I love what the devs tried with the new dlc. I’m all for bringing the aoe2 gameplay to other settings. I don’t mind having 6 eastern european cavalry/infantry civs: it adds a lot of diversity to multiplayer, and devs have definitely put a lot of effort into making new civs more unique. I especially like how new economic bonus require specific buildings and more decision making, instead of being flat increase. But to me, the new dlc shows we can go further. It’s not like the trio of cavalry, infantry and range units is unique to the middle ages.
While thinking about this, I realized that the fallout universe share similarities with the factions of aoe2. Namely:
- during Age I: we play a band of survivors from the apocalypse, a mix of people who experienced the nuclear war and other who refugeed in shelters but had to venture outside because of malfunction. We basically have to rebuild our civ from scratch. Our Town Center is the entry of our former shelter (except in nomad maps i guess 11).
→ this is basically the settings of many european civilization in aoe2. We play as some tribes or clans that establish themselves at the fall of the roman empire and will become an influent factions over time. This is quite caricatural, but in a lot of campaigns we incarnate a rising power that has to fight centuries-old polities. - Age II: factions start the to recover some forgotten technologies (most of them being firearms). They still fight mostly the same way. They start retrieve former technologies on piles of scraps, which acts like gold in aoe.
- Age III: factions begin to really differenciate themselves. For example the Brotherhood of steel put into services power armors, while the NCR leverage its manpower to field large armies.
- Age IV: everthing you want from fallout, except Fat-Man(s) and vertibirds I guess.
(I know the Brotherhood doesn’t exactly follow this pattern. But at the same time Spanish didn’t went directly from hunter-gatherers to conquistadors.)
Am I crazy? Am I the only one seeing those? especially the fell of Rome/the nuclear war parallel.
So I thought, let’s make a fallout-style mod. I want to adapt New Vegas, so it would include 3 factions: the brotherhood, The NCR and the Legion (more Romans go!). To me they are different enough to be interesting, and I could definitively imagine stories on these factions that don’t overlap with New Vegas (although I’m fine if it all ends on the Hoover Dam).
Now weapons in fallout are not particulary similar to bows, pikes and onagers, and translating while keeping the best of aoe2will not be straightforward. Here are a few issues:
- What become of cavalry and infantry when there are no horses and most units have firearms?
- What are castles?
- What becomes of pikemen and skirms when they are no horses and most units have firearms?
- What about siege weapons? Don’t they overlap with power armors?
- Laser weapons?
- And plasmas?
Here are how I tried to solve these issues (in my head - this is all in my head, there are no mod yet):
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In aoe2 we kinda have a system where cavalry > archers > infantry > cavalry. Now there are tons of exceptions, and with timings, better upgrades or a sufficient mass you can absolutely kill cav with archers or infantry with cav (I’m not talking about counter-units for now). I would translate this system like this:
- infantry → power-armor/heavy infantry: high cost, slow speed, medium range. Quite similar to elephant archers or organ guns, they have access to devastating weapons (minigun and so on) and a thick armor that make them very good against anything they can catch. On the other hand, they are prime targets for snipers and monks.
- cavalry → light infantry: low cost, fast speed, low range. Basically scouts and knights, but slower and much cheaper (like 2x or 3x). The manpower of the legion and the ncr translates into cheap, fast troopers that can easily overwhelm more expensive units. However, with their smgs and shotguns they stand very little chance against power-armors. (It would be nice if it included a line of melee units for the Legion).
- archers → marksmen: medium cost, medium speed, high range. A mix of archers and hand canonners but definitely closer to hand cannons. They wield precious weapons and sights, and are especially potent against power armors (high caliber rifles and training to target articulations). This “class” also include an anti-material rifle trooper, basically a “hand cannon++” that is even more vulnerable to light infantry, but even better against power-armors.
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Even though fortications are less prominent in the 23rd century, we can certainly find “castles” for all 3 civs. The NCR has built many fortified camps in the Mojave. We could see the Brotherhood fortifying a place to secure very precious pieces of technology (in a campaign it would sounds like “Look. Our scouts discoverd a former shelter under this hill. Use it as a base and fortify the hill to protect our base from those raiders.”). For the Legion even the actual Roman castle from DE would work.
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We still need cheap specialized counters, in case we get overwhelm by the sheer power of power-armor and marksmen. Against marksmen, we need some sort of skims, but not with high armor, otherwise it would be good against all units. We could still balance this counter with a resistance to marksmen attack (see the UT of ethiopians) and a bonus against them. Alternatively, we could imagine a unit wearing a camouflage, that throws himself at the ground before he shoot. Gameplay-wise, he would have a slow rate of fire and the shrivamsha rider shield, which would be very good against slow-firing marksmen but quite poor against smg and miniguns.
