EU4 Has THE WORST TUTORIAL Of Any Game EVER 

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Every Paradox tutorial is awful and only gets worse when DLCs add more features. The best is when an update outright breaks the tutorial.

Petition for Redhawk to only play in Terrain mode going forward

So when I applied to Paradox Tinto, I talked with the interviewer and he asked me if I had played any of their games. I had started playing EU4 recently and basically told him that the tutorial was awful, and if it wasn't for a friend that introduced me to the game and taught me the basic mechanics (and youtubers like yourself), I would have dropped it. He told me that I was completely right, and they were looking into ways to make it better. This was three years ago and the tutorial is still the same lmao.

A lot of what is "outdated" is actually the base game without DLCs. For the longest time manually increasing/decreasing development was a DLC only feature and estates as well. The tutorial still works best if you don't have any DLCs.

It would be good if the paradox youtubers could write a new tutorial for the game. I think you guys have the resources and expertise to do so and it would certainly be appreciated.

The automatic boat transportation is only in one of the DLC's so unless you have them, the old boat method is the only way to move armies.

I still remember doing the tutorial and then getting completely wrecked by Castilian rebels and Enrique's bad stats... It would have been better if their tutorial had just been links to real tutorials on youtube

18:20 The likelyhood for why the didn't cover these is simple: Besides the "flag" button, these are DLC features. You have them without it.

honestly, I consider it impossible nowadays to make a tutorial for this game, every DLC adds mechanics which aren't in the base game, so you have to make a tutorial for having no DLCs, as well as having between 1 and all DLCs and every combination in-between

Eh, sometimes the automatic transportation is wonky (for example: the boats may go to the province the army is initially in while the army crosses the landmass to the closest tile, and then the boats have to double back to grab the army--exposing both stacks to additional attrition or even an unexpected battle) and you may not want to leave it up to chance. New players knowing about ye olde direct control of transports is probably a good thing.

The auto explore feature is only in a dlc so that is probably why it’s not in the tutorial

making a comprehensible tutorial for eu4 must be one of the most difficult tasks ever

The reason they didn't explain what are the great powers or the age mechanics is because they are DLC

5:42 ofc using ship in old method is much better. Often when my ships are on mission hunt enemy fllets (without transport, because they suck in battle) this fleet can capture 1 or 2 transport. I dont see this, and then if i dont manual use ships, my entire fleet with 1 or 2 or 3 or etc transport ships try to bring my 30 k army to another province. Horrible situations

5:47 completely wrong. This "outdated" way of using transports is the one i always use and for a good reason. It allows good control over the month tick sea attrition so you can disembark with full troops and conserve manpower

22:42 Portugal’s still green…

The manual ship transport is pretty useful. Most of the time when you're at war you want to relocate your units FAST. But if you have mil access through a lot of countries, your units will attempt to walk all the way to their location and not use ships by default. So it's faster to manually load them onto a boat and ship them over the sea where you want them to be. But you're right. When I started EU4 I also tried the tutorial but stopped after the first two or three lessons, because it was so bland. Then I started to watch you, Ludi and Quarbit, watched the various country guides and I actually started to learn how this game works. I'm still struggling with some aspects, but hey at least I know what to do most of the time :P

Before I bought eu4 (around the cossacks) I already had 6 months of watching let's plays and streams. Only then did I feel comfortable playing the game with a justified feeling of knowing what I was doing.

i learned more from the 1.33 ottoman tutorial than the actual in game tutorial💀

I've been playing EU4 for 5 years and I'm just now learning that there's a tutorial.

5:35 correction: this is the way, people with money for DLCs do it. Edit: same thing with exploration

Frankly, if I'm starting a Paradox game for the first time, I just turn off Ironman/activate the cheat console, turn the difficulty down, and pick a nation I think looks neat. The first 20-40 hours of a Paradox game is trying to figure out the interface and mechanics anyway. The only one I didn't do that with was CK3, mainly because how streamlined it was on launch.

