Surprising nobody, Paradox's long-teased Project Caesar is Europa Universalis 5

After a year of faintly enigmatic developer blogs, Paradox has finally unveiled its sort-of-but-not-exactly-mysterious Project Caesar, confirming it to be (just as everyone had expected) Europa Universalis 5 – a “new era for grand strategy”.

Paradox says Europa Universalis 5 has been in development for the last five years at Paradox Tinto, a Barcelona-based studio assembled from ‘modders, super fans, and the best developers around the world’. The goal has been to create “the grandest strategy game” ever, and the result is a “very ambitious” Europa Universalis where players can “do pretty much everything”.

This time around, players can experience history across a span of five hundred years, formulating their nation’s strategy of sustainment and expansion from 1337 to 1837, progressing through the Renaissance era, the age of Enlightenment, and beyond. Key to all this is a “living world” built around “pops”. Similar to those seen in other Paradox grand strategy games, these population groups are bound by the likes of a shared culture or religion (300 religions are said to be represented in EU5), and can range from a single person to millions.

Pops are the primary driving force of a nation’s econony, working in buildings such as farms and factories to produce goods feeding into all other aspects of EU5. You’ll produce food to sustain the population or keep armies moving, for instance, or goods to trade at markets as required. Pops are also split into social classes – from peasants to the clergy and nobility – and further grouped into estates, each with their own thoughts and agendas. And you’ll need to keep these groups happy – perhaps granting them special privileges – to pass crucial policies in parliament.