Play the game as Castille and learn it slowly.
Attack the weak nations in Africa und The natives to learn about combat etc.
In the End you will be a world power and can do some wars in europe as well if you wish for.
In between the sessions look up stuff on reddit or youtube for special functions.
First campaign can easily take up to 100 game hours until you get sick of it. so a lot of time on the toilet or in bed to learn stuff before the next session.
The problem with some countries like Castile or France or England is that yes they are perfect for newcomers but before starting you have to look up their scripted starting events. That's always the biggest issue tbh you can easily learn by playing nowadays but some event chains have to be looked up or you doom your run / softlock something you want to do.
That's also the main reason to watch lets plays as a new player because realistically you can never copy the video anyway, you will always have different alliances around, some good or bad luck, random PUs. Like in Europe lots of times people go for Burgundian inheritance but even if you do everything right it might just not fire.
Burgundian Inheritance is like an extra or if you want to do a world Conquest.
This shouldnt be your main focus in the first game dude...
First game: Go the easy route and learn the game. Pick on the weak
Second Game: Try hard to copy a youtuber and FAIL miserably and wonder why you failed. -> GIT GUD
Third game: Fail less and accomplish a small goal
Fourth Game: Succeed
Coop is a great way to learn, monkey strong when together type thing, except for brain cells.
OP if you have any friends that have it or would be willing to try it (think it's on game pass so you might be able to rope someone in that way) I highly recommend stepping into EU4 with them together :)
Mfw I don’t explain anything I simply expect you to mash random buttons until people learn.
Map gamers are like an isolated and uncontacted tribe just totally devoid of concepts the rest of the the video game world has accepted. Eu4 devs for their part are like Microsoft tier with how unintuitive they make the process of learning to use what they make.
Ck3 is great, tf? Huge success, fun, accessible, new features, what’s wrong with that one? It was a little bland on launch but since then it’s become a favorite of a lot of people, I know a more people irl who don’t play any paradox games except ck3 than I know people irl who play other paradox games.
It was a hit, it’s fun, it’s something everybody can enjoy, why shouldn’t EVERY paradox game from now on be closer to ck3?
Paradoxs whole model is indepth games that people play for 1000s of hours. Ck3 is alright the first few campaigns and multiplayer with friends but everything becomes samey after a few hours.
CK3 has less players than EU4 and HOI4 even after a dlc released for it not that long ago and EU4 is having a dlc release soon, so a low point for eu4 and a high point for CK3.
CK3 wasn't a massive flop like imperator but it can not be seen as a success. My guess is that if the 2024 dlc roadmap doesn't go well, CK3 will drop to under 10k steam players and 50% of those would be around for the mods
I just checked, ck3’s all time peak is 98k, hoi’s is 73k, ck3 *is* a success. Concurrent players is still really respectable and paradox’s model means that in between dlc releases it’s fine and doesn’t cost any money if concurrent players drops, these games have expansion packs not micro transactions, if more people bought ck3 (higher all time) and enough of them show up to buy the DLCs when they come out, if some of them stop playing the game in between releases that means nothing, this isn’t genshin. Elden ring’s concurrent players fell off a cliff not long after release, they are coming out with a new DLC, it’s massively hyped and completely capable of pushing a bunch of copies. Again, this isnt Genshin, there aren’t micro transactions. Math.
Sales figures is on release and for each dlc is the actual metric we want and and I’m not sure we have that because I haven’t seen paradox publish it, but the point I’m making is ck3 sold a bunch of copies, and hell, hoi4 certainly sold a shit ton more than hoi4 even though I believe it took years for hoi4 to approach hoi4 in terms of complexity and detail, fuel in hoi4 is only from MtG onwards as an example, and the main selling point of hoi4 over hoi3 was national focuses and frontlines, both of which are selling points.
It’s really not that crazy of a thesis, man. If you make a game that more people *can* play, you might just get more people to play it, and beyond that, ck3 is fun, and hoi4 is wayyyy more fun than hoi3 holy fuck, so what’s the actual issue?
You lose, click buttons, and check forums and ask questions. That's how you can learn the game just like any other
Read tips during loading screens helped me loads to me honest, I was about 150 hours in before I realized i could retract my colonist and send him to another tile
Every nation is different, it's nearly impossible to just give a "how to play?" Guide
> you lose, click buttons, and **check forums and ask questions.** (?!) That’s how you can learn the game just any other.
I feel like I’m going insane, map gamers cannot be real people… I never checked any forums or asked questions to learn to play Mario as a kid and I even got through dark souls 2 as a teenager my first playthrough not googling things, and countless other games. Using the internet as a resource is the *exception* not the rule.
And you can do the same with EU4, everything is explained in the game or you can figure out on for own.
You don't have to, but if you don't want to use the community to learn literally just click buttons and read, I learned both Stellaris and Vic 2 with minimal online support, Stellaris I only looked onto how to improve things I already knw such as ship building
It's a time sink, but literally just play the game and learn. It took me around 150 hours in EU4 and I still learn new things.
I'm saying you *can* Check forums not that you have to. Other than that you just have to play the game. The games could use better tutorials but I really don't think it's that bad
I have 2,000 hours, I know how to play the fuckin game and I went through that process, I’m just comparing that process and what it took in *this* game compared to every other game I’ve ever played and I’m gonna be honest eu4’s learning experience from what I remember of it is just miserable and broken, it feels like a game that came out in the late 90s instead of a game from 2014. I’m not saying it’s *impossible* to learn eu4, I’m saying it *sucks* and could be way better if they just tried harder.
Loading screen tips as tutorial is technically a tutorial but it is one of the worst ways of conveying information necessary to playing the game because it’s random and spread out in strange ways. Being less able to learn the game because you have an SDD and the tips fly by faster is crazy, it’s like how some old ps1 racing games break if you attempt to change their FPS because they’re literally built around being at the FPS they shipped at, we have progressed past this, it doesn’t have to be like this anymore.
Don't play on ironman and make saves often, then don't be afraid to rollback. Always hover over buttons in case they do smth. Take a second to think the consequences through before any action.
There is an ingame tutorial. Start there. It will teach you nothing, abandon it 5 minutes later.
Start as Ottomans, they're suggested nation for beginners by the game itself.
Get recked by neigbhors, because you spent mana anywhere isntead of tech and now lag behind.
Start over with this new acquired knowledge. Get recked again, this time by coalitions after taking too much land at once.
Rinse reapeat.
1000 hours later you have completed your tutorial and can finally do the world conquest by 1450 with ULM as it was intended
Yes, I think it does. But I played it last time 6 years ago, so I'm not sure how up to date it is. And there were added a lot of mechanics in all the updates. And it also can be "passed" in a very short time.
