How to Fix Europa Universalis IV Crashes, Freezes and Other Problems

The wait is over! Paradox have launched Europa Universalis IV (our review is coming shortly, so stay tuned!) and a ton of gamers who want to rewrite history are already doing it amazed by the game’s quality. And then we have some other gamers who are having problems fully enjoying the game: if you are one of them, we are here to try and help you fix the Europa Universalis 4 crashes, freezes and any other problems that we find a solution for.

I think for starters, just to make sure that the reasons for your Europe Universalis IV problems are not technical, make sure that your system meets the game’s minimum requirements. It is also a good idea to update all your system’s drivers to the latest version (all of them, not just the video card drivers).

Now most of the people complain about the game crashing soon after the game starts or getting the black screen in Europa Universalis IV. Here are a few things to try:

– Change fullscreen to off from the game settings. This generally solves the problems.

– Edit your settings.txt file and find the “refreshrate” line. Change it to the refresh rate of your monitor (your monitor’s default refresh rate, that is)

If you have any peripherals plugged into your computer, like a controller, try to plug them out since they might do bad things to your game.

Finally, if none of these work, uninstall your game and perform a fresh install.

If you encounter any other problems with Europa Universalis IV, let us know in the comment section below and we’ll do our best to help. Also if you happen to find any fixes that work for you, share them with our readers so others can fully enjoy the game too.

13 comments

Amine August 17, 2013 2:58 am

None of this solutions worked with me :(

Luke October 9, 2013 8:15 pm

I have a Mac, and none of these solutions worked for me either.

Brian November 3, 2013 5:17 pm

My notifications dont have a background. For example, siege of a territory, when you conquer it, notification that shows you has text, button like OK and Go to, but no black rectangle behind it :/

Ryo March 26, 2014 4:19 pm

I just updated my Eu4 to patch 1.5 or something with 1 and 5 in it, and after that I can’t load my save files, even the new ones

Jada May 21, 2014 5:42 pm

Just after windows update, when i go to the startup screen, i got an javascript error
And the original europa universalis screen picture is not showing

Kent June 2, 2014 5:08 am

Didn’t work for me too :(
shame really because the game starts up nicely but crashes about 30 seconds into each time I play the game.

Justin July 22, 2014 10:53 pm

The game won’t load, It goes through black screen for more than 5 mins, then goes to a blue screen with europa universalis 4 in bronze for like 15 mins, then gets stuck on a screen with a guy staring at me and goes no further..

Wiz February 22, 2015 2:53 pm

justin, thats the loading screen. just wait it out :)

dx May 10, 2015 6:55 pm

I had Art of War and El Dorado. They worked fine, but recently I got game freezes alot, the game wont let me play it more than five minutes because it freezes. Even ctrl-alt-delete is not possible, so I restart the computer. I uninstalled both and I installed Res Publica, it occurs again.

David June 23, 2015 7:44 am

I just blew a $100 on this game with the expansion set and it keeps crashing within 10-15 minutes of game play. If I don’t remember to save the game frequently, all progress is lost … plus it’s a pain in the you-know-what to have to get back into the game just to load a saved version.

I’m going back to Napoleon: Total War.

Zan January 18, 2016 4:15 am

Hello, I can upload the DMP file if you want for further analysis of the problem.

Cody Felker March 5, 2017 4:44 am

I’ve played europa IV for awhile now, about 1 year. I haven’t had any problems with it until now. When I get to about year 1540 as a custom nation my game will stop saving and when I try to save it won’t. So I tried to save to the cloud and it will just shut the game down and take me back the my desktop screen. Now if I keep playing without saving and it gets to be about year 1550 then the game will again just shut off and kick me back to the desktop screen. I’m not using any mods and even if I did use mods it still does the same thing. How do I fix this?

Magnus July 19, 2019 6:09 pm

I often get a crash when checking the box for include territorys, when on the developement tab.
This is the only time the game crashes.
Well sometimes when I load a game infantry in production becomes cavalry.