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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.

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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.
 
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.
 
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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!
 
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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...
 
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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...
You do realize that even today there is countries (USA) that don't allow women on combat roles.
I am not saying is right, but it is the WORLD we live on which the game is based on...
 
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How about we include a CK2 interaction for the monarchy and their family, so a 70 year old monarch, somehow only produces one son in their life time which is usually ahistorical, and the heir dies when he or she is say 50. Then the 70 year old monarch produces an heir, but dies two months later... Then you are stuck with a 15 year regency, and that gets on my nerves. It doesn't make sense, it really doesn't. I think that would be a great addition to the game. Oh and I think the history of the country (the button near triggered modifiers) could use some work. If I remember correctly, a war that I won pretty decisively was put at the "[Name of War] was a failure.. blah blah. You get the gist.
 
You do realize that even today there is countries (USA) that don't allow women on combat roles.
I am not saying is right, but it is the WORLD we live on which the game is based on...
Unless we are playing a game with random nations, especially if we also use a random map :)

Also, it wasn't unheard of for woman monarchs to command their troops. Some of them are represented in Women in History (and allowed to be special leaders in those cases); it seems reasonable to thus allow women monarchs to be generals in a more generic sense. It wouldn't happen often since you usually don't want to risk your monarch anyway and women monarchs are less common (unless using a custom nation with ruler and heir set female).
 
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Unless we are playing a game with random nations, especially if we also use a random map :)

Also, it wasn't unheard of for woman monarchs to command their troops. Some of them are represented in Women in History (and allowed to be special leaders in those cases); it seems reasonable to thus allow women monarchs to be generals in a more generic sense. It wouldn't happen often since you usually don't want to risk your monarch anyway and women monarchs are less common (unless using a custom nation with ruler and heir set female).
The majority of women rulers would not be allow by their aristocracy to command armies, how about a compromise a Female Ruler or Heir can become a commander if she has at least 4 on MIL
 
The majority of women rulers would not be allow by their aristocracy to command armies, how about a compromise a Female Ruler or Heir can become a commander if she has at least 4 on MIL
And if that fictional custom nation is a complete matriarchy where the aristocracy consists of females? Some sort of "Amazon society" if you like?
 
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And if that fictional custom nation is a complete matriarchy where the aristocracy consists of females? Some sort of "Amazon society" if you like?
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!
 
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You do realize that even today there is countries (USA) that don't allow women on combat roles.
I am not saying is right, but it is the WORLD we live on which the game is based on...

I don't know about most countries, but the US most definitely allows women in combat roles.
 
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I don't know about most countries, but the US most definitely allows women in combat roles.
No we do not, right now we are in a period of transition to make it so, but currently there is NO women in combat roles(Artillery and Infantry)
In the next 5 years we should have a few but as I am writing this it is not the case.
EDIT:I will mention preemptively before I am call a misogynist, I think women should be allowed on combat roles as long as they can meet the same standard as everyone else. If a women is able to carry just as much as a Male Infantry and able to run just as fast and for just as long there is no reason to prevent her from participating except Stone Age gender conceptions. However I don't write the laws nor do I control the cultural environment of the world in the 1500's(or even of today)
 
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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.
 
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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.
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.
 
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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.
 
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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.
 
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