Kor (id: Derfel Cadarn) |
Posted on 03/19/06 @ 09:08 AM
File Details |
Game Version: |
AoE3 |
WHAT DOES THIS MOD DO?
This mod makes minor, non-gameplay, changes to the Dutch civilisation in Age of Empires III, giving them their historical flag, a new AI avatar and a whole host of new ship and fort names, all based on historical Dutch vessels and fortresses constructed during the period.
WHY A DUTCH MOD?
I felt that there were a few errors in ES' portrayal of the Dutch, which could be fixed without changing actual balance or affecting unit stats. These included the fort and ship names, which were rather few in number and were rather archaic. I changed these to resemble historical ships and forts built by the Dutch. Many famous vessels are now included, like Michiel de Ruyter's flagship, "De Zeven Provinciën", Cornelis Tromp's flagship "De Brederode", the ships of the expedition to Bantam in 1602, which, numbering just five in total, managed to defeat a Portuguese fleet numbering over thirty, and many others.
Fortresses now include historical places, too, ranging from Fort Willemstad and Fort Batavia to Fort Nassau and Fort Sint Pieter. I have also renamed the Dutch explorer to Piet Heyn, a captain who was very active in the New World and was the only man to ever capture a Spanish treasure fleet in full.
Also, the shipment of Stadhouders made available after researching Dutch Religious Freedom has been changed: they have been renamed to Zeeland Fusiliers. Stadhouders were actually governors in the Low Countries who ruled a province. There were never thirty of them and it would be unthinkable for them to consent to being shipped to the New World armed only with a musket and a bayonet! After some historical research I discovered that the province of Zeeland was most active in sending troops to the New World, and it were fusiliers from Zeeland who captured Surinam, fought in the Indies and overran North Brazil. I thought it only fitting for their labours to give them a place in the game.
The Dutch flag was changed to the standard flag, a single Red-White-Blue horizontally striped cloth, rather than the double-patterned flag in the actual game. Although the double flag was used now and then, it was the simple Red-White-Blue that was most used by Dutch ships, armies and cities (there was also a triple-patterned flag, which was more common than the double-patterned flag, but less common that the one I imported into the game; I don't know why ES chose the double-patterned flag rather than one of these two).
HOW DO I INSTALL IT?
To install, copy the two folders ("art" and "data") into your Age of Empires III main directory (on standard installation, C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Age of Empires III\). It is advised you back up two files in your data directory in advance, to prevent them from being overwritten. These are the randomnames.xml and stringtable.xml files, found at
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Age of Empires III\data\randomnames.xml and at
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Age of Empires III\data\stringtable.xml.
The art files will overwrite nothing (unless you have another graphical mod installed).
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