Europa Universalis IV to Victoria II Converter (2024)

The EU4 to Vic2 converter is a tool that converts a Europa Universalis 4 save and generates a Victoria 2 scenario (mod) from it. It can be downloaded from this forum thread or from Steam.
It is compatible with CK2 and CK3 converted savegames, as well as with Vic2 to HoI4 converter, allowing the player to play a continuous megacampaign from Imperator through CK2/CK3 to HoI4. This project, while still active and supported, has been succeeded by EU4 to Vic3 converter project.

Features and Conversion Mechanics[edit | edit source]

Here is a general list of Converter capabilities and conversion mechanic explanations. For more information feel free to ask for clarifications on forums or take a peek at the code.
Note: The converter includes a configurables/ folder that contains all data files with rules it uses during conversion. These files are there for a reason - so the user can view them and modify them according to specific needs. Do not be shy to hack away and change them so the conversion fits expected goals.

Requirements[edit | edit source]

• Victoria 2 with both expansions is required.
• EU4, with or without any expansions or DLCs, versions 1.0-1.37 are supported.

Incoming Savegames[edit | edit source]

• Converter supports compressed save games.
• Ironman saves are supported.
• Random New World saves are not supported.

Outgoing Mod[edit | edit source]

• Converter will produce a Victoria 2 mod.
• On Windows, and using the front-end, the mod will be copied to Vic2 installation mod/ directory.
• Without front-end (running the converter manually) or on other OS-es, mod will be exported to converter's output/ folder, and will have to be moved by user.

Bookmarks[edit | edit source]

• Converted mod supports 2 bookmarks: 1836 and the conversion date.
• Conversion-date bookmarks can be quite early, chaining converters from CK2 onward, one can play a 769 game in Vic2 engine, though aside for the novelty that is a horrible idea.
• Converting earlier than 1836 will cause penalties in global literacy levels, so where a country would normally have 60% literacy in 1836, converting in 1000 will see its literacy slashed to 6%.
• Any date post 1815 is generally a solid point for a meaningful Vic2 game, as the first technologies unlock at 1815, and first political parties at 1830.

Cultures[edit | edit source]

• Cultures are converted according to culture_map.txt. Feel free to edit the file if unhappy with results.
• Cultures change. New world will always cause non-native cultures to diverge into "neo-cultures".
• Neocultures are either defined in culture_map.txt (english in northern USA become Yankee), or are dynamically generated (nubian in Brazil become Nubian South American).
• Neocultures belong to their original culture's cultural group.

Primary and Accepted Cultures[edit | edit source]

• Depending on where the capital is, if the primary culture has changed to a neoculture, it will be updated.
• Accepted cultures coming from EU4 are completely ignored.
• Accepted cultures are generated by doing a census among country's full/stated EU4 cores. Territories/Trade Company regions are ignored.
• A culture in the same cultural group as primary culture, holding 15%+ population in cored provinces will become an accepted culture.
• A culture in a different cultural group than primary culture, holding 20%+ population in cored provinces will become an accepted culture.

Cultural and Religions conversion in EU4[edit | edit source]

• Converting culture or religion in EU4 leaves behind a history entry in province history. From that point on to conversion date, cultures and religions assimilate towards target culture.
• Conversion via console commands leaves no history entry and is invisible to the converter. It will be ignored.
• At the moment of EU4 conversion 100% of aristocrats and 50% of middle strata convert. The rest (peasents, which are a majority, and other pop types) tick approximately at 0.25% per year towards new culture/religion.
• Rate of assimilation is defined in configurables/world_supergroups.txt.
• The assimilation is logarithmic - it will never reach 100% and will slow down every year. To get 100% use Any religious/cultural conversion in EU4 converts: Everyone option in frontend options, as that option skips the assimilation process and converts everyone. Using this option is a bad idea.
• Note: Assimilation and minority management is a core vic2 mechanic. Converting everyone via Everyone option is very detrimental to the gameplay as it will eliminate crisis hotspots, nationalist rebels, mess with emigration and so on.

Religions[edit | edit source]

• Religions are updated according to religion_map.txt. Feel free to edit the file if unhappy with results.
• As religion plays little role in Vic2, there are no special mechanics regarding it.