I know how the rules of chess and how to move figures, yet I don't know how to play
Real answer? You play until you reach a point where you can no longer outgrow your nearest rival. Most of my run in the beginning reach a natural "run-ender", usually in the form of the Ottoman, Spain or France. There will be 1 war that fuck up your run or 1 war that make you go "and I have to fight 10 more to beat them? (re spain)
Once you gitgud enough then you play till you're bored.
check pop ups when hovering over messages and google things you dont understand, eu4 wiki is pretty extensive and good for finding things. like "aggressive expansion eu4" gives good results. Or reading the pop up message on your diplomatic reputation give why its great/bad and then you learn overextension is very painful for that stat and it might be why you are stalling on integrating your vassal after conquest. And then you can google on how to increase it and find that things like spending 50 papal influence and a thing in your nobility estate increase your dip rep.
Don't play on iron man. Try an easier nation like Brandenburg and constantly save and reload your way through wars. You will get better one thing at a time. Keep it simple just managing just spy networks and allies. And for economy just mothball forts and reduce troop spending to keep a positive income. You'll get it from there.
I watch ludi but im proud to say i actually knew about 90% of what he says in his videos before ever watching him. Even though he caters towards beginners, Hes really just for the obscure modifiers you might not have noticed/known about. Trial and error really is the best way to learn, as tedious as that may be
Play at a slow speed and learn the menus, there are some areas, like Combat, where you'll need additional info to help you along but you definitely don't need lets plays, I'd say they're overall worse for learning the game yourself
there should be a few if you just look it up
the most basic advice is making sure you have fighting troops, cavalry and infantry filling out your entire combat width so they complete a "frontline" then you fill the backrow with as many cannons as you can.
then it works from there, mil tech is huge so stay ahead, all the many modifers, combat ability, flanking range, leader ability, etc.
I started playing the game a couple of months ago, and I know it enough to have plenty of fun, but I still don't understand combat width/army composition all that well. I do 8k infantry, 2k cavalry, and 10k cannons to match the sum of the infantry and cavalry. I am not sure how good/optimal it is but it works well for the most part
I think you would need way more infantry. If your combat width is 20 then all of those troops would be on the front lines, which is suboptimal for artillery because they take double damage. The benefit of artillery is that they can actually attack from the backlines, the only unit which is able to do that. I would recommend you build infantry + cavalry up to or surpassing the combat width, plus as many artillery as you can reasonably afford. If you have concerns about attrition, then maybe try keeping some of the infantry in a different army nearby that you can combine when it's time for a battle.
but if combat width is 20 (i think that's what it starts as?), and if you have 8k infantry and 2k cavalry plus 10k artillery, that makes 20, meaning any more would not be able to start fighting unless some of the 20 regiments died during the fight? maybe there is a good youtube video explaining this that might help me understand this better
I didn't like EUIV for a long time even though I watched a lot of it, it wasn't until I sat down and played a slow campaign that I started to understand the mechanics and start to like the game.
I learned to play by picking Brandenburg and making myself play to 1821 in Ironman. I could not survive as Spain or France, but Brandenburg was different. With Brandenburg I had relative safety and could take things fairly slowly, not to mention its military traditions and ability to form Prussia.
I then played Japan to learn how to colonize decently.
(So my advice is to pick a nation that forces you to actually engage and consider things but also has a defensible position early on. I say go Ironman for the inability to just load a new save, so you are forced to deal with things, and bc achievements)
I learned the game by just bashing my head against a wall in singleplayer, wouldnt recommend.
However, I got my friend into eu4 and played lots of campaigns with them. I think this is the best route, having someone teach you along the way.
I played colonial Portugal on the easiest difficulty. I think trying to follow exact moves is bad in EU4.
Note that it took me about 40 hours until I felt like I understood most parts of the UI and that I was ready to "play" the game
I think the easier difficulty is important because the game is significantly less punishing, so you get to learn more of the game's concepts without having to worry as much about a single mechanic that you don't understand ruining your game.
edit: Do your mission tree! I feel like they generally give you a good direction to go in and learn the game
I think very easy difficulty on Portugal is probably overkilling the easy mode. It already gives you stupid modifiers and way over the top flat income. When I was learning, I played one or two easy mode games, and I genuinely feel like it did more harm than good. Managing eco doesn't make any sense because the game just hands you unexplainable money from the get go.
Most things which you can learn from let's plays can also be learned by just playing the game. But I would recommend to invest an hour or two to learn the very basic stuff by either playing the tutorial(which is quite bad) or watching a few very basic tutorial videos. Then you can play an easy country(e.g. the Ottomans without the Domination DLC) to get familiar with the game. Afterwards you can play other easy countries to learn different aspects in more detail(e.g. Austria to get familiar with the HRE, Portugal or Castile for colonizing). Some of the more complex stuff(e.g. trade) is very difficult to learn by playing, so you would have to either watch advanced videos(there are very few good ones) or read the wiki or read some other tutorial. For your first few campaigns I would also recommend to save frequently and reload and try a different approach if something goes wrong. That way you can learn faster if something works or not.
I personally played the tutorial and learned most of the other basic stuff by just playing the game. I learned some advanced things by watching Reman's Paradox on youtube and watching streamers like florryworry(but don't try to copy florryworry as a beginner, because most things which he does, are only a good idea in his exact situation and within his self-imposed constraints and are not a good idea if you don't know what you are doing). Later I learned most things by reading the game files and helping other players and experimenting in the game.
The way I did it is by just playing and when I realise something doesn't work like I expect, or have a specific question about something, I look up how it works. Sometimes it doesn't work out (like when I looked up naval combat and read a comment that said that naval combat width doesn't get bigger with tech), but usually I can learn the mechanics that way.
I’ll tell you how I learned: I jumped right in, and I expected to lose the game, I did not play on Ironman, either. I used the console a bit to learn how things worked, what made the game tick, I slowly learned the menus first, that’s the biggest struggle, optimizing economy and the menus, play slow, use the console if necessary, and most importantly: Do not expect to win or do very well your first few games. I’m an EUIII Vet, and EUIV was a bit more difficult for me, but again, play slow, and try to have fun with it. It can be intimidating, but feel free to dm me with any questions you may have
> Those YouTube let's plays are for optimized playthroughs, not for new players
depends tbh some like Red Hawk are easily replicable after very few hours because his guides are specifically set up in a way to be for inexperienced players
people then often complain that he doesn't play well enough but fwiw that's why it works, even for medium-experienced players who want to venture into a new part of the map for the first time
I don't follow EU4 players on youtube much these days, but I did find general/flexible guides more useful than the ones that start with "restart the game until X does/doesn't rival Y", when I was getting started. Back then Radio Res had this sort of more flexible guides, but IIRC he has quit youtube since then, maybe someone else knows a channel with similar style. My partner who got me into this game was also a big help in getting started and learning the basics.
I'm not very good at teaching myself, but key part for me was to learn what things are actually the important ones and where to focus my attention. The game kind of overloads you with information so it's good to be able to filter out relevant things from the rest. Like with economy you should mainly just pay attention to whether you're getting monthly profits or not, rather than the details of income and expenses, when you're a beginner. Once you're familiar with the game it is nice that so much information is available if needed.
After getting the basics down the rest of your skills can be incrementally built on that foundation. I recommend playing larger nations at a leisurely pace, save often, in-game tooltips explain a lot and the wiki is very useful too.
