v2.2-2.3 Formables Update! Age of History 2: The Enhanced Sandbox Spectator Modification

[Pumped 43]

UPDATE: This forums post and download link are now deprecated, please refer to my new plugin AoH2.5, which has an updated version of this integrated (bugfixes, unionize option, etc), among other things.

 

 

Hey everyone. It has been about a year or so since I last posted, but seeing AoC3 got me back here, and I decided to create a modification that could keep us occupied while we wait for it.

 

What is it?

Essentially, the mod is a programmed extension of the game's default "Spectator Mod", which gives the spectating player control over any civilization they select. You can simply click on any civilization and edit its strategic decisions (war, peace), diplomacy (allies, pacts, guarantees), territory (annexation, occupation, state transfer tool), along with many more great features as if you were playing as the country in realtime! This also means that you can install it as an extension to other full-transfer mods like TNO, Addon Redux, etc.

It's a simple modification very similar to geopolitical sandbox games like "Age of Conflict" that are popular nowadays, where you have complete control over the globe and watch countries fight for hegemony, or just shape your own fictional scenarios to watch how they play out in the future.

Below is a YouTube video of its functionality (Note: many more features have since been added! See the changelog below).

So how do I install it?

Very simply, it is the .class script files that make up the game's .jar executable, so you just have to extract the addon game components into your game's (or mod's) .jar file and replace them. While previously you had to install through replacing the .class files in your original game with the plugin's files, I now have made it much easier through a drag and drop installation. For computer, all you have to do is download the .zip at the below link and extract either the UWUT-Engine based .jar launcher (for mods using UWUT) or the normal game .jar launcher (for mods without UWUT features) into your game/mod's directory. From there just double click the file and your game will now run with the spectator plugin installed!

To both run a .jar file and also to install the mod you need Java's JRE. The majority of you will have this, but if not, you can download it here:

Java | Oracle

As for android, it gets a little more complex: you must import the mod's .dex file into your game's .dex installation. I have found that this is easiest with the MTmanager program, and since made a guide on mobile installation located below:

MT Manager | Softonic

I've tried to make the installation as simple as possible, but message me if you have issues - I'll try to get back to you as soon as possible!

PC Download: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Nvug0oPAzQCOTHCGNKUxM9TgN6d6FL8-/view?usp=sharing

Android Download: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LIDgEn5P_YJM7b3tfBl-twv0Oyf5K1jE/view?usp=sharing

Note: Mobile install is currently incompatible with BE2 codes!! I will try and fix this as soon as possible, though it will take time.

How can I also make these kinds of base game modifications?

If you are proficient with Java's programming language, you can find some good resources to mod the game code below. The first link is an amazing guide to de/recompiling the game and setting it up in an IDE by the developers from the Bloody Europe mod (though you may need to translate the website). The other link is to my own guide, which is arguable more confusing/unintelligible (sorry lol). Hopefully this helps.
ГпК-1. Запуск исходного кода. | VK
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eI23RKEo6jWwcAI4V6LiXc8XPcFafj1cE6tEWPbx7z4/edit?usp=sharing

Thank you all for being part of this project - hope you enjoy! And please keep in mind that this is all mainly Lukasz's code, I just rewrote/reordered some parts of it, so thank him before you thank me

-Pumped

 

Changelog

What's new in Version 1.1?

• Large bug fixes for menu glitches
• New "core" and "stabilization" commands in menu, you can now freely assimilate and core all provinces of a civilization with the click of a button!
• Monetary values for altering a civ's economy and rebellion movements have been changed, now capped at 10,000,000 to send or deduct max (likely will be changed later)
• Polish/Russian installation files displaying characters wrong in console is fixed

What's new in Version 1.2?

• Fixed visual error that would happen in 'timelapse' video after ending game
• Fixed random crash at start of game
• Annexing a nation now automatically removes its vassals

What's new in Version 1.3?

• Move Capital option now added!
• Fixed civilization names being glitched after transferring territory
• Fixed another crash at start of game with older versions

What's new in Version 2.0?

