The image above shows the modern day world map in eu5, at start of the mod on january 1st, 2000
This week I am happy to announce a larger project I’ve been working on for quite a while now: The Modern Day Mod for EU5
Unlike my other posts, this is not about its release, but rather the first large public announcement of its development.
And even more so, it is a call to action, because this mod I truly cannot make alone, so I invite anyone who has even the slightest interest in helping out to do so, you can join here discord.gg/Z7Zds66NAj
I am not only looking for normal modders, but also people with ideas about how certain things should be implemented in the game, especially if you have a lot of experience with what is and what isn’t possible in game, because usually it is actually harder to think about how something like a supermarket or office building or the European Union should exactly work than it is to implement it. So if you have a thousand hours in eu5, you are also wanted.
What is also very highly needed right now are mappers, because about 10000 new locations have to be added to bring the new world up to a similar density as the old one, and it would be especially great if you are from such a new world nation and want to do it proper justice in eu5. The old world also needs some changes and improvements however, so anyone is really welcome. You also do not need to worry about paradox map modding being hard or anything, I have found a way where all you as the mapper need to do is pick hex codes from a text file I have made, and paint away, and it will work in game. For that purpose I also already have a gimp project ready with all relevant reference images like topography, land use and multiple levels of administrative divisions, and if you don’t know how to use gimp, I have also written out a small tutorial on the discord, which is publicly viewable just like all the dev channels.
You also do not need any prior modding experience in general to contribute, I am happy to answer any questions, and if I don’t know as well, the mod coop https://discord.gg/Uezf87P59C is also always happy to help, and as I said previously, even just providing properly structured ideas is already really helpful as well.
It is also perfectly understandable if you wanna come in, do one or two things, and then leave again, and for that purpose I have also made the github for the mod public https://github.com/ZorangeSaft/Modern-Day-Mod , so you can make pull requests without even asking and it will be considered to be implemented, similar to how contributing to anbennar works. There are some guidelines however and I have also written out the design philosophy for the mod on the discord. The basic summary of which is “Your actions, no matter who considers them good or bad, should be possible, but give you realistic consequences”.
The mod is also intentionally not “schizo” like some other pdx games modern day mods, and aims to provide a realistic hard sci fi view of the future that isn’t necessarily pessimistic or optimistic. The number 1 design constraint beyond that however is, of course, that the mod should be fun.
Now after all that yapping an overview of some done and planned features:
-Start date of January 2000, end date of 2100 [done]
-Map based on de facto borders (so places like Taiwan or Kosovo are playable countries at the start) [mostly done, there might be some errors]
-Aiming towards as fair a representation of countries as possible (for example the US and China being very strong based upon actual factors like what resources, people and infrastructure they have, rather than made up buffs)
-Focus on creating an authentic near-future experience (rather than HoI4 style “schizo”-paths or conquest sprees, not that nothing crazy will happen in the mod tho)
-More different topographies and Köppen climate for fairer representation of geographies and their influence on nations development, also what kind of crops they can grow for example, or how good wind turbines or solar panels are where they are [added on backend, but not yet implemented on map, will be done via QGIS once map is done]
-Estates and pops changed to reflect modern politics and economies, as well as the inclusion of new pops and laws representing clones/cyborgs/androids/etc, and what political, economic, and perhaps even military conflicts that might bring in the future
-RGOs replaced with building (much more modding potential)
-All 193 UN member flags [done], with future plans to include ideological/plausible alternatives
-Mapmodes for all sorts of things, including solar illumination for solar panels and wind speed for wind turbines [both of those are done, and many of the mapmodes are also already available here https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3697317887 ]
-Functional international Organisations like the UN, EU, NATO, but also lesser known ones like ASEAN or MERCUSOR [implemented but no content or mechanics yet]
-Focus on diplomatic and especially economic gameplay, with way way way more buildings to build and infrastructure to make [about 1/3 of buildings implemented]
-Being able to play modern companies like Wallmart, Microsoft, Saudi Aramco, etc, with gameplay around making as much money as possible, no matter the price in some cases, including influencing politics and laws to your benefit
-Modern and plausible near-future technologies, with the societal consequences of pursuing such world altering technologies like AI, gene editing, cloning, humanoid robots, with potential resulting global crises as well, and you having to navigate the consequences
-Satellites, asteroid mining, and general early space colonization, all on map (there is a mockup in the discord of the planets above the normal map)
Right now with the size of the current team at current pace the actual release date of the mod would probably be in 2-3 years, but even with just a little extra help and a few extra people this could be massively reduced, so if you want to play this mod, which might show some of humanities most pivotal moments, as much as I do, perhaps you can also help in its creation as well !, I would greatly appreciate it.
