This guide aims to help those of us keen on a little role-play to understand simple mod-making in order to rename countries in game. The best part is as this mod will only affect localisation, it will not break ironman saves allowing you to gain achievements!
Introduction
As stated in the description, the purpose of this guide is to show those of you who like a little role-play or historical accuracy in your games to change the names of countries at will just as you can with provinces.
In the past I have done games where I start as the one province minors of Hisn Kayfa and the Knights of Rhodes and eventually reform the Ayyubid and Latin Empires respectively. The Ayyubid is clearly recognised by the conditions for its achievement, while the Latin Empire is recognised in the crusader mission tree – and yet, neither can have its name changed in game the same way uniting Islam or forming the Kingdom of God does.
Since I learned this trick I have found roleplaying in eu4 far more enjoyable because no longer are you stuck with the same name you began with and you can easily reflect changes in government, culture and status.
So this guide is for those of you like me, it does not take long, it is easy, and as I said, it is completely ironman compatible, so let’s get going!
The Set-up
Alright, I have set this up so it is step-by-step and hopefully perfectly clear what I am doing:
1. Open your eu4 launcher and navigate the “All installed mods” tab on the left
2. Once there, click the “mod tools” button at the top.
3. This will open a dialogue box in which you want to click “create mod”.
4. From here you want to fill in the details of your mod. I decided I will rename the country of Toulouse to Occitania (which is a game I have done before) as the flag of Toulouse is also the flag of Occitania and the cultural capital of the state.
Hence, my mod is called “Occitania” and mt directory is “mod/occitania” – these are up to you, but keep them clear so you understand what you’re doing.
In version, simply put the current version you are playing on. Localisation mods are unlikely to ever be broken by an update so this isn’t all that important.
Finally, tags are completely irrelevant unless you plan to upload your mod to the workshop. Just select whatever.
Once this is done, click “create mod”.
5. Now close the next dialogue box unless you want to upload your mod, in which case its pretty self-explanatory. Also close the launcher at this point.
The modding
Now we get to the actual modding part.
1. Navigate your eu4 mod folder in Documents\Paradox Interactive\Europa Universalis IV\mod. Here you will see all of your mods and you should have the mod you just created as a folder. Open this folder.
2. Leave this folder open in it there should be nothing but a descriptor.mod file. Now navigate the main eu4 directory. This will be in your program files (wherever you installed steam) under Steam\steamapps\common\Europa Universalis IV. From there locate the folder called “localisation” and inside it find the file called countries_l_english.yml. If you are playing EU4 in any of the other languages, then find that file instead. What you want to do now is COPY this file.
3. Now return to your mod directory, and inside your mod folder create a folder called “localisation” to mirror that in the eu4 directory. It is important you spell this correctly so the game recognises it.
4. Paste the file you copied form the eu4 directory inside the new folder.
5. Now using a text editor (ideally Notepad++ or Sublime Text – this is what I am using but regular notepad should also work) open this file for editing. Using the ctrl+f “find” function locate the country you want to rename.
Note: Some countries are not located in this file. For some reason paradox has messed up and the localisations for some nations are located in the file called “text_l_ebglish.yml“. The process is the same, the file is simply different. I haven’t looked into all the countries so its possible there is some others in other files too, but the far majority is in the correct file.
6. Rename the country as you wish – do not alter anything else. if the formatting is broken, the game will not recognise it.
7. Now do the same but locate the adjective for this country.
8. Again, rename it as you wish, taking care to not alter the formatting or tags.
9. Once this is done, simply save and close the file, open the Eu4 launcher and navigate your playset where you’d normally select your mods. The mod should already be there, I like to disable and re-enable it just to be sure.
10. Now in-game, start an ironman campaign, and boom.
Conclusion
Here you go! At first this may all seem a little daunting, but once you do it you will know how to do it forever opening a whole new level of immersion to your games.
The graphic mod I am using is called Duck;s Map Overhaul Modpack and is available in the workshop:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1926948425
I hope the guide was clear, if something wasn’t please let me know. I’m thinking of doing a similar guide but for flags some time soon as this also is ironman compatible. Either way, thank you for reading, I hope you have a good day!
Burned.
Here we come to an end for Europa Universalis IV Rename your country – Ironman Compatible! hope you enjoy it. If you think we forget something to include or we should make an update to the post let us know via comment, and we will fix it asap! Thanks and have a great day!
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