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EU4 - Development Diary - 23rd of April 2019

Good day all. Today's a fairly brief Dev Diary, even by recent standards, as two of the five previous workdays were swallowed whole by Sweden's love for public holidays. To that end, I hope a good Easter day was had by all.

Last week I went over some Quality of Life suggestions that came up internally, and today I want to touch on one in particular detail. Again, these are not iron-clad promises of things to come. They are certainly improvements that we desire to make for the game, but or not that translates to being in our upcoming European Expansion and its accompanying update is for reality to dictate.

I mentioned at the end-of-year dev diary before that improving Custom Nation options was something we would like to achieve in said European release. Now a question that may come to mind is why this would be on the radar for our European expansion. Well Custom Nations remain one of the most popular choice for players. It has spent plenty of time as the number one choice in the past, although in the past months it has been playing second fiddle to France, see our handy nations chart:

Played Nations.jpg

No huge surprises here, except perhaps that England have fallen from grace, as they used to consistently be near the very top. These are most fun to observe when a release is done for a certain area, such as Rule Britannia, where England spiked like crazy.

What we see is that custom nations (D00 here) continue to stand the test of time, despite being added to the game with El Dorado back in February 2015. We have updated the designer with features as they have appeared, such as Consorts and ruler personalities, and updated the custom National Ideas as new modifiers have been added, but we feel there is still more that we can do.

In particular, myself and @Groogy have been looking at what we can do to boost the functionality of the custom nations feature, and something we both find lacking is that, while we have hundreds of sweet-looking unit models, there is no way to specify which ones your custom nation uses, leading to a fairly generic visual experience in battles. We may be dipping a bit into the HoI4 inspiration well with their way of previewing units for this.

unit previewer.jpg


In addition to a way to customize your unit models for your nation, I'd say we're due another pass of the available National Ideas for said custom nations. To the custom nation players out there, what would you really like to be able to tweak in your customized experience?

For those champing at the bit to see us move forward with development of the upcoming expansion, know that we are wrapping up this long period of tech debt. We have a couple more aspirations dev diaries to come, before we're likely going to return to our more regular dev diaries of showing off ongoing development.
 
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Serbian Flavour pack? Missions related to the reconquest of lands held by Tsar Stefan Dusan and expansion in the balkans, Serbia was an important regional power in the area and theyre a bit underrepresented *crie
 
Turtlegom said:
Serbian Flavour pack?
Click to expand...
would be interesting, i do think that all/most minor/interesting nations in europe should have their own missions, like serbia, italian minors, livonian order, teutons etc. but a couple of dev diaries ago they did indeed talk about expanding the balkans including greece and serbia, so i suspect that they will get their own missions if not their own events and decissions.
 
Maybe you could add effective discipline into the ledger, a value that takes all the possible factors of army quality into account.
So all of these: (the same way skanderbeg.pm calculates it)
  • Morale
  • Infantry combat ability
  • Cavalry combat ability
  • Artillery combat ability
  • Land leader shock
  • Land leader fire
  • Land leader maneuver
  • Fire damage dealt
  • Fire damage received
  • Shock damage dealt
  • Shock damage received
  • Mercenary discipline
  • tactics
  • infantry total pips
  • cavalry total pips
  • artillery total pips
 
Hey EU IV devs do you planing any changes in ruler/Royal Families/PU system in upcoming European expansion?

For me this is right time that overhaul because you bring back your focus on Europe) for refresh/rework old ruler/RF/PU system.This part of game isn't changed from previous EU games too much and definitely need refresh.

Also another pros for rework is that now you get XP how can to made it (because you learn while work on Imperator Rome) and can use this XP to refresh on one way these mechanic in EU IV (I don't mean that it made entire copy/paste of Imperator Rome system but that it be inspiration for changes)

So here is my suggestion I think that EU4 Ruler/Royal family/PU system is to simple and should be expanded on few ways.

1. That every King can have more than one children not just one heir and one consort. Diplomatic Marriage been important thing to make allies in Europe in period which EU4 represent
2. That we can decide which Prince/Princess we can offer for marriage to other Country Royals
3. That get its pictures and more complex personality traits on one side and diplomatic/combat skills on another + (on that way we will become more connected to rulers and generals and have feel that it is more important in game)
4. That we have family trees
 
Ok, as someone who ONLY plays Custom Nations, here are my begging attempts for change:

  • Please place a button on the Government Modification screen to click on or off whether or not your Custom Nation starts with Feudalism Embraced, instead of having it tied to Tech area and starting location
  • Please add a Development Efficiency idea
  • Please merge all of the + government ideas (+ Horde Unity, + Republican Trandition, etc) into one Idea so that if you change government forms your idea is still useful
  • Please REMOVE the restrictions on some Government/Religion combinations (Mamluks/Islam, Ottoman/Islam, Feudal Theocracy/Islam, Muhgals/Islam, etc)
  • Please allow an Unreformed Tribal Nation with an Unreformed Religion (Mayan, Nauatal, etc) to actually have both reform sets available to be worked through. Currently reforming Government and Religion uses the same pop-up so you can only have one or the other.
  • Please all Tribal and Religious reforms last ALL game, or at least until the player changes their Government Type or Religion respectively
  • Please allow reforming of Governments by having Administrative Tech Level 7 and Administrative Ideas completed with OUT having to border a Nation with Feudalism (This would NOT give the reforming Country Feudalism
  • Please allow reforming of Religions by having Administrative Tech Level 7 and Religious Ideas completed with OUT having to border a Nation with Feudalism (This would NOT give the reforming Country Feudalism
  • Please allow the Customization of Existing Countries without having to use Exploits
  • Please reduce the Cost of Immortal Leader Trait to 200 points so that we can build an actual custom nation that it is worthwhile to be an Immortal Ruler of
  • Please allow the choice of Unit Models
  • Please incorporate the CK2 Religions into the Custom Nation Designer
  • Please make the Religions other than Coptic, Orthodox, Mayan, and Catholic worthwhile choices (ALL other religions compared to these 4 are jokes)
  • Please allow the ability to mark your County as a Member of/Elector of/Emperor of the HRE assuming that an Elector Spot or Emperor has been eliminated from your custom Europe
  • Please allow the ability to mark your County as the Papacy
  • Please change the Fortification Maintenance Reduction Idea to be a reduction in Ducats instead of a Percentage (ie -0.5/1.0/1.5/2.0 Ducats per Month Maintenance Reduction) which would allow free Castles late game
  • Please allow an option on if the game will spawn Colonial Nations in Colonial Areas
  • Please allow an option on if the game will automatically convert Religion and Culture in Trade Company Regions upon settler arrival so that I don't have to kill all the natives first
  • Please allow an option to turn off End Game Tags
  • Please increase the Additional States Idea to be +5/10/15/20 as the game has introduced a large number of additional states
  • Please add a way to purchase, with Monarch Points, additional states while playing the game
  • Please allow New World Unreformed Nations to colonize Islands that share a sea hex with their existing land nation
  • Please add the Gaining of a Missionary for, and the Religious Center Province Modifier for ALL colonies that are considered religious centers in game (Kandy, Hillah, Samawah, Owari, New World Provinces etc.
  • Please allow Defender of the Faith for ALL Religions
  • Please grant a Free Colonist with Diplomatic Tech Level 14 for all Counties

This is all that I can think of right now, but I may add more posts later =)
 
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE - Redo the Revolutionary Flags
For example, while France's flag is good, a nation like the Ottomans or Poland and it just looks weird. I'd like to see more modern day style flags such as the current Spanish, Finnish or Irish flags implemented into the game (with proper symbols and shape such as the Spanish coat of arms) and have an option to have a flag designer for your flag as a revolutionary nation. It wouldn't be too unrealistic as the modern Spanish flag was adopted in 1843 (although being used as far back as 1750).
Speaking of flags, I'd like to see more options for flags in the custom nation designer and maybe an better colour selector (using the palette map and hexadecimal codes for the real colours of modern flags). I'm also a bit annoyed about the symbols. I don't know if it's just me or if the symbols are slightly off-centered. Extended timeline's nation designer has some other layouts as well.
On an unrelated note - I'd like to see a way of sinking extra money into a colony to make it grow more. As England/Netherlands it takes me ages to grow my colonies as I have loads of money and Sportugal has taken all of South America.
 
I personally think that custom nations in EU4 should have more custom things. Here are the following things I would LOVE to see in Eu4 custom nations
- The ability to choose how many ducats your country starts with
- The ability to choose how much development of your capital, or of certain provinces in your custom nation
- The ability to choose the amount of navy in your custom nation
- The ability to choose which skins you want for your nation
- The ability to make puppets of that customized nation, for example I make a 10 province custom nation and I make 2 puppets with 4 provinces for whatever reason
- The ability to choose how many soldiers you have
- The ability to choose if you want to be a starting puppet, colony, etc of another nation

Thank you for expanding into custom nations. I personally really like it and its a big reason on why I got EU4, the main HUGE one is because of Extended Timeline.
 
