As a player, you’re generally trying to make a bigger splash than your country might have made in actual history, or to create alternate histories like taking over Europe as a Muslim state, but because there’s no way to “win” the game, it’s easy to become overwhelmed. In EU, you take on the role of a country like France, England or something smaller like one of the German states and guide it through the Age of Imperialism, a period that runs roughly from the 1400s to the 1800s. The developers of Europa Universalis 4 have a similar information overload problem.
There are just so many variables in front of you that even with guidance it can be hard to figure out just what the hell is going on. You can’t be expected to walk into the NYSE and suddenly learn how a modern economy works. Have you ever seen what it’s like inside the New York Stock Exchange? On nearly every surface you’ll see numbers flashing all over the place beside esoteric codes, monitors showing talking heads with their own scrawl of numbers at the bottom of the screen, and people yelling and pointing and waving bits of paper in the air.
