PHOTO PROVIDED I regret to inform you that every number and piece of information in this screenshot is relevant to understanding the game state in just this tiny corner of the world map — and there are dozens of menu options beyond what you can see here.

I’m going to be honest, this isn’t a recommendation to play this game so much as a recommendation to watch this game.

Europa Universalis 4 (EU4) is what is called a grand strategy game — and it is grand in every definition of the word, including scope and scale.

EU4 drops you in as the pilot of a nation of your choice on Nov. 11, 1444 — and when I say the nation of your choice, I mean you can play as the Susquehannock Native Americans if you want. You can play as aboriginal tribes in Australia. You can play as any of a massive number of one-province minors that are part of the Holy Roman Empire.

The world is, quite literally, your oyster.

Let’s loop back to that Nov. 11, 1444 start date. Why was that chosen?

Nov. 10, 1444 was the Battle of Varna, the final battle in a crusade that sought to block the Ottomans from expanding into the Balkans. This battle is particularly notable because, in it, the king of Poland, Wladyslaw III, died in battle. This would break the personal union between Poland and Hungary, along with empowering the Ottomans to the point that they could break the remnants of the Byzantines by sacking Constantinople on May 29, 1453 — thereby ending the last vestiges of the Roman Empire.

Why do I know all of this?

EU4.

Don’t get me wrong, not every single minor province and nation has this level of depth. But the game does a remarkable job of making the world on Nov. 11, 1444 as geopolitically correct as it can without completely sabotaging the concepts of fun and balance.

From that start point, all things are possible.

Remember that thing about the Byzantines before? As the player, you can play as the Byzantines, push back the Ottomans, and re-form the Roman Empire.

I have personally fought wars over, for example, Spanish Alaska. You get some weird, wild things that can happen.

You also can end up with games where events play out in a shockingly real-world accurate way. In one game that I watched on Youtube, the player forced Great Britain to evacuate to a Canadian colony, at which point they eventually formed Canada with modern-day accurate borders by the 1700s.

Much like the Civilization series of strategy games, EU4 is a fantastic sandbox for history lovers. There’s many opportunities for Wikipedia dives along the way as scripted historical events happen to the player. Unlike Civ, though, EU4 is breathtaking in scale in part due to the real-world map.

You aren’t playing for a randomly generated map with unique attributes, here. You’re playing for the world, down to geographically-accurate provinces and borders.

So, why don’t I recommend it, if it’s so much fun?

The learning curve isn’t a curve. It’s a straight line, and it only goes up.

This is a game where the menus have menus have menus, and every button and option you don’t know about will adversely affect your game. Critical information is hidden behind map lenses, which let you view information like alliances, religions, trade goods and more for every province in the game that you have discovered.

You have to understand dynastic lineages between neighboring countries with royal marriages.

You have to understand concepts like juggling the Diet, composed of, at baseline, the clerics, nobles and merchants, all of which have their own interests.

You have to understand logistics, and supply lines, and loans and interest and building marketplaces and churches and factories and…

And.

I have several hundred hours in the game on Steam at this point and I absolutely am still an abject beginner.

I also love it.

The strategy is amazingly deep, the historical events and references are a ton of fun, and the dopamine rush as you complete conquests and paint the map with your color is primal and satisfying.

The game is published by Paradox Games, which is a company that is somewhat notorious for releasing a game mostly-baked and then releasing absolute piles of downloadable content to expand upon that base game. The base game is pretty affordable and goes on sale pretty commonly, but the expandable content, taken together, can cost several hundred dollars to acquire, and much of it adds a lot of depth and quality of life to the game.

Paradox does offer a modest subscription service, though, which unlocks every dlc while you’re subscribed, rather than making you pay for them all.

You can also do what I did, and wait for the dlcs to go on deep sales, and acquire them bit by bit (hah) over time. I have all the major DLCs now for a fraction of the cost, and while that’s a somewhat dodgy decision for a game as old as EU4 is now — it released in 2013 — they are actively still making more and EU5 has only been announced, with little hard information even known, so there’s still plenty of time to enjoy EU4.

Do be warned that you need somewhat beefy of a computer to run the game at moderate specs — it won’t be too bad most of the time, but even with a very solid computer, the War of the Protestant League in particular will make the game extremely laggy as the entirety of Europe declares war on each other, usually sometime in the mid-1500s.

I should also touch at least briefly on the point of the game before I wrap up.

There isn’t one.

EU4 is kind of a sandbox game — you will want to make your own goals for your game. For example, going back yet again to the Byzantines, perhaps you want to pursue the goal of rebuilding Rome. Maybe you want to play as a Native American tribe and repel the colonizers, or play as the Papal State and convert all of Asia to Catholicism.

Whatever you want to do, you can do, with enough learning and effort.

Every nation has a mission tree which can help provide some ideas, and there are also achievements which you can hunt for, but only in Ironman mode — where you can’t load previous saves to get around bad things happening.

If this all sounds like your idea of fun, welcome and enjoy the masochism!

If it doesn’t, but still sounds interesting, I would highly encourage you to check out the game’s Youtube community. The Red Hawk and Laith are two of the bigger ones that I personally enjoy, but there is a modest community built up, many of which participate in an event called Parabellum (emceed by the two users above), where they compete in specific, and frequently weird, challenges against one another.

It makes for great background, if nothing else!

EU4 is available for PC on Steam, and the only graphic or objectional content is you screaming obscenities at whatever frustrating thing just derailed your plans.

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Arianna McKee is Design Editor of The Express.