game (2009): the final tuning of the game, released after the initial disappointment of the third game, was made by the people responsible of the popular AGCEEP mod for Europa Universalis II
  • Europa Universalis III (2006)
    • And its four expansions: Napoleon's Ambition, In Nomine, Heir to the Throne, and Divine Wind.
  • Europa Universalis: Rome (2008), a Roman Antiquity-themed Spin-Off,
    • Sadly, many reviewers and fans consider this to be the Dolled-Up Installment of the series. The Expansion Pack made it much better. It was the first EU3-derived game to include detailed character mechanics, which led to (ultimately true) speculation that Paradox were working on Crusader Kings II. The general consensus is that Rome is a completely separate entity from the rest of the series. A vocal minority in the fanbase pushed for Rome II, however, until Paradox announced a new game as part of a separate franchise, Imperator: Rome, in 2018.
  • Europa Universalis IV (2013)
    • Conquest of Paradise, a colonial-focused expansion with the option for a randomized New World and Oceania, released in January 2014.
    • Wealth of Nations, a trade-focused expansion released in May 2014.
    • Res Publica, a republic-focused mini-expansion released in July 2014.
    • The Art of War, a military-focused expansion released in October 2014, also coming with a free patch that brings a far more detailed map for the non-European parts of the world.
    • El Dorado, a Mesoamerica and colonization-focused expansion, including a new Nation Designer, released in February 2015.
    • Common Sense, a development-focused expansion coming with a major overhaul of the base tax system as well as new features for Protestants and Buddhists, released in June 2015.
    • The Cossacks, released in December 2015, with a focus on Eastern Europe, new diplomacy features, and improved internal politics centered on managing the Estates of the Realm, as well as several multiplayer-oriented features.
    • Mare Nostrum, released in April 2016, primarily reworks naval combat and espionage. It also substantially expands the cultural diversity and number of provinces in Ireland and Africa, adds the "corruption" mechanic for inefficiently-run nations, and introduces the State/Territory divide as another wrinkle when it comes to expanding.
    • Rights of Man, released in October 2016, adds special diplomatic abilities, personalities and traits for monarchs, queens generated by royal marriages (and are regents if an underage heir ascends the throne), a faction system for revolutionary republics, the ability to abdicate and much more. The add-on content adds German and West African units.
    • Mandate of Heaven, released in April 2017, focuses on Asia, with a Mandate of Heaven mechanic for China, an improved shogunate for Japan, a Banner system for the Manchu, new features for Confucianism and Shintoism, as well as state-wide edicts and an "Age" system giving bonuses to countries that fulfill particular requirements in each game era, among other features.
    • Third Rome, released August 2017, is a smaller "content pack" for the Russian states, adding several unique Russian government forms, an improved system for Siberian colonization, and new features for Eastern Orthodoxy.
    • Cradle of Civilization, released November 2017, focuses on the Middle East and Persia, including new governments for the region, reworked Islamic mechanics, new trade policies and resource exploitation, and a system for drilling armies.
    • Rule Britannia, released March 2018, is a content pack focusing on the British Isles and the early rise of industrialization.
    • Dharma, released September 2018, focuses on India and also substantially reworks the government system.
    • Golden Century, released in December 2018 is the third content pack, that focuses on Iberia and their colonies as well as the Maghreb.
    • Emperor, released June 2020, introduces new mechanics for the Holy Roman Empire, revolutions and surrounding nations and a new set imperial reforms, along with new mission trees for Burgundy, Germany, and a united HRE.
    • Leviathan, released April 2021, adds new diplomatic options designed for smaller states, as well as content for Southeast Asia, Australia, North America, and others.
    • Origins, released November 2021, adds content for Sub-Saharan Africa as well as for Judaism.
    • Lions of the North, released September 2022, adds content for Scandinavian and Baltic nations.
    • Domination, released April 2023, adds content for various historical great powers such as the Ottomans and France, along with an expanded estate privileges system.
    • King of Kings, released November 2023, adds content for nations in West Asia, such as Persia, the Mamluks, Georgia, and fan-favorite Byzantium.

Aegir Games funded tabletop game adaptation called Europa Universalis The Price Of Power through Kickstarter. So that's a tabletop game based on a video game based on a tabletop game.

Europa Universalis has you take control of a nation from roughly 1400 to the early 1800s. There are roughly 200 playable nations, although some are more playable than others. While not every nation is in the game, a good chunk of them are, and so apart from standbys like France or Britain you can try your hand at a world conquest as the Iroquois, the Duchy of Bavaria or the Sultanate of Adal. Or Sweden.

The games have a history of buggy releases and somewhat impenetrable interface, with a variety of concepts not being adequately explained by game documentation (sometimes because they weren't in the original release version...), making the learning curve something of a learning cliff, and this is arguably the least complex of the Paradox Interactive strategy games.

The games also have an impressive community of writers, whose dabbling in the artform known as After Action Reports is nothing to sneeze at. Some of their works are simple gameplay narrations, but others are intricate works of fan fiction indeed.

Europa Universalis is closely linked to three other series of grand strategy games, all of them made by Paradox: Crusader Kings, Victoria: An Empire Under The Sun and Hearts of Iron. Theoretically, they can all be played in one big historically chronological succession thanks to a pretty brilliant (though somewhat buggy) Old Save Bonus system created by the developers, and the modding community will often create their own converters to fill in any gaps.


This game series provides examples of the following tropes :

  • Ab Urbe Condita: The Alternative Calendar used in Europa Universalis: Rome, regardless of the nation being ruled.
  • Acceptable Breaks from Reality:
    • Cultures are generally based on proximity/historical parameters rather than strictly linguistic. This may result in several discrepancies in the use of terminology. For example:
      • "Albanian" is a "South Slavic" culture despite being linguistically independent within the Indo-European family.
      • The "Altaic"note  group includes Mongolic and Turkic languages spoken in Central Asia, but excludes Turkic languages spoken in the former Golden Horde (they're "Tatar" instead), Turkish (that is "Levantine") and Azerbaijani (that is "Iranian").
    • Armenians and Ethiopians follow the "Coptic" Christian religion rather than "Orthodox", on the basis that they're much closer to the former than the latter. While Armenians, Ethiopians and Copts are part of the same church, Copts are an ethnic group limited to Egypt, thus making it a mistake to use "Coptic" to indicate the other two Churches as well.
    • There are cases where cultures are differentiated, or named, following criteria that are incorrect for the historical period in question:
      • The game correctly uses "Ruthenian" instead of "Ukrainian"note , but it incorrectly distinguishes Byelorussian from Ruthenian. Back then, "Ruthenian" actually indicated both people that today are Belarusians and Ukrainians.
      • "Azerbaijani" indicates both people in Iranian Azerbaijan and Caucasian Azerbaijan. Historically, "Azerbaijan" only indicated the land in Iran. Even if there was, in Northwestern Iran and the Caucasus, a contiguous ethnicity of Turkicized Iranics who followed Shia Islam, there just wasn't a collective term for them (except the generic "Turk"). "Azerbaijan" applied to the current Caucasian territory and its people is a recent developing of the early 20th century.
      • There's a "Pueblo" native American culture, which makes no sense since the game begins before the discovery of the New World, so no Native American people could reasonably have had a Spanish name ("Pueblo" means "People" in Spanish).
      • On a similar fashion, the peoples of the Philippines belong to a single "Filipino" culture. Again, it's a name of Spanish origin that was first applied to the islands in the 1500s.
    • There are many cases of culture individually unrepresented: some have their territory attributed to historically "more important" culture, others are merged into "catch-all" cultures:
      • All of Switzerland is of the "Swiss" culture within the "Germanic" group, even French speaking and Italian speaking territories.
      • Transylvania belongs to the abstract "Transylvanian" culture, rather than having its provinces distinguished between Romanian and Hungarian.
      • There's a single large "Dagestani" culture, which is not really inaccurate (the term is also a synonym of Northeast Caucasian language), but it's quite a simplification, since Northeast Caucasian peoples don't consider themselves a single ethnicity, and their languages are rather different to each other, even if related.
  • The Ace: If a ruler is born with a 6/6/6 score it means he's the best at all three of the game's ruling skills: administration, diplomacy and warfare. The ruler who comes closest to that at the game start is Skanderbeg of Albania, with a 6/5/6 score. A small handful of historical rules (Louis XIV, Peter the Great etc) at later dates also get stats of this magnitude.
  • Actually Four Mooks: No matter how many tens of thousands of your troops are in a given province, they will only ever show up as a single soldier. Who's taller than mountains.
  • All Deserts Have Cacti: The "desert" graphics in EU2 have cacti. Even in Persia.
  • Alliterative Name: For some reason, Genoa's mission tree in EU4 tends to be named this way.
  • Alternate History: A popular reason for loving the game series is because of the ability to "correct" things that went "wrong" in real history. A lot of it is really funny, especially when the player has had nothing to do with it. Some examples: Milan blobbed all over Europe, England eaten by Northumberland, Protestant Syria, the landlocked African nation of Sokoto winding up in control of Burma, and Ming China wandering around Egypt in the early 1400s. This has led to the concept of "hands-off games", where the player picks an out-of-the-way nation like Ceylon and disables popups, then leaves the game running for a few hours and comes back to see what hilarity has ensued.
    • There's a console command that lets you enter "Spectator Mode", which lets you do just that. The AI controls every country and reveals the whole map, leaving the player to sit back and watch "history" unfold.
    • "Henry IV of Lancaster led the 14000 strong French army against the 6000 strong Ottoman army, and their forces were triumphant."
    • Importing a saved game from Crusader Kings II adds another layer of Alternate History, as you play on a map that's been changing since 1066 or as early as 769. Sadly, it only affects Europe, the Middle East and India as Crusader Kings does not have a truly global map.
      • Though a save where the Sunset Invasion DLC was present does DRASTICALLY change the North American Continent by effectively giving the Aztecs a more powerful unique variant of Western Tech group and allowing nearby natives to Westernize long before Europeans come across the sea, possibly even resulting in a new Sunset Invasion as the natives invade Europe again instead of the other way around.
    • Several events and missions are designed to facilitate alternative paths history might have taken and to represent the historical ambitions of various nations (which didn't always come to pass). For example, Japanese daimyo have options to convert religions to Catholicnote , Mahayana Buddhismnote , or Confucianism. And one weird side option for the Teutonic Order allows for Danzig to usurp the Order instead of rebelling against it, which in turn sets up the possibility of a Prussian Republic governed directly by the military.
    • With the Origins DLC, IV introduced the concept of branching missions, missions where the name, description, requirements and effects are decided by a path selected earlier on. Generally, one path is the historic one in terms of ambitions, while the others go in different directions. This can range from comparatively minor differences like Sweden having the choice to pursue personal union, conquest or alliance with Poland to massive shifts that impact the entire course of the campaign, like the Teutonic Order having a choice between secularization and going towards becoming Prussia (in turn then subdividing into integrating into the Holy Roman Empire, conquering and forming Germany or consolidating an eastern Prussian Kingdom) or doubling down on being an eastern crusader order.
  • Alternate History Wank: Taking obscure one-province minors (such as Navarre, Trebizond or Xhosa) and turning them into major powers is literally a hobby for some experienced players.
  • Always Second Best: In IV, the Mamluk sultanate is this to the Ottomans, due to the Ottomans having several mechanical advantages. note  Ironically, they start 1444 as the world's second-ranked Great Power, while the Ottomans are third. While quite rare for the AI, it's surprisingly easy for a human-controlled Mamluk player to decisively defeat the Ottomans within the first 20 years and become the strongest country in the entire world outside of the Ming dynasty.
  • Apathetic Citizens: Oh so averted. Your citizens are ANYTHING but apathetic and will revolt for a whole host of reasons. In the expansion to EU3 especially there are multiple kinds of rebels, who will do unpleasant things to you should you let them rampage (like converting your country to their preferred religion, change your government type, install a new monarch or declare independence)
    • One type of rebel that crops up a lot are the Particularists. One joke among players is that they're called that because they don't want anything in particular; they just like revolting.note 
    • Rebel units may be weak compared to your army. But, when you have low stability and high overextension, they pop up ALL THE TIME. They slowly drain your army, deplete your reserves and destroy your economy by occupying vast portions of your territory. They make you send your forces from one corner of your land to the other, and once you suppress one uprising and leave, they rise once again.
  • Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Averted; you can have an undefined number of soldiers and ships, with being actually able to pay and support them the only constraint. You can bankrupt yourself for all the game cares. There is however a soft limit based on your manpower, nation politics and traded goods that makes costs greater than normal if you go over it.
  • Arms Dealer: This is effectively what you become if you support rebels in another country in IV: You pay a clump sum of money which is calculated based on the potential size of the uprising, meaning that you're essentially paying to arm the rebels that are already brewing in the country.
  • Artificial Stupidity: Generally averted, but the AI has its moments. For example, the AI tends to declare war with the Dishonorable Scum (If the player's Bad Boy score is too high) even when he's a one province country and the player controls half of Europe. Although this can be seen as desperation to stop your country's inexorable advance. Countries that have burst their badboy/infamy limit have generally taken over a hell of a lot of land very quickly. It works too; even if a few countries fall a nation fighting the whole of Europe and a few nations outside it will find it will be overwhelmed eventually; the most said country can hope for is to knock out a few rivals quickly and then grimly hold the line.