Government Type[edit | edit source]

• Government conversion is defined in government_mapping.txt
• EU4 government reforms (with Dharma) can impact government conversion, according to reform_effects.txt. For example a republic with peasants_republic reform will in fact convert as proletarian_dictatorship.
• Feel free to consult these files for specific conversion effects, both for reforms and for source governments.

Reforms[edit | edit source]

• Starting reforms are determined from 3 sources: government type - idea_effects.txt, government reforms (with Dharma) - reform_effects.txt, and EU4 idea groups completed - idea_effects.txt.
• All three parts have equal weight. Files referenced give a scale of 0 to 10 describing how a particular idea or reform or government form affects different Vic2 reforms, literacy, upper house composition, technology and national values.
• Any reform or idea with weight of 5 (or without an effect listed) will have no effect on that reform aspect. For example industry = 5 will not affect industry tech.
• Currently we do not support the popular Governments Expanded EU4 mod which brings hundreds of new government reforms, so those reforms will have no effect on the conversion process.

Literacy[edit | edit source]

• Literacy is calculated through several factors: base literacy, reform effects, westernization status, configuration cap and configuration eurocentrism.

Base Literacy[edit | edit source]

• Base literacy is 40%. Protestant, anglican, confucian or reformed religions add additional 10%.
• Sunday Schools, Monastic Education, western embassy, The Education Act or school establishment act all add a cumulative 5% to base literacy.
• Having up to 10% provinces with Universities will give up to 10% bonus base literacy.
• For older games, Military Colleges do the same but up to 5% bonus base literacy.

Effects[edit | edit source]

• Base literacy is directly modified by government type, government reforms and idea groups finished (see above under reforms).
• For every point of divergence above or below 5, literacy is adjusted by 10%.

Westernization[edit | edit source]

• Literacy is directly modified by westernization progress.
• Civilized countries apply no penalty to literacy.
• A country with westernization at 50% will have base literacy halved.

Configuration Cap[edit | edit source]

• Literacy is capped at a value defined in configuration.
• The default is 1, so no cap is applied.

Eurocentrism[edit | edit source]

• Different tech groups in eu4 have different westernization values in tech_groups.txt.
• If Eurocentrism is enabled, this file will affect literacy through both westernization values (see above) and through literacy modifiers directly, as defined in the file.
• By altering this file it is possible to produce any type of scenario one desires.
• Countries matching tech groups at westernization=10 in tech_groups.txt can never become primitive/uncivilized, no matter how far behind tech they are at time of conversion.

Technology[edit | edit source]

• Starting technology is determine by looking at technological levels (adm/dip/mil) at conversion date and institutions embraced.
• Be aware that for any game converted at 1821 or later virtually entire world will be at max tech and max institutions, so these values become meaningless.
• At this point, converter looks at government, ideas and reforms (see above in reforms), to determine how these affect technology levels.
• Again, look at idea_effects.txt and reform_effects.txt for a direct list of technological effects and alter it to suit your needs.
• Once the effects are applied, all civilized countries are sorted by each of the 5 scores, and distributed linearly on a scale of -1 to 1 (for every of the 5 vic2 tech groups).
• Converter then looks at starting_technologies.txt, compares that country's score, and assigns all techs at or below the country's score.
• Since, for example, flintlock_rifles are at -1.0 in army scores, every civilized country will receive it, but only the most advanced country will receive army_professionalism
• Feel free to modify starting_technologies.txt to fit your needs.

Cores, States, Territories and Colonies[edit | edit source]

• Colonies in progress at the date of conversion convert as colonies in Victoria 2, and may be converted into territories if the Country has sufficient colonization points.
• EU4 states and territories are almost completely, but not entirely ignored (see accepted culture determination above).

Cores[edit | edit source]

• Those provinces that hold a majority of primary or accepted culture, will become cores.
• If national cores are enabled in configurations, all provinces holding a majority of a particular culture will receive a core of that culture's nation, as defined in nationals.txt.
• If cultural union cores are enabled, all provinces holding a majority of a particular culture will receive a core of that culture group's cultural union nation, as defined in unions.txt.

