Names of Nations is mod that increases the consistency and historical immersion of Victoria III, primarily by expanding on the games dynamic name feature. Names of Nations gives every country a full/official name based on their government type whenever they lack a specific scripted dynamic name. Thus a country won't change from 'France' to 'French Republic' but from the 'Kingdom of France' to the 'French Republic'.
[Europe at Gamestart, with the VicII-Style map mod]
Every country that doesn't have a dynamic name specified will get a 'generic' dynamic name based on it's government type. Every government type will cause a generic dynamic name.
[Here Greece's Unique name is used for a Presidential or Parliamentary Republic, but the others are Generic. Additionally, all countries will now get a random shade of red as a map colour when they get a communist government, a system which (should) avoid any neighbouring countries having the same colour (though only checked when the country becomes communist, it's not checked afterwards)]
Another particular favourite of mine is Japan, which is now no longer called the 'Japanese Shogunate' at the start of the game, but instead the 'Tokugawa Shougunate'. This is not just a set name, though, however. It is fully dynamic and will change to whatever dynasty rules Japan as a Shogunate (in the event of a civil war that isn't the Meiji Restoriation.
[Note the rendering of Salish, as it ususally is spelt in English-language sources and general use of more common English exonyms]
In all there are many, many unique dynamic names that have been added to the game, as historically accurately as possible both new or fixed/tweaked from vanilla. In addition some flags have been added or fixed compared to the base game. Additionally, due to the increased importance of the base country rank (this determines both base prestige and which government type one gets e.g. Duchy, Kingdom, Empire &c), some countries have had their base country rank changed from values that would give them incorrect names (though it's not 1:1, the UK, France and Italy are all still Empire-tier countries despite not being Empires (unless Napoléon's around).
In addition to country names, some other small localisation strings and names are tweaked/added by the mod to add a little bit of flavour and immersion.
[Again, consistency or full-ness, as well as making 'HM Government' full and dynamic (based on the gender of the monarch)]
[Every country will have a generic name for it's Army that appears in the formation tab and General tab (<Adjective> Army and <Adjective> Navy or Royal/Imperial <Adjective Navy>), though some countries have specific uniqe names for them.]
Additionally, wars have names! Vanilla VicIII gives wars a very boring and clinical name, however Names of Nations gives wars names based on the primary wargoal type, as well as some specific historical wars being named.
[Some unique and some generic War names. Note it's the American-Mexican War rather than the Mexican-American war because it's the <Initiator>-<Target> War. I could actually potentially invert this and maybe even add the 'prefix' adjective (e.g. Anglo-, Franco-, Sino- &c), though that'd be in a future update sometime.]
Finally, Powerblocs are a bit of a dissapointment in that their Coats of Arms are extremely ugly and very strange, so some of the starting ones have been changed (and renamed for consistency). Eventually I plan to make extra Coats of Arms for powerblocs that could be founded during the game however that is not yet implemented.
[Names Changed to English for consistency; unsure what the best CoA to use for the Russian empire would be but this is the one currently used.]
That's not all, though! There are some extra features included, which can be controlled by game rules, helpfully labelled as being part of the mod.
[AI Powerbloc Creation is still WIP, currently only enables/disables AI creation of them]
The first two are fairly straightforward, the United Kingdom (of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) and the Free(, Independent, and Strictly Neutral) City of Cracow (with its Territory) have rather long and unwieldy names, especially in relation to their map size. thus there is an option to shorten them or keep them in full. For the UK, there is also the option to 'disambiguate', that is, shorten it unless there is more than one United Kingdom in the world (e.g. Sweden-Norway, Portugal and Brazil &c). This option affects all UKs, not just Great Britain.
AI Capital Movement is also quite straightforward: by default, the AI will never move it's capital. Thus if a revolution (which can never take the capital state, thus will have a captial in a different capital state) wins a civil war, it's capital won't be move back to the 'de jure'/historical/sensible capital. With this game rule enabled then every so often the game will check through AI countries and move some countries' capital to somewhere sensible for them, depending on their politics (e.g. Communist Russia will move to Moscow, but France will always be in Paris).