    • The AI can't deal with naval attrition, and no one's been able to solve the problem. The workaround? They don't get any! This has led to a tendency for the Baltic to become a kind of Weirdness Magnet, with the Ottomans, Castile, various Italian and Low Countries minors, and whoever else feels like it grabbing bits and pieces of the Baltic coast and Scandinavia.
      • Not having attrition doesn't prevent them from screwing themselves on the sea, however. The AI occasionally sends out small fleets of just a few ships, even when they know the player's fleet is in the area. Sometimes this will happen so many times they'll have completely fed their fleet to yours piece by piece when they would have flattened you if all attacked at once.
    • Since 1.31 in 'IV', AI nations release vassals when they are above their governing capacity. This tends to cause absurd situations when a country is at its cap, as it will keep annexing its neighbors, then release them due to a lack of governing capacity, wasting both time and mana over and over again in the process. Castile and Muscovy are particularly bad at this due to their tendency to respectively release Aragon and Novgorod as vassals, the former wasting the main advantage from forming Spain and the latter creating an extremely disloyal and powerful subject.
    • In 1.35 and possibly earlier in IV, you can offer to release your territories as independent countries instead of ceding lands to the enemy to get out of a losing war. The AI will accept it, even if the released countries are historically friendly to you (even if they're not, they're likely to be afraid of you) and will eventually agree to be diplomatically annexed again. This allows you to expand wildly and simply temporarily release a few small territories in the ensuing coalition war to keep most of your gains.
  • Artifact Title: The original board game this series was inspired by had greater emphasis on Europe as the only playable characters were European kingdoms (and the Ottoman Empire).
  • Artistic License – History: The Counter Revolution prestige malus is meant to represent the terror that European monarchies felt when France became a Republic. However, unlike in real life, this is very unlikely to unite the kingdoms of Europe against the republic as there is no mechanic to help nations set aside their existing rivalries.
  • Ascended Meme:
    • As of the Divine Wind expansion, "Poland can into space" is an achievement acquired by reaching maximum level in all technologies as Poland. This one has carried on to EUIV, which has a Red and White rocket being fired into space as its icon.
    • "Spain is the Emperor" is achieved by becoming ruler of the Holy Roman Empire as Spain.
    • Some of Gotland's ships have weird names, in Swedish: Spain is not the Emperor, Comet Sighted, Sweden is OP, Big Blue Blob, Forum Troll etc.
    • One of the "Fantasy" Random New World themes, a Zoroastrian Danish republic, is called "Secret Denmark" in reference to a notorious Victoria 2 screencap.
  • Awesome, but Impractical: The Napoleonic generals, including Boney himself, the absolutely best general in the game (6-6-6-3 in EU II) that can only be used for a few brief years.
    • Averted in EU III, where starting as the Ming in 1405 gives you Zheng He, an Explorer with 6 maneuver, who can be used to go off and discover America. Some players have had him last for something like 20 years.
  • Back from the Brink: Playing as Byzantium. The first mission's description says "The Empire is but a shadow of itself after repeated blows from the the Turk... we must recover the Greek lands."
  • Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work:
    • Colonization in general throughout the series. In II and III, you can easily control and dominate global trade without as much as having your single, starting provincenote . While everyone else is busy settling out wilderness in the Americas and Africa, pouring money into it, you are siphoning the profits. All you had to do was discovering the location of CoT for that part of the world. IV tried to shake things up, but the end result is that all you really need is dominating in European trade nodes to steer the trade into your home node and you don't even need to explore for that. If this wasn't enough, colonies are easy to conquer and low value in peace talks, so pulling Dutch is very easy to do.
      • In II, you can also take over (or burn) trade posts without entering peace talks. All it really takes is landing even a single soldier in that post and it's yours.
    • In II it was perfectly possible to declare war on a country that either explored half of the globe or simply had from the start maps of far away lands, occupy the capital of it and thus stealing all the maps along the way. This meant wars with Spain or Portugal were less about taking land from them and more about snatching their charters, greatly speeding up own exploration and not having to discover areas already known to them. Even if you lost the war, it was usually still well worth it.
    • Whoever is colonizing Hudson Bay in IV, it shouldn't be the player. This is a starting node in trade and has only a single outlet. Any country tying resources there, including a potential colonial nation, will end up having only one choice with generated trade: send it forward. Hudson Bay is predominately a frozen, barren rock populated by angry natives, so thanks a lot, England/France/Scotland/Sweden, for doing the hard work of setting up trading posts there!
      • Similarly, Australia and New Zealand are best left to the AI. The only exception would be playing as a nation from the Malacca strait area and gearing for maximum profit from as early as possible, rather than waiting two centuries for European colonizers, but that's about it.
  • Badass Boast: Many events have their choices worded as what the ruler would have likely said as they occur. That leads to a few quite badass, if sometimes misguided, boasts. For example, if high instability causes insubordination in one's army, the ruler can declare "Fine, I'll lead the army myself!" (while army tradition is being lost), or if you manage to draw the country back from the abyss of religious turmoil, proudly proclaim "ONE FAITH!" (as the country gains stability and loses revolt risk).
  • Balkanise Me:
    • A prime strategy of the English against the French. France has dozens of releasable states making up over 75% of their territory. You can reduce France to the Ile-de-France and numerous minor countries over the course of two wars if you completely defeat them in both.
    • England can lose Northumberland, Wales, Normandy (Calais) and Cornwall as sovereign nations.
    • Castille can have Leon and Galicia ejected from it from the start, but by the time it becomes Spain it adds Granada, Aragon, Catalonia, and likely Navarra to the mix.
    • Sweden has Finland and Sapmi to worry about.
    • Denmark can lose Gotland and have the Kalmar Union (personal unions over Norway and Sweden) forcibly broken and have their vassalage of Holstein canceled.
    • Austria can lose Styria, Tirol, and its exclave in Sundgau to reduce it to four provinces and get skipped over if/when the Burgundian Inheritance fires and otherwise allows them to claim a large amount of Burgundy's land for free.
    • The Ottomans, various nations including just about the whole empire if they are unlucky enough to suffer a smashing after subduing the Byzantine Empire.
    • Much like France, Ming can be reduced to just its capital and a mess of squabbling small-to-medium states.
    • Poland and Lithuania can lose a variety of minors, especially in their East Slavic lands.
    • The Mongols and Timurids frequently collapse just trying to keep their various resurging nationals under control.
    • Most major powers at the game start are highly balkanizable, and even medium nations like the Teutonic Order (can have the highly valuable trade port of Danzig released as an independent country) and the Livonian Order (can lose almost a third of its land if Estonia rebels or is forcibly released) are not immune. Furthermore, as the game goes on, almost any nation that becomes a major power will inevitably wind up with cores of conquered nations that can be released in war or rebellion.
  • Belief Makes You Stupid: It's less about the religion itself, but rather the influence of religious orthodoxy.
    • In II and III had a slider for how innovative your country was. The more narrow-minded and orthodox things were, the more missionaries and colonists you get while easily placating the masses with religion and tradition, but all of that at a steep research penalty, which easily outweighed the benefits of being narrow-minded. Further pronounced in various non-English releases, where the narrow-mindedness is most often featured as obscurantism, suggesting actively going against any sort of inquiry, particularly the scientific one.
    • Claiming the title of the Defender of the Faith in both of those games allowed to easily and effortlessly go on "defensive" wars against "invading" heathens and heretics... at just as massive research penalty. In fact, combining even moderate narrow-mindedness with DotF meant a research penalty in the range of -25%, up to a maximum of -30 (in II) or -45 (in III). Any culture group that wasn't Latin had own, innate research penalty, which when combined with religious factors could go as far as outright prevent any technological progress, while a Latin country going full into religion had research on par with some backwater in the steppes of Central Asia - if not worse.
    • Muslim countries in IV face a choice that may seem strange: gain negative piety (representing Sufi mysticism) and gain military bonuses and missionary conversion strength... or gain positive piety (representing strict adherence to Islamic religious texts) and gain research, tax, and technology bonuses. Declaring war on neighbors of the same branch of Islam as you increase your mysticism, and declaring on others increases your legalism. It's often beneficial for countries to start off with mysticism to strengthen their early conquests and assist in conversions, and then move towards legalism once most conquests are completed and the bonuses suited towards running/centralizing a state are more useful. There are a variety of events that shift your piety in either direction along with other bonuses/penalties, and anyone reading them will quickly realize that the 'best' choice from the players moral perspective can easily lie on the mystic or legalistic side.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Several peaceful minor countries at the beginning of the game can become world powers by the end. For example, Portugal, even under the AI, can become a force to be reckoned with due to their unwillingness to get involved in Europe and their proclivity towards colonization.
  • Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: The American national ideas emphasize democracy and freedom and such, and are generally nice, but the last national idea you unlock is the Indian Removal idea, which automatically allows you to invade and conquer native American tribes.
  • Breakout Character: A breakout religion in Zoroastrianism. By the Europa Universalis period, Zoroastrianism as a religion of state is effectively dead, but the religion is extremely popular among Paradox players, so King of Kings got content for a Zoroastrian revival in Persia.
  • Bribing Your Way to Victory: Some gameplay DLCs in IV make it much easier to obtain certain nation-specific achievements. note 
  • Buffy Speak: Not that the meaning of "blobbing" isn't immediately obvious, but it's not a word someone who doesn't play 'EU III would use that way.
    • Into Spaced is now a common synonym for blobbing.
    • 'Dat [blobbed country]' seems to be catching on these days also.
  • Call-Back: Crusader Kings II has an Alternate History "Sunset Invasion" DLC where an advanced Aztec civilization invades Western Europe. If you import a CK2 game where you used "Sunset Invasion" into EU4, civilizations in the New World will be far more technologically advanced than usual.
  • The Cavalier Years: One of the eras covered by the games; in IV, the Age of Absolutism roughly corresponds to this era.
  • Challenge Run: Trying to play as a one-province minor (OPM) that is next to a larger neighbour. A popular project is to try to take one of these minor states which are generally swallowed up in the first decade or so of gameplay and turn them into world-conquering empires! The biggest example is the "Three Mountains" achievement from EU4. Your goal is to conquer the entire world—every single province—as Ryukyu, a tiny nation merely consisting of the island chain between Taiwan and Japan. This was possible in earlier patches only through extremely heavy bug-exploitation pulled off flawlessly (achievements require the game to be in Ironman mode, where one can only have one save file at a time). With recent patching out of these exploits, it may now be literally impossible.
  • Changing Gameplay Priorities: All over the place.
    • Cavalry start out much stronger than Infantry, but by end game the firepower and low cost of infantry make them much more useful (and the way math is done on flanking helps as well). Both of them also pale before the sheer obliteration wrought by Cannons, so much that you might find your Infantry as merely Cannon Fodder.
    • Discipline determines how much damage you take and receive, while Morale acts as a meter until your break and lose the battle. In the early game, breaking a unit's morale (rather than killing them all outright) is much more common. By end game, the sheer damage of high Discipline armies (such as Prussia and their Space Marines) means that battles are over before either side breaks morale.
    • Tax income vs. trade income. Early game, how much taxation your land puts out is your primary source of wealth, while only a few countries actually have enough control of a trade node to be making any significant income from it. However, as you conquer the other nations in your Trade Nodes, take trade benefiting ideas, and get more Merchants, a much larger portion of your money should come from trade. Especially if you colonize in Asia.
      • In more recent patches (1.30) of IV, the above dichotomy continues but Production income has been shaken up quite a bit. New monopoly estate privileges can be granted on specific trade goods. You receive 80% of the income those goods would have generated over the next 10 years up front and gain 1% mercantilism. These deals can be renewed every 10 years as well for more ducats and mercantilism. Since mercantilism is an extremely good modifier as it helps increase trade income, it's common to issue monopolies on up to 6 trade goods early game and keep them going until your mercantilism is maxed or nearly maxed. This makes production income less important but still worth upgrading if it's right before a new monopoly, as you'll get all the benefits from the upgrade right up front.
      • This was an even bigger issue in II and III, where tax was collected annually, rather than monthly - you had to manage your budget for a whole year, with income generated only on 1st of January of the new year. All while cores and local culture (which were event-spawned or result of costly, decades-long investments) played big role in the percentage of collected tax, often reducing it to nothing. Trade income, on the other hand, was a monthly thing, while being unaffected by cores, ownership or cultures, and being the only meaningful way to fund research. However, in early game most of the map remains unexplored, so you are stuck with a small handful of centers of trade (or even just one) and have to compete with your neighbors over them, making profits often below expenses of sending and then maintaining merchants, all while lucrative monopolies are both tech-locked and quickly destroyed by fierce competition. This means focusing on taxing at least provides you a solid source of income that can't be removed from your coffers short from being conquered. But, as more areas of the map gets explored and the more trade you can access, the less important land taxes become.
  • Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys:
    • Up until the Heir to the Throne expansion, EU III was a serious candidate for the most triumphant aversion of this trope. France was dubbed by gamers as the "Big Blue Blob" for its tendency to conquer most of Europe. In the words of one poster: "France is the Final Boss of EU III."
