A Wild Bunch news - Hyrule Conquest mod for 0 A.D. Empires Ascendant

Greetings everyone! It's been quite awhile since there's been any kind of big news for Hyrule Conquest. For those wondering or are a bit out of the loop, I have shifted gears in the last 8 months and have been working primarily on Star Fox Event Horizon. I am currently working with official VA's from the actual Star Fox games, as well as a dev or two who worked on them, so naturally my attention has been drawn to that project. That being said, there are a few things I really want to finish for Hyrule Conquest before I devote my full time to that project. One of those things is the next faction appearing in the game.

While in the official Zelda games they are called just "Zora," the natural confusion this brought up has led to some calling them "River Zora" to distinguish them for their more civilized relatives. I have always felt this name was still misleading, seeing as those civilized Zora actually are more commonly found in rivers and the "River Zora" are found in a much larger variety of water bodies like lakes and oceans. As such I feel like the term "Wild Zora" is a much better descriptor of these creatures and at least for the time being is what they will be referred to as in Hyrule Conquest.

As a faction, the Wild Zora's roster will be roughly split in half between an assortment of Zora units and Octorok units, who serve as their beasts of burden. Several other non-Octorok creatures will appear in their roster as well. Overall the intention with the Wild Zora army is to make them very fast but fragile. They have many high damage units with negative status effect attacks such as reducing the values of enemy armor and bleed damage, however they themselves are severely lacking in any kind of armor and are vulnerable to every damage type in the game. Like their more civilized brethren all of their units can move into any body of water as well, giving them much more mobility on water heavy maps.

One of the Wild Zora's most notable features is tied to the mechanics of how their giant Octorok bases work. In simple terms, almost all of their buildings can walk.

And not just walk, but they can also swim, research, train, and do what buildings normally do while walking. This gives the Wild Zora a nomadic power that trumps even the Moblin's ability to pack up and move their bases. In theory the Wild Zora can move most of their infrastructure to the bottom of a lake and build up their armies underwater, or a more reckless player could park their giant Octorok buildings right outside the wall of an enemy base and start pumping out new units.

This is naturally a really powerful feature that gives the Wild Zora quite an edge, both for playing very aggressively and also more passively as well. There are drawbacks to this however. First of all, these giant Octoroks move extremely slowly. Even the slowest Darknut warriors can catch up with them, Cavalry will have no trouble running down and killing these giant walking bases. Secondly these giant Octoroks are completely defenseless. If you do not have any armies nearby to protect them, they are as good as dead. Lastly, the Wild Zora will still require the capture of nodes to build nests, nests which grow the eggs that hatch into brand new buildings. Sooner or later a Wild Zora player will have to commit to capturing and hanging around nodes, even if only for a little while to create a new Octorok carrying a Barracks or Farm before going on the move again.

And that is it with this faction for now. As I mentioned at the start of this news, I am very committed to working on Star Fox Event Horizon at the moment and Hyrule Conquest has taken more of a back seat, so the release schedule of this faction is less certain than my usual routine. Hopefully it will not be too long from now, so stay tuned.