It’s not one for the faint-hearted or numerophobic. The detail wormhole is as deep as any game on the market. Methodist uprisings in Celtic Cornwall are as much a possibility as a Zaidi schism in a Shiite nation. Trust me – there is a tech advance for the use of limes aboard ship to avoid scurvy. This is a game of huge vision, and practically unfettered complexity. In truth, there is a document available that outlines the differences between EU3 and EU4 that dwarfs most game manuals. They are as much a critical currency as cash itself, and are central to the game. Also boosted by the ability of your advisors, these pools of points are spent in pretty much every way you can imagine, from assaulting a besieged stronghold to discovering a new technology. Monarchs now use their statistics as one of the major factors in the accrual of ‘monarch points’, separated into Administrative, Diplomatic, and Military. Other powers can be embargoed to reduce their trade power. Trade Power is a statistic that governs how much trade can be steered along pre-set trade corridors, such as from Chesapeake Bay to London, and this number can be affected by merchants, number of provinces held, certain ideas and decisions, and – significantly – the number of light ships sent to protect trade. Merchants can be placed in any areas you know about, and can either collect wealth (usually at a significant loss) or direct trade ‘downstream’, with the hope of getting as much as possible back to your capital. Trade has seen a significant overhaul, down to the conceptual level. So I’m going to kick off with a TL:DR recap for fans of the previous game, but you newbies stick around too… it’ll be a pretty good way to learn what exactly you’re letting yourself in for. The ones which are wonderfully, unashamedly complex, as if they were written be a roomful of Rain Men obsessed with history down to a frankly terrifyingly granular level? Well, here’s another one. Have you ever played a Paradox game before? No, I don’t mean Magicka or that one with the knights in it. But it is a tough and complicated game of avoiding getting walloped by the bigger kids while you try to decide what you want to do with your life. Okay, so it’s perhaps not entirely like high school. Do you work really hard and suck up to everyone in an attempt to get them to like you (and become Holy Roman Emperor)? Or do you already have a really tough big brother who is five years older than you, who you can use to strike terror into everyone, allowing you to act like a spoilt brat (Papal States)? Or, you know, maybe you’re one of the gothy kids out on the periphery, happy to completely ignore the petty squabbles of the rest of your class and concentrate instead on colonizing North America. Plotting a safe course through the heady, Machiavellian world of early modern-era policital intrigue is a bit like surviving high school.