    • Played With in Heir to the Throne. A severely weakened France gets frequently eaten by Burgundy or by its minor vassals. However, since the Burgundians are French as well, and the Final Boss tends to end up either France or Burgundy (and sometimes Burgundy changes into France after taking all the French provinces)... Divine Wind seems to try for more of a middle ground.
    • As of the release of EU IV, the Big Blue Blob is back with a vengeance. Due to the variable nature of the game, they can still get beaten up on occasionally, but they're one of the games' most consistently powerful nations. Their very early 20% morale bonus and compact country means the AI can't help but win most of its battles and wars and gradually keep growing. European players will always need to contend with the ever present threat of France, and it's often worth trying to keep them as an ally if you can't balkanize them very early.
  • Chokepoint Geography: When appropriate. Terrain and the layout of provinces tends to channel armies into certain paths.
    • The best example is the Alps, which a north Italian nation can take and build forts in its few passable mountainous provinces. The defenders advantage will be massive, as will the attrition for anyone trying to siege it. While not blessed with the island of Great Britain, a unified Italy still has a very easy time defending its peninsular holdings as long as they own all the passes.
    • Another is the borders of the Indian subcontinent, where 13 forts can completely block access to the entire rest of the world. Since any empire stretching from Afghanistan to Burma will already be quite strong, any country with those 13 forts will become nearly invincible.
    • Korea is a lesser example, with two mountain provinces separating its peninsula from the Ming to the west and Manchu tribes northeast. Since a unified Korea is only a tertiary power at best (without extensive development or colonization) these provinces are often used offensively, baiting the nearby tribes to take penalties for attacking into mountain terrain and losing their shock bonus from flatland. This allows Korea to more easily expand to the north through its more militarily powerful northern neighbors.
    • Albania's chief defense against the Ottomans, besides Memetic Badass Skanderbeg ("Skander Beg For Mercy") with his 6/5/6 ruler stats and 5/5/5/0 general stats, is its treacherous mountains. A competent player can combine the two to forever bury Sultan Mehmed's dreams of European conquest.
  • Church Militant:
    • In II, at any point of the game, one can claim the title of "Defender of the Faith". It's costly and there could be only one Defender of any given faith at any given time (so someone could claim it before you are ready), but it provides an all-powerful diplomatic option: permanent casus belli against any country that is at war with any country that shares the religion of the Defender. As if Spain and France weren't terrifying already, without additional props to declare more wars. The downside is -15% research speed, which means anyone who isn't Latin tech group will start to lag behind considerably.
      • 'III nerfed the DotF significantly and further increased the research penalty, but it still allowed to both easily go on war and prevent accumulation of either badboy and war exhaustion.
    • In IV, before 1650 (or, with Mandate of Heaven, before the Age of Absolutism), Catholic powers can ask the Pope to declare a crusade.
    • Orthodoxy is basically a dream come true for militaristic nations. Besides a baseline reduction in stability cost, it uses patriarch authority that increases manpower by 33% and decreases unrest by 3 in Orthodox provinces on 100% authority. "Third Rome" DLC introduces a new mechanic, Icons, that takes this even further: You can commission an Icon that grants various bonuses, connected with expansion and maintenance of your militaristic empire.
    • Having positive or negative piety gives you different military benefits as a Muslim country.
    • The Temples Faction gives military bonuses and is described as the following:
    The Temples are especially interested in persecuting Buddhists. Since Buddhists are not a renewable resource, the Temple faction facilitates war to acquire more Buddhists
  • Circassian Beauty: Circassia has a national idea in EU IV called "Adyghe Beauty", which decreases prestige decay for the country. Trebizond, in the same area, has a similar idea based on its historical survival strategy, as a Christian Orthodox nation almost surrounded by larger Muslim factions, of offering beautiful noblewomen as wives to Muslim rulers.
  • Civil Warcraft: You WILL suffer from revolts or civil wars. Your enemies will suffer from Enemy Civil Wars. It comes with the time period.
    • Can be used to great effect when instigated in another country.
  • The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: depending on difficulty level at least. Some nations from EU III onwards are also "lucky" and get extra bonuses (though this can be turned off).
  • Corrupt Church: All religions provide events where you can increase your piety at a cost to your wallet, your dynasty or your subjects. Catholic and to a lesser extent, Orthodox Christianity provide events which imply outright corrupt acts. "Reformation Desire" is a sort of Karma Meter based on how corrupt the Catholic Church is - and the higher the score, the more dissidents start to form Protestant and Reformed Christianity. Every Catholic country gets events that increase or decrease it, but smart players are best served by taking whatever option gives the best outcome and ignoring the reform desire impacts - the reformation is an inevitability no matter what and your piety will make no difference when most of the AI choose options increasing reform desire. If you're hoping to become Protestant, you may want to be as corrupt as possible so the reformation can start faster.
  • Cosmetically Different Sides: All countries play by (basically) the same basic mechanics; the difference is mainly in the starting position, religion, tech group (which affects the speed of your research) and starting domestic sliders. Some of these can be changed (at least to some degree) while some are locked in place. In EU III, all of these can be changed through normal gameplay. Not easily, mind.
    • This was slightly altered in the Divine Wind expansion, with Japan, China and the horde nations receiving unique gameplay changes to represent their unique historical political structure.
    • EU IV introduces a little differentiation through National Ideas: All of the countries you've heard of (and a lot you haven't!) have unique bonuses that can be gained through research. All of these bonuses do operate through the same universal game mechanics, though. However, the tech rework involving the introduction of institutions reinforces the Cosmetically Different aspect.note 
      • Several DLC in, IV saw the introduction of Government Reforms, which adds a different layer of of differentiation to downplay this trope — different government types have different reforms to select from, both culture and religion can add new reform options, and specific nations and mission trees can have their own unique reforms with their own mechanics of different impact to the game.
  • Crutch Character: Timur for the Timurids. He's a massively capable ruler and general...who is about to die of old age.
    • The Timurids as a whole, especially in AI hands. They're quite possibly the strongest military power in the world in 1399 besides Ming, but they tend to melt down fairly quickly once Timur dies (as happened historically), and aren't really equipped to face down the sheer number of enemies they have on their borders and the rebels that pop up whenever their leader dies.
    • A human can avert this fairly easily and turn the Timurids into a real powerhouse however. The trick is to make peace with everyone except the Indian empires and take the provinces necessary to form the Mughal Empire. This will remove all the penalties associated with hordes and leave the player with an extremely strong Military and Economy, although they won't tech as fast as the Western nations.
  • Cult Colony: Countries with any of the Christian religions receive additional colonists regardless of any other factors in II and III (in fact, non-Christians gain virtually no colonists in III). On top of that, in II, going narrow-minded provides further colonists.
  • Curb-Stomp Battle: A well-blobbed player can steamroll over dozens of one-province countries with ease.
  • Cursed with Awesome: A border with any Horde state in III means they automatically declare war on you every five years. An inexperienced player would see this as a significant challenge (especially when considering the War Exhaustion mechanic and its tendency to cause massive revolts). An expert player sees this as a great opportunity to gain land, prestige, Imperial authority, or similar. A popular tactic is to acquire a border with Golden Horde as an HRE state (the easiest is Bradenburg/Prussia), and since winning a war as the Emperor gains authority, it's a surefire means of instituting the reforms needed to eventually unite the Empire.
    • In IV hordes themselves are a great example.
      • As a tribe, a ruler dying before the heir comes of age will instead be replaced by a new ruler...removing any concerns of long peaceful regencies and letting you get a new roll at decent heir stats.
      • Instead of legitimacy, they have horde unity, which is almost impossible to passively keep at 100...but increases by winning battles and razing provinces.
      • Razing provinces decreases their development permanently and can only be done on lands you recently conquered in war...but razing them provide money and lots of monarch points which can help keep you ahead of time on technologies and makes your new provinces easier to convert and cheaper to govern.
      • While hordes are pretty bad if you remain at peace all the time, they're extremely well suited to near-continuous wars with neighbors.
    • Some disasters in EU IV may prove beneficial in the long run:
      • The War of the Roses and Granadian War of Succession both allow you to get rid of your god-awful starting ruler for a more decent one.
      • The Conflict of Court and Country, if fought against well enough, can permanently raise your maximum absolutism by up to 20. For nations with a penalty to max absolutism, this can be a godsend to the point many advanced conquest strategies often include triggering this disaster as soon as possible.
      • The Revolution disaster is the main way to become a revolutionary nation, which grants several strong bonuses.
  • Damage Is Fire: The siege screen displays a small picture of the city under siege. As the siege progresses, one can see smoke and fire from within the city walls, reflecting its deteriorating condition.
  • Dawn of an Era: The beginning of the Renaissance, the Baroque period, the Age of Exploration, and the Age of Sail are all covered here.
  • Dated History: In Europa Universalis 4, there is an achievement for havinga large colonial empire in South America as Mali called "Abu Bakr II’s Ambition", in reference to an unsucessful 14th-century voyage of exploration. It is now believed that the actual name of the monarch who launched the expedition was Muhammed ibn Qu. The Malian mission tree, due to being added in a significantly later update, actually gets his name right.
  • Defeat Means Friendship: Forcing a country to become your vassal as part of a peace treaty immediately raises your relations to 200, the highest possible. Of course, since you've essentially conquered the country and are just letting the former rulers remain in power, this is a very Justified Trope.
    • As of EU4 patch 1.17, this trope is averted as force-vassalising a country immediately lowers your relations by 100. Unless you are powerful enough to stomp it flat and/or were very good friends with it beforehand, it will hate your guts and attempt rebellion immediately. The truce period must be used by the winner of the war to work on improving relations, or things will go south in no time once the truce is over.
  • Developer's Foresight: In EUIV, there is a chance that certain provinces will have names displayed that reflect the culture of the owners and not the culture of the locals. This is especially the case in countries where the culture of the rulers does not match that of the locals (for example, at the start of the game in the Ottomans (a Turkish country), Adrianople (a Greek-culture province), will have its name flashed as 'Edirne', which is the Turkish equivalent). Curiously, 'Avlonya', whose name would preferably be flashed as a name that translates as 'Vlore' is sometimes flashed with a name that translates as 'Albania'.
  • Difficulty Levels: Two types:
    • The normal variant, which affects how certain mechanics work for you and the computer within the game.
    • Which country you pick, which changes certain aspects such as what government you start with, and what vassals and releasable states. This can change your luck much more than the normal variant, and allows certain Challenge Runs, like trying to restore the Byzantine Empire to how the Roman Empire was at its height.
  • Disc-One Nuke: In Heir to the Throne and Divine Wind, it is possible for a Holy Roman Emperor to carry out a group of decisions that give them progressively more power in the Empire, eventually leading to abolishing the electorate, all members becoming vassals of the Emperor, and finally annexing the rest of the Empire into a single HRE state. The problem with this is, it's almost laughably easy to take a mega country- like say, France, or Poland-Lithuania- into the Emperorship. The end result? A nation state consisting of a completely cored mega-state and most of Germany and Northern Italy. The devs tried to curb this by making it so the HRE state only gains cores on nations that directly border it- thus making the first 50 years a rather hectic period of running around playing whack-a-mole with rebelsnote  - but after 50 years, it gives you the undisputed most powerful nation in the world, with a manpower only rivaled by Ming China.
  • Dump Stat:
    • In II, diplomacy skill of your ruler is virtually meaningless, especially if below 7 (on 1-9 scale). The only thing it truly affects is the amount of badboy decrease per month, at -0.05 per point. In III and especially IV, the stat is far more important.
    • In IV, monarch points are very important, but diplomatic is definitely the least important stat. Administrative and military points are both very important for expanding and is used for useful technologies, while diplomatic is neither (except integrating vassals, who are typically situational).
  • Dystopia Is Hard: Surprisingly averted in II. Going full narrow-minded, with harshest serfdom possible and actively using religion to back-up your goals, be them on domestic matters or against your enemies, is the easiest and most efficient way to go for global conquest and heavy colonisation. Add to that going fully decentralised state, where the ruler is a figurehead and every province does what it feels like doing... and it's even easier to conquer and maintain global domination. Your own population at large is too stupid, too beaten-down and too indoctrinated to know better, while nobody can oppose a country that can churn out dirty cheap infantry in droves. Stability and war exhaustion are both non-issues, despite normally killing dead any conquering force, while the sheer number of troops possible to command means anyone stupid enough to declare war to oppose your evil empire is just making it easier for your own conquest, as technically, it was them attacking you, so everyone is content with defending their horrible homeland against would-be invaders.
  • Early Game Hell:
    • Even as a large and (relatively) prosperous country, you start out with only a fraction of the world revealed, limited access to trade and your main income being taxing poorly developed provinces. Infrastructure is almost non-existing, you have close to no monetary reserves and chances are, your ruler is just a guy - not terrible, but also nothing special. The first 100 or so years of gameplay are both the most crucial ones and the toughest, because things can't be cheesed up with colonial ventures, global trade or Summon Bigger Fish - those things aren't there yet and you need to wait for them to develop. Even if you cheat your situation, the world itself is still an early 15th century backwater, so you can't exactly reap any benefits, as there are virtually none built up yet. And if you happen to be an OPMnote , things only add up further, since you have no manpower, no space to grow and obviously losing a single war means being booted out.
