hey guys Spirit of the law here I want to make an update video about what's without a doubt one of
the most incredible Community tools we've ever had in ae2 where you can design your own civilizations
this is the Kraken Meister Civ Builder which lets you play developer and make a brand new Civ
however you like choosing from existing as well as some brand new bonuses on top of a customizable
Tech Tree making cves that you can then play against the AI or your friends online now this
site went up about 3 years ago and I covered it at that time but unfortunately it was then taken down
for a while secretly I'd hope that was because it was being made into an official DLC but that
doesn't seem to be the case though at least it is now back up and running in this video we're
going to play around with some of the new features including new bonuses and unique units and we'll
then make a couple of civs with different themes plus then I'll show you how to test your custom
civs using an easier method than I showcased last time originally the only way I knew how
to play the cves once you made them was to upload two different mods onto the workshop though given
the popularity of the mod that led to a lot more Workshop activity than I anticipated just looking
over the last 2 days when I'm recording this of the 41 newest mods uploaded over those 2 days 34
of those 41 are custom saves from Kraken meister's site many of which have just one download by their
creators this is with many people not even knowing the site is back up so you can just imagine how
many personal use mods were being uploaded in the days just after the first video I made showcasing
it at the end of this video though I'll be showing you how to save your civilizations locally in your
own game files instead of the workshop which will hopefully reduce some of the spam going forward
for those people who only want to play their custom civs against the AI now to give you a
quick sense of how powerful and creative this is and why so many people are excited about it here
we have my custom step Lancer civilization I made the kazars even featuring the actual Kazar flag
and should make for a nice way to Showcase how you can mix new and existing bonuses their first
bonus is it can upgrade Elite step Lancers into a brand new unit the Royal Lancer giving them a
little more attack and HP I then have the Mongols 30% more HP bonus and the Berber stable discount
and obviously you can mix and match existing bonuses from cves in creative and stacking
ways I then added a brand new smaller Farm bonus that caught my eye changing the regular 3x3 Farms
to just 2x2 tiles making them easier to stack together and reduce some walking as their ecob
bonus rounding things out we then have step Lancers getting plus 10 bonus damage against
villagers so even a couple in your economy would get pretty nasty and it's may be Overkill in some
situations quite literally the unique tchs are then a couple of existing ones and finally plus
three line of sight on step Lancers as the team bonus the unique unit is in the kazak
which is classified as a heavier version of the Cavalry Archer having better attack and
durability but a little slower and requires a castle the whole save is probably a little too
hyperfocused on step lancers and a bit slow out of the gate admittedly but once it gets
rolling it's pretty broken and highlights the creativity of some of the sight's added bonuses
now though let's walk through the process of making a couple more cves so you can get a
sense of how that works including some of the site's brand new features let's check it out
all right so first off in order to find the site we just search for Kraken Meister Civ
Builder and any search engine and it should be the first result taking you to this page
for this first Civ I want to make I was thinking we do a crusader variant on the
French so we do kns hospitaler which I think is French so I could if I had a picture of
their flag I could actually upload that as a custom image however I think I can make
it just using the tools he's got here so just give me a sec for that [Music]
there we go so we got our Middle Eastern architecture cuz this is a crusader faction
and we're going to be speaking French and I got the exact like this is the perfect we had
the exact picture exact cross and everything so kns hospitaler perfect all right so I've gone
through the tech tree quickly and I basically gave us the Frank Tek Tre with a very small
tweak uh maybe not that small is I gave us the full Monastery the idea here is that we're going
to have this monk Rush early game and we're going to turn into more of a classic Frank's
late game is the concept behind this and notice that I've got 300 points spent that's kind of
the recommended amount and is realistic for the SES that are in the game so to explain that if
I took away Paladin I would that drops Me by nine points so the idea is that if you're playing with
somebody else you could have a limit and say okay you can only spend 300 points in your Tech
Tree or 350 points to give you a sense of it I think 440 is if you gave yourself everything
next we're going to jump into the bonuses and I'm going to have to think about this a little bit all
right here we get to pick all of our different bonuses and notice a couple of things so first
of all they all have these little pictures on them so start with one villager but minus 50
food so we have plus villager so you can kind of find things that way another little tip here
is that civilizations bonuses tend to be grouped together so here we have cheaper Town centers we
have foot archers with extra range and Shepherds working 25% faster so we have all three Britain's