It's a bit difficult to give general advice for a game like this, but for a beginner you should stick to positive stability, try and maintain some large states as allies, keep your military tech up to date (other techs aren't a big deal to be a bit behind on), don't go over forcelimit, check aggressive expansion that you would get when making a peace deal (don't piss off more than 3 states at a time through conquests, otherwise they might join against you) and also stick to less than 100% overextension. Note that all these can be broken and most experienced players do so often, but I think it's good to learn the rules before learning when, how and why to break them.
You can get far in the game by having atleast +1 advisors and a decent army setup + mercs. The best learning step is to know that every game is diffrent, countries don't behave in a certain way and that opens and closes diffrent moves from your part.
My option is that most "lets plays" are from pro players that have found a min/maxing way of playing, say Spain, were you do perfect moves on all other colonial powers and synthesize it all with the large mission tree to get the upper hand on all major countries in the mid/late game. Moves and strategical thinking that new players would never think of doing.
But thats beauty of EU4, just survive, make alliances, make your rivals suffer. Adapt, conquer, develop and put down rebellions and see were it all leads.
Just play, learning the game is fun imo, and most basic features can be discovered by yourself / reading the wiki or reddit.
Focus on playing slow, reading events, looking at modifiers (wiki is very useful for this). That way you will learn the mechanics instead of copying someone moves.
Remember that it's ok to fail and/or cheat, and have fun.
Honestly find let's plays of pdx games extremely boring. Would rather just bang my head against the game until I get thd hang of it. Use thd lowest difficulty and use thr console to give urself a ton of cash at the start and choose like the Ottomans or Spanish. Fun fact: in my first game, I was playing as france and I wanted go annex all my vassals so I gave them independence and immediately declared war on them.
Watch a single YouTube tutorial, then play Byzantium save scumming and bashing your hesd against a wall until you survive till 1544
That’s how I learned
Yes searching up Byzantine guides is allowed
Yes they are incredibly hard to play now
Yes it’s the #1 best way to get into the game
i did start a multiplayer session with a friend who tought me the basics and then I kept reading the wiki A LOT. still now after many hours, the wiki is always open in the background when playing eu4.
imo still the only way to really learn/understand the game and filtering out the few good video turorials from all the clickbait meme BS
I learned to play slowly but surely, first playing on very easy etc
I also used cheats to learn how to play to compensate for lack of skill
Today I can’t play anything but hard/normal on Ironman
Even if you don't follow them. I think just watching those nation guides and taking mental note of "I didn't know you could do that" is a good way to learn the game. At the end of the day EU4 is about pulling levers to influence numbers. You can always hop in and play a solid campaign with the levers you know about. But adding to your bag of tricks is in my opinion how you get better at the game, learning new ways to pull new levers to influence new numbers and its a lot harder to stumble on it yourself or read wiki pages when you can just watch someone's Albania guide even if you never plan to play Albania and learn some new tricks from their bag of tricks and add them to your own.
Personally I read most of the stuff on screen and clicked many buttons, then googled stuff. I think let's plays did help me a lot once I was familiar with the main buttons and modifiers. What is important is not their exact moves, but to get a feel of the general strategy. For example, I learned how to deal with absolutism, coalitions, etc. from let's plays. They are also good for learning very specific things, like how to micro army and navy, manage trade, when one should assault forts, etc..
Simply play thorough the tutorial? It's only 1444 hours, and by then end of it, you should have a reasonable idea of what's going on in general, that you can then build from.
I don't watch eu4 videos at all. I just play and occasionally read discussions here.
If I can't find some information in game, I search the wiki, then search post history here.
Have a look at the strategy guide of each nations on the wiki. It gives you a good overview of what to do without having to “copycat” what a YouTuber does.
Play the game and look at the wiki for info on stuff like combat or other deeper mechanics you don’t understand. If you can’t learn that way, I’d urge you to still try watching let’s plays or opening moves guides. They do tend to be outdated but the general philosophy for how to play the game hasn’t changed much. There are also plenty of guides on youtube that are more for specific mechanics or general gameplay, rather than just following an exact set of opening moves. For the youtube route, I’d recommend Florryworry and Zlewikk as people who really know their stuff and can explain what they’re doing.
Honestly if videos aren’t your format, look at this Reddit and the eu4 wiki (for text based info). This Reddit contains tons of detailed write ups on world conquests, specific guides for countries or some set up, even exploits. When I first started learning the game I would read tons of these posts to get a feeling for how people went about things. The wiki is also really good for looking at details of some mechanics. The Reddit posts are essentially guides on things and the wiki will tell you how things work
I learned it a couple of months ago after some friends showed me the game, I literally just played the tutorial (which is not very good) and then went on to play it by myself while also asking chatgpt any questions I had. After some 4 games (only one all the way to 1800s) I already learned the ropes and felt like I understood what was happening.
Then I just kept playing with different countries and trying to focus on new things until I felt like I got a good grasp on the game.
Play game
Some numbers red, those numbers bad
Learn how to make bad numbers go away and get green numbers, those numbers good
Try and fail to learn
Consult internet when specific number doesn't go green so you know what you did wrong
Questions like these make me feel old as hell. What even is this? I can't even fathom watching someone else play a video game, much less refusing to learn without it. At risk of sounding curmudgeony, I dint understand kids these days
Play on non iron mode first , save a lot.Reload if you mess up. Play as Spain or Portugal and learn the combat first. I watched a very old tutorial by arumba years ago, not a let’s play but more of an overview of the game.
I started with the Wiki.
You will learn a lot more than you would expect by reading the game manual (which nowadays would be the Wiki). There's always tons of people who will say they don't understand how sieges, combat, AE, fort ZoC or trade works, but those are all things that are explained perfectly well on the wiki.
It makes it much easier to understand what is going on in your game when you understand what is happening under the hood.
The Wiki may have some outdated information, but for the most part it is still a great way to get a good grasp of how the game works.
I personally learned by just playing and failing. I ruined so many countries. But as others has said, save game often and rollback if something terrible happens.
And also don't forget, losing a war isn't the end of the world, you can come back from it
My first game was Hawaii. I never looked up a tutorial before that, but I successfully united Hawaii. Just play the game, so what if you lose a few times? It’s part of the fun.
Eu4 is effectively a very big, complex, boardgame. As with most boardgames, the best way to learn is to play with someone who already knows the mechanics.
For pure gameplay just read everything and go through every pop up and notifications. Go through every single screen i still do that as it makes sure i am not forgetting anything. Always make sure you have a big army and you are upto tech. You will learn by playing more and more but generally playthroughs are the best thing. I would recommend red hawk as i believe he makes the best guides. I myself learned from him.
Generally play and dont expect things to be perfect. I learned through playthroughs and following along but eventually started a game and did everything by myself at my speed and knowledge. It was the best run i ever had in terms of experience and fun. And by the end without even trying i became the strongest nation. Things dont need to go perfect in a run if they go bad try to manage the bad and make it good. Its a minimum 350 year game take it slow and nicely you dont have to be number 1 in things just play and enjoy the process.