      • Specifically in II, before you can promote governors in your provinces, just managing your budget is a feat by itself. The technology for governors is dated at 1530 and you are unlikely to reach it earlier (or even by that date). On top of that, unless you build tax collectors, you can forget about, well, collecting most of census tax, aka your main source of income in early game. If you aren't in debt or with double-digit inflation by 1500, you've either lucked out with events or used exploits.
      • Enforced with colonisation in II. Early on, it is done under double penalty: "rookie mistakes" for first 20 attempts (starting at -20% and only going down with each attempt made, regardless if successful) and date-based for first 200 years (starting at -25% in 1419 and going down by 1% per 8 years). And that without mentioning the regular penalties that come from tropical climate, aggressive natives or an incompetent ruler. This turns early colonisation into Luck-Based Mission, especially considering how limited colonists are and how prohibitively expensive it is to gamble with your pre-governors budget.
    • You can try to revive the glory of the Byzantine Empire - starting just a few decades before it was invaded in real life. You have only a few provinces (with ocean and enemy territory between your capital and them), an all but nonexistent army and navy, are surrounded completely by a much stronger enemy who wants your capital province and will work to claim it, and your only ace is that your capital province is a trade center, which really doesn't do you much good, all things considered. There are nearby powers you can form alliances with, but they tend not to do much if any good unless the Ottomans find themselves in a bad position early on, which rarely happens. Recommended strategies tend to be "gamey", like exploiting the peace treaty and vassalage systems to gobble up territory in eastern Europe before the Ottomans can. Luckily, the game does give the player considerable bonuses just for being able to expand into the Byzantine Empire's old territory, but most games played as Byzantium won't even make it to that point. The Muslim equivalent to the Byzantine Empire is Granada, with Castile (most likely Spain later), usually in conjunction with Portugal and Aragon, filling the role of the Ottoman Empire. IV even offers players who manage to pull off conquering all of Spain and Portugal as Granada the Re-Reconquista achievement.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness: II plays significantly different than III and IV, which are far more similar to each other. Rulers are pre-defined, census tax not only is a thing, but provides main source of income early on, there are no advisors, structures are far less numerous or nuanced, regiments aren't even a thing, mercs are pre-defined and only accessible in Europe... the list goes for quite a while. Most importantly however, cultures and cores are fixed and can only be changed via events, while religious conversion takes forever and is by default unlikely. The map is also far less detailed, being adopted from a board game.
    • Did you notice nobody ever talks about I? That's because it's crude even when compared with II, looking like a beta or a tech demo of the incoming game.
  • Easily Conquered World: Considering that total world conquest is possible, this is definitely true. This is sometimes known as "blobbing".
    • Good luck pulling it in II without starting as something already big and knowing all possible exploits by heart - and you will still probably fail. The bigger you are, the more expensive your technology and lagging behind in land tech is the surest way to be conquered, rather than conquering others.
    • Subverted in the Magna Mundi mod, where there are several blockers in place to limit unrealistic blobbing, and aggressive expansion is not always the most efficient use of your time and money.
    • IV tried to address this with the introduction of States/Territories. Every nation has a set number of States it can have (largely based on Admin tech and government type). States can have low autonomy (down to 0%), which meant that provinces which are part of States are the major contributors to the nation. On the other hand, Territories have a minimum of 75% autonomy note , which largely limit their usefulness to the nation. note 
  • Easy Communication: The player gets notified about stuff happening a world away (cardinals dying, peace treaties being signed, rebellions erupting, etc.) the second they happen. The world-exploring mechanics subvert this, however, as it takes between 25 and 50 years for another nation's discovery to spread to the rest of the nations.
    • Subverted in MEIOU mods, where distance to capital (including regional ones), quality of roads, access to ports and similar factors affect how fast communication is going. You might end up with 3-5 months of delay between one end of your empire to another when decisions are made and your infrastructure and administration are insufficient even for a small duchy. In fact, even a small duchy will end up with few days of delay, unless you have top-notch roads and postal service. However, all of this regards only your actions and orders - anything happening is still notified instantly, it's just your reaction that takes forever to reach the frontiers.
  • Easy Logistics: Played with; while the abstraction level is too high to bother with boots and blankets, your armies DO have to be paid, and simply leaving them around means they will suffer "attrition", slowly (or, if you are, say, in Russia in winter, VERY QUICKLY) reducing their strength. Just like in Real Life, though there are no supply lines; Armies have to live off the land where they are stationed.
  • Elective Monarchy:
    • Nobles Republic. The ruler is elected from a handful of candidates for life. It's a republic solely in name, to the point where the ruler is styled as king, and royal marriages are allowed. It's widely considered one of the worst forms of government, since foreign countries can meddle in your elections, the government is weak and in III, also decentralised.
    • Republican Dictatorship, while ostensibly a republic, has a ruler elected for a life term and, unlike the king in Nobles Republic, having absolute power, rather than being a figurehead subservient to the demands of the nobility. This makes it a republic solely in name, and the only thing that differs from actual monarchies is the lack of royal marriages. If mishandled, it will devolve into an Absolute Monarchy (which oftentimes is beneficial).
  • End of an Age: The end of The Middle Ages and feudalism. One of the songs in EUIV is even titled "The End of an Era".
    • Certain events, such as "The Last Jousting Tournament", which fires for European countries, have this feel.
    "We can feel it in the wind. Soon our equestrian elite will be nothing more than a dream remembered, as the chivalrous tradition dies out before the onslaught of modernity. The world is changing, but for now, for one last time: Let the Knights of X ride!"
  • Enlightened Self-Interest: Being nice can pay off handsomely:
    • Putting a humane, not overly harsh regime over newly conquered territories, along with playing nice with cultures other than the main one(s) of your nation also means fewer or no revolts, ability to accept more cultures for better productivity and stability, along with quicker gain of bigger manpower for future wars and conquests. Also, if you happen to accept certain culture and it's an unaccepted minority in neighbouring countries, you can gain a casus belli to "liberate" those people.
    • Playing nice in diplomacy, marrying into every nation possible and keeping as many good relationships as possible means other countries are less likely to band against you even if you suddenly decide to conquest half of the continent. This also allows the taking over of entire nations without a single shot being fired, as you can befriend them, have a royal marriage, a long-lasting alliance and eventually propose a vassalage treaty, which they will gladly accept... fast-forward few decades of being nice and they will just get merged willingly into your country, while spending all that time in making their provinces rich and prosperous for you. Post-war rebellions? Poverty in war-torn countryside? Pfty!
    • Enlightened Despotism is a government form in III. You still have an absolute monarchy with all the power, but putting a friendly façade to the regime, along with following the ideas of the Enlightenment... of course the ones approved by the monarch. This allows to drastically decrease your infamy, making it easier to survive on international stage after large conquests.
  • Event Flag: There are a wide variety of events in the game; some are random, most have some kind of trigger. In the earlier games, some were "Historical" and would trigger for certain countries in order to recreate certain historical events, such as the Habsburg inheritance of Hungary. These were removed in EU III (though restored in some of the Game Mods, with more complex trigger conditions to ensure that historical events only happen when the conditions are appropriate); whether that is a good thing or not is a matter for debate.
    • IV tries to balance the pros and cons of this system by introducing special historical event chains for certain nations. For example, every nation can descend into civil war if a king dies without an heir, but if the same happens in England at a certain time frame, the game will trigger a War Of The Roses event chain. Similarly, if Russia did not westernize after a certain date but is ruled by a competent king, an event chain might trigger that simulates the modernization reforms enacted by Peter the Great. A low stability level generally enables bad things to happen, but in a certain time period in Russia, it can trigger the Time of Troubles event chain. And so on.
  • Evil Is Easy: Harsh, brutal options are not only the easiest way of playing the game, many of them are openly encouraged. And some are the only options to be taken in the first place. Do you want to give up the territory you've just conquered and/or make it unproductive for next 30 years... or do you want to simply send your troops to subdue locals with brute force? Do you want to get easy money from plundering natives or do you plan on spending precious monarch points on peace talks with insignificant tribes present only in the event? Forcefully converting any foreign cultures and religions into your own for quick rise of productivity and tax revenue, or spending decades or even centuries before you can add them to the group of "accepted" cultures within your country, with extra costs at that? The list can go on for quite a while, but unless you are a nationalistic, war-monging empire, the game not only gets hard and unrewarding, it's simply boring due to lackluster non-aggressive options.
  • Expy: In III and especially IV, certain advisers can become this particular timeline's equivalent of a famous person from history (a la In Spite of a Nail). For instance, if you have a particularly skilled Astronomer around the latter few decades of the 16th century, he might end up replicating the accomplishments of Tycho Brahe.
  • Fighting for a Homeland: Separatist rebels, which seek to join an existing nation with their culture as its primary culture if one exists, and (re)establish one if no nation with their culture as primary exists.
  • Final Boss: As noted above, especially powerful AI nations (France in particular) often end up taking this role.
    • If you are focusing on Europe, watch out for the Ottomans, Poland-Lithuania, Russia (with their infinite manpower), and Austria (who, true to form, marry anything with a pulse and inherit later). If you are colonising, or playing as a non-Western nation, beware of Castile, Portugal and England (if they weren't eaten by the Wars of the Roses or the French). Always beware of France.
    • If you're playing Europa Universalis IV and are importing a Save from a Crusader Kings II game with the Sunset Invasion DLC enabled, the Aztecs and Inca are going to be some of your hardest foes due to their equal tech group, their ideas which tend to lead to the Natives invading Europe first, quite often an outright *lead* in technology, and huge swathes of territory they already have and plenty more they can just gobble up without much opposition. You can forget about trying to conquer them with a few hundred men.
  • Final Solution: The "Attack Natives" option, for when you have an army over a province that's uncolonized or in the process of being colonized, is an unambiguous example. When you press it an army of natives appears, either correspondent to the native population and attacks your army. After it's defeated the province loses that amount of people from it's native population. Through this method it's possible to render provinces with thousands of native inhabitants entirely deserted. Once the native population of the province reaches 0, getting it colonized gets much easier.
    • It is worth noting this action is also heavily discouraged, especially in II and III, where native population is added to province pop once the colony turns into a town. In some cases, this can provide a new town with a whooping population of 26 thousands - something that would be otherwise simply impossible to achieve within the timeframe of the game. IV eventually added a bonus to trade value scaled with native population when colony turns into a province, but in initial release, it wasn't present and extreme measures were the only sensible way of colonising at all, as there was simply no benefit for keeping natives around.
  • Fog of War: the standard version, and also the fact that "unexplored territory" can only be removed by armies or navies led by conquistadors and explorers respectively. Some parts are also "Permanent Terra Incognita" (such as the interior of Australia, Africa and the Americas) and cannot be explored at all.
  • 420, Blaze It: In a downplayed example, the province with the internal code number 420 is called Ganja by some cultures. It's most likely no coincidence that a province that can share its name with a nickname for marijuana also happens to have this internal number.
  • Game-Breaking Bug: Generally averted, but here and there strange things happen.
    • On the Strange Screenshots thread in the forums, there's a picture of a nameless Lithuanian general with ridiculous stats. Normally the maximum stats for a general are 6 shock / 6 fire / 6 maneuver / 4 siege, but this guy had 300,000 shock / 0 fire / over a million maneuver / and 0 siege. There were Chuck Norris jokes. Possibly the result of an overflow error.
    • In the Divine Wind expansion, an event was created that requests nations hand over imperial land to the nation in control of the Holy Roman Empire. It was intended that the human player release these lands as sovereign states, as doing so would increase the Emperor's influence and not doing so would lead to infamy gains, which has very negative effects. However, the AI never releases land as sovereign states of its own free will. The result is that the emperors become the most hated nations in the world, and the Holy Roman Empire practically collapses as many imperial nations go to war with their emperor.
      • The 5.1 patch fixed this bug. Prior to the fix, the player could get quite savagely mauled by it due to certain provinces being unreleasable for cultural-mismatch reasons.
  • Geo Effects: Rivers, hills and mountains give juicy bonuses to the defender and sensible commanders take advantage of this fact to exploit Chokepoint Geography. The Common Sense expansion makes such provinces more costly to develop, however.
  • Global Currency: The generalised in-game "ducats".
  • Gondor Calls for Aid: If relations have become strained with your allies, calling them to war becomes this.
  • Great Offscreen War: For IV, the Crusade of Varna is this; all the major players in eastern Europe participated and it's the first domino in a massive chain. The Crusade of Varna was essentially an attempt by Poland and Hungary and Croatia (all 3 in a Personal Union), Serbia, Lithuania, Moldavia, the HRE, the Pope and the Teutonic Knights to curb the Ottomans' expansion into Europe. The war was lost after the Polish-Hungarian-Croatian King Wladislaw was killed in the Battle of Varna. The Crusade itself practically shapes the political landscape of Eastern Europe for the rest of the game, as this list of after-effects will attest:
    • The destruction of the Hungarian-Polish-Croatian Personal Union. King Wladislaw of Poland was granted the Crown of Hungary and Croatia, with the Pope supporting him on the condition he joined the Crusade of Varna. The crusade didn't go so well and since Wladislaw died heirless (he died in Varna at age 18), what would've been a PU between Hungary and Poland (Croatia came packaged with Hungary) was gone.
    • Hungary and Poland being in Interregna at the start of the game.
