Friday Updates

Nice lolzy update :lol:
Nice textures too!

I think the best thing in this update is the information about possibility to add new Cheats. Again, thanks to Misterscp.

That's brilliant. :lol:

Thanks to AOE_Fan's lightning-like progress on scripting, we finished most of the Prologue maps a long time ago, but a lot of them weren't quite done yet, as the appropriate Barbarians hadn't been textured and coded yet. We're currently busy trying to get those done, so that the maps really are fully done. These are the latest two Barbarian units to be finished:


The Sudanese Warrior is the unit that belongs to the Sudanese subciv (who'd have guessed?), and it's crap. Well, perhaps not really crap, but it's not a particularly good fighter either. This is offset by the highest buildlimit of all Barbarian units though, so an group of these Sudanese chaps is not necessarily useless in battle. The Sudanese will appear mostly in African maps, such as Sahara and Savannah. The Steppe Pony is the unit that belongs to the Alans, a subciv that will appear mostly in maps of the Caucasus and the more southern part of the Eastern European steppes. The Alans were famous for their excellent light cavalry, and the Steppe Pony is exactly that.

Now, as a little extra, here's the concept art spangopola made for the Sudanese Warrior, on which the unit texture is based.


I'm not going to say much about this, but I can tell that we've got something special in the pipeline for a future Friday Update...

The Dude wrote:Ohh perfecto. Just need to find a way to upload this damn video...

K&B salutes... Mario Monti. No slow introductions to austerity, 6 years added to the Italian pension age in a single day. If only all European leaders could be this convincing...
K&B refutes... Middle Eastern buildings. It's almost impossible to texture them without making it look like copying WotTA's Lebanese immigrant buildings.


peugeot407

Nice textures!

Thank you very much, Daniel!


peugeot407

Very nice, especially the Sudanese warriors. And the concept art is brilliant as well. Just one thing though, the alan horseman's hat looks a bit strange, it doesn't resemble any steppe headgear I have seen.

The textures are very beautiful..congrats

So, a K&B gameplay video coming soon...? Great, beyond awesome.
Oh, and I like the look of those Sudanese men, I can't imagine how you managed to do that, but the leopard loincloth really makes them feel african.

Thanks a lot!


peugeot407

If you think that Nuns by Pepp is his first and last -- bad English -- Random Update, then you're wrong. You may count yourself lucky, or unlucky, because Pepp proudly present, his second Friday Random Updates!


In this Friday Update, I will present you three mercenary units that you'll find in the game. They are the Corsair Ship and the two Russian Auxiliaries.

The corsair ship is a mercenary unit who will replace the role of Privateer in Knights and Barbarians. This unit will work just like other K&B's ships, attack with ballista. These pirates accepted the Letter of Marque from certain nobles, paid to fight another nobles. They came from Turkey, Barbary Coast, or at the early medieval age, Scandinavia.



Now you're going to go to Russia. Just like Serbia or Hungary, Russia don't get a place in K&B as a full flagged civilization. So, following the main rules, we make it a mercenary. However, due to the fact that in the middle age Russia was divided into several countries, we decide to choose two, the so called Kiev and Novgorod. So then we present you, Kievan Druzhina.



After seeing a quite bad textured Druzhina (Pepp/I will retexture it again), now I'll present you the a bit better textured Novgorod Dvor! Dvor will replace the function of Manchu Horsemen in Knights and Barbarian. Here you go:




This is what Matti said, yes, I did no edit to what he said:

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck, my computer had crashed during the night and there was only 50 Mb left!!!!!

K&B salutes... Now K&B has a new leadership structure and new "political" structure. Everybody has their deadline, so nobody will be lazy, *cough*.
K&B refutes... SkyDrive. It let us to upload just 100 MB, while we need more than two GB. Matti suggest google thingy and a li'l fight happened.



You Know Who

Those are some great looking units!

But firstly I couldn't help but notice what appear to be blood stains on the corsair ship. A nice, realistic touch I guess, though I'm not sure how some splatters ended up near the top of the sails (see the picture in the inset). The Druzhina and Dvor also look really good, I like the Dvor's lamellar and mail armour combination especially. Well done.

Let's remind ourselves that all of these textures were made by Pepp...


peugeot407

It all makes perfect sense now... :lol:

Very good textures Pepp!

