Anno 1800: Combat Overhaul

Anno 1800 mod created by Ac3s.

For feedback, questions, issues you can add "Ac3s" as friend on Discord, or send me a personal message on mod.io.

Some mod features are only included in the latest mod version, these will be shown in light red text on this description.

To access the latest mod version and support the mod author, consider leaving a donation: | 6 Euro | 12 Euro | 20 Euro |
After the donation is successful you will be given access to a google drive which will open in a new tab automatically, so make sure your ad-blocker isn't stopping it from opening.

You can also press on "cancel and return to" at the very bottom, this will manually bring you to google drive as well, just in case the tab fails to open automatically.
If the above method does not work then use this link instead and contact me so I can give the mod to you.

If you donated before and wish to download the mod again, contact me and give me your email or name which you donated with on paypal to confirm, I keep a record of all donations.

Make sure you unsubscribe Combat Overhaul from the ingame mod browser and manually install the mod instead.
The reason this monetization came about is due to mod theft and plagiarism of my mod. I'm sorry but I too have limits.

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Please read the entire description as it explains the mod and things you need to look out for.

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Welcome to Combat Overhaul, a mod that changes combat, AI behavior and also adds new ships.
I highly suggest you use parts 01/02/03 of the mod together and DO NOT rename the folders.
Be aware that if your computer is low-end you might have issues with parts 02/03/05 of this mod, I suggest a minimal of 32GB of RAM and a decent processor.

On a New Game:
-Do NOT disable vendors because you will need them to buy items, you will not be able to win battles unless you equip good items on your ships. Items are the key, figure out what combinations are good on specific ships, some could be tanks, others pure damage, or perhaps even some as pure artillery (mortar/howitzer), come up with your own favorite setups by using items.
-It is best to put Fertility to "Plenty" because even though you can use items to get more/other fertilities, the AI can not, so the AI can easily get blocked from developing simply because he can't get enough islands with specific fertilities, this is especially true for players who decide to play without Cape Trelawney, those players should choose biggest "starting world size" since they only play on Old World.


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---------- Technical Details ----------
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-PART 01 changes combat, adds new ships to the game for the player/AIs and fixes vanilla ships and skins, nothing else on the AIs is changed.
At the bottom of the description there is a "ship unlock list" detailing when exactly all ships unlock.

-PART 02 changes the AIs, they build faster, more ships, more defenses and no longer will any AI be handicapped.
in order for PART 02 to function you need to either [Start a new game] OR [Destroy AIs and respawn them with AI Shipyard*]

-PART 03 changes the pirates. Recommended setting for pirates is "Normal" difficulty. If you put them on "Hard" your just making it borderline impossible as they will build ships insanely fast.
in order for PART 03 to function on a current savegame you need to make sure both pirate bases are alive, do not install this part when a pirate base is destroyed.

-PART 04 is for AI teams, it makes AIs be at 100 reputation and alliance with each other and will remain so as long as Part 04 is enabled.
you can enable or disable this whenever you like, however, if you had this enabled and then disable it the AIs will still be at 100 reputation and depending on their personalities (they naturally love or hate other AIs) they will either stay at high reputation and at peace/alliance, or eventually lower their reputation and go to war.

-PART 05 changes how the AIs build their cities, they will use more building styles, use more parks and natural trees will even grow around their houses to make empty spots look like parks.
in order for PART 05 to function you need to either [Start a new game] OR [Destroy AIs and respawn them with AI Shipyard*]

*AI Shipyard is a mod from the "Spice It Up" mod collection, after you spawn a new AI you need to look at the map where the AI is going to settle, so make sure you constantly look at either the Old World or Cape Trelawney maps the entire time from the moment the AI flagship is build until the AI has settled their first island, if you are looking at other maps like New World, Enbesa or Arctic then you might cause the AI to make their first settlement there, which will bug out the AI as they can never develop there.


I will explain each part in more detail:

PART 01:
- Vanilla Skins - Various issues on vanilla ship skins have been fixed, if you already had these skins they will get replaced.
  -> these skins are sometimes used on "improved" ships that the AI can also build.
- Royal Galleon - Tradeship with some cannons. Carries 100 cargo per slot. (trade routes capacity has also been increased to max 100/slot)
- Royal Warship - Stronger and slower than the Ship-of-the-line.
- Cargo Boat - Steam tradeship equivalent to the Schooner, but better.
- Monitor - This ship can be used as a warship or as a tradeship (4 slots now). Slows enemy fire rate by 30%.
- Ironclad - A fast new steambased warship, good for hunting down solo enemy ships. Slows enemy fire rate by 30%.
- Petrolier - Oil Tanker that comes with pre-build Peace Mode and transports 600 oil (do not unequip the item).
- Reefer Ship - Almost identical to the "World-Class Reefer", except this one can be build without the Docklands DLC active.
- Huge Collier - Expensive and very big cargo ship with huge capacities. Carries 100 cargo per slot.

