
We’re talking about Army, Navy, and Fort maintenance costs, rebel uprisings, and the cost to core provinces. With that said, bigger nations come with bigger problems. Blobbing is fun in EU4 because it means you have conquered other nations and absorbed provinces.

It’s beyond thrilling to see your nation grow to a giant blob on the map. It’s difficult to learn this game when you’re sitting on 1-5 provinces waiting for Admin, Diplo, and Military points while running on loans. Just make sure to keep yourself involved and learning. France, Burgundy, and Britain are great choices too. Ottomans and Austria are absolute powerhouses from 1444-1821. Portugal and Castile offer a safe and exciting game. Your best bet is to keep to the Great Powers in Europe. If you do, you will get demolished the instant colonists arrive. The worst thing you can do in your first EU4 game is to pick a nation in North America, South America, or a small nation in Asia on your first few campaigns. Green is passive alerts, Yellow indicates warnings, upgrades, or timers, and Red indicated urgent and nation-threatening events.

Those notifications will point you to key interests that you’ll have to address depending on their urgency. Keep an eye on the notification banners at the top left. It also gives you a month headstart to prevent wars by improving relations with hostile nations. If you hit pause at the beginning, you give yourself an opportunity to create Royal Marriages and Alliance with key partners, establish merchants, and mothball forts to keep your income flowing. The EU4 AI won’t wait for you to play around with troops or get lost in the dozens of tabs. It’s so important to hit pause at the absolute beginning of every campaign. Only downside of it is that it costs a couple of military points.We’ll keep it light in this EU4 beginners guide, starting with some good general tips to keep you moving through to January 3rd, 1821.

Oh yeah and a tip if you select your army when you're in a colony(and I think also if it's still uncolonised) there's a button to stamp out the natives to increase your growth rate and success chance of getting it into a colony. Also you do need to second idea in the Exploration Ideas branch to hire them. Then you take an army with those ships that has a conquistador(also need to be hired). You need to hire an explorer(you can do that in the same place you hire generals) for your navy to be able to go in undiscovered sea zones. But most of the uncolonised places are hidden in the Terra Incognita(I may be wrong on the name). When you've all that you can just click on the piece of land and there's a nice little button to start the colonisation progress. And it has to be in your colonisation range. Well first you gotta find a piece of uncolonised land(The azores are already a colony of Portugal in the beginning so you're out of luck getting that one.).
