Hello EU4 fans! The team have now all returned them their vacations and resumed work, so it's time to get going with the development diaries once more. Because this week has been a busy one, today's diary will be a bit short but should address a topic that people have asked a lot of questions about:

Future Improvements to the Nation Designer

The Nation Designer is, as has been previously mentioned, probably the biggest feature added to EU4 since launch. It's proven quite popular, with custom nations consistently beating out every historical nation as the most popular choice of country to play. It's also received a number of updates, adding things such as the ability to name your own ideas and improved interface support.

However, much as how it is with EU4 itself, with a feature like the nation designer you never feel quite 'done'. There's always more you can add, things to improve and tweak, and we frequently receive requests for updates and improvements to the nation designer, as well as questions about when previously suggested improvements might surface. As such, today's DD is going to be about updates to the Nation Designer: Specifically which ones we either have already done (internally) or are planning to add in the not distant future. So without further ado, here are the planned changes coming to the Nation Designer:

Saving Custom Nation Templates
Probably the most requested feature for the Nation Designer has been the ability to save your custom nations for later use. This has now been implemented and will be available in 1.14. What it means is that while designing your nation, there are now two buttons called 'Save' and 'Load'. Save will save a copy of your Custom Nation (minus the provinces it currently holds) to your hard drive, and Load will load up that copy, replacing the current Custom Nation you are designing with the saved one (again, minus its provinces). This allows you to, for example, quickly re-use a particular setup of ideas or a flag and color combination that you enjoy.

Choosing Government Rank
This is really more of a fix than an addition, as it was something left out of 1.12/1.13 due to time constraints and will be added in 1.14. When designing a custom nation, you will be able to choose your government rank, with Duchy rank being free, Kingdom rank costing 10 points, and Empire rank costing 30 points.

Improved Color Picking
This is something that is not yet done, but we hope to have done for 1.14. In addition to picking from a list of preset colors, I want to add the ability to choose your country's color from an in-game RGB picker, allowing for true color customization.

More Patterns and Emblems
As above, this is something we hope to have done for 1.14. We want to add support for more texture files for country flag patterns and emblems, so that we can create more options for flag customization.

Better Random Setup
While not fully part of the Nation Designer, the random setup option that fills the world with randomly generated countries is nonetheless a feature that we want to improve on. Right now, it suffers a bit from being 'samey': You'll generally always end up with a couple megablobs, a number of medium sized countries, and a general feeling of lack of plausibility on behalf of the generated world. We want to add more options for controlling the size of the countries generated, as well as better country naming (being able to name countries after regions rather than capitals, for example) and better random idea generation. We're also considering adding options such as different tech group distribution and different uncolonized parts of the world.

Achievements
Though the Nation Designer supports Ironman, there are currently no achievements that are able to be unlocked while playing a Custom Nation. In the future, we plan to add some Nation Designer-specific achievements that will require particular point limits to be followed, and may as an example require you to start as a Norse Custom Nation and conquer Northern Europe.


If you have other improvements you'd like to see, feel free to bring them up in this thread and I will do my best to answer as to whether they are likely to ever happen. Note that I will not discuss ETAs on when patches containing these changes may show up.

 

[ecrurudesby]

I've no reason to distrust Wiz when he says custom nations are more popular than any historical nation. And given that, it's understandable that Paradox would choose to focus on this feature. Just a shame personally because it's not something I've used or really plan to use.

Hoping for some more general bug fixes, improvements etc.

 

[MWSampson]

I would like to see the random nations create a random sized HRE based around a certain point on mainland Europe. It would have to be on a normal-ish distribution for its size, but the mono-blob of HRE in amongst nations strikes me as odd.
I also propose that a way perhaps to approach the random nations is to approach it from the RNW new approach. For certain regions create arbitrary sets of nations. For example Iberia and Morocco could have varying degrees of "shattered" with vary degrees of Islam and Christianity. In the British Isles there can be varying amounts of Norwegian, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and England.

This would allow borders to be more natural, respecting the region map-view. I guess it's harder work but if each region has 10-12 different settings and you split Europe into 10 regions that's a massive number right off the bat, and although a good amount of work, would make a novel 1-time feature one that I might return to.

 

[Clausewitz_]

ETA in final 1.13 release?

 

[ASmallFish]

Can you let us edit CK2 imported nations? That would be superb as 90% end up with Generic Ideas.

 

[Greyhound_Gen.]

The planned improvements for the Nation Designer in this diary cover pretty much everything I was hoping for (especially with regards to flag options) - 1.14 will be amazing!

One small thing I would like to request to change but realise probably won't happen (as I doubt it's relevant to many people) would be if Florence (LAN), Malta (JAI), Andhra (YOR) and the Maldives (DGL) could be given new, more suitable tag codes and perhaps the nations they replaced (Lancaster, Jalayirids, York and Doughlat) could be reinstated so that they could occasionaly spawn in games with the Random Nations setup? It just seems a bit of a waste to get rid of them completely when they could be used elsewhere, and a big part of the appeal of Random Nations, at least to me, is giving rarely-seen tags the opportunity to appear and actually be relevant. I don't know if it would be possible to make it so that the game ignores these 'ghost' tags during normal games so that there's no burden on processing speed from the extra tags but if so that would be ideal.

Anyway, I realise there are far bigger priorities for you to deal with at this point, but I figured I may as well ask now while there's still the chance it might happen. Either way, I'm looking foward to seeing what the future brings!

 

[panther-anthro]

Random Cultures and Religions for the random nations please.

