What are your most fun custom nations? (2024)

Form Byzantium and Form Persia starts, where you take all the necessary cores (Except Constantinople), and form them at game start.

You get their events, and your own custom ideas. Rise of the Eastern Empires!

I also like Basque France (Visigoths) and Welsh England (Celtica), those are pretty good too.

Poland would be interesting, but you can't form Poland-Lithuania because you never start with a regency council.

Note that provinces are more effective than ideas on a point for point basis, especially more so than tier 3+ ideas.

Tengri tolerance games are pretty relaxing.

Some of my more memorable custom nations:

Mëtälland - Roleplayas a free Norway with Norse religion and eastern tech. Difficulty turned out to be extremely high despite only being eastern tech and located in Europe: who knew being a pagan surrounded by Catholics is pretty much impossible to survive? Not to mention taking even a single province from said Catholics is enough to spark a coalition consisting of all of central Europe.

Tentacle Love Empire - This game was started to test how low I could push accepted culture threshold and nationalism (you can get both to 0). I added the later challenge that my mainland Asia borders must be 1 province thick tentacles. Sadly, any custom nation with Japanese culture is currently broken because you will get the Western Trade event lowering your missionary strength by 5%, but you don't get the national decision to counter it. Pretty much unplayable.

Cannibal Corpse - Roleplay as a cannibal tribe in Polynesia with Doom mechanics. Gotta eat'am all.

Channel Trade Company - A game to test building a "Tall" nation. Basically, I was not allowed to expand in Europe ever, but was allowed to make trade companies. Turned out to be very easy after dismantling the HRE. This I feel however is just mainly due to how poorly the AI is at blobbing.

Afrikana Maxima - Roleplay as a small nation started in the sub-sahara from a lost Roman Legion that then returns to Europe to restore the Roman Empire.

Choatic Neutral said:

Form Byzantium and Form Persia starts, where you take all the necessary cores (Except Constantinople), and form them at game start.

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What ideas did you choose for a run like this?

ZomgK3tchup said:

What ideas did you choose for a run like this?

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Not ideas, government.

Orthodox gets a random event that's essential -Orthodoxy Power for +5 Republican tradition.

Dutch Republic all the way.

Orthodox Republic + Byzantine Purple Phoenix Events = Great game.

Persia has a couple of good events, but they're front loaded for little long term flavor. You get a sh*tton of cores though.

I know this is ancient, but I thought I'd add something I've done several times and enjoy each time I do it:

Create a custom nation that encompasses Granada, Tangier, and Marrakesh. If your capitol is one of the provinces in Granada, you get the benefit of being on the Eurpoean continent, so you can make Trade Companies in Africa that feed into your trade capitol of Sevilla. A usually make the culture Leonese and name the kingdom "Nova Asturia," fantasizing that a monastic order called The Knights of Asturia partook in the Spanish and fictional Moroccan crusades, winning Granada, Tangier and Marrakesh from the Pope. Over time, the needs of a society simply couldn't be met by a monastic order, and so they somehow chose someone to serve as their king.

I like playing this way because it makes colonizing the Americas possible earlier in the game, ahead of some of the competition, and because Western Africa is pretty weak. If you get lucky, Tunisia and Tlemcen don't ally with the Ottomans, so taking their territory isn't too difficult. One thing to note, however, is that when you do this there are really only five kingdoms that would readily consider you a rival, and it's random which three you'll end up with: Portugal, Castile, Aragon, France, and England. If you can ally with either Castile or Aragon, you should be okay, but if they both rival you it could be exceptionally difficult. Having four Iberian kingdoms is a pretty cool way to play either way though.

Thanks for unearthing this relic!

I haven't tried a custom nation before, but I love playing in Iberia. This is a fun idea, thank you!

Henrious said:

The real OP custom nation is taking the Russian expansion idea in the new world. How i got the 3 dev start achievement.

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I managed to grab mine before they patched out the mistaken 0-cost for it, too. Great times!

one of my favorite i've ever done is an 800 point OPM.

started with 20% morale, -25% advisor cost(or is it 20?)
Then 1-7 were
Construction cost 20%
dev cost 20% (both of those during economic for a -30 construction cost and -40% dev cost for tallness)
Followed by liberty desire from dev -0.4%, allowing for massive vassals
Diplo reputation + 2, helps wiht vassals, usualy take influence to stack a bit more on that.
Discipline 10%
yearly prestige 2
and both final are 20% shock/fire damage taken reduction. Tanky army are broken as f*ck. Usualy pick quality or expansion as third idea, depending on where I'm playing.

While the idea set is definitly strong, like, super strong, it's not straight up broken.
Lots of fexibility, allows for vassal, tall play and decent army game, with a decent income from the building being cheaper.
If I don't do vassal I swap 3-4 with goods produced +20% and admin efficienty +20% and the advisor cost with coring cost.
That one's straight up op tho.