Europa Universalis 5’s ‘biggest update yet’ expands the Balkans, overhauls the economy, and fixes more than 2,000 bugs

Paradox Interactive has rolled out its “biggest update yet” for Europa Universalis 5. This is a slightly cheeky way to phrase things, considering this is only the second major update for Paradox’ latest, dizzyingly complex grand strategy. But it’s also accurate. With patch notes that Paradox claims would fill 72 pages of a Google doc, the Encinades update overhauls several of the game’s major systems and squashes more than 2,000 bugs.

The primary goal of Encinades (which is not to be confused with echidnas, the small, egg-laying mammal and Sonic the Hedgehog frenemy) is similar to that of Alexander the Great, namely expanding the Balkans. The update introduces more than 300 new advances and around 150 dynamic historical events, many of which revolve around Greece and the other countries in Europe’s southeastern peninsula. These are designed to couple with the Fate of the Phoenix expansion pack, which focuses on Byzantium, but are free for everyone to play with.

The update also overhauls the Holy Roman Empire (which history tells us is no mean feat). As explained in the accompanying video showcase, the previous implementation of the UI for the Holy Roman Empire made it “incredibly difficult to distinguish members, policies and finances at a glance”. Hence, this panel has been rebuilt into a tabbed structure, which Paradox hopes will make the information easier to digest. Though one could argue the Holy Roman Empire being incredibly unwieldy and hard to parse is the most authentic experience you can have.

More broadly, Encinades provides a significant overhaul to the game’s economy, with more refined trade route logic and enhancements to the Maritime Presence mechanic, as well as a new trade orders feature. Paradox hopes these adjustments will “reflect a more historically accurate economic setup”. Orthodoxy has also been reworked to make Patriarchs into proper, interactable characters, while the related laws & tenets system has been updated so that some laws are inviolate, while others can be changed.

As for those bugfixes, yeah, there’s a lot. British history fans will be pleased to know that The Wars of the Roses event will now trigger properly, while Lichfield Cathedral will no longer randomly wander off to Stafford. The “Reform Society” disaster has been stopped from occurring multiple times (I mean who would want that?), while Paradox has also fixed a bug where players were not “able to liberate countries because they ‘would cease to exist'”, which feels like something that would spark some intense political philosophy debate.

The full changelog is available on Paradox’s Forums. The update should further enhance what was already a sterling entry in Paradox’s grand strategy simulations, at least according to Jonathan Bolding in his Europa Unversalis 5 review. “It’s nothing less than an attempt at simulating the world for centuries with a fidelity beyond anything else in the genre,” he wrote last October. “It’s enough to make even the most hardened genre veterans realize they’ll have to stop, take a moment, and start learning new things again.”