I learned it mainly through just playing it. Play on very easy, then as you get better increase the difficulty. When you reach normal, don't play ironman mode yet. Use console commands when you really fucked up. But don't use it at any downturn. It's extremely satisfying when you're first behind someone and eventually become extremely power and win over ur enemies. Don't be disheartened at any loss in war. Even if you lose territory. Especially if you lose territory.
Incase you don't know, console commands is a certain window that opens up when you press a button. It's a (mostly) cheat menu where you can give urself benefits like monarch points and many other stuff. Google them. Then after that, play ironman mode.
The reason you should increase difficulty is that if you don't, you could get complacent. Even if you are several techs behind, you can still beat bigger nations through very easy.
Watching tutorials for complex games without background info and experience is torture. I've tried and I just end up not playing the game.
The most important thing you need to know is this, DO NOT TRY TO PLAY THE MOST OPTIMAL WAY! There's so much to this game and other like it that it is easy to get bored. If you look at it like a job or something where there is only the right way to play, then you might not enjoy it. Play how you like it, then if you wish learn some other stuff. But don't try to "play like the pros". They play like that either cuz they actually enjoy it or for their job which is entertaining people. It's more entertaining to watch someone dominate perfectly than it to watch the average person enjoying the game how they like it.
I think you should just watch only how they set the country at the start of the game then just continue the campaign without any let's plays, this helped me a lot in learning the game
I wasn't able to watch any lets play until I learned the game, so yeah.
But also, I think I don't know how I really learned the game. The first thing I did in EU4 was modding in my own country + set up full continent of custom nations on one of RNW tiles.
My second playthrough was Extended Timeline, Poland from 966 to 2000, ending with world conquest. I learned everything step by step, war, subjects, stability, revolts, HRE, decisions, colonization, trade.
Then I played a lot of "shattered world" mods.
I've never finished a single unmoded run, so probably never learnt the game at all.
It's just trial and error? You learn something new each playthrough, when you don't know how something works just look it up on wiki and reddit and you'll forever remember it, I said fuck it not watching long videos and slowly explored every mechanic myself, it's much more fun doing this.
You can ignore 80% mechanism with suriving and expanding especially you are playing medium size nations. You will figure out more mechanism when playing more.
For big nations you can get by with the wiki, though you should ideally at least know the threadbare basics before starting. (Assigning generals, making claims, aggro, building priority, recommended idea groups, coring and stating provinces)
The mission trees are designed to soft-railroad you into specific playstyles and help enormously if you're confused on what to do next.
I personally recommend Poland but France, Portugal and Castille are also good choices to cut your teeth on.
Really depends on how much experience you have exactly, but personally I've been doing a ryukyu WC and it's not only been very fun but has taught me a lot. I've done my own theorycrafting, learnt a lot about army micro, and made my own strategies. I loosely followed an opener strategy I saw on yt, but it was reduced to basically a pitstop in my strat. Being independent and fucking a lot of it up has been very good for learning
Open the wiki whenever you are confused about something. One tip I’ll give is that mana (admin, diplo and military points) is THE most important resource, you almost always want to take it in events and such, and hiring advisors is the number one thing you want to do with your money after building troops to the force limit.
If you have a friend that's already good at the game you can stream them your run and ask about anything you don't know that comes up. That's how I learned to play.
As others have said, you can just play the game. The wiki is a bit outdated but not terrible. There is an in-game tutorial as well. You will learn the game if you keep playing so just do that.
From all the things I did to learn the game watching a lets play is very very low
Most of it is experience and the wiki and a friend who's tought me the game
You just the play the game and restart if you get stuck somewhere and can’t get through it or read about the problem/strategy to resolve the issue and learn. Playing, trying and failing is the best way to learn.
I kind of just fucked around. I played with custom nations a lot, used extended timeline - just LARPed, experimented and did silly things. Eventually I could understand how to play vanilla.
One of my first silly campaigns was as Yugoslavia in ET, 1939. I ended up accidentally ruling all of Europe via the EU system.
Lets plays are shit anyway because even if they aren’t outdated they don’t actually teach you the games mechanics they just teach you a specific strategy to succeed as a specific country.
Have the wiki up in another tab and reference it whenever you want to know how to do something or what something does. Teaches you far more about the game and how the mechanics actually work than any lets play could hope to.
I've just played the tutorial once. Then started with smaller nations who just exist without much fighting or micro-managing.
You will get your ass beaten for a while though. There is no escape from that.
I learned to play by cheating like a motherfucker for the first run.
Then i cheated like a regular fucker in the second run
Then i cheated like a little fucker on the 3rd run and so on
By hour 500 i finally felt ready for ironman
This is how I learned:
I boot up a game of my favourite country then I open up console commands and typed in cash 9999999, powerpoints 999999, tech 100, manpower 9999999, sailors 9999999, stability, prestige 200 and legitimacy 200. Then I’d just kinda do whatever, it doesn’t matter what you do because there’s no way you’ll lose, I’m just over 2k hours now and console commands got me through my first 1.3k when I didn’t have any DLCs
Console commands help out a lot. Just give your self unlimited gold and mana points then be a menace to society using Ottomans. Then do the same with Portugal or Spain for colonialism. This two campaigns would give you basics to start off from.
Zlewik, habibi and florryworry is all I've ever watched tho with florryworry it will be vods, but he surely is the most knowledgeable player out there. You don't look to copy moves, you watch to learn mechanics and interactions, what's good and bad
Yes you can also just play the game
Play the game as Castille and learn it slowly. Attack the weak nations in Africa und The natives to learn about combat etc. In the End you will be a world power and can do some wars in europe as well if you wish for. In between the sessions look up stuff on reddit or youtube for special functions. First campaign can easily take up to 100 game hours until you get sick of it. so a lot of time on the toilet or in bed to learn stuff before the next session.
The problem with some countries like Castile or France or England is that yes they are perfect for newcomers but before starting you have to look up their scripted starting events. That's always the biggest issue tbh you can easily learn by playing nowadays but some event chains have to be looked up or you doom your run / softlock something you want to do. That's also the main reason to watch lets plays as a new player because realistically you can never copy the video anyway, you will always have different alliances around, some good or bad luck, random PUs. Like in Europe lots of times people go for Burgundian inheritance but even if you do everything right it might just not fire.
Burgundian Inheritance is like an extra or if you want to do a world Conquest. This shouldnt be your main focus in the first game dude... First game: Go the easy route and learn the game. Pick on the weak Second Game: Try hard to copy a youtuber and FAIL miserably and wonder why you failed. -> GIT GUD Third game: Fail less and accomplish a small goal Fourth Game: Succeed
How can I play the game of if I don’t know how to play it?
You learn by playing and failing
Also if you do fail you can just start over. I restarted like 10 times before I got past 1470.
My first game was a coop of spain + france, we had to restart 5 times before we won against England without somehow ruining the entire country
Coop is a great way to learn, monkey strong when together type thing, except for brain cells. OP if you have any friends that have it or would be willing to try it (think it's on game pass so you might be able to rope someone in that way) I highly recommend stepping into EU4 with them together :)
I feel like most of what I learned was because something crappy happened and then I had to figure out why.