• Improve and decrease relationships with civilizations now added! This uses the game's integrated UI for ease of access.
• Installation significantly improved, now instead of .class replacement there are two prebuilt launchers, one with UWUT and one without, that you simply drop into your game's directory to play!
• New 'Create a State' feature, similar to 'Release a Vassal' but the state is completely independent and has no relations to its parent country
• All annexation and transfer territory features now compacted into one UI menu with many more options! This includes: 'Annex Cores', 'Annex Vassals', 'Annex Inner Borders' (annex the official territory of state, basically returns control of land in case another country has occupied some land'), and 'Annex Occupied Territory'!
• 'Stabilization' feature improved, now establishes cores on territory and reduces nation's war weariness/rebellion factors
• 'Liberate Self' command showing up on menu of any puppeted state now replaces 'Liberate a Vassal' which only showed up on menus of lords (states with puppets), hopefully this makes it way easier to release a vassal.
• Releasing a vassal or forcing a puppet now changes the puppet's color to its parent/lord state, and liberating the vassal returns the nation to its default color!
• State Transfer Tool now lets you give a state the power to annex territory that it has occupied.
• Gift money now capped at an increased 100 million, though scaled based on country's treasury to ensure no integer overflow errors
• 'Support Rebellion' feature now has corrected donations, you can give or take a 100 million to either cause a rebellion immediately or completely squash it (by giving negative money).
• The cosmetic civilization nametag in the bottom corners showing up when transferring territory now correctly refer to the civilization you are selecting.
• Nations that are annexed completely will now white peace out of all wars and leave alliances, so that they are gone from the scenario.
• Fixed crashes on UWUT and BE2 installations, they are now compatible.

What's new in Version 2.1?

• New "Add Army" option! Select an amount of troops to add on a slider (capped at the nation's total troops x2 to prevent integer overflow and insane disbanding/upkeep cost to the country) and select the provinces to summon that amount of troops in. Troops summoned in enemy territory will automatically occupy the territory - This is very useful for altering the course of wars!
• Fixed civilization capital icon still being shown after another civilization annexes their capital province

What's new in Version 2.2?

• New "Formables" feature! Select any civilization during the course of a spectating game and dynamically form it into a selection of any another civilization. Also, form any of its potential formables without any of the requirements in money, diplomacy points, or territory in the civilization info menu.
• "Inner Borders" renamed to "Pre-war Provinces" to clear up confusion in transferring territory menu.
• Fixed bug where AI aggressiveness was reset to default values of 50 - 400 percent instead of 0 - 400 percent after installing the mod.

What's new in Version 2.3?

• FINALLY FIXED AOH2 BUG WITH LOADING SAVES REVERTING TO MAIN MENU
• Fixed bug with releasing states and vassals that sent you to the formables menu

Edited August 5, 2024 by Pumped
Update

[Comrade_Parrot 265]

nice work

[Guest]

Good to have you back, Pumped 

[flafmg 18]

cool 😄

[polymagnitude 2]

weird bug: 

 

everything else is fine and it "downloads normally" yet nothing happens

• aoc2 executable is AoC2.jar
• java is downloaded and updated
• happens on 2 separate mods
• bat and sandboxmod in same file as exe
• tried other languages
• manually moving the class files into the aoc2 jar didn't work

is my pc just wonky or smth lol

[Guest]

alright, that's so fuckin' cool.

[Pumped 43]

8 hours ago, polymagnitude said:

weird bug: 

 

everything else is fine and it "downloads normally" yet nothing happens

• aoc2 executable is AoC2.jar
• java is downloaded and updated
• happens on 2 separate mods
• bat and sandboxmod in same file as exe
• tried other languages
• manually moving the class files into the aoc2 jar didn't work

is my pc just wonky or smth lol

Thanks for posting a screenshot of the console! I think it is something technical related to Java's jar command (which basically handles extracting the jar); manually moving the .jars would usually work but it doesn't when archives are corrupted.

I have good and bad news; The good news, I think this solution would work - try getting the JDK (Java Downloads | Oracle; choose the setting "x64 Installer") alongside Java (the one linked in my install video, though I assume you already have it). The bad news - I just tried and found out the mod doesn't work on BE2 because they complexified the code I am replacing, and so the game is dysfunctional (crashes) without their custom copy of the .class/.java files.

I will probably try to contact them soon and see if they are interested in implementing the methods I added into their code, though right now I apologize for that.

Edited June 19, 2024 by Pumped

[LulaVoter2026 0]

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Greek Defeat We as a nation have been defeated by the Ottomans and have become a vassal of them and are under their iron fist once more the Greek people are no longer free and our nation and army is a joke an embarrisment to the legacy of Alexander and Justinian they as of right now are rolling in their graves we should be a ashamed of ourselves we dont deserve to lead the Greek people

[polymagnitude 2]

43 minutes ago, Pumped said:

Thanks for posting a screenshot of the console! I think it is something technical related to Java's jar command (which basically handles extracting the jar); manually moving the .jars would usually work but it doesn't when archives are corrupted.

