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.

 

[Diceman]

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

 

[Johan]

Late developmental diary about really vague improvements to the custom nation option. Ya vacations really make people more productive *eye roll*. And definitely dont ask about the next patch!

Are you trying to troll?

 

[Ironicus]

Something that has always bothered me is that there are historical territorial configurations you literally cannot replicate. I usually don't want to upset the landscape too much but rather replace a historical country with my custom nation.
There is no way to give Custom-Genoa their Crimean holdings.
There is no way to give Custom-Venice their Crete.
Those two can be somewhat worked around by snaking land connected to your capital towards the provinces. But of course this greatly disrupts the map (as the provinces cannot be unselected without losing the far-away holdings).
What is literally and totally impossible is to take the Azores away from Portugal. There is no way to reach the Azores from continental Europe. And if you put your capital on Madeira you can get the Azores but not all of the mainland holdings of Portugal. It's really silly.
For me what compounds the problem is that you need to start your custom nation by selecting your capital. I've made the mistake of making an awesome custom nation only to realize I cannot get all the lands I want even though the historical country I want to replace has them. With the proposed changes I could have at least saved my progress as a template...

The minimum feature I would humbly request is a very clear visual indicator of your selection range (maybe make it a red border around the provinces/sea tiles near enough to your capital). What I would ideally want to see is either a removal of distance restrictions (probably too exploitable) or an option to pay points to extend your range. If I really want to make a great colonizing nation I'd gladly pay points to secure some of the launchpad islands early. The same with a trade nation for some specific centers of trade.

A related annoyance: There seems to be no way of telling what the capital of a historical country will be if you take their historic capital province. And yes, that can make a big difference if you want to restrict them or take them over later. Sticking with Portugal: You can't really let them have the Azores and expect to take them over later, because they might put their capital there and good luck doing a navial invasion outside your supply range into a 12stack early on.

Somewhat related but less of an issue and more a would-be-awsome-to-have: I would be wonderful if we could replicate the custom perks some historic nations have, like the pre-hired explorer Portugal enjoys or maybe some really good custom general. Or as someone else has mentioned above: Pre-made claims and cores on enemy land. I can totally see those being able to be bought for points (with provinces > cores > claims in terms of price).

 

[Te. Kenzo]

There is a thing that I want to request, even if probably could be considered a less incentive to create a custom nation, but I think could be cool and fun have the possibility to create our own scenarios with ability of choosing and use also the historical tags, with their decisions, ideas and events.

For example is a like the idea to create a scenario with an Afghan empire, instead to create a custom one I want to use the historical tag.

I'll add another important thing, actually if I create a custom nation with the same name of an historical one the game say that is not possible, and I feel this very limiting.

 

[Ironicus]

One feature I really like is how if you play a monarchy with a leader and heir that are both female, the game adjusts future heir probabilities such that you're more likely to get a woman as leader again.

Other government forms that don't have listed heirs lack this feature. For instance, if I make a republic with a female starting leader, that's the only woman I'll ever have leading the republic. Is there any way you could replicate the monarchy feature here? While it's true that there were no such leaders historically, I'm already going against this with my choice of starting leader in my custom nation. No reason it can't then continue as intended, right?

Another thing that would be nice: if you have Women in History and make a custom nation with female leaders (triggering the changes to heirs), then the probability of getting women advisors would greatly increase as well (from 2% to something like 50%).

Why not go the whole nine yards and include a slider allowing you to go from full patriarchy to full matriarchy (all rulers, leaders, envoys and advisors are female) or anywhere inbetween.
Currently you can't turn female heirs into military leaders and the tool tip says something to the tune of "well, historically yaddayadda different times, etc". That may well be, but then again I'm not playing a historical nation to begin with...

 

[tbu]

The major reason for me to not play Custom Nations is the lack of "historical flavor" at the start and during the game. In the historical start many nations start with cores held by other countries, share dynasties with other countries, special events (Iberian wedding, PLC formation), special modifiers (for instance historical friends), etc. I would love to see such cores/dynasties/events randomly mixed in, to give the randomly set up game more flavor.

 

[ZappyVlaams]

I would like to be able to change the culture and religion of provinces. I think the current set up, where culture remains what it was but religion is equal to the state's religion, is in many cases already a sort of buff. You can create a crusader state that already has all of its conversion work done. Instead I would like it if by default, provinces did not flip religion, but you could choose to make (any or all) provinces of yours match your culture and/or religion. As this would give you more internal stability, this would obviously come at a cost, perhaps a low cost for religion and a high cost for culture.

 

[xyloz]

Adding the unique idea modifiers (i.e. No cost for reinforcement, can explore, etc) as options in the Nation Designer would be great.

 

[RHKINC]

Will we ever be able to choose which nations are lucky?

 

[Hypebear]

This might come across as really, really daft, but I'd like the ability to make the national ideas negative instead of positive, so they're bad instead of good.

