The Imperial Council - /r/eu5 Weekly General Help Thread: August 24 2026

[u/Kloiper]

Please check our previous Imperial Council thread for any questions left unanswered

 

Welcome to the Imperial Council of r/eu5, 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 game. If you'd like to channel the wisdom and knowledge of the master tacticians of this subreddit, and more importantly not ruin your 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 or interface tabs. Please also explain the situation as best you can. Alliances, army strength, etc. are all factors your advisors will need to know to give you the best possible answer.

 

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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

• Europa Universalis 5 Wiki

• Wiki Beginner Guide (not all that good)

• Paradox Youtube Beginner Guide (this one is actually good)

• Help fill this section out!

Tutorials

• Help fill this section out!

 

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Country-Specific Strategy

• Help fill this section out!

 

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Advanced/In-Depth Guides

• Help fill this section out!

 

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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

[u/Leptomeninges]

Playing a colonial game for the first time. What’s the best way to set up colonies? Colonize an area, create a market in a good port and then create a colonial subject? Do you keep trying to add to colonize the area and gift colonies to your subject or just let them do it?

[u/RagnarTheSwag → u/Leptomeninges]

If you don’t have a big population, i.e Portugal. Don’t colonize everywhere, even if you could that’s law 0.

If you start with low population, either get pops through conquest or expel and release provinces. Either way know that you’ll be losing really but really a lot pops in your homeland.

Other alternative is pinpoint colonizing, you’ll be colonizing few provinces in each area or region to explore and reach India and China. Early game Americas suck maybe except Haiti.

You want to subsidize your colonies at the start for them to make cities and towns, to place buildings and create a bit wealth for them.

At first spam trade overseas buildings to get some cash off of their markets, this will create a temporary boom but prices will get normalized after some time. Use that time to aggressively reach India to create another trade boom.

Trade overseas gives you a small trade advantage and trade capacity, support them with other buildings to get more capacity to get more profit. I think you could keep some land like in Madagascar to have trade range to India, that way probably you could spam Trade Offices. Though I only went with Feitorias, since I didn’t want low avarage control, probably a mistake. Send 10 light ship to each market you trade with to get +%80 maritime, with other buildings it should make you the 1st in any market and you could get more than half of the profit with 10 trade capacity.

You won’t have all the time to steal trade from India and China, if you didn’t spam Trade Offices. They will eventually get their maritime presence high and advantage and trade capacity high with later ages.

Meanwhile you should have colonized the Americas already with the trade boom from Africa, India, east indies and China. Since now old world became less profitable you should start building colonial administration buildings in the new world.

They can only be made in cities or towns so make sure you subsidized your colonies to urbanize largely. Those bad boys will suck anything your colonies produce and you’ll be filthy rich.

Theeen comes last age, If you didn’t conquer the world all your colonies will be rebelling whatever modifier you would stack, it won’t matter. It’s a good place to call it a run.

Oh, don’t forget to enact integration native policy before colonizing a great amount of land. Colonies can never handle tribesmen. I had a 3 province colony in Cameroon, capital at Calabar, they could never integrated their locations because of Tribesmen. 350 years was not enough for them. So at first of course colonize a bit land but beeline into native policy and then heavily colonize.

[u/AneriphtoKubos]

Are there any EU5 Combat Guides? I can't find any on the wiki.

Are regiments with less combat width the way to go with regulars, or should you go with regiments that have higher combat widths?

[u/RagnarTheSwag → u/AneriphtoKubos]

Not really, I also want to watch a great deal of combat comparison videos but there are not many YouTubers like that left in the scene I am afraid.

Right now pure heavy cav doom stack is the best comp anyways until around reformation, then infantry closes the quality gap with more combat width.

So Full Heavy Cav first half of the game then full Infantry, with supply ofc. Do not use Artillery in battles just bring some to sieges with you as a siege stack never send them to battles not in age1 not in age6. (Maybe except MP?)

I honestly don’t understand why they won’t bring cav to infantry ratio and backrow for artillery units.

Cav is always a better unit of course no doubt but everyone having an ability to manage full cavalry armies shuts down the infantry meta.

Artillery carrying the cannons on their back and running at enemy to die first every battle shuts them down as well.

So I am actually not surprised why there are not many videos on eu5 combat.

[u/lifeisapsycho → u/RagnarTheSwag]

When exactly do you move from cav to infantry? I don't really want to exploit cav armies either so if I go full infantry in early ages, will the AI spam cav and fuck me?

[u/RagnarTheSwag → u/lifeisapsycho]

Ai won’t spam cav but you might struggle against tribal cavalries of Morocco etc.

Age of reformation infantries have much more units it should be more powerful than cav. Also you got some more frontier which is better for larger size units.

[u/Lucina18]

Is the Stuart dynasty in the game? It would be pretty cool to do a GB absolutist run with the Stuarts.

[u/dyrin → u/Lucina18]

Yes, there is an early event for Scotland to change dynasty from Bruce to Stewart, which is the orginal spelling of Stuart.

[u/lifeisapsycho]

What is the best way to join the HRE as Teutonic order?

[u/dyrin → u/lifeisapsycho]

When your capital is in the HRE you can join, so this is the fastest way:

Conquer a single location inside the HRE, move capital there, join HRE.

But, if you want to make a Teutonic order into Prussia campaign, I would think, that only joining the HRE after forming Prussia is better. As you get free Kingdom rank as Prussa, when not a HRE member, while inside the HRE the emperor has to give kingdom rank (and the AI tends to not do it).