I founded the United States of America in the year 1760. Well, strictly speaking I forced Spain to do so as a condition of its surrender after its foolish invasion of my French allies. My Russian colonial forces in the New World barely even had to fight, capturing Spanish colonies from Kansas to Guatemala. But my overwhelming success led to difficult choices at the negotiating table; if I were to try to keep all that land, my neighbors would rightfully be wary of my expansionist tendencies. So I weakened the Spanish by forcing them grant independence to the new USA, a Catholic monarchy located in the Carolinas.
What makes Europa Universalis IV special, in a way that most sandbox-style strategy games fail, is that it’s unusually free of annoyances and contradictions that get in the way of enjoying alternate histories. My colonial wars with Russia comprise a perfectly normal set of events in EU4, which lets you take control of any nation on the map, as drawn in the age of the Renaissance and Enlightenment (from 1444 to 1820). From rising empires like France and Russia on one hand, to the Creek in North America, or Ming China, or the merchant republic of Venice, the wide selection provides a solid amount of variety. And because there aren’t any victory conditions apart from a nebulous point system at the end of a game, EU4 is all about self-defined goals within historical settings. It’s mostly liberating, if occasionally lacking in validation when it won’t acknowledge my total domination with a “You Win!” screen.
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