Friday Updates

Do Persians give Hashashins unit?

And are Mongols the only Far Eastern nation?

No and no. The Hashashins come from the Nizari, so they are effectively their own subciv, and the Mongols are no longer the only civ to have the Far Eastern buildingset since huanglukuzhu's Age of Steppes mod merged into K&B, although we're still working on integrating that.


peugeot407

Nice work you guys have done! I loved the textures!

Keep up the great work!

I promised we'd talk about the French some more this week, so of course that's what we'll be doing. Since the last of the French UUs got out of the texturing stage this week, I thought it might be a good idea to talk about them.


First up, the Voulgier. Available from the Barracks in Age II, it replaces the Spearman for the French, and it does so in undeniable style. It's normally hard to get excited about a unit like this, but the Voulgier isn't just any Spearman replacement. Being armed with the multi-purpose voulge, effectively just a broad blade stuck to a pole, it can take down enemy infantry and cavalry alike. It's not as effective against cavalry as a Spearman is, but in return it gets a healthy dose of ranged resistance thanks to its extensive armour, and much higher base damage, meaning it can reliably defend itself against enemy Men-at-Arms and Halberdiers. It is somewhat slower than the Spearman however, and quite a bit more expensive as well.


The Chevalier is the French replacement for the Knight. "Chevalier" is of course just the French word for "knight", but that is not without reason; these human battering rams are knights, but better. French knights were famed throughout the Middle Ages for their destructive charges and ferocity in melee, and the Chevalier is tribute to that. It is difficult to fault the Chevalier anywhere, because its increased armour and base damage over the already impressive stats of the Knight make this one of the most destructive units in the game. If you encounter an army of Chevaliers coming for you, your best chance may be to simply run for your life. Much like the Voulgier being more expensive and slow-moving than the Spearman however, the Chevalier is also slower and more costly than the Knight. The kind of power these units wield on the battlefield doesn't come cheap...


The Voulgier's mediocre bonus against cavalry might seem like something of an Achilles' heel for the French, but they have another unit that more than makes up for it: The Cranequinier. This mounted crossbowman replaces the Cavalry Archer for the French, and is not unlike the Voulgier and Chevalier in that it is more expensive but also considerably more powerful than the unit it replaces. The Cranequinier has a lower rate-of-fire than the Cavalry Archer, because it uses a slow-to-load crossbow instead of a regular bow, but the damage it deals is extensive, especially against other cavalry. The weight of its arms and armour make it slower than the regular Cavalry Archer, but to compensate, it is much more capable in melee.


The Bombard that most civs get access to upon researching Black Powder is a very powerful unit, but the French would argue that there is something better still, in the form of the Ribauldequin. The Ribauldequin is not primarily a siege unit like the Bombard is, so the French rely on non-gunpowder siege units to take down enemy walls. Instead, the Ribauldequin focuses on killing enemy units. It is moderately effective against enemy artillery and siege units, although more than the Bombard it replaces, but it really shines when targeting infantry, which it can mow down with almost unparalleled efficiency.

You may have noticed that a consistent theme across French UUs is their high cost and rather excessive stats; we'll go into more detail about that next week when we talk about the French bonuses, and the way the French ought to be played to unleash their full potential, which you'll agree is not insignificant...


Some things just deserve to be Quotes of the Week regardless of their actual relevance, so here is this week's entry in the increasingly peculiar world of K&B quotes, coming from AOE_Fan...

AOE_Fan wrote:Such texture, much pretty, very Friday Update.

K&B salutes... the ability to make new models for AoE3. Yes, I know we saluted this before, but we would have been nowhere without it when it comes to the French. Just in the units shown above, there are seven (!) new models...
K&B refutes... capturable Gates. The strawpoll's results are in, and they are quite clear. Don't worry though, if you like to be able to capture Gates, we'll have an easy way for you to re-enable the feature.

Hon hon hon
~ Pepp

Those new textures made me surrender!

