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[Digital Hellhound]

The 32 limit is a bit annoying - I finally got a satisfying custom start done, after tries that were either not working (turns out OPMs... can't really colonize) or dull, and hit the limit here. I'd have wanted to add more minor powers.

I set up a bunch of nations on the North American coast and Mexico (Western tech, Western cultures... Pagan religions), with four Shinto Hordes in the interior. I added some nice island states to the Caribbean (original Caribbean cultures, Indian/Ottoman tech, Hindus), a few kingdoms to Central America (also Indian with, uh, American Indian cultures), Chinese Ottoman-tech nations down the Pacific side of South America, joined by a few Sikh Hordes.

There's some vague backstory in my mind about these being colonies left stranded after an Old World catasthrope, plus I tried to give each nation an unique personality/feeling with ideas and equally vague backstory in my mind.

The designer is a bit limited right now, but hopefully patches and mods will tweak it. I admit, what I want to do is probably not what most people will use it for, so I dunno if the problems I've noticed will be fixed (for example, colonizing as an European power in Europe doesn't seem to give the provinces any production goods).

[Persus13]

colonizing as an European power in Europe doesn't seem to give the provinces any production goods).

They just fixed that.

[Digital Hellhound]

Clearly my complaining about here convinced them to fix it ASAP! Score!

I hope the 32 limit isn't hardcoded. Though it takes so much time to create these nations I'd spend half of the day setting up and hoping it doesn't crash.

[WealthyRadish]

Looking at the NNationDesigner defines, it looks like the 32 limit is hardcoded (custom nations are probably stored in a static array or something, and they didn't get around to memory management stuff for doing it dynamically). Maybe a binary patch could raise the limit to something else, but I don't think there's anything that can be scripted for it.

[Hetairos]

So how accurately does El Dorado let you recreate the EU2 Fantasia scenario?

Well you can only make up to 32 custom countries. Beyond that you can allow the system to fill in the rest of the world either historically or randomly.

Fantasia only had 8 nations scattered over the entire world, each an OPM, and everything else was uncolonised. They would start on more or less equal terms, excluding the tech group and geographic location, and get a fixed high amount of colonists and merchants to aid with the expansion. All armies and fleets were allowed to explore Terra Incognita - something only unlocked by 1700's military tech in normal play, as you couldn't recruit conquistadors and explorers back then. It was quite fun, especially when the massive blobs would start crashing into each other.

So far it seems it's a thing that can be done. In the worst case I'll give everyone two provinces (why can't OPMs colonise? I'm not very familiar with the game yet). I'm still going to finish my current campaign first, to avoid compatibility issues.

Year is 1583, I'm playing my first campaign as the Commonwealth, and things are looking a bit odd.

It all started going south when the Reformation came around. Vienna, the seat of the previous emperor, has been a favourite camping spot for gigantic stacks of heretics for the past 50 years or so. I giggled a bit whenever I saw "Dishonorable Emperor" pop up in the log, and Austria's prestige was stuck at -100 most of the time. The rebels also broke the Kalmar Union and have been messing Scandinavia up for about as much time, with Hussites taking over Norway again and again, Sweden losing Finland, switching from one religion to another because of zealots and fighting pretenders in the meantime, and Denmark being a general mess losing clay to Gotland. France is being bullied by Burgundy, stronk Provence and Great Britain. All in all, it's a beautiful mess.

The HRE is broken so badly I was just elected emperor thanks to a single vote from my old friend Brandenburg. Took me a while to even notice. The IA is unsurprisingly 0, and not a single reform was passed. I can shift provinces into the Empire now; is there any downside to that? Will doing that to the capital make me join the HRE as a member? I have an accidentally acquired PU with Bavaria; should I grant her electorship? Scratch that, it counts as a subject. I can also westernise, but it doesn't seem to be worth the cost. Or am I wrong?

[Digital Hellhound]

OPMs can colonize if you find them all fantastic provinces (and have a lot of patience - I'd suggest changing the start date to a late one so you have higher Settler Increase, so you don't have to spend the entire game at speed 5), but most of the time they're going to be too poor to colonize at all.