What I'd find really useful is some videos that deal with the mechanics (trade, absolutism, PUs etc.) and a full guide on how each one works. I just broke 2k hours, but there is a lot I still sort of gloss over. Like I never even really think about culture converting, how hard to pursue absolutism stuff like that. Great video as always though, had me chuckling, playing that very tutorial is how I started learning :-D

best new year video ever lmao. i remember this was my first introduction to the game too... thankfully i had some of your videos recommended to me and learned the game much faster and more effectively that way. that, and just actually playing it and occasionally googling things.

Thank you for making all of these videos!! I've never been able to get any sort of grasp as to how to play this game... even 700 hours in, when my friends want to play I follow along with your guides so I can keep up and continue to enjoy this game with my horrible memory, and the memories I've made with this game are entirely thanks to you! Keep up the incredible work ♥

Thanks for this. I am trying to learn this game with the subscription DLC and picked up so much from this video (I was searching for 2024 vids, but only found this after filtering for videos in the last week). Keep up the good work.

I think the tutorial does a good enough job of teaching you how to interact with the game in a basic way. It doesn't overwhelm the new player with too much information and does things one at a time, simply. Also 5:30 you can't use auto-attach without one of the DLCs so with the base game this is actually the only way to do it.

Would love the tutorial !! One of my friend is currently getting into EU4 and i have no clue what to teach or where to start and since there are no current tutorials around the new 1.36 update it would be great if you could help the new players out a bit. As usual love your vids and cant wait for the day when you finish A - Z 😆

Great video! I learned EU4 by first playing the tutorial and then starting an Ottomans game. I learned everything by just messing around and figuring things out slowly. Luckily I have a friend who I could always ask questions which helped. However I feel like I still continue to learn stuff as I play.

nice! always thought the turorial was a bit strange tbh :D, after that I dived into Wallachia as a first country... as a beginner only playable at very easy settings, but a dive into the cold water most def; I do strongly suggest doing the transportation of the troops as the tutorial intends it and NOT automatically, because you lose control over your fleet and often it will do strange stuff like split the boats or dive into the enemy fleet. happened to some friends of mine while playing multiplayer so often that it was frustrating.

5:40 automatic transport that you are suggesting is in one of the DLCs, not sure which. 29:00 clicking on a TI province with a fleet with explorer, or an army with a conquistador is also what you have to do without DLC. This tutorial is still bad lol. I would like to see you do a world conquest starting as any nation without any DLCs, good luck.

5:14 I still prefer the outdated method because some boats go across the entirety of the African continent to pick up my troops.

First comment i leave to your Channel, you touch my Heart. Few Years ago i wanted to play eu4 so bad but with the tutorial i understood nothing... After few gamplays i strted yo learn and the It's Just experimentos!! Keep going you are doing a great job!!

Hi there, relatively new to the channel and first of all, thank you. It helped me immensly to catch up on EU4. I used to be mainly Ck2,Ck3 player. I was wondering if you have any unedited playthrough which i could watch. Blessings from Montenegro!

Great point about watching updated tutorials. If you had played the PDX tutorial in a vanilla ver 1.0 of the game it would probably have felt comprehensive, giving you enough confidence to play it.

Automatic troop transport is an easy way to take unnecessary attrition or to get your boats and troops killed or lost. So knowing how to micro boat transport the old fashioned way is very useful. What automatic transport is good for is for unlocking troop movement

Just for info. If you don't have any DLC you DO have to load and unload armies in the method shown in the tutorial. I played 100% vanilla version on an unupdated version and couldn't figure out why my armies were not auto boarding

The transportation might be outdated, but having automatic transportation is quite slow embarkment. I do that I dock ships, attach tropps to the ships and then move my ships to the sea tile or directly to the province where I can dock. If I can dock, the embarkment time is zero, and if it is during a war to conquer the province, it reduces the time significantly.

Before finishing the video-I think you are taking for granted that you have DLC-most people that use the tutorial have never had experience with grand strategy games so would probably not buy all the DLC straight away. Therefore some mechanics like transporting units automatically by sea don't exist. Therefore the safest way to explain it is through a way which will always work. And yes-I don't know why that is a DLC feature.