Nation demotion is also somewhat simple, similar to CKII/CKIII's 'de jure requirement' rule. Certain nations (currently only the Great Britain, Belgium and Denmark, will be changed to a tag more reflective of their status if they are rump states. (Such as GB -> England if Scotland's Independent, Belgium -> Flanders/Wallonia if the other is independent (or Flanders is Dutch) and Denmark -> Iceland/Greenland if they lose mainland Denmark (and Iceland).
Finally, the meatiest of them all, gameplay changes. Although originally the idea was to keep the game to be purely flavour/aesthetic or 'ironman compatible (spiritually)', I did eventually add some gameplay changes that help fix immersion-breaking issues with the base game or nudge the game towards some more historical map results. First of all, this will affect some of the setup if enabled:
[A unique ideology for British (and some others') intelligentsia should make republican revolutions less likely, and a new ideology for American landowners should make coups for autocracy less ubiquitous.]
One of my biggest bugbears with Victoria III, however, is how incredibly rare Germany, or even the North German Federation, forming without player intervention is. In Victoria II it happened most of the time unless you stopped it which is more fun, immersive and historically plausible. One of the big issues with the setup at the moment is that Prussia rarely completes the Schleswig-Holstein question and part of this is because it lacks a land border with Denmark. Thus, with gameplay changes enabled, the following event can fire if Denmark changes the Status of Schleswig or Holstein:
[This event gives Prussia a claim to Schleswig-Holstein, starts a play to take all Danish-ruled states therein and triggers an event to every country in the German Confederation to join the Diploplay, which the AI will always accept, giving the Germans a direct land border.]Considering this change, enabling gameplay changes will also change the requirements to form Germany, adding the requirement that the Schleswig-Holstein Question JE be resolved before Germany can be formed. This is also the trigger for the unification candidate mechanics, meaning that the Brothers' War will not happen until after the Schleswig War has been won.
[If gameplay changes are disabled, then the vanilla requirement (just the German National Identity JE) are applicaple instead.]
Besides that, there are changed requirements for Scandinavia (Norway must be annexed first, so you don't get auto-approval for Norwegian states as Sweden), Danubia (can now be formed by South German nations, but requires pan-nationalism and multiculturalism, but will be the United States of Greater Austria if formed by Austria, which pairs nicely with added Austria-Hungary content, where with gameplay changes enabled the Hungarian revolution can happen, and if that happens or the Matter of Hungary JE is failed, then Hungary is released as a Personal Union subject and Austria will use its Red-White-Red flag.
There's also an event for the Dominican Republic's independence from Haiti, Newfoundland and New Zealand to be split of from Canada/Australia, the CSA/FSA not having Yankee/Dixie culture and the USA losing the respective culture if they lose the civil war, any British Colony getting rereleased if the AI decides to annex them, or the British Raj annexing all of the Princely States once the Company is nationalised (instead of them all become direct vassals of the UK) and if Qing has a civil war led by a Han Monarch, a new Dynasty will be founded (pseudo-randomly picked from a handful of possible ones).
In terms of setup, enabling gameplay changes will make Puerto Rico a subject of Spain rather than directly owned (this stops them giving it to Cuba which causes Cuban revolts to get all of Cuba because Cuba gets PR), removes Argentina and Chile's claims on each other's (modern) territory for cleaner borders, gives Paraguay a claim in Alto Paraguay and Portugal some claims in africa to help them get their territory and gives the Dutch East Indies and British Raj modifiers that reduce their liberty desire change as the new subject mechanics model such fully-dependent client states poorly.
As for future updates, I plan to continue updating the mod, adding new names or bits of flavour. I greatly appreciate any feedback/suggestions/corrections (in particular suggestions for names of Theocracies and Technocracies, as they're very rare/nonexistant historically, so very limited source to draw from) anyone may have (and that is part of the reason of creating this thread.) the mod is of course available on the Steam Workshop.
