EU4 Changing/Customising country flags

Changing a flag for any nation

A guide on how to edit ANY flag for ANY country.

It's more than likely other people have made guides before this one. However, upon messing around with the files on my own, this was the simplest way I could come up with as it requires the least amount of steps.

This will work in multiplayer whether both players have done this or not, however, if both players want to see the same custom flag, both players will have to go through this process.

All right, let's get too it.

*IMPORTANT*
If you make a mistake when moving the TGA files out of the game files and try to boot the game with one of the fliles missing, the game will not be able to load. If this happens, reinstalling the game should work, or checking for integrity.

Anyway,
In this guide, I’ll be using England as an example, so you can either follow along with me, or swap out England for another country. Just remember to do the same steps with the country you select.

First thing is to establish how the game recognises what flag to use for a country.

Go into your library and right click the game, select properties, go to local files, click browse local files.




















































You’re looking for a folder named ‘gfx’, inside look for a folder called ‘flags’.

















Inside, you’ll find a whole bunch of TGA Images with names that are three letters long, that is how the game knows what image to use for each country as they are abbreviations of country names.

The Next Step

OOOOKAAAAAY!

Now that we know where the images are located, we can set about making our own flag.
Open paint, yes, dumb I know, but it is perfectly suitable for what we need.

Set the size to 128x128 and start.

So long as you make something within the size limit, it will work.

REMEMBER. EU4 flags in game are in the shape of a shield, so don’t put any effort into the bottom corners, because they will NOT show up in the game.



Okay, once you’re done messing about and you have your flag ready, SAVE it in it’s current form in a spare folder where you will put ALL your PNG flags. (I called mine ‘My flags PNG’)




Create another folder where you will put all of the flags YOU made but in a TGA format (I’ll deal with that in a moment) (I called mine, ‘My flags TGA’)






UGH, nearly done, create yet another folder. This folder will be used for the games ORIGINAL flags.
(I called mine, ‘Original flags TGA’) (This step saves a ton of confusion later on)






Go back to the folder containing the games original flags. (Steam > Steamapps > common > Europa Universalis IV > gfx > flags)

Go back two folders (You should be in the Europa Universalis IV folder) and enter the history folder then enter countries. You should see Text documents with names that start with three letters, a dash, followed by the country name.








This folder makes this whole process soooo much easier.
Scroll through the countries (Or search for one) until you find the country you want to play as.

For this example, I’ll be using England. (ENG – England)



Once you’ve found the country, look at the first three letters, this will tell you which TGA file to change later, for me it was ‘ENG’. Write it down or remember it, your going to need this in a second.

Go back two folders (into Europa Universalis IV) then go into ‘gfx’ and then ‘flags’ just like before and find the three letters of the country. Again, for me it was ‘ENG’.



This TGA file is the image type used for England. Take the file and put it in the ‘Original flags TGA’ folder as you DO NOT WANT TO LOSE THIS.


Open your ‘My flags PNG’ folder and rename your flag to the game file you JUST removed, so I changed the name of my PNG flag to ‘ENG’.
Now you need to convert your PNG flag into a TGA, you can do that by using this website.
https://image.online-convert.com/convert-to-tga

The Final Step

Once you have your flag in a TGA format, you’ll need to put it in the ‘My flags TGA’ folder.
It should still be named with the three letters of the country you chose.



Now, move the TGA file of your flag into the 'flags' folder in the game. (Steam > Steamapps > common > Europa Universalis IV > gfx > flags)
AND you’re done!

Boot up the game, select the country ( For me it was England) and enjoy your game!
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Here’s how you change it back.

Go into this folder (Steam > Steamapps > common > Europa Universalis IV > gfx > flags) and find your flag’s name and drag it back to ‘My flags TGA’ go into ‘Original flags TGA’ and drag the file back into (Steam > Steamapps > common > Europa Universalis IV > gfx > flags)

Make sure that when you remove your flag from the game, return it's name to what it was when you created it as a PNG, otherwise you'll forget which flag is which.

Any problems and you can just right click the game, properties, local files and click ‘Verify Integrity of game files’ this will check for any missing files. If you’re STILL having problems, uninstall the game then reinstall, or delete all the games files, then check integrity of game files.

One mistake that's very easily made would be overwriting the original TGA files with the file of your custom flag, if this happens, delete your flag out of the game and check for integrity.

Thanks for reading, this is my first guide.
I don't know whether or not this style of guide is acceptable, but I made communication with the reader the top priority.
Hope you found this useful or informative. Would enjoy some feedback.
(Let me know if you want more guides or have me unscramble existing guides that you find to confusing to follow)

[jackoat03]

love this guide then. :D

[Ingram]

Should do. All this does is edit what the game reads as a flag, not an actual game feature.

[Jazrudin]

will it work on ironman

[jackoat03]

ironman compatible?

[Sharpie The Dragon]

Thanks for this tutorial, I can confirm this works and it is surprisingly easy. This will work great in my England run.