Creating a new country

Creating The Nation

Let's use a hypothetical "American Caliphate" as an example.

The first thing you are going to need to do is come up with a 3-letter code (also called "country tag") that's not in use by the game. In this example we will use GAC. If you need to check if a combination is in use, simply check the Tag article or your History\countries folder. This code is used by the game to identify anything related to your country (history, flag, and so forth).

To begin, go into your game folder. By default this is located in the following location: C:\Program Files\Paradox Interactive\Eu3\

You will notice several sub-folders here. The three we are interested in are: history, gfx, and common. Go ahead and browse around a bit.

Ok, now that you've gotten a general idea of what's in each folder, go ahead into the Common folder.

You will see a bunch of sub-folders and text files.

Open up countries.txt in your text editor of choice (Notepad is fine)

You will see a bunch of text like the following:

# Special countries..
REB = "common/countries/rebels.txt"
PIR = "common/countries/pirates.txt"
NAT = "common/countries/natives.txt"

#Scandinavia
SWE = "common/countries/Sweden.txt"
DAN = "common/countries/Denmark.txt"
FIN = "common/countries/Finland.txt"
GOT = "common/countries/Gotland.txt"
NOR = "common/countries/Norway.txt"
SHL = "common/countries/Holstein.txt"

Find the part of the world where you want to add your nation to. In our example you could go and add a line to the #Colonies section. Try to keep it alphabetical.

#Colonies
BRZ = "common/countries/Brazil.txt"
CAN = "common/countries/Canada.txt"
CHL = "common/countries/Chile.txt"
COL = "common/countries/Colombia.txt"
GAC = "common/countries/American Caliphate.txt"
LAP = "common/countries/LaPlata.txt"
LOU = "common/countries/Louisiana.txt"
MEX = "common/countries/Mexico.txt"
PEU = "common/countries/Peru.txt"
QUE = "common/countries/Quebec.txt"
USA = "common/countries/USA.txt"

Great job! Now remember the name of the .txt file you just named in this file.

Now go into the countries sub-folder.

For now, pick a nation of a similar culture etc. as the nation you want to make, and copy/paste its text file back into the same folder. You should get a name like: Algiers - Copy.txt . Now rename the file to the name of your nation. In the example the text file would be named "American Caliphate.txt". This name MUST match the name you put into the countries.txt file before; if it does not, the game will crash on launch.

For now we are going to leave the contents of this file alone. We can change it later to suit your nation (see part 4 below).

Great. Your nation now kinda exists. Of course it's not in the game yet, it has no flag, and has no history! Let's try to rectify this a bit.

Let's go ahead and go back to the C:\Program Files\Paradox Interactive\Eu3\ folder and head into the gfx sub-folder.

Once there go into the flags sub-folder. Now let's go ahead and copy/paste the USA.tga file back into its own directory. Let's rename the new file to GAC.tga . (the 3 letters must match the 3 letter combination you came up with before)

At this time you can use your favorite graphics editing tool to edit this flag. You could use the free paint.net.

Once you are satisfied with your flag, delete the flagfiles.dds cache file (per Havard's tip) so there aren't any graphical glitches in the game as a result of the change.

Let's go head back to the C:\Program Files\Paradox Interactive\Eu3\ folder.

Now that we have a country and a flag let's go ahead and give it some basic history.

Go to the C:\Program Files\Paradox Interactive\Eu3\history\countries folder. Similar to what you've done before copy/paste a similar countries file, and rename it to: GAC - American Caliphate.txt - Yes you can have spaces in the name file.

Go ahead into the file. Change the values to what you want them to be. I made mine very simple for now, although I will adjust it more later in the guide.

For the Capital you'll have to go into the C:\Program Files\Paradox Interactive\Eu3\history\provinces folder and get the number of the province you want to be the PREFERRED capital of your nation. If this is a revolting nation or one that can be released as a vassal, the capital may end up in a different location, so don't be surprised to see it that way.

#######################################
# American Caliphate
#######################################

government = constitutional_republic
aristocracy_plutocracy = 1
centralization_decentralization = 1
innovative_narrowminded = -1
mercantilism_freetrade = -2
offensive_defensive = 2
land_naval = -1
quality_quantity = 1
serfdom_freesubjects = 5
technology_group = Latin
primary_culture = American
religion = sunni
capital = 966 # Connecticut

Great, now your country has its starting technology, government, capital, and religion.