States and Territories[edit | edit source]

• If a state contains provinces with the owner's cores, it will become a state.
• If the state contains unaccepted culture pops that are civilized (based on that culture's westernization level), they will also become states.
• Otherwise, it will become a territory.
• Uncivilized countries convert all their provinces as states.

If using default configuration files this means Europe (with the exception of Crimea and surrounding lands) will convert as states for whomever holds the provinces. New world provinces will either be territories or states depending on pop composition (if majority is native, they will likely become territories if owned by civilized countries).

Armies and Navies[edit | edit source]

• EU4 armies are converted into Vic2 armies through two mechanisms - manpower value and pip-to-guns conversion.
• Vic2 regiments hold 3000 soldiers, while EU4 regiments hold 1000 soldiers. Where approximate power ratio is 1:1, expect to have one third of EU4 regiments deployed.
• For older units (countries with lower tech or earlier conversion date), converter is using regiment_costs.txt, that defined how many pips are required for one Vic2 regiment
• For very early conversions, where units have but a few pips, having no regiments post conversion is quite possible.
• Navies follow a similar model, with an exception of transports that will always convert at an identical ratio.

Wars[edit | edit source]

• Wars are converted according to war_goal_map.txt.
• This file defines different war goals (not all eu4 CBs have equivalent Vic2 ones!)
• Primary belligerents are imported as well as all supporting allies.
• since this feature is rather new and not sufficiently tested, please report back any issues.

Diplomacy, Spherelings, Puppets and Personal Unions[edit | edit source]

• Diplomacy is converted as defined in agreement_types.txt.
• Alliances are converted ad verbatim.
• A GP will start with all its puppets as spherelings.
• Tributaries will not become puppets but will become spherelings with military access enabled.
• Royal marriages increase relations between two countries.
• Regular vassals, marches, client states, client marches, daimyos (if not integrated through Japanese unification), personal unions and all other dependencies convert as puppet states.
• We do not convert EU4 personal unions into Vic2 personal unions such since the only different between a PU in vic2, and a vassal in Vic2 is that a PU has a preset end date, at which point the vassal is released.
• GPs look at their general relations across all relevant countries (guarantees, marriages etc) and if they have sufficient influence, the relations are automatically improved (Neutral->Cordial->Friendly).
• Converter will not sphere countries automatically, even if influence is at 100 and relations are Friendly, as this is a player's decision to make.

Consciousness and Militancy[edit | edit source]

• Starting Consciousness for primary and accepted cultures is a direct function of EU4's Legitimacy (or republican tradition or equivalents) and Stability.
• The lower legitimacy/stability, the higher starting Consciousness.
• For colonial pops (any non-accepted culture) consciousness is a function of primary population's consciousness and average autonomy - the closer average autonomy is to 100%, the closer non-state consciousness will be to state consciousness.

Factories[edit | edit source]

• Factories available at start are defined in starting_factories.txt.
• Converter will score every country according to it's tech levels and the number of built manufactories, as proportional to its size.
• Coal furnaces count as 3 manufactories for this purpose.
• Once all countries are scored, top 15 countries will take turns to spend their "industrial score" by purchasing factories from the list (defined in the file), according to their RGOs and available technologies.
• Since every country will only have so many points, increasing the number of starting factories will not have full impact unless the world is full with many powerful civilized countries with a large score.

Buildings[edit | edit source]

• Generally, EU4 buildings contribute to province weights when determining population shaping, and industrial score. There are a few exceptions:
• Level 8 forts will be transformed into level 1 Vic2 forts.
• Every Grand Shipyard or Drydock in a state will increase that state's naval base by 1, up to a maximum of 2.
• It is not necessary to have the Grand Shipyard and the Drydock in the same EU4 province, they are summed up on a state level.
• Railroads are not imported nor built.

