Re: EU IV, I'd really like to get into it, but the in-game tutorial is very, very bad. I've had several tries over the last year, but always gave up way to soon.

Is there a practical intro somewhere? One that allows me to actually play a game, even losing it badly, but not encounter half a dozen "huh, I have no idea what that means and what I should do now" situations every turn.

You could try some videos as bookwormAT suggested, alternatively (or in parallel) you can just play as one of the easy nations (Ottomans, Spain, Portugal, France, etc) and blunder about. The Ottomans are nicknamed Easymans by the fans.

That's how people learn Dwarfortress, which is even less penetrable. Remember, losing is fun.

I have nothing against losing, but the UI has dozens, if not hundreds of buttons at any time, most very inconspicuous (oh, that's a button?!), and no way to guess what they are for. It's... frustrating.

Oh, that's true. Though they do show you a bunch of the basic features in the official tutorial, don't they?

There is no actual tutorial, sorry. The best way to learn how to play EU is to watch a tutorial on youtube.

It's worth it, though...

> any Civilization game

Exactly, it's a good example of a game that uses 3D only for effect, without incorporating it at all in the gameplay.