Now we have one final step to do. Go into C:\Program Files\Paradox Interactive\Eu3\localisation . You will see several files. Open text.csv in either Notepad or Excel. Excel will be faster but you CAN use notepad if you must. NOTE: Do not use OpenOffice Calc. It seems to add characters that mess up the file and will cause EU3 to not work correctly.

Do a search for any existing 3 digit code.

You'll come to a bunch of entries. Add your 3 digit code to the list alphabetically, keeping the same format. Below is a sample including our entry.

FLA;Flanders;Flandres;Flandern;Flandria;Flandes;Fiandre;;x
FOI;Foix;Foix;Foix;Foix;Foix;Foix;;x
FRA;France;France;Frankreich;Francja;Francia;Francia;;x
FRI;Friesland;Frise;Friesland;Fryzja;Friedland;Frisia;;x
GAC;American Caliphate;American Caliphate;American Caliphate;American Caliphate;American Caliphate;American Caliphate;;x
GAK;Gakwar;Gâekwâr;Gakwar;Gakwar;Gakwar;Gakwar;;x
GBR;Great Britain;Grande Bretagne;Großbritannien;Wielka Brytania;Gran Bretaña;Gran Bretagna;;x
GDW;Gondwana ;Gondwana;Gondwana;Gondwana;Gondwana;Gondwana;;x
GEL;Gelre;Gueldre;Gelre;Geldria;Gelre;Gelre;;x

What this file does is name your nation in the game. Make sure the name is not too long or text will overlap in game. For example, this nation was originally Great American Caliphate—too long, but change it to American Caliphate and no problems.

While you're here, you should go ahead and create an adjective for the nation as well.

Find the following in the file:

FRI_ADJ;Frisian;frisone;Friesische;Fryzja;de Friedland;frisona;;x
GAK_ADJ;Gakwari;gâekwâr;Gakwari;Gakwar;de Gakwar;Gakwar;;x

In between Frisian and Gakwari, add the following:

GAC_ADJ;American-Caliphitian;American-Caliphitian;American-Caliphitian;American-Caliphitian;American-Caliphitian;American-Caliphitian;;x

This will make it so there can be things like the French American-Caliphitian war etc.

Now save your file.

That's it for part 1! Congrats, you have now made your very first country!

Adding the Nation to the Game

So now you have your nation created... and good work with that. What's that you say? Your nation doesn't show up in the game? Of course not! It doesn't magically know where its supposed to be!

One of the best parts of EU3 is that you can choose any start date for any nation. While this is great for players it can be a real pain for modders. You have to tell EVERY territory about EVERY change a nation has throughout the games history.

I'm going to use the same example as part one. Since this is just an example, we are going to actually put GAC in Europe so we don't have to worry about things like Terra Incognita etc.

To start with lets go into the C:\Program Files\Paradox Interactive\Eu3\history\provinces folder.

Pick a province you want to belong to the American Caliphate. For the example we're going to give them Yorkshire (#245). Go ahead and open that text file now.

#245 - Yorkshire

owner = ENG
controller = ENG
culture = English
religion = catholic
hre = no
base_tax = 7
trade_goods = iron
manpower = 3
capital = "York"
citysize = 10000
add_core = ENG
fort1 = yes
temple = yes #York Cathedral
marketplace = yes
discovered_by = Latin
discovered_by = Muslim
discovered_by = eastern

1453.1.1 = { revolt_risk = 5 } #Start of the War of the Roses
1461.4.1 = { controller = REB } #Capture of York after Battle of Towton
1461.6.1 = { revolt_risk = 2 controller = ENG } #Coronation of Edward IV
1467.1.1 = { revolt_risk = 5 } #Rivalry between Edward IV & Warwick
1470.3.1 = { controller = REB }
1470.10.6 = { controller = ENG } #Readeption of Henry VI
1471.1.1 = { revolt_risk = 8 } #Unpopularity of Warwick & War with Burgundy
1471.3.1 = { controller = REB }
1471.5.4 = { revolt_risk = 2 controller = ENG } #Murder of Henry VI & Restoration of Edward IV
1483.6.26 = { revolt_risk = 8 } #Revulsion at Supposed Murder of the Princes in the Tower
1485.8.23 = { revolt_risk = 0 } #Battle of Bosworth Field & the End of the War of the Roses
1520.1.1 = { citysize = 8000 }

That file represents every change that occurs during the history of the game. So as-is if you start after Jan 1, 1453 there will be a huge revolt risk.

