Brand New Noob Virgin: Advice please

[OnyxAbussos]

Just got the base game and a bunch of the EU4 DLC on humble bundle.

Never played before ever.

Got advice?
Or... things to know, or...?

I'll be flying in blind tomorrow or Wednesday. Like what did I just get myself into?

Is like a Civ game?
Is like Stellaris? Like CK2? Like none of these?

 

[grotaclas]

First advice: don't post in this subforum. It is for posting FAQs and Strategy guides, not for asking questions and advice. Few people read this subforum, so you will get few or no replies.
A lot of people ask about advice for beginners. Google all the other threads here, on reddit or steam and read the replies there. You can also watch a few tutorials.
The advice I can give is: Hover over everything with your mouse. Almost everything has a tooltip and most numbers are broken down into their components. And almost everything is explained on the eu4 wiki. If you don't understand something, you can look it up there. Also almost every event is there. If you ask yourself, why you get some event, you can often find out what triggers it. The event texts are sometimes misleading in this regard. You should also hover over the event options before clicking them. The game tells you in the tooltip what actually happens.

The only similarity with civ is that you play a country in both games. But eu4 is much closer to history and the gameplay is completely different. In Civ your nation consists of a few cities. But eu4 is broken into provinces.
Maybe it is most similar to CK2, but without the characters. But I have not really played CK2, so it is difficult to say for me. If you played CK2, it may be important to know that you play a country in eu4 and the only way to lose is if that country stops existing. So you may get a different dynasty on your throne or even have pretender rebels put someone else there. Or turn into a republic or have a revolution. But you will continue playing.

 

[Olleindien]

First game I played was with Castile, I highly recommend playing as them. You are large enough so no one will try to jump without reason. There are some nice events (which with a reasonable chance will fire) giving you personal unions over Aragon and possibly Naples, thus giving you insight in that mechanic of the game. Then you have some rather easy targets at close range, Granada and the Maghrebi nations. And then you just go colonizing which lets you expand and become rather powerful as well as giving you loads of easy targets over sea to conquer.
Gamewise it's definitely most like CK2 of the ones you stated, yet rather different. Characters have little to no meaning at all, apart from their monarch skills.
As @grotaclas already stated, read every single tooltip as they come. Fighting a battle, read the tooltip. Trying to colonize a province, read the tooltip. Play around with the different mapmodes and read the new tooltips that appear there.

Quill18 has a great tutorial for complete beginners with Castile on youtube, although old so some of the mechanics have changed. But it gives good insight in most mechanics.

 

[Hallon]

First game I played was with Castile, I highly recommend playing as them. You are large enough so no one will try to jump without reason. There are some nice events (which with a reasonable chance will fire) giving you personal unions over Aragon and possibly Naples, thus giving you insight in that mechanic of the game. Then you have some rather easy targets at close range, Granada and the Maghrebi nations. And then you just go colonizing which lets you expand and become rather powerful as well as giving you loads of easy targets over sea to conquer.
Gamewise it's definitely most like CK2 of the ones you stated, yet rather different. Characters have little to no meaning at all, apart from their monarch skills.
As @grotaclas already stated, read every single tooltip as they come. Fighting a battle, read the tooltip. Trying to colonize a province, read the tooltip. Play around with the different mapmodes and read the new tooltips that appear there.

Quill18 has a great tutorial for complete beginners with Castile on youtube, although old so some of the mechanics have changed. But it gives good insight in most mechanics.

Castile has to deal with an early civil war, and potentially aggressive rivals in both Aragon and France. Ottomans is a much better starting nation.

 

[Fitzgerald93]

There are many great Nations to get used to the games basic mechanics, some isolated nations might help while they dont teach you as much. Be prepared to fail a bit in the start like in many other games. Ottomans are generally a fun nation to start with as there you will learn the art of conquest. Ming is a strong nation but it faces some nasty events later in the game and depending wether you have the mandate of heaven dlc some unique mechanics. Generally bigger nations are easier to play than smaller countries due to being able to handle issues on their own even when being diplomatically isolated.

Pretty much all Nations offer a bit of a unique session with their struggles being mostly historical occurences.
Some unique and fun nations are suggested to you on the nation selection at the gamestart.

 

[onlysane1]

I actually recommend Portugal as a beginner's nation. Start by dissolving your alliance with England to stay out of their wars, and avoid any other European alliances. If Morocco attacks over your North Africa province, just do a recommended peace to give it to them.

Portugal starts with an explorer. Give him some ships, and send him exploring the Terra Incognita. Save up your monarch points to buy techs. Once you unlock your first idea group, take the Exploration idea group, and buy the Quest for the New World idea. This will let you buy new explorers as well as conquistadors. Next you can get that colonist. Your colonial policy is your own choice; I prefer Native Repression when you can afford the troops to guard the colonies.

Once you have a colonist, transport 3-4 regiments of infantry to an uncolonized province (Brazil is always good to start), send a colonist, and camp those infantry on the colony to protect against native uprisings. Building a colony takes a while, so in the meantime watch how your monarch points are spent, how to time your tech purchases to not pay too much for being ahead of time, etc.

Your second idea group should be Expansion, which will get you a second colonist. Use that in Brazil, as well. If the developing colonies are adjacent, you can guard them with a single group of 3-4 regiments.

Once you have enough fully developed colonial provinces, it will transform into a colonial subject (in this case, Portuguese Brazil) and act independently. Colonial subjects get their own colonists to expand with, so it's better to move on to another area--in this case, South Africa is useful if you still want to avoid native nations, and the American East Coast if you want to wrangle with some Native Americans in (relatively) easy wars.

After a while (perhaps 1550-1600) an event will give you claims to a crap ton of North African provinces. If you feel you're up to it, you can build an army paid for by your colonial income and try your hand at a good sized war. If not, you can always stick to the Americas and South Africa.

After getting a colonial nation in South Africa, Australia might be a good idea if you can reach it. After this, you may be able to make a circumnavigation of the world (under naval missions for explorers), for a huge prestige boost.

Playing like this was how I finally learned to "understand" the game after maybe 200 hours of fiddling. I highly recommend trying it out this way.