Europa Universalis 5: Best Settings for 1440p

These are the best settings for playing Europa Universalis 5 at 1440p resolution on GPUs with up to 12GB VRAM.

Managing Institution spread can help you win matches in Europa Universalis 5 (Image via Paradox Interactive)
Europa Universalis 5 (Image via Paradox Interactive)

Europa Universalis 5 is a CPU-intensive strategy game. The game is very similar to the Civilization series and relies heavily on CPUs rather than GPUs. Even at 1440p resolution, you will be CPU-bound regardless of how fast your CPU is. The guide below resolves the issue on either an AMD / Intel or Nvidia GPU, letting you enjoy a seamless experience.

Read More: Europa Universalis 5 Formable Nations Guide

Europa Universalis 5 – Best Settings To Play at 1440P

Europa Universalis 5 settings page - 1 (Image via Paradox Interactive)
Europa Universalis 5 settings page – 1 (Image via Paradox Interactive)

The recommended GPU power for playing this game at 1440p starts at an RX 9060 XT or RTX 5060 Ti. You can manage it with the Intel Arc B580 / B570 GPUs, but the settings below will require a few adjustments. That said, there are many rendering issues in the game. The biggest is shimmering in trees, houses, characters, and other areas. At 1440p, even with MSAA set to 4x, you will still notice shimmering.

The only way to clear this is to use DLSS, which cleans up the image and makes it sharper. However, if you push the upscaler beyond quality, such as using balanced or performance, you will be heavily CPU-bound again. You can increase the render scale beyond 100%, but the results won’t scale linearly. Your GPU usage will increase, but the frame rate will be all over the place. 

As of now, only Nvidia GPUs support upscaling, and you will have to rely on native resolution on AMD or Intel GPUs.

Best Settings Explored

SettingValue
RendererVulkan
Display ModeFullscreen
Resolution2560 x 1440
VSyncOff
Maximum FPSOff
Quality PresetCustom
Map ObjectsHigh
Texture QualityUltra
Mesh LOD QualityHigh
Mesh LOD FadeOn
Anti-AliasingMSAA ×2
Texture Filtering×16
BloomHigh
Map SSAOOn
Depth of FieldHigh
Refraction QualityHigh
ReflectionsHigh
GUI Blur QualityHigh
Low Quality ShadersOff
Shadow Quality2048 x 2048 (Reduce this if out of VRAM)
Texture StreamingOn
GUI Texture StreamingOn
Render Scale100%
Animated CharactersOn
Single Unit ArmiesOff
Units CoA Resolution128×128
Characters SSAOOn
Portrait MultiSampling×4
Upscale MethodOff / DLSS (Nvidia only)
Upscale QualityN/A / Quality (Nvidia only)
Triplanar UV QualityHigh
Disable 3D TerrainOff
Enable ParticlesOn

Read More: Europa Universalis 5 Trade Guide


Europa Universalis 5 Logo
Europa Universalis 5 (Paradox Interactive)

We provide the latest news and create guides for Europa Universalis 5. Meanwhile, you can check out the following articles or catch us playing games on YouTube: