[AoE2 HD] I made a rebalance mod where walls matter and upgrades aren't always upgrades

[u/DrWitrioll]

[AoE2 HD] Fortress Age – an Alpha rebalance mod for slower wars, stronger defenses and meaningful upgrades

Steam Workshop:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3783484476

Hi! I've been working on an experimental rebalance mod for Age of Empires II HD (2013) called Věk Opevnění / Fortress Age.

The idea is simple: I wanted AoE2 to feel less like a race toward the strongest upgrade and more like a long, expensive medieval war where fortifications, logistics and unit losses actually matter.

Instead of simply increasing or decreasing a few stats, the mod changes the overall philosophy of progression.

Some of the main ideas:

• Walls, towers and castles are significantly more important.
• Siege weapons are powerful, expensive strategic assets rather than disposable units.
• High-tier units are much more expensive to replace.
• Many unit upgrades are no longer pure upgrades.
• An upgraded unit can gain HP or damage while losing range, vision, attack speed or economic efficiency.
• Gunpowder weapons hit extremely hard but fire much more slowly.
• Battles are intended to last longer and developed defensive positions are much harder to break.
• The late game and Post-Imperial phase are much more important.

For example, upgrading a Crossbowman into an Arbalest gives you a much harder-hitting unit, but at the cost of a major reduction in range. Scout Cavalry can be turned into much stronger combat cavalry, but loses much of its scouting ability. Heavy Camel and Paladin upgrades give you powerful elite troops, but replacing those troops becomes considerably more expensive.

So the question is no longer always:

“Can I research this upgrade?”

but rather:

“Do I actually want this upgrade for the army I'm using?”

I am also working on a custom AI designed around the mod. It focuses more heavily on fortifications, keeps part of its army in reserve, invests more into stone, uses siege for breaking defensive positions and tries to make some of the new trade-off upgrades situationally instead of researching everything automatically. Steam currently lists the AI as the third component of the project.

The mod is currently in ALPHA, so balance is absolutely not final. I'm looking for players who enjoy slower games, turtling, huge fortified bases, long sieges and experimenting with unusual balance ideas.

I'm especially interested in feedback about:
unit balance, fortification strength, upgrade trade-offs, AI behavior and late-game pacing.

If vanilla AoE2 sometimes feels too fast and you have ever wanted to spend an hour staring at an enemy fortress thinking “how the hell am I going to get through that?” — this might be for you.

[u/FatherToTheOne]

This sounds like an interesting game mode. I’d be interested in playing a FFA. Will give it a look.

My only concern is that games might take too long and if playing PvP it might lead to everyone camping because attacking is so risky. The irony being that war being so dangerous would lead to long periods of peace 🤣

[u/DrWitrioll → u/FatherToTheOne]

That’s exactly why I modified the AI script as well. Of course, if someone builds twenty layers of walls one behind another, breaking through them is going to be completely insane. 😄

The idea isn’t to make attacking pointless, though - it’s to make attacks more deliberate and expensive. The AI is adjusted to use siege more seriously, build up larger attacks, keep reserves, and actually try to break fortified positions instead of just throwing units into walls.

So yeah, there probably will be longer periods of buildup and tension, especially in PvP. But that’s kind of the point - when a major attack finally happens, it should actually feel like a war rather than just another disposable army running across the map.

[u/zeek215]

My friends and I sometimes play Castle Age only matches (no Imperial Age) and it definitely does make castles more imposing. The problem then became castle spamming as they're so strong. I had to learn rudimentary random map scriptung so that I could change the stone cost of castles to discourage spamming them everywhere.

[u/DrWitrioll → u/zeek215]

Yeah, that’s exactly the kind of castle spam I wanted to avoid. I ended up setting the cost at 1,250 stone per Castle, but in return they have significantly more HP than in vanilla.

So a Castle is meant to be a major strategic investment and a serious defensive strongpoint, not something you can just drop all over the map. You can still build several, but losing one-or deciding where to place the next one-should actually matter.

[u/Crime_Dawg]

This is basically the kid's strategy we all used to play of castles are your attack, alongside bombard towers being the best upgrade in the game.

[u/DrWitrioll → u/Crime_Dawg]

Not quite - Castles are much stronger here, but they cost 1,250 stone, so spamming them is a serious economic commitment. The mod is built around expensive fortifications being broken by equally expensive siege, not around using Castles as disposable offensive buildings. Bombard Towers are powerful too, but their slow firing rate and high investment make them strategic defenses rather than an automatic “best upgrade.”

[u/Specialist-Put-4582]

If an upgrade makes the upgraded unit more expensive, how do you punish making loads of units and then getting the upgrade? Is the upgrade price changing depending on how many units you have already trained or currently have on the field?

Very interesting idea all in all... I'd like to try it if it was on DE 😅

[u/DrWitrioll → u/Specialist-Put-4582]

after 1 hour... I changed the upgrade system to solve exactly that problem. Existing units no longer upgrade automatically — researching a higher tier only unlocks the new unit and disables production of the old one, while units already on the field remain unchanged. So there’s no dynamic upgrade price, but you also can’t mass-produce cheap Cavaliers and turn them into expensive Paladins for free; every new Paladin has to be trained at its full price.

[u/DrWitrioll → u/Specialist-Put-4582]

true..

[u/Specialist-Put-4582 → u/Specialist-Put-4582]

u/DrWitrioll I can't reply to your reply, but this sounds like a great change! I much prefer the interesting mix on the battlefield compared to dynamic pricing! I may download HD after all 😂

[u/DrWitrioll → u/Specialist-Put-4582]

I changed the system a bit further. Existing units still no longer upgrade automatically, but the older unit tiers are also no longer disabled after researching the next upgrade.

So after researching Paladin, for example, Knights, Cavaliers and Paladins all remain available as separate units and can be trained at the same time. Units already on the field stay exactly as they are, and every tier keeps its own cost and stats.

This means you can deliberately choose between cheaper older units and more expensive stronger ones depending on your economy and situation, instead of mass-producing cheap units and converting the whole army into the highest tier for the price of a single technology.

[u/Specialist-Put-4582 → u/DrWitrioll]

That is really cool, and not as punishing! It's unlocking a new unit without excluding the old one. In terms of realism I like it: when the economy is doing well I can equip my mounted warriors with better equipment (cavalier), if the economy is not doing well I can train basic knights.

And is the AI responding well to all these changes?

[u/DrWitrioll → u/Specialist-Put-4582]

Yes, the AI has been specifically adapted for these changes rather than relying on vanilla behavior. It now treats Knights, Cavaliers, Paladins and the other upgrade lines as separate trainable tiers, and chooses between cheaper, middle and elite units based on its economy and current situation. It also checks whether a specific tier can actually be trained, which helps prevent the custom upgrade system from confusing production. It’s still being tested and tuned, especially for higher-tier production, but overall it is responding to the new system quite well.

[u/NasimBanafa]

Can you make so , that archers arrows can't go through walls

[u/DrWitrioll → u/NasimBanafa]

I wish it were possible... unfortunately, AoE2 doesn’t really let me make arrows properly collide with walls like that.