Playing Europa Universalis IV - El Dorado

Mar 6, 2015 22:04 GMT  ·  By

I admit that it is hard to be a native power in Europa Universalis IV and I’ve always preferred to play the European powers most of the time, invading new continents and driving out natives, because it gave me a feeling of power and purpose.

The El Dorado expansion, which I have been engaging with for more than one week, shifts the focus of the experience to South and Central America, and I entirely appreciate the way the developers at Paradox have aimed to make the region interesting using religion and some engaging mechanics focused on relationships with vassals.

I played a few campaigns trying to create a continent-spanning empire and encountered some major challenges, which is to be expected, given the new game features, so I abandoned them in order to go back to Europe and try the new Nation Designer.

The system is designed to allow players to create their own custom country, choosing everything from its appearance to the ideas that power its future, in order to then try to make it a major power in the world.

The Nation Designer in El Dorado is surprisingly addictive to use and the variety of potential play styles and outcomes it suggests means that I spent more time tweaking new nations than I did actually leading them through history.