The Return of the Gods
My ideas are in some ways an alternative to those in the mod.
I don’t think the developers will use that mod as a template anyway, even if it’s simply just for legal reasons.
Prisoners
Prisoners should be a 5th resource and not real units that actually move on the map.
It has a lot of inconvenience and performance issues to have real units running around on the map.
Also making prisoners an abstract resource means that they can choose on how bloody they want to make things look like in the end.
Prisoners should be used in more then one way. Not just as a source for Favour.
Some units (like Eagle and Jaguar Warriors) and some technologies cost Prisoners.
Favour
Favour is generated by Warrior Priest working at temples.
They convert Prisoners to Favour (1 Prisoner = 5 Favour) but also generate a small trickle without.
Only one Warrior Priest can work at one Temple at once and their number is limited to 10.
Converting one prisoner into favour takes 20 seconds which is equivalent to 0.25 Favour per Second so it’s more than twice as fast as an Egyptian Monument for example. That means 2 Temples are equivalent to all Egyptian Monuments if you have enough Prisoners.
If there are no Prisoners or you disable the conversion they generate 0.02 favour per second when working at a Temple.
That is as much as 2 Hersir passively.
Units
Temple
- I Warrior Priest
Barracks
- II Puma Spearman (Anti Cavalry Infantry)
- II Cuextecatl Warrior (Anti Infantry Infantry)
- III Papalotl Runner (Fast Anti Archer Infantry)
Puma Spearman will turn into Eagle Warrior after capturing 5 enemies.
Cuextecatl Warrior will turn into Jaguar Warriors after capturing 5 enemies.
Both can do so in Classical Age!
Archery Range
- II Tlamanih Slinger (Anti Archer Archer)
- III Otontin Archer (Anti Infantry Archer)
- III Blowgunner (Poisonous Anti Hero Archer)
Nobles Barracks
- III Eagle Warrior (Ranged Anti Cavalry)
- III Jaguar Warrior (Generalist Anti Infantry)
- IV Tlacochcalcatl (Hero Infantry)
Eagle Warrior
- Does small bonus damage vs. Cavalry at range
- Does automatically switch to melee when attacked in melee
- Does even more damage vs. Cavalry in melee
- Decent vs. Infantry at range
- Bonus damage vs. Myth units
- Costs 5 Prisoners
Jaguar Warrior
- Has small bonus damage vs. Infantry
- Has good enough stats to be good vs. Cavalry too
- Bonus damage vs. Myth units
- Costs 5 Prisoners
Fortress
- III Light Ram (Similar to Norse unit)
- IV Heavy Slinger (Throws burning pots that to Crush damage)
Capturing Prisoners
Aztec units have a chance of capturing an enemy unit with every melee attack. A captures unit will instantly disappear from the battlefield (practically a 1 hit attack)
Captures chance
- Enemy HP compared to own HP (if the enemy has more remaining HP the chance is always 0)
- Base chance of unit type
- Noble Barracks units have 2x the chance of capturing an enemy
- Capture mode increases chance by 5x
Capture mode
- Every units (besides Siege units) has a capture mode
- This mode is activated or deactivated on the unit itself
- There is a small cooldown on it so you can’t just activate it every time your unit faces a weakened enemy
- Ranged units turn into melee units when they are in capture mode
- Attack speed is reduced
- Bonus damages are reduced
Your units fight significantly worse when in capture mode but they provide a lot more prisoners. You have to strategically decide which unity should be in capture mode.
It is a lot lower risk to use it on weaker enemies like Villagers.
Ranks
- Units rank up every time they capture an enemy
- Every rank up gives +10% attack and +10% HP
- Every capture (even at max rank) heals 10% of the HP
- Barracks units have 5 ranks
- Noble Barracks units have 10 ranks
- Puma Spearman and Cuextecatl Warrior turn into Eagle and Jaguar Warriors on their 5th rank
- Eagle and Jaguar Warriors turn into Heroes on their 10th rank
Prison Building
- Build limit of 1
- Produces 1 prisoner per minute
- Equivalent to 0.08 Favour (1 Hero Oracle or a little less then 1 Monument)
- Can be constructed in Classical Age
Heroes
Tlatoani
- Unique leader unit
- Collapses instead of dying like Campaign Hero or AoE3 Explorer
- Uses an Atlatl as a main weapon (ranged)
- Has an aura (depends on Major God and Minor God technologies)
- Generates favour whenever killing a human unit
- Limited to 1
Warrior Priest
- Can heal allies
- Can attack in melee
- Does more damage the lower the enemy HP are (in relation to full HP)
- Generates favour whenever killing a human unit
- Can garter favour in Temples
- Limited to 10
Tlacochcalcatl
- Late game Hero unit
- Takes the same bonus damage as Norse Heroes (mostly anti Infantry units)
- Can switch between melee and ranged
- Do AoE damage with their melee attack
- Ranged attack is an Atlatl
- Relatively strong vs. most human units too
- Costs 10 Prisoners
- Limited to 5
Gods and Myth units
I will look into that later.
The Return of the Gods has a lot of interesting ones but mythology is not really my expertise.
Thoughts
I got some of my inspiration from The Return of the Gods and some form AoE3DE on top of some research on my own.
I mainly focused on the human units aspect and trying to find a way to make prisoners work in AoMR without being too bloody or being an actual real unit that might be annoying to deal with.
Edit
I changed the favour per prisoner form 1 to 5.
Units costing Prisoners are all doing bonus damage vs. Myth units now.
Added 3 new human units.
Split Barracks into Barracks and Archery Range.