    • Hungary electing Matthias Corvinus and kicking off the rule of House Hunyadi, later culminating in the Austro-Hungarian Union. A Hungarian commander, John Hunyadi, distinguished himself in the Crusade. He later went on to grow powerful in Hungary, eventually getting his son, Matthias Corvinus, elected King of Hungary. Later, Hungary was inherited by 2 Jagiellions (without a personal union with Poland) for a short while before finally landing in the hands of Austria (because the second Jagiellion king agreed to hand the kingdom to Austria if he died without issue, which he did when he drowned in a river).
    • The Polish-Lithuanian Personal Union.
    • The truce between the Ottomans and much of eastern Europe, which caused the next after-effect:
    • The lack of eastern European support for Byzantium in the Siege of Constantinople.
  • Green Aesop: An unusual example with migratory tribes after their rework. Contrary to their usual depictions as guardians of nature, migratory tribes in IV now cause devastation at their capital province (attributed to "tribal grazing"). This, combined with the tribal development mechanic, depicts migratory tribes as pillagers of their lands.
  • Guide Dang It!:
    • After II had it easy and simple, naval combat had three overhauls through the support life of III and then being switched around a few times more in IV. As a result, it is pre-requested to check the version and/or expansion/DLC you are using and find appropriate guide online, or suffer the consequences of building "wrong" navy.
    • I and II are pretty obtuse when it comes to some of their shared mechanics
      • There is a CRT rating for your military. Not only the game doesn't explain what it does, but neither does the manualnote .
      • Inflation and minting are very poorly explained within the game. Not only you aren't anywhere told how to handle themnote , the game does an awful job explaining how exactly the Governor works to decrease the resulting inflation in the long run. The tooltip does tell you about the immediate benefit (-1% of your current inflation on building finish), but not how it works in the long runnote . All of that despite the three elements being crucial for having a successful playthrough and the basis of the exponential growth once Age of Discovery starts for good.
      • Good luck figuring out how buildings affect prices and how or why it matters for the global economy and income of your country from both taxes and trade. In fact, this one is part of the general "read the wiki first, play the game maybe" help given to new players.
      • Just about anything related to pirates and their impact on trade value along with taxation or how to even prevent their generation in the Caribbeans (or why they even spawn there and in the American Great Lakes out of all places), not to mention why their ships can be either floating rafts or top-of-the-line vessels that will sink fleets few times their sizenote .
    • Ever since III introduced "pips" for military units, they have never been explained in any way throughout the game other than being very roughly covered as "more pips = better unit"note .
    • IV isn't much better, despite being designed 15 years after the first game
      • When building Manufactories, the interface only informs the player of the direct boost to income. The indirect boost through an increase in the province's trade value (as more goods are produced) is not mentioned - despite being the main reason to build them.
      • IV is in general absolutely full of these, as tooltips often don't properly inform you of things or even give the wrong information. One of the most common is the total inaccuracy of the trade ship income estimates (which often scares off new players from building them, even though they're the best investment one can make in the entire game).
  • Guns Are Worthless: Well, they START OUT that way. As your tech level improves, "Fire Damage" becomes far more lethal than "Shock Damage" though.
    • Averted with vengeance in II. Guns are lethal from the moment they show up, since without them, there is no Fire Phase in combat at all. Having guns, even the weakest ones, while your enemy does not makes a massive difference and is the main reason why Europeans have such easy time fighting against American and African tribes. In early dates, firearms are a complete game-breaker and only stop having such huge impact around the start of the 17th century.
  • Heart Is an Awesome Power:
    • Cultural tradition in III represents how important culture, art and education are for your nation. This in turn translates into the quality of advisors (and a currency to get most of them) you can get, as you have more and better-educated people in your country to fill various posts. Further emphasised by the Patron of Arts national idea, which allows to reach 100% cultural tradition and maintain it, all thanks to the government realising how important it is to keep generously funding such "useless" people like writers and artists.
    • Diplomatic reputation in IV represent how earnest and competent your diplomats are. This in turn translates into increased chances of AI joining your cause, be it call to arms, forming an alliance or becoming your vassal (and being integrated a lot faster and cheaper). High enough, diplomatic reputation might make a nation immune to disloyality of subjects and makes staging uprisings and rebellions against senior impossible. Unsuprisingly, Austria excels at this, as not only does it have a ton of diplomatic national ideas which can be combined with Diplomatic and Influence ideas, but it starts out as Emperor of the HRE and is very easily able to stay that way. You can end up with a personal union over Bohemia and Hungary in the first 30 years of the game, and later have the same with Castile and Poland while also reforming and unifying the HRE to become the superpower of Europe without even conquering any of your neighbours.
  • Hegemonic Empire: As typical of Paradox Interactive games, there are mechanics for expanding through peaceful vassalization and annexation. Austria has missions to encourage this, and can in its initial place form a much larger empire diplomatically, with some diplomatic cunning and strength.
  • Hired Guns: Mercenaries. They deploy faster but are much more expensive to rise and/or supply.
  • Historical Domain Character: Pretty much every named member of the cast, including the rulers, popes, advisors, commanders, etc.
    • This can also lead to Richard Nixon, the Used Car Salesman, especially since the game randomly selects first and last names for advisors and mercantile/religious leaders from the appropriate languages. Though in IV there are events to grant access famous advisors, like Da Vinci and Machiavelli, to the proper nations if the conditions are right.
  • The Horde: Divine Wind turns all of Central Asia over to these guys, with the particularly nasty twist that they automatically go to war with every neighbor every five years. The Golden Horde and Timurids are strong enough to be Demonic Spiders, while the minor hordes (Nogai, Qara Koyunlu, Kazakh, Chagatai, Oirats) are more like a Goldfish Poop Gang.
  • Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: A Romanian mission in IV lets you impale the Ottoman sultan if you occupy the Ottoman capital.
  • Imperial China: The Ming dynasty. The foremost world power in the game's start date of 1444, with more provinces and a higher population than any other nation in the world. Make sure to keep the Mandate of Heaven though, or you'll go the way of Yugoslavia. But if you play your cards right, you can end up with a colonial empire of your own, meet the Europeans in Africa instead of in Guangzhou and keep them out of your chosen sphere of influence, and eventually industrialize large parts of your empire. Should you fail, the Ming are most likely to be replaced by either the Qing (arising as they did historically from the newly-united manchurian tribes to the northeast) or possibly even a resurgent Yuan. Even worse, the empire may remain fragmented by the time the Europeans arrive to carve out their spheres of influence and China may remain fragmented for centuries.
  • Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: more like Insurmountable Waist Height Mountains - certain areas of the map are unexplorable. This is less egregious in EU3 but there is still permanent terra incognita.
    • The Heir to the Throne expansion removes this in favour of "wasteland", which is basically the same thing but visible. Note that most of the American West is "wasteland". Which for the purposes of the game it is - it wasn't explored nor settled (by Europeans, anyway) until after the end.
    • There's a mod for EU III called the Whole World Mod, which makes the entire world explorable.
  • Interfaith Smoothie: The Fetishist religion (representing Africa's native faiths) is not a single religion, but a religious culture that essentially grabs every deity it can find (including several monotheistic ones) and establishes cults to them, leading to weird, Africanized versions of various faiths that have more in common with each other than with their parent religions. Each king can choose any cult he wants without causing strife, unless one cult has become dominant, and all Fetishist countries consider each other same-religion, while other religions (even the parent religion of the king's cult) call them heathens.
  • It Will Never Catch On: Occasionally. For example, the Castilian/Spanish national idea Siglo de Oro mentions that "that book about the man fighting the windmills" probably won't stick around as a part of Spain's cultural heritage.
  • Kill It with Ice: Attrition is higher during winter in frozen provinces, and this combined with a scorched-earth strategy can deeply decimate a superior enemy army. The Real Life campaigns in Russia can thus be simulated.
  • Land of One City: Commonly called One Province Minors, or OPMs (strictly speaking, all OPMs aren't actually lands of one cities — many provinces are large enough to in reality have several cities in them, but all one-city lands are one-province minors, and in game terms one province=one city). It's even possible to take certain OPM's (like Hamburg) and through subjects, colonial nations, and trade leagues become the number one world power without directly controlling a second province.
  • The Late Middle Ages: The earliest possible starting year in III is 1399.
  • Magikarp Power:
    • Governors in II are those if your country isn't an OPM and thus has to build them in multiple provinces, rather than just a single one. Each governor building provides +1% to population growth (per decade), +1 production income (which in II is a lot) and the Magikarp bit of it: 0.25 decrease of yearly inflation. However, the amount of provinces with governor was compared with total number of provinces in your country, decreasing the anti-inflation value accordingly. But if all of your provinces had a governor, a whooping 25% of your total income could be put directly into your coffers without any ill effect. This in turn allowed to stop relying on annual tax income, along with massive increase of money reserve, allowing to build military, improve infrastructure, send merchants to far away places and colonise like crazy.
    • Slaves in II and (especially) III start as a lackluster trade good with low price and are ignorable... until colonisation starts picking up the pace. Each province that produces cotton, tobacco or sugar (and coffee in III) sharply increases demand for slaves, turning them quickly into insanely profitable commodity. More so if it's not held by a nation following animism religion (so giving an incentive to conquer natives). III added a further modifier, which increases the value of slaves if the province producing "plantation goods" is on a different landmass than your capital (so a colony). If you directly own any province(s) "producing" slaves, you will be hard-pressed to eventually abolish slavery - that's how profitable they get once most of the world is colonised.
    • In III, the various basic provincial decisions on their own don't look like anything important or powerful, providing minor, almost invisible bonuses... but those quickly add up together. Most countries start as feudal monarchies, with tiny amount of magistrates provided per year. But with extensive passing of two provincial decisions, "Build post office" and "Expand road network", one keeps gaining +0.01 of monthly (rather than yearly) increase of magistrates. Pass 8 of those and you gain additional magistrate each year. Pass 50 of thosenote  and you gain a magistrate every other month. This in turn allows to just spam decisions of real importance, like "Enact Land Reform" or ones with nation-wide effects. If done early on, this quickly turns into Disc-One Nuke. And of course, both post offices and roads provide their own bonuses to production and trade - even if small, they are still a cheap increase of production and trade efficiency.
    • Similarly, Trade Depot/Marketplace is the most sought after building in the gamenote , that also shows up with low tech requirements. Trade depot adds +1 (marketplace +2 and +1% population growth) to trade value of the province, at price of 75 ducats (50 for marketplace). Per province. This means an entire Center of Trade can greatly increase its value, especially in sparsely populated areas that produce low-value goods, suddenly making trade lucrative.
    • Latin culture group in III and IV. Your cavalry is a laughing stock with close to zero progression, your infantry adopts firearms quite late and for the most parts, your units are mediocre or worse. Come 17th century and onward and your units are becoming much better with less technological progress needed, not only catching up with everyone, but gradually gaining an edge. By early 18th century, Western European infantry is the best in the game and only gets stronger from there (and everyone else is virtually stuck at their current, already weaker state), while cavalry gains badly needed upgrades.
    • Shipyards and Regimental Camps (along with their upgrades) in IV increase respectively naval (+2) and land (+1) force limits. A single building is almost meaningless, making room for two ships or a single regiment... but when build into a handful of provinces, this can multiply the force limit into just silly values.
    • Germany starts out divided into dozens and dozens of mostly one province little countries. Conquer the right ones and you can gain the option to form Germany which can quickly become one of the most powerful countries in the game. Do this early in the game before Spain, France, Russia, and Great Britain have formed and you easily have THE most powerful country in the game. Even if it takes you slightly longer, all those disparate countries will spend some of their monarch points developing their lands...which will then become your lands. Even without the military bonuses some of the nations that form it may have, even a partially united Germany is an economic powerhouse.
    • The Timurids (once Timur himself dies) are prone to rebellions and other woes even by horde standards. Successfully reform the government into a proper kingdom, however (or better yet, form the Mughal Empire), and you've got a powerful nation with mountainous terrain that can be a nightmare to invade, access to multiple high-value trade zones, and lots of potential for colonization, with Africa and some Pacific islands close by.
    • Generally, any large nation in Asia or Africa if you adopt institutions soon enough. By the time European colonizers start knocking on your door, even an intermediate player can easily push back their fleets and armies, and many nations are well positioned for a colonial empire of their very own (Kilwa, Indonesian and Indian tags, China, and Japan can use the Europe-pointing trade nodes in their favor.)
    • Bahmanis starts out as a medium-power Indian kingdom with some stellar national ideas and Vijayanagar to the south as their only real threat. Overcoming them initially can be a challenge, but taking their cores and those of Orissa to the east will let you form Hindustan and get permanent claims on all remaining territories in the Indian subcontinent. If you can manage to unite India, you have a terrifying beast with limitless potential: population and resources to rival Ming but with superior government and military bonuses, plus alliance possibilities with the Muslim nations of the middle east, and even the chance to do a bit of colonising in Africa and Indonesia.
    • Byzantium in EU IV starts the game with just four provinces and a vassal, all menaced by the enormous Ottoman Empire. If you somehow can defeat them, you will find out the Vestigial Empire is actually a rather capable nation, with strong national ideas, top tier orthodox religion, a powerful mission tree and several unique events that will boost your mana production. With all this, restoring the Eastern Roman Empire, or maybe even the entire thing, is much less of a difficult task.
    • A couple of religions work this way in EU IV due to their unique mechanics.
