Draxsath’s Pop and Tech Mod

This is the Steam Workshop version of my 17-year-old mod for Rise of Nations, which is still the 13th most downloaded mod on Rise of Nations Heaven (http://ron.heavengames.com).

The select more units mod was removed from this version, if you want this feature then you need to download the other version.

Please note: once you select this mod while starting the game, the population limit will still show as 200 in the game setup screen. You can ignore this; the population limit will appear normally once the game loads.

Thanks for all the subs, I’m glad to see that people are still playing Rise of Nations!
– :TF: Mortico (Formerly Draxsath)

I know a lot of people set their pop caps to 2,000 or more, but I feel this all but removes a core game mechanic. The problem isn’t that the population limit is too low, the problem is that it doesn’t increase relative to the size of your nation.

As you build more cities, you generally add a set number of citizens and scholars per city, so you would think that population needs would be linear. In practice, your nation’s population requirements ramp up significantly as the game goes on, especially once air units are Introduced. A bonus side effect is that the population cap bonus from the Colossus is still relevant.

Normal population cap, increasing by +25.
25-50-75-100-125-150-175-200

Modded population cap, increasing by 50%.
35-55-80-120-175-265-400-600

You’ll notice with this mod, that you’ll still hit that pop cap near the end of each age. You’ll still need to struggle with it from time to time, but it’s nowhere near as limiting.

I’ve always felt that you breeze through all the first ages so quickly that most of the action and fighting occurs after age 4. One way to spend a bit more time in earlier ages is to increase the technology setting to "Very Expensive and Very Slow”, which Increases the resources and time required for every tech by 50%. This certainly helps, but I find you still get to the later ages too quickly.

This mod doubles the base resource requirements and research time for every technology. With my mod, the “Normal” setting is equivalent to "Very Expensive”

Normal technology settings:
Cheap – 66%
Normal – 100%
Expensive – 125%
Very Expensive – 150%

Modded technology settings:
Cheap – 133%
Normal – 200%
Expensive – 250%
Very Expensive – 300%

This change moves the focus from the tech rush to other aspects of the game such as combat and resource gathering. You won’t be struggling to madly click through all the available techs as you whip through the ages, or upgrade your Javelineers to WW2 Infantry simply because you forgot to upgrade for 5 minutes.

This feature was removed, it was causing stability issues for some users. The version that includes this feature is available as a separate mod.