  -> sinking animation (view).
- Battleship - Heavy armored and well armed.
- Dreadnought - Massive battleship, heavily armored and armed to the teeth.
  -> gets severe debuffs when under attack from harbor defenses due to its massive size.
  -> require permits through the Research Institute, so you need the Land of Lions DLC.
- AIs and Traders will build new ships too, but these vanilla AIs are still as dumb as a rock with handicaps.
- Visuals - Many ships have been visually altered, like changed turrets, textures, models, etc.
- Airships - Nerfed all airship speeds by almost half, also put back original Airship names such as "Hermes" instead of the unreadable Aztec names.
- Flotsam - Yellow flotsam arrow icon has been made smaller, useless flotsam from destroyed ships (such as Bente's journal, empty chest, nailclipper) have been removed.
- Defense Cannons - Flame, Anti-Armor, Flak cannons have been reworked.
- Combat Items - Mortars, Howitzers, Rocket Barrage, Hull items, Flamethrowers, Sea Mines, Airship Bombs have been reworked.
- Debuffs - Flame, Anti-Armor, Mine, Torpedo Debuffs have been reworked.
- Global Trade Buff - Has been lowered from +25% speed to +15% speed.
- Red Attack Decal - Made much smaller and almost identical to before Anno v.15 (this is when Ubisoft made them huge).
- Bugfix - Wrong "DamageType" was set on several ship projectiles, items that said "-% damage taken from ships" do not function properly on some ships, now they work correctly.

PART 02:
- Build - AIs build faster, build more ships, make bigger fleets, attack you way harder (if they are not at war with another AI), build more defenses, and so much more...
  -> easy AI is removed, you now only choose between medium or hard AI.
  -> personalities have not changed, so Bente, Willie and Qing will be the most peaceful ones just like before, but once war happens they will be just as hard as other AIs.
- Health - Harbors HP has been increased, no longer will 1 or 2 ships take it down in 10 seconds.
- Mines - All AIs will now have sea mines around their shores, just like Mercier always has.
- Advanced Shipyard - Only for the AI, allows them to build Advanced Battleship and Advanced Battle Cruiser, slightly better than the normal versions. Normal steam shipyard now also doubles production with electricity, just like the sailing shipyard always did.
- Cape Region - AI will even build a steam shipyard and an advanced shipyard in Cape Trelawney as well now.
- Harbor Artillery - Only for the AI, a new long-range harbor cannon.
- Defenses - The AI will gradually fill their entire shores with cannons.
- Bribe - More shore cannons means more military power, which made it practically impossible to get peace with the AIs in the endgame due to how diplomacy works with military power, so now you can more easily bribe the AIs with money to get back in their good graces.
- Diplomacy Prices - Money costs for AI diplomacy gifts, cease-fire, peace, trade, threats, all these costs have been significantly increased.
- No Mercy - AI will never take the shares of your island if they just conquered your island, instead they will always take the island for themselves.
- Land Bombing - Is allowed now, bombs can damage specific buildings on land, such as the Sky Trading Port on the Arctic plateau's so player can conquer those plateau's.
- AI Share Buying - They will never buy shares anymore, unless its to buy shares back on their own islands.
- Island Share Takeover - Cost to take over an enemy island through shares is borderline impossible now, you can still buy shares at normal prices to get extra money from the enemy island, but you can't just take over the island like before.
- Research Institute Cap - Item creation through the institute now has a cap, meaning the cost will not increase forever like in vanilla, cap is 25k for Common items, 50k Uncommon, 75k Rare, 125k Epic and 250k Legendary.

- Harbor Office - Range increased from 20 to 60, to use combat items for harbors more effectively. Town Hall and Trade Union increased from 20 to 30.
(If you do not like this change, use this mod to reset ranges back to vanilla: Vanilla Ranges TownHall-TradeUnion-HarbourOffice)  
- AI Ships Buff - The player can use very good items to make ships stronger but the AI never uses items, so instead now the AIs have a powerful buff that applies on all their ships that act like a full set of items, this means that in order for the player to compete with enemy ships the player NEEDS to use items, hence you should not disable vendors as you will need to buy items from them.

