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

 

[Bolshevik_1924]

Oh this sounds awesome. Im so excited! Who knows how many hours ill put into this game making custom nations alone.

 

[Wagonlitz]

Whether you keep your ideas when you enact a nation-forming decision is entirely determined by whether the decision contains the directive swap_free_idea_group = yes in its effect clause.

Formations in the game which currently change your ideas are:

• In the Americas: Canada, Inca, Mexico, Quebec, USA
• In Europe: Byzantium, Croatia, Kurland, Italy, Netherlands, Prussia, Romania, Ruthenia
• In Africa: Morocco, Algiers, Tunisia, Tripoli, Sokoto
• In Asia: Jerusalem, Manchu, Mughals, Persia, Shan, Tibet

So setting it to no will not swap the ideas? And thanks.

 

[ChildeR]

Whether you keep your ideas when you enact a nation-forming decision is entirely determined by whether the decision contains the directive swap_free_idea_group = yes in its effect clause.

That's the *current* situation. Since Wiz said that custom nations will keep their ideas, there will probably be another factor to affect it, hardcoded or not.

 

[Te. Kenzo]

some option to change the religious, cultural setup of the provinces?

 

[EU3NOOB]

Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia and will always remain at war with Eastasia...:ninja:

 

[Rainbow Mirage]

You can't stack types like this I'm pretty sure (it would do funny things to maintenance, attrition, etc).

Also, it's a lot more fun to stack big core creation cost with -culture conversion cost, that way they can't force you to release anything and lose cores either .

Might as well toss in huge defensiveness, attrition, and morale too to make assaults, moving in your territory, and sieging just awful. Maybe some -build cost for forts.

Yup. That would be like Dai Viet on steroids.

 

[Te. Kenzo]

However for Random setup, instead of historical flag and tags, that are killing flavour, like Milan in Kongo. I prefer a true random thing, with nation generated with the name of their capital province or of their region (random chanche) random flag and random colour. So seeing a nation with the name of a city in that area, or with the name of the area itself appear more coherent, interesting and fun for the player.

 

[Serum211]

Thank whatever god might be/is up there for dynamic revolutionary flags. French tricolours in Russia anyone?

 

[Nassau]

Will we be able to cheat the value of 200?

And will we be able to create several of these nations, controlled by the AI? Redesigning a whole continent?

 

[Junuxx]

Will we be able to cheat the value of 200?

And will we be able to create several of these nations, controlled by the AI? Redesigning a whole continent?

There are several options by default, 200/400/800 pts I think. These values can be modded too.

And you can make up to 32 custom nations at the start. That's probably a hardcoded limit due to the number of tags required.

 

[Wagonlitz]

Will we be able to cheat the value of 200?

And will we be able to create several of these nations, controlled by the AI? Redesigning a whole continent?

As mentioned in the OP you can make up to 32 custom nations---and you don't have to play any of them.

With regard to points then you can at least set it to 800 in settings; you can probably mod it higher too.

Edit: Emu'd

 

[Potatonator99]

Looking forward to creating my own nation

 

[Jamey]

My excitement level for this expansion may have just gone to 11.

 

[the cool guy]

Is Ambrosian republic an option for the designer?

 

[Tuskin38]

Is Ambrosian republic an option for the designer?

You can make what ever nation you want.

 

[DSYoungEsq]

Wow, that is bigger than I thought it would be indeed. You can wipe certain biases from the face of the map or just do crazy stuff.

And we all know that doing crazy stuff is a good thing!

 

[Tuskin38]

I'm loving the fact that the nation designer opened up the door to fixed revolutionary flags for that concept! And glad to see its part of the free features, as it should be. People do a lot of talk about nickel and diming, but the fix for revolutions all sharing the one flag could easily have been flag packs available at 2.99 a pop for different regions, but it's not.

So yeah, thumbs up for what we've seen so far.

Well the flag designer was originally announced as a feature for Client states, but they didn't finish it in time. So this isn't surprising really.

 

[DSYoungEsq]

*cheers*

Fantasia!!! With a VENGEANCE!!!

 

[sr999]

You sir Wiz are infact amazing. Also any chance for Zoroastrian eventually? I can see Persian Zoroastrian Nation a sought after custom nation start.

+1

 

[Keioel]

So...are Roman Culture and the flag of the Imperium Romanum included?