I have good and bad news; The good news, I think this solution would work - try getting the JDK (Java Downloads | Oracle; choose the setting "x64 Installer") alongside Java (the one linked in my install video, though I assume you already have it). The bad news - I just tried and found out the mod doesn't work on BE2 because they complexified the code I am replacing, and so the game is dysfunctional (crashes) without their custom copy of the .class/.java files.

I will probably try to contact them soon and see if they are interested in implementing the methods I added into their code, though right now I apologize for that.

first, thank you a lot for responding so quick lol

second, doesn't work, i'm trying it with project vita too, i downloaded the JDK and it still does that, java is 100% installed

maybe uwut engine has something to do with it? idk

(still got same error message as before)

Edited June 19, 2024 by polymagnitude

[Pumped 43]

20 minutes ago, polymagnitude said:

first, thank you a lot for responding so quick lol

second, doesn't work, i'm trying it with project vita too, i downloaded the JDK and it still does that, java is 100% installed

maybe uwut engine has something to do with it? idk

(still got same error message as before)

Perfect timing - I'm making a video for installs to UWUT right now. The reason it doesn't work is because UWUT usually compiled the files into .exe's instead of .jars, but you can bypass this by changing (via renaming) the .exe extension tag with a .jar and then using WinRAR to repair it. Just make sure you can see file extensions from the setting in windows (in the file explorer, at the top there's a column called 'View'. Click it and then enable 'File Name Extensions').

Oh and btw - make sure to create a backup of the .exe game file. From there, open this renamed game .jar with WinRAR (right click > open w WinRAR) and click Tools > Repair Archive > OK on the popup.

It'll make a new file in the game's directory called rebuilt.[file name here].jar. Now open that one with WinRAR and extract the two folders in sandboxmod.jar ('age' and 'com') into the game's rebuilt .jar (should also have the folders 'age' and 'com' in WinRAR's view. Essentially you are replacing certain .class scripts). From there you should be able to run the rebuilt .jar index and play the game normally, assuming you have java.

If this all is confusing, don't worry, I'll be releasing a video in ~an hour when I record it that walks you through the steps visually

Edited June 19, 2024 by Pumped

[polymagnitude 2]

6 minutes ago, Pumped said:

Perfect timing - I'm making a video for installs to UWUT right now. The reason it doesn't work is because UWUT usually compiled the files into .exe's instead of .jars, but you can bypass this by changing (via renaming) the .exe extension tag with a .jar and then using WinRAR to repair it. Just make sure you can see file extensions from the setting in windows (in the file explorer, at the top there's a column called 'View'. Click it and then enable 'File Name Extensions').

Oh and btw - make sure to create a backup of the .exe game file. From there, open the .jar with WinRAR (right click > open w WinRAR) and click Tools > Repair Archive > OK on the popup.

It'll make a new file in the game's directory called rebuilt.[file name here].jar. Now open that one with WinRAR and extract the two folders in sandboxmod.jar ('age' and 'com') into the game's rebuilt .jar (should also have the folders 'age' and 'com' in WinRAR's view. Essentially you are replacing certain .class scripts). From there you should be able to run the rebuilt .jar index and play the game normally, assuming you have java.

If this all is confusing, don't worry, I'll be releasing a video in ~an hour when I record it that walks you through the steps visually

okay, yeah, that worked, thanks a bunch, nice mod :)

[Jzepee 17]

amazing

[Pumped 43]

Hey everyone,

With the 2.0 update I've made the install much easier by now providing the code pre-installed within both the updated AoC2 default .jar file along with the UWUT launcher, and consequently removed the installation guide as it is useless now. All you need to do is pick a launcher (if the mod you are installing in has UWUT, use the SandboxUWUTLauncher.jar file, but if not use the default SandboxLauncher.jar) and drag and drop it into your mod's game directory. From there just double click the extracted jar and the game should run seamlessly with the plugin, assuming you have JRE aka Java (JDK is now not needed). This is way more efficient and less error-prone, though please contact me if you have issues.
 

2.0 also sees all the transfer tool features integrated in one big UI menu to reduce clutter.

Now instead of clicking "Annexation" or "Transfer Provinces" in the decisions menu you now click "Transfer Control" to get a whole list of the previous territory exchange controls alongside many more options. To annex a civilization like before just click the "Select Civilization" option > "Transfer Control" button.