PART 03:
- Build - Pirates build faster, build more ships, use more variety of ships, make bigger fleets, attack you way harder.
- Defenses - Pirate cannons health and damage is increased, the harbor has a flak cannon and is indestructible (to stop bug abuse, but island can still be destroyed).
- The Red Pearl - Once pirates build enough ships in the endgame they will build a massive battleship, it is very powerful and recommended to shoot mortars and howitzers at it.
- Capt'n Jack Arrow - Very good item for your ships, only obtainable by destroying "Red Pearls" or doing Legendary Pirate expeditions.
- Durations - Cease-fire lowered from 120 min to 50 min, non-aggression pact lowered from 300 min to 120 min.
- Diplomacy Prices - Money costs for pirate diplomacy gifts, cease-fire, peace, trade, threats, all these costs have been significantly increased.
- Base Destruction - If you manage to destroy the pirate island they come back with a huge fleet to rebuild, duration has been lowered from 2.5h to 1.5h.

PART 04:
- AI Team - AIs will be at 100 reputation and alliance with each other and will remain so for the entire game.
  -> without Part 04 the AIs would fight a lot with each other, causing them to lose ships all the time and not be a threat to the player, the hardest "vanilla" game possible would be with Hunt, Bente and Qing as they like each other and almost always go into this "Girl Alliance" on their own, however if you use Part 04 all AIs will be forced into an alliance making sure none of them would fight each other and lose ships, this ensures they all get big fleets and are a threat to the player.

PART 05:
- City Layout - AIs will build their houses with more variations and different styles, so AIs like Gasparov that before only build in one style and all houses facing the same direction will never happen again.
- Park Layout - AIs will use way more trees and other "green" props to be placed around their city so that the overall city looks more natural. Before I found their cities to look like depressing concrete blocks.
- Natural trees - Will grow around AI houses, the AI builds in such a way that sometimes gaps can appear which the AI will never fill up with other buildings or props, to avoid those empty spots natural trees will now make them look like parks.
- Stone Roads - AIs will now instantly build stone roads on Old World, Cape Trelawney, New World and Africa.
- No Wooden Bridges - AIs and Player can now only build stone bridges, previously the AI only build wooden bridges but they never upgraded those to stone bridges, which looked awful as their cities develop but they kept wooden bridges. Bridges require 0 stone.


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---------- Manual Installation ----------
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Make sure you unsubscribe Combat Overhaul from the ingame mod browser so the mod is no longer automatically installed.

Now on to manually installing the mod: download the "[Ac3s] Combat Overhaul.7z" file.

Extract the .7z file (with WinRAR or 7-zip) and place the following folders into your "Anno 1800\mods" directory.

-[Gameplay] 01 Combat Overhaul Ships

-[Gameplay] 02 Combat Overhaul AI

-[Gameplay] 03 Combat Overhaul Pirates

-[Gameplay] 04 Combat Overhaul 3vs1

-[Gameplay] 05 Combat Overhaul City

 
If the mod is installed correctly, once you open the game you will see "mods detected" on the left bottom of the game main menu, and to see if the mod is working as well you can start a new game and in its creation menu you see if Bente, Willie and Qing are 2-star AIs now.

Part 1 has to be active, in order to use either part 2 or part 3.
Part 4 and Part 5 are standalone, you can enable or disable them regardless of the other parts, consider them mods of their own.

I will repeat:
Part 01 is standalone.
Part 02 needs Part 01.
Part 03 needs Part 01.
Part 04 is standalone.
Part 05 is standalone.


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---------- Change between EASY-NORMAL-HARD difficulties of the mod ----------
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Automatic installation through the ingame mod browser:
Part 2 will be uploaded three times on mod.io, do not install all three of them, only install part 2 ONCE and choose between easy/normal/hard.

Manual installation:

Go to the folder [Gameplay] 02 Combat Overhaul AI\data\config\export\main\asset, there you see 4 different assets.xml files:

-assets.xml   (used by the game)

-EASY assets.xml   (not used by the game)

-NORMAL assets.xml (not used by the game)

-HARD assets.xml   (not used by the game)

When you first manually install the mod you play on normal difficulty.

Always keep those EASY/NORMAL/HARD files as a backup, DO NOT rename them, instead you copy them and then you rename the copy.

So for example, the game is too hard for me and I want to switch to easy, I delete the original assets.xml, I make a copy of EASY assets.xml, and now I rename THAT COPY to assets.xml.

You can change mod difficulty on an ongoing savegame, it will not cause issues.

