Age of Empires III: The people of the sand

Hello everyone! I´ve been thinking on this for months. I have been planing a mod about the middle east, I´m still in conceptual stage. I would like to show it to you and see your opinions or suggestions. So here it is...

Age of Empires III: The people of the sand

Basically a new culture is added: The middle easterns. They are really linked to religion. That is made obvious by their age-up system. The advancement itself is free, but thy need to research some religious techs to unlock it first. Those techs variate a lot depending in the religion the civ has. The cost of all teachs aviable at that age together is the same as the advancement cost for the other civs. Apart from that, they choose religious characters as politicans.

New civs

I must tell you that I am still developing ideas. This mod would add four or three civs (the fourth one is the persian, I just don´t get ideas) and transform the ottomans in a middle eastern civ. So here we go...

Armenians (in the mod, the guerrilla civ)

Bonuses: When villigers die, a fedayeen appears in his place (after reaching age 2). Can create infantry from farms. Infantry moves a bit faster. They can call militia from houses too.
UUs: Fedayeen (I need to research more on armenian UUs)

Hebrews (the civ more linked to religion):

Bonuses: They can´t hunt or grather from berries, because of their kosher diet. Anyways they start with a kibutz
a special farm limited to 15 gratherers and can recive HC shipments. Fishing boats are spawned free (but slowlier) from docks. They can call their people to "aliyahs" special tech which bring some military units to ther town centre an kibutz.
UUs: Yhishuv, Kiryot, Kfir (the two last names were chosen randomly, but they do represent some units)

Arabians:

Bonuses: not idea yet
UUs: Ikwan, Bedouin, Ruwallah.

Ottomans: Their bonuses will stay the same, with necessary modifications to convert them into a middle eastern civ.

Thanks for reading and please give me your opinions.
That´s all folks!

I was thinking about those 8 civs:

The Byzantine Empire
Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm
Ayyubid Sultanate
Crusader States
Abbasid Caliphate
The Kingdom of Cilicia (New Armenia)
The Kingdom of Georgia
Khwarezm Empire

I choosed those civs because they were very important at this region and I am trying to make them historicaly accurate as arabs, hebrews and persians were not very historical accurate.

Here we go to natives:
Omam
Makuria
Hashashin
Solanki
Danishmends
Hebrews

The game must be between 1100-1300 and I think the Armenian bonus about suicide don't fits well, as they were christians, if you are trying to make something in a later age, please, recreate the civs, they doesn't fit well with later stages of the world.
I will try to come with more information after.

The Byzantine Empire
Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm
Ayyubid Sultanate
Crusader States
Abbasid Caliphate

I smell Age of Crusader there.

Beside, it will be an anachronistic thing to include both Hebrew and Ottoman, they ain't exist at the same time.

Well, not quite. There may not have been a Hebrew nation at the time, but there most definitely were organised groups of Jews living in the Holy Land...


peugeot407

so very cool ideas maestrosanti,butt as the armenians exploding themselves not is historicaly acurate i sugest that their infantry units  could plant bomb barrels instead, the bomb barrel could be a petard like unit butt is imobille and sthealth and will detonate when you want,  and the cost will be high for balance reasons

So, no suiciding infantry. What about the other ideas?
@Vvv: the timeline is 1500-1900 aprox
@leon: now i think it‘s better to remove all kind of explodin bonus to armenians

Well at this time most arabian nations were under ottoman control, so I sugest that Arabia turn into Mamluk Sultanate (Egypt), and Armenia was not a major civ at this timeline, they were under control of other nations

Well, the armenians would be the gerrilla civ exactly for that reason.
@everybody: I would like to read your opinions about the other armenian bonuses, the idea of transforming ottomans into middle easterns, the hebrews and the age-up system, please.

Any other opinions?

Given the timeframe you've given and the civilizations you've chosen, this mod is basically unworkable...

The timeline is "exactly" WoL's... The culture is not really unique too.

Haha, I've made my minutemen commit suicide everytime they run out of hp and this is with baptist church selected. 

but then I stopped doing that because that wouldn't be historically accurate and I just let them take up pop spaces.
[sarcasm] 

So... a new timeline (1300-1600 maybe ) and new age-up system.

I have decided it. The new timeline is 1400-1800. Regarding to the civs:
Hebrews
Afghans
Persians
Mamluks
Ottomans
Morocco
What do you think?

If you would choose those civs, the Ottomans and Persians are really the only ones that still make any sense in the last two centuries of your timeline...


peugeot407

So which civs would fit that timeline?

Best civs:

1. Ottoman Empire
2. Mughal Empire
3. Safavid Empire
4. Maratha Confederacy

Other civs who haven't a good timeline position:

1. Mameluke Sultanate
2. Kingdom of Georgia
3. Durrani Empire

The Maratha Confederacy, the Mughal Empire and the Durrani Empire are a bit far from the Middle East, I think.

Well, the Maratha Confederacy is a bit far, but the Durrani Empire represent the Afghans and the Mughal Empire had many possessions around Afghanistan and Pakistan (they are also muslims). The number of civs could be too small if you don't use nations around Central Asia.

So I could go for:
Oman
Persia
Afghans (Maybe)
Georgia (Maybe)
Hebrews
Mamelukes
What do you think?

If you look at the civs that will be in WotTA Delta, plus the ones Golden Dragon, Christos and myself are trying to push through, there's the Indians (for the Mughal Empire), Afghans, Persians, Uzbeks, Ottomans, Arabians and Egyptians. To me, that seems like the most complete list of civs anybody could ever make of the region without falling to repetitive dullness.


peugeot407