Hello everyone!
I’ve recently launched “Mods Single - Age of Empires - World's Edge Studio” a mod that I think is unique for the new things it brings. I had my older mod of AOE2 “https://www.moddb.com/mods/age-of-stainless-steel” and wanted to export it to AOE DE, but I was fascinated by the new mechanics and modding possibilities of the DE, so I scratched everything, even I had a good start for the export.
What made me change?
It was this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2cm-rsDfjw&t
I had to figure out how to apply this video documentary to the mod, so I had to make some further studies and to fix some concepts. So let’s see what these were:
- Recruitment, was of 3 types: Feudal Levies, Retinues and Mercenaries, so I made these simulation:
- Feudal Levies: Each time you build a House (Cottage), a Tower Manor, or a Castle (Keep) soldier will spawn depending on the building. For the Cottage you can chose between 1 archer or 1 spearman, for the Tower Manor it’s 1 Lance (1Knight + 1 Serjeant + 2 Archers) and for the Keep is 1 Baron with 3 Lances. Not only this, but after some time, gentry will spawn in these buildings, 1 Freeman for the Cottage and 1 Seigneur for the Tower Manor. These civilian unit can be armed as soldier depending on what strategy you like. Freeman can be armed to spearman/archer, and if you chosen spearman, you can buy him a horse to have him as Serjeant. Seigneur is more strait forward, it goes to Foot Knight, and Knight when you purchase horse.
- Retinues: So retinues is more simple, you have the same units, with lower train cost, but this time they have upkeep. The upkeep depends on the soldier salary ( English Weapons & Warfare, 449-1660 , A. V. B. Norman and Don Pottinger, Barnes & Noble, 1992), and you can hire 20 Spearmen, 20 Archers, 1 Lance, 1 Broken Lance (1Knight) or 10 Serjeants. Just the upkeep of a Knight is 22 Gold and 11 Food per minute. Knights and Serjeants have their own dismount units but this time you cant buy horses for them. These are like national soldier with contract.
- Mercenaries: Same as retinues these will be soldier with low train cost, and with upkeep (double in confroft of Retinues). These are non-national units (not yet implemented in the mod) so will not use your population limit.
Soo, how did I achieve these things.
- Had to have only 1 training building, the Retinue Barracks. And you can build only 1, so when spawn command is enables, you will not have multiple times the units you have payee for.
- No need to research unit updrade, so all the units will auto upgrade once you research their armor and weapon.
- The option to count the units you have on the field was not an easy task. So the cost of horses is 10 Gold for Serjeant or 20 Gold for Knight, for each one you have on the field. Just for Knight horses to count the total cost, I needed 8 research and 6 extra units.
- How to spawn units, was the simples, it was done by adding “Annex Units”, and use dead unit “Corpse Decay Time”
- Same as spawn, upkeep uses the “Corpse Decay Time” of dead units.
So what is the reason of this post:
- Will we ever see units that spawn after a certen time, like growing up kid to adult?
- Will ever be units with upkeep, as there are building that generate resource?
- Will ever have armor and weapons go inline with each unit armor and weapon they use (like AOE4)?
- Will wester european civs be revised and done properly?
- Will we finally have all the mount units dismount like the Konnik?
- Will we have a proper armored King and other comanders like Dukes, Counts/Earls or Barons?
- etc etc
Will AOE DE go in the direction of “Historical Accurace”?
Please write your opinion. Thank you.