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.

 

[Disrep]

Are you trying to troll?

Leave him be for gods sake. I can understand him.
I almost never use nation designer and think there are much more important things to adress.
That being said I might just use it much more often with the new additions.
Its just... not as great as say a "better", more historical development system, a rework of culture or else.

 

[ampren7a]

Nice stuff! And welcome back!

 

[Ilightmaster]

YES YES YES but please add diplomatic setup at least between a nation and its vassals

 

[couchfighter78]

Welcome back Team!

How about the option to select unit types from the custom unit packs we have purchased?

That would be epic.

 

[TenshiN]

As a part of creating more patterns, i strongly wish for more asian-style patterns like chinese hieroglyphs and the like.

 

[Kwami]

The modding ability is there already you just have to be creative about it.
Make EVERY ruler male on the script, make names for male rules both Female and Male, the player will not be able to tell the difference.
If you want events that trigger only for one gender, make a flag that triggers depending on the name of your rules(flag for female if they have a female name) you might have to make it so all Heirs are born from events under this rules tho.
There you go a MOD that allows for Female commanders, a player will never be able to tell if Mary II is a girl or a boy on the game files but they will recognize the name as female.

All hail King Mary II!

 

[Styria]

I notice that, at least in my games, the little flags that appear on map for a custom nation's territory never seem to have the emblem on them, just the flag pattern you select. For example, I pick the Wheel of Mainz (#32) for an emblem, with a St. George's cross for the background. When I zoom in on the map and look at my custom nation's flag, I only see the St. George's cross.
Is this something just on my end?

 

[Holmern00]

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.

 

[DigohD]

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!

 

[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.

 

[ThrownIntoSol]

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

 

[Shampoocat]

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.

I would realy like to see some more (ahistorical) religions like Hellenisem, Ancient Egyptian and Celtic religions.

 

[Manzo_]

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.

 

[Holmern00]

Oh, and the possibility to change the colour of the emblems. That would be cool.

 

[SchwarzerKaiser]

Making that Albanian Empire is mechanically already there in the game, allowing for women to become commanders is not, and the moment it gets added to the Custom Nations you will see an ocean of demands that they make it so in the base game and that I am not okay with.
Should women had been allow to be commanders? Yes, Would they under any circumstances be allow to be so in large number during this period of history? Not in your dreams.
Face it this period of time was ripe with sexism and racism and the game SHOULD represent that otherwise we are whitewashing history.

I can assure you that the "ocean of demands" you're expecting will actually be a few drops into the ocean. At least I can't remember that many outcries that there should be a way to convert to Norse religion in the base game.

Female commanders won't make it into vanilla because there is no historical base for it, I agree with you on that. Why it shouldn't be possible to use them in a completely fictional custom nation or in mods is something I don't understand.

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[pattb011]

Something I'm really hopuing for is the ability to add vassal relationships. I've wanted (on multiple occasions), to add a vassal to my nation, or start as a vassal of someone else. For instance, I might want to produce a scenario where I am the colonial nation of a nation (whether historical or custom), and I fight for my independence.

I think if there was another tab on the Nation Designer interface, you could perhaps select one of two buttons: 'Become vassal of', or 'Add vassal'. It would then allow you to select a nation on the map, much like how you'd edit a custom nation in the current version. So step 1: Select button of choice. Step 2: Pick nation.

This would please me soo much, and would make the Nation designer 100% amazing for me.
Thanks

 

[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.

 

[Darkath]

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.

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+ )