Lets go ahead and get rid of all the history notes for now. They pertain to the English anyway!

The file should now look like:

#245 - Yorkshire

owner = ENG
controller = ENG
culture = English
religion = catholic
hre = no
base_tax = 7
trade_goods = iron
manpower = 3
capital = "York"
citysize = 10000
add_core = ENG
fort1 = yes
temple = yes #York Cathedral
marketplace = yes
discovered_by = Latin
discovered_by = Muslim
discovered_by = eastern

That's much easier to look at. Now lets change the Owner and Controller to GAC.

Let's change the religion to Sunni. Below add_core = ENG add another line add_core = GAC. This will give both you AND the English a core in this province.

Now just for fun lets change the culture from English to American since that's your primary culture.

The final province file should look like this:

#245 - Yorkshire

owner = GAC
controller = GAC
culture = American
religion = catholic
hre = no
base_tax = 7
trade_goods = iron
manpower = 3
capital = "York"
citysize = 5786
add_core = ENG
fort1 = yes
temple = yes #York Cathedral
marketplace = yes
discovered_by = Latin
discovered_by = Muslim
discovered_by = eastern

Now simply rinse and repeat for any province you want your country to start with!

Your nation is now in the game! Woohoo!

Adding Events and History to the Nation

Now you probably don't want your nation to be static throughout all different start dates.

For our example we are going to make it so:

On February 4th 1496 the Sunni Religion spreads to Yorkshire. On July 1, 1496 Yorkshire becomes American in culture, and GAC takes military control On March 8 of 1497 the territory becomes fully GAC territory GAC gains the territory of Cumbria on December 2, 1500. This is a simpler way of transferring control. Since it's breaking away from England we are also going to have it go to war with them when they emerge in 1496, and have a peace treaty on May 9 of 1500. Finally they forge an alliance with the Ottoman Empire on September 12, 1500.

Ok lets get started. Open up the Yorkshire province file. It should still look like it did in the earlier post so I'm not going to repost it.

Remember those history blocks we got rid of before? Well now it's time to add some new ones!

For starters lets give control of the province back to England.

Make the file look like the following:

#245 - Yorkshire

owner = ENG
controller = ENG
culture = English
religion = catholic
hre = no
base_tax = 7
trade_goods = iron
manpower = 3
capital = "York"
citysize = 10000
add_core = ENG
fort1 = yes
temple = yes #York Cathedral
marketplace = yes
discovered_by = Latin
discovered_by = Muslim
discovered_by = eastern

At the bottom of the file add the following:

1496.4.2 = {
religion = sunni # Sunni religion takes over
}

1496.1.7 = { 
culture = American #province now has American Culture
add_core = GAC # This territory is now a core of GAC
}
1497.3.8 = { 
owner = GAC # American Caliphate takes Ownership of province
controller = GAC #American Caliphate takes control 
}

Save your file, close it, and open up the province file for Cumbria (it's #247)

Just like Yorkshire we need to get rid of the existing events.

Delete the following

453.1.1 = { revolt_risk = 5 } #Start of the War of the Roses
1461.6.1 = { revolt_risk = 2 } #Coronation of Edward IV
1467.1.1 = { revolt_risk = 5 } #Rivalry between Edward IV & Warwick
1471.1.1 = { revolt_risk = 8 } #Unpopularity of Warwick & War with Burgundy
1471.5.4 = { revolt_risk = 2 } #Murder of Henry VI & Restoration of Edward IV
1483.6.26 = { revolt_risk = 8 } #Revulsion at Supposed Murder of the Princes in the Tower
1485.8.23 = { revolt_risk = 0 } #Battle of Bosworth Field & the End of the War of the Roses

Ok great. Now in place of the text you just deleted add the following

1500.2.12 = {
owner = GAC # GAC now owns this
controller = GAC #American Caliphate takes control
add_core = GAC # This territory is now a core of GAC
}

1502.15.1 = { 
religion = sunni # Sunni religion takes over 
culture = American #province now has American Culture

}

Now save the file, and launch the game. Try starting at various dates in our time frame and check out Yorkshire and Cumbria! Tada!