bonuses together and we actually have all the Franks right beside it so we'll just grab these
so this is our cheaper castles this is our foragers and our uh cavalary having more HP
now one other thing I should point out is that you can actually filter now you know this is a
monk Civ is kind of our idea so we can jump and we can filter to just things that affect monks
by typing in monk so now anything that has monk in its description is going to show up here uh
same thing if we wanted stable bonuses we could do that if we wanted Cavalry bonuses so it makes
things a little bit easier to find I think it's a great tion this didn't used to be here so I'm
going to go through and I'm going to pick some bonuses and I'll let you know what I find I got
five bonuses picked out I could do more I could do six or seven and really get something pretty crazy
going on but I think I'm going to limit myself to five so I got to make some tough choices and to
start with I'm going to take two of the Frank's current bonuses I do want this to be very based
on the Franks so we're going to have their mounted units having like basically free blood lines from
your kns and the really strong paladins plus uh you know Crusades you build lots of fortresses so
I think we can keep the castle bonus in there and still be on theme now though I don't want to turn
them into the regular kind of scout rush siiv and you know very strong early game of the Franks
instead I want this to be a monk rushing Civ with an early Castle Ag Power Spike so the next bonus
is we're going to give them monasteries in feudal age now remember monks are still very expensive
and they also take longer to convert in feudal Ag and they can't pick up relics as just a couple of
extra things that Kraken meister's thrown in here next how about this one every Monastery Tech we
research brings a new monk to your cause meaning it creates a monk so you spend 140 gold research
a tech and you get that Tech Plus you get a free monk coming out now remember there's only so many
Monastery techs but this really helps that early rushing aspect and then just to superpower that
we're going to give Monastery techs 50% discount you're just going to steal that from the Burmese
we get this early Monastery Tech remember there's no texts you can get in feudal age so we build our
Monastery we research texts they're much cheaper and we're getting free Monks at the same time next
we have to pick a unique unit and we could just go with a regular throwing axemen actually kind
of works in the Frank's Tory pretty well but how about this we can get Crusader Knights which are
unconvertible heavy Cavalry so we get Knights that can't be converted uh not actually sure
how they stats compare but I just think that's so on brand I mean guys we're literally a crusader
Civ making Crusader Knights a no-brainer as for our unique Tech I was looking through this and
we got a couple of Monk options so we could have Orthodoxy though that doesn't really makes sense
for a crusader Civ uh Inquisition I mean maybe a little bit I think by Maran actually makes the
most sense cuz I think that literally translates to hospital and that's kind of our C's whole deal
and then we get that healing aspect in so we're going to be able to heal all of our Knights and
stuff in a big group and mons will heal each other in a big group I think this makes a lot of sense
all right next for the Imperial age one uh we do have some things that we could do to pump up our
Knights even more although I think I'm going to go with this one so villagers how does this sound
villagers Revenge dead villagers become halers so somebody's raiding your base with a bunch
of hazar and as they kill villagers hbers are just appearing in your base I think that'd be hilarious
so I'm going to take that we're like unraidable by hazar here finally for our team bonus uh there's a
few options here we got a few different monk ones or how many monk ones do we even have so we've
got monks heal monasteries work faster that'd be pretty useful for a rush monks more line of
sight nah monaster is three times HP I think we're just going to go with 20% faster working
monasteries I think that makes sense now that we' done that we just hit download and that's it so
we can actually edit that file if we want but now we're just going to go back to the home and I'm
just going to start the next civilization these are going to be the Tans which were basically
enemies of the Aztecs and I'm thinking for this one we're going to go for super heavy infantry
spam that we just throw a bunch of infantry at you in the early game and hope we win and if not
we just don't have much of a late game that's kind of the idea I want to go for here and and I'm not
sure if this is going to be an eagle Warrior rush or just a regular long sword rush I got
to see how many Eagle Warrior bonuses we have but I'll just make this up and I'll show you what I
got I don't know i' kind of like this thing they could play around with this all day but
all right we're going to go with talans we're meso American speaking Aztec got a little flaming
sun in triangles I don't know if this is T scin probably not but I think it looks kind of cool
I got the Aztec Tech Tree in here so we got no stable I wonder if I gave them Knights if
it would give them shalot Warriors probably not so I didn't want to risk it or I probably would
give me or give the Civ sh Warriors I think that could be fun I also took away a couple Monastery
tchs cuz I don't unlike Aztecs I don't want this to be a monk civilization oh that is one thing
I kind of wish you could put in you know the labeling of like Cavalry Civ infantry Civ that
sort of thing I think it just kind of does it randomly uh in my experience but anyway we want
