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.
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.
