EU4 - Development Diary - 23rd of April 2019

[Bobemor]

I would be very interested to see some further breakdown of countries played. Notably how many hours played. For instance, I wonder if Byzantium ranks so highly, not because slightly over 4% of people are playing it daily, but more because a much smaller percentage are playing many games over and over again. I have yet to make my way round to a Byzantium game, but I imagine it takes a FAIR amount of restarting. I therefore wonder if Custom Nations also are perhaps inflated by this. People throwing some ideas ideas together to see how they play out for a short while then trying another. I have very little experience with Custom Nations as they're just not my kind of thing, but my experience with them when they were realised was very much a trial and error short game thing. I don't think I ever made it past 1600 with any of them, but i definitely made a fair few back then. Not to say Custom Nations shouldn't receive attention, I just do wonder if this data in particular is perhaps misleading in some ways.

I imagine I'm not uncommon when I best remember my longer in length campaigns, than shorter campaigns accompanied by many restarts and eventually switching country. I have much fonder memories, and find it the kind of thing that brings me back to EU4 (and Paradox games as a whole largely), of my long drawn out Tunis campaign than my shortly aborted Mamluk run. By this statistical analysis, both games would be equally weighted.

I'm sure you guys in development look at all sorts of statistics, and I'd love to see more. I'm also aware that there could be some hidden caveats to this data; for instance it could only count unique plays, or doesn't count any games under 1 hour of play. If so, would be great to know any of these caveats!

Ultimately, I'd love to see, mainly from a curiosity perspective, a Tag by hours played chart (I apologise if this kind of thing has been shown before and i just haven't seen it). I imagine it'd provide a perhaps better suggestion of what the players spend their time playing.

 

[Giromon]

While you are adding on to the custom nations designer can you fix the emblems being off center and maybe even fix the emblems not appearing on the small flags on the provinces?

A THOUSAND TIMES THIS. It drives me BONKERS seeing the custom flag just ever so slightly off center, also the borders around it are rather bright and makes it exceedingly hard to see imo. but i am colorblind so *shrug*. just anything to give it an easier viewing while designing.

 

[eliphas8]

My biggest thing would be that I want the ability to modify countries that are in the game already, And to potentially have the choice for your custom nation to use the tag of a nation that isn't independent at game start.

So like for example, if I'm customizing a finnish nation I'd like the ability to go into a menu of potential tags that aren't in play and turn it into the FIN tag. With the requisite flag and name on the map.

By modifying existing nation's what k mean is the option to like, click on France, and go into a menu where I can modify the flag, religion, ideas, etc of that country like it was a custom nation.

 

[Zqrfmb]

If you are still accepting suggestions, random events that affect only one province should either be trimmed down or broadened in scope.

 

[Riekopo]

I just want Ruler/General/Admiral/Explorer/Conquistador portraits and more personalities for these characters. Please. Pretty please.

 

[wkscrombie]

I’d really like a way to more directly influence your diplomatic starting position with custom nations— choose allies, vassals, guarantees, et cetera. Of all the aspects of starting a CN game, that’s the one that I feel would add the most depth and opportunity.

As others have stated, it’d be nice to mix and match two ideas into one slot, as is the case with many vanilla nations.

Speaking of ideas, Portugal needs new ones. Yet (yet) another (another) friendly reminder <3

 

[Skyfus]

How about culture conversion in syncretised/harmonised provinces that are treated as true faith for every other purpose?
How about the bugginess of primitive status?
How about the soft nerf to asia with the trade company and capital restrictions?

