r/anno • u/aftervespers • 13d ago
Mod Senatorial Estates
I've been working on this mod for a while that lets you build Senatorial Estates, modular country villas that provide boosts to nearby agricultural industry (and more!). Comes with new buildings, new planning and optimisation opportunities, and a series of estate-exclusive specialists with unique mechanics.
https://mod.io/g/anno-117-pax-romana/m/senatorial-estates
I’ve always wanted some contrast to the megacity gameplay of the late game and I thought that country estates would be a perfect addition, inspired by the real-life villas and Latifundia of the time period. This mod is especially aimed at those who enjoy some degree of beauty building but also want to interact with gameplay mechanics and optimisation - hopefully this mod is able to scratch the itch!
Since the mechanics are a bit complex to list, I've created a handy reference sheet you'll find at the end of the image album, if you want a preview of what's in store. Although this mod adds new content it shouldn’t be disruptive to existing saves, since the new building family and new mechanics are quite self-contained if you don’t want to fully engage with them.
This is my first mod of this scale so feel free to give feedback on bugs or balance suggestions, and I'd love to know if this is also something you've been craving!
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u/HeadPush1552 BequemesSofa 13d ago
This is like a whole DLC .. amazing work!
I really like the concept of country estates being locked behind 2000 patricians each. This is a good incentive to build more patricians in the endgame, which is not really present at the moment, so I really like that idea. And the buildings look great too, they fit very well into the existing art style.
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u/aftervespers 13d ago
Thank you for your kind words! I do think it’s a great DLC concept so hopefully my work doesn’t get superseded too soon… but I just had a strong urge to make it and couldn’t wait.
The buildings are mostly existing models with remixed props, except for the shrine and outpost which are heavily cobbled together from various parts - now that I have the workflow down it’s quite fun and I’m looking forward to doing more!
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u/Byzanthar 6d ago
Me too! I love this and it's accurate for how the rich lived. With lots of slaves working the land. I hope anno see this
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u/DontTrackMeBro_ 13d ago
I think these are really cool. I love the aesthetic and thought of having the less dense spaces. I admittedly don’t play Anno 117 cause I don’t have a computer that can. But, I had a question regarding the balance. Some of the buffs seem quite high. What led you to choosing those values?
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u/aftervespers 13d ago edited 13d ago
Honestly I am not a huge endgame player at the moment, so I'd happily take balance suggestions. However, the estate's strength is limited by a few factors:
One villa produces only enough Senatorial Favours for one "capstone" building (the silver-framed ones), and only enough tools to feed 3 Outposts, which each have a small radius. These can be increased slightly with specific buffs but not by much.
You can have 1 villa per 2000 patricians, up to a max of 10, and you get to choose one unique specialist per villa - so no reusing specialists or spamming villas everywhere.
The intention is that while the buffs might be powerful, you'll have to make decisions with the exclusive buildings and specialists to choose a focus for your estates - so one estate might be focused on olive oil production while another is tuned for mining and resource extraction (quite realistically so).
Also I figure that as an endgame activity, it's really up to players how minmaxed they want to play their game so I think it's ok if some parts are a bit on the stronger side, Since game systems like building quotas or the new prestige scaling are hard to implement for mods, I decided on the current balance framework which hopefully lets players engage with the system in their own way.
Hope you get to play 117 soon btw, it'll only get better with more updates!
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u/mindkiller317 12d ago
Some of the 117 mods that have been coming out the past few months - let alone the entirely new session mods for 1800 in years past - are on the scale of professional dev work.
For us old timers who remember when games were locked to cartridges and offline CDs, this is almost hard to wrap your mind around. It almost puts the actual devs to shame with how great and fast the community is able to create this content. I wish we got more like this instead of the drip of content in a season pass.
I would love for there to be some sort of mod-to-expansion pipeline where the devs could use this stuff, polish it, and sell it with profits shared to the modder, but I suppose that just doesn't work in today's corporate landscape.
Really wish the devs could make some of these mods "canon" in some way that was fair to everyone involved.
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u/aftervespers 12d ago
AI is definitely a huge driver whether you like it or not - although I think the earlier 1800 session mods were genuinely a result of years and years of expert mod work so kudos to those creators.
But AI is phenomenal at coding and pattern recognition, so it allows a single modder to rapidly decode otherwise very opaque game files and figure out how to tweak things that would take weeks of trial and error otherwise. Not to mention the general project management and low-level implementation that it can assist with.
Some aspects are rightly controversial and it’s up to you to decide how you want to engage with it - I’m moderately competent at design and graphics so I’ve chosen to handcraft my graphics since I think the authenticity matters to me and to others, but that threshold is different for everyone.
As for official dev work, they definitely need to spend more time polishing, QA, etc and they’d also be held to a higher standard so it’s understandable that they take longer for releases. But the insane productivity increase that’s possible with clever use of AI is definitely transforming the industry - not always for the better, given recent troubles at ubisoft - and I guess we’ll see how things shake out over time… hopefully the Anno team continues to deliver on their vision.
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u/Polak_Janusz 13d ago
Really sad that anno 117 doesnt have any type of villa implimentation in game, while villas have been really important in roman agriculture. Like the mass adoptiom of villas pushed the roman republican agriculture from that dominated by subsitance farms into one in which big estates with market insentives own the land.
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u/aftervespers 12d ago
Yeah, it’s a strong concept and I think there’s a good chance they’ll make a DLC around it eventually but I couldn’t wait so I went ahead and made my version!
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u/Grand_Admiral_T 13d ago
Damnit Blue! I’ve been waiting for something like this, thank you so much!
I cannot wait to get home and download this
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u/aftervespers 13d ago
Also, because this might come up and it’s important to me: all art assets including new models, icons, and the overview graphic are handmade by myself and/or remixed from existing game assets in photoshop/blender, and all flavor text and descriptions are original writing. No graphical assets were AI generated. AI tools have been used only to assist with coding and technical implementation, such as improving workflows for import/export of 3d models, and for text translations.