Great work you guys have done once again! ^^

Thanks very much, Daniel!


peugeot407

This week, we're going to talk about the French bonuses, and how they affect their gameplay. However, if I would go into a lot of detail about that, I feel I would start repeating myself at a later point, so instead of that, you can read it all here, in the latest entry among the User Friendly Civilisation Outlines:

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Of course we do have more to show you than just that, so here are two units for the Mongols:


Yes, you've seen a texture of the Yuan Bin before, I know. This, however, is a texture made by Pepp, and Pepp has a bit of a habit of redoing textures when he feels they're no longer up to his standards. This is actually the second time the Yuan Bin has been completely redone, but I think we can all agree that it's only become prettier...


This, however, is a new unit. The Boyar Vassal is an aristrocrat from one of the Russian principalities that was subjected by the Golden Horde, and as might be expected in such a situation, they fight in a manner akin to European knights. With it, the Mongols are pretty much all done in terms of texturing, barring a few small things here and there...


I know architects, and supposedly also architects-to-be, aren't really meant to blacktalk certain styles, but I cannot help but agree with AOE_Fan on this matter, Rococo is an affront to all things beautiful. Consider this a good old "quoted for truth":

AOE_Fan wrote:Just a random question because I'm curious: have you ever heard about the Cosmatesque decoration style used in medieval times? I was completely unaware of such thing before I visited Rome in spring but it's really beautiful, in my opinion. Definitely much so than ugly rococo styled churches...

K&B salutes... Hoop Thrower, for consistently posting replies that are even more insightful and interesting than our own history posts on Facebook...
K&B refutes... Rococo, obviously. After the Quote of the Week, did you expect anything else?

I loved those textures! And the French bonuses are nice!

You guys have done a good work once again ^^

Such nice you're back! It feels really good to hear you still progressing and WOW! Great textures! Really liked the French and Far East Bldset, and i'm Pretty excited to hear about the Mongol civ in General

Wait....if Age of Steppes merged into K&B, how many civs will Quintessence have?

ACN45trooper wrote:Such nice you're back! It feels really good to hear you still progressing and WOW! Great textures! Really liked the French and Far East Bldset, and i'm Pretty excited to hear about the Mongol civ in General

Wait....if Age of Steppes merged into K&B, how many civs will Quintessence have?

Thanks! Also, I think it's quite funny you should ask that question, I'm just writing up the Friday Update where I answer it...


peugeot407

In the Friday Update this week, bits and pieces of art we haven't shown before. There's no real overarching theme, but rest easy that will return next week.

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And now for something of an announcement: When K&B merged with Huanglukuzhu's Age of Steppes mod slightly more than a year ago, we agreed to add the Chinese, and another civ that we're not going to reveal yet, but we hadn't really got around to actually planning how we would get about this yet. Recently however, we have, and we now have a working outline for the Chinese, as well as an idea about how we will release these civs. First we'll finish the Quintessence, bringing the mod up to fourteen civs, and then we'll add the AoS-derived civs in the next version titled the Reprise, in keeping with the alphabetic naming pattern. Since the Reprise isn't going to add a vast number of new civs over what will already be present in the Quintessence, we'll be able to release it quite shortly after the Quintessence gets released. So, when will the Quintessence be released? Don't ask...


This week's quote comes, again, from AOE_Fan, who inadvertedly ended a post like this, thus making it quite obvious how quickly things have been moving along recently:

AOE_Fan wrote:I shall do this.

Edit: The changes are now coded.

K&B salutes... Circles. If you don't get this one, I'd say it would be an idea to follow more AoE3 mods on Facebook.
K&B refutes... Donald Trump. Not for any particular reason, but I don't think we ever refuted him before, and being a qualified member of the world's most stupid people, I think he deserves it...

Nice, get It, so 2 new civ to be realeased after Q, and Asían civs!

Circles are fine, they roll easely, but trying to roll an irregular concave heptagone gives more fun to me.

