New mod, 0 A.D. - Imperia Vetera

[Deicide4u]

0A.D.AlphaIXMod-ImperiaVetera.zipI'm proud to present to you a new mod for 0 A.D. called Imperia Vetera. As the mod is based on an alpha that introduced the final original civilization, Romans, it makes sense to name the mod in honor of their ancient language. Imperia Vetera is "Old Empires" in Latin, and the name itself reflects the vision and the source for the mod. Be aware that this is a so-called "retro" mod. It doesn't and it will not, represent the full features of the original game.

Changes when compared to Alpha 9 vanilla.

Siege Weapons overhaul:

Siege weapons are much better at destroying buildings, but much worse at killing organic units. At the same time, all economic and civic buildings are more vulnerable to hack damage.

Building costs overhaul:

Overall, higher tier buildings (Fortresses, Army Camps, Gymnasiums, etc.) are now much more expensive to build. This is in part to compensate for the lack of phases. Houses and other civic structures are cheaper, except for Carthaginian apartments (Bets).

Champion units:

They now cost more population space. Champion infantry costs 2 population, champion cavalry costs 3. So, there is no more champion unit spam.

Heroes:

All Heroes are now just very powerful units, identical to Greek heroes from Age of Mythology. I'm still working on implementing a training limit. They also cost more population space. Celts and Hellenes can now train only 3 Heroes, the same as other civilizations.

Hellenic heroes are Leonidas, Alexander and Themistocles. Celtic heroes are Boudicca, Brennus and Vercingetorix.

Mercenaries:

They all now train at an Advanced rank.

Ranged units:

Removed minimum range. Archers were heavily nerfed.

Technical changes:

All features that weren't implemented, or were implemented partially, were either removed or tweaked. Charge attacks are removed because they didn't work and they were cluttering the UI. Priests are removed, but the Temples now heal faster and can garrison up to 30 troops. GUI buttons that did not work are removed. Civilization pages that showed technologies and bonuses are also removed, as almost nothing was implemented at the time.

Population cap is now at 150. In Age of Empires 2 campaigns, you had only 75 population space. I think 150 should be more than enough, considering the lag at higher unit counts.

The AI (legacy qBot as base) is now harder, and attacks with more units. Hellenic AI can now train Siege Towers.

Towers and Fortresses:

Towers are now weaker, but you can build more of them. You can now only construct 5 Fortresses, so turtling is not really an option.

Changes not considered:

Technologies and phases are not in the game. This is a feature, not a bug.

The full mod, changelog and install instructions are inside the ZIP file below.

0A.D.AlphaIXMod-ImperiaVetera.zip

Edited 2 hours ago by Deicide4u
Added the ZIP file with the mod

[Classic-Burger]

Then it won't have A27's civs?

[Deicide4u]

It will be balanced around the 6 original civilizations.

Edited August 17 by Deicide4u

[Dakara]

only A9?

[Deicide4u]

@Dakara, yes. Alpha 9 was a good base to build upon.

 

 

 

Edited August 21 by Deicide4u
Removed link because it expired

[Deicide4u]

New balance update.

- Ranged units have no minimal range, similar to later alphas. The damage of archers is reduced. Also, infantry archers no longer have damage bonus against one of their counters, spear cavalry. Tooltips adjusted. This will prevent ranged units from running away and dragging your melee infantry into danger. It should also reduce the lag from bad pathfinding. 

EDIT:

- Backported the female citizen sounds from Alpha 11. No more huffing

I would now like to present the goals of the mod.

1) Overhaul of the combat system with various civilization and rank upgrade bonuses. Civilizations will train better units of certain types, and rank upgrades of those types will be better. We had something similar in A16, with rank upgrades only being available to certain unit classes for some civilizations. Overpowered units will be nerfed, in time. Capturing will not be implemented.

2) Preserving the early vision of the project. I'm aware that developers and designers come and go, things change with addition of new civilizations and features, etc. But the core of the project still needs to exist, and one of the main goals of this mod is to provide players with an "what if things stayed stable for a few more years" option.

3) Reducing the base building phase of the game to a bare minimum that's needed to field armies and build a stout defense. The rest is on the player's skill to micro his/her units and use a proper army composition to counter his/her enemy.

4) Simplification of the economy. Females gather food from berries and fields faster. Cavalry hunts better than everyone else. Citizen Soldiers are slightly better at chopping wood, and much better at mining stone and metal. That's it.

5) Visual and graphical consistency. Unit portraits will have similar, retro-style textures. Units will be clearly distinguishable on the map. You will be able to tell a difference between unit ranks, for example. This is mostly complete in Alpha 9, I just tweaked some unit and building portraits. Also, the old Hellenic female portrait is back.

I might have missed something out. In any case, this is still a work in progress and more is to come.

Edited August 21 by Deicide4u
Added more comments. Added female sounds from A11

[Deicide4u]

New release, bringing bug fixes and streamlining of features (fancy euphemism for "less stuff").

- Units now can't build walls, gates and wall towers, as the click-and drag walls weren't implemented until Alpha 10. The AI can't build them, anyway. Even in A27.

- Fortresses now cost only stone again. The AI was having difficulties building them as they cost too much wood.

- Roman Army Camp cost reduced, as it no longer can train Marian Legionaries.

- Various bug fixes, most notably Carthaginian Infantry archers being trainable again.

Edited 2 hours ago by Deicide4u
Update for the release.

[Deicide4u]

The mod is now in a good spot to share, so I've updated the opening post with the ZIP file containing the full mod and instructions.

I didn't want to use GitHub for this, so apologies for the large file size. Thankfully, it's not a huge file.

There shouldn't be any major bugs. Have fun playing the mod.