How long to actually learn this thing?

[oBruhWinFree]

how many hours to actually know what the hell is going on? I bought the game on humble bundle sale with all dlc's ( at the time ) and getting to learn it now but this thing is so complex , the only paradox game I played is Vic2 and I have like 250 hours , I think I was getting the hang of it withing 20 to 50 hours , but I'm playing EU4 with no dlc's and the curve is STEEEEEEEEEP

[Marquoz]

You're right, it is! Most people say you need a few hundred hours of playtime to have a solid understanding of what's going on, and that you'll become expert around a thousand or so. I tend to agree, although experience with other Paradox titles or previous games in the EU series definitely helps.

The EU4 wiki is also a great resource to explain complicated systems like trade. I highly recommend you spend time there. Asking questions here and on the official forums is also useful.

[tonypa]

I have played EU4 over 3300 hours, and still do not understand everything. Part of the problem is that with every new major Expansion they keep adding or changing features, so you need to constantly relearn optimal ways unless you do not upgrade the game ever.

I do think it is best to start learning with base game only. Each Expansion adds new stuff and you need to understand which ones are more important and which ones can be safely ignored.

Let's take en example: States. Once you have cored new land you may need to add these to the States. But if you grow big enough you only have limited amount of States available, this alone can provide challenge of re-stating lands for the best result as you need to pick some for States and leave others as non-stated. Is it most important thing in the game? Nope. You can pretty easily ignore all of this for many-many hours.

Or similarly sounding, but different features - Estates. Again, you can tinker with their loyalty and Influence and finish agendas and assign Privileges, you can do many things with these. But, in the end, you can also play through the whole game without ever interacting with them. Nothing really happens if you totally ignore everything about Estates (ok, try to keep their Loyalty above 30 to avoid penalties, there are random events for this).

If you are still learning, I would recommend land-locked nation with small amount of neighbours. This way you will not have to deal with sailors, ships, naval combat, colonisation and probably several more features. The game suggests to always build ships if you have some ports, personally, I consider these total waste unless you are heavily investing in Naval Power as specific nation (England, Denmark).

I also recommend training with large, rich and powerful nation that usually does well even when controlled by AI. Ming is what I consider very easy nation, you will never be attacked and you can play for long time without the need to expand, just keep your internal Stability high, Economy on plus and you are fine.

[oBruhWinFree]

Originally posted by tonypa:

I have played EU4 over 3300 hours, and still do not understand everything. Part of the problem is that with every new major Expansion they keep adding or changing features, so you need to constantly relearn optimal ways unless you do not upgrade the game ever.

I do think it is best to start learning with base game only. Each Expansion adds new stuff and you need to understand which ones are more important and which ones can be safely ignored.

Let's take en example: States. Once you have cored new land you may need to add these to the States. But if you grow big enough you only have limited amount of States available, this alone can provide challenge of re-stating lands for the best result as you need to pick some for States and leave others as non-stated. Is it most important thing in the game? Nope. You can pretty easily ignore all of this for many-many hours.

Or similarly sounding, but different features - Estates. Again, you can tinker with their loyalty and Influence and finish agendas and assign Privileges, you can do many things with these. But, in the end, you can also play through the whole game without ever interacting with them. Nothing really happens if you totally ignore everything about Estates (ok, try to keep their Loyalty above 30 to avoid penalties, there are random events for this).

If you are still learning, I would recommend land-locked nation with small amount of neighbours. This way you will not have to deal with sailors, ships, naval combat, colonisation and probably several more features. The game suggests to always build ships if you have some ports, personally, I consider these total waste unless you are heavily investing in Naval Power as specific nation (England, Denmark).

I also recommend training with large, rich and powerful nation that usually does well even when controlled by AI. Ming is what I consider very easy nation, you will never be attacked and you can play for long time without the need to expand, just keep your internal Stability high, Economy on plus and you are fine.

I can see the logic here but most or all the video tutorials on yt are without any dlc's so its easier to follow along and also dlc's will add more mechanics and there is enough to confuse the ♥♥♥♥ out of me rn :D , its so early to enable dlc's maybe when I finish couple games to get the basics and finish the tutorials

[oBruhWinFree]

Originally posted by Marquoz:

You're right, it is! Most people say you need a few hundred hours of playtime to have a solid understanding of what's going on, and that you'll become expert around a thousand or so. I tend to agree, although experience with other Paradox titles or previous games in the EU series definitely helps.

