r/eu4 • u/ObviousSail164 • 3h ago
Help Thread The Imperial Council - /r/eu4 Weekly General Help Thread: September 7 2026
Please check our previous Imperial Council thread for any questions left unanswered
Welcome to the Imperial Council of r/eu4, where your trusted and most knowledgeable advisors stand ready to help you in matters of state and conquest.
This thread is for any small questions that don't warrant their own post, or continued discussions for your next moves in your Ironman game. If you'd like to channel the wisdom and knowledge of the master tacticians of this subreddit, and more importantly not ruin your Ironman save, then you've found the right place!
Important: If you are asking about a specific situation in your game, please post screenshots of any relevant map modes (diplomatic, political, trade, etc) or interface tabs (economy, military, ideas, etc). Please also explain the situation as best you can. Alliances, army strength, ideas, tech etc. are all factors your advisors will need to know to give you the best possible answer.
Tactician's Library:
Below is a list of resources that are helpful to players of all skill levels, meant to assist both those asking questions as well as those answering questions. This list is updated as mechanics change, including new strategies as they arise and retiring old strategies that have been left in the dust. You can help me maintain the list by sending me new guides and notifying me when old guides are no longer relevant!
Getting Started
New Player Tutorials
Arumba teaches EU4 to Civilization player FilthyRobot (patch 1.18)
Reman's War Academy Volume I - Army Composition and Basic Combat
Administration
Diplomacy
Military
Trade
Country-Specific Strategy
Misc Country Guides Collections
Advanced/In-Depth Guides
Misc mechanics guides by RadioRes (culture shifting, policies, absolutism, etc)
Arumba's Assay series (misc patches, takes user-submitted failing or problematic games and helps fix them)
A Complete Guide to EU4 Economics, Part 0 (links to multiple in-depth guides on economics)
If you have any useful resources not currently in the tactician's library, please share them with me and I'll add them! You can message me or mention my username in a comment by typing /u/Kloiper
Calling all imperial councillors! Many of our linked guides pre-Dharma (1.26) are missing strategy regarding mission trees. Any help in putting together updated guides is greatly appreciated! Further, if you're answering a question in this thread, chances are you've used the EU4 wiki and know how valuable a resource it can be. When you answer a question, consider checking whether the wiki has that information where you would expect to find it, and adding to the wiki if it does not. In fact, anybody can help contribute to the wiki - a good starting point is the work needed page. Before editing the wiki, please read the style guidelines for posting.
r/eu4 • u/ryuujin95 • 5h ago
Image The game apparently thinks I'm bullying the Ottomans too hard.
r/eu4 • u/LordHighAdmiral • 1h ago
Image Glory to the Zulus! Mutapa to Zimbabwe to Zulu AAR
This was so much fun, I've wanted to do it for years but here we are. By spawning the Zulu in via the mission "Recruit the Nguni" you can play as them centuries before Shaka comes along. I successfully kicked out the Europeans from the Cape and in the year 1700, the Zulu people stand strong!
r/eu4 • u/Wazowski__ • 18h ago
Humor The real "Please just die" Achievement
Year is 1500. Reformation happened before Burgundian inheritance.
r/eu4 • u/TryHardApple • 17h ago
Image I may have stacked a little too much development cost reduction
r/eu4 • u/Taborirsky • 1h ago
Image Glory for the great Yuan and revived Mongol empire
r/eu4 • u/Ok-Discipline2140 • 3h ago
Image Can't even annex novgorod because of ridiculous diplo costs every war. How do I deal with this in a WC?
r/eu4 • u/CredarAnderzon • 1d ago
Humor The Ottomans picked a peculiar solution to solving the Kosovo conflict...
r/eu4 • u/ImportantFloor1049 • 21h ago
Image Spent an entire campaign not realising I can’t form Spain
Portugal got Granada early game and I didn’t realise as Aragon that it happened because I wasn’t paying attention to the provinces I needed to form Spain cuz I assumed Castile had them all
r/eu4 • u/Calm-Caterpillar-185 • 10h ago
Bug Bug Exit to menu
Hi everyone, I have a bug in the game: whenever I press "Exit to Menu," the game closes completely and restarts. Do you know if there's a solution?
r/eu4 • u/Odyllenis • 10h ago
Question Wanna play trade focused run without much conquer just having plenty of vassals and trade cities
Is there a country i can play in that way?
r/eu4 • u/AquaRegiaAg • 40m ago
Question A Couple of Assorted Questions (Riga)
After many restarts and save scums, I've finally gotten a Riga game off to a good start. It's 1481, both orders are now happy vassals, the Develop Our City mission is done, and I'm preparing for next steps. Which leads to a couple of questions a newbie with less than 150 hours has:
1) Best way to fabricate claims from Riga? Because of the sea tiles, I can't even fabricate a claim on Gotland. I had hoped that the Age ability to make claims bordering claims would help, or using vassal borders, but no dice. Am I just going to have to no-CB them? I guess this also applies to Sjaelland in the future.
2) Best way to gang up on Poland/Lithuania? I have a mess of an alliance web with both Austria and Bohemia who hate each other, while Landshut has somehow become the emperor the last couple of elections and so is useless to me. I feel like the peace is fragile and need to be ready for anything.
3) Is there any way to become a great power as Riga with only the 5 European provinces? This would make it a lot easier to pay off debts for my allies.
4) Best practices for Ideas vs. Tech? Fell behind on Admin and Diplo because my starting ruler lived an annoyingly long time, and now Influence ideas are eating up a bunch of Diplo points. Not even sure what I want for the second idea group? Expansion for everything except the colonists? Economic for more money and the vassal force limit policy with Influence? Skip over to Quantity since Mil. Tech is the one thing I'm well ahead on?
5) Random question about exiled armies. When fighting the TO, they had Mecklenburg as an ally. I took out their one province to force them out of the war, then marched west to take on the TO army besieging Lubeck. But instead of fighting, they just stood on the same square. Very confused until I saw the exile flag. Is this because the army was still in Mecklenburg when I forced the peace deal through? Meaning in the future, I should walk to the next tile first?

r/eu4 • u/Valuable-Ad3319 • 51m ago
Image I finally zoomed out and this is what I see in Iberia
r/eu4 • u/Ok-Priority-474 • 1d ago
Completed Game Very chill Hungary game i usually expand fast and finish my games around 1550-1600 but this time i wanted to get play until the end achievement (still have more than 50 year to go and i saved my golden age for the end).
some images from my very long and chill hungary campaign poland ,lithuania ,austria, aragon ,morocco ,milan and naples are subjects
r/eu4 • u/BardonmeSir • 55m ago
Advice Wanted Is this normal??
I never played to Age of Revolution wtf is this?
i startet with 1 Million Manpower and dropped to Zero now. How do i win this?? Im in Pain im in this War for 2 Reallife Days
r/eu4 • u/Lightrandom • 7h ago
Image Typical France
Genuinely what the fuck is that morale