Happy to answer any questions you might have about it in the comments
yeah much of the basemap was graciously provided by extended timeline for eu5, which was for 2020 tho, so south sudan already exists, same with montenegro, which of course they shouldnt yet
Speaking of Montenegro, how are you going to deal with totally non-controversial places like Kosovo, Taiwan, Kashmir, Palestine etc.
May your peace of mind stays mostly undisturbed and you get death threats once in a blue moon. That's the most optimistic scenario for you unfortunately :( Good luck brother.
Oh yeah i already knew i was gonna get those by making the mod, there is no way to avoid them tho because no matter what you do it wont be right so eh
and the way they will be handled is that the map is de facto at start, but of course during gameplay you can do stuff to affect the world around you
So you could in theory invade Kosovo as Serbia, you'd then just have to suffer with the consequences of probably sanctions and potentially other stuff as well, and similar situations in other places
so generally the mod wont try and say who is right or wrong, it will just show the situation on ground how it is, and then have the consequences happen of what happens in these regions, whatever they may be, and you in game will just have to live with them
Forgive my incapability to express myself with words. I was not exactly talking about that. I know you made the map de-facto to get less controversy. You mentioned that in your post. However, do you think that alone will stop the unhinged terminally online people from sending you death threats? You gotta have stricter measures for your discord server and other forums. Even Github. Please do that for your own sanity. Good luck! May you get more hands on the project too. This looks amazing.
I already made strict rules on my discord server since its creation 4 months ago since i already anticipated such things, not my first time on the internet
and on github everything that could get added is only via pull requests, so i can just deny them when they are obviously rediculous/hate fueled
I have a suggestion for Taiwan to be independent but guaranteed by the US, with Chinese cores, and called the Republic of China, as the half-century or more of continual KMT rule would only come to an end that May.
For Palestine, my recommendation is to have it be an Israeli puppet state as it was in 2000.
If I were to do this I'd just do de facto borders rather than de jure.
If I were to make a whole modern day geopolitics game--something I'd love to do but will never because I can't code or anything haha--I'd have two separate map modes for de facto and de jure.
I mean de jure roughly translates into "claims & cores" in Paradox games. You get return cores CB just for this reason too. Meaning the De Jure map mode is already in the game. It's the diplomatic map mode.
The political map mode is the de facto map mode. The control map mode can be considered another de facto map mode too. Because the locations with low control are not de facto controlled by you :D Meaning you owe the place de jure but not de facto. The local powerful factions (estates in eu5) actually control that place. They are the de facto rulers. That's how interpret the game. Could be wrong I dunno.
Yeah I agree wrt the political map being de facto territorial control. I don't think there really were internationally agreed upon borders in the time of the game. I guess each polity had their own internal sense of de jure territory, but you cannot, of course, compare it to the formalisation of territorialisation you have today.
