This mod was designed to enhance the Legacy (original 2007) version of Age of Empires 3, rather than overhaul the vanilla experience. No civs were altered except to make visual improvements, while the new civ additions were crafted to feel like they were a part of the original game. All other enhancements are unobtrusive and/or optional. Overall, the core design philosophy was to make what feels like a new, seamless mini-expansion of the original game.
- Adds 2 new civilizations: the Maltese and Americans, each with unique units, buildings, cards, and Homecity customizations.
- New AI characters (Americans: George Washington, Maltese: Jean de Valette) include many handwritten response lines, while George Washington features AI-generated voiced lines.
- Enhances AI with a customized version of DraugurAI to make CPU players more versatile, efficient, and competitive.
- Improves graphics with added blood and corpse effects, an AI-upscaled UI, optional AI-upscaled building textures, and now nearly all unit upgrades will reflect with visual changes.
- Longer-lasting corpses, impact effects, rubble, and new blood splatter effects make battles more visceral.
- Adds more high-qulity, fitting music to the gameplay soundtrack, for a nearly 2-hour long loop, with a carefully ordered playlist that separates the soundtrack into European, Native, and Asian flavors, before transitional music sets up the start of the loop (similar to the Age of Empires II: Conquerors Expansion's soundtrack).
- A singleplayer-only option to have randomized, historcally-representative, and civ-appropriate music tracks and Explorer audio start at the beginning of each new random map game.
- Fixes minor visual, text, and audio bugs, such as misspellings, potrait/icon discrepancies, and missing unit audio.
- Increases the scale of battles by increasing naval, native, and tower build limits; changes the Immigrants tech in the Imperial Age to double the pop cap to 400; adds a new third wall upgrade to help offset increased offensive limits; Mortars can now target units, but have a larger minimum firing range; the camera can be rotated, zoomed out farther, and zommed in more; and the unit selection limit is increased to the engine limit of 99.
- Increases Homecity level rewards and card deck limits, and adds new Homecity customizations for all civs to make leveling past 40 feel more rewarding.
- Everything new was made with historicity and uniformity in mind--from visual unit upgrades, to tech names, to the soundtrack's play order.
- Includes modder's resources, like a compendium of useful tricks and information I learned during the making of the mod, as well as tools to help the new AoE3 modder.
Note: screenshots were taken on a 1440p monitor, which slightly stretches the HUD, as the game doesn't scale the aspect ratio properly. The standard 1080p resolution doesn't have this issue.
The Maltese specialize in defense, healing capabilities, and archaic unit combat. Certain buildings and units generate a new resource called Favor, which they use to request special Homecity shipments and train units at Auberges. They can build Hospitals to heal, defend, train Hospitallers, and generate Favor; meanwhile, Auberges are used to form associations with one of the Grand Priories, which grant access to their own unique, powerful bonuses and units. Further punctuating their defensive capabilities, Homecity cards can send enormous Fixed Gun Barrels, which can be built over Fixed Gun Platforms, providing tremendous stationary firepower to whomever controls the area.
Best units:
- The Hoop Thrower is a relatively expensive unit, but their ranged damage resistance, combined with their splash damage, lend them high utility against tightly-packed masses of ranged infantry.
- Hospitallers are heavily armored melee infantry who are deadly in hand-to-hand combat, and who also provide triage to wounded friendly units for armies far away from home.
- Knights are the Maltese tanks of their era, excelling at mowing down infantry with their lances, with an additional small bonus against cavalry.
The Americans excel at gunpowder combat, while the bonuses provided by their Age-up politicians, and the specialization of their citenzry, allow them to boom through Ages when carefully managed. Representatives and (via a Homecity card) Senators gather a new resource called Favor, which can be used to enact bonus-providing Policies at the Legislature. Policies are unlocked via new Age Politicians starting from the Fortress Age and up. Homesteads replace Houses and allow herdables to be trained and fed there, and also spawn Minutemen when built. Minutemen do not lose health over time. Livestock Pens (available through Homecity cards or an Age Politician) can train Cows and Ranchers, the latter being shotgun-toting cavalry who deal spread damage, and who can build Livestock Pens. Finally, each Age also unlocks a different Settler who specializes in gathering a specific resource, at the cost of other non-specialized resource gather rates.
Best units:
- The Continental Army Regular (or Army Regular) is American heavy infantry armed with the some of the most cutting edge firearms of their time, allowing them to fire at farther ranges with each upgrade than comparable units.
- American Dragoons are carbine-wielding ranged-cavalry who excel at taking down artillery and other cavalry, whether at range or in hand-to-hand combat.
- Riflemen are expert marksmen who use early forms of sniping rifles to outrange all other non-artillery land units.
While the majority of ideas and actual work implemented in the mod came from me (even though some ideas--like the Maltese Fixed Guns, American Riflemen, and more--I found later wound up being almost identical to AoE3: DE's, or to some other AoE3 mods', implementations), I owe some inspirations, textures, models, and outright implementations to other sources. All credit that I can recall is listed below, but since I originally meant to keep the mod private and unpublished, I didn't keep track of sources and so may have missed some. If I failed to include proper credit for something, please let me know.
- ESOC was the foundation for everything, from data files to AI files.
- Main menu UI graphics, most land textures, some tech icons, some unit/building icons and portraits, unit tactic files, UI-related data files, and some other data files are based on, or from, the Improvement Mod.
- A number of models, textures, and sounds for the new Maltese and American units/buildings are from the Wars of Liberty mod.
- Multiple music tracks come from the Age of Dynasties mod, which got them from different games I don't know the names of.
- Implementation of the Auberge langues, and indeed the base foundation for the new civs, is from CC Mod V4A at aoe3.heavengames.com.