Welcome to the second development diary for Europa Universalis 4: El Dorado. Today we’ll only be talking about a single feature, but it’s probably the single biggest feature we’ve added to EU4 since launch: The Nation Designer.


As the name implies, the Nation Designer allows players with the El Dorado expansion to create their own, custom-designed nation to play instead of picking one of the historical nations. The Nation Designer is available for both Single-Player and Multi-Player, and can be used at any start date as long as you are starting a new game.

To make a custom nation, you simply click the new ‘Custom Nation’ button during country selection. This will prompt you to pick a capital province for your custom nation: Choose carefully, as the capital province cannot be changed without cancelling your custom nation entirely! You can start anywhere on the map that isn’t water or wasteland.

Once you have chosen your capital, you will be taken to the Nation Designer interface. From here you can freely add or remove provinces from your new nation, though each point of base tax and base manpower deducts from your 200 point allowance. What does 200 points buy you? A country somewhere between Hungary and Austria in strength in 1444 - a low-end major power. You can’t build France with 200 points, but how many big blue blobs do we need?

This allowance can be changed in the settings (more on that later). If you exceed your points allowance, you will be unable to finalize your custom nation (and thus start the game).

But if EU4 has emphasized anything it’s that there is more to a nation than the land it occupies. You can further customize your nation’s Appearance, Government and Ideas. This is done through the menu on the left-hand side of the screen.

Appearance
The appearance tab is where you configure the name, map color and flag of your nation. A variety of patterns and emblems are available, with the colors taken from the flags of historical nations in the game to keep them stylistically similar. The name and flag are purely aesthetic and do not cost any points from your allowance.

Government
The government tab is where you configure your rulers and how your state is governed. Here you can set the name, dynasty, gender, age and skills of your ruler (and heir if you’re a monarchy), with point costs depending on age and skill so that a 20-year old 6/6/6 will be more expensive than a 60-year old with the same skills, but a 20-year old 0/0/0 actually gives you a decent chunk points back to spend on other things. (Then you can send him off to die in a war or something, I guess.)

In addition to tweaking your rulers you can also set your culture, religion, government, graphical style and technology group. These are taken by default from your starting position, so that if you start your custom nation in England you will start English Catholic with Western tech and graphics. Culture, Religion and graphical style are free of points costs, while certain, more advanced Governments will have a cost. The cost for Technology Group depends on your location - picking Western tech in England costs you nothing, while doing the same in North America is very expensive.

Ideas
The ideas tab is where you configure your custom idea set by picking from over 90 different Administrative, Diplomatic and Military modifiers and setting the level of each. Modifier levels range from 1 to 4, with some modifiers being limited to level 1 or 2 - you can’t start with 4 colonists, for example. Your custom ideas set always consists of two tradition modifiers, seven idea modifiers, and one ambitions modifier.

The first level of most modifiers is free, with an exponentially increasing cost for higher levels, and steep penalties for having more than 50% of your total modifier levels come from a single type - you can’t be all Military unless you’re willing to give up the higher level bonuses. Overall, a strong set of ideas will be quite costly and will likely mean you have to start with a small nation.

Finalizing your Custom Nation
When you’re done setting up the nation of your dreams, you simply hit the green checkmark to finalize your nation and exit the Nation Designer interface. At this point you will be back in the lobby and can start the game if you’re ready to play.

If you realize you forgot something, you can also go back and edit your nation, or create another custom nation somewhere else on the map up to a limit of 32 custom nations in the same game. Just because you created a nation doesn’t mean you have to play it - you can set yourself up with a whole bunch of custom AI rivals if you so desire.


Settings
In addition to the nation designer itself, El Dorado also comes with a bunch of new settings for those who want an even more customized start:

Custom Setup Difficulty
This setting allows you to set the number of points available to all players when making a Custom Nation, ranging from 50 (Very Hard) to 800 (Very Easy). The numbers can also be changed through modding.

