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

 

[Freudia]

Well, this sold the expansion to me. This ended up being so much better than I expected it to be, and I already felt good about the idea of being able to build custom nations in EU4. You earned my (whatever amount of money this DLC is going to cost) this time, Paradox!

Honestly, being able to build my nation is pretty cool, but all these other game setup options you guys are implementing to support it, including randomly generated AI custom nations, is pretty awesome.

 

[Golladan]

Still a few questions, a lot of the nations have unique national ideas like the Spanish colonists that allow fabrication on all colonial provinces or the dutch trading spirit can we also pick those?

This was asked in the stream (talking about Russia's exploration thing), which A_Spec misinterpreted. But Wiz said it (Russia's) wasn't in, but could be added. It's likely the answer applies to all of the special ideas. (what's unique about Dutch Trading Spirit?)

 

[elpibeuruguayo]

Can implement that you can edit the diplomatic relations of your custom nations, for example: alliances, royal marriages, vasallage, war, ect?

 

[Brent15]

Best feature seems to be the updated client state options and the tricolor.

I probably won't use the custom nation editor.

 

[GizahNL]

This was asked in the stream (talking about Russia's exploration thing), which A_Spec misinterpreted. But Wiz said it (Russia's) wasn't in, but could be added. It's likely the answer applies to all of the special ideas. (what's unique about Dutch Trading Spirit?)

The Dutch trading ideas has multiple modifiers It's just an example of any unique idea though that gives special or multiple modifiers instead of your standard increase x by x NI

 

[Loaf Warden]

This looks great, but I do have one question. I presume ruler names will be based on what your culture is? It looks like you can name your starting ruler, but what about when heirs start to appear? For example, suppose I want to make, say, a Kingdom of Babylonia out of some of the provinces in the Iraq area. It appears, from the screenshot, that I can name my first ruler something like Hammurabi if I feel like it. (Unless you can't type it in, and just have to keep clicking that die until something you like pops up.) But since there will (I presume) be no actual "Babylonian" culture in the game, does that mean I can't have heirs with names like Nebuchadnezzar and Kurigalzu if I want? Presumably I'll just have to pick an existing culture and deal with Babylonian kings with exclusively non-Babylonian names?

For that matter, could we please get the option to change our heirs' names anyway? I'm not asking for a comprehensive CK2-style dynastic system. It would just be nice to be able to decide my own heir's name when he or she appears. I do get tired of getting my umpteenth "Louis" in a row when playing as France and not being able to say, "Actually, I think I'd rather this one be called Marcel", or something. You know, it could just give us a name as a default like it already does, and then we could have the option to change it if we feel like it. Please?

 

[josh127]

Had the stream running in the background while I did other work. Sounds like a lot more than expected, and sounds interesting. I'm not sure how much I'll end up using it, but I do like that the option will exist. For what it does, it does appear to be setup real easy to work with.

 

[Wizzington]

Can you use the nation designer to play as established EU4 countries that don't exist at the game start? For example in 1444 could you play USA or Canada in eastern North America or Kurland in Europe and use their flag, ideas, events etc?

No, but you can generally get a very close approximation.

 

[Wizzington]

Come to think of it, how will the HRE mechanics be affected by the random custom nation options and the others?

Playing in custom or random setup removes the HRE.

 

[Wizzington]

Can the AI handle the Custom Setup where everyone starts with a colonist or is this intended to be multiplayer only?

Likewise, in Random Setup will provinces be populated by proper countries, each taking in various provinces and playing normally, or will all the random tags get one province and +1 colonist?

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

Very fun new tool!

Can we customize the name of the actual city in our capital?

It would be good to give the capital city a fitting name.

You can do that once ingame.

 

[Yradnegel]

Playing in custom or random setup removes the HRE.

Would there be any way to form it?

 

[Wizzington]

What have you done? You made it possible to murder countries and create ahistorical monsters straight from hell.

Isn't it great?

so you don't have to buy the El Dorado DLC to get the client states update?

Nope!

 

[Wizzington]

I just have one question: will you be able to add in descriptions/localizations for your custom ideas, or will they be blank?

They have some generic names/descriptions based on the modifier. We'll likely add the option to name them at some point.

Oooooh this is awesome! Love the random setup options! Just like the Civilization Universalis mod for EU3.

Just one request though. Please use color pickers or a dropdown instead of the awkard system of arrow buttons and unhelpful color names like 'flag color 2'.

We'll look into making the color picking better in the future.

 

[Panzerschiffe]

Playing in custom or random setup removes the HRE.

Even if you start in Asia? Or just within the HRE itself?

 

[Wizzington]

I just thought, what prevents me from putting my capital in Europe, giving me easy Western Tech, and then giving myself a bunch of land in North America and Africa? Do provinces cost more for being far away?

There is a range limit, and increased costs if your nation is scattered all over.

Will it be possible to make your custom nation start as a vassal?

No.

 

[Wizzington]

Even if you start in Asia? Or just within the HRE itself?

I'm talking about if you're using the 'clear map' or 'random nations' map, not if you just make a custom nation.

 

[Jack45]

Even if you start in Asia? Or just within the HRE itself?

Really the HRE should stay unless you edit something inside it. But I guess that would be a lot of work, and even more exploitable than current custom nations.

 

[Sebuk]

What about national events though: if I create a custom nation in Sweden, will I get their events? Or have the national events been removed from custom nations?

 

[Wizzington]

Would there be any way to form it?

Not at present.

Can implement that you can edit the diplomatic relations of your custom nations, for example: alliances, royal marriages, vasallage, war, ect?

No.

What about national events though: if I create a custom nation in Sweden, will I get their events? Or have the national events been removed from custom nations?

Custom Nations have their own custom tags and so will not get events that trigger on tags unless they form a different nation.

 

[mcmanusaur]

I've got to hand it to Paradox- this actually looks a lot better than I initially expected. I'm happy to hear we can create multiple custom nations (hopefully that ceiling of 20 is modifiable)... however, what would be extremely useful is if we could save custom nation scenarios as bookmarks straight from the lobby (and I assume you can use custom nations with any start date). Judging by Wiz's statements above that you cannot set diplomatic relationships, it's still a ways away from being a true scenario editor, but it would still be helpful for branching alternative histories.

I could see playing Netherlands, Romania, Ukraine, Rhineland, Guyenne, or Lombardy.