We aren't finished yet though. We still have a war to trigger, troops to place, and an alliance to cement!

Lets start by starting a war!

Go to the C:\Program Files\Paradox Interactive\Eu3\history\wars folder

Make a new text file called: AmeriIslamicRevolution.txt

Now add the following to the file.

name = "AmeriIslamic Revolution"

1497.3.8 = {
add_attacker = GAC
add_defender = ENG
1497.3.8 = {
battle = {
name = "Yorkshire Revolt"
location = 168
attacker = {
# leader = 
infantry = 8000
losses = 10 # percent
}
defender = {
# leader = 
infantry = 2000
losses = 100 # percent
}
result = win
}
}
}

1500.9.5 = {
rem_attacker = GAC
rem_defender = ENG
}

Now from March 8, 1497 until May 9, 1500 England and American Caliphate will be at war with one another! Oh Noes! There is also now a battle that GAC wins when the war starts called the "Yorkshire Revolution"

Now lets add in that Ottoman Alliance. No lasting empire stands alone after all!

Head on over to the C:\Program Files\Paradox Interactive\Eu3 - DEMO\history\diplomacy folder

Now we can add our alliance anywhere, but since we stuck GAC in England, lets add it to the British Alliances. Go ahead and open the British_alliances.txt file.

This should have the following information in it:

#Auld Alliance
alliance = {
first = SCO
second = NOR
start_date = 1326.1.1
end_date = 1560.1.1
}

#The Anglo-Portuguese alliance
alliance = {
first = ENG
second = POR
start_date = 1373.1.1
end_date = 1701.9.1
}

# Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon
royal_marriage = {
first = ENG
second = ARA
start_date = 1509.6.11
end_date = 1516.1.22
}

royal_marriage = {
first = ENG
second = SPA
start_date = 1516.1.23
end_date = 1533.5.23 
}

Lets add our new alliance to the bottom. Add the following:

The American Caliphate-Ottoman Empire Alliance

alliance = {
first = GAC
second = TUR
start_date = 1500.12.9
end_date = 1700.1.1
}

Now from September 9, 1500 until January 1st 1700 GAC and Turkey will be allied!

Now your pretty much all done. The only thing you have left to do is customize your nation (advisors, leader names etc.). That will be explained in Part 4 below.

If you wanted to you could also make an event for this - however that's for a different guide

Customizing Your Nation

To rehash the previous steps for those just joining us, we created a new nation called the American Caliphate. We placed them in Yorkshire and Cumbria, started a war with England, eventually called a peace, and had them ally with the Ottoman Empire! Pretty Impressive!

So lets go ahead and get to customizing your nation a bit.

Go ahead an open up the GAC - American Caliphate.txt file in the C:\Program Files\Paradox Interactive\Eu3\history\countries folder. If you remember we created this waaaay back in part 1.

#######################################
# American Caliphate
#######################################

government = constitutional_republic
aristocracy_plutocracy = 1
centralization_decentralization = 1
innovative_narrowminded = -1
mercantilism_freetrade = -2
offensive_defensive = 2
land_naval = -1
quality_quantity = 1
serfdom_freesubjects = 5
technology_group = Latin
primary_culture = American
religion = sunni
capital = 966 # Connecticut

Lets go line by line what you can change:

government: This determines what form of government your nation starts with. Your choices are: feudal_monarchy, merchant_republic, despotic_monarchy, noble_republic, administrative_monarchy, administrative_republic, absolute_monarchy, republican_dictatorship, constitutional_monarchy, enlightened_despotism, constitutional_republic, bureaucratic_despotism, theocracy, papacy, tribal_despotism, tribal_federation, and tribal_democracy.

aristocracy_plutocracy: Where on this slider your nation starts (-s are to the left of center +s to the right)
centralization_decentralization: Where on this slider your nation starts (-s are to the left of center +s to the right)
innovative_narrowminded: Where on this slider your nation starts (-s are to the left of center +s to the right)
mercantilism_freetrade: Where on this slider your nation starts (-s are to the left of center +s to the right)
offensive_defensive: Where on this slider your nation starts (-s are to the left of center +s to the right)
land_naval: Where on this slider your nation starts (-s are to the left of center +s to the right)
quality_quantity: Where on this slider your nation starts (-s are to the left of center +s to the right)
serfdom_freesubjects: Where on this slider your nation starts (-s are to the left of center +s to the right)

technology_group: What Technology group your nation is a part of. Your choices are: Latin, eastern, Muslim, Indian, Chinese, African, and new_world.

