How to fix problems/crashes when starting eu4 version 1.29

As there are many people who have problems to run eu4 after the Manchu update, I compiled a list of all known problems and how to solve them. Please tell me which problems I missed or if I made any mistakes.

Please leave a comment to tell me which specific problem you had and what helped you, so that I can improve this guide. And also tell me how the instructions can be improved or clarified.

These help with many different problems and you can try them if you have a problem which is not listed below or if the solution below doesn't help.

The easiest thing that you can do is to verify the integrity of game files.

Can somebody tell me what the default folders in windows and macOS are and how to access them in a username agnostic way

1. find out where steam installed eu4 (go into the steam library, right click on eu4->properties->local files->browse local files). Remember that folder for 5.
2. unsubscribe from all mods in steam
3. uninstall eu4 from steam
4. exit steam
5. make sure that the folder where eu4 was installed (the one you remembered from 1.) doesn't exist anymore. If it still exists, delete it with all its contents
6. delete the folder "steamapps\workshop\content\236850" with all its contents. Per default it is in "C:\Program Files\Steam" or "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam" under windows(can somebody please verify that). Under Linux it is in ~/.steam/steam/ or ~/.local/share/Steam. In macOS it is in "~/Library/Application Support/Steam/" (can somebody please verify that)
7. move/rename the folder "Paradox Interactive\Europa Universalis IV". This folder is in your Documents folder in Windows and macOS and in ~/.local/share/ in Linux. You can also delete that folder, but it contains your save games, screenshot and locally created mods, which you may want to keep.
8. uninstall the launcher(you can skip this step if your game at least opens the Europa Universalis startup screen after you click play in the launcher). In windows use the windows uninstall function to uninstall "Paradox Launcher v2". Then delete the launcher directories:
   1. C:/users/<UserName>/AppData/Local/Programs/Paradox Interactive/
   2. C:/users/<UserName>/AppData/Local/Paradox Interactive/
   3. C:/users/<UserName>/AppData/Roaming/Paradox Interactive/launcher-v2/
   4. Documents/paradox interactive/.cpatch/
   5. Documents/paradox interactive/launcher-v2.2019.10.4/ (this one changes with each update of the launcher)
   6. In Linux the directories are ~/.paradoxlauncher and "~/.local/share/Paradox Interactive/launcher-v2/" and the file "~/.local/share/Paradox Interactive/launcherpath"
   7. In macOS it may be "~/Library/Application Support/Paradox Interactive"
9. start steam and download eu4 again
10. verify the integrity of game files
11. start eu4 from steam without subscribing to any mods

If nothing else helps, you can go back to version 1.28.3

change from borderless fullscreen to fullscreen and reduce the resolution. Or increase the gui_scale in settings.txt

change the resolution in pdx_settings.txt instead of settings.txt

try borderless fullscreen or windowed mode. That should use the refresh rate from your OS.

If this is not caused by one of the windows specific issues below, it can happen if you have broken save games in the save games directory. Try to move all save games somewhere else.

1. unsubscribe from all mods in steam
2. exit eu4, the launcher and steam
3. delete the contents of the folder "steamapps\workshop\content\236850". Per default it is in "C:\Program Files\Steam" or "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam" under windows. Under Linux it is in ~/.steam/steam/ or ~/.local/share/Steam
4. backup any locally created mods(or mods that you downloaded from outside of steam)
5. delete the folder "Paradox Interactive\Europa Universalis IV\mod". This folder is in your Documents folder in Windows and macOS and in ~/.local/share/ in Linux.
6. delete the file Documents\Paradox Interactive\Europa Universalis IV\mods_registry.json (~/.local/share/Paradox Interactive/Europa Universalis IV/mods_registry.json in Linux)
7. delete the folder Documents\Paradox Interactive\Europa Universalis IV\launcher-cache . It might be called .launcher-cache in some operating systems. (~/.local/share/Paradox Interactive/Europa Universalis IV/.launcher-cache in Linux)
8. start eu4 again and make sure that it works without mods and that you have the same checksum in the launcher and in the main menu(with 1.29.3 it is 1a2e) and then exit eu4
9. start steam again and resubscribe to your mods
10. wait for the mods to download completely
11. if you have local mods that you want to use, copy them back to "Paradox Interactive\Europa Universalis IV\mod" now
12. start the launcher again

If you use userdir.txt to place your game files in a different folder you may need to follow the instructions from this forum post to get mods to work.

There has been one report that clearing the download cache and then verify the integrity of game files helps. And several reports that doing a clean reinstall helps(see above)

reinstalling steam has helped several people. If you don't want to do that, you should be able to start dowser(.exe/.app) directly.

Try to run dowser.exe from the game installation folder as an administrator. That allows the game to install missing dependencies. Once you started it successfully you can start it normally from steam. You can also try to run steam as an administrator.

If the launcher says "We had trouble communicating with Steam" or something similar, try to restart Steam or restart your computer. If that doesn't help, see the next line.

Other launcher problems can be fixed by a clean reinstall(see above). Especially steps 8 and 7 are important for the launcher.

Missing Microsoft libraries (Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 SP1 Redistributable x86, Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 SP1 Redistributable x64, Microsoft Visual C++ 2015 Redistributable Update 3 RC) can also prevent the launcher from running.

