Cobra Nothing

Age of Empires II: DE II - Modding
1

Hi everyone!

After a lifetime making custom maps for AoE, W3, and basically every RTS out there, it seems I learned nothing, as I just published this mess of a map. This is actually my first time publishing a map, honestly.

cobranothingcover
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I thought there was nothing to do with nothing maps (pun not intended), till I came up with this. Gameplay-wise, I got inspired by T90’s “Lion Nothing” video. In short, the whole map is baobab forest, but full of cobra cars instead of lions. The rest is your standard diplomacy, regicide game.

Obviously, there’s a catch.

There are two types of cobra cars:

  • Grey (Player 7 AI): numerous but weak. This is what makes the map playable, obviously.
  • Orange (Player 8 AI): these are the real ones, with full stats (I actually nerfed range and blast damage a little bit, because it was insanely op in this terrain). They drop a relic when destroyed. If you take a look, the triggering I did for dropping relics on death is… messy. I admit it, I miss W3’s map editor.

I tried to make this work with Gaia, but sadly I found several limitations, so we’re stuck with 6 players.

To make things a little more interesting, I added a monument. But this isn’t king of the hill. Whoever controls it can train cobra cars. Currently they cost 10k wood, 10k food and 5k gold, and take a while to train. I couldn’t test this properly, but I guess it’s fair enough for now. The reduced gold cost is because setting trade routes is kinda hard with this map, and the same blast damage/range nerfs apply to these cars too.

Sidenote: because cars aren’t managed by Gaia, they became insanely aggresive when setting the AI to high difficulties (even though their personality was set to none in the editor). So I used SWORDMAN100’s idle AI script (thank you very much btw), which did a fantastic job. Even so, I recommend setting the AI to extreme difficulty. With lower difficulties, they can become way too passive.

I guess that’s it. There’s not much else to explain, but if there’s anything you want to know, or better, complains to make about my crappy triggering and map design skills, I’m here. For real, I’ll really appreciate it.

Map: Cobra Nothing

Have fun!

2 Likes
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I am curious about the triggers you used from a nothing map mKer perspective myself (https://www.ageofempires.com/mods/details/18441/) . Will check yours out tommorw. Thanks for sharing :slight_smile:

Its hard to get anyone to play custom maps in aoe. Sadly this is not WC3.

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Thanks a lot! Your map looks pretty cool too, I’ll check it out. :wink:
And yep, the custom maps scene is still pretty tiny here. I still have some hope anyways. If we get editor features (at least) on par with userpatch, and casters showcase some more custom maps, we’ll see more stuff besides forest nothing. :sweat_smile: Also, the battle royale mode may be a good sign from the devs.

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You could change the cobra drop relic mechanic also by changing the corpse I’d of the cobra cars exaclty how I used the trigger to make birds spawn resources in my nothing map. Then you don’t need to replace the cobra at 10 hp but can let it get killed regularly.

Also the cobra train time and cost are too high. Better nerf the stats but make it possible to actually get some reasonably. Would be more fun in my opinion.

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I just updated the mod with the improved triggers. I can’t believe I didn’t know about that one, I’m still a noob when it comes to triggers. :sweat_smile:

About the trainable cobras, I greatly reduced the cost and training time to see what happens. Being a regicide game, I hope this’ll make games more interesting (I want more king snipes XD).

Thanks again for the feedback, it helps a lot!