Additionally, the mod is also (mostly) translated into Chinese, although I am not a native speaker and far from fluent, so any help or suggestions on that is also appreciated, as I have recieved some already.
Translation into other languages is possible though a lot of work, particularly European langauges due to grammatical features like grammatical gender and adjective inflection that make having a full name appear in different contexts difficult as it would need to be different. There are some possible workarounds but they are time-consuming and tedious. I have done some work on a German Translation but that is still WIP and might never be completed as it's currently a low priority.
[Europe at Gamestart, with the VicII-Style map mod]
[Here Greece's Unique name is used for a Presidential or Parliamentary Republic, but the others are Generic. Additionally, all countries will now get a random shade of red as a map colour when they get a communist government, a system which (should) avoid any neighbouring countries having the same colour (though only checked when the country becomes communist, it's not checked afterwards)]
[The Tokugawa Shogunate giving way to the Nabeshima Shogunate (just the name of the randomly-generated Shogun, not deterministic). The country's adjective is that of the dynasty, so 'Tokugawa Army' or 'Nabeshima Market' &c]
Decentralised countries are also touched up. As they are not specific states but designations for cultural groups, they get a dynamic name of <Adjective> Tribes. Some American nations still have non-generic dynamic names.
[Note the rendering of Salish, as it ususally is spelt in English-language sources and general use of more common English exonyms]
In all there are many, many unique dynamic names that have been added to the game, as historically accurately as possible both new or fixed/tweaked from vanilla. In addition some flags have been added or fixed compared to the base game. Additionally, due to the increased importance of the base country rank (this determines both base prestige and which government type one gets e.g. Duchy, Kingdom, Empire &c), some countries have had their base country rank changed from values that would give them incorrect names (though it's not 1:1, the UK, France and Italy are all still Empire-tier countries despite not being Empires (unless Napoléon's around).
In addition to country names, some other small localisation strings and names are tweaked/added by the mod to add a little bit of flavour and immersion.
[Again, consistency or full-ness, as well as making 'HM Government' full and dynamic (based on the gender of the monarch)]
[Every country will have a generic name for it's Army that appears in the formation tab and General tab (<Adjective> Army and <Adjective> Navy or Royal/Imperial <Adjective Navy>), though some countries have specific uniqe names for them.]
Additionally, wars have names! Vanilla VicIII gives wars a very boring and clinical name, however Names of Nations gives wars names based on the primary wargoal type, as well as some specific historical wars being named.
[Some unique and some generic War names. Note it's the American-Mexican War rather than the Mexican-American war because it's the <Initiator>-<Target> War. I could actually potentially invert this and maybe even add the 'prefix' adjective (e.g. Anglo-, Franco-, Sino- &c), though that'd be in a future update sometime.]
[Names Changed to English for consistency; unsure what the best CoA to use for the Russian empire would be but this is the one currently used.]
That's not all, though! There are some extra features included, which can be controlled by game rules, helpfully labelled as being part of the mod.
[AI Powerbloc Creation is still WIP, currently only enables/disables AI creation of them]
The first two are fairly straightforward, the United Kingdom (of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) and the Free(, Independent, and Strictly Neutral) City of Cracow (with its Territory) have rather long and unwieldy names, especially in relation to their map size. thus there is an option to shorten them or keep them in full. For the UK, there is also the option to 'disambiguate', that is, shorten it unless there is more than one United Kingdom in the world (e.g. Sweden-Norway, Portugal and Brazil &c). This option affects all UKs, not just Great Britain.
AI Capital Movement is also quite straightforward: by default, the AI will never move it's capital. Thus if a revolution (which can never take the capital state, thus will have a captial in a different capital state) wins a civil war, it's capital won't be move back to the 'de jure'/historical/sensible capital. With this game rule enabled then every so often the game will check through AI countries and move some countries' capital to somewhere sensible for them, depending on their politics (e.g. Communist Russia will move to Moscow, but France will always be in Paris).