And if you have an antivirus or a ransomware protection software, add the launcher to their exception list. If you have Windows Defender(also called Microsoft Defender), add it to the Ransomware "Apps Allowed Through" list(here are instructions for that). If you have bitdefender, add the launcher to the list of ransomware exceptions and "give it access" to "protected files".

if the launcher starts and asks you to accept the End-User License Agreement, but if you click on continue, nothing happens, that usually means that the file game_data.json can't be written. This file is in "Documents\Paradox Interactive\Europa Universalis IV". Access to that file is often blocked by an antivirus or ransomware protection software. You have to add the launcher to its exception list. The next section(Crashes on startup) has a few details on how to do that for bitdefender and windows defender.

If you have no such software, make sure that the folder or the file game_data.json is not read-only.

• if you have an antivirus or a ransomware protection software, add eu4 to their exception list
• if you have Windows Defender(also called Microsoft Defender), add it to the Ransomware "Apps Allowed Through" list.
• if you have bitdefender, add eu4 to the list of ransomware exceptions and "give it access" to "protected files"
• if you have any program that messes with your screen and/or overlays something in your game, try to disable them. Programms which are known to be problematic are:
  • RivaTuner Statistics Server
  • RadeonPro
  • a gaming VPN app called Evolve
  • MSI Gaming App / MSI Afterburner
  • Duet
• update your graphics driver
• install libraries from Microsoft: Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 SP1 Redistributable x86, Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 SP1 Redistributable x64, Microsoft Visual C++ 2015 Redistributable Update 3 RC and directx
• if you are on windows 7 or 8, try to manually install MS patch KB4019990
• if you are on windows 10, try to uninstall KB4515384(this might not be a good idea)
• if you configured eu4.exe to run as administrator, also set dowser.exe to run as administrator. Or deactivate the run as administrator for eu4.exe. (you can change that setting in properties>compatibility>change settings for all users>check "run this program as administrator)
• sometimes it helps to run the game in a different mode(windowed, borderless fullscreen or fullscreen). If the launcher doesn't have the option to change that, you have to edit settings.txt. windowed is fullScreen=no and borderless=no, borderless fullscreen is fullScreen=no and borderless=yes, and normal fullscreen is fullScreen=yes and borderless=no
• disable "Fullscreen optimization": right click the game exe >> compatibility >> disable fullscreen optimizations
• make sure that your harddisk is not full
• Microsoft OneDrive(if you have it) synchronizes the Documents folder per default which contains the save games and settings files. That may use up your quota and prevent changes to your settings files afterwards which would prevent the launcher from starting your game
• If you have a AMD Radeon graphics card, disable the anti-lag feature for eu4:
  • Right Click on desktop, select AMD Radeon Software
  • Select the Gaming tab and then Europa Universalis IV
  • Disable Radeon Anti-Lag

change the scaling option for eu4 by right clicking on eu4.exe, select Properties, select the Compatibility tab and then check "Override high DPI scaling behavior" and try the different values in the select box below

There is at least one bug in Wayland which prevents the game from starting. As a workaround you can select a different session when you log in(on Fedora this would be called gnome-xorg). Your distribution should offer a way to change that permanently(Instructions for Fedora, can be found here).

Another workaround is to disable multisampling by editing "~/.local/share/Paradox Interactive/Europa Universalis IV/settings.txt" and changing the line which starts with "multi_sampling" to "multi_sampling=0"

This should be fixed with hotfix 1.29.2.

Set your launch options in steam to

LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libc.so.6 %command%

You may have to specify the path where libc.so.6 is on your system. But it probably doesn't matter. For me it also works if I use an empty LD_PRELOAD:

LD_PRELOAD= %command%

One person also reported that they had to remove "noexec" from the mount options for /tmp. You probably don't have to worry about that if you didn't change the mount options manually.

Or is noexec for /tmp the default on any Linux distributions?

• Make sure your game is already installed
• Press shift-command-G and enter "~/Library/Application Support/Paradox Interactive" ("~/library" alone will suffice, but you'll have to navigate manually within the folder)
• Erase everything you see in the Paradox Interactive folder
  • Alternatively you can use this command in the Terminal: rm -r ~/Library/Application\ Support/Paradox\ Interactive
• Launch Steam
• Click "Play" on the Steam Client's game page.

This should be fixed by the 1.29.2 hotfix

this seems to happen if you continue a save game from 1.28.3. Possibly this is caused by the Koxinga event. If you still have a backup of the save game from version 1.28.3, you can go back to that version. You can also try to prevent the Koxinga event by colonizing Taiwan or by somehow keeping Ming above 600 dev.

The devs don't know what is causing this and asking for reports in the bug report forum. That way they can find out what the people who have this problem have in common

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Edits: several edits, but I didn't keep track of what I changed when

2019-10-05: add section "the game starts directly and skips the launcher" and added a note that the crash on the same date was fixed in 1.29.2

2019-10-16: improved the clean reinstall step 8(launcher)

2019-10-19: solution for launcher doesn't start on macOS

2019-11-01: solution for EULA not clickable

2019-11-09: fix for mods not working if userdir.txt is in use. Update clean reinstall to explain when a launcher reinstall is not needed

2019-11-22: add more things to launcher doesn't start; And remove suggestion to uninstall KB4515384, because I have not heard that it helped anybody since I made this post and it might cause further problems

2019-12-08/09/12/18: improved the mods do not work section

2019-12-20: add a section for Linux users who use Wayland

2019-12-25: "We had trouble communicating with Steam" can maybe be fixed by restarting steam

2019-12-28: add information about full harddisk/onedrive

2020-01-02: radeon anti-lag causes problems on windows

2020-01-04: update wayland information for linux

2020-01-21: improve mods do not work section slightly