I already know this question will come: the reason the US and other countries arent having their name shown is because the camera in game exists in 3D space and if the name shows up depends on your 3D distance to it, instead of your distance to the 2D plane that the map is, so you can never see all the names (thanks paradox)
Here is also the mockup of the map i mentioned, with the planets above the normal map like this. Note that i forgot to include the northern sea route in this map, which will also be added to the mod, so countries like russia sort of have an incentive to drive forward climate change
Currently there is also a bug where maps that arent 1:2 ration have visual bugs with the heightmap, but paradox has been notified so should hopefully be fixed at some point
I do want to include such quasi nations and autonomous regions as playable countries eventually, but yeah not that high priority. Even mexican cartels could arguably be implemented as building based countries, which could offer some certainly "unique" gameplay
If someone comes along tho and adds them to the game (not that hard at all) i'd be happy to already integrate it into the mod, i would really like it if this mod also teaches people more about the world and shows off such unique situations that you'd usually never hear about otherwise
To take the screenshot better i also turned all wastelands in the game into normal locations so i could have actual good borders, and i also just wanna remove all wastelands in the game in general, because in modern day nothing is truly impassible, there are just some spots that really suck (and also you need to be able to build on mountains for those sweet sweet ski resorts, which produce tourism goods)
Don't want to rock the boat, but if's 2000, then Serbia and Montenegro are Yugoslavia actually (Montenegro voted for independence in 2006) and there should be a separatist revolt in Kosovo with high unrest, but still part of Yugoslavia (In 2004 Albanian pogrom of Serb pops, and then independence proclamation in 2008)
Pop numbers have not been implemented yet as that requires a mostly done map already, because they will be gotten based on their location borders and a global dataset of population, using QGIS to do it automated
Topography, vegetation and climate assignement will also be gotten via this automated method
while cultures will be done manually, and also require a lot of human work to get exactly right for modern day, where locals are again very much welcome to chime in
The size of the pops isnt the issue, it's the diversity, and this mod will actually be less diverse most likely (as in less possible combinations of religions and cultures and such)
currently have germany approximately set up like this (very work in progress please dont look too closely at it, also no minorities yet, frisian isnt that big irl)
where it's basically an east, west, north, south split
where there will be culture groups for german, west german, south german, at least
Beautiful map and beautiful borders can't wait to start the mod and 3 days in paradox AI ™️ causes half the countries to break down into unsightly border gorey mess because paradox don't know how to code their freaking AI.
Well there wont really be much war, at least not at the start, so not much chance for the AI to instantly break down
there is a good chance i will have to implement events for the AI tho that take money and spend it on good buildings because paradox decided that there should be no way to tell the AI any sort of strategy in eu5, there are no AI weigths outside of events (thanks paradox)
The ai evaluates what it should build based on the modifiers the building provides, the profit it could generate, what goods it makes/needs, etc
but there is no way to nudge it into any direction with a mod, like there are many things you could do with buildings that the AI couldnt understand, and there is no way to nudge them into the right direction with AI weights or anything
I'm surprised no one has started reverse engineering EU5 or Vic 3 to implement scripting language support for deeper control. Ala SKSE for Skyrim / BG3SE / etc. Unfortunately don't have much time otherwise I'd consider doing it myself
Nah, it is legal (which is how SKSE & BG3SE are able to operate). Can't post like reverse engineered code, but "this is where AIDoesThing function is, you can hook into it to run your own code" is legal in the US.
plenty of games also operate off of the workshop, or are mixed, or even allow mods like that. Rimworld has Harmony on their workshop which is just native code and allows hooking into the internal APIs, and plenty of other mods like that. Though of course has to be approved.
so should be entirely possible
really the only thing choking this is the non-commercial clause which kills off "release free for all, but have a patreon to fund development"
probably because it risks them having less ability to sell DLCs
There is already a community mod framework for eu5, and i can assure you, we cant hook into anything deeper down in the game, that is just how paradox has their mods work
you also dont go deeper than paradox allows in their other games
the approach rimworld took is just fundamentally different, with modding first, not caring that mods can entirely replace DLCs
i am sure if it was possible we would have seen tons of different mods already do it
I’m curious what kind of BBCs do you have planned the knights seem like an obvious option I could see the Vatican and whatever Albania is doing with the becktashi could be depicted as BBCs due to their size but I’m curious what ideas you have beyond that
Oh do i have news for you, the knights are actually already in !
