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Discover how compatible Europa Universalis 5 (EU5) is with the Steam Deck and the best settings to use for the smoothest gameplay experience.
Europa Universalis 5 is a grand strategy game that immerses players in building empires starting from the late Middle Ages up until the industrialization of the Victorian era. Although the game features incredibly complex diplomatic, economic, and warfare mechanics, it has relatively low system requirements. As a result, you can play Europa Universalis 5 on the Steam Deck. However, the game does not feature the Steam Deck Verified tag yet.
In the early game phases, EU5 runs at a comfortable 30 to 40 FPS on Low settings. While you can use a touchpad to control the cursor, you will have a much better experience with a docked monitor, mouse, and keyboard. The main reason for such a setup is the Steam Deck’s small display, which makes the game’s plethora of menus difficult to navigate.
Also Read: Best Nations To Choose in Europa Universalis 5
Europa Universalis 5: Best Settings For Steam Deck
The best way to play EU5 on the Steam Deck is to use the following low graphics settings:
Screen
- Renderer: Vulkan
- Display Mode: Fullscreen
- Resolution: 1280×800
- VSync: On
- Maximum FPS: Off
Quality
- Quality Preset: Custom
- Map Objects: Low
- Texture Quality: Low
- Mesh LOD Quality: Low
- Mesh LOD Fading: Off
- Anti-Aliasing: Disabled
- Texture Filtering: Disabled
- Bloom: Low
- Map SSAO: Off
- Depth of Field: Off
- Refraction Quality: Disabled
- Reflections: Disabled
- GUI Blur Quality: Disabled
- Low Quality Shaders: Off
- Shadow Quality: Disabled
- Texture Streaming: On
- GUI Texture Streaming: On
- Render Scale: 100%
- Animated Characters: Off
- Single Unit Armies: Off
- Unit COA Resolution: 64×64
- Characters SSAO: Off
- Portrait MultiSampling: x2
- Upscale Method: Disabled
- Upscale Quality: Off
- Triplanar UV Quality: Low
- Disable 3D Terrain: Off
- Enable Particles: On
As you progress toward the mid-to-late game in EU5, the greater volume of armies and characters on the map will cause performance to plummet. You can lower the settings further to maintain 30 FPS at that point. Very Low settings are given in the following section.
Also Read: Can You Install Mods in Europa Universalis 5?
Best Settings For Docked
Playing on Low settings while docked to a monitor or TV will likely cause your frame rate to drop to 20 FPS with screen movement or action. As a result, the game becomes nearly unplayable. To fix the issue, you can lower the settings even further to maintain between 30 and 40 FPS. Playing at 1920×1080 resolution is recommended rather than 2560×1440.
Screen
- Renderer: Vulkan
- Display Mode: Fullscreen
- Resolution: (Monitor Resolution)
- VSync: On
- Maximum FPS: Off
Quality
- Quality Preset: Custom
- Map Objects: Off
- Texture Quality: Low
- Mesh LOD Quality: Low
- Mesh LOD Fading: Off
- Anti-Aliasing: Disabled
- Texture Filtering: Disabled
- Bloom: Disabled
- Map SSAO: Off
- Depth of Field: Off
- Refraction Quality: Disabled
- Reflections: Disabled
- GUI Blur Quality: Disabled
- Low Quality Shaders: On
- Shadow Quality: Disabled
- Texture Streaming: On
- GUI Texture Streaming: On
- Render Scale: 100%
- Animated Characters: Off
- Single Unit Armies: On
- Unit COA Resolution: 32×32
- Characters SSAO: Off
- Portrait MultiSampling: x2
- Upscale Method: Disabled
- Upscale Quality: Off
- Triplanar UV Quality: Disabled
- Disable 3D Terrain: On
- Enable Particles: Off
The bolded options are the settings that are reduced further from the Low settings listed previously.
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