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. For the normal nations, I don't think having strict paths that nerf alternative paths is a good idea (you go for loads of men as russia because russia lets you have lots of men, but it doesn't force you to shy away from having good quality men or make having quality a must-have in order to balance out your national ideas), but since it's a custom nation and up to the player, I think it would be amazing.
Mind you, I don't even know if it's possible to have negative national ideas.

Also, the ability to have two benefits for single national ideas, like how the first three ideas Austria have do two things instead of one(imp authority & diplo annex cost, fort maintenance & national garrison growth, yearly inflation reduction & interest per annum). There'd be some sort of cost to balance it out, but I've come across a desire for this feature many times when constructing nations. Combined with the earlier idea of negative national ideas, it would be really awesome to have a negative and a positive in one idea, like soldiers that fight better, but also now cost more, or something like less advisors that are cheaper, less missionaries but more merchants, better production but worse taxes, more chance for an heir but less yearly legitimacy and so on, which would allow for some interesting ideas for nations and greater roleplay ability with your nation. The royal family in your nation is less picky about its heirs, but gets less legitimacy because of it, for example.

The save features sounds amazing by the way. As someone who has literally spent four hours straight making custom nations in one save, under the constant threat of the pc crashing, I am very hyped for a save feature!

 

[net.split]

One feature I really like is how if you play a monarchy with a leader and heir that are both female, the game adjusts future heir probabilities such that you're more likely to get a woman as leader again.

Other government forms that don't have listed heirs lack this feature. For instance, if I make a republic with a female starting leader, that's the only woman I'll ever have leading the republic. Is there any way you could replicate the monarchy feature here? While it's true that there were no such leaders historically, I'm already going against this with my choice of starting leader in my custom nation. No reason it can't then continue as intended, right?

Another thing that would be nice: if you have Women in History and make a custom nation with female leaders (triggering the changes to heirs), then the probability of getting women advisors would greatly increase as well (from 2% to something like 50%).

 

[Fintilgin]

One thing I'd like to see the ability to use the name of a 'real' tag. Like to be able to make custom Ireland and call it Ireland in the random world. The AI generated nations can reuse names, for example there can be a random 'Crimea' nation, but the player can't call his/her nation 'Crimea' because 'that name is in use'.

Just warn us the 'name is in use', but let us click 'continue anyway!'

Maybe some sort of weighted algorithim for AI flags that tries to pick more complementary colors for their flags? A bit less purple on green?

Oh yeah! A 'random start' would be nice too. Like if you have a totally random world but DON'T make your own custom nation and just click 'start' is generates the world and then hands you a completely random country, so you don't even know where in the world you're going to start or what you'll wind up with.

 

[Krebsig]

I'd like to have a country relationship menu where you can edit potential vassals, RMs, PUs and even Historical Friends at the cost of points.

Obviously PUs and vassals would be more expensive the bigger the vassals/partners are and would in general cost a lot more points than a simple royal marriage. I feel like this would greatly enhance the ability to create specialized setups. We could recreate custom nations that behave similar to Burgundy in terms of their setup, for example.

PS:
Additionally, one could also gain points by giving oneself a disadvantage like being a Colonial Nation or a Vassal of someone else.

 

[Traian]

What about giving us the possibility to modify historical nations using the designer? for example i want to play with Venice and retain all the Venetian events but i wanna change a couple of ideas or start with different provinces for *reasons*

 

[SchwarzerKaiser]

I don't know why I am arguing lol
I point out facts and propose a sensible compromise and all I get back is "But it would be cool and is fantasy!" under that logic I should be able to get Dragon Soldiers and Gorilla Artillery cuz is a Custom Nation named "Dragon Gorilland" because you know is fantasy!

So a female ruled society is the same as Dragon Soldiers and Gorilla Artillery?

You can create a massive, Albanian cultured Empire in the Caribbean that follows Norse religion, so I don't quite get why a matriarchal society where females can become leaders is so wrong it should be left out.

 

[Galaahd]

Speaking of Norse culture: There is no way you can turn your religion into Norse in a normal historical setting so far and I'd like it if you'd offer such an opportunity either through specific rebel tags or uncommon/rare events.

No thanks.

Norse culture emerging in normal EU IV gameplay (even if a "rare" event) is terribly ahistorical, it's more like fantasy.

 

[DominusNovus]

The minimum feature I would humbly request is a very clear visual indicator of your selection range (maybe make it a red border around the provinces/sea tiles near enough to your capital). What I would ideally want to see is either a removal of distance restrictions (probably too exploitable) or an option to pay points to extend your range. If I really want to make a great colonizing nation I'd gladly pay points to secure some of the launchpad islands early. The same with a trade nation for some specific centers of trade.

I agree with the range concerns quite heartily. I'd say a fair way to balance it is for provinces beyond a certain distance to scale up in cost rather quickly.

 

[CzokletMuss]

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.

Speaking of which - are there any plans to improve CK2 -> EU4 converter?

 

[WeissRaben]

Would it be possible to have a checkbox "Can form nations"? Shattering somewhere like Iberia is boring, at the moment, because no one can form Spain if it prevails, for example. And yes, I'm talking about the AI.