Your First Mistake Was Not Buying The Dlcs. Yes, I Know They Are Like 500$, But The Game Is So Vastly

your first mistake was not buying the dlcs. yes, I know they are like 500$, but the game is so vastly improved by them that not buying them is basically shooting yourself in the foot. I don’t know off the top of my head which ones add the MOST necessary mechanics, but I can say with certainty that the most recent ones are mostly flavour and niche mechanics, so you don’t need them. if you have a really limited budget then I would hazard that Art of War and Conquest of Paradise are probably the first few you want to pick up.

as for how I stuck with the game long enough to learn it… I honestly don’t even know. probably a mix of nationalism for the nation I was playing and undiagnosed autism. I learned the game on no dlcs and it was BAD but I had the primal need for my daily mappies so I stuck it out. but uh if you don’t have that then idk what to tell you.

Few games seem so hostile to my human brain as Europa Universalis 4. I picked it up for 4 dollars (w/o DLC) on GOG because the idea of a historical sim sounded cool, and I'm trying to rectify some of my historical illiteracy, but god damn if that UI isn't just information overload. I get that everything is there for a reason (you probably need all of it to successfully run an empire), and I don't want to give up on it just yet, but even the beginner tutorial videos I've watched are like 30 minutes long and barely cover 1/100th of everything on screen. I just wanna ask those who play; how were you successfully onboarded without immediately bouncing off?