I’ve been working on a civ rework and balance patch for AOE3:DE alongside @dansil92 and 0.10 includes full reworks to Sweden and Japan. Currently, I’m working on V0.20 which include a full rework to Ottoman (no more free villagers, no abus guns, nerfed Humbaraci, etc.) and Inca. Life got in the way, but since the announcement of no more balance patches, I’ve resumed active development on the mod.
Sweden gets 2 villager types (Miners and Villagers) instead of Torps gathering resources. Caroleans are now a skirmisher unit available in age 2, Leather Cannons are now a ranged Petard, and they have Halbs/Pikemen with melee charge by default. Think of them as a more aggressive Dutch focused on timing attacks.
Japan removed a lot of the laming factor. Shrines only generate XP or Export now, no direct resources. Yumi and Ashigaru are now consulate units, and Yamabushi and Shinobi have been moved to the barracks and rebalanced (Yamabushi cost a little more and have a weak heal, Shinobi are a hybrid skirmisher and grenadier unit). Daimyo have been removed and wonders also got a rework (Shogunate is now an additional Town Center, Torii Gates is fast age up, etc.).
maybe call it something else, it sounds very interesting and fun but I think most people would expect a “fan balance patch” mod to only be making small tweaks to unit stats and costs lol
Thanks for the suggestion, I’ve done “civ rework + balance patch” to made it more clear, since there are some smaller balance changes in their alongside the larger adjustments.
Hey that’s actually a nice changes for Japan, my guess their villager limit is also increased to 99 yes?
About this one, I found it a bit weird that Shinobi is now a barrack unit while ashigaru a consulate unit. I mean ashigaru originally is feudal Japanese backbone soldier/farmer, while shinobi often the spies and bodyguard employed by feudal lords which is more suitable for the consulate. The hybrid skirmisher and grenadier is pretty good for limited unit and I don’t have issues with that. Perhaps it’s better to add new skirmisher type unit for Japanese if the ideas it to give them skirmisher to replace the now consulate Yumi.
I was thinking perhaps Shogunate and Summer Palace is much suitable to be each faction respective fort like Agra. Instead of removing Daimyo, why not make them like Greek Hero in AoM? Retrainable from TC, still providing their aura, but remove the ability to train unit and receive HC shipments.
Thanks for the detailed feedback! I’ll try to break down the thoughts of myself and dansil for some of the design decisions.
Yeah, it’s been bumped up to 99 and the Age IV tech has been brought down significantly. The new intent for shrines is to provide XP in the early game for shipments (letting you take advanced of the 2x bonus) and switch over to export for late game consulate upgrades. Or you can do an early consulate rush.
This is admittedly ahistorical, I agree, but the game itself has a lot of weird and silly stuff like the Shogun of Japan running around and raiding villagers or spawning cannons. A lot of the designs in the patch are designed around gameplay first and historical accuracy second, and that involves stretching history around game balance/design. The new intent is to use the Shinobi grens as your main anti infantry unit instead of just spamming yumis. As Japan lacks a non-consulate musketeer, you’ll need to invest into your melee infantry or cavalry to promote more varied unit comps. Having a mainline grenadier unit as your anti-infantry unit is a design I want to explore in more civs (with nerfed grenade launchers to boot).
In my opinion, each of the Asian civs should have distinct wonders, so having an Agra clone didn’t work. A Town Center is a good defensive option with some economic benefits. It’s quite strong in age 2 if you want to go for an early boom. I tried to fix the design of the Daimyo, but the auras, unit training, and shipments were too much, and those are key to the unit designs. It was just easier to remove them and rebalance around that. I think Japan is a healthier civ without the aura stacking (they have a 2x +5% unit HP/ATK shipment, and more ways to construct military buildings on the battlefield to help compensate for the Daimyo removal)
Disappointed about the removal of free villagers to the Ottomans. That’s been core to their gameplay since their inception, and it makes them interesting and fun to work with. Of all the changes I see, that’s the only one I genuinely dislike - Free villagers for the Ottomans is part of what makes them so powerful early, but it’s also offset by the extreme costs to gain more villagers.
If anything, increasing the frequency at which they need to purchase more villager slots would be a better idea than removing free villagers.
I like your enthusiasm but some of these changes are kind of bizarre. Caroleans were very much heavy infantry, and Ashigaru were the bulk of the army.
Also there’s no way you can make this many changes and expect to call it balanced. There are just too many moving parts being fiddled with to balance it on the first try.
I’d like to suggest removing the scout priests and replacing them with a mounted scout with a reused Shogun or Daimyo skin, but since shrines weren’t replaced with regular houses I guess that’s a change that can’t really be made.
Overall I like the direction of these changes, I hope this mod sticks around and manages to improve the balance between civilizations.
So, with Otto, the free vills has been replaced with a built-in silk road as a civ bonus. Their new theme is around getting resource crates more often and extracting more resources from them. This also has the side effect of making trading posts stronger for them. Currently working on porting over some of the mechanics from Italy where you dump resources for crates. It feels like a healthier civ, rather than a rush oriented turbo aggressive one.
I was reading the Ensemble’s design document back in the day, and they called Otto a “turtle/boom” civ, which has historically not how the civ has been played, so I’m working on getting it closer to that original vision.
A lot of the design follows gameplay, even if I stretch historical accuracy. I tried multiple iterations of rebalancing caroleans, and I didn’t come up with a satisfactory outcome until I dropped their role as a musketeer. On DE, Sweden crams in too many features to Caroleans to compensate for their lack of standard skirmisher unit.
Turning them into a skirmisher, even though ahistorical, fixes a lot of the design constraints and encourages them to use their strong hand infantry and hand cavalry.
Similar thing with Japan. Ashi/Yumi are a very oppressive combo, especially with the stacking auras from Golden Pavilion, Daimyo, Shogun, etc. Yamabushi and Shinobi make for a more interesting gameplay strategy with Japan as they have a lot more specialist infantry units and they’re encoruaged to go cav early (Yabusame have been moved to age 2 so all Asian civs get age 2 cavalry archers/dragoons).
I’ve worked on these for multiple iterations, give it a try.
I’m in favor of calling it a “fan patch” - The devs were too scared to completely rehaul things that needed it. This gives a chance to completely rehaul things in a good way.
Après je me demande pour le bonus civ de la France (que je joue en ce moment) s’il serait pas pertinent d’ajouter un truc, le seul bonus actuel c’est d’expliquer que cette civ à un villageois qui récoltent plus vite, après vu que je joue exclusivement en skirmirsh peut être que ça rendrait le résultat trop broken