Video tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7X4QBIxZ3Y

-Differences in EASY/NORMAL/HARD difficulties of the mod:
      EASY mod difficulty:        AIs build less ships,       less defenses,      AIs have no sea mines,  AI ships are slightly weaker. (this is a bit harder than vanilla game difficulty)
      NORMAL mod difficulty:  AIs build normal ships,  normal defenses,  AIs have sea mines.
      HARD mod difficulty:       AIs build more ships,     normal defenses,  AIs have sea mines,       AIs build only steel ships at Endgame.

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---------- Recommended mod ----------
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1805 - Ships of the Line - Combat Overhaul Edition

If you want sailing ships to look different, more alive, have more variety in them, then you should really check out this mod as it has been made explicitly with Combat Overhaul in mind in cooperation between me and AJ.

Everything from that mod will of course also apply to AIs and AIs will build these ships too. 

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---------- Compatibility ----------
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If you use other mods that add ships, change combat mechanics/items, or change the AIs/Pirates, you can expect the mods to no longer fully function as intended as it all affects balance.

Even if those other mods claim they are compatible, which in a sense they are, but its all a matter of "what degree" and how each mod changes specific things. Even adding new ships can shift this balance dramatically and make other ships pointless. If a mod would change the exact same combat items or vanilla ships you can expect unbalanced outcomes.

My aim has always been to bring balance, to make the vanilla game as it was supposed to be regarding combat, and to not add new things for the sake of adding new things, which in my opinion only brings more imbalance, as we all witnessed ourselves with dozens of DLCs that always made previous DLCs pointless.

Sometimes less is more, everything needs to have a purpose and be in equilibrium with each other, balance is key. But in the end it is your game and your choice.


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---------- Credits to ----------
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-Ghostbuster for the Battleship mod, the Ironclad mod and the Pyrphorian textures.
-shane868 for the Battleship textures, Ironclad textures, Huge Collier textures, Cargo Boat textures, World-Class Reefer textures and new ship icons.
-EadweardMylae for the Fishing Boat textures.
-Serp for the AI reputation/alliance triggers to make AI-teams possible and for the Dreadnought/Great Eastern costs fix in their tooltips.


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---------- Permissions ----------
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This mod is not to be uploaded or used anywhere else. No patches/replacers of/requiring the mod are allowed unless you contact me first to get permission.

Do not alter the mod in any way, shape or form, nor include it in any mod-lists or any other form of external reference that installs or uses the mod files.


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---------- Ship unlock list ----------
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Schooner                             @ 150 workers
Gunboat                               @ 150 workers
Improved Gunboat               @ harbor-office item for player, @ 150 workers for AIs
Frigate                                  @ 1 artisan
Improved Frigate                  @ harbor-office item for player, @ 1 artisan for AIs
Clipper                                  @ 750 artisans
Ship-of-the-line                     @ 750 artisans
Royal Galleon                       @ 1500 artisans
Royal Warship                      @ 2000 artisans
Improved Royal Galleon       @ harbor-office item for player, @ 2000 artisans for AIs
Improved Royal Warship      @ harbor-office item for player, @ 2000 artisans for AIs
Oil Tanker                             @ building a power plant
Flak Monitor                          @ 1 engineer
Cargo Boat                           @ 250 engineers
Monitor                                 @ 400 engineers
Improved Monitor                 @ harbor-office item for player, @ 400 engineers for AIs
Flamethrower Monitor          @ 400 engineers
Cargo Ship                           @ 500 engineers
Ironclad                                @ 500 engineers
Battle Cruiser                       @ 500 engineers
Reefer Ship                          @ 2000 engineers
Huge Collier                         @ 4000 engineers
Battleship                             @ 5000 engineers for player, @ 3000 engineers for AIs
Advanced Battle Cruiser      @ Archibald or Isabel as sold ship for player, @ 5000 engineers for AIs
Advanced Battleship            @ Archibald or Isabel as sold ship for player, @ 5000 engineers for AIs
Blue Flamethrower Monitor  @ 1 investor + 750 arctic population (player only)
Dreadnought*                       @ 5000 investors for player, @ 6000 engineers for AIs
Petrolier                                @ 7000 investors (player only)

*Note that for the Dreadnought to become visible in the shipyard, just like the Great Eastern, you need to have build the World Fair, completed the "The Floating City" quest for Archibald and must have build the Research Institute which requires the Land of Lions DLC to be enabled.
If you do not see the Great Eastern in the shipyard, you have not done these things, and thus the Dreadnought will also not be visible since both ships rely on permits.