EU4 1.37 (final)

EU4 Achievements: Every Difficulty Tier, Ranked by What Players Actually Achieve

EU4 has 373 achievements, and this page exists because the wiki’s difficulty ratings — while genuinely useful — are one editor’s opinion until you check them against what nearly a million Steam owners actually managed to do. Cross-referencing the wiki’s full list against real Steam completion data turns out to validate the ratings well, but it also surfaces a short, specific list of achievements the ratings undersell: mechanically simple, but so rarely attempted that almost nobody has one.

The headline number

The single most-completed achievement in the entire game — “Until death do us apart” — sits at 28.4% Steam completion. Not a majority. Not even a third. EU4’s achievement culture skews toward players who finish campaigns and chase specific conditions deliberately; casual completion of even the easiest achievement is genuinely uncommon. Keep this number as your baseline before judging any individual achievement’s percentage as “low.”

Does the wiki’s difficulty rating actually predict real completion?

Yes, and cleanly. Averaging Steam completion percentages within each of the wiki’s five editor-assigned tiers:

Wiki difficulty	Achievements rated	Average Steam completion	Median
Very Easy (VE)	55	10.6%	8.3%
Easy (E)	78	4.8%	3.4%
Medium (M)	114	2.5%	1.6%
Hard (H)	86	1.2%	0.9%
Very Hard (VH)	34	0.9%	0.8%

That’s a clean, monotonic gradient — good evidence the wiki’s community-assigned difficulty tiers are tracking something real rather than arbitrary editor taste. Use the tier as a reliable first filter when picking a target.

The exception list: rated easy, barely attempted

Ten achievements carry the wiki’s Very Easy rating despite sitting under 3% Steam completion — a real mismatch between “how hard the mechanic is” and “how often anyone actually does it.” Reading the pattern across all ten, it’s consistent: the mechanic itself is trivial, but the achievement requires an obscure starting nation or a specific rule most players have never encountered.

Achievement	Steam completion	Requirement
Imposter Syndrome	0.7%	As Sus (a joke/meme nation), have three countries hostile to you within a short window
David the Builder	1.3%	As Georgia, have no free building slots in any owned province
From Humble Origins	1.3%	As a custom nation with ≤50 points, reach a specific development threshold
The Six Nations	1.7%	Form a Federation of at least six nations as the Iroquois
Krabater	1.9%	Form Croatia and station a cavalry unit in Stockholm
Turning the Tide	2.2%	Start as a Steppe Horde in 1444 and embrace all institutions
Foul Mouthed	2.6%	Scornfully insult 10 bordering nations
Poland can into space	2.6%	As Poland, max every technology (level 32)

The practical read: if you’re achievement-hunting and comfortable stepping outside the usual major-power rotation, this list is genuinely efficient — the wiki’s “Very Easy” label is honest about the mechanical bar, it’s just that almost nobody plays Sus, Georgia, or the Iroquois long enough to notice how low that bar actually is.

What PDX Tools adds

PDX Tools — a save-file analysis and leaderboard community — tracks a curated subset of roughly 54 achievements, and its own difficulty labels skew toward Medium, Hard, and Insane; no Very Easy or Easy achievements appear in its tracked set at all. This isn’t a gap in their data so much as a reflection of who uses the tool: players uploading save files for leaderboard comparison are disproportionately attempting the longer, harder, multi-decade achievements rather than quick wins. Where a PDX Tools rating and a wiki rating overlap, treat it as a second opinion from a more hardcore-leaning community rather than a contradiction — the two sources are sampling different populations of achievement-hunters, not disagreeing about the same one.

DLC and version notes

106 of the 373 achievements currently require at least one DLC mechanic to complete — worth checking before committing to a specific target if you’re playing a base-game-only campaign. Achievements were added incrementally across EU4’s life and the wiki tracks the specific version each debuted in, but — unlike nearly every other data point on this site — this isn’t patch-sensitive information that needs periodic re-verification: EU4 is in its final version, and achievement conditions aren’t retroactively altered once added.

Ironman is required for the overwhelming majority of achievements — no manual saves, no console access. This is also the reason our console commands page carries no achievement-loss warning for EU4 specifically: the console only works outside Ironman, where there are no achievements to lose in the first place.

Sources checked

Achievement names, descriptions, and wiki-editor difficulty ratings are transcribed from the wiki’s full list, itself generated to track the game’s own achievement definitions. Completion percentages are transcribed directly from Steam’s public global achievement statistics page (372 of 373 achievements matched by exact name; one likely renamed or delisted achievement did not match). PDX Tools’ difficulty tier was matched by name prefix against 54 of the 373 wiki entries, reflecting PDX Tools’ curated, harder-skewing subset rather than the full list.

Frequently asked

What's the actual easiest achievement to go for first?

By Steam completion data, the top completed achievements are 'Until death do us apart' (28.4%), 'Victorious!' (27.0%), and 'That's a Grand Army' (26.8%) — all rated Very Easy by wiki editors and all achievable through fairly natural play with any reasonably strong nation, no obscure knowledge required.

Are there achievements that are mechanically easy but almost nobody completes?

Yes — a specific, useful category: ten Very-Easy-rated achievements sit below 3% Steam completion. The pattern is consistent: the mechanic itself is simple, but the achievement requires starting as an obscure nation (Sus, Croatia-former, Georgia, the Iroquois) or knowing a specific undocumented rule (like the technology-cap requirement in 'Poland can into space'). These are the best value picks if you're achievement hunting and don't mind an unusual nation choice — the wiki's Very Easy rating is honest about the mechanical difficulty, just not about how few players ever attempt the setup.

Does the wiki's difficulty rating actually mean anything, or is it just editor opinion?

It holds up well against real data. Averaged across all rated achievements, Very Easy sits at 10.6% Steam completion, Easy at 4.8%, Medium at 2.5%, Hard at 1.2%, and Very Hard at 0.86% — a clean, monotonic gradient. Treat the five-tier rating as a reliable first filter, and use the completion-rate outliers above as the exception list.

What does PDX Tools' difficulty rating add that the wiki doesn't?

PDX Tools tracks a curated subset of about 54 achievements — skewed toward Medium, Hard, and Insane — as part of its save-file analysis and leaderboard community, which tends to attempt the more involved, multi-decade achievements rather than quick wins. Where it overlaps with the wiki's rating, it's a useful second opinion from a more hardcore-leaning community; it isn't a substitute for the full 373-achievement wiki list.

Do achievements require Ironman mode?

Yes, for the vast majority — Ironman mode (no manual saves, no console access) is the standard requirement referenced across the wiki's achievement conditions. This is also why the console commands page on this site is safe to use freely: achievements and the console are mutually exclusive by design, so using commands for a casual campaign was never going to cost you an achievement you weren't pursuing anyway.

Are achievement requirements patch-sensitive like other EU4 data?

Less so than almost anything else on this site. EU4 is in its final version, and achievements were added incrementally across the game's life (the wiki tracks the specific version each was introduced in) but aren't retroactively changed. The one caveat: some achievement conditions do reference DLC-gated mechanics — 106 of 373 achievements currently require at least one DLC to complete.

Sources checked

Three independent sources cross-referenced: the wiki's full achievement list with editor-assigned difficulty ratings (file-verified tier — the list itself is generated from the game's own achievement definitions), Steam's global completion percentages (372 of 373 matched by name), and PDX Tools' curated competitive-achievement difficulty tier (54 of 373 matched — PDX Tools tracks a subset, skewed toward Medium-and-harder achievements, not the full list). This is the highest-confidence page on the site: EU4 is feature-complete, so none of this data is patch-sensitive in the way EU5 pages are.