I very much disagree that the "new method" is better than the "outdated" method for shipping your units across the sea. The new method is very flawed. It will let your units wall from the province into the boat sitting in the sea tile instead of letting your boats dock in the provinces. This costs a lot of days extra, which might result in you unnessecarily arriving late at a battle or siege. Also it automatically splits your stacks if they are too large for your transports.... but it doesn't do so in a good way, resulting in stacks without a general and/or wrong unit type being send first.

8:05 I have nearly 700h in this game and menus like this are the reason why I'm STILL sometimes finding buttons I've never noticed before

I just got EU4 for christmas after getting into the game from you and Laith and was pretty confused by the tutorial! if you could make a "what does everything mean and dont do X" tutorial that would be really helpful!!

Man i remember having to do some of these before dlcs lol. Especially the manual exploration

this makes me think of an awful challenge run- the tutorial challenge: play any nation using only the things the tutorial teaches you

The best way to learn this game is to watch tutorials on RU-vid. It's how I learned the basics - after that you can start diving deeper into whatever you want to learn more about

The arrow being an object in the game and having a shadow is pretty cool

In stellaris the first time you scrap the tutorial bot to recover one mineral.

Funny enough, i use the attach to transport button since i played the tutorial at the beginning of launch.

Does anyone else hate that if you are trying to go across water but the game makes your troops walk cause the land is connected even if going with boats is so much faster

Auto transportation of armies with a navy is extremely wonky and straight up doesn't work, ever. I don't know if it has been fixed on 1.36 though, I play on 1.35 and on that version (and older versions) it is completely useless. Also, it will cancel the missions of your navies and it might assign the task to a navy half way across the world.

Quite frankly, I sometimes wish I could straight up turn off automatic troop transport because the way the game chooses the navy for that (and they they send it) is straight up bad. "Hmm, should this navy, which is one tile closer and only has one damaged transport from a battle 5 seconds ago, transport the troops or the 30 transport ship navy there? The one with the 1 transport ship ofc!"

This reminds me back in 2013 the issue I had with Eu4 was that I was never merging my armies, so even while having more men I kept losing because they go in 1 by 1 stack at a time

The thing about any Paradox game tutorial is the invalidation of each tutorial as soon as a new DLC or update is released. The interfaces are massively confusing in every Paradox game, in EU4, in Stellaris, in CK2 and CK3, they all have so many interfaces it is overwhelming for a new player. They would be much better served by simplifying interfaces in several chapters, slowly increasing complexity by introducing new mechanics.

YES OMG! I've really wanted to get into playing EU4, but I could never get pass the tutorial so instead I live vicariously by watching your EU4 videos.

To be totally honest, even though I played EUIV few thousand hours, I have learned two things from watching Red Hawk playing the EUIV tutorial: - Max manpower is equal to 10 times yearly manpower growth (I never though what exactly constitutes on this number, I just knew how to make it bigger), - there is an option to instantly attach an army to a navy if the navy is in the port; there are few time critical operation that this may be useful, and I always though I have to have ships in the see zone and then move the troops to the ships and then move the ship (EU2 style)

At 5:30 , this "outdated" shiping mechanic is the only way to get troops around if you don't specifically own the Art of War DLC. Very useful, but one can only afford so many (to bind them all in darkness is a costly buisness).

I needed this 2000 hours ago bro

tutorials only include base game content (without any dlc's) that why tutorial doesn't talk about great power list and etc.

im pretty sure that base game with no dlcs doesnt actully have the automatic transport feature

I remember playing the tutorial, not having any idea what I was doing, and didn't play eu4 until 3 years later when I started watching Redhawk 🤙

Maybe, dear red hawk you do some kind of Tutorial. I would be immediatly with you about that, watching it. I would really adore that. Need always info how to do all those things.

I learned how to play eu4 by watching Radio Res’ guide for complete beginners. It’s the main reason I recommend Castile as the best nation for beginners. That first campaign got me hooked and taught me how to get started and explore the game on my own. Thank you Radio Res, miss your content bro

The boat thing I find very useful when fighting someone with a big navy since I have more control over how the units in the boats move so I don't have my transport ships getting destroyed. The war tutorial was so useless for my first couple hours, the game not telling you to always get war reps and money also was so bad my first couple of games, like my money was going down the drain and I didn't know how it happened. The one with exploration by light ships I didn't even know until now lmao!

