Anbennar turns Europa Universalis IV into a fantasy world where absolutely anything can go wrong

Europa Universalis IV already has a rather impressive ability to make several hours disappear without warning.

You sit down intending to play for a little while, maybe expand your borders, sort out your economy, and deal with that one neighboring country that's been getting on your nerves. Before you know it, the sun is coming up, your treasury is empty, half the continent hates you, and you're desperately trying to hold together an empire that seemed like such a good idea six hours earlier.

Now imagine doing all of that in a world filled with elves, orcs, dwarves, magic, and adventuring companies that can eventually become nations of their own.

Welcome to Anbennar.

Created by JayBean and the Anbennar team, Anbennar: A Fantasy Total Conversion takes Europa Universalis IV's grand-strategy foundations and builds an original fantasy setting around them. Historical Earth is replaced by an entirely different world, filled with its own countries, peoples, politics, conflicts, and opportunities for a spectacularly ill-advised campaign of conquest.

This isn't just a matter of renaming France and giving its soldiers pointy ears, either.

Anbennar uses EU4's political, military, economic, and technological systems to explore how an evolving fantasy world might function over centuries. Magic exists alongside politics and warfare, adventuring companies can establish countries of their own, and different civilizations have their own mechanics and priorities.

For example, the project includes eight schools of magic, giving magical systems a meaningful place within its grand-strategy framework. Adventurers aren't simply wandering characters in the background, either. Some companies can eventually settle down and develop into countries, bringing a different kind of beginning to the familiar process of building a nation.

Then there are the dwarves.

Because apparently managing an empire on the surface wasn't complicated enough, Anbennar also lets players explore underground dwarven realms and the effort to reclaim territory beneath the mountains. It's a wonderfully fitting idea for a fantasy setting, and one that gives the game another distinctly different kind of civilization to represent.

The world isn't frozen in a traditional swords-and-sorcery moment, either. Its setting progresses through technological development, gunpowder, colonization, and changing relationships between magic and society. That mixture gives Anbennar room to explore some fascinating possibilities using systems originally designed around real-world history.

And perhaps that's the most interesting thing about the project. Europa Universalis IV is already excellent at producing unexpected stories through the collision of player decisions, rival ambitions, and historical systems. Anbennar takes those same ingredients and asks what might happen when the historical constraints are replaced with an entirely different fantasy world.

Of course, a total conversion of this scope comes with its own requirements. The Steam Workshop version explicitly targets Europa Universalis IV 1.37.5 and lists several required DLC expansions, with others recommended for additional mechanics. It shouldn't be assumed compatible with later EU4 versions or Europa Universalis V, so check the creator's current instructions before starting a campaign.

And if you're hoping to carry an existing vanilla save into this fantasy world, don't count on it. The project is best approached as its own campaign experience, and vanilla-save importing hasn't been established.

But for the right kind of strategy player, that might be exactly the attraction.

A completely unfamiliar political map. Nations you've never ruled before. Magical systems to understand. Dwarven territories to reclaim. And more opportunities than you could possibly need to make a decision that seemed brilliant at the time.

If you've ever looked at Europa Universalis IV and thought, “This is pretty good, but I really wish I could spend an entire weekend worrying about the geopolitical consequences of underground dwarven civilization,” somebody has gone and built you a world.

Good luck getting to bed at a reasonable hour.