MAKES HISTORY

Strategy veterans may be startled by the complexity in EUROPA UNIVERSALIS V

- By Jonathan Bolding

Many games claim to be multilayered simulations. Few achieve that. But the grand strategy genre is always about expanding the view, incorporating into its wargame roots systems of politics, economics and culture. Europa Universalis V widens the frame, adding a new wrinkle: people. It’s nothing less than an attempt at simulating the world for centuries with a fidelity beyond anything in the genre.

You play as the controlling force behind a country over 500 years of history, 1337 to 1836, using the same mechanical simulation to present both the late medieval and the entirety of the early modern period.

It simulates all the people on Earth at the time. Their culture, religion, migration, production, trade, and even participation in political systems. There is a truly shocking array of things on screen at any time, and dozens of map modes to show the ones that aren’t visible right now but that you might need.

Any given window is rich with text and statistics, studded with buttons and symbols - some of which you won't even realise serve a crucial function until you've been playing for 12 hours. It has so many interacting systems that the developers have gone to considerable pains to include optional automation for them.

I expect it’s enough to make even the most hardened genre veterans realise they'll have to stop, take a moment, and start learning new things again. I certainly did, and I'm glad I spent over a hundred hours wading through the bugs and performance problems in the review build of EU5, because after all those hours I'm still learning how things work.

NEW ERA, NEW GAME

You are more than ever the spirit of the nation, a kind of abstract force behind the doings of various governments.