I quite like to play custom nations on an occasion so I suppose I can throw in my 2 cents as well.
- The ability to have multi-effect National Ideas (such as having both "fort maintenance reduction" and "fort defensiveness increase" in one idea) like some vanilla countries have. Especially useful for the "Female Advisor Chance" as it is otherwise kind of useless outside of an RP purpose or cheesing the idea balance mechanic.
- Allow you to create an "Enatic" country where the heirs are generally female with the males being the exception. Also useful for save-game transfers from CKII where Enatic countries may actually exist. This should also reverse the idea rules, so for example rather than being "Female Advisor Chance" an Enatic country would have "Male Advisor Chance" and "Recruit Male Generals".
- Allowing us to pick the religions from CKII such as Fraticelli or Zunist
- Allow you to specify if your country is in the HRE, and in the same vein, make sure the game has a back-up for when the game starts without an existing Emperor (i.e, Austria has been removed)
- I know you mentioned it, but unit preview would be cool. I am unsure how hard this would be, but if you could also make it so that you can choose different models for each of the 3 combat units that would be a nice bonus. (i.e Inuit infantry with Norman Cavalry and German Cannons)
- In the same vein as the above, being able to pick your building style.
- Ability to determine starting relationship(s) with other countries
- Ability to start the game as a puppet of another country, or have another country start off as your puppet
- Ability to increase the development of the provinces you start in.
- Ability to start with a an army/navy/treasury, even if just a minimal one.
- Ability to enable the Emperor of China mechanics for your nation
- Remove a lot of, if not all of the restrictions for government types. (Perhaps just have this as an option that would disable most achievements if selected?)
- Ability to edit base game nation ideas, allowing you to play as a nation with all of its unique events/missions, but with a new National Idea set (Should likely have this disable most achievements)
- Ability to have your selected culture encompass more than just your capital. It is annoying to create a larger Custom Nation, but then have to deal with the fact that only your capital follows your culture, this is especially important for nations with rarer culture groups such as Lost Cultures
- A way for an idea to change depending on your circumstances, for example giving Legitamacy while a monarchy but republican tradition if a republic, or giving Papal Points if catholic but Church Power if Protestant, etc.
- "Interfaith Marriage" idea, allows your nation to ignore the usual 'cannot royal marry other religion' block for diplomacy. Removes wrong-faith diplomacy penalty if not a monarchy perhaps?
- "Transport Combat Ability" idea, to round it out for all ship types.
- "Mandate Growth" idea


Other Suggestions (Not specifically Custom Nation related)
- As a sidenote, Inuit cavalry. I'm not saying you should add Polar Bears, but I'm also not not saying that. (Just think of the Elephant vs. Polar Bear action Jake!)
- Remember that one time you had the randomized world Dev Clash, putting that as an option for the base game would be cool. CKII has it and it's really neat. (If it already is in the game and I am just blind, I apologize)
- Ability to place tags already in the game onto the map. For example, I could select "Roman Empire" from the menu and put it in Italy as the Roman Empire complete with their unique ideas/units/etc. without needing to create a "Pseudo-Roman Empire" custom nation.
- I had a thread about this before at some point, but the ability for natives to eventually just reform themselves without Europe would be nice. I once had a game where I sat around and waited until the mid 1700's to be able to reform. That was not particularly fun, especially since as a native, I could not build boats and find the Europeans myself!
 
Elfangor567 said:
I quite like to play custom nations on an occasion so I suppose I can throw in my 2 cents as well.
- The ability to have multi-effect National Ideas (such as having both "fort maintenance reduction" and "fort defensiveness increase" in one idea) like some vanilla countries have. Especially useful for the "Female Advisor Chance" as it is otherwise kind of useless outside of an RP purpose or cheesing the idea balance mechanic.
- Allow you to create an "Enatic" country where the heirs are generally female with the males being the exception. Also useful for save-game transfers from CKII where Enatic countries may actually exist. This should also reverse the idea rules, so for example rather than being "Female Advisor Chance" an Enatic country would have "Male Advisor Chance" and "Recruit Male Generals".
- Allowing us to pick the religions from CKII such as Fraticelli or Zunist
- Allow you to specify if your country is in the HRE, and in the same vein, make sure the game has a back-up for when the game starts without an existing Emperor (i.e, Austria has been removed)
- I know you mentioned it, but unit preview would be cool. I am unsure how hard this would be, but if you could also make it so that you can choose different models for each of the 3 combat units that would be a nice bonus. (i.e Inuit infantry with Norman Cavalry and German Cannons)
- In the same vein as the above, being able to pick your building style.
- Ability to determine starting relationship(s) with other countries
- Ability to start the game as a puppet of another country, or have another country start off as your puppet
- Ability to increase the development of the provinces you start in.
- Ability to start with a an army/navy/treasury, even if just a minimal one.
- Ability to enable the Emperor of China mechanics for your nation
- Remove a lot of, if not all of the restrictions for government types. (Perhaps just have this as an option that would disable most achievements if selected?)
- Ability to edit base game nation ideas, allowing you to play as a nation with all of its unique events/missions, but with a new National Idea set (Should likely have this disable most achievements)
- Ability to have your selected culture encompass more than just your capital. It is annoying to create a larger Custom Nation, but then have to deal with the fact that only your capital follows your culture, this is especially important for nations with rarer culture groups such as Lost Cultures
- A way for an idea to change depending on your circumstances, for example giving Legitamacy while a monarchy but republican tradition if a republic, or giving Papal Points if catholic but Church Power if Protestant, etc.
- "Interfaith Marriage" idea, allows your nation to ignore the usual 'cannot royal marry other religion' block for diplomacy. Removes wrong-faith diplomacy penalty if not a monarchy perhaps?
- "Transport Combat Ability" idea, to round it out for all ship types.
- "Mandate Growth" idea


