Usac’s Civ Crafting Brainstorms Part 7 - Alans

So my next choice? An interesting one for sure. The Indo-Iranian Alans are quite traveled. Many were forced into migration from Hun and Germanic invasion, so far forced that they winded up joining the Vandals all the way looped from Iberia into Carthage.

The Alans who didn’t make that journey stayed in Alania by the Black Sea. They were even known about in China! Their location was an excellent trade point between much of the Steppes. They lost to the Mongols.

So here the Alani are a cavalry based civ.

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Alans (90BC-1239) A Cavalry and Cavalry Archer civ

Bonuses:

  • Huntables generate wood while gathered

Like most nomads, bows were made not just of wood, but bone, horns and other composition of animal parts that could not be eaten. The conversion rate??? HELP!

  • Military units +1 LoS

With such far travel, the Alans have good navigational skills.

  • Cavalry Archers +2 armor vs anti-archer attacks

Like most Steppe peoples there were Cav Archer bonuses to be had.

  • Berries last 40% longer

Food is scarce, but gatherers gonna gather.

Team Bonus: Completed Markets spawn a trade cart.
As stated, good crossroad location.

Missing Techs

  • Barracks: Eagle Scout
  • Archery Range: Hand Cannoneer, Elephant Archer,
  • Stable: Battle Elephant, Husbandry
  • Siege Workshop: Siege Onager, Battering Ram, Bombard Cannon
  • Dock: Heavy Demo Ship, Cannon Galley
  • Blacksmith: Iron Casting
  • Economy: /
  • University: Heated Shot, Bombard Tower, Stone Wall, Treadmill Crane, Chemistry
  • Monastery: Heresy, Theocracy, Sanctity, Redemption
  • Castle: /

The tech tree has a few notable missing pieces, namely Stone Walls, Chemistry and Age 3 Melee attack. We’ll find some work around.

UU: Draco - Cavalry wielding a banner that has a charge attack that deals minimally more damage but causes all nearby allies to be inspired to hit harder for a short time. The boost for melee is +2 and +1 for ranged and nothing for non-biological units. With multiple Dracos, another Draco will not activate his power unless a unit within 15 range of him is not inspired. The effect lasts 1 minute and cooldown is 2.5 minutes.

DOES NOT BOOST TEAMMATES!

The numbers need a little balance for sure.

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Draco Stats Elite
Health 110 145
Attack (Pierce) 9 (+3 with charge) 11 (+5 with charge)
Range melee melee
LoS 6 6
Movespeed 1.4 1.4
Armor 2/1 3/2
Cost 55f/65g
Train Time 19 19
To Elite 900f/550g 35s

Draco banners were first used by Dacians but the local Sarmatians (later Alans) were quick adapters as well. The banner was inspirational to troops.

Castle UT: Kontos - Mounted units except Knight line +1 range.
The Lance of the Steppes. The Kontos is why you can’t hit hard and need your castle to Sub in for a lack of Smithing. Granted, the value of +1 range on a bunch of Knights can’t be understated. Interestingly enough, this civ gets Elephant Rams due to some exposure to Iranian warfare early on. And yes they too get the boost.

Cost: 550f/600g 45s

Imperial UT: Dragon Banners - Improves Draco aura by increasing the range of the inspiration by 20% and doubles the damage boost (+2 more for melee and +1 for ranged). In addition charge cooldown reduced by 20%.

Keep in mind you have no Chemistry and no Iron Casting.

Strategy: So this civ is very oiled as a machine and if pieces are missing it kinda falls apart. Cav archers with +1 range? Cool! Cav archers without Chemistry needing supplementation by a UU? Not so great but you can reach Magyar levels eventually.

Paladins with +3 range?! Cool! -3 attack? Not so good.

And the Draco is not awful but he has one very heretical flaw that can really topple the player that makes them: No heresy. A converted Draco that isn’t on cooldown can pretty much turn the tide of a big battle in favor of your enemy who likely DOESNT use the boost to compensate for a lack of techs. That said, Hussars with +1 range are great, but missing Blast Furnace is actually CRUCIAL! Without the banner boost an Alani Light Cav will do 17 damage and come too short of a 2hKO while a Blast Furnace Hussar always does. Protect your Dracos kill all priests!

+1 range for Lancers is pretty silly as now they’re at 2 range, which shouldn’t be discounted even with a low base power.

Dracos, even if Monks are handled, are a bit unwieldy in combat. You want a few, always, but not too many to entice a conversion that pretty much hoists your own petard against you as this unit is more game changing than losing an Elite War Elephant.

Cav archers resistant to anti-archer lets them stand in the face of Skirms that much better.

The idea is that the civ is a little versatile but a few key techs just pushes them backwards.

5 Likes

Even without the second attack upgrade thisciv has to be nerfed and hard. Remove paladins and hussars rn. Even then the Steppe Lancer and Draco are probably OP. I dont really like the Draco in general

2 Likes

If you could explain I could agree and understand. I’d sooner remove Husbandry truthfully as I can’t see their paladins winning hard against a Frank if he can convert the banner holder. Maybe removing the faster tech time would help here too.

I thought I was onto something creative.

no battering ram or bbc is unnecessarily brutal, esp. on maps where getting castles up is tricky.

Elephant rams. 20 characters.

I’m blind and thought no capped ram, makes sense.

Extra range is just massive. I have my own design of a civ with ranged cav and I removed paladin, hussar and the last attack (the extra attack I mostly removed for the eles and the light cav tbh). You have basically super tanky steppe Lancers as Cavaliers, and with the Draco it wont even be fair

In general I do t like Auras tbh. Particularly when they are impossible to see

It’s not an aura though. It’s a charge attack. It has a cooldown, can be easily turned against you with conversion, etc. I really feel like Paladins are an identity unit here, so I want to work around having to remove it even if it makes you mad.