I only played for 600-700 hours and had no clue about the middle mouse button to move the camera 😂

Fun fact, if you try and form spain before the tutorial tells you to do it the game crashes, it doesn't disallow it for the time being it let's you form it and crashes the game

One of the biggest crimes of EU4's tutorial is the absence of a link to Red Hawk's channel. But seriously, one very underrated map that I use A LOT during wars is the "Terrains and rivers" map (not the default terrain one). It paints provinces according to their terrain and gives a blue contour between river frontiers, so you'd be prepared about crossing penalties and whatnot. Another thing that the learning curve is a chasm is trade. Not because it is difficult, but it is very cryptic. The centers of trade, province dev, trade power of each province, protect trade and merchant presence influences, all this is hard to grasp to any player, even the ones coming from Civ, Starcraft, Age, etc.

I had no idea what I was doing and the tutorial didn't help at all. I think Paradox got people to do multi-video guides when Common Sense came out (or multiple people just decided to make some at that time) and that was how I figured it out.

I was today years old when I found out 4 infantry units is all you need to siege a level 1 fort effectively in the early game.

I almost always open the trade node window as the tutorial suggests. 😅 I seriously underutilize the trade map mode, but I can't help it, I only really care about trade when I play with a trade-heavy nation like Holland.

i don't even know which estates i should take after my casual playtime... 😅 But is there a good tutorial for the whole game anywhere? If you don't have one, maybe you could do one? Your explanations are awesome, i watch everyone of your videos for a while now :) Great job btw.!

so lets see a renewed hawk tutorial explaining everything in depth and with timestamps :)

i still manually control army naval transfers since auto transport bugs out all the time

As an occasional/casual EU4 player who dips into the game every now and again, one of the big issues I face is remembering what to do and what to check before performing various actions. What would help me a lot is having some kind of general checklist for these things, like "here's what to do and what to look at before unpausing at the start", "here's what to do and what to look at before declaring war", "here's what to do and what to look at before devving or building", etc. Do you or anyone reading this know of any guides or resources like that?

I have over 3000 hours on Eu4 and there are some things I didn't know that this video taught me

I wish this video was made when I started euIV, it took me 2weeks to understand how to move the army

A true tutorial video with that 10 year no cut playthrough sounds perfect for those that are new to the game or for those with experience, but don't know enough yet

Unironically, watching EU4 youtubers does more help at me understanding mechanics of the game than the tutorial

I will point out that some of the actions you said are "outdated" are in fact still horrible features in the base game. The "explore" fleet mission, for example, I think comes from Golden Century.

I never knew this existed, when i started i watched videos

I started 2 years ago didn't even know there was a tutorial

I remember playing the tutorial 1 year ago, i felt so lost, the tutorial not help me, i had to play 200 hours to know the basic, playing as castille but dont like it so i go with Xiu n try to stop castille to colonize. at this point i think im an expert playing with the Mayans with 1000 hours

Tutorial : Learn by doing. Fail, look up stuff online. Repeat.

When I was teaching my cousin how to play EU4, I never recommended him tutorial. I just had a gut feeling that it might be not enough to fully grasp that game.

Great powers is a DLC feature, Factions are too, exploring via mission is too, native policies are too, expel minorites are too.

I first started to learn this game through usage of console commands.

Red Hawk with Verona: This is my plast Eu4 video in 2023 Red Hawk is checking the tutorial: Soooo :D

I remember when I did these the first time. I had CK2 experience and that helped. I noticed that white skull when my troops were attritioning. When it turned to Terrain mode on it's own, I knew to change it back to Pol. When I attacked Granada, I knew how to fight battles and wage war. But that's from 1000 hours in another game and a few in similar ones. Someone just picking up the game isn't going to do well. Ships were a nightmare, Provence view is aids and by the way, the tutorial relies way to much on reading. England locks you in so you can't fuck anything up. Not Spain. I remember never seeing that royal marriage block, and attacking Portugal right after Granada. They don't teach much about combat as someone needs in order to fight a country on equal terms. CK2 you just fight with good commanders and/or superior numbers. Eu4 requires good tactics or better mil tech if applicable, which you never understand until you it look up. I won, but it took way to long for a nation that is really easy to beat up. If you're new, you are up Shit's Creek without a paddle, better and worse depending on your DLCs. You're better off just jumping in as Portugal, Castile, Ottomans, or Austria, ironman or not, and having a RU-vid video of that country in the background. And when you aren't playing, look up guides from Estates, Economy, Army Comp, and battle. It will take some time, but you'll learn more. You'll have the 1444 start as well, which is REALLY REALLY important.