 

[net.split]

I oppose it because I am afraid that once it makes it to the Custom Nations people will campaign to get it on the base game and I am not ok with that unless very specific circumstances are meet(I suggest MIL 4 for a female to become a commander)
The idea that "Its fantasy therefore we shouldnt care about history" makes it so I can ask for my Bear Cavalry and Gorilla Artillery because "Its not the real world"
So in short I don't really care how people make their Dragon Nations with Gorilla artillery I am just afraid that female commanders on the Nation Designer would motivate people to ask for it on the base game because equality and stuff and I think that whitewashes the history of sexism of this time.

At the same time you're probably overstating things a bit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_warfare_(1500-1699)

Many of these were defending cities and castles, which isn't quite represented well in EU4's battle system, but the volume alone is enough that it's actually more ahistorical to ban women as generals as a gameplay mechanic. The MIL requirement is unnecessary, though if the AI is too eager to put its monarch into battle then maybe you'd need to tweak that.

Dahomey, an actual state in the game, should recruit women generals frequently instead of only being able to use the monarch.

 

[that-guy-is-it]

I want a to import flags for the nation designer. I am a Tropico Fan, and would like to import the Tropican flag into EUIV to make the country in game (and then convert to Vic2 and HOI 3/4)

 

[Wizzington]

The ability to copy an existing nations ideas and modifying them for your custom nation would be nice.

Changing existing nations would require a huge amount of work and honestly isn't too likely to happen. Same goes for copying ideas from one.

Will we be able to import our own TGA files for this feature ? Right now we can change a country flag quite easily by swapping the TGA, but i don't think we're able to change the flag of a custom nation (best would be to be able to add our own patterns/emblems to the flag designer in game+ )

The problem with this is multiplayer - different people using different tga files etc.

 

[Wizzington]

What about setting up royal marriage?

Adding the ability to set up diplomatic links would be cool but would be such a huge undertaking it's not too likely.

So is this a no on Hellenic and other Pagan religions on the Nation Designer? D:

We're still planning to add more of the CK2 religions.

I would like to see the possibility to add "two things" to the same idea, like florence that has -5% to both tech cost and idea cost in the first idea. Maybe the cost in creating such an idea should be higher than just the sum of the two.

You can mod this but we have no plans to support it in the base game.

 

[Wizzington]

Is it possible to add regnal numbering to costum nations? At the moment if i name my king Johann I and the heir Johann he will be king Johann and not king Johann II. Just a minor detail really.

This sounds pretty easy, I'll look into it.

Wiz!

Pay points for development in claimed provinces. I started a separate post about this a while ago, but it is something I always wished I could do when designing a nation. I want to start as a two-province iceland, but with an alternate history, as the pinnacle of civilization.

Thanks for the greatest strategy game ever!

This is something I'd like to add as well, but can't promise we'll ever have time for.

Can we have an unlimited point mode for going crazy?

You can easily mod the point limits if you want unlimited points.

 

[JacobMunro]

Paying points for development is also a highly desirable thing for me. I mean picking an already developed place like Prague for a custom OPM is one thing, but what if I want to be the majestic Imperial Free City of Bamberg?

 

[Ornlu Wolfjarl]

Can we get the option to change the name of the country we are playing during the game? Both for regular and custom nations.

Also can we get custom cultures generated as well?

 

[winddy]

If you have other improvements you'd like to see, feel free to bring them up in this thread and I will do my best to answer as to whether they are likely to ever happen. Note that I will not discuss ETAs on when patches containing these changes may show up.

How about a fusion idea and or unique idea? Like USA and Hungary's tolerance, Spanish's fabricate claim on colony, Austria's unique imperial authority increase with diplomatic reputation etc. ? But just make it unique for national designer country. Like how you fusion two ideas into one idea. Said, diplomatic reputation + immune negative tolerance, Tolerance toward heretic + unique idea etc. I also suggest that there will be unique idea pool that you can add additional slot for more powerful version (just like upgrading weapons) but it will cost more x1.5 extra points.

Some of unique idea pool I can think of for now: Gain a free casus beli against Western nations/Eastern Europe/Ottoman as a conquest casus beli + military unit morale recovery
Torelance (similar to Hungary/USA) + reduce national unrest
Auto-explore (similar to Russia's Siberian frontier) + envoy travel time. Etc.

 

[negativekarz]

Will the bug that makes all models for all Custom Nation related things level-1-westerns ever be fixed

 

[Krebsig]

Adding the ability to set up diplomatic links would be cool but would be such a huge undertaking it's not too likely.

This is a shame, but thanks for answering.

 

[Savagepumpkin]

Can´t wait for this. I hope the price is reasonable haha

 

[Tiax]

The problem with this is multiplayer - different people using different tga files etc.

You can't transmit a 40kb tga file? Or at the very least, disable imported flags for multiplayer?

 

[FeedTheHorse]

The ability to use the features of the El Dorado religions (Nahuatl, Maya, Inti) without being primitive would be great. I appreciate it would be very powerful on a Western nation, but equally it's a custom set-up so the user must have considered this - if we want to have a Nahuatl Nepalese nation raiding northern India from the Himalayas for captives why not?

 

[ahyangyi]

Could it be possible to play a nation that is not available at a specific start but exists already as a tag ?

Eg) Playing as Persia in 1444

Not sure about your Persia example, but I do want to be able to play Ashanti in 1444...

 

[Deye99]

Will be cool if we could choose a template of a real nation in the "saved template tab" (or in another tab, whatever), and play with this nation in a different year, or even change the nation a little bit to make it more interesting.