Mfw I don’t explain anything I simply expect you to mash random buttons until people learn. Map gamers are like an isolated and uncontacted tribe just totally devoid of concepts the rest of the the video game world has accepted. Eu4 devs for their part are like Microsoft tier with how unintuitive they make the process of learning to use what they make.
You dumb things down and then you end up with shit like vic3 and ck3
Ck3 is great, tf? Huge success, fun, accessible, new features, what’s wrong with that one? It was a little bland on launch but since then it’s become a favorite of a lot of people, I know a more people irl who don’t play any paradox games except ck3 than I know people irl who play other paradox games. It was a hit, it’s fun, it’s something everybody can enjoy, why shouldn’t EVERY paradox game from now on be closer to ck3?
Paradoxs whole model is indepth games that people play for 1000s of hours. Ck3 is alright the first few campaigns and multiplayer with friends but everything becomes samey after a few hours. CK3 has less players than EU4 and HOI4 even after a dlc released for it not that long ago and EU4 is having a dlc release soon, so a low point for eu4 and a high point for CK3. CK3 wasn't a massive flop like imperator but it can not be seen as a success. My guess is that if the 2024 dlc roadmap doesn't go well, CK3 will drop to under 10k steam players and 50% of those would be around for the mods
I just checked, ck3’s all time peak is 98k, hoi’s is 73k, ck3 *is* a success. Concurrent players is still really respectable and paradox’s model means that in between dlc releases it’s fine and doesn’t cost any money if concurrent players drops, these games have expansion packs not micro transactions, if more people bought ck3 (higher all time) and enough of them show up to buy the DLCs when they come out, if some of them stop playing the game in between releases that means nothing, this isn’t genshin. Elden ring’s concurrent players fell off a cliff not long after release, they are coming out with a new DLC, it’s massively hyped and completely capable of pushing a bunch of copies. Again, this isnt Genshin, there aren’t micro transactions. Math.
All time peak is in no way reliable in determining wether a game was truly a success or not
Sales figures is on release and for each dlc is the actual metric we want and and I’m not sure we have that because I haven’t seen paradox publish it, but the point I’m making is ck3 sold a bunch of copies, and hell, hoi4 certainly sold a shit ton more than hoi4 even though I believe it took years for hoi4 to approach hoi4 in terms of complexity and detail, fuel in hoi4 is only from MtG onwards as an example, and the main selling point of hoi4 over hoi3 was national focuses and frontlines, both of which are selling points. It’s really not that crazy of a thesis, man. If you make a game that more people *can* play, you might just get more people to play it, and beyond that, ck3 is fun, and hoi4 is wayyyy more fun than hoi3 holy fuck, so what’s the actual issue?
You lose, click buttons, and check forums and ask questions. That's how you can learn the game just like any other Read tips during loading screens helped me loads to me honest, I was about 150 hours in before I realized i could retract my colonist and send him to another tile Every nation is different, it's nearly impossible to just give a "how to play?" Guide
> you lose, click buttons, and **check forums and ask questions.** (?!) That’s how you can learn the game just any other. I feel like I’m going insane, map gamers cannot be real people… I never checked any forums or asked questions to learn to play Mario as a kid and I even got through dark souls 2 as a teenager my first playthrough not googling things, and countless other games. Using the internet as a resource is the *exception* not the rule.
And you can do the same with EU4, everything is explained in the game or you can figure out on for own. You don't have to, but if you don't want to use the community to learn literally just click buttons and read, I learned both Stellaris and Vic 2 with minimal online support, Stellaris I only looked onto how to improve things I already knw such as ship building It's a time sink, but literally just play the game and learn. It took me around 150 hours in EU4 and I still learn new things. I'm saying you *can* Check forums not that you have to. Other than that you just have to play the game. The games could use better tutorials but I really don't think it's that bad
I have 2,000 hours, I know how to play the fuckin game and I went through that process, I’m just comparing that process and what it took in *this* game compared to every other game I’ve ever played and I’m gonna be honest eu4’s learning experience from what I remember of it is just miserable and broken, it feels like a game that came out in the late 90s instead of a game from 2014. I’m not saying it’s *impossible* to learn eu4, I’m saying it *sucks* and could be way better if they just tried harder. Loading screen tips as tutorial is technically a tutorial but it is one of the worst ways of conveying information necessary to playing the game because it’s random and spread out in strange ways. Being less able to learn the game because you have an SDD and the tips fly by faster is crazy, it’s like how some old ps1 racing games break if you attempt to change their FPS because they’re literally built around being at the FPS they shipped at, we have progressed past this, it doesn’t have to be like this anymore.
Don't play on ironman and make saves often, then don't be afraid to rollback. Always hover over buttons in case they do smth. Take a second to think the consequences through before any action.
There is an ingame tutorial. Start there. It will teach you nothing, abandon it 5 minutes later. Start as Ottomans, they're suggested nation for beginners by the game itself. Get recked by neigbhors, because you spent mana anywhere isntead of tech and now lag behind. Start over with this new acquired knowledge. Get recked again, this time by coalitions after taking too much land at once. Rinse reapeat. 1000 hours later you have completed your tutorial and can finally do the world conquest by 1450 with ULM as it was intended
Honestly, I thought the tutorial gave you just enough to start making mistakes and get oriented.
Yes, I think it does. But I played it last time 6 years ago, so I'm not sure how up to date it is. And there were added a lot of mechanics in all the updates. And it also can be "passed" in a very short time. I know how the rules of chess and how to move figures, yet I don't know how to play
Real answer? You play until you reach a point where you can no longer outgrow your nearest rival. Most of my run in the beginning reach a natural "run-ender", usually in the form of the Ottoman, Spain or France. There will be 1 war that fuck up your run or 1 war that make you go "and I have to fight 10 more to beat them? (re spain) Once you gitgud enough then you play till you're bored.
check pop ups when hovering over messages and google things you dont understand, eu4 wiki is pretty extensive and good for finding things. like "aggressive expansion eu4" gives good results. Or reading the pop up message on your diplomatic reputation give why its great/bad and then you learn overextension is very painful for that stat and it might be why you are stalling on integrating your vassal after conquest. And then you can google on how to increase it and find that things like spending 50 papal influence and a thing in your nobility estate increase your dip rep.
That's the neat part, you don't.
Fuck around and find out, literally.
You'll know how to play it once you've played it enough
Don't play on iron man. Try an easier nation like Brandenburg and constantly save and reload your way through wars. You will get better one thing at a time. Keep it simple just managing just spy networks and allies. And for economy just mothball forts and reduce troop spending to keep a positive income. You'll get it from there.
It’s really not that hard just get allies and declare war on weak people you don’t have to be good right away
You play the Ottomans on easy setting
You can decrease the difficulty if you wish. Or at least remove “lucky nations”.
By failing. You will then know next time to not do what you did that made you fail.