 

[MrOobling]

Things I'd really like chagned about custom nations:
Better flag emblem selector- something similar to Stellaris' flag designer would be nice. A better colour selecter and design selector would be nice (clicking through the list is exhausting).
A better way to randomize the national ideas of your custom nation. Currently it can't randomize both which ideas you have and have much is invested in each. This would be nice for custom maps where you can't be bothered to fill in ideas for each individual nation.
Better random ideas for nations created in dynamic random world mode. There are far too many landlocked countries with useless navies and other generally useless ideas (spy network construction, heir chance etc...) are really common. Also, I'd like colonial ideas (an extra colonist, global settler increase) for random nations in Western Europe.
Allow editing already existing countries, specifically for CK2 conversions where you have stupid countries with the same name or colour.
Already existing cores in dynamic random world mode, as well as vassals and other dead nations.
A WAY TO MOVE YOUR CAPITAL AFTER YOU HAVE SELECTED YOUR FIRST PROVINCE.

 

[Tyr Alexander]

@DDRJake PLEASE for the love god allow us to choose any governmental type without restrictions for custom nations and random goverments. I will never be complete until there is a Shogun of France and one of his damiyos is the ruler of flanders.

 

[Metz]

Any chance in the future for colonial unit models like European troops recruited in Asia for instance?

 

[Adjutant Reflex]

One feature that I'd like to see added to custom nations is editing diplomatic relations at the start. Something like adding an ally or vassal at the start could be integrated into the points system based on how big/powerful they are, etc. Or at least allow us to pick historic friends/enemies.

 

[sr999]

In addition to a way to customize your unit models for your nation, I'd say we're due another pass of the available National Ideas for said custom nations. To the custom nation players out there, what would you really like to be able to tweak in your customized experience?

I'd most like to see some "quality of life" improvements for choosing ideas for custom nations: specifically (in order):

• "Push up" and "push down" buttons for rearranging order of chosen ideas.
• For each of the three mana categories - instead of always going to the beginning of the list and having to scroll all the way down to the end, remember and display the pageful of ideas last displayed.
  
• Rationalization of the inconsistent titling of ideas - for example putting all "Yearly" and "Monthly" prefixes to the end rather than the the start of the title, because it messes up the collation sequence (alphabetical order). Example: if you're thinking about the type of modifier (eg army tradition) you might be looking at the top of the list, unless you remember that it starts with "yearly" and thus appears at the other end of the list. Alternatively and probably less controversially, a "finder-chooser" tool (similar to province finder) so you just type in say "army" and see everything that matches it in all three mana categories.

More generally, in order of perceived desirability/pain:

• Permitting re-selection of capital province without having to back out altogether to the main menu.
• A "finder-chooser" facility to ease the trial-and-error pain of discovering to which culture group your desired culture actually belongs. Same for religion, government type, etc
• A facility to upgrade, and specifically to downgrade, initial development in chosen provinces, i.e. a bit like "exploit development" but prior to the start.
• Highlighting all provinces eligible for adding to the nation (ie in range of capital)
• Option to specify starting adviser choices would be nice.
• A facility to customize trade goods in chosen provinces.
  
• A facility to customize terrain type in chosen provinces.
  

 

[JayD]

I'll try to say what wasn't already said:
- Add option for player's custom nation(s) to decide if CN is HRE member/elector/emperor and ability to set EoC title owner
- Option for CN to include them in HRE even if they have capital outside HRE borders but in Europe and close to HRE
- Add ability to decide which estates are present for player's CN
- Remove age restrictions in CN's court menu (there were plenty of kings older than 40)
- Remove point limit for CN or add "sandbox" CN option where you can place countries any size you want
- Allow CN to have prov. all around the world (4 ex. one prov in Rome and 2nd in Rio) despite "This province is too far from your home provinces" inscription
- Allow using already existing in game coat of arms for CN creating
- Instead 32 map colors of CN's add RGB area where you define CN's color with numbers
- Allow regencies for CN's (ability to create CN without ruler)
- Add revolutionary governments to CN's gov. menu
- Allow to set starting conditions 4 CN's 4 ex.: stability, prestige, money, loans, corruption, army professionalism or mercantilism
- Place rebels on map (4 ex. Denmark has to fight pretender rebels on Gotland then why not allow CN's to suffer from rebels from start)
- Allow ALL religions at start date for CN's (protestant & reformed)

