

You gain this power primarily through your ruler and advisors and can gain (or lose) this power through random events. Highlighted in green are your three types of monarch power. Manpower recovers slowly, though there are a few ways to gain soldiers quickly. Earlier on in the game, it’s wise to have at least as many men in reserve as you have in the field. If you deplete your manpower reserves, your army becomes vulnerable. You use them to raise new regiments, but also to heal existing ones. These are the men you have in reserve but have yet to be assigned to regiments.

There are many ways to make money in the game, such as internally through tax, industry and gold mining, externally through trade and vassal taxes, and through war reparations. Measured in ducats, this is used to raise and maintain an army and navy, construct buildings, hire advisors, and maintain colonies. Here you can click on various buttons to unlock twenty-odd submenus with differing levels of functionality and value, but let’s begin with what is currently visible. France is a powerful European monarchy with no unusual mechanics, but lots of flavor events and just enough quirks to let me show how to comprehend the game’s logic. For this demonstration, I'm going to play as France, known to aficionados as the "Big Blue Blob." While this is not a country recommended for beginners, it’s still a good entry point. This is a first-turn guide, detailing what to do when starting a campaign. This guide, by contrast, assumes you know nothing about Paradox games. For most people, this is where the Paradox Interactive experience ends - lost amid an endless procession of menus that sap your will to continue and a wiki that actually has a transformation matrix on one of its pages. When you’ve put thousands of hours into a game, it’s easy to forget how intimidating it was the first time you fired it up. There are worlds and worlds of Europa Universalis IV strategy guides, and every single one of them assumes that you're a top-level expert looking to break the game over your knee.