Custom Setup Nations
This allows you to change the overall setup of the map in the following ways:
Normal Setup: The map is populated by historical nations, and Custom Nations are available.
Historical Setup: The map is populated by historical nations, and Custom Nations are disabled.
Custom Setup: The map is empty asides from player-designed Custom Nations, and all nations start with a colonist.
Random Setup: The map is empty asides from player-designed Custom Nations in the lobby, but once play is started it is populated with randomly generated states that use the historical tags and names.

Custom Setup Provinces
This allows you to change the base tax and manpower of all provinces in the following ways:
Normal Values: All provinces have their historical tax and manpower values.
Random Values: All provinces have randomized tax and manpower values, weighted by factors such as terrain and climate. Total tax and manpower in the entire world will be the same as the historical provinces.
Flat Values: All provinces have the exact same tax and manpower (4 and 3 respectively).

Client States & Revolutions
As a free bonus, we’ve tweaked the Client State interface to use the new flags from the Nation Designer, replacing the single-color single-icon flags from Art of War.

We’ve also made use of this system in the Revolution mechanics by having each nation generate a dynamic tricolor based on their national colors that will be used as their flag if they become the Revolutionary Target. No more French tricolor for everyone!

That's all for today - join us next Thursday for yet another development diary that will be all about the Americas and Liberty.

+ Here are all videos about the Nation Designer:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqRhPbyFDQWjpJjylLqRQFNbC_vxoORU1

Europa Universalis IV: El Dorado expansion - Nation Designer Highlights
[video=youtube;WX3XGI4BFes]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WX3XGI4BFes[/video]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WX3XGI4BFes

EU4: El Dorado - Nation Designer Livestream - Part 1 - Devs play the beta:
[video=youtube;GrwHCojtB8o]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrwHCojtB8o[/video]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrwHCojtB8o

EU4: El Dorado - Nation Designer Livestream - Part 2 - Devs play the beta:
[video=youtube;OMUO1ohXZAY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMUO1ohXZAY[/video]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMUO1ohXZAY

EU4: El Dorado - Nation Designer Livestream - Part 3 - Devs play the beta:
[video=youtube;EIMLSUjzIp8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIMLSUjzIp8[/video]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIMLSUjzIp8

EU4: El Dorado - Nation Designer Livestream - Part 4 - Devs play the beta:
[video=youtube;XgnxapM4WAI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgnxapM4WAI[/video]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgnxapM4WAI

EU4: El Dorado - Nation Designer Livestream - Part 5 - Devs play the beta
[video=youtube;H-xqEjSUrEs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-xqEjSUrEs&index=6&list=PLqRhPbyFDQWjpJjylLqRQFNbC_ vxoORU1[/video]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-xqEjSUrEs

 

[Eh up me duck]

I beg to differ. While atheism per say never was close to a mainstream movement within EU4's timeframe, the 1755 Lisbon earthquake certainly gave way for the early beginnings of modern atheism.

Modern atheism goes right back to the Ancient Greeks, but realistically any game that takes place in a period of time that predates modern education will have to ignore atheism due to its obscurity.

 

[CassCD]

Yes.

Oh, that is awesome, indeed. Thanks, Wiz!

 

[spinoza013]

Great, for purely historical correctness I'm going to create Western Isles as an autonomous state then play as Scotland. Shame you can't have them start as a vassal.

Or even play as Western Isles. That would be a challenge. I could recreate the treaty of Westminster (1462) and ally the English to defeat the Stuart dynasty for control of the Highlands.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Westminster_(1462)

 

[Ephafn]

AI can handle it fine. Random setup does not give everyone a colonist.

You can do that once ingame.

About the Custom start, if you want to play against the AI, do you have to fill up the 31 other nations by hand, or is there a way to generate those randomly?

Also about the Custom start, is there going to be left-over cores from the erased nations?

 

[ragnarokk]

Small question: Why can't we do general achievements or new custom nation achievements with a standard 200 point based custom nation?:sad:

You'll make a 200 points romanian country out of Ottos Balkans and easily make Dracula achievment. For example.

 

[regne_valencia]

It will be possible load a external predesigned flag in the nation designer?