this to be an infantry only spamming Civ this is not going to be a miv at all now I have to
see how many Eagle bonuses do we have we've got Eagle line upgrades free okay that's interesting
Eagles are faster bonus against Stone defenses and Pierce armor I don't know if there's enough
there to really have an eagle C so let's think about infantry bonuses I think you know we're
going for spamming infantry so I think the goth discount makes a lot of sense all right I got my
five bonuses here so first we're just going to to do goth bonus discount I mean it just totally
fits okay next we're going to have the Infantry armor upgrades free and we're going to add in the
Roman bonus so we get double the effect of those uh actually I'm probably going to take away the
last armor upgrade no you know what whatever we'll just let this be crazy at the end you'll get what
plus six melee armor and plus eight Pierce armor yeah that's pretty great okay so then in addition
to getting plus two plus2 armor the instant we hit feudal H I'm going to have the militia line
upgrades are going to be free so we also get instant men at Arms plus okay this is where it
gets crazy we then move the men at arms and the long sword and I think the two-handed swordsman
is how this works all up one age so what's going to happen is we're going to have our militia Rush
it's going to be discounted and as soon as we hit the next age we're going to get plus two plus two
and we're going to get instant Menat arms and then instant long swords and that's going to be our one
big Power Spike we're not going to have any other bonuses for the rest of the game other than just
having cheaper infantry that's exactly what I was picturing and unfortunately I don't think
I can make this work with eagles I guess we could take away these power Spike and we could just go
with eagles I just didn't think there was enough bonuses here although maybe the upgrades for free
I don't know let's just go with this crazy all-in long swordsman play all right now I got to come
up with some unique TXS so I got my Tex and unique unit figured out I found this one this is actually
brand new it's plus one plus1 pierce armor for infantry or plus one plus1 armor for infantry and
plus one attack for a pretty cheap price it's kind of fitting our whole infantry everything guess we
could do something like this ooh this would be pretty good for eagles and stuff too H having
discount on them N I think I'm okay with this and then Garland Wars just because like weren't
the Garland Wars actually fought between the TAA Clans and the Aztecs maybe I'm wrong about that
but a very on brand for us and oh I didn't pick a team bonus uh I like the idea of the barracks
working faster where is that one is that this one yeah Barracks working faster I mean this is
our like Allin infantry SI so I think that makes sense and for Unique unit I grabbed this guy never
heard of him the ible infantry there's another one that caught my eye so this guy is an anti- Archer
infantry I do think we've already got that in the eagal Warrior though so I don't think we need any
more there and I mean lots of really interesting things here let's see if anything else jumps out
to me wolf Warriors offensive Cavalry I wonder if that just means really low HP or something
anti villager Cavalry it's kind of what we did with the step Lancers okay I think I'm good with
this so there's our T cant so or t plance and we're going to download that now obviously the
Civ is kind of broken if we're being honest but um I do know there's tournaments every once in
a while where people will Design cves I think there's one coming up in middle of June that I
think T West is hosting and I feel like this is the kind of thing in a tournament you would get
is just something where you just steamroll your opponent 15 minutes into the game like this all
right now let's get to how you actually save and try these sies that you made if you want to play
them against the AI so the way to do that is we go back to the main page and we click on
combined civil izations which refers to combining or packaging the civilizations into a single mod
and not you know actually combining civilizations now you do have to watch out here because if you
create the mod with just your custom CS then those will become the only playable ones you can't play
the vanilla CS so if you want to have the actual vanilla cves like you know Franks and Britains
and Aztecs and all that then we're going to have to download those and we have to include those in
our mod so we just go get vanilla cves and we're just going to have to open that we're going to
have to extract that and we're going to put it all together so I'll show you what that looks
like here I've extracted them I've got all the vanilla sivs and then plus I've got my two other
sives down here now one really important thing to know is the game can only handle 45 civilizations
in total so since I'm adding two civilizations I have to take two away so we'll just take away sure
Turks and malons so just be really careful you can't take all the vanilla cves plus your new ones
if you're adding three sves you got to take away three of the others and not select them so then
you just go open and you just wait a minute it thinks about it and just be patient it it actually
take like a minute and then it'll download for you and after that it's basically just a
matter of following these instructions that I'm going to have on the screen right now these are
straight from Kraken meister and I followed these instructions it was incredibly easy and then once
you have it all extracted and everything you just put it in that one folder and start up your game
