Future Wars of Liberty

The following is Future Plans of Wars of Liberty, written by the Developer Team of the Mod. The main Writer is Jutlander of the Dev Team.

## Part 1: Overview

***~The state of WoL: Where we are and where we are going~***

2019/08/04

   When Wars of Liberty was born as War of the Triple Alliance, it served the purpose of representing a corner of the world often overlooked, but it eventually got more prominent, and it had to change its name to Wars of Liberty. That change brought with it new desires both for the modders and the players: it wasn’t just about representation anymore, but about giving players innovative and fun gameplay. At the time, it didn’t matter if the bonuses were too extreme. After all, it was just a mod, and if you wanted to take it seriously, then you were better off playing Napoleonic Era anyway. The mod, though, grew up immensely: every day, more players were interested in trying it, and, of course, more and more players claimed the mod was not to be taken seriously. After all, civilizations had access to many abilities that broke down the balance, leading to ridiculous situations where civilizations had units with colossal damage, hp, numbers, etc. That’s when we realized the mod needed to be taken even further from representation and innovative gameplay: it needed to stand its ground in terms of design and balance to provide a satisfactory game experience for all players alike. So, for the last couple of years, we have been focusing on that, we were doing our best to track down the most unbalanced issues, the most significant bugs, to tune down broken mechanics and to retouch some aspects of civilizations that weren’t too well designed. Right now, the mod is in better shape than it’s ever been, the player base keeps growing, and we even have a tournament going on, but we know that to be the Age of Empires III modification we want to be, we have to do more.

But first, what kind of modification do we want to be? What do we have to offer? I think it’s important to clear that up before I tell you where we are exactly and what’s in the future.

First of all, we want to be a treasure. That means we want to be a game people will find, years from now, and be amazed at the many features. Such as the maps, the mechanics, the cultures, the civs, the cards, all the combinations, all the units, and all the stories the mod will express. We want a game that can truly take people through a journey, and the only way to do that is with quality content that has enough depth on it and, of course, with having a lot of it to offer.

## Part 2: Changes to Wars of Liberty

***~ In what ways will Wars of Liberty change and why? ~***

2019/08/08

   So what does this mean for us and the game? It means that we will rework almost every aspect of the game, and our main focuses will be the three I mentioned in my last post: Richness of content, narrative depth, and competitive gameplay. We want all aspects of Wars of Liberty to be vast, polished, fun, and fair, and our work, hopefully, will reflect that wish.

In the future, you will see almost every Wars of Liberty culture reworked in one way or another. We will polish their unique mechanics, their shared cards, their units, and their buildings so that they will have a meaningful narrative. And offer every civilization of that culture tools powerful enough for them to stand their ground against anything in their own unique way. We will also make more unique civilizations, providing them with unique, yet not broken mechanics, strengths, and weaknesses, so every single civilization feels like their world. We will rework espionage, religion, and almost every single aspect of the game to make it fit the mod setting, to do justice to the mod’s size and, of course, to make them more compelling, viable, and fun. You can expect to see changes in everything, and I mean it, even how units themselves work.

This, of course, with balancing in mind. Every culture, every mechanic, every civilization, will have tools to stay competitive, to bring something to the table. Still, we will only achieve that if we rework everything from the ground, so we can be sure we can standardize all aspects of the mod and, therefore, with the help of players, bring stuff closer together in terms of numbers.

Another aspect of the mod encouraging us to think about reworking was sensibility: It’s no secret that some designs are, at the very least, not really historical and, in not a few cases, openly stereotypical. We will work on fixing that. New designs will be more sensible with what they are trying to represent. They will follow a rule that we have been trying to enforce with our unique designs: represent a civilization in their own terms. Because with a mod so big, we can only have two options: to represent the entire world through the lens of one culture (in this case, European culture) or to represent each culture through their lens. We prefer the second, as it highlights the richness of the world in a way a monocultural interpretation will never do.

Last but not least, you can also expect what we’ve never failed to deliver: new, exciting stuff. We are still working on new civilizations, cultures, systems, maps, etc., some of them known to the public, some of them still secret, but all of them with what makes Wars of Liberty so unique. The rich world of Wars of Liberty will only grow more vibrant over time as it fills the map, fulfilling its first promise: to represent those who have never been represented in video games.

