The OP is right.
Variants of the Mining Camp/Field Hospital model (along with PROP Campfire
and SPCXPCampire
):
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From a content maker perspective, the Mercenary Camp building is a bit of a missed opportunity. A soldier’s camp site that looks the part would be extremely useful to scenario designers, not to mention one with ready-made mercenary recruiting functions. And AoE3 hadn’t had one 100% suited for the purpose.
However, a few factors have dragged down the Mercenary Camp’s potential:
-
It’s implemented as a tech upgrade to Tavern, without an independent protounit. From a dev perspective this is perfectly logical, but makes it harder to use.
-
The golden tents with Habsburg eagles are both excessively flamboyant & overly specific for wider use.
-
What the OP said: the surgical table inherited from Field Hospital sets a grim tone for the building, incongruent with its song and laughter SFX (since technically it’s still a Tavern).
I think all these can be improved on the cheap, with minimum hassle:
-
Make a Mercenary Camp protounit for scenario use, that’s functionally a copy of the default Tavern. The multiplayer version can still be a Tavern upgrade.
-
Lower the tent texture’s specularity (metallic gloss), replace the Habsburg eagle with less specific symbols that fit broader historical scenarios.
-
Replace the surgical table with thematically fitting props that already exist in the game, such as:
-
A campfire pit (numerous existing buildings);
-
A pot over the campfire (from native settlements);
-
The turkey table, guns, swords, chairs & stools, straight from the Tavern, which also serve to create a visual link between this and the Tavern:
- Dishes & mugs from the Plymouth props, from which the turkey & chair originated.