I have been playing AOE2 for quite a while now, and have a number of friends I am trying convince to play the game.
However, as soon as this group (About 8 people) saw how unit formations worked, they immediately became frustrated and quit. (This is in addition to how units are controlled and how badly they path… but the formations seemed to be #1 thing that turned them off the game.)
This group comes from other RTS games, such as Starcraft, Starcraft 2, Warcraft 2, Warcraft 3, Command and Conquer Series, Warhammer 40k, and Supreme Commander.
Is there a mod that completely removes formations or disables the grouping of units into formations?
(a) I would venture to say no, (b) your friends sound snobby af, i played the shit out of command and conquer and formations never bothered me (why would they even?) yes the pathing sucks but formations aren’t the reason, and (c) every RTS uses some variation of what aoe calls “formations” but most give you little or no control over it, so they need to quit their bitchin
Requesting a mod that removes the core part of what makes an RTS is a little weird and unrealistic, but nevertheless, as a modding enthusiast and someone who is curious, I looked around the base files, and in Genie Editor for like 15 minutes to see if this was possible.
Nothing in Genie Editor, but I did find something. You can edit the hotkeys.json to remove the four hotkeys for the four formations, so that your friends don’t accidentally hit them, but the formation buttons still exist for manual clicking when they group-select units.
This is likely hardcoded anyway. Best thing I can recommend is try to sell them on 8p custom scenarios like CB/A, RPG ones, etc.
it determines the rank of units in formations, 0-no rank/no formation, 1-front rank (usually cav), 2-second rank, and so on, usually heroes are rank 5 or 6 I think so they stay in back.