## Part 3: European Rework

2019/08/12

   The Europeans were the first culture to be added to the game and, therefore, one can expect them to be ‘bland’ since every culture after them changes the way you play the game in a way. That was the biggest problem for European civilizations in the mod; nobody wanted to play with them, for they didn’t offer what the mod was famous for fun and unique mechanics. To fix that, we aimed at designing European civs with fun bonuses and reworking the original civilizations to differentiate them more from each other. This, as you probably know, is not enough, and while European civs can be super fun to play as the European culture as a frame offers not much besides a space to design around. This is good in many ways. First, Europeans will feel a lot more balanced, or at least they feel like they could be easily balanced because they don’t have much in the way of changes. Also, their simple design allows the civilization bonuses to shine brighter and, therefore, what every civ proposes is stronger than with civilizations from, for example, the Native American culture. We certainly don’t want to take that away from the European culture, but we do want to make it feel special, we want it to feel a part of Wars of Liberty and not just the culture that was here before us.

So, what’s in store for Europeans? A lot of stuff, so let’s begin:

The Capitol will be moved to age II and will include a new set of technologies that will give the Europeans an edge in terms of map control to better represent how the Europeans settled their colonies. This building will also host Royal Decree cards. Hopefully, this will be a core building for European civilizations that intend on booming, since this will give them powerful economic upgrades that no other culture will have access too, but for a high price.

Many cards will change the way they work. Royal Decrees, for example, will now offer a trade-off technology that will emphasize the way the civilization is played, making it a more extreme version of itself, instead of the older effect that was just thematic at most. Explorer cards will also be reworked, along with some minor cards that will make European civs more fun to play. One example I can give is the age I British Museum card, which will make treasures give away a bigger bounty and your explorer a bigger bonus against guardians, in case you want to play treasure hunter. Also, native and mercenary cards will be completely updated to accurately reflect the state of the European civilizations’ colonial empire. This will allow you to thematically play the civilization in any way you want while getting a more viable roster of units to use in competitive play.

We’re also working on the European unit roster, specifically both Ultimate units and Artillery. We want Ultimate Units to keep their distinct roles, but we’re also aiming towards making them more intuitive both for the player and for the opponent. And for Artillery, we will, of course, bring the cannons from the past right into the 19th century, so you can expect to see POWERFUL artillery for the European civilizations.

And finally, you can expect to see significant changes on most of the European civilizations, including some bonus rotation from some civilizations to others. Some of the civilizations that will be radically changed are the British, the Dutch, the Germans, the Habsburgs (now to be renamed Austria-Hungary) and the Ottomans. You can also expect minor to medium range changes for all the other European civilizations.

## Part 4: Naval Rework

2019/08/16

    One of the most significant flaws of Age of Empires III is naval combat or sea play in general, it’s unrewarding in many ways, the ships make no sense strategically speaking and, above everything, it lags the game immensely. It also doesn’t feel significant in terms of what it brings to the game experience. We want to change all of that.

One of the things we noticed about the sea is how disconnected it is to land: owning sea gives you access to some resources, and, in age IV, you can bombard the coast. Still, considering the number of resources you have to use actually to fight over the sea, it might end up feeling frustrating for how little you get in return. Another aspect we wanted to change was how dull and indistinct from each other ships and naval battles were. Ships were just stronger or weaker versions of each other, and in combat, you put them head-on head and click on the ability every time it’s available. There isn’t MUCH more to it. So we tried to define ways to make this better. Ships that can be told apart from each other on how they look and what they do, a sea that is more rewarding, a more engaging combat system, and, above all, many ways to make a sea victory count on land as well.

We found the key to address and hopefully fix all of this in Age of Empires II HD and their rework of the naval system. While not using their same ideas, we are following the spirit of their rework: triangular balance. A beats B, B beats C, C beats A. I’ll now explain each new ship archetype:

Light Ship: Fast-moving ship, good against Siege ships. It’s cheap and not so durable. A master of the sea. It allows you to move fast so you can cover the ground without spending many resources. This Ship has zero influence on the land.

Heavy Ship: A ship which is much more expensive and slower, yet powerful. This Ship has a bonus against Light Ships, but most of the time, it won’t be able to catch them while they are on the move. This is the perfect Ship to protect your Siege ships, docks, or to make amphibious assaults since this ship can train your Naval Infantry. More on that later.

Siege Ship: A ship that is slow and expensive and has a bonus against Buildings and Siege ships. This Ship, like the other two ships, is going to be available from age II already. But don’t let that make you think they are going to be breaking havoc on age II, since this ship is more expensive than a dock and two Light Ships, making it easy prey to an opponent paying attention. Also, the range of this ship gets better on each age-up, so you’re not going to be able to reach that many buildings on age II.