      • Coptic Christians get to select a new Blessing for every holy site (out of a possible five) under their religion's control. The Ottomans take the "difficult start" aspect out of the equation entirely, though; they can deliberately spark a religious rebellion early on to convert over, then stomp the Mamluks to recover the holy sites not already in Ethiopian hands, subsequently quickly gaining many strong bonuses compared to their old Sunni faith. However, the loss of their unique government type (which grants a choice of 3 heirs, granting unprecedented monarch flexibility) means that it is sadly not a straight upgrade.
      • Confucian nations (most prominently Ming and Qing) are able to "Harmonize" with other faiths, so long as they control at least one province of that religion. On the one hand, this is a drawn-out process which, in the short term, hurts the realm's stability and finances. On the other hand, when Harmonization is complete, the country gets a permanent bonus and all provinces of that religion (if it's Shintoism or a Buddhist sect) or that entire religion group (if it's anything else) are counted as "the true faith."
      • Downplayed with Fetishist nations. Through contact with other religion groups (and Fetishists in other regions of Africa), the stable of Cults they can choose from gradually expands; thus, the larger the nation, the more options it has. Unfortunately, Hindu and Tengri mechanics are very similar, but provide better bonuses, while Confucianism lacks flexibility but has the potential to become much more powerful; combined with Fetishism's lackluster missionary strength, it really can't compare even with every Cult unlocked.
      • Ibadism is much less present on the map than its sister faiths Sunnism and Shiism, with as few as 3 nations practicizing it in 1444. However, if you get past the inevitable Early Game Hell, it comes with a powerful economical bonus that will allow you to snowball faster in the midgame, and it can invite scholars from any school of islam. Since all three Ibadi nations are often annexed within the first 40 years of game time, you can also become the defender of the Ibadi faith with no penalties beyond the initial cost. While bonuses are minor when there are only 1-4 ibadi countries, they are decent with 5-9 and quite nice with more than that. Since you will likely be spreading the ibadi faith to your vassals and buffer states, you won't mind being called in to defensive wars where they get attacked either.
      • Some of the less-popular religions are actually made stronger by the paucity of countries worshipping that faith. Completing religious ideas gives quite a powerful casus belli on any neighbors with a different state religion - whether heretic or heathen. For some (Ibadi, Coptic, Orthodox) that's going to be basically everyone and even for religions like Hindusim, the Indian subcontinent is still mostly ruled by Muslim sultanates.
    • The EU IV achievement "Ideas Guy" is based on deliberately invoking this with a custom nation: You get to create a custom nation using 800 points (the maximum allowed) but can not start with more than 3 total development (the least possible), which means that the vast majority of those points can be spent on getting incredibly overpowered national ideas. But since nearly all of those national ideas only get unlocked later on in the game, your nation will initially be among the weakest in the world and you need to manage to survive the first 100 years or so before you really start to reap the benefits of your powerful ideas. Alternatively, you can give your ruler the "immortal" trait at a very steep cost. As long as you never make him a general, this lets you have a 6/6/6 ruler for the entire game. The military technology advantages alone can pave the way for early expansion, and excess monarch points can be used to develop your capital into a shining jewel of the world.
  • Map Stabbing: A sword-in-the-map icon is a stock image used for a number of "conquer X region" missions.
  • Merchant Prince: Merchant Republics are ruled by this sort of character.
  • Metagame: Any given human player is aware that (a) Americas exists, (b) Africa can be circumnavigated to reach India and (c) South East Asia along with Far East are full of rare, expensive trade goods. This leads to situation where certain strategies, especially for trade-reliant counties, fully depend on the fact the player knows even most basic world geography, such as gearing for full control of the Cape of Africa or sending ships in the exact area to find specific locations.
    • Paradox became well-aware of this issue and introduced colonial range as a counter-balance in III. All this caused was people conquering bits of Moroccan shore and Iceland ASAP to get a core there and start exploring with even better range than Spaniards. Ultimately IV introduced new exploration mechanics, where explorers first have to chart entire sea zone in their range and then start exploring the shoreline, both as missions that can't be cancelled until finished, simply to give AI any sort of chance against human player in exploration.
  • The Minion Master: You're likely to become this if you Revoke the Privilegia as the Holy Roman Emperor: All HRE members become your vassals and since they're typically quite numerous but individually small, it leads to a massive vassal swarm that can often Zerg Rush your enemies all on their own, often eliminating the need for your armies to get involved themselves.
  • Mission from God: Three examples: The Holy War casus belli, the Deus Vult national idea and the mission mechanic flavor text: "God's will has been revealed to us!"
  • Moral Myopia: In III, there is no stability hit for declaring war on a heathen nation outside one's religious group without a casus belli. Countries can also take a National Decision that extends this to heretic nations within the same group as well.
    • After a patch, this is replaced by a Holy War Casus Belli on heathens (either neighbors or just all heathens, depending on your national decisions and government), which expires in the midgame. In Europa Universalis IV the expiration date was eventually removed, then in an even later update it was reworked so that you either needed to choose the Religious Idea Group, or else be a Catholic nation attacking a heathen nation that has had a crusade called upon them by the Pope, in order to use the Holy War cb at all.
  • Morale Mechanic: Most battles are won not by destroying every single unit the enemy's army has, but by lowering their morale so they flee the battlefield.
  • The Musical: As an April Fools' joke in the leadup to EU IV, Paradox announced Europa Universalis: The Musical, and even released three songs from it: "Casus Belli," "Prestige," and "Empire Borders".
  • Must Have Caffeine: controlling 20% of the world's output of Coffee gives you the benefit "Trading in Coffee", which greatly speeds up how quickly new Institutions (the Renaissance, Colonialism, Printing Press, etc…) spread throughout your land. Coffeehouse philosophers and all that. Islamic nations even have events where they may need to crack down on these 'coffeehouse dissidents', significantly increasing unrest in that province.
  • Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Pirate ships in IV mostly have names in various flavors of evil, from the simple yet intimidating ("Executioner", "Death", "The Nightmare") to the more elaborate and at least as intimidating ("The Fear of the Demon", "The Doom of the Ocean", "Killer's Fearful Storm").
  • Nerf: In II, manufactories are the ultimate building you want to have in your province, with all-around bonuses and very high pay-off, especially when matching with correct trade goods. In III, they are even better, with more trade goods related to their type and even stronger bonuses, while others being so strong and unlocked so late, it's worth to wage wars to seize the pre-build ones. And in IV... they are virtually meaningless mid-game structure that simply doubles local goods production or provide bonuses that can be easily gained by developing the province instead (making the good-producing manufactories better by default).

  • Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Some of the less plausible alt-history paths in IV's mission trees are based in this. The Mongols were cool. The Crusaders were cool. So why not have STEPPE HORDE CRUSADING ORDERS (the result of one branch of the Teutonic Knight's tree)? Or PROTESTANT THEOCRATIC PLUTOCRATIC VIKING PIRATES (an option for the Baltic city-state of Riga with its 'Salvific Plutocracy' government).
  • No Points for Neutrality:
    • In II and III, certain policy sliders don't provide any benefits or penalties when set to the mid-point. You must go into either direction to get any effects and usually only the final two steps (out of five) provide the "main" effect of going into that direction.
    • In IV, Muslims get bonuses for embracing mysticism and oneness with god (determined armies, easier conversion of infidels) or embracing a scholarly legalistic view of Islam (faster technology research, more manpower), but not for being in between. There is a 'consolation event' giving you a free stability if you remain in the middle, however.
    • Inverted for Buddhists, who get bonuses for being in the middle of the (literal) Karma Meter, but are penalized for being on either extreme.
  • Off the Rails: Many AAR writers consider it mildly distasteful, even in a gameplay AAR, to make blatantly gamey and Out of Character moves like converting the Ming to Shintoism or turning the Timurids into a republic. Others, conversely, run with it and pile on the Ass Pulls for the lulz.
  • Old Save Bonus:
    • You can transfer games from Crusader Kings into Europa Universalis III; these saves can further be transferred into Victoria: An Empire Under The Sun and then into Hearts of Iron 2, for a total of some 900 years of gaming.
    • Crusader Kings II and Europa Universalis IV have a similar linkage with its official converter from Crusader Kings II, keeping the exact countries, rulers, heirs, and even claims (and, if reformed, pagan religions), and it will do its best to try to pair converted nations with appropriate national ideas if they're the same as or close enough to a normal Europa Universalis IV nation. With the earliest start date in 769, that's over 1,000 years total gameplay just between those two. Furthermore, there are a variety of Easter Eggs within the converter, such as if the Norse holy order, the Jomsvikings are independent, the Roman Empire was restored, or Karlings still exist and control an independent kingdom, they all get unique national ideas. If Sunset Invasion was enabled, the Americas go from easy conquests to formidable powers able to maintain technological parity with the Europeans. Finally, kings who attained immortality in the Crusader Kings remain immortal; with immortality costing a whopping 800 points in the Nation Designer, and no historical nations having immortal leaders, it's generally the only non-mod way to reasonably get the trait. An imported CK2 game is also the only way to have Israel in an EU4 game (it's infinitesimally unlikely to happen without player intervention, but it's possible to restore the Kingdom of Israel as a Jewish ruler in CK2).
  • Ominous Latin Chanting: More like Badass Latin Chanting!
  • One Stat to Rule Them All:
    • Centralisation in EU2 and 3. Everything else is either situational, depend on the size of your country, tech group and what not. But you want to have your centralisation slider as much toward "Centralised" as only possible at any given moment.
    • In EU4, Prestige and Legitimacy improve the morale of your armies and give other bonuses. Having low Legitmacy and low or even negative Prestige will make it very difficult to win wars without significant numerical superiority.
    • Absolutism is IV's version of Centralization. Its a bonus to everything your empire does with no downsides, and as soon as the mechanic is enabled the only viable strategy is "rush to Max Absolutism
    • Unless you plan to use them as Frontline Generals, your rulers' main stat is administration. It interacts with a wide range of game mechanics, including taxes, production, colonisation and general efficiency of the government. Every single point of it counts.
    • For combat generals, having a bonus to Fire damage boosts gunmen and cannons, becoming the only important stat for winning battles because of how strong they are. However, for winning wars the far and away best General stat is Siege, which makes it much quicker to take forts.
    • For non-general military leaders, it's movement. Explorers can spend longer periods at sea (and thus explore more or even shrug off effects of a storm), conquistadors become almost entirely immune to attrition, and admirals have easier time positioning their ships or escaping pursuit, on top of giving them an edge during naval battles.
  • Piñata Enemy: Native American nations could become this in earlier versions of EU4 since their relative isolation meant that they usually just sat there hoarding money for most of the game, so giving them a quick beating and forcing them to empty their wallet for you was a surefire way to fill up your treasury with relatively little effort. This often made them far more profitable to keep independent than to conquer, at least until you had milked them dry of their ducats. Later versions changed the way money transfer in peace deals worked to make it scale with the income of the target rather than their current treasury, so small OPM's now have far less money to give than larger nations.
  • Pintsized Powerhouse:
    • Ever since Common Sense added province development to the game, OPMs became a downplayed case. Since they only have a single province to invest into, this leads to very highly developed spots, as AI has literally nothing else to do with mana.
    • Due to the way how MEIOU mod overhauls game mechanics, it's entirely possible to play as a Land of One City and be a dominant power of the continent, due to said city being worth more than certain (pretty large) countries. This is especially pronounced in Northern Italy and the members of the Hansa, with various city states having wealth comparable to, say, Provence or Castille. And they don't fold down in war as easily as OPMs in regular game. The mod generally allows to play tall, without having to conquer a single province through the entire game to enjoy various mechanics and still actively shape global history.
  • Press X to Die: The game, being based on history, has a number of events where one country can chose to merge with another (eg. Lithuania merging with Poland to form the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth). If the player happens to be controlling the country in question, choosing to merge is an instant game-over.
  • Pretext for War: The entire purpose of the casus belli mechanic. If you declare war without a legitimate reason, expect to take some severe consequences.
  • Pun: For Hindu nations, there's an event called "Guru Meditation," which refers to the Amiga version of the Blue Screen of Death, and is about a Guru causing problems for society by spending all his time in meditation. The tooltip even includes "Press left mouse button to continue," another reference.
  • Purposely Overpowered: In EU4, Nations that did very well historically in this time period tend to have more powerful national ideas to aid them in that goal, in addition to whatever advantages they receive from their starting position of resources. Prussia, for example, has national ideas that guarantee its land forces will be the most powerful on the continent if they're allowed to form, and expanding empires like the Ottomans and Russia have ideas that lets them throw massive armies into the fray to conquer and core vast swathes of land easily.
    • Most of the countries with unique idea groups from Crusader Kings 2's converter tend to fall into this as well, especially the Aztecs with Sunset Invasion, the Templars, the Carolingians and the restored Roman Empire.
    • Then there's the mechanic called Lucky Nations, which gives various arbitrary bonuses to certain AI-controlled nations. By default it buffs a number of historically successful countries, such as France and England, but there are options to make the selection of lucky nations more random or to turn it off altogether.
  • Quantity vs. Quality:
    • Played absolutely straight in II and III with a policy slider - country can either favour quality (higher morale, better commanders, but less manpower and higher recruitment costs) or quantity (more manpower, dirty cheap units, but lower morale and bad commanders). Depending on the slider position, additional, often non-military events can fire, affecting economy.