>be me >purchase eu4 >choose ottomans for the first save >things go good cuz anatolian tech dominates early game >nation starts feeling weaker, but still wins so why not bother >declare war on ethiopia >double size army humiliated by glorious ethiopian army (attacked on mountain) >think 30 mins what went wrong >realize game has military tech, and i shouldn't spend all mils on harassing rebels edit: glad i started when game wasn't that complicated lol, it'd probably go even worse

This tutorial is basically worse than just starting the game as some random nation. At least you don't get bombarded with 100 popups at the start and you can read the few remaining tooltips in peace. The transport method may be outdated and I personally only learned it after about 2000h in the game, but it has its uses when time is critical. It's basically the only way you can play in Malacca without tearing your hair out. Maybe they changed how AI works inbetween patches or smth but the AI derps HARD when transporting your troops from landmasses with 1+ provinces. My army was in some majapahit provinces and I was colonizing the clove islands. Since your transport ships simply die off the coast if you send your army before the colonist arrives I usually miss the moment when the colonist starts his job. If they travel for 600+ days you just tend to forget. The cloves islands are in the northeast of Majapahit Island. My army is in the southwest part. I missed the moment when colonist arrived, so the natives rise up and I pause and use the amazing right click feature to transport my army. The amazing AI does something truly spectacular. First, the army moves to the north east tip of the island, my last owned province there , all good, 10/10. The navy moves to the province the army WAS standing before this on the south side. Wastes alot of time since the sea tiles are strange there. Anyways. The navy arrives and sits in the port chilling. The army still moves for a a few days. The army arrives. NOW the navy starts moving there circling the island and wasting more time. Finally picks the army and moves to the island. The natives destroy the colony just at the moment the navy leaves port. The right click option 1) sends fleet to current army position 2) sends troops to closest land province to target 3) sends fleet to the new position of the army 4) performs as intended and moves the army. Now, if #1 moved the fleet to the army position immediately OR didn't even happen before the army arrived it would be perfect and I would use it 100% of the time, but alas.

Even though I agree that the tutorial is really not ideal, I feel like quite a few points made in the video apply only if you're playing with dlcs, for example automatic transport is not base game feature as far as I remember, same with great power ranking and age mechanics. I know its really stupid and definitely doesnt justify the state of the tutorial, but Í guess I kinda see what they were aiming for which I think was just one universal tutorial that wont have to change depending on your dlcs.

lets make a basic tutorial Hawk, the first nation i play is castile and lucky for me the time i stuck with castilian rebels then have to go on youtube u just up castile guide 3 days ago

I had no idea how to play EU4 when I first started. The tutorial didn't help. I was Portugal and died to rebels

I cant believe my favorite Cities Skyline 4 youtuber learns how to play EU4. Truly moving

Paradox Games are full of systems that i just refuse to interact with because i cannot be asked to figure them out, sometimes base game but usally some dlc addition, for example spys in hoi4 exist to make colab governments at best or not even to be looked at. And i have played thousands of hours of that game.

The best way to learn eu4 is to just pick castille, open the EU4 wiki on your phone, and just roll with it. I managed to conquer half of north africa in my first campaign until I got coalitioned and absolutely destroyed by... portugal.

19:15 I often open trade that way and I have close to 2k hours

The boat thingy isn't actually wrong becasue efficient way is just locked behind a DLC. Actually a lot of the things that aren't included in the tutorial are DLC features like great powers and ages

I like how having years of experience in a paradox games sounds like a professional skill for a job interview 😂

7:29 that method is only in art of war DLC so a new player (probably no DLC) would have to use that method actually most of everything not mentioned is locked behind DLCs lol