 

[Hypebear]

As others earlier in the thread have mentioned, I'd really really want to see multiple modifers in each idea slot, like Austria has. I think the general consensus about custom nations - in this thread at least - has been that they need to be more custom, with more customisation options, I honestly believe it would be fantastic if the custom nation opition was varied and thorough enough that you could effectively re-create basically any nation if you really wanted to. As it stands now, the colour and flag options are too limited, the lack of control over missions, absence of diplomatic settings to customise how your nation starts in regards to other nations, etc. And while I'd love these things, I haven't seen or perhaps I have missed any suggestions for what I think would add a lot of flavour and variety, which is negative modifers in your custom ideas (Combined with having multiple modifers), so in the spirit of laziness, I'm just going to quote myself from 4 years ago.

I tend to make a load of custom nations for a single game, based either on someone else's fiction or on my own fiction with concepts tying into the lore and history of the nations I'm making, and I find myself always wanting a negative national idea to better portray the nation I'm creating. Outside of roleplay reasons like this, I'd imagine it would allow players to create unique challenges, increasing the difficulty of the game or even doing their own psuedo-balancing outside of modding, for example making navies more expensive, and then you could couple this with something like having less durability, which would make you much more concerned about and protective of your fleet. Nerfing your own nation's national spy defense through your national ideas would make AIs with espionage more of a threat and might even make you specially target them, as another example. I'm sure there's players that are always interested in more of a challenge, and the ability to make your own nation give you the challenge you want appeals greatly to me, not just for roleplay purposes, but also for the interesting challenges it could bring.

I still find myself wishing that your custom nation was really your custom nation.

 

[Larva]

I dunno, how this relates to Custom Nations - but random ideas given to RNW nations are abysmal and frequently make little sense. Can we somehow get a sort of control over this? Like in starting menu a 'slider' RNW ideas - Fully Random/Some Sort Of Rigged Random (like having ranges of idea costs that will be used by RNW nations - so you can have them 'feeble' with low cost or really buffed with high cost put into ideas and Siberian Frontiers as tradition all over the place)/Random Preset(20-50 preset by devs idea sets distributed randomly - making some nations more warlike, others diplolike and so on - also with cool idea sets for fantasy nations like Kemet and Vinland). Nothing is worse, than seeing Vinland with some lousiest Yearly Meritocracy tradition.

 

[nightvoice]

I love custom nations I play them in between achievement runs.
However I rarely play serious as I tend to do female rulers in custom nation games.

As soon as your last dynasty member of your female line dies you instantly get a male ruler.
In 1 day no more matriarchy which kind of sucks if that is why you play custom games.
I already play enough patriarchs in normal games

This also applies to forming new nations which will directly start giving you male heirs.

This is just a small annoyance nothing major but something I would love to see changed.

 

[FrogCrusher]

To create your own government type & reforms could be cool. And creating your own religion would be perfect. Imagine spreading välfärd to the world!

You have mods to do that.

 

[TheDarkMaster]

To add to the CN stuff, could creating them be instead something you do manually with an alert coming up for it when it's available? Since we can state oversees territories, there could be good reason someone might want to retain their CN territory as core territory in a small country like Brittany or Scotland. Even if there are penalties like doubled state count cost or a higher autonomy floor, they're better off as full states rather than a CN. They can always make regions into a CN later once things change.

It would also be a good place to let us choose what the capital of the CN is going to be. CNs tend to get terrible capital provinces which are of course set as their historical capitals so they never change them.

 

[Zahari]

Being able to create a custom empire would be fun and when I say empire I mean smth similar to HRE with many different states in it, elections etc.

 

[PossibleTango]

You should add the ability to change a nations ideas, while still keeping the nation. For Example: I want to play France, get all their events, but I want to play it with different ideas than what they traditionally start out with.