EU4 loading screen featuring Akbar I, Padshah of the Mughal Empire (r. As we will see, Europa Universalis has global ambitions, with at best uneven execution (which nevertheless still sets it well above most of its peers it at least wants to tell a global story, even if it doesn’t always succeed). The tension between a game that is in some ways about Europe (I mean, it is called Europa Universalis), but is played on a global stage has been core to the franchise for a long time. This week we are going to take a deliberate look outside of Europe to see how well EU4 functions as a truly global grand-strategy game. We are going to be bringing that thread forward this week and next week as well, because that lens is going to shape the way that EU4 presents its understanding of other historical forces and pressures (though this week we are going to see a few missed opportunities to take that model even further).
In particular, EU4 presents a system where the pressure to survive in an anarchic, ‘dog-eat-dog’ world leads states to prioritize increasing security, which in turn forces them to expand in order to have the resources to defend themselves, creating an international system where failing to victimize one’s neighbors lead to becoming a victim and so aggressive war is normalized as states expand and consolidate in order to survive. Last time, we looked at how the diplomatic and military model that Europa Universalis ( EU4) uses provides a vivid demonstration of the pressures of interstate anarchy as understood through neorealist international relations theory. This is the third part of our series ( I, II, III, IV) examining the historical assumptions of Paradox Interactive’s grand strategy computer game set in the early modern period, Europa Universalis IV (which is in turn the start of a yet larger series looking at several of Paradox’s games and how they treat their historical subjects.
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