This is how the sea will look like in the future: Light ships ruling the waves while Heavy ships rule the space they are standing on. Siege ships, if well protected, and hopefully after winning on the sea, will sail and will reward you for winning on the sea. But be careful, too many Siege ships, and your opponent will be able to beat your navy only with cheap Light ships!

Finally, we have a Naval Infantry. Right now, those are units available to some civilizations only, but in the future, every culture will get access to their sailors. This unit can only be trained on Heavy ships, and they will feature unique siege damage ranged attack, meaning they can pierce through most units' armor. Great for amphibious assaults! This will make the sea even more relevant than before, considering you can now make a forward base on the coast, anywhere you want, as long as you have enough ships protecting the zone.

Anyway, that’s it for now! I hope you liked it. The next issue will be about a classic WoL culture: the Latin Americans and their rework.

## Part 5: Latin America Rework

2019/08/20

    Our very first culture, and one I consider being brilliantly designed. It has a clear personality, many options for both competitive play, and to play just for fun and, of course, beautiful and unique graphics. Still, the Latin Americans have a few structural issues, and we will address this in this rework.

The first thing we wanted to change or to finish changing is their roster: Half the civilizations have a different list while the other half has the old European roster. When we rework Latin America, all civilizations will share the same roster. Also, the same issue is present in their Home city: it looks like a copy of the European one with a few unique cards. To change this, we will include a number of unique shared cultural cards that will tell the shared history of these people.

One of the most significant issues regarding game experience is the Town Hall and Coronels. They require their own building, the upgrades are too specific and not too good and the coronel, above everything, has frustrating abilities. To fix that, we are going to focus on what they represent historically: the corrupt elites that ran Latin America. Coronels will now no longer have access to that ridiculous amount of broken abilities, but will now be able to train unique outlaw units that will do its job for him. You can hire guys to burn down buildings, raid villagers, go on sneaky missions, kill objectives, etc., etc. The coronel will then act like a Shogun. The Town hall, then, will include more technologies related to espionage and subterfuge, putting Latin America on par with other cultures.

Immigrants will also receive a small rework: First, you will see new immigrants. We will also tune some abilities, so they are now more useful, and villagers will work differently: you will get them for free, once per each ‘generation’. This way, we have more space to make their abilities more powerful. Besides that, we include more regional mercenaries, so your shipments and matches on Latin American maps will be more colorful than ever.

And last but not least, you can expect medium to a large range of reworks on the Brazilians, the Colombians, and the Argentinians and, perhaps, something else…

Anyway, that’s it for today! In my next post, I will talk about Religion rework. See you then.

## Part 6: Religion Rework

2019/08/24

    Religion has always had its problems in the mod. For example, if your civilization had religions that could benefit, it was a matter of pure luck, with some civilizations having super strong combos while others have no option but to ignore religion. Besides that, some civilizations were just too powerful, others just too weak, and the number of weird, nonsense combinations was just too high. In short, the system didn’t make sense.

So? How to fix it? How to make the system relevant not only for those civilizations lucky enough to have a religion both powerful and that synergizes well with its bonuses? The first thing we did was to classify civilizations using four categories: Warring, pacifist, industrialist, and agrarian. Then, using those categories, we gave points to each religion, so they all showed us what type of civilization had access to it the most. Here’s an example:

Catholic
10x Pacifist
9x Agrarian
7x Warring
7x Industrious

What does this mean? It means that, well, Catholicism is a pacifist and agrarian religion. This means that most catholic civs are very defensive or oriented towards their villagers, or supporting its allies, which is why they are a pacifist civs. They will also have an economy based mostly on villagers and have a bonus that gives their units the strength to fight in general, nothing specific.

This is helpful because it will allow us to redesign this religion taking into account the necessities of the civilizations that have access to it. So what are the new religions going to look like?

Well, first of all, Priests will get new, better abilities. From a total of 4, your priest will get 2 based on the categories your religion has access to. Catholic priests will have access to Terra Sancta and a new ability that makes nearby units tankier for a few seconds, for example. Religious shared upgrades will now be reworked, they will be more accessible, not as powerful as they were before and, most importantly, also appealing to civilizations with different necessities, like rush civilizations or civilizations without much access to resources in the late-game. These technologies will also be more widely available to all religions, while still having some restrictions. This is the logic the shared technologies’ availability will follow:

Gathering rate upgrades:
Base: 2 upgrades out of 4
Warring: +0
Pacifist: +2 if possible
Industrious: +1
Agrarian: +2 if possible

The other shared technology, that won’t be revealed yet:
Base: 1 Upgrade out of 4
Warring: +2
Pacifist: +0
Industrious: +1
Agrarian: +1

Each religion will have access to a maximum of 4 of these upgrades per technology. As you can see, only a warring and agrarian religion have access to all 8 shared technologies. What religion do you think that one is?

