Bret Devereaux

First off, Europa Universalis is about states. Only states are meaningful actors with agency in the game. Non-state people exist as land areas with population but no government who can be 'colonized' (we'll come back to this), but have no real agency themselves. 8/xx

Moreover, while the game features social change, religious change, revolution and upheaval, it features all of this from the perspective of the state - the player plays not as a ruler but as the state itself, persisting from one ruler to the next. 9/xx

Now the game has no stated 'win conditions' for those states, but in practice the game mechanics tend to reward expansion and economic development. There is a 'score' and 'ranking' of powers which assesses them based on their military, diplomatic and economic power. 10/xx

(Caveat: It is technically 'military' 'diplomatic' and 'administrative' but much of the diplomatic rating is determined by trade dominance and much of the administrative rating is determined by tax revenue and territorial extent - which is to say agriculture dominance). 11/xx

Consequently, while some players play 'tall' (that is try to maximize power without territorial expansion), the game is really about maximizing the power of the state through expansion, colonization, conquest and internal development. 12/xx

Success is measured not by the living standards of people but by the state power that development and expansion produces. Culture, religion and language exist, but are primarily viewed in terms of their impact on the state (where, for the most part, homogeneity is better) 13/xx

Previous versions of the EU series were *very* Euro-centric in outlook (the game, which features the entire globe, is called *Europa*Universalis after all). EU4 has tried to avoid this trend, with mixed success. 14/xx

So the good news is that the game accurately reflects Europe's status in 1450 as something of a backwater. The bad news is that the game's mechanics pretty much ensure that the 'rise of Europe' is pre-determined in each game, presented as a consequence of technology. 15/xx

While a skilled player playing outside Europe can 'hold off' the wave of European colonialism, that wave is going to occur in every game, as the innovation system allows Europe to steadily pull ahead and the AI (which controls all of the non-player states) tries to expand. 16/xx

...and consequently the player (and the AI) has to constantly prepare to fend off aggressive war. Since the primary way to build military strength is to expand, player (and the AI) generally has to expand to survive ('get fat or die'). 18/xx

Consequently, EU4 presents European colonialism in some sense as the inevitable consequence of military competition within Europe - deciding *not* to do colonialism or military expansion means handicapping yourself in an all-or-nothing game of military power. 19/xx

That conclusion - European states had no choice BUT to expand militarily in order to survive - is essentially smuggled in by the game mechanics rather than stated outright, but it is a clear conclusion players will draw from playing the game, consciously or no. 20/xx

To be fair, that conclusion is not outside the history mainstream, G. Parker *The Military Revolution* (1996) and W. McNeill *The Pursuit of Power* (1982) both suggest European military competition drove these processes. 21/xx

But EU4, because of it's 'simulation' presentation presents that conclusion as an actual fact, rather than one of a number of theories. And its solution - the way to 'beat' colonialism - is generally for the non-European powers to become imperial masters themselves. 22/xx

Which, again, is not entirely outside of scholarly discourse - it fits well with the Poli-Sci thinking on interstate anarchy (see K. Waltz, "The Origins of War in Neorealist Theory" JIH 18.4 (1988)), but the persuasive power of a simulation model is intense. 23/xx

Because the game is focused on states, the human impact of all of this violent expansion is abstracted away into little floating numbers - the player is never made to really face the butcher's bill of their desperate efforts to survive in an anarchic world. 24/xx

That's not unusual for strategy games, but it seems really relevant here when players are encouraged to start opportunistic wars that may kill thousands to gain increased tax revenue or strategic advantage. 25/more

The game attempts a dispassionate, non-moralizing view on all of this. Slavery exists (though the slave trade isn't as clearly represented as it might be) and while the player is given the option to abolish it in their state, the game doesn't pass judgement either way. 26/46

Likewise, the game has no moral judgement to lay on violent imperial expansion or war-mongering. Consequences are always expressed in terms of their impact to the state - too rapid expansion can cause instability, but it doesn't cause you to lose your soul. 27/46

Because this is a game about states, most of the player's tools are coercive in nature and the overall model of power is zero-sum - for the player to become powerful and secure, other states must be rendered less so and defeated when they resist. 28/46

You can see this clearly in how the game models trade - trade exists as a flow of goods through trade nodes which can be redirected by either dominating the territory around those nodes, or the sea-lanes near them or both. 29/46

Successful trade policy redirects the trade flows back towards the home port of your country, thereby gaining that revenue and denying it to others. For you to get rich in trade, others must get poor. 30/46

I should note that the trade network is one part of the game that remains solidly Eurocentric; trade moves in a predicable direction and while it can be diverted this way or that in small ways, trade lanes begin in the Americas or Asia and end in Europe. 31/46

Consequently, building a trade empire from places that aren't Europe is usually impossible, restricting non-European states to large territorial empires (generally you either run a small state on trade or a big state on land taxes in the game). 32/46

All of that said, EU4 still does have some interesting bits of historical lessons. As noted, the map is fairly scrupulous and EU4 players are more likely to know where Prussia (or Mali, etc) is from playing. 33/46

As a 'Realist Political Dynamics Simulator' it is almost peerless. The value of that depends on how accurately you think Neorealism describes international systems. I think it is a useful lens, which lends EU4 some value in presenting that. 34/46

Historical events are trickier. The game is free-form, so events after the start date will not unfold in perfect historical order, though some major events (Printing Press, Reformation, etc) are encouraged by game mechanics to happen around the right time. 35/46

The big issue is the degree to which, without serious player intervention, European dominance by 1800 is inevitable. Now of course European colonial empires did happen, so it seems odd to fault the game for regularly producing historical outcomes... 36/46

...but the degree to which those outcomes are presented as mechanistic and inevitable, rather than contingent is troublesome and may lead some careless players down a fairly dark path of historical thinking. 37/46