Thank you guys

So, if the ship attacks with ballista, why does it have cannons?
The textures are amazingly good btw...

...because the cannons are in the model and cannot be removed...?

Have you got fifty spare minutes in your life? Have you got absolutely nothing to do, yet don't want to get bored? Watch our premiere commented gameplay video! It pits The Dude, playing as the Italians, against AOE_Fan, playing as the Byzantines. The video isn't perfect, but as this is our first time, we hope you'll forgive us that. I personally think The Dude did a cracking job at commenting here, even if he goes offtopic on occasions, and mispronounced both my real name and my forum name.


As The Dude pointed out multiple times during the video, the Team Alpha version that was used for this video still had lots and lots of bugs in it, but we prefered to get a video out as soon as possible, so we hope you'll forgive us. The wrong sounds, unupdated unit stats and missing icons will of course be fixed, in those cases where they haven't already been...

Any guesses as to what you think this Feudalism feature The Dude mentioned will be?


As was clearly visible in the video, some stats aren't quite right yet, and improving them is a regular theme in our team forums:

AOE_Fan wrote:Sounds good for me. I honestly see no reason to train siege units, as halberdiers do the same thing. Sappers should be much better against buildings and siege tower shouldn't be so unnecessary.

K&B salutes... History of Disease and Medicine class. Apparently it bores spangopola to death, and there are even rumours that it affects the quality of his concept art.
K&B refutes... The fact it takes several hours to up- or download something that is 2 GB.


peugeot407

I'll try to watch it in 1080p. Let us see if it works.

Loged in!

Ok, so, the video...
Dude's voice sounded annoying at first, but further thinking about it, it really was a good choice; his accent is clear and it really shows he knows how to make a gameplay video.
I'm actually surprised at how american his voice sounded, I was expecting something more exotic, actually, don't do that russian impression again, please.
Oh, and of course the video had the obligatory "big red polish bull" comment.

On the gameplay stuff:
Textures are gorgeous as expected, but the age4 italian church was particualrly impressive, I must remark that.
Also, the horse archers with different horse textures were cute, good idea on that.
Also, yeah, those free trees/groves looked OP, they built in almost no time and they provided lots of resources for a free cost. It also shows you've toyed with resource gather rate upgrade costs, I believe they were all different from AoE:3.
Fishing boats have always gathered that fast? It seemed as if Dude's economy boomed during the short while he was fishing, also, he had an annoyingly low ammount of settlers peasants.
It really shows you got creative with politicians, you reused lots of the aoe3 ones, but they do somehow fit, some of the new ones didn't seem quite to mesh up well with the others, the age 5 ones particularly.
The brief moment I could see your religions it seemed odd, they look like some sort of middle point between WotTA's immigrants and religions, though these ones had malus as well as bonuses.
Speaking of WotTA, thanks for mentioning it, it shows you have great appreciation for the mod where I'm part of. Sure your plague isn't like our plague?
That Carrack looked very powerful, it smashed towers and ships like nobody's bussines, you sure that's balanced? Also, that wall thingy is... odd, but I believe I know how you coded that...

It also seems you had some aztec remains in your Venice HC, want some help with that? I've toyed with Tenochtitlan as much as possible, so I'm pretty sure I'd be able to make those things (like the statue) disappear.

Oh, and the italian storm was by far the best thing in the video. :lol:

Finally, I love the video! Good job that you could commentate it just in few days...

Yeah, it was a bit unclear at start, but got better after 10 minutes or so. There were many bugs, but I think all of them are fixed already so no need to worry about them too much. The orchards and tree batches were OP in the video, but they are okay now with small buildlimit and a medium cost. As for balance, there are lots of things to do and iliander is actually making new stats for all units (including ships!).

The plague thing is kind of unimportant (for me) and I guess it hasn't even been coded. The HCs aren't yet fully done as in visual things, but the cards are pretty much done (many have been added after the game was played) and the storm is really awesome when it is working properly, and I don't suggest transporting troops in Dalmatia during the storm...

Textures are gorgeous as expected, but the age4 italian church was particualrly impressive, I must remark that.
Also, the horse archers with different horse textures were cute, good idea on that.