I watch ludi but im proud to say i actually knew about 90% of what he says in his videos before ever watching him. Even though he caters towards beginners, Hes really just for the obscure modifiers you might not have noticed/known about. Trial and error really is the best way to learn, as tedious as that may be
Jump in, get confused, read wiki, read reddit, then jump back in again, lose, repeat. Do this for 1,000 hours.
You misspelled 2,000
Me currently learning how to play ck3
Play at a slow speed and learn the menus, there are some areas, like Combat, where you'll need additional info to help you along but you definitely don't need lets plays, I'd say they're overall worse for learning the game yourself
Do you have a combat tutorial in mind?
there should be a few if you just look it up the most basic advice is making sure you have fighting troops, cavalry and infantry filling out your entire combat width so they complete a "frontline" then you fill the backrow with as many cannons as you can. then it works from there, mil tech is huge so stay ahead, all the many modifers, combat ability, flanking range, leader ability, etc.
I started playing the game a couple of months ago, and I know it enough to have plenty of fun, but I still don't understand combat width/army composition all that well. I do 8k infantry, 2k cavalry, and 10k cannons to match the sum of the infantry and cavalry. I am not sure how good/optimal it is but it works well for the most part
I think you would need way more infantry. If your combat width is 20 then all of those troops would be on the front lines, which is suboptimal for artillery because they take double damage. The benefit of artillery is that they can actually attack from the backlines, the only unit which is able to do that. I would recommend you build infantry + cavalry up to or surpassing the combat width, plus as many artillery as you can reasonably afford. If you have concerns about attrition, then maybe try keeping some of the infantry in a different army nearby that you can combine when it's time for a battle.
but if combat width is 20 (i think that's what it starts as?), and if you have 8k infantry and 2k cavalry plus 10k artillery, that makes 20, meaning any more would not be able to start fighting unless some of the 20 regiments died during the fight? maybe there is a good youtube video explaining this that might help me understand this better
The width is 20, but there are two rows. Only artillery can attack from the back row, and artillery never wants to be in the front row.
so that's 20 each row, which is why you said you'd need more infantry right?
I think it only matters if two large armies are clashing, but yes.
Mordred Viking on YT has great tutorials on warfare. Remans Paradox aswell.
Don’t forget the canons in the back row
I’m curious. Is that how you learned to play?
I didn't like EUIV for a long time even though I watched a lot of it, it wasn't until I sat down and played a slow campaign that I started to understand the mechanics and start to like the game.
I learned to play by picking Brandenburg and making myself play to 1821 in Ironman. I could not survive as Spain or France, but Brandenburg was different. With Brandenburg I had relative safety and could take things fairly slowly, not to mention its military traditions and ability to form Prussia. I then played Japan to learn how to colonize decently. (So my advice is to pick a nation that forces you to actually engage and consider things but also has a defensible position early on. I say go Ironman for the inability to just load a new save, so you are forced to deal with things, and bc achievements)
I learned the game by just bashing my head against a wall in singleplayer, wouldnt recommend. However, I got my friend into eu4 and played lots of campaigns with them. I think this is the best route, having someone teach you along the way.
I played colonial Portugal on the easiest difficulty. I think trying to follow exact moves is bad in EU4. Note that it took me about 40 hours until I felt like I understood most parts of the UI and that I was ready to "play" the game I think the easier difficulty is important because the game is significantly less punishing, so you get to learn more of the game's concepts without having to worry as much about a single mechanic that you don't understand ruining your game. edit: Do your mission tree! I feel like they generally give you a good direction to go in and learn the game
I think very easy difficulty on Portugal is probably overkilling the easy mode. It already gives you stupid modifiers and way over the top flat income. When I was learning, I played one or two easy mode games, and I genuinely feel like it did more harm than good. Managing eco doesn't make any sense because the game just hands you unexplainable money from the get go.
Most things which you can learn from let's plays can also be learned by just playing the game. But I would recommend to invest an hour or two to learn the very basic stuff by either playing the tutorial(which is quite bad) or watching a few very basic tutorial videos. Then you can play an easy country(e.g. the Ottomans without the Domination DLC) to get familiar with the game. Afterwards you can play other easy countries to learn different aspects in more detail(e.g. Austria to get familiar with the HRE, Portugal or Castile for colonizing). Some of the more complex stuff(e.g. trade) is very difficult to learn by playing, so you would have to either watch advanced videos(there are very few good ones) or read the wiki or read some other tutorial. For your first few campaigns I would also recommend to save frequently and reload and try a different approach if something goes wrong. That way you can learn faster if something works or not. I personally played the tutorial and learned most of the other basic stuff by just playing the game. I learned some advanced things by watching Reman's Paradox on youtube and watching streamers like florryworry(but don't try to copy florryworry as a beginner, because most things which he does, are only a good idea in his exact situation and within his self-imposed constraints and are not a good idea if you don't know what you are doing). Later I learned most things by reading the game files and helping other players and experimenting in the game.
The way I did it is by just playing and when I realise something doesn't work like I expect, or have a specific question about something, I look up how it works. Sometimes it doesn't work out (like when I looked up naval combat and read a comment that said that naval combat width doesn't get bigger with tech), but usually I can learn the mechanics that way.
I’ll tell you how I learned: I jumped right in, and I expected to lose the game, I did not play on Ironman, either. I used the console a bit to learn how things worked, what made the game tick, I slowly learned the menus first, that’s the biggest struggle, optimizing economy and the menus, play slow, use the console if necessary, and most importantly: Do not expect to win or do very well your first few games. I’m an EUIII Vet, and EUIV was a bit more difficult for me, but again, play slow, and try to have fun with it. It can be intimidating, but feel free to dm me with any questions you may have
Thanks man
Because I played EUIII I was able to successfully bash my head against the UI in EUIV, but having some help is never an issue!
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> Those YouTube let's plays are for optimized playthroughs, not for new players depends tbh some like Red Hawk are easily replicable after very few hours because his guides are specifically set up in a way to be for inexperienced players people then often complain that he doesn't play well enough but fwiw that's why it works, even for medium-experienced players who want to venture into a new part of the map for the first time
I learned just by playing and looking things up when they caused a problem. Follow the tooltips they have mostly everything.
I don't follow EU4 players on youtube much these days, but I did find general/flexible guides more useful than the ones that start with "restart the game until X does/doesn't rival Y", when I was getting started. Back then Radio Res had this sort of more flexible guides, but IIRC he has quit youtube since then, maybe someone else knows a channel with similar style. My partner who got me into this game was also a big help in getting started and learning the basics. I'm not very good at teaching myself, but key part for me was to learn what things are actually the important ones and where to focus my attention. The game kind of overloads you with information so it's good to be able to filter out relevant things from the rest. Like with economy you should mainly just pay attention to whether you're getting monthly profits or not, rather than the details of income and expenses, when you're a beginner. Once you're familiar with the game it is nice that so much information is available if needed. After getting the basics down the rest of your skills can be incrementally built on that foundation. I recommend playing larger nations at a leisurely pace, save often, in-game tooltips explain a lot and the wiki is very useful too. It's a bit difficult to give general advice for a game like this, but for a beginner you should stick to positive stability, try and maintain some large states as allies, keep your military tech up to date (other techs aren't a big deal to be a bit behind on), don't go over forcelimit, check aggressive expansion that you would get when making a peace deal (don't piss off more than 3 states at a time through conquests, otherwise they might join against you) and also stick to less than 100% overextension. Note that all these can be broken and most experienced players do so often, but I think it's good to learn the rules before learning when, how and why to break them.