Other Suggestions (Not specifically Custom Nation related)
- As a sidenote, Inuit cavalry. I'm not saying you should add Polar Bears, but I'm also not not saying that. (Just think of the Elephant vs. Polar Bear action Jake!)
- Remember that one time you had the randomized world Dev Clash, putting that as an option for the base game would be cool. CKII has it and it's really neat. (If it already is in the game and I am just blind, I apologize)
- Ability to place tags already in the game onto the map. For example, I could select "Roman Empire" from the menu and put it in Italy as the Roman Empire complete with their unique ideas/units/etc. without needing to create a "Pseudo-Roman Empire" custom nation.
- I had a thread about this before at some point, but the ability for natives to eventually just reform themselves without Europe would be nice. I once had a game where I sat around and waited until the mid 1700's to be able to reform. That was not particularly fun, especially since as a native, I could not build boats and find the Europeans myself!
Click to expand...

I agree, I'd like if we could customize historical nations too, have custom dynasties, custom missions, and custom storylines, even if it's just a bunch of preset events but with customized text.

I.E. I want a custom map as well for my campaigns, currently takes a long time to set up with console commands. It's like a clash of the greatest but with some custom nations including my own personalized one.

Also picking from preset national idea groups would be great and speed things up(Prussian for example) preset ruler personalities, both in traits and being the militarist/diplomatic type, etc., custom government types, custom factions, custom events(related to custom storylines), and much more flexibility in difficulty system, i.e. 800 points is way too low imo.

It's very important for immersion to have these things I feel. It would allow for limitless possibilities.
 
Elfangor567 said:
- Remember that one time you had the randomized world Dev Clash, putting that as an option for the base game would be cool. CKII has it and it's really neat. (If it already is in the game and I am just blind, I apologize)
Click to expand...
it's there, in the game options before you start a new game, go in the "custom nation" options. There is a setting called "custom nation setup", choose Random nation and the world will be empty except the custom nations you create (up to 40 I think). It's compatible with RNW for maximum wackyness, but sadly you cannot randomize all the land masses. Or just randomize parts of the world.
eu4_5.png

(screenshot from the original dev diary)

Suggestion: add an hability to select where you want random nations or not. Maybe with a tool like the one you use to crate the nations, you clic to select where you want empty "random" space, with an option to change the scope to area or region to reduce clic fatigue.
 
Allow all features already available to historical countries to be picked for CN (Spanish artillery fire, being able to recruit banners for example).
Also would be nice if several features would be available to culture over specific country (portugese flagship upgrades, forming Qing etc)
 
All the talk of the CK2 converter religions in the EU4 nation designer had been something I wished for for a while.... Prior to Holy Fury; I feel like with Holy Fury in CK2 I'd rather have the paganism you reformed in CK2 change modifiers, or especially mechanics in EU4 more than just a token presence as a sign you did alright in CK2; Additionally, I understand why, mechanically, but being able to switcheroo your religion to any of the non-pagan ones leaves a sour taste in my mouth, though I imagine that's a very "me" problem; I digress, however, that's likely more of an issue to talk about in a CK2 dev diary-- Or at least in a thread or DD more dedicated to the converter (Which would be nice eventually).

What I would like personally for custom nations are the basics already mentioned in the thread or even original DD post; greater range of aesthetic customization (with more unit selection, more customization in flags, more map colors, etc.) , more freedom (in government types, two slots in national ideas, ironman incompatible point limit removers), and perhaps allowing for more flavor in playing as a custom nation.

As for less relevant questions though, how feasible would the CK2 ruleset menu be in EU4 to begin with? Do you have plans on making the transition to rome less annoying? I can't imagine so now as of golden century but culture overhauls in general?
 
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It would be really nice to be able to make different presets on ideas for custom nations that you could just load, so it's much easier to make many custom nations. One preset would contain all the national ideas, traditions and ambition.
 
OscarTheSwede said:
It would be really nice to be able to make different presets on ideas for custom nations that you could just load, so it's much easier to make many custom nations. One preset would contain all the national ideas, traditions and ambition.
Click to expand...
I'm prety sure saving presets containing everything but land already exist, actually.
 
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