If you've played outside the temperate zones of Europa Universalis V, you may have noticed telltale signs of climate disaster wreaking havoc on your military campaigns. The dreaded skull icon appears over your units, indicating they're taking attrition. But why? You've brought supply trains or negotiated food access with the locals, so you can be sure the troops aren't starving, nor have you exceeded the supply limit in the current location. Nonetheless your men seem to waste away with each passing month.

Congratulations! You've encountered your first proper winter. Mild climates, like those of Western Europe, are only considered to have mild winters, which translate to a slight dip in food production. But once you get into continental climates, you'll encounter normal and severe winters, which inflict unavoidable attrition to any units caught in the freeze. So, besides just parking your armies in mild climates during wintertime, how can you plan your invasions of colder climes to account for the risks involved?



Importantly, while many unit calculations occur day by day, attrition is inflicted at 8:00 a.m. on the first of each month. Besides simplifying the background calculations so the game can run at a decent speed, this also presents an opportunity: keep your operations in winter-affected regions brief, between the beginning of one month and the next, and you can avoid attrition entirely despite trudging your armies through the snow. This gives you time to seize an undefended provincial capital or attack an enemy splinter force before returning to an area with mild winter.

The Climate Mapmode will tell you what areas are safe from attrition: those that experience mild or no winter are safe to stand in all year round, at least as far as the weather is concerned. The Winter mapmode will show what severity of weather is affecting each province at a given time, with cold weather beginning in November or December, intensifying in January and February, and subsiding around March. If a location in a frigid climate is temporarily experiencing mild conditions, that might be a place you can safely gather your army... as long as those conditions hold true by the end of the month.

Keep in mind, sea zones are affected by weather too. Sending your fleets to the arctic might seem like a good idea until they start to suffer from attrition due to the extreme cold. If you're going to invade Norway, do it in the summertime.

That's it for this fairly simple guide. Hopefully it encourages you to consider how to plan around the in-game seasonal calendar. At the very least, you might consider waiting to declare war on a northern neighbor until after the ice has melted, lest you find yourself losing half your peasant levies and trained troops to General Winter.