 

[Calbrenar]

Can you recreate Prussia? Can you create any decisions or events that will lead to claims? Seems to me that nation designer is actually one of the worst ideas I can think of unless you're someone with 500+ hours played and know all the nations. Many of the nations have interesting flavor options and historical things, like Austria and it's various marriages, Castille/Aragon Brandenburg -> Prussia etc. I'm assuming that barring generic ones based on culture your custom nation won't have any of this.

 

[hashinshin]

Modern atheism goes right back to the Ancient Greeks, but realistically any game that takes place in a period of time that predates modern education will have to ignore atheism due to its obscurity.

Atheism already has in game effects via excommunication.

All you need to do to be an Atheist is have everyone granted a special CB against you, take a severe relations penalty hit, and have absolutely no bonuses from religion.

 

[grommile]

Can you recreate Prussia?

You can give yourself Prussian culture and all the provinces required to form Prussia. (Whether you can fit in an idea set as scary as Prussia's is a separate question.)

Can you create any decisions or events that will lead to claims?

I'm sure they'd have said so if you could, so "no". As noted: it's a customizer, not a modding toolkit.

Seems to me that nation designer is actually one of the worst ideas I can think of unless you're someone with 500+ hours played and know all the nations.

Your ability to think of bad ideas is surprisingly limited in scope

Many of the nations have interesting flavor options and historical things, like Austria and it's various marriages, Castille/Aragon Brandenburg -> Prussia etc. I'm assuming that barring generic ones based on culture your custom nation won't have any of this.

If your custom nation has a culture for which a historical formable tag exists, you can (once you've met the requirements) form that formable tag and get its flavour events - so you can't get Aragon or Brandenburg or Novgorod's flavour events, but you can get Spain or Prussia or Russia's.

 

[Wizzington]

A sneak peek on random nations (not final):

 

[hashinshin]

Wait, random nations can put random tech groups anywhere? That's honestly pretty hilarious. You can just end up with a massive pomeranian China that charges in to Europe with 700 base tax?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Oooh, Australia.

That looks pretty crazy, fun as a changeup.

 

[1337Hospitaller]

A sneak peek on random nations (not final):

That looks rather cool.

 

[WeissRaben]

No.




No. I'm not going to buy fairy tales. If the new fans want it, good job Paradox you found a new niche. In your place I'd release fairy tales DLC too if that would make greenies appear on my bank account. But I am skipping this nonsense.

Fairytales have been part of EU4 since day 1. Protestant Spain being a paragon of Devout Catholicism? Republican Sweden impressing the world with its Absolutism? The Merchant Republic of Prussia having the greatest army in the world, despite not having fought a war in decades? Sorry, but I rate these waaaay over "you can create a custom nation", as far as fairytales go.

 

[Uglyr]

If there'd be ability to pick exsting nation and tweak it's ideas - maybe I'd use this option. But create completely new unhistoric nation - no way.

 

[Wizzington]

Wait, random nations can put random tech groups anywhere? That's honestly pretty hilarious. You can just end up with a massive pomeranian China that charges in to Europe with 700 base tax?

No, their culture, tech group and religion is based on where they end up.

 

[crownsteler]

The nation designer is just part of the DLC, there will be a whole lot more to El Dorado than just this.

The joys of bundling. It would have been better if the nation designer had been sold seperately from the rest, as it would have prevented those who don't like the nation designer (or like it but don't like the rest) from paying for something they don't want/need/like.

Though this is undoubtedly a decision which is financially best for Paradox.

 

[Arizal]

Thanks to you, children will no longer know anything about geography.

 

[grommile]

The joys of bundling. It would have been better if the nation designer had been sold seperately from the rest, as it would have prevented those who don't like the nation designer (or like it but don't like the rest) from paying for something they don't want/need/like.

It would also have made the nation designer more complex to implement - which is to say, likely to have more bugs.

 

[Darkrenown]

Split stuff up so people have choice and you're nickle n diming them. Pack stuff together for added value and you're "bundling". Can't win either way.