[Hetairos]

I should probably just play Portugal for a while to familiarise myself with the colonisation mechanics and AI behaviour in regards to them, so I don't set up a scenario only to discard it later. Large parts of the world still being uncolonised by the end of the game are not a problem, but countries should start interacting before a century or so passes.

I can always write a custom event to give everyone big bonuses to whatever they need.

[Sartain]

OPMs can colonize if you find them all fantastic provinces (and have a lot of patience - I'd suggest changing the start date to a late one so you have higher Settler Increase, so you don't have to spend the entire game at speed 5), but most of the time they're going to be too poor to colonize at all.

I managed to become a world power as Navarra, through colonizing South America, so it's certainly possible. It's slow, boring and full of risk until you reach critical mass though

[Catastrophic lolcats]

So I've given El Dorado a fairly decent play through now and I'm fairly happy with it. However there are still three glaring issues that, in my mind, have to be fixed as soon as possible.

1) The arbitrary 50% restriction on idea groups.
This change just boggles my mind. For some unknown reason one can't pick the same idea group unless it's less than 50% of the total. For example England can't go maritime and then exploration instead having to pick up either an adm or mil idea.
Paradox hasn't commented on why this was changed (and the first topic discussing it was locked without reason) which leaves players to speculate it's to stop players stacking mil ideas in MP. Again another ridiculous bandaid fix that EU4 is infamous for, utterly disgraceful.

2) Auto Exploration.
Auto Exploration will only scout for a very limited amount of coastal tiles before returning home resulting in a tedious amount of micromanagement. Paradox has actually acknowledged this and given us back manual exploration and will look at making Auto Exploration search for whole regions instead. Credit where credit is due.

3) Wonky Vassal Liberty Desire.
Right now there are some rather wonky modifiers for the liberty desire of vassals. Having a vassal above 100 base tax will add a massive 50 liberty desire no matter how large your empire is. This should be removed for scaling via differing base tax.

When those three problems are fixed I think it's safe to say EU4 is likely in the best state it's ever been. Even the custom nation designer which I was dreading (who wasn't after CoP's shitty random new world) has managed to add a new dimension to the gameplay.

[WealthyRadish]

So I've given El Dorado a fairly decent play through now and I'm fairly happy with it. However there are still three glaring issues that, in my mind, have to be fixed as soon as possible.

1) The arbitrary 50% restriction on idea groups.

This might be IDEAS_PERCENTAGE_LIMIT and IDEAS_LIMIT_PENALTY under the NNationDesigner defines. Could just be for the nation designer, but I'd try it, that sounds awful.

3) Wonky Vassal Liberty Desire.

GREAT_POWER_VASSAL_LIMIT and LIBERTY_DESIRE_GREAT_POWER_VASSAL under NCountry in the defines. Also one for 'large' vassals near it too. I agree that scaling would be better, though.

[Persus13]

Make a new colony and liberty desire of 25%. Increase tariffs and it goes up and up, decrease tariffs and... It doesn't drop.

Hasn't this been how its always been? And in a historical sense it makes sense. America didn't want independence less after Britain dropped the Stamp Act.

[andrea]

it used to be that lowering tariffs would reduce liberty desire, just a bit less than increasing tariffs would increase it.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

This might be IDEAS_PERCENTAGE_LIMIT and IDEAS_LIMIT_PENALTY under the NNationDesigner defines. Could just be for the nation designer, but I'd try it, that sounds awful.

It's not just for the nation designer and it's not in the defines (those modifiers are unrelated). Hilariously the AI doesn't need to follow the arbitrary rule and will happily choose the same idea grouping over the 50% margin.

[Digital Hellhound]

I haven't seen the new system yet, but I'm glad if liberty desire will increase more (and it seems nations will Support Independece more readily). I've never seen a colony rebel, ever, because the AI has no trouble keeping liberty desire low. I guess it's just too smart in that regard. I could count the colonies that got past 50% liberty desire with one hand. I even started a game in a late date where liberty desire starts off in the 70s or so - the AI immediately lowered tariffs to make it minimal again.

[Micro102]

I wish they would shovel all these advantages for the AI into a ruleset. Heard on one of Arumba's videos that they want to change attrition so that the AI don't suffer attrition unless their individual armies exceed the support limit, but the player will suffer attrition if the total number of armies exceeds the limit. Why base your game on history when you aren't going to base the gameplay on reality?