Europa Universalis V Stuck on "Loading Game Resources"? I've Got a Bizarre Fix That Actually Works
If your CPU is from 2012 or earlier, Paradox has a special surprise for you. Here's how to get past it.
So, you just dropped your hard-earned cash on Europa Universalis V, hit "play," and... crash. Right on the "Loading Game Resources" part of the main menu. Over and over.
Welcome to the club. I've got an AMD processor from 2012, and it turns out our "old" CPUs are missing a specific instruction set called avx2.
This exact same thing happened with Victoria 3 at launch. I'm not about to upgrade my entire rig for one game, and you shouldn't have to either.
The good news? I found a fix. It's weird, it's janky, but it works.
The Fix: Emulating a Brain
We're going to use an official tool from Intel, the Software Development Emulator (SDE), to pretend we have avx2 for one single, painful launch. This works on AMD processors, too.
First, go to the Intel website and download the SDE.
Once it's downloaded, find the sde.exe file. Right-click it and create a shortcut. You can rename this shortcut to "EU5 Fix" or whatever you want, just keep it in the same folder.
Configuring the Shortcut
Right-click your new shortcut and go to Properties. You're looking for the Target field.
You need to replace whatever is in that box with this exact command. You must change the file path to match where your own eu5.exe is installed.
sde.exe -avx2 -- "E:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Europa Universalis V\binaries\eu5.exe"
Make sure the path to your game is correct.
The Long, Laggy Launch (This is Normal)
Now, right-click your shortcut and Run as administrator.
A black terminal (CMD) window will pop up. Just hit the Enter key.
And now... we wait. And I mean wait.
This is going to be the most agonizingly slow game launch of your life. It took me about 10 minutes for the game to even appear. It will lag. The music will stutter. It will look completely broken. Do not worry. This is part of the fix.
If you open Task Manager, you'll see the game running under the CMD drop-down. Just let it cook.
Once the game finally opens, try to click "Create New Game". If you can get to the map, great. If it's too laggy, just let it sit on the main menu for five minutes.
The Final Step
After you've let it run for a few minutes, quit the game by closing the black terminal window. Don't quit from the game menu.
Open your Task Manager and make sure sde.exe is fully closed.
Now, go back and launch Europa Universalis V normally, right from Steam or your GOG shortcut.
That's it. It should just... work.
I've played for three hours since doing this with zero crashes and no more loading screen of death. You can now delete that SDE shortcut. You're welcome.