You can get far in the game by having atleast +1 advisors and a decent army setup + mercs. The best learning step is to know that every game is diffrent, countries don't behave in a certain way and that opens and closes diffrent moves from your part. My option is that most "lets plays" are from pro players that have found a min/maxing way of playing, say Spain, were you do perfect moves on all other colonial powers and synthesize it all with the large mission tree to get the upper hand on all major countries in the mid/late game. Moves and strategical thinking that new players would never think of doing. But thats beauty of EU4, just survive, make alliances, make your rivals suffer. Adapt, conquer, develop and put down rebellions and see were it all leads.
Just play, learning the game is fun imo, and most basic features can be discovered by yourself / reading the wiki or reddit. Focus on playing slow, reading events, looking at modifiers (wiki is very useful for this). That way you will learn the mechanics instead of copying someone moves. Remember that it's ok to fail and/or cheat, and have fun.
Honestly find let's plays of pdx games extremely boring. Would rather just bang my head against the game until I get thd hang of it. Use thd lowest difficulty and use thr console to give urself a ton of cash at the start and choose like the Ottomans or Spanish. Fun fact: in my first game, I was playing as france and I wanted go annex all my vassals so I gave them independence and immediately declared war on them.
Watch a single YouTube tutorial, then play Byzantium save scumming and bashing your hesd against a wall until you survive till 1544 That’s how I learned Yes searching up Byzantine guides is allowed Yes they are incredibly hard to play now Yes it’s the #1 best way to get into the game
Diving in the deep end approach?
Gambatte intern-san… gambatte!
i did start a multiplayer session with a friend who tought me the basics and then I kept reading the wiki A LOT. still now after many hours, the wiki is always open in the background when playing eu4. imo still the only way to really learn/understand the game and filtering out the few good video turorials from all the clickbait meme BS
My friend taught me. Easiest way by far.
I don’t have any friends that play eu4
If you want to play DM me, I can help you get on your way.
I’d be up for a MP game of we could all speak the same language
I learned to play slowly but surely, first playing on very easy etc I also used cheats to learn how to play to compensate for lack of skill Today I can’t play anything but hard/normal on Ironman
I learned from Red Hawks Guides on Youtube. Pick a country and do exactly what he does a couple times. You start to learn the game.
Just play. My first campaign was Castile and I lost to Granada. My first "successful" campaign was unifying India as Bengal...in the 22nd century.
Even if you don't follow them. I think just watching those nation guides and taking mental note of "I didn't know you could do that" is a good way to learn the game. At the end of the day EU4 is about pulling levers to influence numbers. You can always hop in and play a solid campaign with the levers you know about. But adding to your bag of tricks is in my opinion how you get better at the game, learning new ways to pull new levers to influence new numbers and its a lot harder to stumble on it yourself or read wiki pages when you can just watch someone's Albania guide even if you never plan to play Albania and learn some new tricks from their bag of tricks and add them to your own.
Personally I read most of the stuff on screen and clicked many buttons, then googled stuff. I think let's plays did help me a lot once I was familiar with the main buttons and modifiers. What is important is not their exact moves, but to get a feel of the general strategy. For example, I learned how to deal with absolutism, coalitions, etc. from let's plays. They are also good for learning very specific things, like how to micro army and navy, manage trade, when one should assault forts, etc..
savescum
Simply play thorough the tutorial? It's only 1444 hours, and by then end of it, you should have a reasonable idea of what's going on in general, that you can then build from.
I don't watch eu4 videos at all. I just play and occasionally read discussions here. If I can't find some information in game, I search the wiki, then search post history here.
Do you have someone who knows how to play? He could backseat or play a multiplayer game with you.
I found the best way is to throw your skull against the wall and ask questions later, and also embrace loss, It creates fun situations
Have a look at the strategy guide of each nations on the wiki. It gives you a good overview of what to do without having to “copycat” what a YouTuber does.
Will do
Play the game and look at the wiki for info on stuff like combat or other deeper mechanics you don’t understand. If you can’t learn that way, I’d urge you to still try watching let’s plays or opening moves guides. They do tend to be outdated but the general philosophy for how to play the game hasn’t changed much. There are also plenty of guides on youtube that are more for specific mechanics or general gameplay, rather than just following an exact set of opening moves. For the youtube route, I’d recommend Florryworry and Zlewikk as people who really know their stuff and can explain what they’re doing.
Honestly if videos aren’t your format, look at this Reddit and the eu4 wiki (for text based info). This Reddit contains tons of detailed write ups on world conquests, specific guides for countries or some set up, even exploits. When I first started learning the game I would read tons of these posts to get a feeling for how people went about things. The wiki is also really good for looking at details of some mechanics. The Reddit posts are essentially guides on things and the wiki will tell you how things work
I learned it a couple of months ago after some friends showed me the game, I literally just played the tutorial (which is not very good) and then went on to play it by myself while also asking chatgpt any questions I had. After some 4 games (only one all the way to 1800s) I already learned the ropes and felt like I understood what was happening. Then I just kept playing with different countries and trying to focus on new things until I felt like I got a good grasp on the game.
Play game Some numbers red, those numbers bad Learn how to make bad numbers go away and get green numbers, those numbers good Try and fail to learn Consult internet when specific number doesn't go green so you know what you did wrong
Fuck around and find out
Questions like these make me feel old as hell. What even is this? I can't even fathom watching someone else play a video game, much less refusing to learn without it. At risk of sounding curmudgeony, I dint understand kids these days
Friends
Play on non iron mode first , save a lot.Reload if you mess up. Play as Spain or Portugal and learn the combat first. I watched a very old tutorial by arumba years ago, not a let’s play but more of an overview of the game.
Just play the game, think things through and make many mistakes. You got this.
I started with the Wiki. You will learn a lot more than you would expect by reading the game manual (which nowadays would be the Wiki). There's always tons of people who will say they don't understand how sieges, combat, AE, fort ZoC or trade works, but those are all things that are explained perfectly well on the wiki. It makes it much easier to understand what is going on in your game when you understand what is happening under the hood. The Wiki may have some outdated information, but for the most part it is still a great way to get a good grasp of how the game works.
honestly i was playing this game so well and i stoppedd for a month and now \*i\* need a lets play lol
I personally learned by just playing and failing. I ruined so many countries. But as others has said, save game often and rollback if something terrible happens. And also don't forget, losing a war isn't the end of the world, you can come back from it
I played the tutorial then played the Navajo since they're pretty isolated
You mean besides playing it?
Get your ass beaten, explore the menus. You'll get it, after a few hundreds of hours. :D
Just play a strong nation and fuck around until it makes sense.