Thank you very much! The Age 4 church doesn't really fit perfectly with the rest of the buildings in the buildingset, but I felt I couldn't do an Italian church without giving it a Renaissance Florentine facade... As for the horse variations, that is actually something that all three generic cavalry units (Light Cavalry, Knight and Cavalry Archer) will have.

Also, yeah, those free trees/groves looked OP, they built in almost no time and they provided lots of resources for a free cost. It also shows you've toyed with resource gather rate upgrade costs, I believe they were all different from AoE:3.

Neither the Orchard nor the Tree Patch is supposed to be free, but at the moment they're just cardboard copies of the Cherry Orchard and Mango Grove, without any changes other than its name. They're both supposed to have a cost, obviously, and they're going to get a retexture too.

Fishing boats have always gathered that fast? It seemed as if Dude's economy boomed during the short while he was fishing, also, he had an annoyingly low ammount of settlers peasants.

Yeah, I think so... We've never changed anything about it anyway, and I always get the impression they gather very quickly in unmodded AoE3 as well...

It really shows you got creative with politicians, you reused lots of the aoe3 ones, but they do somehow fit, some of the new ones didn't seem quite to mesh up well with the others, the age 5 ones particularly.
The brief moment I could see your religions it seemed odd, they look like some sort of middle point between WotTA's immigrants and religions, though these ones had malus as well as bonuses.

The politicians are far from perfect, I know, but it's not always easy to find pictures of medieval people in the style of AoE3 politicians. As a result, most of them are clearly Renaissance, but even then they're not easy to find...

As for Religion, the main difference is of course that our Religion system does not enable any new units or techs, which WotTA's Religion and Immigrants do...

It also seems you had some aztec remains in your Venice HC, want some help with that? I've toyed with Tenochtitlan as much as possible, so I'm pretty sure I'd be able to make those things (like the statue) disappear.

If you could help us with that, that would be fantastic...


peugeot407

Hoop Thrower wrote:Dude's voice sounded annoying at first, but further thinking about it, it really was a good choice; his accent is clear and it really shows he knows how to make a gameplay video.

Thanks, I guess. :lol:

Fishing boats have always gathered that fast? It seemed as if Dude's economy boomed during the short while he was fishing, also, he had an annoyingly low ammount of settlers peasants.

I'm very good at Age of Empire, should work on it more...

The brief moment I could see your religions it seemed odd, they look like some sort of middle point between WotTA's immigrants and religions, though these ones had malus as well as bonuses.
Speaking of WotTA, thanks for mentioning it, it shows you have great appreciation for the mod where I'm part of. Sure your plague isn't like our plague?

The Plague feature is quite interesting, really, I don't think it will smiler to WotTA's...

Thanks everyone for the comments, much appreciated!

Well, Robby seems busy with Euro Cup these weeks, so he has no time to update the Friday update. Matti is somewhat busy too, so he can't do this either. With these two reason, I make this [a bit Peppish] Friday update!


In this Friday Update, I will present you just one mercenary from Ireland. Here is our mercenary, the Galloglaich!



Galloglaich were soldier from Ireland, paid by outsider to fight for them. The Ireland's army were made of two kind of soldier, the Galloglaich, who act as the heavy infantry-swordsmen, and the Ceithernach, who ac as the light infantry-ranged unit. What I like from this texture is that I don't need to edit the basic texture too much, as it was looks quite medieval. Also, here are some comments from KnB guys about its texture:

Iliander wrote:About the helmet: It should be a pointy helmet (historically).

Well, Iliander said this because at first I used morion helmet, because most picture show it using morion helmet. Then, I find a pointy helmet in the game and voila!

Robbert wrote:Ooh, how I love those Celtic patterns on the sword...

Nah, that is because of the detail I added to the Galloglaich's claymore sword. This is, however, cost a big and not fully used texture who will make the mod a bit heavy.

And, if you guys want to know how Kern will looks like, wait and believe me, I will post them next friday update, or later!


Yeah, this week I feel a bit pro African, and I suggest a somewhat annoying new mercenary from Mali. However, there is some miscommunication, thanks to my bad English.

Robert wrote:Malinese as in from Mali or as in from Malines?

K&B salutes... UEFA Euro 2012, everybody watches it this week, and it stunned them. It seems that the happiest guy here is The Dude, he is .
K&B refutes... CURRENTLY, we hate nothing this week...



You Know Who