A while ago, a friend and I started work on a mod to add multiple missing East Asian civs into the game. The plan was to make 4 new civs, and a campaign for each of them and for the Chinese. This petered out a bit when the DLC rumblings started, and initially it looked like the very civs we were working on might be added. But that did not come to pass, so I think now is as good a time as any to introduce the project to the public.
Presenting…the Mandate of Heaven mod!
Let me go over what this mod does, and what’s planned for it.
First, it contains four new civs. The Jurchens, the Tanguts, the Khitans and the Tibetans. These four civs all have a unique design with their own civ bonuses, unique units and techs, civ theme music and icons. We are still working on voicing all of them, with so far only the Tibetans having their own voice lines. Each civ was also designed to occupy a different niche within the AoE2 roster with the current civs, through the way they play or their unit access.
Here is a brief summery of each civ. We have our own Discord channel for the mod, where you can learn more about this civs in detail.
Tibetans:
A cavalry and monk civilization. Tibetans use their yak herders to gather resources more efficiently, then use them to buy powerful armour for their troops.
Khitans:
A cavalry civilization whose main economic bonus is pillaging others. These distant cousins of the Mongols prefer close quarters combat and quality armor.
Jurchens:
A cavalry and infantry civilization where might equals right. The Jurchens win games through the sheer power of their units, rather than through economic bonuses.
Tanguts:
A camel and economic civilization with a wide breadth of military options that are better en-mass than individually.
(Images are just for a general idea of the civ’s themes. Not representative of the mods contents)
A more detailed breakdown can be found in a follow-up post. You can learn more by either downloading the mods below:
or by joining our discord. (Message me about the link, as I’m not going to put it up publicly here)
The other thing that it will contain is campaigns. There are plans for the following:
Chinese: Taizong of Tang (Nearly complete, needs voice lines and testing)
Tibetans: Tride Tsuktsen (50% complete)
Khitans: Abaoji (Not started yet)
Jurchens: Wuqimai (Not started yet)
Tanguts: Jingzong (Not started yet)
You can find the Taizong campaign in the mods. We are looking for further feedback on it, along with playtesting to make sure it works smoothly.
In fact, the civs require feedback as well. This is all a work-in-progress mod, and they will override other civs while active (namely, civs that will not pop up in their campaigns).
While we would all love to have perfectly balanced civs, we need data for this, and the more we have the better. So please do give feedback on them, preferably in the Discord, but if you don’t want to, feedback here is perfectly usable.
Thankyou for reading, and enjoy!