The game does give you guidance in the form of alert bubbles in the upper left of the screen, informing you of the things it thinks are most relevant, and paying attention to those can at least show you what you might want to think about. Even after you've learned the basics, you'll still find yourself wondering: if I declare a holy war, will it cost me diplomatic power to annex territory or not? And it's often hard - certainly in ironman mode - to undo decisions, so small mistakes and misclicks can end up costing you a lot. You crush them and bring them under your control - and suddenly you find revolutions popping up everywhere.

You start again and this time you find a weak neighbor with no allies. You start over as a bigger country and attack a smaller neighbor - and suddenly you're in a war against several large countries at once. You have a country and three thousand infantrymen - what can you do? You decide to attack your neighbor - and they cut you down like reeds. Steep learning curve When you start out, it can be overwhelming. And if you don't keep your country's internal affairs in order, you may find yourself on the wrong end of a peasant's war or facing other national disasters. Some require you to hire the right set of advisors. Some of them are specific to which country you're playing as. If you want to annex a neighbor, do you declare a holy war on them, or do you fabricate claims on their territory and demand that they 'return' this land to you? Do you ally a much larger nation that might try to force you to be their vassal? Conversely, do you try to improve relations with a much smaller neighbor in order to become their suzerain overlord, or do you attempt to conquer them directly and risk pulling their larger allies into a war? On top of that, there are hundreds of events that can occur once certain preconditions are met.

However, these interact to produce a large number of interesting decisions that affect your outcomes. There is a relatively limited set of choices you can make under normal circumstances: hiring advisors to improve your capabilities, hiring troops, about two dozen diplomatic actions in peace, and a number of different peace deal options when terminating a war. Lots of depth EUIV is a simulation of global politics and war.

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