EU5 Grand Strategist is an AI-powered council that reads your Europa Universalis V save and surfaces the strategic levers your eyes can't reach through the binary.
Why I Built This
I've been a fan of Paradox games for almost 15 years, starting with CK2. I love the complexity of Europa Universalis — but EU5's binary saves put most of the strategic picture out of reach: a 200-300MB world state behind every campaign that no player can actually read. I wanted to combine my passion for software engineering and AI to fix that — to build something new players and veterans alike can use to actually understand what's happening across their realm and get better at the game.
Built in spare time around a full-time job and family. EU5's tagline is “be ambitious,” and that's exactly the spirit behind this project. I hope you enjoy.
Where I Am At Currently
This is beta. The formulas behind the advice — income, crown power, estate power, food, trade — have been reverse-engineered and validated across several different test countries. Most are nailed down; a handful are still works in progress. Here is a non-comprehensive list of known limitations:
- Responses take 10–30 seconds, with beta rate limits of 5 questions per minute and 25 per hour per user.
- Mid- and late-game saves are less validated than early-game; advice quality in later saves is genuinely unknown.
- Trade advice doesn't yet gate by reachable markets — it may suggest markets that aren't actually within your trade network.
- Naval and mercenary advice is limited — fleet positioning and the mercenary pool aren't wired into the model yet.
- A few economy and estate-power numbers (including Income and Expense line items) may diverge slightly from the in-game UI while the crown-base and estate-power formulas are being locked down.
Full roadmap and bug reports live on Discord — the Connect link is in the page header.
Legal & Privacy
Affiliation & Trademark
This is an unofficial fan-made tool. Europa Universalis, EU5, Project Caesar, and related marks are trademarks of Paradox Interactive AB. This site is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Paradox Interactive. We aim to comply with Paradox's Content Policy.
What we collect
The save files you upload contain Europa Universalis V game data — country names, provinces, armies — not personal information about you. Your save is sent to Google's Gemini API for AI analysis and stored in our Google Cloud Storage bucket for up to 7 days, after which it is automatically deleted.
We log the file name, size, and a hash prefix in operational logs (retained roughly 30 days). For abuse prevention, your IP address is briefly held in memory by our rate limiter and is also passed to Cloudflare Turnstile for bot detection. We collect anonymous usage metrics (question type, save size, response time) to monitor service quality.
We do not collect your name, email, payment information, or any other personal identifiers, and we do not sell or share data for advertising.
Cookies & analytics
We use Google Analytics 4 to count visitors and understand which pages get traffic. GA4 sets first-party cookies (_ga and _ga_*) and collects approximate location (country/city), device type, and pages viewed. We do not use it for advertising or cross-site tracking.
On your first visit you'll see a consent banner. Analytics is denied by default until you accept, in line with the EU ePrivacy Directive and GDPR. You can change your choice at any time via the “Cookie Preferences” link in the footer.
Cloudflare Turnstile is also active on upload and chat actions for bot defence; it sets a short-lived essential cookie that is exempt from consent requirements.
AI processing
Save contents are sent to Google's paid Gemini API. Per Google's API terms, prompts submitted to the paid tier are not used to train Google's models. AI-generated advice may be inaccurate or incomplete and is provided for entertainment and educational purposes only — not a substitute for your own judgment.
Multiplayer saves
If you upload a multiplayer save, it may contain in-game data about other players. Please only upload saves you have permission to share.
Liability & service
Provided as is for entertainment and educational purposes — no warranty of any kind. We may modify, suspend, or discontinue the service at any time without notice. Not directed to children under 13.
Contact
For questions, data-deletion requests, abuse reports, and copyright concerns, please reach us on our Discord server. For copyright complaints, please include the elements required by 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3).