Randomization! news

This has been an exciting year for the mod. In the modding community we had a lot of breakthroughs in modeling and UHC features, and then there's AoE3DE which will release soon and... god help us all.

I've already talked about some of the new stuff UHC2 brings in a previous post (stuff like 95 unit selection limit, multiplayer save and load game system, many engine fixes) but this post is about a specific, new, lit feature which right now is exclusive to the Improvement Mod: tech randomization.

But what did I use this new feature on? Well, I used it in one of the most controversial ways possible, I made European politicians, Revolutions, native Council members and Consulate allies random.

But how does this randomization work?
At the start of each game, a set number of techs are picked from a list to be made available that match to the player. Just like random mercenaries which have been in the game since the WarChiefs expansion.
Politicians (and councillors) and Consulate allies are random but shared between all players that play the same civ. So all French players will have the same politicians, all British players will have their own set of politicians and so on. This was made this way to ensure mirror games are still as fair as possible. Revolutions however, and randomized individually per player, because they are less impactful and for even more diversity.

As for Asian Wonders, I plan to add this feature to them as well and again because of technical reasons, it will be done the same way as I did it for Natives, keep the Wonder buildings the same but randomize the shipments they send.

The feature is now only available on the "age3b.exe" version of the mod that you can start the the game's folder (remember to put the exe in WinXP SP3 compatibility mode).

And yes, such a system requires rigorous balancing. Which is why I always need help with balancing and why you can join the mod's Discord server to help out.

As for the elephant in the room, yes, I plan to make an Improvement Mod for AoE3DE if I can.
I just hope there will be people who want to play it.

Special thanks to Kevsoft from the Project Celeste team for making all of this possible!

For a more detailed post, go to the mod's blog.