A Lakota rework mod

Age of Empires III: DE III - Modding
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I’m working on a mod to rework the Lakota and am looking for things that players like about them and things players don’t like, as well as some general feedback on the direction this mod is going so far.

Economy

Food and Gold

The main things I've changed mostly have to do with the economy - I removed their ability to build estates and farms. Food production is achieved through infinite bison production from town centers that starts off slow and is slowly improved through cards, but if you want to make it into the late game, you're gonna need more than a few cards to improve their production speed. Some of those also grant the ability to build another TC. 5 is the max with all cards, as well as one extra in Age 2. Gold production is achieved through a secondary tribal marketplace that must be placed near town centers. Basically a limited estate by another name.

Villagers

Villagers have a build limit of 60. After playing a few games vs bots with them, I realized that the ability to hunt endlessly really pushes their food production to an insane level. Alongside the White Buffalo on the plaza, there seemed a necessary limit to prevent them from going overboard on the Plaza and food production, and this forces them to choose whether they're going to have gold or wood alongside their high food costs.

Community Plaza

The Medicine Man dance now spawns White Buffalo instead, and they are stronger on the Plaza than Priestesses, but not as strong as War Priests. Medicine Men are just trained out of the TC if you really want healers.

Military

The military got 7/8 of their units' names changed, along with some stat adjustments.

Infantry

  • the War Clubman is now called the Chanpi (literally just “Warclub”) and is a quick-moving anti-heavy infantry unit rather than a pikeman by a different name.
  • the Cetan Bowman is now called the Miyostake (Blunted Arrow) and is a siege archer with a range that starts at 23 and slowly increases to 33 through cards and upgrades. (Without cards, it maxes at 30.) (Also to be clear, it starts with a ranged attack of 12, with a x1.5 into infantry. That is purely so it at least keeps its base stats into what it originally countered early, and is largely irrelevant once you hit age 3.)
  • the Wakina Rifle is now called the Waoka (Marksman) and is a quick moving generalist gunpowder unit with high ranged resist. It did lose some range, ironically.

I am aware that some of these units break the “codes” of the game that visually indicate what units are good against as a class (like units with clubs being good against cavalry), but I’m hoping the high cost of the infantry units and the relatively niche spots mean they won’t be used that much anyway, as they were designed to cover the weak spots of the otherwise-generalist cavalry units.
The Cetan Bowman got changed specifically because the Lakota lack a long-range siege unit. It’s rather weak, and (without the fire ceremony) its siege attack seems to max out around 37, so it’s not a siege replacement. The cavalry will still be the strongest siege units.
Also, the Miyostake is not a culverin - it has zero multipliers against artillery. If you need to snipe artillery, use the Itazapayanka - it maxes range at 16, so that gives you some breathing room to hit an artillery piece if you need to.

Cavalry

  • the Axe Rider is now called the Zuya Hoka (War Badger). It has more health and much less attack, but now has an AoE attack of 1.5 and the Morning Star shipment gives it a +x1.0 to cavalry. (This makes it the only melee anti-cav the Lakota now possess, since the Chanpi is now a melee skirmisher.)
  • the Bow Rider is now called the Itazapayanka (…bow rider. Literally.) It’s more fragile than before with a higher siege attack (and slightly more range. Bumped up to 14, and it can siege from a range of 10.)
  • the Rifle Rider is now called the Wakinyayanka (Thunder rider.) The Onikare card now gives it a +1.0 to its multiplier against heavy infantry, since it is now the only ranged unit good against heavy infantry. (Technically the Miyostake has a x1.5 against all infantry, but considering its attack maxes out around 30 with the war ceremony… I’m not even sure that’s worth mentioning.)
  • the Tashunke Prowler is now called the Okichize Prowler (Battle Prowler.) It’s overall weaker, but moves faster and has a higher siege attack.
    Nothing changed about the Tokala Soldier.

If you’ve read through this, thanks. I’m just looking for feedback on the direction this is going. Also, yes. Those are (mostly) proper Lakota names for the units.

I have gotten tired of seeing the Lakota be so terribly portrayed. I couldn’t do much about models (which is why I didn’t change the Tokala Soldier - my issues with that unit are purely to do with the model of it, as the Kitfox Society didn’t wear the crowfeather headdresses of the Dog Soldiers) but I have been changing what I can.
Over the next few days, I plan on remaking the cards. The biggest card changes seem to be the Earth Bounty, Evening Star, Morning Star, Uprising, and Great Hunt cards, as I’m gearing each of those to be powerful (and expensive) cards to get, each aimed to hit a unique aspect of the Lakota.

