Age of Discovery: Total War (preview)

**General Malaise** · August 04, 2010, 10:09 PM

Hey all. Originally I was going to wait until I had a completed campaign to upload anything, as I myself very much get disappointed with mod promises only to never see anything surface. However I figured I'd release a preview of what I'm working on now anyway (at bottom of thread), to maybe generate interest and perhaps get some suggestions. If anyone is interested and would like to help that would be nice too.

Anyway, essentially, the (Kingdoms-only) mod I'm making is called "Age of Discovery" and is somewhat of a cross between Expanded Americas and Renaissance Total War, and is to be set in the time period from 1454, just after Byzantium fell to the Ottomans and closed off eastern trade, and 1604, a bit after various foreign trading companies had been establish by western powers and european history entered more then colonialist than the exploration phase. It will be 2 turns a year for a total of a 300 turn campaign.

As its based off the Expanded Americas map, it will include much more of the New World and I have added a new faction there now as well, the Caribbean Tribes which is like the Apachean in that it is intended to represent the various Carib, Arawak, etc. peoples the europeans, particuarly the Spanish and Portuguese interacted with. There will be a total of 23 playable factions (plus 1 rebel/mercenary faction) with largely realistic holdings although I am expanding things slightly unhistorically where appropriate either for some balance or to ensure there are no "minor factions" at the start so the player is not able to easily take rebel factions from the get-go without any consequence. Lastly, like in ExpAmer, the european factions are guaranteed to try to attempt to conquer the New World, unlike in vanilla.

On the Renaissance side, all factions are now given units appropriate to the era, with earlier era units removed (unless they were still used in this style, like javelinmen for certain factions). Pikemen, gunmen, etc. are all fixed and are much more effective and are available to all "civilized" factions. All settlements will start off at the "Large" (or equivalent) level to represent the amount of development by this period but to still give some small room for growth. I will also be using the economy fix to deal with the increased upkeep of later era units and in addition Darth's AI fixes are implemented as well. Finally, fitting with the period, Explorer's Guilds will be made much more important, although I am not quite certain how yet, either allowing elite units or giving significant bonuses or both. I'm also going to experiment with formations, so that you can easily make proper pike squares (double-stacking pikemen for instance) without tedium but more importantly so that the computer will as well.

I mostly started this as an entirely personal project, to play the game and era that I wanted to play, but as I am attempting a whole new campaign I thought I might as well go ahead and make it public even if some think the idea is too redundant. Below is a list of factions to be included, although I am not really doing any remodeling as not only am I not good with it but I don't want to open a can of worms so to speak with adding tons of new units. There are a few though, added where I thought a faction needed a leg up, but this is mostly changing stats and flavor and such. So, take a look if you're interested (right now only custom battles are ready) and let me know what you think, but politely please, keeping in mind this is my first attempt at modding and I'm learning as I'm going.

FACTIONS
Old World (European/Christian):
[Northern European] Kingdom of England, Kingdom of Scotland, Kingdom of Ireland, Kingdom of France, Kalmar Union (Denmark/Norway), Holy Roman Empire, [Southern European] Papal States, Republic of Genoa, Republic of Venice, Kingdom of Spain, Kingdom of Portugal, [Eastern European] Kingdom of Hungary, Polish-Lithuanian Union (Poland/Lithuania), Teutonic Order, Tsardom of Muscovy (Orthodox faction)
Old World (Middle-Eastern/Islamic):
Wattasid Sultanate, Mamluk Sultanate, Ottoman Empire, Golden Horde
New World:
[Sun God] Aztec Empire, Inca Empire, [Great Spirit] Apachean Tribes, Caribbean Tribes

DOWNLOAD
Part 1: http://www.zshare.net/download/7901833932485481/
Part 2: http://www.zshare.net/download/79018491c278d92f/
-Extract 001 with WinRar or 7zip to your Medieval II\mods\ folder and click on the Shortcut in "Age of Discovery" folder to play.

**cossacks368** · August 04, 2010, 10:35 PM

any screenshot have a look ?

THANKS

**General Malaise** · August 04, 2010, 11:07 PM

Ah, right. Should have figured people would want that. Like I said, there's no remodeling but I'll post some with the big changes tomorrow. Right now my wrists are sore from so much text editing and typing.

**General Malaise** · August 05, 2010, 12:14 AM

Meh, decided to do it sooner anyway. Here are some screenies:

Can the power of the cross hold back the power of war elephants?

Mamluk bombard preparing to fire grapeshot rounds as rockets fire in the background.

Russian mixed-pike/halberd line with mounted musket-wielding cossacks behind.

A shield wall of powerful Inca warriors.

Irish army with native wolfhounds ready to chase down routers.

The demoralizing effects of Caribbean poison arrow bowmen on a colonialist Venetian army.

**nessj999** · August 05, 2010, 05:05 AM

dont you want to include the dutch ?

**General Malaise** · August 05, 2010, 02:31 PM

I thought about that, but a quite a few problems with it.

1) They weren't in existence as a nation at the start date, which means I'd have to do the forced "emerging faction" thing, which I find to be a kind of railroading.
2) They don't become a nation until 1579, which is very late in the campaign and would bring up questions as to why other nations that came in that late weren't included.
2) There's no unique units for the Dutch, which means they'd just be a clone or mix of France or Germany.
3) There's no textures or banners for them, which means I'd have to learn how to re-texture and do that and would eat up a lot of time.

**IVIarkI2I** · August 05, 2010, 03:38 PM

you can try brabant or flanders factions, they had plenty of unique units

**Peteriscoolz** · August 05, 2010, 04:14 PM

Keep Ireland IN! please!!! This look like an excellent mod BTW,

**General Malaise** · August 09, 2010, 11:53 PM

Just in case anyone is actually interested in this mod, I've done about a fourth of the factions so far, so I estimate the whole campaign will be complete in about a week or two (barring experimenting with pike formations for the AI, which will make things take much, much longer).