Europa Universalis IV

Europa Universalis IV is a game about running a state in the period from the late Middle Ages to the Napoleonic Wars, played out on a map of the entire world divided into thousands of provinces. It doesn't run in turns but in flowing time that can be paused and resumed at any moment, which is necessary since so much happens at once: diplomatic negotiations are underway, manufactories are being built, a distant colony is asking for money, and a neighbor has just laid claim to your border province. The player leads any existing state, from France to small Italian city-republics, and essentially sets their own goals.

At the heart of the system are three types of monarch points - administrative, diplomatic, and military - which accumulate according to the current ruler's abilities and are spent on technologies, on absorbing conquered territories, and on national ideas that determine the country's long-term focus. Alongside this, the game tracks stability, inflation, religious unity, and above all aggressive expansion, which causes surrounding powers to unite into a coalition against a state that has grown too greedy. War is therefore never just a matter of a bigger army, but also of whether you can politically afford it. The interface is dense, full of numbers and options, and the first hours can be tough despite the built-in advice and tutorials.

The game has been shaped over the long term by an endless string of expansions and free updates that gradually reworked trade, the navy, government forms, and the behavior of individual regions, so today's version differs substantially from the one from 2013. Reception was very favorable, and the title became the backbone of the entire grand-strategy genre as well as a source of countless player stories about improbable empires. Today, Europa Universalis IV is above all a giant story-generating machine that rewards patience: once you understand why your neighbor behaves the way they do, it's hard to tear yourself away from the map. Getting used to the sheer number of menus takes a while, but the reward is a game you can spend a hundred hours on and still keep discovering corners of the world you haven't visited yet.