Rise of Humankind – The Calm and The Storm
This mod was originally made for personal use as I started out with "Rise of the Ages" by 0wca. However, as it grew more and more over the years, I decided to release it publicly.
The main features of this mod are:
- A much longer playtime for every match with around 3 hours to reach Information Age
- Enough time for at least one big battle each age
- More depth, uniques, immersion, and strategy
- Reworked commerce and battle systems
- Higher population limits and with that much bigger economies and armies
- A steady change between fighting battles and working on your industry to keep you busy
- New sounds, along with unique units now having sounds that fit their nation
- An extended version of the "The Entire World" campaign
DISCLAIMERS:
- It is advised to lower the population limit if your PC is not able to handle the amount of units that you and the AI might field.
- This mod breaks all of the campaigns except for "The Entire World".
- To work properly the mod needs to be installed locally. You also need to add the "RiseOfHumankind_GameMaster.bhs" script for each skirmish or multiplayer match that you want to play, otherwise some features of the mod will not work, and the AI will perform very poorly. In case of CtW the script is already added to automatically do its thing.
- 1. Subscribe to this mod
- 2. Subscribe to Rise of Humankind – Script
- 3. Navigate to your steam folder and go to steamapps/workshop/content/287450
- 4. Copy the folder named "2613116925"
- 5. Go to your Rise of Nations game folder, open your mods folder (create it if it does not exist) and paste the previously copied folder there
- 6. Start the game, go to Tools & Extras, then Steam Workshop
- 7. Disable "Rise of Humankind – The Calm and The Storm" and enable "2613116925<local>". Make sure that "Rise of Humankind – Script" is enabled as well.
- 8. When starting a quick match, don’t forget to add the script called "riseofhumankind_gamemaster". You can find the option to add a script on the lower right on your setup screen.
In case you need to update the mod, the process is exactly the same.
The Calm…
The mod is made to reward you for stopping your righteous crusade to conquer the world from time to time and focus on your economy:
- The economy system has been thoroughly reworked to reduce one of Rise of Nations biggest flaws: The commerce limit capping at +999 resources. In order to do so, the production rates of the original Rise of the Ages economy has been changed up: All workers and buildings produce around 1/4 of the resources but gather them in a shorter time span. This effectively means that you are able to gather around the same number of resources in the same amount of time, while having more room to further your economy before hitting the cap.
- Several other changes have been made to accommodate the resource gathering rework. Cities can be upgraded to Large Cities from Ancient Age onward, you can build 6 farms for every city and 5 more for every upgrade, each commerce limit has of course been refitted, along with several smaller changes and lots of cost rebalances.
- Granaries, Lumbermills, Smelters and Refineries are more important than ever, as their bonuses are important to keep your economy actually viable.
- In late game you get access to four new economic buildings that produce either food, timber, metal or oil on their own but reduce their effectiveness the more cities you have, with 10 cities being the point where their production no longer scales down. This is to allow even smaller nations to acquire the strength needed to fight bigger nations in late game. (This is one of the many features that require the Gamemaster script to work, so don’t forget to add it to your matches!)
- Advancing in ages and colored technologies is much more expensive, in order to extend the time you spend in each age. However, if someone else advances before you, you will get a significant cost reduction to your technologies. Advancing before everyone else might just give you that upper edge in strength you need but waiting for someone else to advance first might now be the better option in order to not waste precious resources.
… and the Storm
When you are done managing your resources it is time to show your enemy the power of your empire. To enhance waging war, the entire combat system has been thoroughly reworked:
- The use of damage modifiers has been minimized. A unit’s role is now decided by its actual stats instead, to keep them from all feeling the same. Armor values now go much higher than 8, especially with tanks. No more cavalry defeating a tank for some weird reason. There are also no more ramping costs, except for some special support units and oil (to give a feeling of modern vehicles using up oil to move).
- Battles are now similar to what you might find in a Total War game. Flanking and height bonuses are important factors for your strategy, as well as new unit classes that each counter each other (For example: Spears -> Cavalry -> Swords -> Spears).
- All ranged units now have a certain degree of inaccuracy, making melee units much more viable throughout all ages.
- The maximum amount of population has been increased significantly to allow for huge battles.
- Huge battles require good management of logistics. To emphasize this, Supply Wagons are much more expensive. Make sure to protect them well! Attrition now hits much harder, but supplied units also get a slight healing bonus.
- Many new unique units await your command, from Supply Planes to Priests, Monks, Zeppelins and many others!
- Unit classes have been greatly expanded. As your units develop through the ages, they might change classes and with this even fulfill an entirely different role on the battlefield.
- There is a huge army coming towards your base that you can’t handle? Build a fortress! All kinds of fortresses are now able to keep almost any army at bay. Defense is now more important than ever but can also be countered easily: Bring out your siege weaponry if you need to take down a fortress, and make sure to protect it from cavalry and aerial attacks.
- If an ally of yours loses a city they built, it will be automatically returned to them if you are the one that takes it back instead of them. (This feature will only work with the script enabled!)
Big campaign update:
If you like playing the campaign, give the new "The Entire World" campaign a try! Based on DonTheDime’s great work way back in 2004, you can now play on an expanded world map with more territories, cards, longer missions and game mechanics regarding the management of your nation.
There are many more smaller changes that it’s impossible to list them all, most of them relating to balance and game feel. I suggest taking a look in the discussions, as there is some more information on unit classes and troubleshooting.
- Rise of the Ages (Models, Animations, Textures)
- =Q4= Sztypettto (CtW World Map Graphic)
- Fierce War Gold Edition (Textures)
- Ivenend on RoN Heaven (Landsknecht model and Textures)
- Cap_Nikollas on RoN Heaven (A7V Model and Textures)
- Age of Darkness (Tachanka Model and Textures)
- BoneZone on Discord (Textures)
- Age of Empires 3 Sounds (Gun Sounds, Voice Lines)
- Age of Empires 3 Wars of Liberty Sounds (Voice Lines)
- Cossacks 3 Sounds (Gun Sounds)
- Vsevolod Ivanov (Thumbnail)
If anyone credited here does not want their resources to be used, please contact me and I will remove them immediately from the mod.