Advanced Nation Editing Tutorial (+ custom ideology flags)

Create custom nations with custom ideology flags and names!

Introduction

If you have read my previous guide, you may be familiar with who I am. However, if not... well... that shouldn't make much of a difference. But be advised, if you haven't read the first guide, there might be a few questions.

Setup

You require to have:

• Age of History 2 (obviously)
  
• Access to the files of the game
  
• Any text editor
  
• Any image editor

Creating a new nation

There might be a question on your mind.




"...what do I do?"

Well, that's exactly what we're going to talk about now.

Launch Age of History II.
Done? Good.
Now, press on Editor.
...
*cough* I said... press on Editor.
...


Oh, you're still waiting for it to finish loading.
Done now? Great.
Now, as long as you don't have severe memory loss, you should know what to do next, and that is...
...
press... on Editor.

Anyways, moving away from the jokes.
Press the button that says Editor.
Once you're in, press Game Editor.
And then, you have to press on Game Civilizations. Whew, that's a lot of sub-menus!

Hold on, hold on, calm your horses, don't click on that very obvious Add Civilization button yet.
First, you need to think of a TAG to give to your country. This usually contains 3 letters, but some countries like Austria-Hungary have 4.
Then, you need to figure out if that tag is taken yet by another country, and that is very simple to do... By just diving into the country list and trying to spot the tag.

But... turns out... that's not very simple to do with 1000 whole countries.
An alternative way is to go to this specific folder:
(steam folder which games are stored in) > steamapps > common > AoCII > game > flags.
Then, with your file browser of choice, search the tag you want to give your country. If there are no results, then congratulations! If there are though, then you have to think of a new tag and do this procedure again.

In my situation, I want to do the OPPOSITE of this and actually find the tag of the country I want to edit, and in this situation, Austria-Hungary has a tag of auhu.

Actually creating your nation

Now that we found where the country tags are stored, now comes a new step - actually creating the nation.
Press "Add Civilization", or, if you want to edit an existing country, click on the country you want to edit. (You can just search up the country's name in the search bar, as it only supports country NAMES and NOT country TAGS.)


Once you're done writing the tag and editing the service ribbon, you can press "Save."

Creating flags

Now that your country has been made, you can proceed with this step.
Go into that flags folder I mentioned before, and there are two options.
1. You create a completely new file (follow the resolution in the next image).
2. You copy an existing flag (recommended).
Rename the flag file to your country's tag.
Edit the flag file and paste in the flag of your choice, but MAKE ABSOLUTELY SURE that you remove a pixel on each corner.
It's not the end of the world if you don't, but it will result in UI inaccuracies.

If you want to make flags for custom ideologies, follow the following image's prefix (even an example is given on how to use the prefix, so is it even a prefix? What, is it a afterfix? Followfix? I'm running out of ideas.).

Creating large flags

What's on your mind? I think I know...
"How come the game has bigger images for flags than these minuscule tiny little things?"
Enter the flagsH folder.
Literally.
Go to the game folder and enter the flagsH folder.
Like again, you can make a new file, with the corresponding resolution, or copy pasting another flag. Don't forget to rename your flag's filename to the tag!
Copy paste your image, resize it to your liking and save the file.
Do this for other ideologies as well, but with... whatever-fixes. Prefixes, afterfixes, I don't care.
However, you DO NOT need to erase corners!

Naming your country and its ideological variants

Now, that you're finished making your flags, you have to name your country. Head over to AoCII > game > languages > civilizations and open Bundle.properties with a text editor.
Here you can country tags and their corresponding nation names. This includes ideologies.
Go to the end of the list and type in your country tags. Then, like in the image, add an equal sign after the tags and add your nation's names (with spaces before and after the equals sign, of course).
Save your work, and, if necessary, add nation names for other languages, for example, Bundle_de.properties is nation names in German and Bundle_gr.properties is nation names in Georgian. See the images below for more details.

Deleting a country

"Whoopsie-doodles! I manufactured a civilization that my mind can't comprehend the idea of making it purposely!"

Simple. Undo all the steps you did except making the country. Then, go into the game folder. From there, go to the "civilizations" folder. Find the tag you used for your country and... make use of your Recycle Bin by deleting the file. (NOT RECOMMENDED if you edited an already existing country!) Then go to the "Age_of_Civilizations" file and open it with a text editor. Find your custom nation's tag, and, unless you edited an already existing nation, it should be at the end of the list. Delete it, and remember to leave a ; at the end to prevent game-breaking bugs. If you do... it as well might end the entire world that is in your copy of AoHII, well, because there's a couple of world maps in there.
If you already used your custom nation in, say, a formable, head on over to my old guide and head to the "Oopsies! I made a mistake!" section.

Once again, a thank you

Thanks for... reading this guide. I can't really think of anything to say. Yeah, let me just slap on what one of my older guides had for a similar section.
A really huge thank you for reading my guide. I hope you learned something, if so, then that's good. See you somewhere else, possibly!



...I can't believe this stupid message will be engraved into this guide now.
Here's a link to buy the game if you don't even own it yet. Oh wait, you can buy it TWICE??? Is this finally enough to get this game updated?!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/603850/Age_of_History_II/