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.

 

[Atilla 'The Hun']

The ability to get your own made flag into your custom nation

 

[jdrou]

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

That would be a question for the CK2 team. The converter is a CK2 product.

 

[3ishop]

Hoped for something more interesting but I guess you've only got back so not much time for that.

Hope you all had a good break

 

[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?

 

[victimizer]

Why not just add an internal scenario editor, where you could paint cultures, religion, and states on the map freely, and save your work.

 

[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.

 

[Ricox]

I think, adding on to the idea of taking idea sets from existing countries, it would be nice if Nation Designer was expanded so you could just play as a historical country on the map, but simply change some aspects about it, ex. the ideas & government. (really, just the ability to change ideas & government for any existing nation through Nation Designer would be an amazing addition, or at least the ability to change the government, so I never again have to play a monarchy (or if I do, it's at least absolute muahah), pretty please)

I'm not sure how it would work with changing idea sets for existing tags, but maybe it could work the same way it does when you form a cultural union/another country as a custom country? You get the map color, missions, setting, events, name & flag, but the idea group remains the one that you selected.

 

[valentin4]

nice DD, but I hope the develoment system will be tweaked in the next patch to avoid the random metropolis in small nations across the world.

 

[BrokenSky]

Will the better random nation generation system have graphics for randomly generated nation being determined by tech group as an option? It's funny, as I said in a thread about this before, to see a load of mesoamerican and indian cities in the middle of the HRE the first time. Less so the ninth time.

Also are there plans to improve the randomized province values systems with, for example, the ability to have random values, but have the mean values in various regions stay the same (so Europe will still be ~4-8 base tax provinces most of the time, while north africa will be much less developed) instead of the same patchwork of deep red and bright green everywhere?

 

[tobias.mb]

Is there any chance to get new ideas to choose from in the nation designer?
AFAIK it's missing some nice ones like +production size.
Maybe even the "special ideas" like france's less native attacks or russia's discover adjacent?

 

[Promanco]

What are you going on about? Amazons are already in the game, just not playable. The event "The Amazons" says "If approached at any other time than is appointed, the women will defend themselves with bows and arrows." and the event "When Natives Attack" is even more explicit how fierce they are: "They were a terrifying sight, these half-clothed women with spears, clubs, bows and arrows in their hands and the sound that emerged from their throats as terrifying as the roar from a tiger! These warrior women from $PROVINCENAME$ were named Amazons by the survivors of our expedition and those they did not wound or kill were taken prisoner."
Warrior women are a legend, just like the Fountain of Youth, which btw you can discover in the unmodded base game. Like, the actual literal Fountain of Youth, no jokes. Should there be a legend about Dragon Soldiers - sure, why not. I'm not aware of any and I think it would not fit the style of EU4, but female warrors and female military commanders are grounded in well-known real world legends. I see no reason not to include them given what Paradox has already added to the game.

EU4 is not about history - it's about alternate history. The actual HRE never came even close to becoming a unified country, yet that mechanic has been in the game since forever. And any historical argument immediately goes out the window when we're talking about custom nations. Why shouldn't I be able to found my fictional merchant republic on the Greek island of Lesbos and add some flavour with female rulers and merchants? Or why not build an actual Amzon Empire in South America? I currently can make a Norse Tribal Federation in Macau with Austrian culture and Sub-sahara tech ruled by Elvis Presley. But women on the battlefield? By Elvis (may Thor and Mozart bless him), that is going too far and would be ahistorical!

In the end I think it boils down to this: Why oppose this proposal so fiercely if it will never take anything away from your gameplay experience? Just don't touch that slider or don't make a matriarchical custom nation and you'll never even see that feature come into play. Different strokes for different folks

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.

 

[pattb011]

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.

I use the nation designer a Sh*t tonne! Whether that's just me, or whether it's just you who doesn't do the same

 

[Axe99]

Cheers for the DD Wiz and Team . The Nation Designer's not really my thing (although the random start could be, except I had a brain-explosion last time I tried to use it and couldn't find it in the UI - probably not a UI problem, far more likely to just be a U issue, will have another look today!) but it's still great to see it getting refined as a feature. Hope you all had a great holiday, and commiserations it's over!

 

[delpiero1234]

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

I really hope that @Wiz will finally fix this. Lucky nations are a silly feature. Turing them off prevents ironman mode which is dumb.

 

[doktorstick]

Now that you are allowing templates to be saved, when doing random nations, present the player with a dialog where they can tick off all of their custom nations they want to be placed in the world. You might have a second checkbox next to each custom nation that asks "limit size to government rank" or somesuch... meaning if they have a nation that is a empire, it could be created either as an empire (checkmark on) or a random kingdom size.

 

[Chaos_TLW]

Going off in a slight tangent, is there any prediction of when 1.13 will leave beta? Or are you guys going to just jump straight to 1.14?

 

[thegreatuniter]

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!

Because the productiveness of the EU4 team is measured by Dev diaries? And it's strange that in the very first interaction after the summer vacation no details of a new patch is mentioned while there currently is one in Beta that will be released first?

And apparently a lot of people like custom nations a lot. I'm not one of them either, i played around with them for a bit, but it's hard to find good campaign goals with them.

 

[Sexual Velociraptor]

Here are some questions. Feel free to only answer some if you want:
1- Have you looked at the nation designer extended mod for ideas?
2- Have you considered unlocking things we can't use yet? (like the No cost for reinforcing from hordes)
3- What about unlinking tech/location from stuff? Why can't I be a eastern/western tech horde? Why can't I be a Indian Dynamo? Seems a little silly to say no to that and yes to giant western theocracy in Mexico.
4- Can you allow us to use a custom point setting, like 300, 500 or 600?
5- What about starting owning or as a vassal or PU partner?
6- What about some negative modifiers to get some extra points or for roleplay purposes? Permanent -1/2/3 diplo rep/relations, +1/2/3 national unrest, etc?
7- What about some flavor things, like the option for the primary french culture nation to get some of the french events and decisions?
8- This might already be, but could you make it possible to mod unit and building packs? If I'm going to be the zerg horde it would be cool to download a mod that allows me to add zerg units for my nation.

Thanks for any insight you can provide. Hope your vacations were awesome.

 

[Hakuromatsu]

Cool. Is 1.13 not shit yet? Oh it's not? You whacky scamps!

"not not shit" is some Steam-caliber review stuff you got going on there mate

 

[Keizame]

There's are still some ideas missing from the Nation Design will they be add to 1.14. Such as "national trade income modifier" & "time to fabricate claims"