primary_culture: This is the primary culture for your civilization. You have a LOT of choices. They are: pommeranian, prussian, hannoverian, hessian, Saxon, rheinlaender, bavarian, Austrian, Dutch, Flemish, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, English, American, lowland_scottish, highland_scottish, Welsh, Breton, Irish, lombard, umbrian, sicilian, castillian, Catalan, galician, andalucian, Portuguese, cosmopolitan_french, gascon, normand, aquitaine, burgundian, occitain, wallonian, basque, Finnish, Estonian, sapmi, Slovenian, Croatian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Romanian, Albanian,Czech, slovak, polish, Hungarian,schlesian, Russian, Ukrainian, byelorussian, ruthenian, Lithuanian, old_prussian, Latvian, ingrian, Greek, Georgian, Armenian, maghreb_arabic, al_misr_arabic, al_suryah_arabic, al_iraqiya_arabic, bedouin_arabic, Maltese, berber, Persian, azerbadjani, baluchi, kurdish, Turkish, turkmeni, Mongol, tunguz, pashtun, tajihk, uzbehk, khazak, Kirgiz, uralic, siberian, yakut, tartar, zapotek, mayan, aztek, inca, guarani, aimara, amazonian, patagonian, guajiro, teremembe, tupinamba, mataco, Arawak, carib, Dakota, Cherokee, pueblo, aleutian, inuit, cree, iroquis, huron, Navajo, shawnee, Delaware, creek, Japanese, manchu, chihan, cantonese, Korean, khmer, mon, Vietnamese, Polynesian, cham, Malayan, Filipino, Madagascan, sulawesi, central_thai, lao, northern_thai, shan, Burmese, Tibetan, chin, papuan, aboriginal, melanesian, moluccan, assamese, Bengali, bihari, nepali, oriya, sinhala, avadhi, kanauji, anjabi, kashmiri, Gujarati, marathi, sindhi, rajput, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, telegu, madagasque, tuareg, senegambian, dyola, nubian, Somali, bantu, Swahili, Ethiopian, kongolese, shona, Mali, yorumba, aka, and ashanti.

religion: What religion your nation starts as. Your choices are:catholic, Protestant, reformed, orthodox, sunni, shiite, buddhism, hinduism, confucianism, shinto, animism

capital: This is the NUMBER of the province you want to put as your countries preferred capital. As there's well over 1,000 provinces in the game i'm not going to list them here. Look in your C:\Program Files\Paradox Interactive\Eu3\history\provinces folder for the number.

Go ahead and tweak the file all you want. Once you have your nation the way you want it (I set the government to a Theocracy, changed the religion to suuni, culture to American etc.) save and close the file.

Now lets go ahead and open the C:\Program Files\Paradox Interactive\Eu3\common\countries folder.

Currently it should look something like this:

#Country Name: Great American Caliphate

graphical_culture = muslimgfx

color = { 220 202 96 } 

historical_ideas = {
excellent_shipwrights
merchant_adventures
military_drill
national_conscripts
sea_hawks
superior_seamanship
shrewd_commerce_practise
naval_fighting_instruction
national_trade_policy
battlefield_commisions 
}

historical_units = {
mamluk_archer
mamluk_cavalry_charge
mamluk_duel
mamluk_musket_charge
ali_bey_reformed_infantry
}

