Countries and Identity

Names, aliases, tags, flags, colours, reputation, leaders, and countries that hold no land at all.

A country in Open Historia is not a row in a table of stats. It is a name, a set of things it is known for, a reputation, a flag, a colour, and whatever territory it holds — and the world reads all of that when deciding how to treat it.

Identity and names

Every country has one stable identity, and its name is how that identity is presented. A scenario keeps a registry of its countries — independently of the regions they hold, so a country can exist with no land at all — and region ownership, the colour palette, flags, tags, diplomacy, the war records and your standing goal all hang off that identity.

Two practical consequences:

• In the map editor, typing a new country name creates that country. There is no separate "add nation" step; giving a region an owner that does not exist yet brings it into being, and the owner is picked from the registry, so a typo cannot quietly mint a one-province country.
• Renaming changes the label, not the country. A country renamed after a revolution keeps every region, flag, tag, colour, conversation and war record, and the map labels it by its new name. The world only renames on an actual regime change, never for a mere change of leader. Territory handed to a country that does not exist yet founds it.

Countries also carry aliases: alternative names the game will recognise as the same country. This is what lets a scenario use a historical name while still matching modern data.

Tags

Tags are short descriptors of what a country is — its ideology, alignment, character, whatever matters about it. "NATO member", "nuclear power", "military junta", "resource exporter".

• Up to 8 tags, each up to 32 characters.
• They are fed to the world as context, so they genuinely change how a country behaves and how others treat it.
• When a country's alignment shifts, the world rewrites the complete tag list rather than adding one — tags are a full replacement, not a running log.

You can see a country's tags in its panel, and edit your own (or anyone's) in the cheats panel.

Reputation

International reputation runs 0–100, where 0 is a pariah and 100 is universally trusted.

It moves only when a turn's events genuinely change how a country is seen — breaking a treaty, brokering a peace, being caught doing something indefensible. It is not a score you grind up; it is a summary of how you have behaved.

Low reputation makes diplomacy harder in exactly the way you would expect: fewer countries will take your word, and more will assume the worst reading of what you do.

Intelligence rating

Also 0–100, and it works the same way — moved by events, absent meaning ordinary. It is the espionage system's master statistic. See espionage.

Leaders

A country has a named leader, stored on its stat sheet. When a leader is overthrown, assassinated, dies, resigns or is voted out, the successor's name is written there as part of the same event — so the stat sheet and the story never disagree about who is in charge.

The leader is who you are talking to in diplomacy, and their voice changes when they change.

Colours

How a country paints on the map. Resolution order:

1. The scenario's own palette.
2. A colour explicitly set on the country.
3. A match against the country's aliases.
4. A colour derived from the name itself.

Step 4 is the fallback that guarantees every country has a colour, including one you invented five seconds ago and never picked a colour for. It is also why two countries very occasionally land on similar shades — the derivation does not know about the rest of the map.

Flags

Countries can carry a flag from the built-in set, from a scenario's own flag pack, or from a community flag pack. Invented factions can pick one or go without.

The diplomacy and spy pickers show the scenario's own flags, and a flag changed mid-campaign updates live. One deliberate rule: a country that holds no land never borrows a real country's flag. A government in exile that happens to share a name with a modern state does not get that state's flag, because it is not that state.

Landless countries

A country can exist while holding no territory at all: governments in exile, national movements, international organisations, rebel administrations. They are full participants — they talk, they are talked about, they can be spied on, and they can acquire territory later.

You can play one. It is a genuinely different game: nothing to defend, nothing to lose territorially, and everything resting on what you can talk other people into.

Inventing a country

The Create a faction tab of the new-game picker creates one. You choose the name, colour, flag, starting regions (or none), and — the part that matters most — the lore.

The lore is read by the world. A faction with a paragraph explaining who you are, what you want and why you exist gets treated as that thing. A faction with a blank lore field is a blank to everyone, and gets treated accordingly. It is worth writing properly.

Any regions you claim at creation are taken from whoever held them, and that country will have opinions.

Editing countries mid-campaign

The cheats panel has a Country Editor — identity, colour, tags, reputation, the persistent stat sheet — and an Add Country tool. Useful for repairing a country the simulation has drifted on, or for authoring the world by hand.

Next

• National statistics — the numbers behind a country.
• Diplomacy — dealing with them.
• Territory — what they hold.

Open Historia is under active development on two channels, and this wiki is written by hand — a page can fall behind a release. Last checked against the game on 2026-09-24 · main e62a1c55 · beta 2f48a6c2. If something here does not match what you see in the game, trust the game and say so on Discord.