National progress is a balance between aiming for the future and simply managing the present, a series of tough choices that are plenty of food for thought. While points from these ever-growing scores can be invested in discovering new technologies, you find you’re constantly spending them to helping you get through day-to-day tasks, from quelling revolts to negotiations to stabilising your nation. You find you’re you’re constantly watching three power scores: administrative, diplomatic and military. Using merchants to control trade routes becomes vital for raising funds, while employing capable advisors who will advance your research is essential for if you want advantages in both peacetime and on the battlefield. Europa Universalis IV has a real sense of pace to it as you quickly realise that, as well as whatever petty land-grabs your neighbours might be involved in, much more is at stake. Starting in the renaissance era means that the world is poised to discover new ideas, new lands and even new technologies. Modest Portugal stares out at the Atlantic, across which a whole continent awaits their opportunistic explorers, and even the smallest countries have a lot to keep them busy.

Europa Universalis IV is all about asymmetry, starting you off at a point in history where some nations are large and sprawling, while others are weak and subservient and others still have the possibility for greatness ahead of them. This is no Civilization, where every nation begins from scratch. This is how things start should you choose to be Sweden in the fourth game in this grand strategy series. If I can’t look outward, I’m certainly going to look inward. As well as balancing my books, shuffling my armies about and constructing a host of improvements, I’m trying to make my country much smarter than its neighbours.

Europa universalis 5 2016