Last but not least, religious technologies will now follow an internal logic, a narrative, one could say. Besides that, all religions will feature an ‘Ultimate technology’, a powerful ability that will change the way you play your late game. The technologies will be focused on aspects related to the categories I explained. Using catholicism as an example, I’ll show you:

Catholicism: A Pacifist and Agrarian religion.
Christian religion dominant on most of the world.
Faith Upgrades: 4
Secret Upgrades: 2
Main bonus: Allows the construction of one extra Abbey. Priest abilities: Terra Sancta and Sacrificium.
Technologies
Counter-Reformation
300 Food, 100 Faith.
II
One Shipment.
Spread Missions
300 Food, 300 Faith.
II
Natives are 20% cheaper and are trained 30% faster.
Stained Glass
100 Wood, 400 Faith..
II
Your buildings get +15% hp.
Holy Communion
200 Food, 400 Faith.
III
Your Villagers pray 20% faster.
God’s flock
600 Wood, 1200 Faith.
III
Your Abbeys now increase nearby gathering for buildings.
Rerum Novarum
2000 Food, 2000 Faith.
IV
Villagers now cost 70% less resources.
This religion has a big number of civil upgrades, mostly focused on its villagers.

To finish this entry, I’ll tell you that on top of the rework, you can expect to see a significant number of new religions in the future, bringing a lot more aspects for you to explore on your matches.

I hope you enjoyed it. Next time I’ll talk about the Balkan culture rework or, should I say… the Nation States?

## Part 7: Balkan Rework

2019/08/27

    One could call the Balkans a featureless culture. I mean, what do they have? They can age-up from buildings, neat indeed. But that’s about it. Oh, they also have more archaic units than any other culture. That’s… cool? There’s all of that, and, of course, there are crops. They don’t work. They are supposed to be a fun Farmville style economy, but in the end, you click a lot for limited resources.

On top of that, you have Romania and Bulgaria, that while they can be fun, they are certainly poorly designed. To the extent that’s true for Greece too. Do their special cards even work? They are counterintuitive, and I’m sure many people think they are not worth the effort. After all, you already have the easy win water boom and for land, well, let’s pretend they don’t exist.

So, what’s in the future of this culture? First of all, a change of name. We eventually realized the name Balkans was too restrictive and that, design-wise, the culture could include civilizations from all over central Europe. After much thought, we ended up deciding the best name for this culture is the Nation States, meaning all the peoples from central Europe to the Balkans that rose up against foreign powers in the context of the spring of nations. Those foreign powers almost all the time end up being Austria, the Ottomans, and Russia.

Now, how to solve the fact that this culture doesn’t feel like a full culture? Well, by adding more features. One of the new features we have prepared for the Nation States is the Secret societies. This is a group of people with a common secret goal aiming towards their nation’s independence. How do you get one of these? Well, by building a Tavern and choosing from two options. What will these Secret Societies do? They will buff you in unconventional ways, mostly related to spies and utility. This building also allows you to train outlaws, a unique Nation-State mercenary (civilization dependent), and even upgrade mercenary units! I will give you an example. Serbia will get both the Black Hand and the Filiki Eteria secret societies.

## Part 8: Mercenary Rework

2019/10/25

    After a long time, we’re back with another Future of WoL blog post! Today we’ll talk about the new mercenaries and what to expect of them.

Mercenaries have always been cool. Nobody can deny that. They are strong and provide a lot of variety. We want to enforce those aspects to make them more useful because even when they are not completely niche, they could still see more play and more strategies dedicated to them. After all, they’re eager to sell their services!

As WoL spreads all over the world to places no RTS has ever seen, so will our mercenaries. In the future, you will see mercenaries from every single corner of this shy, supple, blue, little world. Thus effectively turning this mod into a world parade of cultures and peoples. Now that the Nordic patch is finally out, you can see how the patch comes with a vast roster of German and Nordic mercenaries for you to enjoy with the Germanic and Nordic civs!

On top of that, we want to encourage the use of mercenaries via new cards, new strategies, and new approaches some civs can take to make them more viable. Germany, for example, gets a nice set of mercenary cards that it can now use in combination with its German Mercenary Army cards to deliver a deadly army of units.