The same applies to the transferring provinces tool. The other options work for annexing cores, national borders, vassals, or occupied territory if the civilization does not already have them (if they do, the option will indicate "No Data" as seen above, and nothing will happen upon annexing. You can see above that Moscow has multiple vassals that it can annex but is not occupying any foreign territory/controls all its cored territory, so "Vassals" has annexable provinces but the other options do not).

Hopefully this improves ease of access and makes the decisions menu much cleaner. I plan extend the same type of menu to the "Occupy" command to allow for many more features (occupy enemy states, occupy vassals, occupy rebels etc.) if all goes well with this release.

You can read the list of various other changes added with 2.0 in the post's changelog - enjoy!

[Mihael1 74]

@Pumped

I have this idea, you can (in AoC2) IMPROVE the Imperial elections like in Europa Universalis 4

Please🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺

[Pumped 43]

On 7/3/2024 at 11:57 AM, Mihael1 said:

I have this idea, you can (in AoC2) IMPROVE the Imperial elections like in Europa Universalis 4

Please🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺

lol I'll think about it. I am contemplating adding dynamic events and that's a good idea of an event to add - only problem, it all depends when AoH3 (which has better events, sandboxmod, etc) releases, I don't want all this work to go to garbage after I spend hours making it
Thanks for the suggestion though. 

Edited July 8, 2024 by Pumped

[Pumped 43]

Version 2.2 brings the beautiful formable feature into the mod - You can now form any civilization dynamically into any other civilization through a list selection menu in spectator mod, and each civilization's default formables have respective buttons, so that you can easily form them in just one click! (See pictures for details)

Edited July 10, 2024 by Pumped

[Apple 171]

This looks fantastic.

[Apple 171]

This is fantastic.

[ExistenceDaVitaReduxDev 19]

Can i use this modification for an upcoming mod?

i will credit you for it.

[Pumped 43]

On 7/11/2024 at 3:26 PM, ExistenceDaVitaReduxDev said:

Can i use this modification for an upcoming mod?

i will credit you for it.

No problem, just put the forum link to this mod wherever you post it if you can

On 7/11/2024 at 1:35 PM, Apple said:

This is fantastic.

Good to hear! Feel free to let me know if you got any problems or issues with the gameplay

[ExistenceDaVitaReduxDev 19]

2 questions

is the mobile download compatible with uwut engine already

and

does this plugin works on all uwut engine versions because i am currently using an old version of uwut engine

versions 1.2.1(?)

if no then i couldn't use the plugin anymore

i will use it on another mod tho

Edited July 18, 2024 by ExistenceDaVitaReduxDev

[Pumped 43]

12 hours ago, ExistenceDaVitaReduxDev said:

2 questions

is the mobile download compatible with uwut engine already

and

does this plugin works on all uwut engine versions because i am currently using an old version of uwut engine

versions 1.2.1(?)

if no then i couldn't use the plugin anymore

i will use it on another mod tho

The codes I have put in the game should make it fully compatible with UWUT on mobile, as I recall also using the mod on QBAM to test for compatibility. I haven't checked with the specific older versions, but the way I coded it should make it work safely without crash - as always, though, make a backup of your game's Android file (A.PK) just in case something does go wrong and it does crash.

Edited July 19, 2024 by Pumped

[Pumped 43]

On 7/3/2024 at 11:57 AM, Mihael1 said:

@Pumped

I have this idea, you can (in AoC2) IMPROVE the Imperial elections like in Europa Universalis 4

Please🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺

On 7/8/2024 at 5:58 PM, Pumped said:

lol I'll think about it. I am contemplating adding dynamic events and that's a good idea of an event to add - only problem, it all depends when AoH3 (which has better events, sandboxmod, etc) releases, I don't want all this work to go to garbage after I spend hours making it
Thanks for the suggestion though. 

😉 foreshadowing... Here's my new AoC2.5 Portable Plugin in Beta, which includes this mod as well. Check it out

 

Edited July 19, 2024 by Pumped

[Mihael1 74]

1 hour ago, Pumped said:

😉 foreshadowing... Here's my new AoC2.5 Portable Plugin in Beta, which includes this mod as well. Check it out

 

[ExistenceDaVitaReduxDev 19]

4 hours ago, Pumped said:

The codes I have put in the game should make it fully compatible with UWUT on mobile, as I recall also using the mod on QBAM to test for compatibility. I haven't checked with the specific older versions, but the way I coded it should make it work safely without crash - as always, though, make a backup of your game's Android file (A.PK) just in case something does go wrong and it does crash.

because when i click audio in the game (with your plugin) it would crash and kick me out

while clicking audio while playing the game works, it crashes when you click music list