Nation demotion is also somewhat simple, similar to CKII/CKIII's 'de jure requirement' rule. Certain nations (currently only the Great Britain, Belgium and Denmark, will be changed to a tag more reflective of their status if they are rump states. (Such as GB -> England if Scotland's Independent, Belgium -> Flanders/Wallonia if the other is independent (or Flanders is Dutch) and Denmark -> Iceland/Greenland if they lose mainland Denmark (and Iceland).
Finally, the meatiest of them all, gameplay changes. Although originally the idea was to keep the game to be purely flavour/aesthetic or 'ironman compatible (spiritually)', I did eventually add some gameplay changes that help fix immersion-breaking issues with the base game or nudge the game towards some more historical map results. First of all, this will affect some of the setup if enabled:
[A unique ideology for British (and some others') intelligentsia should make republican revolutions less likely, and a new ideology for American landowners should make coups for autocracy less ubiquitous.]
One of my biggest bugbears with Victoria III, however, is how incredibly rare Germany, or even the North German Federation, forming without player intervention is. In Victoria II it happened most of the time unless you stopped it which is more fun, immersive and historically plausible. One of the big issues with the setup at the moment is that Prussia rarely completes the Schleswig-Holstein question and part of this is because it lacks a land border with Denmark. Thus, with gameplay changes enabled, the following event can fire if Denmark changes the Status of Schleswig or Holstein:
[This event gives Prussia a claim to Schleswig-Holstein, starts a play to take all Danish-ruled states therein and triggers an event to every country in the German Confederation to join the Diploplay, which the AI will always accept, giving the Germans a direct land border.]
[If gameplay changes are disabled, then the vanilla requirement (just the German National Identity JE) are applicaple instead.]
Besides that, there are changed requirements for Scandinavia (Norway must be annexed first, so you don't get auto-approval for Norwegian states as Sweden), Danubia (can now be formed by South German nations, but requires pan-nationalism and multiculturalism, but will be the United States of Greater Austria if formed by Austria, which pairs nicely with added Austria-Hungary content, where with gameplay changes enabled the Hungarian revolution can happen, and if that happens or the Matter of Hungary JE is failed, then Hungary is released as a Personal Union subject and Austria will use its Red-White-Red flag.
There's also an event for the Dominican Republic's independence from Haiti, Newfoundland and New Zealand to be split of from Canada/Australia, the CSA/FSA not having Yankee/Dixie culture and the USA losing the respective culture if they lose the civil war, any British Colony getting rereleased if the AI decides to annex them, or the British Raj annexing all of the Princely States once the Company is nationalised (instead of them all become direct vassals of the UK) and if Qing has a civil war led by a Han Monarch, a new Dynasty will be founded (pseudo-randomly picked from a handful of possible ones).
In terms of setup, enabling gameplay changes will make Puerto Rico a subject of Spain rather than directly owned (this stops them giving it to Cuba which causes Cuban revolts to get all of Cuba because Cuba gets PR), removes Argentina and Chile's claims on each other's (modern) territory for cleaner borders, gives Paraguay a claim in Alto Paraguay and Portugal some claims in africa to help them get their territory and gives the Dutch East Indies and British Raj modifiers that reduce their liberty desire change as the new subject mechanics model such fully-dependent client states poorly.
As for future updates, I plan to continue updating the mod, adding new names or bits of flavour. I greatly appreciate any feedback/suggestions/corrections (in particular suggestions for names of Theocracies and Technocracies, as they're very rare/nonexistant historically, so very limited source to draw from) anyone may have (and that is part of the reason of creating this thread.) the mod is of course available on the Steam Workshop.
Additionally, the mod is also (mostly) translated into Chinese, although I am not a native speaker and far from fluent, so any help or suggestions on that is also appreciated, as I have recieved some already.
Translation into other languages is possible though a lot of work, particularly European langauges due to grammatical features like grammatical gender and adjective inflection that make having a full name appear in different contexts difficult as it would need to be different. There are some possible workarounds but they are time-consuming and tedious. I have done some work on a German Translation but that is still WIP and might never be completed as it's currently a low priority.
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