and it should be there now if you really want to play multiplayer then I'll link the older
tutorial to that it's a little more complicated but basically you just create your set of saves
the same way and then have to upload them to the AG of empires. comom Workshop where then
you and your friends would have to both download the mod after which you would just host a game
with that data mod and they could join it the original tutorial I made still works for that and
obviously many people have figured out how to get that to work also if you really like the project
consider buying Kraken Meister a coffee to show him some support as he's a one-man team making
in my opinion the coolest A2 project out there all right so last thing you need to remember is
to change the default data mod to the one that you just got there you do have to remember to do that
every single time if you go into a game and you're like hey this isn't my Civ 99% of the time it's
probably because you forgot to change this just before you started and if you did it right you
should have your Civ so I got my kns hospitaler and I've got my galance also very cool is now
the tech tree even works with it I I seem to remember that being an issue in the past but now
it does so you have it here and I can go and I can check something in the tech Tre and this will be
accurate and it'll be updated even got my Crusader Knights 90 HP 16 attack okay that's pretty good A
little expensive though a little high in the food cost okay cool and then I can go down to the TX
and wait a second this has 9 HP 99 attack and 99 armor that can't be right okay well maybe there's
there's bugs here cuz this is the craziest unit this is not a generalist infantry this is like
Furious the monkey boy okay well there you go now I want to end this by making a quick pitch
that I really think this whole site needs to be incorporated into the game first off the initial
video I made showcasing it crashed the site on day one in about 20 minutes and even once it was back
backup I honestly guys this took the mod Workshop by storm I even have the numbers of the 3,280 mods
on the de Workshop over 7,700 of them have the name Kraken Meister in their description which is
almost 25% of all mods ever uploaded and who knows how many of the others are custom C related but
just don't specifically credit Kraken Meister in the description it honestly wouldn't surprise me
if over half the mods in the workshop are custom C related mostly through this site for Microsoft
to look at that and not see a top priority DLC I can only assume they're allergic to money now if
I'm put in charge of ae2 and to be clear they're never going to do that probably the right call
but day one we're filling up a truck with cash and dumping it on Kraken meister's front lawn
to get them on board and make this an official DLC the thing is they put all this effort into
making that sad looking bar in the main menu which is two icons and we're going to extend
that with a kraken Meister Civ Builder DLC again this is if I was in charge let's also get Robbie
lava on that team as well and if you don't know his channel he designs a lot of very creative
Theory crafting custom sifts so let's get all the talent we can involved in this as thinking
of cool new bonus ideas is Paramount and we can even set the best ideas aside for future dlc's
anyway we then sell it for $3 now I know what you're thinking spirit this could sell for $5
$10 people would pay it but that's smooth brain thinking I don't know if you've noticed but I
have dozens of highly successful businesses I made on the side shout out to Squarespace and
here's a little business tip I picked up there's this thing called Goodwill and companies literally
pay each other for it when they're bought out I think A2 lost a bit of that Goodwill when
they overcharged the last DLC and that's nothing against its quality the Creator Philadelphia is
a legend in the custom scenario community and mix in the best scenarios I've ever played it
was just priced too high which is something I'm sure he didn't have any control over having a
very popular very cheap Civ Builder DLC letting players create their own custom cves would be a
great bounceback and Echo what was previously in my opinion Microsoft's best decision in the
last 20 years regarding A2 by bringing the wildly popular forgotten mod into the game as a DLC for
a very reasonable price not just by ripping them off and stealing the idea but actually getting
that Community Talent involved in implementing the idea they spearheaded ideally this would all be
incorporated into the ae2 ecosystem with special custom save games allowed in the unranked Lobby
or even its own ladder letting players test out their cves against similarly skilled opponents
with their own custom cves I feel like the ability to play a game and then afterwards make a quick
tweak to your CV's Tech Tree or swap out a Civ bonus and then jump into another game immediately
would almost bring a deck builder aspect to the whole dynamic that's hard to capture when it's
all based on an external site you're having to extract and copy files or uploading to the
workshop that's my pitch or rant anyway about the big opportunity that I see just sitting
here though again there's probably a good reason I don't get to make these decisions that's all
for this one though and you can either give it a try yourself or even download someone else's mod
off the workshop if you think one sounds cool many people have put different overpowered SES
out there so there's lots to explore even if you don't feel inclined to to make one of your
own that'll do it for this one though thanks for watching guys and I'll see you next time [Music]