I personally thank you, as a Latino, for refuting Donald Trump.

So will the Chinese be the Ming or the Sourthern Song ?
What is the second asian civ ?

@Andres: Thanks!

@Sunreaver: All shall be revealed in due time. The nature of the second civ certainly isn't going to be revealed for a while yet, but I will say that it might be unwise to attribute the word "Asian" to it quite so easily.


peugeot407

Here's hoping for a Malian civ.

Hmmm....I don't think so, since the mod that is been merged is "Age of Steppes" that according to it's name is focused in the steppes of Central Asia and the rise of Mongol Empire, I doubt Mali would fit here

Nice textures you guys have made once again!
And those news are great! ^^

So Mongols will be the Mongolian Empire instead of the Golden Horde right ? or they remain the Golden Horde ?
Is the second asian Yuan Dynasty

Sunreaver, you can keep asking questions, but as I said, we'll reveal it in due time...

@Daniel: Thanks!


peugeot407

Actually is there a current version of Age of Steppes for people to try.

Do you remember that Friday Update, a long time ago, where we announced we managed to make the Castle of the Southern European buildingset cannon-less? If not, click here for a reminder. Well, it's been a while, but we've now finally done the same thing to the Castle of the Middle Eastern buildingset:


Of course, all of the civs in the Muslim civset, which are the Turks and Saracens in the Prologue and also the Quintessence's Moors, have the Qalaat instead of the Castle, so the Crusaders are the only civ with the Middle Eastern buildingset who actually use this building. Looks alright though, doesn't it?

In other news: We spent the last weeks primarily talking about the French civ in K&B, starting off with their history and moving on to their unit roster and bonuses. In the coming weeks, we're looking to do the same thing for the Slavs, so here's a small introduction to them:


The Slavs in K&B are what we call "The Duality Civ", as they represent both the separate countries of Poland and Lithuania and the later union of these two countries into Poland-Lithuania. The duality between Poland and Lithuania is a theme that echoes throughout the entire civ, and deeply affects gameplay. Among all the civs of the European civset, the Slavs are without a doubt the most special, having bonuses that are on the very edge of what could be expected in a single civ, and almost differing so much from the other European civs that the Slavs would become a civset in their own right. Militarily, the Slavs are utterly versatile and unpredictable, which makes them very interesting to play as, and potentially very frustrating to play against.


Here's a quick quote from AOE_Fan, just to make it clear that while we're very much focused on pumping out new content for the Quintessence, bugfixing also remains a priority:

AOE_Fan wrote:Fixed: Lords and War Dogs now get increased HP and damage on every age-up like they did in original Aoe3. War Dog stats were also fixed as there were some errors.

K&B salutes... Knightly attire. As you made very clear in a recent Facebook post, you prefer it to modern fashion.
K&B refutes... YouTube, now that a lot of browsers are switching to HTML5 by default. Choosing between the HTML5 player and the Flash player was always a bit like choosing between having your leg amputated and having your head kicked in anyway, but somehow it now feels even worse...

Honestly, I think the MIddle Eastern building set needs to be redone. It doesnt look Arab or Persian.

And on we go, with our second Friday Update dedicated to the Slavs. As mentioned in the last Friday Update, the Slavs are quite a special civ, and do most things ever so slightly differently to other European civs. A key difference that becomes apparent straight at the start of the game is that the Slavs are the exception to the rule that hunting is always a faster way of gathering food than farming is. The Slavs have a quite significant increase in their gather rates from agriculture, but also do worse than other civs on natural resources. This makes the agriculture system, centred around the Manor, an absolutely crucial part of Slavic gameplay, where for other civs it is a powerful but nonetheless decidedly undecisive part of their strategy. The focus on agriculture that the Slavs have is very much a two-sided affair: On the one hand it benefits them greatly in situations where they don't have map control, and allows them to execute very effective turtles, staying behind their defences and just gathering from Farms instead of having to venture out in the world in search of huntables and mines. On the other hand however, it also makes the Slavs very vulnerable to raids, as they have to expend significant time and investment into not just retraining lost Peasants, but also lost Farmers and destroyed Farms. This also counts against the Slavs in Age I, as it will take them a while to set up their economy.