monarch_names = {
"Muhammad #4" = 80
"Ahmad #0" = 50
"Mûsâ #2" = 20
"'Abdallâh #1" = 20
"Abû Tâshufîn #0" = 20
"al-Hasan #0" = 20
"'Abd ar-Rahmân #3" = 10
"'Abd al-Wâhid #1" = 10
"Sa'îd #1" = 10
"Yûsuf #1" = 10
"Baba Aruj #0" = 10
"Khidr Khair ad-Din #0" = 10
"Selim #0" = 10
"'Uthmân #2" = 5
"Yaghmurasân #1" = 5
"'Abd al-Karim #0" = 0
"Barakat #0" = 0
"Basir #0" = 0
"Dawud #0" = 0
"Fahd #0" = 0
"Faris #0" = 0
"Fuad #0" = 0
"Haidar #0" = 0
"Hashim #0" = 0
"Husam #0" = 0
"Iqbal #0" = 0
"Jabbar #0" = 0
"Jamal #0" = 0
"Junayd #0" = 0
"Malik #0" = 0
"Mustafa #0" = 0
"Najib #0" = 0
"Qasim #0" = 0
"Rahim #0" = 0
"Rashîd #0" = 0
"Safi #0" = 0
"Sakhr #0" = 0
"Umar #0" = 0
"Wahid #0" = 0
"Zahir #0" = 0
}

leader_names = {
Selmi
Amara
Behar
Ilaes
Benzine
Essaid
Hacini
Benzai
Kelkal
Merah
}

ship_names = {
Barr Muta´al Wali Batin Zahir Akhir _Awwal
Mu´akhkhir Muqaddim Muqtadir Qadir Samad
Wahid Majid Wajed Qayyum Hayy Mumit Muhyi
Mu´id Mubdi Muhsi Hamid Waliyy Matin Qawiyy
Wakil Haqq Shahid Ba´ith
}

Again lets go through this file entry by entry.

graphical_culture: What graphics set your nation uses.

color: Not 100% sure but I believe this is your countries color on the political map. This needs to be in a RGB value.

historical_ideas: What national ideas your country historicly had. I belive this gives them preference, but the AI may choose to use other ones. Don't hold me to that though. Your choices are: grand_navy, sea_hawks, superior_seamanship, naval_fighting_instruction, excellent_shipwrights, naval_glory, national_conscripts, grand_army, military_drill, *engineer_corps, battlefield_commisions, glorious_arms, merchant_adventures, quest_for_the_new_world, colonial_ventures, shrewd_commerce_practise, vice_roys, smithian_economics, bureaucracy, national_bank, national_trade_policy, espionage, cabinet, bill_of_rights, church_attendance_duty, divine_supremacy, humanist_tolerance, scientific_revolution, patron_of_art, and deus_vult

historical_units: These are the unit preferences (I'm assuming) of the nation. As there are a lot of different units I won't list them all here. You can however find the ones you want in C:\Program Files\Paradox Interactive\Eu3\common\units .
monarch_names: This is where your monarchs names go. If you have some forms of government (like a constitutional republic) this is the First/Proper name of your leader. The name needs to be in the following format: "Name #<The numeric for the last king with this name. So if you wanted the next instance of John to be IX you would put 8 here>" = <This is the chance of the name being used. If it is 0 the name can be used as a last/sir name for other government types>
leader_names: In some government types you need last/sir names. They go here.
ship_names: Names that special ships (such as ones belonging to Conquistadors) get

ALLLLLMOST done! One final thing to do. No country is complete without their own unique advisors!

soooooooo... lets head into the:C:\Program Files\Paradox Interactive\Eu3\history\advisors folder!

Now select the text for your group. Since we put GAC in Europe I'm going to choose BritishIsles.txt—go ahead and edit it.

Look for the following information in your file.

################################################## #################
# Era #1 1450 - 1540 (17/25 used currently)
################################################## #################

advisor = {
name = "John Fortescue" #English lawyer 
location = 234 #Wessex
skill = 1
type = statesman 
date = 1424.1.1 #30 years old
death_date = 1476.1.1 #died
}

Don't worry about the 17/24 thing - This was used during the research stage of development so they had a balanced number of advisor's in each area.

Underneath the Era 1 stuff you'll see an existing adviser. Lets use John Fortescue as a template.

Now add the following above him:

advisor = {
name = "George Muhammad" #GAC Theologist 
location = 245 #Yorkshire
skill = 3
type = theologian
date = 1427.1.1 
death_date = 1526.1.1 
}

The name of the new advisor is George Muhammad, He can be recruited by whoever owns Yorkshire. His skill level is 3, and he is a theologian (There is a list of types actually in this file so I wont post it here). He can be recruited after Jan 1, 1427 and dies on Jan 1 1526.

And that's all there is to it.

External links

This article was adapted from a guide by Strager at Paradoxplaza