The EU4 wiki is also a great resource to explain complicated systems like trade. I highly recommend you spend time there. Asking questions here and on the official forums is also useful.

Thanks , I think I heard similar numbers around , also respect on the 3.5k hours and 100% achievement . I will take 3 years to get there :D

[Azunai]

i think i started to get the hang of it after maybe 100 hours or so. that is to say at that point i was good enough to play it on ironman and end up somewhat successful when playing countries with a decent starting position.

now another 300 hours or so later i understand most of the game mechanics well enough. there are still details i'd have to look up but i think there's nothing major left in the game that i don't understand at all.

[Usaball]

Originally posted by 0Skill100Chill:

how many hours to actually know what the hell is going on? I bought the game on humble bundle sale with all dlc's ( at the time ) and getting to learn it now but this thing is so complex , the only paradox game I played is Vic2 and I have like 250 hours , I think I was getting the hang of it withing 20 to 50 hours , but I'm playing EU4 with no dlc's and the curve is STEEEEEEEEEP

I'd say when I was around 500 hours I knew what to do. I remember the first country I ever played as was Yemen, and I didn't go through the tutorial and never had anybody show me anything as far as EU 4 went. So, I immediately declared war on Oman and felt pretty overwhelmed with the game at the time, went into bankruptcy, lost the war, lost half my provinces and then 10 years later had the remnants taken over as well.

[Razor Feather]

It took me about 60 hours before I started my first campaign where I actually got the ball rolling. Didn’t end up super duper huge, but I had over 1k dev and was well established. By 500ish hours I could handle some of the more challenging starts given a few false starts and early screwups. At 1300 hours while there is still much I don’t understand (I can’t be bothered to learn how exactly personal unions work) I can abuse and manipulate a lot of the games mechanics and usually get myself through whatever challenge I throw myself into.

Eu4 isn’t really a game you ever *finish* learning. There is just so, so much going on under the hood and all sorts of tricks and techniques you can use, but I’d say 50-100 hours is about what it takes to get the basics down well enough that you should be able to survive as a decent start through the game.

[Brady Gunner]

100-150 hours if completely new to RTS games, especially paradox titles.

Less if already has some experience with similar games such as Civ. Also depends on the quality of time spent learning.

[oBruhWinFree]

thank you guys for the detailed replied , I have a side question , after finishing the vanilla tutorial videos and getting the basics of the vanilla , how should I handle enabling dlc's , like enable them one by one or all at once , I think I have all dlc's minus the emperor

[Tulduil Iphukiir]

Originally posted by 0Skill100Chill:

thank you guys for the detailed replied , I have a side question , after finishing the vanilla tutorial videos and getting the basics of the vanilla , how should I handle enabling dlc's , like enable them one by one or all at once , I think I have all dlc's minus the emperor

If you already have all/most DLCs my recommendation is:
1) Activate Art of War and Rights of Man; Of all DLCs those two probably have the most "universally useful" features.
2) With those two play a game (or two) with an European Monarchy to get used to their features (Europe because of the League War which can be so much fun and chaos at the same time)
3) Then look at the map and choose a nation that you are interested in, e.g. Bahmanis (doesn't need to be extremely far away, European non Monarchies (e.g. Theocracies) or European Monarchies with extra content (e.g. England, Russia, Castile, ...) also work)
4) Check whether there are DLCs that add to that nation and activate those in addition to the already activated DLCs (in case of Bahmanis: Dharma because India, Cradle of Civilization because Muslim)
5) Play this nation
optional: 6: Play another nation which benefits from the DLCs activated in 4), in this case another Indian Muslim, e.g. Jaunpur

7): Repeat 3)-6) until you have activated all DLCs, ideally with nations that profit from a previously activated DLC and one newly to be activated DLC (e.g. after Bahmanis/Jaunpur ("Indian Muslim") Morocco (Muslim but not India, newly activate Golden Century) or Vijayanagar (India but not Muslim, newly activate Wealth of Nations).


