Behind the scene changes

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

With every new release, the developers are trying to de-hardcode important features, which I really like.

The most notable one was ability to modify the tech tree. Adding units and techs in the tech tree was easy, but adding secondary unique units, buildings (that too unique buildings), changing the age of a unit/building/tech for a particular Civilization was impossible. No one knew how to add Caravel for any other civ, but everyone knew if it were removed from Portuguese, there would be blank line just dangling in its place.

The latest change are hero mode and regeneration rate. Regeneration rate of Berserks being hardcoded was something I pointed out last month. The branching of hero attributes is great in my opinion. But I still cannot find how Castles are made resistant to conversion. It just doesn’t show up in the hero attribute.

About the attribute, regeneration rate too isn’t visible in my version of the genie editor. Sure you can modify it using effects but where is it in the first place? It is like Ballistics. You can modify the property of the projectile, but it is not shown where it is.

In my opinion, the hero attribute will see a lot of use in custom scenarios. I would also like if they allowed giving sprites manually too (the golden sprite).

The other hardcoded features which need to be addressed similarly are:

  1. Auto drop off for villagers: the Khmer bonus basically. I tried to get a workaround and I was successful too. But lately, I noticed in Sicilian 1st mission that yellow’s farmers also had that effect. It would be great to check out from the game files directly how it is done. Alas, the campaigns are locked to be inspect manually even after purchasing the expansion.

  2. Effect of missed shots: the Arambai and now the 2ndary projectiles of Organ guns deal full damage even when missed. On the other hand, Battle Elephants deal 25% of the damage as blast radius, while War Elephants deal 50%. The default behaviour (blast radius =/= 6) is full effect in the area of trample damage.

  3. Properties of unit classes: The fact that cavalry are not allowed in towers, but monks are. The Missionaries being classified as a monk, still cannot enter towers. On the other hand, I want to have a “Ram” class. Presently ram units are classified as siege but have very different properties like not being converted by a monk from a distance, or not attacking units automatically (only buildings).

  4. Creation of a standard pierce armor class (like the standard melee class for Leitis attack): I don’t mean we have units which ignore pierce armor while attacking. This is purely for garrison purposes. We can give the 2ndary projectiles of Skirmishers some reasonable attack of this class, so that they add projectiles being garrisioned. The same can be used for Chu Ko Nus, Kipchaks, etc.

  5. Charge mechanic: I also found that despite being an option to add charge mechanic, I cannot give a charge attack to some units. I was trying to give charge attack to Arambai, with the same recharge rate as its rate of fire, so that it deals less damage to buildings while dealing the original damage to units. Also I am not sure what will be the effect of charge attack on ranged units

3 Likes
2

If I understand you correctly, you can already achieve this with the current set-up.
The class you’re calling the “standard melee class” should be thought of as the “true damage armour class” (or the “null armour class”). (Behind the scenes it’s called the “anti-leitis armour class” which is ridiculously stupid.)
The property of this armour class is that all units & buildings have 0 armour, and so you could make 2ndary projectiles deal damage in this armour class.
It appears Organ Guns 2ndary projectiles currently deal 2 “true” damage by having 1002 attack against an armour class where all units have 1000 armour. Probably implemented this way because AOE2 didn’t have a proper true damage armour class at the time OGs were implemented.
We can hope these true damage methods get merged, though I’m not particularly hopeful.
I agree it would make a lot of sense for most 2ndary projectiles to deal true damage.

3

What you are saying I thought 2 months back, when I did not understand the new game mechanics.

  1. Giving an attack of armor class 31 will actually give an attack to the projectiles because units actually have this armor class. I don’t want them to have an attack. I want them to increase arrows of buildings when garrisioned. Also, this is melee because buildings are unaffected and they it behaves as if it were melee.

  2. The 1002 damage of organ guns is considered bonus damage. Only attacks of base melee, base pierce and standard melee (leitis) are considered main damage. Only these stats are shown on screen and only these attacks effect garrisioned projectiles.

I now got a very good question. Does the Sicilian bonus reduce the damage received by Organ guns too? Let me check it out.

4

I think they reworked the tech tree because they wanted the Cuman and Burgundian tech tree to reflect their bonuses correctly.

Wait what? Buildings have anti-leitis armour right? Or I don’t get it?

5

Yes they have it. For buildings, anti leitis armor = melee armor

1 Like
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They do? I wasn’t aware. I thought Leitis ignored all armour. It’s never really mattered in any of my games.

7

Against buildings, they are variation of Celt Paladins basically.

8

Yes, otherwise leitis would melt castles even faster than Tarkans 11