Population Shaping[edit | edit source]

• Population shaping is an optional but relevant function of the converter.
• When disabled all provinces will have identical number of pops as vanilla, though their culture, religion and distribution will be different.
• With dev-push option, factors such as development investments, life rating, constructed buildings and similar will determine approx. increase (or decrease for a lack of those investments). Very generally speaking, 1 dev point increase in EU4 province will translate into 1% population increase in related Vic2 province, as compared to vanilla Vic2 population size of that Vic2 province.
• Extreme reshaping option is useful for special scenarios where historical distribution is harmful, such as multiplayer games, flat-dev games and similar. All of the world's population will be redistributed according to absolute development size of eu4 provinces, so a province with 50 development will have 10x as much population as a province with 5 development.
• When either reshaping is enabled, the configuration's shaping factor will be applied - a factor of 0 retains vanilla population, and a factor of 100 applies full shaping.

Flags[edit | edit source]

• The converter provides a small library of over 17500 flags to be used for various countries and every government type.
• Colonial flags - for those colonial nations that are not independent - and do not have a predefined flag (Permian Alaska or Funj Brazil) will have flags automatically generated.
• Converter will also try to match Indian and Muslim flags with respective countries, as well as use CK2 flags for those countries where a CK2-title connection can be established.

Uncivilized nations[edit | edit source]

• As discussed earlier under technology, unless EU4 game is heavily modded, by end-date all countries will be at max tech and institutions, and will convert as civilized.
• Using Eurocentrism option is strongly recommended to maintain standard Vic2 colonization and native-"handling" mechanics.
• Uncivilized reforms assigned according to technological level and generally imitate vanilla Vic2.

Other[edit | edit source]

Observer[edit | edit source]

• Game supports "Observer" mode through an event that fires after game has started.
• This event, if enabled, will release Jan Mayen, and make it very undesirable, so the player can assume the role of Observer without fear of being conquered.

African Wipe[edit | edit source]

• A strongly recommended option for those playing outside Africa, this option will remove all African natives from sub-saharan Africa. Existing colonies by civilized nations (and partially westernized, if eurocentrism is enabled) will remain.
• Using this option enabled the use of vanilla Vic2 colonization mechanics without having to spend improper amounts of infamy by conquering natives.

RGO Randomization[edit | edit source]

• Completely optional, shuffling RGOs can be interesting for multiplayer games, or to bring some variety. Provinces with similar terrain type and climate will have their RGOs shuffled, so no fear of having fish RGO in deserts.

The HRE[edit | edit source]

• Unless HRE was dissolved or united in EU4, both the HRE and the Emperor are imported.
• The Emperor will have until 1860s to unify the HRE members and land through warfare and sphereing in order to enact Unify HRE decision.
• Once Nationalism and Imperialism becomes available, this option will no longer be available.

Decentralisation reforms[edit | edit source]

Please help with verifying or updating this section. It was last verified for version 1.30.

Having Reichskrieg reform enacted has the following effects:

• Unify HRE decision is disabled
• Holy Roman Empire cores are removed
• Emperor's cultural union is removed (e.g. Germany if ruler of Austria was the Emperor)
• Emperor will sphere all non-subject HRE members and get military access through their territory

FAQ / Troubleshooting[edit | edit source]

Q: I have an ironman save. Can it be converted?
A: Yup.

Q: When starting conversion, conversion immediately ends, not producing anything.
A: Inside the converter folder there is a file called VC_redist.x64.exe. This is Microsoft's C++ redistributable package the converter relies on. Install it and re-run the conversion.

Q: I loaded my mod, but nothing changed. What's wrong?
A: You probably placed the mod in the My Documents mod folder. It needs to go in the Vic2 install location's mod folder.

Q: Vic2 is crashing at converting history. What do I do?
A: Try going into the mod and deleting history/units. If it now loads, likely a navy got placed badly. Open up log.txt and search for warnings. If any mention whitelisting and blacklisting, open port_blacklist.txt and add the provinces in the warnings to file file. Save it and reconvert. Repeat checking for the warnings and adding the provinces until there are no more warnings. You should now get a working mod. Make sure to inform the team of any provinces you had to add so we can include them in future releases.

Q: Vic2 is crashing at Initializing Maplogic. What do I do?
A: Clear your map cache by deleting the cache folder inside ".../victoria 2/map/" in both My Documents and the Victoria 2 install location.