This approach may be time-consuming but as other already pointed out: If you like the game you will spend many hours playing anyway.


We can help you with recommended/useful DLCs for specific nations, feel free to ask.

[tonypa]

I would say activating The Cossacks can be problematic, it is great DLC for any Horde, but it also comes with overhaul of Diplomatic system for every nation. The new system may require relearning of how to deal with allies, some players hate it while others only play with new system.

[Bishop]

I've played about 600 hours. Still learning. Every time you play a new nation, there are new dynamics to learn to play that nation well. Best joke I've read about the game "Beginners truce-break. skilled players don't truce-break. Experts truce-break." Learning the game involves learning the limits, and being good is knowing when to push those limits.

[Brady Gunner]

Originally posted by Bishop:

I've played about 600 hours. Still learning. Every time you play a new nation, there are new dynamics to learn to play that nation well. Best joke I've read about the game "Beginners truce-break. skilled players don't truce-break. Experts truce-break." Learning the game involves learning the limits, and being good is knowing when to push those limits.

Development building meta and game become easy

[[ λ³ ] nob]

For what it's worth I can give my quick guide on the estates. Maybe someone will correct me and explain how it's not optimal but it works well:

- call diets whenever you can, I always keep the year and month in mind for when I can call it again
- you can check various things before accepting a certain agenda, like when the nobility ask you to vassalize someone you can move away the pop-up and see what alliances get triggered if you attempt to no-cb that nation. if it looks good go for it, otherwise you might be better off going with whatever the clergy or burghers want
- hand out supremacy over the crown to the nobility for extra diets
- strong duchies is a very good nobility privilege that is only available when you have at least 2 vassals or marches, and it gives +2 dip rel and -10% liberty desire. extra diplomatic relation slots are REALLY good and allow you to keep plenty of allies and subjects. know that when you have 0 dip slots left and one vassal, vassalizing another country won't cost you monthly diplomatic power cause strong duchies become available
- the basic +10% loyalty +10% influence are an option if other utility/loyalty privileges aren't appealing, be wary of the risk of too high influence but you want enough loyalty equilibrium to regularly seize land
- seize land whenever you can, you want at least 50% loyalty for each estate when you do
- when crownland is over 40%, you can give primacy privileges to an estate of choice (usually clergy first, then burghers, then nobility. but it depends on your needs). it's a one time hit of 10% crownland which you can just build up again by seizing land. it's not like you permanently forfeit that % of crownland to the estates at all times
- both the clergy and burghers have a privilege that improve colonization. keep this in mind before you give 4 privileges to either of these estates
- expansionist zealotry is often good if you're in a position to fight heretics or heathens, best if you're surrounded
- the advisor discount privileges are mediocre but they have their use in early game for small nations
- you probably don't wanna give burghers free trade as IMO they have the more useful privileges and you'll wanna have those instead
- trade good monopolies are GOOD. I thought it was absolute garbo at first cause the money from them seems pitiful compared to the income loss. I was fooled by this cause I made the assumption that you lose all province income of relevant trade goods (if you look at the trade goods map mode, it looks like you're giving up X amount of provinces!) when you obviously keep tax income but those goods also still contribute to trade! what you get is 8 years worth of production income, if it seems little then know that really is how much that production is worth. so what you get out of it is a renewable privilege that increases mercantilism and estate loyalty with no influence increase. these privileges make a good contribution to maintaining loyalty for regular land seizing. ticking up your mercantilism bit by bit is great too, especially if you can afford like 3/4 monopolies. you can give multiple monopolies to the same estate. the best monopolies are those of low value and/or low province count goods that you have. you can even go out of your way to acquire a single province of a certain good to hand out a monopoly, like getting theodoro (wine province) as russia, so you get 1 mercantilism every 10 years and 10% clergy loyalty for one province of a trade good you don't have anywhere else

If you do things right, you can seize land almost every interval and build up your crownland fast after handing out the supremacy privileges. higher crownland gives bonuses but also gives you some leeway to hand it out through events, like the one that gives like 3% of crownland to burghers in exchange for province development. both >50% crownland and clergy loyalty give tax bonuses, which can be very good early and early-mid game for more tax dependent states