    • The so-named idea groups in IV. Quality gives your existing troops some nice bonuses to combat ability and morale for both land and naval units, while Quantity gives you a slew of bonuses to make your forces cheaper to maintain and easier to replace, more manpower, bigger garrisons and more mercenaries. There's nothing really stopping you from taking both Ideas if you wish, and can be quite a solid choice depending on your national ideas.
      • However, pretty much all mods make those idea groups mutually exclusive.
  • Randomly Generated Levels: Conquest of Paradise allows this for the American continents, in an effort to recreate the spirit of adventure of the time period, and counter the fact that players already know where the New World is while the characters do not. It's optional.
  • Railroading: II had history set in stone due to combination of various gameplay mechanics. This even included having historical monarch of the country, with their reign lasting for as long as it did in real life. The most railroaded part were the historical events, which could fire even without the original historical context (for example, Spain always had a bankrupcy events in early 17th century, regardless of how it was doing). III balanced things out significantly, with various additional triggers and mechanisms to represent historical outcomes, but without forcing player to follow historical scenario. IV decided to ditch historical events almost entirely, boiling them down to handful of decisions, mission goals and opening situation for any given date, but that's it - and it keeps receiving mocking remarks from older sections of fandom because of being the other extreme of situation from II.
  • Reality Is Unrealistic: Some real historical situations will almost never happen in-game. For example, usually the first step for a European power colonizing North America would be to conquer and annex the native tribes (such as Creek), while in real life they survived well into the 18th century.
    • The unification of larger nation-states is something the AI & game mechanics prevent from happening historically. Russia and Spain, particularly, will almost never form at the appropriate time. Sometimes the effect is reversed - Great Britain tends to form centuries early, primarily because England already has most of the conditions to form it, and all it needs is to take over two provinces in Scotland and hold them until they become cores.
      • Divine Wind has made it so Britain at least forms close to when it is supposed to because it gets a mission to conquer Scotland at around that time. Brandenburg-Prussia has a tendency to never form unless a human plays Brandenburg (the Duchy of Prussia forms often since all that needs to happen is for the Teutonic Order to survive until the Reformation, but Brandenburg often fails its missions to conquer the Prussian lands or doesn't become Protestant, which is required to form the Kingdom of Prussia). It is at any rate virtually impossible for the Kingdom of Prussia to form historically (ie Brandenburg inheriting Prussia through a personal union).
    • Most such events are technically possible, just highly unlikely during normal gameplay and often not very good strategy.
  • Rearing Horse: The cover of Napoleon's Ambition resembles the iconic painting of his crossing of the Alps. Similar images are used for the loading screens.
  • Rearrange the Song: Several tracks in IV are redone versions of tracks from III. For example, 'The Stage is Set' is the Main Theme of III redone, 'The Stonemasons' is 'Para Bellum', and 'Discovery' is 'Swashbuckling Privateers'.
  • The Remnant: During the 1444 start in EU 4, Anatolia is divided between the various successor states and remnants of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm, including Karaman, Dulkadir, Candar, and even the Ottomans themselves. As such, it is theoretically possible to restore Rûm as any of these except for the Ottomans.
  • Ridiculously Fast Construction: Averted; buildings take a year or more to be completed and soldiers need some months to be recruited, and more than usual if there's internal dissent in your provinces.
  • Rising Empire: In IV, the starting date of 1444 isn't called the "Rise of the Ottomans" for nothing. They start as the 3rd-ranked Great Power in the world and have a ton of potential to become 1st, as they start with a huge amount of land and manpower and a military generally slightly superior to their western counterparts. note  Playing as a nation in eastern Europe or central Asia means curbing their expansion.
  • Royal Mess: In III, any independent monarchy which does not use the Imperial form of government has its ruler termed King/Queen, even if historically many of those were not kingdoms (like All the Little Germanies, for example). A few mods more or less rectify this, by making the ruler title dependent on both the government type and country size.
  • Running Gag: Revolving around a But Thou Must! situation. In the original EU III, the event meteor sighted had only one option, which...caused your country to become less stable. The fans clamored for more options (as most events have multiple options), so Paradox added a second option...which had the exact same effect. Heir to the Throne added a third option (same effect) and Divine Wind, the latest expansion, a fourth.
    • Exaggerated in quite a few mods, which add ridiculous amounts of choices, of course all with the same outcome. The ones down the list often carry headers like "Oh, not again", "Will this ever stop?" and so on.
    • The gag has carried on to EU III's sister game Victoria II, where the Comet Sighted event causes scientific progress (Victoria is set in the 19th century)...and the text of the option is "Thank God we live in such enlightened times". The event "The Curse of Tutankhamen" similarly refers back to EU III's infamous comet.
    • The same gag has carried over into EUIV, but this time it's noted as a comet with only one option, which is "It's an omen!", which causes you to lose one stability.
      • The 1.4 patch added an additional option to the event, "The End is Nigh!", which, you guessed it, has the exact same effect.
      • The 1.6 patch does it again with "The Economy, Fools!".
      • The 1.8 patch adds another with "I wish we lived in more enlightened times", in a throwback to Victoria.
      • The 1.10 patch adds one more with "Sacrifice a human heart to appease the comet!".
      • The 1.12 patch adds "If only we had comet sense...", playing on the tile of the associated DLC, "Common Sense"
      • The 1.14 patch adds "Oh Comet, devil's kith and kin", referring to the Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, due to the patch being launched at the same time as The Cossacks DLC. The letter in question starts: "O sultan, Turkish devil and damned devil's kith and kin"
      • The Rights of Man DLC bucks the trend. If your ruler has the Scholar trait, you'll instead get an extra option called "Fascinating!" which gives you 20 Administrative point.
      • Getting the event before 1445 (which would mean it triggered in the first two months of the campaign) gives the option "What a great start into the new year!". Similarly, if it triggers after 1810, the option is "Just a few years then it is Victoria's problem..."
  • Salt the Earth: In each installment, invading armies will loot the provinces they are in by the start of the next month. Looted provinces have serious economic problems before recovering. If the war is prolonged, enemy provinces can be literally farmed for large profits, while crippling the owner for decades. In II and III, looted provinces also get a huge penalty to population growth, easily throwing it into negative values. And it can be further extended with presence of even the smallest army in the province, perpetuating the looted tag. In II, looted provinces also have a chance to lose a manufactory, if they had one. Certain tactics against large countries and empires revolve around keeping them looted for as long as possible. Against a human enemy, this can cause a disaster impossible to recover from, even after winning the war.
    • This is especially potent against Ming. In IV, blockading their provinces, sacking their cities, and occupying+looting their lands massively increases their provinces' devastation, which provides a serious mandate penalty. It's often possible to end up technically signing a white peace, but crippling Ming as their devastated provinces lead to mass unrest, revolts, and forced loans while their army is made much weaker by their dropping levels of mandate.
    • The ruler in IV can enact a scorched-earth policy to hinder the supplies of enemy armies and increase their attrition. The action puts a dent in the involved province(s)' economy. For twelve months.
  • Save Scumming: A particularly potent strategy for low-tech exploration in II involved saving the game one day before explorer reaches new sea zone. Not a single coastal province revealed? Reload. Three provinces, centre of trade and a capital of a previously unknown country? How marvelous!
    • Also extremely useful in IV. 25 year old ruler 6/6/6 ruler died? A quick alt-f4 will close the game without saving and you can pick up at your autosave six months back. Since events like that happen semi-randomly, it's very unlikely he'll die again at the same time. This can be very tempting to abuse.
  • Schmuck Bait:
    • Generally speaking, trying to gain maximum profits out of particular centre of trade falls under this trope. You are better off simply getting a basic monopoly (in II and III) or dominant control stake (in IV) than trying to wipe out any sort of competition, which will eat away resources and agents for marginally bigger income. And if you keep a CoT monopolised for too long in II and III, it will start to shrink or might even outright disappear, since you just made it unprofitable for everyone to trade in that region.
    • In II and III, the Centres of Trade in Veneto, Liguria and to lesser extent Lubeck are this. They are rich, large and pretty much everyone that knows where Europe lies can access them. Which is the very reason why it's a dog-pile of competing merchants and God forbid if you're going against the trade league from III. Your merchants, no matter how big your technological and political edges are, will be simply kicked by the sheer numbers of merchants send from every corner of the Old World. Unless you play as Venice, you have better chances gaining monopoly in rest of the Europe than simply staying afloat in Veneto.
  • Settling the Frontier:
    • The colonization gameplay mechanics. The game really stresses that colonies are always built with a lot of hit-and-miss effort and over a number of years and decades. Notably, even if your colony reaches enough of a population to be considered a new province of your country, it only becomes a fully integrated province after 20-50 years.
    • In IV, colonies are relatively fast, but due to the limit in colonists, you can only colonize at all if you have the right ideas and the number of colonies you can be working on at any time is limited. note  Furthermore, if you're a European, African or Asian power, your colonies in the Americas and Australia are not you; they're a special form of vassal (colonial nations), and you'll make your money off their trade and their gold mines while you wait for them to inevitably declare independence from you note . Finally, current colonial nations have trouble setting up their own colonies unless and until they become independent, at which point this trope arrives in full force.
  • Shout-Out: Have their own page.
  • The Siege: You are going to do a lot of those. Every single province that has a fort requires to be besieged. In case of II and III, that means literally Every. Single. Province. that isn't a colony or for some weird reason still didn't build even most basic fortifications.
  • Silliness Switch: The Random New World generator can generate a fairly realistic New World with the appropriate tribes, but there's also an option to allow or disallow "fantasy" elements; these range from a united Mesoamerican "Obsidian Empire" with Western-level technology and research, to lost Chinese or Viking colonies, to Atlantis as a "native" tribe, to a large continent consisting of the skeleton of some truly massive creature.
  • Skill Point Reset: In IV, with the right DLC installed, you can remove idea groups you previously picked to free up the slot for a new group while refunding 10% of the monarch power you had spent on the first group. This can be useful for certain idea groups that become less useful after a certain point in the game, for instance Exploration Ideas which become subpar once you've colonized everything you need or Religious Ideas if you've converted everything you own and don't plan on expanding further into heathen lands.
  • So Last Season:
    • Cavalry absolutely dominates the battlefields for first century or so. But once firearms and thus fire rating are introduced for infantry, cavalry gets so heavily outclassed (being a shock unit without fire phase until 17th century), you might abandon it entirely if not for minor bonuses it provides in combat. Most guides openly suggest ditching cavarly aside token force of two regiments per army once infantry has fire rate and artillery can be build.
      • as a side effect of this, Shock Damage becomes useless in the face of Fire damage, which effects guns AND cannons.
    • If cavalry loses revelance after a century, it's a matter of just few years for galleys to do so on seas. In II, they never receive any upgrades, especially regarding movement speed, making them completely obsolete by 16th century. In III and IV they start as poor man's heavy ships and quickly get obsolete, rarely receive any upgrades (and none at all from early 18th century onward) and generally being lackluster by the time galleons show up. On top of it all, they can't leave coastal zones when outside inland seas (Med, Black and Baltic) or they will simply disappear, making their use extremely limited.
    • In II, explorers and conquistadors become this respectively once hitting 27th level of naval and 31st of land tech - every single navy and army can explore terra incognita by early-to-mid 17th century. Of course nations that gain either historical or random leaders capable of exploring far earlier gain a significant edge, but it is perfectly possible to join the colonial adventures late and still build a colonial empire.
      • III and IV made explorers mandatory to have, but with far, far less restrictions on how a country can gain them, to the point they are simply hirable characters.
  • Space-Filling Empire: Generally not a good way to administer vast lands in any edition.
    • By default, horde nations start out controlling huge swaths of land, with barely any means to control and maintain them. The biggest offender is the Timurid Empire, which will explode upon Timur's death.
    • In II and III later era historical starts, Spain tends to control a third of Europe, almost all of Latin America and having colonies spread in strategic spots in Africa and Asia. It's also a complete pushover.
    • Ottomans eventually become this. Problem is, most of their empire is going to be made up of European backwater provinces, deserts of north Africa and mostly useless Middle East provinces, almost all of it of the wrong cultures (and in II and III, barely any way to change it). It becomes Vestigial Empire pretty much right after swallowing Mamluks.
    • Mughals and Ming control respectively most of the Indian subcontinent and historical China. In II and III, this was more a problem than useful, since tech development was tied with the size of the country - the more provinces one has, the more expensive the tech. Since both countries had very bad tech group attached to them, they were quickly falling behind and turning into Paper Tigers.
    • Let's count the ways IV punishes unplanned expansion:
      • Land owned by a nation is divided into states and territories. Every nation has a maximum number of states (which can be raised, but requires time and investment), where local autonomy can go as low as 0% if not assigned to an estate; most land beyond the limit becomes territories, where local autonomy is at least 75%. note 
      • With the Dharma expansion, Centers of Trade located in territories cannot be upgraded (they remain at level 1).
      • Territories beyond the maximum number of states a nation can have contribute to corruption, forcing the nation to spend ducats to remove it.
      • Beyond states and territories, acquiring land with populations of cultures deemed not accepted in your nation and/or religions different from the state religion will add various penalties. Oh, and cultures of populations living exclusively in territories cannot be made acceptable by your nation, even if your nation can otherwise accept more cultures. They are also harder to convert to the state religion; this is compounded by the mechanic that only populations who follow the state religion can have their cultures changed.