But that’s a change that will occur in the Home city. What about trained mercenaries? Well, there’s still a lot of work to do about it, but we have some ideas in mind that we hope will make mercenaries more unique - not related to changing their cost or stats, but in how you train them! Besides that, many civilizations will now have bonuses that will directly or indirectly benefit the use of mercenaries, especially related to both population and coin generation. So expect to see new, unique mercenaries in unique and varied combos for every civilization and hope to see new civilizations, cards, or approaches for civs that will allow them to deliver consistently good mercenary builds and strategies. Get ready for the mercenaries to come back!

For my next entry, I’ll talk about one of my favorite reworks, the Anglophone culture rework! So stay tuned, it will come pretty soon.

## Part 9: Anglo Rework

2019/11/04

    The Anglophone culture represents all the countries that have been shaped by their relationship with the British Empire, modernity, etc. Historically speaking, no process has ever been simple nor too fast, and in this case, it shows. The anglophone civilizations are supposed to show the dichotomy between two ways of living, between two ideologies and how that conflict shapes nations and peoples.

The Anglo culture we all know had a problem, though, it was extremely USA-centric. To be honest, it was just a frame for a USA civ, and both Canada and Australia felt kind of out of place within that system. Also, some of their mechanics and narratives weren’t so developed to our current standards (they had nothing ‘Anglo’ about them. They were just mechanics with no gameplay justifications), so we decided to take a look at them and see how we could make them better. The result is one of my favorites, and I’m very excited to share it with you.

First, we realized the Fur Trade was the very first thing that had to be changed: it was just too North American oriented, and if we wanted to make a true anglo culture frame for all present and future civilizations, then that had to change. The new idea is simple, every Anglo culture civilization will receive an explorer dog and a set of explorers that will excel at one resource, the Fur Trader being that option for Canada. Can you guess what will the USA and Australia get?

Another thing that will get retouched but kept will be the age-up system. The party system is a great way to tell the story of a people, or a group of peoples, fighting about different worldviews on the frame of modernity. We want, though, to further emphasize that change, making the decisions more meaningful. The party you choose will no longer give you a unit and a tech, but it will each, in a particular way, boost a playstyle within the civilization. When playing as Canada, do you want to focus on Native Posts? Or maybe you want to focus on helping your ally? Well, choose your parties wisely, because those decisions will shape the way your civilization behaves. When playing as the USA: Do you want an agrarian economy, focused on villager work? Or maybe you want to invest more but get an industrial economy?

It is not a secret that Wars of Liberty will keep growing, and you can expect to see quite a bunch of new Anglophone culture civilizations. With that in mind, it became clear to us that their roster was just not good enough, so while we are keeping many of those units, we are going to add many more units to make this roster so rich no civilization will feel alien to it. The anglosphere reached every corner of the world, and their units will show that.

And while we’re talking about how far the anglosphere can reach, we ask ourselves: What unique features will this culture get that will make justice to all the diversity we’re trying to portray? This was the Anglo culture’s biggest issue: The congress wasn’t very fun mechanically, and narratively, it was too narrow, working mostly just for the USA and barely for the other civilizations. Besides that, the Anglophone culture had no other feature worth noting. We finally found the answer to our issue: If we wanted a feature that could portray all the corners of the world, why not base it on our own mod’s diversity? That’s how we ended up designing the Anglophone culture’s key feature: Each anglophone civilization will borrow different aspects from its ‘host’ culture. To take Canada as an example: Their ‘host’ culture is Europe, and therefore, they have access to the Mill, the Plantation, and Factories. Two late-game resources and a particular European factory. In this case, the Factory. And thus Canada will be, in that way, very European. But that’s not all. Anglophone civilizations get a brand new Unique Building, the University! The University is a building that will host each politician’s unique technology, upgrades for the borrowed systems, and more! Now, a little puzzle for you. Since Canada borrows from Europe, the USA can’t do that so, what culture do you think the USA borrows its features from? Happy guessing!

If you’ve been reading carefully, you have probably realized there has been quite a spoiler already revealed for the future of this culture, but I won’t talk about it yet.

I think that basically covers it all. I hope you are as excited as I am for this culture rework! For my next article, I will talk about the future of the Wars of Liberty maps. How many will there be? What can you expect of them, what playstyles will we favor, and how. At the end of the day, my next article will talk about how you all will experience the game, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself, so I’ll finish here.