As for pikemen…I have no idea. It should be only good against power armor, but I have no credible concept for this one. -
I have ideas for siege weapons: grenade laucher → grenade machinegun to replace onagers, missile laucher to replace BBC… but the slow unit with some sort of splash damage role is quite fullfilled with power-armors. Hence the brotherhood would have acces to a very limited variety of siege weapons, with no age IV upgrades, and would be forced into power-armors with worse range and damage potential but much higher hp. The other factions would have a more complete set of weapons. Another issue is that lauchers in a fallout univers are much weaker to range attack than mangonels in aoe2. This is one of the trickiest parts to balance.
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What about energy weapons? Well, I don’t want to translate every New Vegas in aoe2. For energy weapons, some would be wielded by power-armors, such as gauss cannons (long-range, anti-marksmen) and laser gatling (upgrade to the minigun). Then in the light infantry departement, we would have the “scout-line” (smgs) and the knight line (laser pistol → laser rifle → tri-beam laser). Energy damage would basically be the aoe2 melee damage: most units have a lower “energy armor”, especially power-armor. Light infantry still die to power armor, but its more of a 40/60 and less of a 10/90.
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PLASMAS! Here’s my idea (completely influenced by the Greece dlc): the “knight line” starts with laser weapons, but you have access to a tech to turn all your laser troopers into plasma troopers. Laser weapons are very close to firearms, except they are hitscan. Meanwhile, plasma weapons fire slow projectiles, but they can actually deal decent damage to power armor. So now the fight is a 50/50, and with better upgrades you can beat them with light infantry. Laser are still better against marksmen, but plasmas are quite well rounded. Oh, and the tech can be reversed, but you still have to pay for it and it researches slowly, so its not too much spammable.
Now…the civilisations!
The Brotherhood of Steel:
Defensive and power armor civilization
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bonus: the starting forum gains +1 attack every age, started in age II (they actually kept their shelter in a good state)
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bonus: gold miners / scraps gatherers work 30% faster when a monk/scribe stands nearby (to reflect their interest in understanding former technologies)
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(it needs other bonuses
idk what) -
Units: good marksmen (= arbalester but no hand-cannons) with no bonuses, good light infantry (=light cav, cavaliers, maybe paladin, but it would probably be too strong), good scribes but no heresy.
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Regional units: various variants of power armor, mainly minigun, gauss rifles and heavy incinerators.
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Unique Unit: maybe the gauss rifles goes there, otherwise I don’t know
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Unique techs:
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Team bonus: something with relics
The New California Republic:
Marksmen and trade civilization
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bonus: caravan free, starting in age II
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bonus: every newly built tc spawn a trade cart
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bonus: no trade tariffs on food (more trade! MOOORE!!)
(On a side note, I thought about this because if I make a scenario with the NCR, it woul probably be about having a limited amount of farms, and having to gather food through other mean) -
units: very good marksmen (extra range, or something along those lines), good light infantry (hussar, cavalier), ok monks, good siege with missile laucher (=bbc)
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unique units: ranger: fast marksman with a revolver. Fire slowly at long range, but has a charge attack of 5 shots against units at close range (I don’t know if it is actually possible to implement). Overall quite similar to a plumed archer.
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unique techs: one that makes the trade cart faster, beefier, with a powerful range attack; another one
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team bonus:
The Legion:
Infantry and slavery civilization
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bonus: starting in age III, all villagers killed by the legion become slaves for the legion. Slaves are weaker than villagers, work twice slower but count for half the pop space. (or 0.7 times, whatever you want. but you still have to gather them and escort them to your base)
(this one is very hypothetical. Otherwise, slaves could simply be weak fighting units) -
bonus: light infantry is cheaper every age (goth but different percentages)
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bonus: devotion, faith cost no gold (or no food) (because they are indeed quite devoted to Caesar)
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units: ok marksmen (crossbow, hand cannon), strong light infantry (hussar, their regional unit, maybe cavalier or just knight), weak monks, ok siege.
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regional/unique unit: legionaries: fast, armed with a machete. Still good against marksmen (altough they are more expensive than light infantry), altough good against power armors if they manage to close the distance.
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unique unit (castle): centurion: aoe2 centurion, I think it fits well. No horse, though. And a 12.7mm smg.
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unique tech: one that gives their melee unit +3 range, because they discovered the mind-blowing technologie of spears; another one
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team bonus:
That’s it. Those are my general ideas for the mods. For know I’m experimenting a bit with the civbuilder website, to see if some of these ideas work. Then I’ll try to cook something with all the gunpowder sprites we arlready get in game.
If your have any suggestion, or any issue with my ideas, or you don’t understand this concept in the first place, please tell me. I know fallout tactics exist, but from what I can see it’s neither great in fallout nor as rts.
Thanks for reading.