    • Colonial Nations in IV are very often this, especially when they are the only CN in given region: a huge blob on the map that's underdeveloped, with almost zero infrastructure and constantly cash-strapped, struggling with just about any task. Except staging revolts, that is.
    • Averted in IV by any Russian principality which goes on to form Russia. Once Russia is formed, it has a minimum capacity for 25 states note ; by contrast, even Ming has "only" 20 states as a minimum. If Russia survives until the Age of Revolutions, it can then use an unique ability which grants it an extra capacity for twenty states. With the Dharma expansion, the Mughals are also this, as they can choose three different reforms at different tiers, each allowing them an extra capacity for three states, for a total capacity of 29 with the third reform chosen.
  • Small, Secluded World: The game starts during The Late Middle Ages, with most countries having only knowledge about their vicinity and rest of the globe waiting to be explored. In fact, this used to be a penalty to your nation to be bottled up like this. Know less than 20 other countries? Never met "whitemen" (read: Europeans or Asians), and if so, just a single expedition? Those are severe debuffs to research in II and virtually everyone who isn't Muslim or European suffers to a degree from one or both of those.
  • Sprint Shoes: The Forced March order in IV effectively works like this, giving your armies increased movement speed while activated at the cost of military power for each province they move through and the inability to recover morale. With the Mandate of Heaven DLC, there's an age bonus during the Age of Revolutions that removes the military power cost of Forced March, but not the inability to recover morale.
  • Staged Populist Uprising: In III and IV, you can use spies to incite rebellions within your neighbors' borders, although the people there usually have to have a good reason to rise up in the first place. Unlike rebels that spawn naturally, the resulting mob will not be hostile to your own troops.
  • Storming the Castle: Generally not a wise thing to do. Unless there is a breach in the walls, you have a technological advantage and a decent commander and massive numerical advantage (which means you can't stay for long in the province, or attrition is going to maim your army), the far more sensible scenario is to simply besiege the fort for few months until it surrenders.
    • In II you can't even start storming until reaching proper (albeit low-level) technology. And from fort level 3 onward, assaults, even with a breach in walls, are pretty much suicidal due to the garrison size. The scale ends at level 6.
  • Succession Crisis: Things can get messy when a monarch dies heirless, their heir has low Legitimacy, or they rule a tribal nation.
    • Tribal Succession Crises are an absolute nightmare in III - you will, obviously, be doing a lot of conquering as a tribal horde, but cores take fifty years to form - and a rebel stack spawns in every non-core province, plus a massive pretender rebellion in a random cored province. The end result? Easily in excess of a hundred thousand rebels. And this happens every time the king dies! Annoyingly, reforming the government into a non-horde type requires Level 10 Admin tech, which you don't get for quite a while.
    • Dummied Out in Europa Universalis: Rome includes various methods of succession for monarchies, where a more popular family member takes the reins, a disloyal member starts a civil war, or if there's no child.
  • Super Mode: With the Mandate of Heaven DLC for IV, you can activate a Golden Age if you fulfill at least three Age Objectives at the same time, providing you with a global reduction to monarch power costs, increased army and navy morale, and other bonuses. A Golden Age lasts for 50 years and each country can only activate it once per game. It even comes with a Power Makeover of sorts by turning your entire interface from blue to gold for the duration.
  • Super Not-Drowning Skills: One common way of getting rid of a monarch with bad stats is to make him a general, give him command of a single regiment, load the regiment onto a transport and sail out into the middle of the ocean. The transport will sink with all the soldiers, but the monarch somehow manages to swim several hundred miles back to shore and pester the nation anew.
  • Take That!: The description for transport ships reads "Everyone knows that soldiers cannot turn into boats".
    • A bug in EUIV can cause soldiers to actually turn into boats.
  • Tampering with Food and Drink: Dummied Out content for Europa Universalis: Rome states that heir coincidentally died while eating mushroom soup just before he was about to get crowned, and a more popular replacement reluctantly agreed to take his place.
  • Themed Cursor: A gloved hand. And, in the case of loading, a fancier-looking Renaissance hourglass.
  • Then Let Me Be Evil:
    • After crossing certain point of badboy or infamy points, there is pretty much no turning back - everyone will hate you and plot against you, starting countless wars against you before the infamy will decrease to non-threatening level. The only way to survive is to continue the conquest until there is nobody left to threaten your empire.
    • Due to how coalitions work in 4, you either have to chill out and spend years limiting your growth to be let off the hook, or you can just double down and cripple the coalition via sheer dishonorable scumbaggery. Countries at war or under truce with the coalition target cannot join the coalition, allowing you to declare simultaneous wars on major countries before they could join (you don't have to win, just get a truce so they are locked out of the coalition). Once multiple majors are under truce with you, break the truce and destroy them one by one and just tank the stability hit with the Machiavellian government reform. The coalition can do nothing but watch in horror as you destroy in detail most of the big countries that could have been the backbone of a mutual war against you, leaving nothing but lesser nations with isolated stacks that stand no chance against your merciless legions of doom.
  • Too Awesome to Use: The Golden Age mechanic from the Mandate of Heaven DLC for IV can end up becoming this since it only lasts for a limited time and only works once per game. Downplayed in that the duration is fixed at exactly 50 years, so if you have that amount of time left on your campaign you can safely activate it without regrets. Same happens if in specific Age your country receives an additional bonus, meaning it's now or never.
  • Too Good for This Sinful Earth: There is a sentiment on the forums that leaders with good stats are destined to die young, while cruddy leaders will persist for decades.
    • There is an actual, scripted curve, relating maximum age of advisers and monarchs with their competence. The higher their stats, the higher the chance of dying out of "old" age, with the clock starting to tick when they are 40. It's been considerably toned down during various patches for EUIV, but it's still there.
  • Underrated and Overleveled: In IV, Great Power status is determined largely by a nation's development (and that of their non-tributary subjects) note  and their current tech penalty from institutions, but ignores things such as army quality, trade income or territorial cohesion. This means that a nation can in practice have the world's strongest army and highest income but not even be included on the Great Power list. It's particularly likely to happen for trade-focused nations like Merchant Republics or someone like Prussia, whose unique government form encourages playing tall to maintain their powerful military bonuses from Militarization. Colonial empires created by small countries also are likely to be omitted, since eligible subject nations only provide half of their development to the counter (and colonial provinces are most likely going to be underdeveloped anyway) - never mind that such colonial masters can indirectly control half of a continent (or world) and by default have huge fleets. note  It is common for large colonial nations to be ranked as Great Powers after their independence wars if they emerged from the wars largely intact.
  • Units Not to Scale: Soldiers are province-sized sprites and bigger than ships. This makes them easily selectable.
  • Vestigial Empire:
    • The Byzantine Empire is the classic example in the games where it shows up. Trying to restore it to its former glory is a popular pastime for skilled and ambitious players.
    • Another challenge is trying to keep the hopelessly declining Timurid Empire and Golden Horde from disintegrating; in particular, a Timurid Empire that morphs into the Mughal Empire with most of its territory intact is truly a force to be reckoned with.
    • Depending on how late you start the game, the Spanish and Ottomans also apply.
    • If the Holy Roman Empire is united by the AI, it tends to become this within a few decades.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential: Oh dear yes. Slave-trading, purging religious dissidents, backstabbing your allies, wars of aggression... It's very abstracted of course, but you can be quite nasty, and the best part is, you might not even realize that's what you're doing...
    • The game's mechanics for colonization sometimes encourage genocide as a means of stopping native attacks on your settlements if they are overly-aggressive. However if they are peaceful, it pays best to tolerate them since they'll join your colony once it reaches city levels, giving you more population and benefits.
    • Believe it or not, the Magna Mundi Game Mod for EU III actually inverts this. The computer gets its revenge...
    • Depending on whom you ask, the "Convert Culture" button either begins the introduction of your own culture's magistrates to a foreign culture under your jurisdiction, or is a veiled euphemism for the systematic extermination of anyone who has not yet assimilated to your peoples' way of living (which you, from your lofty throne, order without a second thought).
    • Quite a few events give you a choice between a costly-yet-benevolent option and a brutal-yet-pragmatic one. Your subjects may see a certain matter as a threat to their very way of life and livelihood; you will see it as a choice between another annoying yet easily-defeated revolt and a sacrifice of carefully-stewarded Admin Points.
  • Video Game Cruelty Punishment: Trying to pull large conquest past the 1700 mark is the surest way to get into a lot of trouble with half of the planet. The long line of alliances, relatively high tech level of everyone, size of the armies and forts and worst of it all, the economy to sustain it all will mean anyone that survives the initial war will come for bloody retribution the moment truce is over. Conquer too much and everyone in the vicinity will form a coalition, meaning dozens of pissed off nations with a single goal of kicking your teeth in the moment truce is over. Or before the truce is over if outsiders get involved when you are considered a global thread to the status quo. Having a colonial empire? Congrats, thanks to shared borders, you now look threatening to countries on the other side of the planet, as they react to your warmonging.
  • Video Game Geography: While probably A LOT better than most games, Moscow in EU2 famously was located in a very wrong place.
    • The Heir to the Throne expansion pack for EU III changes the previous "permanent terra incognita" zone to visible, but unexplorable provinces. All described as "wasteland" - wasteland such as the Brazilian rainforest or the jungles of Africa.
      • Granted, "wasteland" doesn't refer to the lack of vegetation, but to its suitability for colonization (at least with pre-Industrial Revolution technology). The rainforests were almost impenetrable until we started developing cures for diseases like malaria, and the American West was known as "the Great Desert" before it started being extensively irrigated.
    • A pretty glaring inaccuracy exists in not only Europa Univeralis but also several other Paradox games: The entirety of North and South America have been shifted upward relative to the Old World, so that for instance the southern tip of South America appears to be at roughly the same latitude as the south of Africa, when in reality the former extends much further south than the latter. This is intentional on the part of the developers, to avoid having to include a bunch of empty ocean below Africa that would serve no practical gameplay purpose.
  • Video Game Historical Revisionism: Hell yeah; the extent to which it's the case is a topic of some debate on the official forum.
    • Most notably, in Divine Wind Japan is divided up into warring clans, as it was historically. However, at start, it's divided up as it was in 1180, at the start of the Genpei War. The game begins in 1399.
  • War for Fun and Profit: Some Casus Belli encourage the player to demand money instead of lands, as part of the peace treaty.
    • The war reparations treaty in IV allows one to demand 10% of the target's income every month for ten years. Note that this can be part of the peace deal no matter the casus belli, no matter who started the war, no matter whether the target is co-belligerent. This means that you can attack another country without any casus belli, defeat their allies, and then demand that those allies pay you money in reparations.
    • As of patch 1.12 there's an achievement for receiving war reparations from ten different countries at once.
  • Vikings In America: One of the random map options includes Vinland as a Nordic country in North America.
  • Villain with Good Publicity: Your nation can be a bunch of genocidal maniacs, but with the espionage and diplomacy idea groups, your state propaganda can dilute the truth of your atrocities (lower aggressive expansion gain) and your diplomats can assure everyone of your good intention (faster AE decay), allowing you to still be a trusted voice on the international stage.
  • Violation of Common Sense: In IV, if you plan to benefit from dyes as trade goods, your goal is to prevent Europeans controlling even a single province in Bengal regionnote , the historical source of dyes - even if you're playing as European nation yourself. This prevents the "Increased availability of dyes" event from firing, which decreases the price of dyes for the rest of the game. Ironically, you can in the same time colonise every possible region that can spawn dyes as local trade goods, greatly increasing actual global production, but the event only triggers in relation with European control of Bengal.
  • What the Hell, Player?: The reputation ("badboy" or "infamy") mechanic is supposed to be this. Aggressive acts (annexing nations, declaring wars without casus belli, taking territories that you don't have cores on) add badboy points to your reputation score. If you keep your aggression in moderation, your score will eventually go down with time; however, if you go on a conquering binge, don't be surprised if all your neighbors suddenly decide to gang up on you all at once.
    • In IV, the mechanic was replaced by the Aggressive Expansion penalty gained by demanding provinces at peace talks, annexing personal union partners or vassals, or vassalizing countries. Instead of being a global score that warrants war from anyone, it is a relation penalty applied to your immediate neighborhood that, if too large, gives said neighborhood a propensity to form a coalition (a pact in which if one member declares war on you, all others do) against you. Despite this, it was originally incredibly unbalanced - in one EU4 patch, you would get aggressive expansion for reclaiming your own cores.
  • Won the War, Lost the Peace: If you're not careful, you can fight a war to a victory only to find that your country has descended into a rebel-haunted death spiral, and the new annexations prove to be nothing more than another spawning ground.
  • Wooden Ships and Iron Men: Fully justified, since the game takes place during the golden centuries of the Age of Sail. The nautical feel is definitely present - even in some of the music themes.
  • The World Is Always Doomed: For the Nahuatl religion in El Dorado, the world is always on the brink of destruction and needs to be saved by Human Sacrifice. The point of reforming the religion is to get rid of the gods' constant thirst for human lives (and the incessant warfare it leads to).


Alternative Title(s): Europa Universalis II, Europa Universalis III, Europa Universalis IV, Europa Universalis Rome

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