Paradoxically, the stubbornness of the Slavic economy is coupled with a very agile and versatile military. All Slavic military units, base units and unique units alike, do more attack damage than those of other civs, and while unit upgrades for all other civs benefit attack and hitpoints, for the Slavs they benefit attack, hitpoints (less so than for regular civs) and speed. The Slavic military, then, is not one to be held back for drawn-out pitched battles, but instead one that comes to its utmost fruition in lightning-fast raids and tactical attacks at strategic targets. All this is before we even get to the Duality feature, but we'll be talking about that next time...

Just to make sure that this Friday Update doesn't consist fully of text, here's an image of something we've been working on this week, an attachment for the Observatory.


When taking questions for the Q&A video we received something of a complaint about the Observatory, and how it still looks decidedly Aztec instead of Middle Eastern. To be honest, it's difficult to disagree with that sentiment. To alleviate that, and also to make it look more like an actual observatory, and not just some building with a high sloping roof, it will be getting an attachment, much as we've been doing to Castles. The render shown here is from a very much work-in-progress stage of the attachment model, with more things still to be added to it, as well as a wholly different attachment for the Age IV Observatory.


The main thing we've been doing this week is to take another look at balancing and unit stats, as evidenced in this collection of short sentences, somewhat like those uttered by a nuclear missile controller in a Cold War action film:

AOE_Fan wrote:The current version of Barbarian stats are now in main post. Also the Outlaw stats have been added. The livestock values have been recalculated.

K&B salutes... the forests around Arnhem. They were clearly crucial in the making of our Q&A video...
K&B refutes... Autumn. The summer weather is dying down, and now we can look forward to months upon months of rainy days...

"Life is an exercise in duality", the great Ben Croshaw once said. Replace "Life" with "The Slavs" and capitalise the D in "duality" and this also applies to K&B. In our last Friday Update we talked about the economy and basic military bonuses of the Slavs, but this week we'll delve into what makes the Slavs truly unique; the Duality feature.

Duality is a way for the Slavs to change their entire military strategy. It can make them a storming cavalry-focused civ, but equally it can benefit their infantry to a great extent. What all European civilisations have, among other things, are a set of two units for which they have unique Royal Guard upgrades that offer more of a benefit than regular unit upgrade techs. The Slavs do not have this. Another thing that all other civs (not just Europeans) share is a set of Blacksmith techs that benefit the cost, movement speed, line-of-sight and a variety of other parameters of their units. The Slavs do no thave this either. What the Slavs have instead is a choice between Poland and Lithuania, with each side offering a different set of Royal Guard upgrades and Blacksmith techs. As such, when we say the Slavs don't have Royal Guard and Blacksmith techs like other civs, what we're actually saying is that they have twice as many, but they have to choose. Choose, that is, between Poland and Lithuania.

Choosing a side is done upon building a military building, with all the units and techs blanked out until a choice is made in the Duality. Choosing a side is free and is done instantaneously so as not to obstruct quick unit training. Choosing Poland will give Royal Guard upgrades for cavalry units and give Blacksmith techs that benefit cavalry, while choosing Lithuania does the same for infantry.

Planning the Slavs was completed quite a long time ago, so here's something that was done a bit more recently, the redone Observatory:



This week we don't have a quote from the team forum, but instead we've got something else that's been "leaked" from the team forum:



K&B salutes... Wars of Liberty. It's not every day that we can congratulate a fellow modding team on releasing a new version of their mod, after all.
K&B refutes... right-wing politicians in Europe, who like to pretend that our own petty first-world problems are so big that we couldn't possibly take up Syrian refugees who have actual problems...