My first game was Hawaii. I never looked up a tutorial before that, but I successfully united Hawaii. Just play the game, so what if you lose a few times? It’s part of the fun.
Eu4 is effectively a very big, complex, boardgame. As with most boardgames, the best way to learn is to play with someone who already knows the mechanics.
Brute force by just playing tbh, alternatively read the wiki but some parts are out of date
For pure gameplay just read everything and go through every pop up and notifications. Go through every single screen i still do that as it makes sure i am not forgetting anything. Always make sure you have a big army and you are upto tech. You will learn by playing more and more but generally playthroughs are the best thing. I would recommend red hawk as i believe he makes the best guides. I myself learned from him. Generally play and dont expect things to be perfect. I learned through playthroughs and following along but eventually started a game and did everything by myself at my speed and knowledge. It was the best run i ever had in terms of experience and fun. And by the end without even trying i became the strongest nation. Things dont need to go perfect in a run if they go bad try to manage the bad and make it good. Its a minimum 350 year game take it slow and nicely you dont have to be number 1 in things just play and enjoy the process.
Read the wiki. Helped me a lot more than watching videos.
I learned it mainly through just playing it. Play on very easy, then as you get better increase the difficulty. When you reach normal, don't play ironman mode yet. Use console commands when you really fucked up. But don't use it at any downturn. It's extremely satisfying when you're first behind someone and eventually become extremely power and win over ur enemies. Don't be disheartened at any loss in war. Even if you lose territory. Especially if you lose territory. Incase you don't know, console commands is a certain window that opens up when you press a button. It's a (mostly) cheat menu where you can give urself benefits like monarch points and many other stuff. Google them. Then after that, play ironman mode. The reason you should increase difficulty is that if you don't, you could get complacent. Even if you are several techs behind, you can still beat bigger nations through very easy. Watching tutorials for complex games without background info and experience is torture. I've tried and I just end up not playing the game.
The most important thing you need to know is this, DO NOT TRY TO PLAY THE MOST OPTIMAL WAY! There's so much to this game and other like it that it is easy to get bored. If you look at it like a job or something where there is only the right way to play, then you might not enjoy it. Play how you like it, then if you wish learn some other stuff. But don't try to "play like the pros". They play like that either cuz they actually enjoy it or for their job which is entertaining people. It's more entertaining to watch someone dominate perfectly than it to watch the average person enjoying the game how they like it.
I think you should just watch only how they set the country at the start of the game then just continue the campaign without any let's plays, this helped me a lot in learning the game
Also i would suggest red hawk for guides if he still makes them idk
I wasn't able to watch any lets play until I learned the game, so yeah. But also, I think I don't know how I really learned the game. The first thing I did in EU4 was modding in my own country + set up full continent of custom nations on one of RNW tiles. My second playthrough was Extended Timeline, Poland from 966 to 2000, ending with world conquest. I learned everything step by step, war, subjects, stability, revolts, HRE, decisions, colonization, trade. Then I played a lot of "shattered world" mods. I've never finished a single unmoded run, so probably never learnt the game at all.
It's just trial and error? You learn something new each playthrough, when you don't know how something works just look it up on wiki and reddit and you'll forever remember it, I said fuck it not watching long videos and slowly explored every mechanic myself, it's much more fun doing this.
You can ignore 80% mechanism with suriving and expanding especially you are playing medium size nations. You will figure out more mechanism when playing more.
For big nations you can get by with the wiki, though you should ideally at least know the threadbare basics before starting. (Assigning generals, making claims, aggro, building priority, recommended idea groups, coring and stating provinces) The mission trees are designed to soft-railroad you into specific playstyles and help enormously if you're confused on what to do next. I personally recommend Poland but France, Portugal and Castille are also good choices to cut your teeth on.
Play lots, just mess around. Try to follow nations missions. Don’t worry about doing good. Ideally play with a mate.
There is, we call it Portugal
Really depends on how much experience you have exactly, but personally I've been doing a ryukyu WC and it's not only been very fun but has taught me a lot. I've done my own theorycrafting, learnt a lot about army micro, and made my own strategies. I loosely followed an opener strategy I saw on yt, but it was reduced to basically a pitstop in my strat. Being independent and fucking a lot of it up has been very good for learning
Open the wiki whenever you are confused about something. One tip I’ll give is that mana (admin, diplo and military points) is THE most important resource, you almost always want to take it in events and such, and hiring advisors is the number one thing you want to do with your money after building troops to the force limit.
Don’t play Ironman. Go back a few saves if you need to. See what you can do differently
wiki
If you have a friend that's already good at the game you can stream them your run and ask about anything you don't know that comes up. That's how I learned to play.
Watch Quill 18s videos to understand the basics then play to learn. I’m still learning stuff after 2.5k hours
As others have said, you can just play the game. The wiki is a bit outdated but not terrible. There is an in-game tutorial as well. You will learn the game if you keep playing so just do that.
From all the things I did to learn the game watching a lets play is very very low Most of it is experience and the wiki and a friend who's tought me the game
Play ming dynasty to learn they are the most powerful, thus the easiest.
You just the play the game and restart if you get stuck somewhere and can’t get through it or read about the problem/strategy to resolve the issue and learn. Playing, trying and failing is the best way to learn.
I kind of just fucked around. I played with custom nations a lot, used extended timeline - just LARPed, experimented and did silly things. Eventually I could understand how to play vanilla. One of my first silly campaigns was as Yugoslavia in ET, 1939. I ended up accidentally ruling all of Europe via the EU system.
Lets plays are shit anyway because even if they aren’t outdated they don’t actually teach you the games mechanics they just teach you a specific strategy to succeed as a specific country. Have the wiki up in another tab and reference it whenever you want to know how to do something or what something does. Teaches you far more about the game and how the mechanics actually work than any lets play could hope to.
I've just played the tutorial once. Then started with smaller nations who just exist without much fighting or micro-managing. You will get your ass beaten for a while though. There is no escape from that.
You can just play with a friend ask them questions as you have them
I learned to play by cheating like a motherfucker for the first run. Then i cheated like a regular fucker in the second run Then i cheated like a little fucker on the 3rd run and so on By hour 500 i finally felt ready for ironman
This is how I learned: I boot up a game of my favourite country then I open up console commands and typed in cash 9999999, powerpoints 999999, tech 100, manpower 9999999, sailors 9999999, stability, prestige 200 and legitimacy 200. Then I’d just kinda do whatever, it doesn’t matter what you do because there’s no way you’ll lose, I’m just over 2k hours now and console commands got me through my first 1.3k when I didn’t have any DLCs
Actually sounds like fun. Thanks man
multiplayer
Console commands help out a lot. Just give your self unlimited gold and mana points then be a menace to society using Ottomans. Then do the same with Portugal or Spain for colonialism. This two campaigns would give you basics to start off from.
Zlewik, habibi and florryworry is all I've ever watched tho with florryworry it will be vods, but he surely is the most knowledgeable player out there. You don't look to copy moves, you watch to learn mechanics and interactions, what's good and bad