I know this isn’t a full breakdown and the numbers themselves aren’t here, but any feedback on the direction this is going would be appreciated. If possible at some point in the future, I plan on doing a full voice-over rework for the units as well. I don’t have super high quality recording equipment, but I speak enough Lakota to translate and say the voice lines for most of the cast.
Thanks again if you read through this far.

(Side note, if any of you are talented with creating new unit models, I do have one new unit that I want to make but don’t know how. Any help is appreciated.)

5 Likes
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Ana Winters, what I liked most was the fur market to generate gold infinitely and to be necessarily linked to a towncenter. I think it is much more accurate than connecting them to a gold mine, although the proximity of the gold mine could symbolize that the fur market was installed close to places where white people went, to trade. But I don’t know if that would be correct either, even so, it seems more logical that the fur market was close to the towncenter. I think it is essential to change the names of the units as well. Plantations are strange constructions, whose cotton deposits have nothing to do with Lakota, or Haudenossaunee, or Aztec, or Inca architecture, and even so, this was not changed in the definitive edition. I’m sad that I don’t have cotton cultivation at MOD, but I’m glad I didn’t have that plantation shed, which has nothing to do with the architecture of the Lakota people! The farms produced corn, and the Lakotas were mainly corn farmers, before Spanish horses were redomesticated by them, and helped in the hunt for bison, which there became the main food source and the main source of wealth for the people’s barter. , who started to buy corn, vegetables and raw materials from other nations, paying with meat, skins, horns and bones of bison, and with the objects made with these raw materials of bison. But couldn’t the farm be maintained to symbolize this corn farming, which in one way or another existed among all the peoples of the Americas? And instead of appearing in the tonw center, couldn’t bison be produced in flocks, in specific places on the map, more distant, to look like flocks that came in migrations? They are just suggestions, I really want to be able to play the fruit of your work! Thank you very much!

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Will tribal markets be limited to one unit per town center? Would not leaving many tribal markets functioning in one town center make gold production very simple and give the Lakota an unfair advantage?

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The Fur Trade building is connected to the town center because connecting it directly to bison kept causing it to self-destruct every time one of the bison moved. Because the town centers produce bison, I connected the Fur Trade building to the town centers to ensure the Fur Trade building would always be near animals to make it look like they’re producing coin from the bison that are being hunted around them.
I wanted to create buildings that would produce bison (for balance purposes, there has to be a building to produce bison, otherwise the Lakota would entirely lack reliable food income) but creating a new building specifically for that purpose kinda defeated the whole point. It makes more sense to just have the town centers themselves produce bison, just for streamlined effort.

They can have an infinite number of Fur Trade buildings (which are different than Tribal Marketplaces - Tribal Marketplaces are still a thing, they just have to be built next to a mine - Fur Trade collects coin much slower) but because of the high speed of food gathering and the inclusion of a Community Plaza unit, I had to reduce the number of villagers available to the Lakota down to 60. This way, they are forced to put a lot of their villages to hunting to compensate for their expensive food costs and are forced to choose between collecting wood and collecting coin with their remaining villagers.
Fur Trade buildings cost 400 resources, but are weaker than Estates.

I removed farming because, during the time period of the game, the Lakota were not farmers to any great extent. Only one of the Oyate (tribes), the Mniconjou, were farmers, and their name reflects it - Mniconjou means Plants By The Water. One of the things I plan on doing is having a Mniconjou Support card from the Messenger that is the delivery of a single farm travois that allows access to a new big button tech - the Three Sisters, which will be an upgrade to the unit I want to have delivered with the Evening Star card, which I plan on reworking.

Evening Star will be renamed Hteyatu Wichapi and deliver a Medicine Woman, who will act as a super powerful villager and have an aura that enhances the White Buffalo and nearby villagers. She will be retrainable at the Town Center and cost 2 population. I also plan on removing the Medicine Men and leaving the Medicine Woman as the sole healer of the Lakota. The Three Sisters will increase her build limit to 3, as well as improve the rate at which the farm produces food.

5 Likes
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I dont like the fur trade building at all (currently in game) and think it being just a rename basically in your version is also not too exciting.

I would have it be either a max 1 building where you do upgrades for hunting and in your modcase faster bison creation speed and where you have 3 modes. One which is the generic food gathering mode from huntables. The second being split into gathering smaller amount of food, but also coin and the thrid purely coin from huntables.

Or have them trade food for coin somewhere.