Age of Discovery: Total War (completed!)

[General Malaise]

After reading about the era of my mod more, and looking back over a few earlier comments, I decided to release a small patch which adds an archer unit to every faction lacking one presently, before this mod goes fully down the memory hole. However, archers are only available at castles, unlike gunners and crossbowmen, to represent the increased difficulty of training them and thus also their comparitive rarity in the period.

List of Units added

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

ENGLAND: Retinue Longbowmen
FRANCE: (Dismounted) French Archers
HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE: Peasant Archers
SPAIN: Peasant Archers
VENICE: Venetian Archers
GENOA: Peasant Archers
SCOTLAND: (Noble) Highland Archers
MUSCOVY: Archer Militia
MAGHREBS: Desert Archers
OTTOMANS: Ottoman Infantry
MAMLUKS: Desert Archers
KALMAR UNION: Norse Archers
PORTUGAL: Peasant Archers
POLAND-LITHUANIA: Lithuanian Archers
HUNGARY: Bosnian Archers
PAPAL STATES: Peasant Archers
IRELAND: Saighdeoir (Gaelic Archers)
TEUTONIC ORDER: Prussian Archers

Copy over the files contained in the patch into your mod's install folder directory (check the mod's folders if you are unsure, they are likely to be the same). Make a backup of the old files if you're unsure you want to use archers. This version also makes a minor change to start of campaign to (hopefully) prevent the Mamluks from too often winning the short campaign. Use only the "descr_strat" file, or do not use it, if you are interested/not intested in that change only.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, this should be fully savegame compatible and has been tested.

DOWNLOAD LINK FOR (OPTIONAL!) PATCH: http://www.zshare.net/download/83021721652d7855/

[achwell]

cool just installed it I love the game

[nessj999]

sorry but why add Archers to a renaissance mod ?
shouldnt you add muskets
just a suggestion, i still love your idea

you could learn to expand the map, maybe ?
it would be good, for portugal and so on, on historical position...

[General Malaise]

Because, on reading more about the period, I discovered they were more commonly used than I thought, especially during the time the game begins, 1454. Also, others were saying on the first release they didn't like how they were completely removed, so I simply added them back in but made them more rare than in vanilla. It's an optional patch though, you don't have to use it.

As for the map, I think the faction's power is pretty well represented. Most of the territories Portugal, since you brought it up for instance, had at the time that weren't Portugal itself were tiny island areas that wouldn't really be worth the trouble to mod in, in my opinion.

[nessj999]

portugal had brazil istn it so, that here, portugal has honduras ?
and also the whole of carribean would be really nice
hmm...
maybe one day im bored of modding units in my mod, i will expand the map for you until brasil and virginia...

[General Malaise]

Actually no, Portugal didn't control Brazil (Fortaleza in game) until ~1500. The mod starts almost 50 years before that.

[nessj999]

yeah but in 1450 NO one owned colonies in america...
not spain, not portugal not france
so, why not
america was discovered 1450, so brazil would be really well fitting in the game

[General Malaise]

Brazil is in the game, it's controlled by one of the native factions, and none of the European nations do have colonies at the start of the game. The whole point is to try to be the first there, starting any nation off with colonies in the beginning would be counter to the point of the mod.

[nessj999]

oh lol ^^
i was talking about an other mod...
hmm i thought it was also age of discovery
sorry man

[beatington]

hi i have just downloaded the files but i can't seem to be able to play the mod? help!!!!! what do i need to do to get it to work

[General Malaise]

Install Info:
To install, download and extract files to Sega\Medieval II Total War\mods folder (should look like mods\Age_of_Discovery) and click on age_of_discovery shortcut.

[General Malaise]

I realize this is a month old, but I just noticed this and I remember seeing someone else say something about the economy so I'll comment.

uh nice mod dude but, its almost like a world war with way too many armys on map

Well:

1) A very common complaint with TW games is that real army sizes are not well represented, even if you grant them a large scale. This era also had more men fighting in armies, generally, than in the medieval era.

2) The era, in many ways, isn't too far off from being one long world war (e.g. Italian Wars, Eighty Years War, etc.)

3) Large armies orient things around decisive (and epic) battles, rather than little skirmishes and one-unit army raids the AI is known for in vanilla.

could you fix the economy somehow ?!

The economy is fine in my opinion, if you attempt to play how it's intended, which is attempting to maintain colonies in America and fight off the Ottomans/Mamluks from Europe (or vice versa if you pick those factions). In the AAR in my sig below, I was very quickly running out of money trying to take the Americas in the west and push back the Ottomans east , all while trying to maintain a garrison large enough to hold back the French in my homelands.

Plus, personally, I don't like the economic management in TW games. For one thing, the game isn't Victoria, or even Europa Universalis, where there are enough trade and diplomacy options to make being a peaceful nation viable and interesting. Secondly, it's very much against the stated theme of the game ("Total War") to be counting coins more than bodies.

uh and-
if i add any type of artillery unit to my ships the movement speed of the ship lowers ?!

raise the movement speed for ships- pimp the musketeers they are useless in america ?!

The ships are already faster than in vanilla and any ship can cross the Atlantic, not just carracks. The artillery thing is a reasonable trade off for that. If you want to haul huge amounts of cannons across the Atlantic you're gonna be slowed down. Otherwise you could just steamroll the natives with artillery, which didn't happen precisely because transporting that stuff across an ocean isn't easy.

For a similar reason, I don't think muskets need improving relative to the natives. Bows, at the the time, were still a better weapon, especially fighting in dense forest and in rain, two common situations in the New World. The adoption of the musket has largely to do with shifting slowly to large armies of peasant warriors and away from highly trained men. On top of that, the amount of muskets they could transport historically to the colonies was limited (they were still using crossbows for the most part there) and there's not any other good way to represent that.

[General Malaise]

I just noticed on strategyinformer that, even with 600+ downloads, no one has rated the mod yet! I'd appreciate it if anyone who enjoys the mod could vote and/or comment there. Thanks.

[achwell]

done

[Yuko]

great mod, its really fun, and it can get really chaotic at times, with lots of full stacks.

but i found a bug, whenever i click on vineland as the english the game crashes.

here's the log.

[Tom Crooze]

I have a question, do you need Kingdoms for this mod?

[Morrowgan]

Yes, you need Kingdoms.

[Grenadier.]

Seems like superb mod ..downloading ... i hope colonising will be funny for this game

[Grenadier.]

please upload as a winrar or exe..it's corrupted..

[Yuko]

install 7zip, i did and it worked.