Best Nations for Beginners in EU5 (And One Official Pick to Skip)

EU5 ships with an official answer to this question: five recommended tutorial nations, each tagged to a learning track, each activating the Learning Walkthrough and tutorial missions when started from the recommended-countries screen in 1337. That list is a genuinely good starting point — and in one case the community has quietly overruled it. Here’s the honest version.

The official five

Hungary — Economy track. The game’s flagship economy classroom: a large, safe kingdom with room to learn buildings, trade, and development without anyone punishing your mistakes. The tutorial missions hold your hand through the early decades. Side effect worth knowing: because the game funnels new players here, Hungary is currently the most-searched nation in EU5 — you’ll find abundant fresh discussion when you get stuck.

Holland — Economy track, with an asterisk. Officially recommended; community-annotated as actually quite difficult for new players, and the reasoning is specific. Your market center is controlled by Flanders — a vassal of France — which caps your trade advantage and capacity from the start. Founding your own market is expensive; evicting Flanders militarily means fighting France; and you sit inside the Holy Roman Empire, where over-expansion invites the Emperor and coalitions. The community’s own route (expand south and west into the HRE, found a market center after 50–100 years, diplo-annex Zeeland, mind the antagonism) is clever — and exactly the kind of plan a first-timer shouldn’t need. Second campaign material.

Naples — Politics track. The community’s sleeper recommendation: strong, forgiving, and full of teachable diplomacy. The short version of the community plan: build galleys, rival and absorb Sicily early (you’re much stronger), form the Two Sicilies, then look north toward Florence and Milan and eventually the Kingdom of Italy. Your cloud of small Greek and Balkan vassals is a live diplomacy lab — annex the Greek ones and re-release them as a single stronger vassal to work the region as Byzantium declines. Your real rivals, Aragon and Tunis, start at roughly four-fifths of your strength, and the Ottomans won’t bother you for a century. Keep the navy strong and don’t invade Tunis casually — attrition and food will eat an unprepared expedition.

Ottomans — Expansion track. The best “strong but interesting” start in the game: scripted direction from the Rise of the Turks situation, the deepest unique content currently in EU5, and forgiving neighbors. We maintain a full Ottomans guide.

Castile — Expansion track. The consensus first “big nation” pick: safe corner geography, one clear enemy chain (Navarra, Granada, Morocco), a scripted road to the Iberian Union, and unusually deep community documentation. We maintain a full Castile guide.

Our recommendation, by what you want

• “I want to learn the game with training wheels” → Hungary, for the walkthrough missions.
• “I want a strong nation and a real campaign” → Castile first, Ottomans second — or the reverse; both of our guides assume no prior EU5 knowledge.
• “Diplomacy is my thing” → Naples.
• “I like pain” → Byzantium, eyes open.
• Skip for now → Holland (the market trap above), France and England (Hundred Years’ War turbulence), and anything one-province inside the HRE.

Whichever you pick, the next page in this series is the same for everyone: the first-session checklist — what to actually do before you unpause, distilled from every nation guide we’ve written.