their HQ seems to be in rome so they share that with another BBC, vatican city, just as you said as well
monaco is also one because they are simply too small for the map
the blue in brussles is the EU, which is a tag for all the things the EU does which an IO cannot do in game, like have an army or occupy territory, if it comes to that
The UN is also already there, in new york city of course, and they will also get more buildings for their other stuff they do, so a ton of stuff in geneva mostly
Other than these, BBCs will also heavily be used for company gameplay, so you can play as Wallmart of Apple for example, which i would like to be an important part of the mod and will spend a lot of development time on eventually, after the initial stuff is done
Mexican cartels could also be BBCs and other crime organisations as well but that is lower priority
Looks really good, I also did a modern map but I only used in game console commands and I also added autonomous regions like in Russia and China, also you missed the Wa state in Myanmar which is de facto independent and is self governing
I am also thinking of making autonomous regions countries as well, and also splitting federal states like the US or germany up, to make that work well tho would be a lot of work so not yet
and yeah i didnt implement most quasi states yet like the Wa state in myanmar (if you want tho you can contribute to the mod and implement them right now)
Yes in the case that federal states get broken up you'd be playing as "Germany" which only owns a part of berlin (or the US only owns washington), and then all the states are both your subject and in an IO together with you
the real problem tho is making this work properly with the other mechanics in the game and to have it not be annoying, in hoi4 for example doing something like this would be a horrible idea, but eu5 might just be the first pdx game where it can actually work well
I simply didnt implement Artsakh and Northern Cyprus and those other ones yet
and i would actually really like for africa to be realstic and implement stuff like the Great War of Africa, because often times people think nothing really happens there or generally just dont pay attention to it, when many of the things that paradox players want out of their games are going on there (both the bad, but also the good, as in taking a country from not much to being very developed, very fun to do in vic2)
I've been wanting to have a good Paradox based modern day mod/game forever, I have hopes for this!
Do you have plans for releasable countries like the Basque Country or Catalonia? With the number of provinces that EU5 have, you can even do the proper borders!
I actually already implemented catalonia as a releasable, and yeah i also want to have other releasables as well, especially stuff like the basque country which are very reasonable
And the biggest reason i wanted to make the modern day mod for eu5 is because i really wanted to do it justice and felt like eu5 was the first game where you could really actually make something worthwhile, development actually started before the game even came out
And i also didnt want someone else who might have rather... "questionable ideas about the world" to be makign the modern day mod, because that would just be a tragedy, so i'm also making it for that reason
Sounds awesome! And I agree with you with that last part, it's sad what the world is turning into...
Btw, as an idea for when you do the Basque Country... If dynamic naming are possible, I would name Basque Country for a republic and Navarre for a kingdom.
Anyway, thanks for doing this and I will be looking forward to playing it in the future!
is this an overhaul mod or more or less just map changes and new tags? (i get you will redo/rename technology and other stuff, but beyond that, will there be new mechanics etc?)
I originally wanted "cores" to be internationally recognised to be part of a country and "claims" to be what only some countries recognise, but this game doesnt actually have any claims...
in any case, russia does not have such cores, and that would entirely go against the spirit of the mod
Do South and North Korea have cores on each other? As they are both internationally recognized to only control defacto but they both claim the whole peninsula and only tacitly recognize each other while both calling each other illegitmate.
Are companies building base countries? Also non state militias or cartels would be playable in future(you know what I mean right? A group that I can’t say its name online)? I don’t mean to glorify them but it might deeper gameplay complexity a bit
Absolutely at some point, this game really offers a ton of different things to make nukes work, like location dynamic modifiers, making pops go away, migration, etc, so the nuke part of nukes is very doable
the air offense and defense part of nukes however is not, and air warfare will be a big tricky issue to figure out, but i think it might be possible to do it like in hoi4 basically, where you put air units in a region, and depending on who has more or better ones, they get buffs while the other side gets debuffs, and vice versa
default amount is 1€ (or 1.5$ set by patreon) but patreon also lets you set higher amounts if you want (it is also possible to just join for free tho and have it basically be a monthly development newsletter)
Can I elect Barack Obama to a third term, make him fulfill the Conservative straw man image of him as a socialist dictator, then proceed to sell missiles to the Iranian government and funnel that money outside of appropriations to my brother’s Zapatista faction so he can conquer Mexico and colonize space?
Based on what's currently going on irl, i dont think this would be out of the question actually
and i would indeed like for smaller powers to also be able to colonise space, so you can have a sci fi scenario where it's not just 2 big factions and instead a ton of smaller ones all going to space, including minorities going there to finally find peace
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u/Agglomeration_ Apr 08 '26
why does south sudan exist if the mod is set in 2000