so just played the demo to see if i would have like it, put in about 4hrs of work on Austria. I had absolutely no idea what i was doing, kept pushing wasd keys to move and was switching the map a whole assortment of colors. I first started with the whole northern border of Austria in a Finnish revolt where they had like 60 troops which i eventually overcame. I took over Antwerpen and the surrounding area after the revolt but couldnt figure out how to annex all of the territories they had taken, eventually they got to keep one territory which i broke an alliance with to go to war to take it as well. Venice kept claiming my land every like 2 months or so, I couldnt figure out how to research anything, it kept telling me to colonize Africa and i had no idea how to do it. I had a stability of -4 for most of the game, Played for like an hour with 1 advisor because i wasnt sure what to do, and kept having people leave the Holy Roman Empire. Also didnt realize i was the king of the Holy Roman Empire until near the end of my playthrough lol. Still dont understand the point in getting access with other peoples ports because it didnt seem to extend the range of my vessels at all. Never once saw a pirate btw, do they exist, because all i kept seeing was Venice, Spain, and Frisia sailing all over the goddamn place. Also, the trade system totally lost me, do i have to send/build a boat? or do we autotrade once we pick a place to trade with? Also what made other places better to trade with than another, since half the places i saw just had 0's for everything? did i not discover those? it said i had already did.
Well in the end, playing the demo sparked my interest to wanna play more, but im still not sure what to do, or if it will have replay value enough to wanna keep playing. I bought civilization 5 and played through it on the gigantic world one time and then never really played it again.