Q: Vic2's map is all blue. What do I do?
A: Clear your map cache by deleting the cache folder inside ".../victoria 2/map/" in both My Documents and the Victoria 2 install location.

Q: The converter crashes after no time with no errors and no log.txt (when running through the frontend). What went wrong?
A: You may need to install this if you are not on Windows 10: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2999226. If this does not help upload your save to the PDX forums for further study.

Q: The converter says my save is compressed. What do I do?
A: You are using an old converter that does not support conmpressed saves. Download a fresh release.

Q: How can I customize my game after converting?
A: Use the guide in after_converting.txt in the converter subdirectory. Scan through configurables/ folder and look into the myriad of configuration files - a great majority of these files is intended to be modified by users to acheive specific conversion results.

Q: The generated mod was in a different language than my savegame.
A: Go in the mod of the converted save, then in setting.txt and change the line "language=l_english" to the language you need, e.g. "language=l_french"

Q: Some/all country names appear as X25, FRA etc.
A: This is an issue with the localisation. See above if you may have changed the language, if not check the localisation files in the converter for the offending countries. Sometimes Vic2 fails to load localizations and merely needs to be restarted.

Q: The country crashes upon selecting a country and pressing play (at main screen)
A: Upload your save to PDX forums for further study.

Q: The game forbids me to select nations.
A: Upload your save to PDX forums for further study.

Recent version history and changelogs[edit | edit source]

• 1.0 Wallachia - Pumpjack Release, 2023.04.19
• 1.0 Venice - Mercantile Release, 2022.09.14
• 1.0 Ulm - Ancillary Release, 2022.03.02
• 1.0 Teutonic - Nightmarish Release, 2021.10.17
• 1.0 Stettin - Dragons Release, 2021.05.04
• 1.0 Ragusa - Rolling Release, 2020.12.30
• 1.0 Qi - Preemptive release, 2020.11.22
• 1.0 Picardy - Workshop release, 2020.09.30
• 1.0 Oyo - Iron release, 2020.07.11
• 1.0 Nitra - Imperial release, 2020.06.10
• 1.0 Mexico - Final 1.29 release, 2020.03.25
• 1.0 Lucca - QOL release, 2020.02.01
• 1.0 Kurland - 2020.01.28
• 1.0 Jan Mayen - 2019.12.30

You can find detailed change logs at the forum pages linked above.

Helping with development[edit | edit source]

We're always on lookout for programmers, modders, editors and similar, for this and all other current projects.

• Programming the converters is very streamlined across all projects and involves parsing incoming data, mangling it, and outputting it into a mod
• Modding support involves crafting supporting events, decisions, ideas and standard modding work
• Editors deal with data files - we rely on a myriad of supporting files that define how various aspects of the game are converted. Provinces, religions, cultures and so on.

If you have the expertise, or a wish to learn, and a desire to help us with converter projects, you are more than welcome to contact us and join our team.

Miscellaneous[edit | edit source]

Configuration Options[edit | edit source]

Converter relies on configuration.txt, a file inside the converter directory, to load all the necessary resources. This file is uniformly generated by the Frontend every time a conversion is started. However, for non-windows builds the converter has to be ran manually and this file needs to be set by hand as well.

 EU4directory = "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Europa Universalis IV"

 EU4DocumentsDirectory = "C:\Users\Stephen\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Europa Universalis IV"

 CK2ExportDirectory = "C:\Users\Stephen\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Crusader Kings II\eu4_export"

 CK2ExportDirectory = "C:\Users\Stephen\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Europa Universalis IV\mod"

 V2directory = "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Victoria 2"

 V2Documentsdirectory = "C:\Users\Stephen\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Victoria II"

 SaveGame = "C:\Users\Stephen\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Europa Universalis IV\save games\autosave.eu4"

 max_literacy = "100"

 absorb_colonies = "1"

 liberty_threshold = "1"

Adjust population size according to dev improvement over EU4 timeframe, buildings constructed, life rating in V2 and other province modifiers. Options are:

 pop_shaping = "2"

 pop_shaping_factor = "100"

 core_handling = "1"

 euro_centrism = "1"

 africa_reset = "1"

 randomise_rgos = "no"

 convert_all = "no"

 output_name = ""