This mod increases the regiment limit to 180, the building limit to 40. there are 35 new special operations, over 50 new generals. each nation now has 10 generals in WW2 mode. each general has 6 special operations. new terrain has been added. new terrain modifiers for all units. new corpse and destroyed tank doodads for all nations. All nations have snipers and marines. artillery trailers have been turned into combat units. added new campaign buildings, minefields, obstacles, and division HQs. completely revised and expanded the SP campaign. customized dozens of the WW2 metagame territories. new WW2 capitals for Great Britain and Germany in MetaGame. dozens of new units, hundreds of new regiments. new intro-video. new generals show up in visible in Metagame Lobby. AI has been altered to be more aggressive and to use all of the new special ops. AI has been changed to recruit and research more like online human players.
A good mod that greatly enhances the game. Of course the Uncommon Valor mod is way better than this one. The mod had stability issues, and texture-glitches so i will put it on 7.
This review is perhaps very, very overdue, to such a point that I should say as a sort of disclaimer that this is a very, very old mod, made by one of the greatest Modders ever to grace this game's community, and does not reflect his current capabilities. However, the mod as it exists must still be critiqued honestly and openly, and so I hope to do so as the first in a series of reviews for every extant A&A modification.
The first thing that can be said about Gizmotron's User Mod is that this is or at least was for the time a very large and expansive modification. Many new Generals are added for each nation, new units, regiments and buildings, along with new and retooled special operations and technologies, with the AI dutiously modified so as to make use of the new material. It has been said that AI has also been modified to be more aggressive, which does appear to be the case, although there are flaws in the new gameplay which can make this less apparent, to be covered later.
The first thing a player will notice is the new building situation. Beyond having a single infantry HQ to produce, most nations will now have two or three, a heavy infantry and special infantry tent besides the standard one. It should be noted that the standard Infantry Division HQ is still required to produce Mechanized HQ tents, but that the special HQs offer more unit slots, better resource production, and generally a better unit selection all around, typically for only a 10% higher cost over the standard HQ. One might think these new infantry HQ tents would extend the infantry stage of the game, and they do, but not in the way one might expect.
Simply put, many of the new regiments featured in the mod are very, very overpowered, and will dominate their respective stages of the game and beyond. Tanks and mechanized units are often available right off the bat from the special or heavy infantry tents, and elite infantry enjoy similar ease of access that largely erases regular infantry formations from the battlefield.
Most to blame, however, is the new role of artillery units.
The original game featured artillery as a support weapon that killed enemy morale at the cost of damage. Massed artillery could still demolish most enemy units at range, but tanks or large numbers of units could be used to overwhelm artillery units through sheer DPS or durability. Artillery units in this mod do not share this vulnerability.
Artillery of all sorts in the user mod have had their damage values raised, with mortars in particular now being granted a whopping +10 damage from the improved mortars tech, which makes japanese mortar infantry, particularly their heavy mortar infantry from the Imperial Guards tent, able to successfully 1v1 any other infantry regiment in the game, and many armored units as well by nature of their durability and morale damage. All nations also have access to heavy artillery halftrack regiments, which feature three artillery halftracks and 6 regular ones (or armored cars), all of which feature the bonus pierce damage to infantry that has been granted to most MG attacks in the game. Six of these regiments may overwhelm any number of infantry and is probably the single most important mechanized regiment in the game.
It is however the armored stage, whereby Armor division HQs (or Guards Armored HQs for Russia, and in the case of Germany, now renamed the Wehrmacht, both SS Mechanized and SS Armored HQs) take the field, that balance is forgotten entirely. The USA enters this stage as the second weakest economic power, in a bizarre reversal of reality as well as the original game balance, and is entirely helpless except for airpower, even their veritable Artillery Tank Regiment from the vanilla game suddenly finding itself useless. The king of the armor stage is instead the ultra powerful SS and Guards armored artillery regiments, which combine either massed artillery and assault guns (which may also bombard, and feature high direct damage output) or heavy tanks and artillery, combining artillery with high AP damage dealing heavy tanks, and thusly capable of defeating any enemy regiment on the field.
The balance of the game is particularly favorable to Germany, whose SS tents and access to nearly every technology in the game allow them to not only enjoy better end-game units, but better units at every stage of the game, checked only slightly by their subpar economy, which ultimately matters little when unit preservation is so much easier with their superior units. It is also clear that much more quality of life attention was given to them, with a large variety of custom models and textures for units and buildings, while USA in particular still has regiments defined which may never be produced, such as airborne AT, and ship-deployed marine regiments that the AI repeatedly tries in vain to produce from on-land division HQs, a situation remedied by only several small changes in required_technologies for marine infantry units
Only con I would say is the AI is too aggressive, unless I am playing it wrong.
I can't see the pics of any new general added by the mod just pitch black space. Please help me out.
This game was one of the best RTS i have ever played and still keeps to be that, only that with this mod it brings much much more fun and realism to game
pretty nice mod^^