So instead… Husbandry, Heavy Camel, Hussar are missing as is the 20% faster tech bonus. Possibly even faith. Targets banner boosted should likely get a slight glow around them.

Its an aura triggered by a charge attack

And Paladins will only be maybe fine if you give them back hussars and heavy camels but remove bloodlines and nerf the Draco. But at that point your knights will suck before the UT

Extra range palas just arent doable honestly

Well then all those techs are back and now the tech boosts all cav range EXCEPT knights. I’m okay with this as a different civ could revolve around longer range knights only instead with different drawbacks.

1 Like

Now their knights are kinda weak tbh but nothing too bad

If the Draco banner is too good I can make it not effected by the extra range either

Excellent idea. Aoe2 should have more civs from early period :wink:

One aspect I wish I could’ve given more attention was perhaps their longest lasting effect on most of Wurope: the Alaunt dog. While now extinct, it can be traced from the roots of many currently alive European breeds today. Doesn’t seem like much but the goodest boys and girls deserve more love!

Whose the lucky person to see this getting my own hand at a retuning!?

Well not much to say except auras are now a thing and the his civ seems made to interact with Rome and thus have Dromons. It doesn’t even have chemistry anyway.

So off the top I revisted this civ and a few things stick out to me pretty hard:
This civ has 3 early game eco bonuses! THREE! Better berries, better hunting and +1 military LoS for better scout and drush! That’s a tad much imho.

So that part needs a rewrite. I like the wood from hunt bonus as that feels very much like you’re making bows out of bone and horns. Let that stay.

The +1 LoS is probably a bit extraneous but extra scouting WITH a hunt bonus feels a bit too familiar.

And the cav archer bonus is a bit too niche so here’s how to fix it: damage resistance bonus. Let me show you:

  • Huntables Generate Wood
  • Camels, Steppe Lancers, Armored Elephants, Dromon and Cav Archers take 25% less bonus damage.
    Team Bonus: Caravan spawns with every Market. Caravans +2/2 armor.

In a sense this civ seems a bit focused around its cross roads of regional units. And it kinda is. Lancers, Dromons, Camels and even the Siege elephant due to their Iranic heritage (this civ would totally have war elephants in AoE1 for that reason)

This civ technically only has 2 civ bonuses, but wood from deer/boar can be all the boost you need for an archer push.

So what changes to the tech tree?

Well…

  • Barracks: Eagle Scout
  • Archery Range: Hand Cannoneer, Elephant Archer,
  • Stable: Battle Elephant
  • Siege Workshop: Battering Ram, Bombard Cannon
  • Dock: Heavy Demo Ship, Cannon Galley
  • Blacksmith: Iron Casting
  • Economy: /
  • University: Heated Shot, Bombard Tower, Stone Wall, Treadmill Crane, Chemistry
  • Monastery: Heresy, Redemption, Faith
  • Castle: Sappers

The big difference is the loss of Faith, which I think really enables this civ to have to play around its UU’s crippling weakness to religion. And perhaps, I might even grant the elephant archer (which might benefit from the bonus damage resistance and Kontos)
Gambesons is here… wow!!! Goes great with their 13+1 damage Champions

As for the UTs…

Castle UT: Kurgan Burials Dead units grant 5 gold.
Cost: 400f/200w, 35sec

Imperial UT: Kontos - Mounted units except Knight and UU +1 range.
Cost: 650f/350g 45sec

Put simply the Banner Wielder’s original UT, like Royal Heirs and Berzerkergang before it, is now baked into the Elite Upgrade. Because of this ease of access upgrade, the Kontos tech is now Imp Age AND no longer effects the Draco.

Wonder: Shoana Church - A church that still stands in the old Alani lands after its turn to Christiandom.
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UU: Draco - Cavalry wielding a banner that has a charge attack that deals minimally more damage but causes all nearby allies to be inspired to hit harder for a short time. The boost for melee is +2 and +1 for ranged and nothing for non-biological units. With multiple Dracos, another Draco will not activate his power unless a unit within 15 range of him is not inspired. The effect lasts 45sec and cooldown is 2 minute. The stat boosts are double for the elite and duration increases by 15 seconds.

If converted, Dracos will have their banner reset to full cooldown and thus needs to be killed in 2 minutes before they can activate the effect.

Draco Stats Elite
Health 110 145
Attack (Pierce) 9 (+2 with charge) 11 (+3 with charge)
Range melee melee
LoS 6 6
Movespeed 1.4 1.4
Armor 2/1 3/1
Cost 55f/65g
Train Time 19 19
To Elite 900f/550g 35s

So what’s changed? Well this is still the civ without Iron Casting, and without Chemistry and with a combination of Dromon, Siege Elephant and Lancers.

So play to your strengths. These units with their ability to better shrug off pikes can prove quite formidable.

Much of the strategy from the main post still holds true.

1 Like

Do you want to see my concept for an Alans civ? Because I went in a totally different direction, and made them a more conventional European-type civ. That’s because I introduced them in a hypothetical Caucasus expansion. However, they still have some very interesting stuff.

Sure but in its own thread.

That said I’m going the whole hog from its place as Iranian migrants to their settled lands in Alania and Ossentia to their place as travelers who went all the way through Europe hand in hand with Vandals to Carthage.

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Okay, I can get my own thread going then if I want to.

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Would this be the first civ without access to Chemistry? Would they get the Dromon?

1 Like