Guide to Underwater Buildings, Units, and Terrains
From AgeofWiki
This is a step-by-step guide to creating handsome and functional underwater scenario elements in AOE3 and its expansions. It builds on the groundwork laid by CheezyMonkey and Kumar Shah in Water Units on Land - Land Units on Water.
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General Tips
Water in AOE3 is a 3-dimensional terrain type. One may view it like a cube or a room: it has a lid or surface, a body, and a floor or base. AOE3's Editor engine assigns special Physics to the surface, body, and floor. These physical properties somewhat limit how units and buildings interact with water, but we can use the laws of AOE3 Physics to our advantage in creating intriguing, attractive, and strategically exciting effects.
First, the Bad News
Some of the limits of water are obvious. Units can't cross water or walk underwater. Buildings can't be built underwater or on its surface (docks are a special exception by design). You can move and drag land units underwater, but they are immobilized there and can't move around. Underwater barracks and HC dropoff points don't spawn units or shipments; there's no place for them to go. Even some stationary unit animations may not work: berry picking, paddy harvesting, etc.
Now the Good News
Those limitations aside, virtually everything else you can do on land, you can also do underwater. Trade routes, factories, banks, and shrines still accumulate resources. The trade carts and carriages still make their rounds, even when under the murkiest depths. You can still research upgrades and techs at buildings located underwater. Windmills still turn, flags still flutter. Last but not least, surface units and buildings can "see" and interact with underwater units and buildings, as long as they are within range. That's 3-D LOS, mind you.
Using the special interactions between objects on, near, and in the water, these techniques open up a whole new arena of aesthetic and strategic design space.
The Basics: Town Center in a Pond
Start with a large, clear pond. Use the Water Tool to create a broad round pond of Berlin water (I use Berlin water because it is translucent, neutral color, and its smooth surface makes it easy to see what I'm doing below the surface.)
Place a Town Center nearby on the land. Position Object: Drag it into the center of your pond.
Raise/lower Terrain: Lower the lake-bed underneath the TC until the flag and most of the chimney smoke disappears under the surface of the pond.
Elevation sampler: Copy the elevation at the bottom of your pond, underneath your TC. Paint that elevation around the bottom of the pond, giving it a nice flat base of even depth.
Smooth the bottom and sides of the pond so it has a nice U-shape.
Voilà, a submerged Town Center. But wait, there's so much more we can do...
Over The River and Through The Woods
Units and buildings under water are fairly boring by themselves. One way to make an underwater scenario more attractive and exciting is to use it as a backdrop to nearby ship traffic and coastal buildings.
One physical property of water in AOE3 is that boats and ships may not pass directly over the footprints of underwater buildings. You can verify this yourself by trying to place a Caravel directly overhead our Town Center.
Placing the Caravel and tasking it to pass directly over the TC causes it to veer around the TC "footprint" and arrive at its endpoint from the side.
Just remember to leave sufficient space between buildings in your underwater town, so your navy can maneuver properly.
Fishing boats seem to be able to ignore this once they arrive at a fish or whaling spot. However, getting there may be a pathing nightmare if the fish is in the middle of a crowded "city".
Submerged buildings, forts, towers, and units can fire at and damage ships and units overhead, or nearby on shore. Ships will attack enemy buildings and units directly below them.
Did you know that you can garrison and "rescue" submerged units from the seafloor?
Terrains
You can edit, blend, and mix lake-bed terrains just like land terrains. If you use transparent water types, use terrains to highlight the underwater action going on. A dull brown or gravel terrain might make it hard to see your underwater buildings. Change it to a light sandy bottom so your buildings and units stand out in the deep water.
Use surface lake props to enhance the illusion of depth, but don't use so many they obscure the view below.
You can also fish to your heart's content right over your sunken city.
It's sometimes desirable to hide your Underwater scenario items entirely from view. You can change the water type to a more opaque type, beautify it, add or remove surface props, lower the seafloor further, and more.
Lastly, don't forget you can research Techs and Upgrades from underwater buildings.
Undersea Cliffs
Another trick to create exciting and handsome bodies of water is to use the Cliff Tool to make underwater cliffs, mesas, and trenches. Briefly, it's possible to set the Cliff height lower than sea level. For instance, a standard blank map has the "water table" arbitrarily set at 0. If you have a body of water on an otherwise flat map, its water level is 0. You can set the Cliff height a little bit under 0 (say -1.25 m) and then paint underwater cliffs, mesas, escarpments, and rocky shoals in the same way you would on land. If you use a translucent water type, you can look into the water and see these formations lurking below the surface. As long as the maximum cliff height is at least 1 m below the water table, the clffs won't "peek" above the surface or interfere with ship traffic.
As shown above, the cliffs can then be used to support additional underwater or amphibious units and buildings.
Another example showing a blend of emergent (atoll) and submerged (shoals) cliffs, from the Guns of Navarone scenario.
Further Directions
For more tips and walkthroughs on Underwater scenario building, see the tutorials on Underwater Trade Routes and Bridges and Crossings.
