Besides Europeans who must be updated with the European maps and “natives” (This is a good chance to make European civs “less colonial”), do not forget about the native Americans. Pre-TAD civs usually have limited options, in terms of both gameplay and representation, and look very outdated.
Again I’m not talking about overhauls, just the addition of a few cards or buildings.
Aztecs and Incas: I actually think it was not a good idea to force Aztecs into the same culture group as Hauds (Iroquois) and Lakota (Sioux) back in TWC. They are too culturally different from the other two. The fire pit/community plaza do not fit their typical image. These cultures had strong state religions and their kings were religious leaders as well, so their similar bonus building should be reskinned into something like a temple (same function as the community plaza).
Aztecs probably also need a revolution-like card that gives them modern units, and a temple-like fort (through cards maybe) like the revolutionary Mayans.
Hauds and Lakota: I have to admit I’m not so familiar with them in real history, but I think at least they should get greater accessibility to native American allies like Incas, US and Mexicans. They should also be able to get some better outlaw units like US and Mexicans because they have no mercenary (or simply give them mercenary). Maybe @AnaWinters could provide some insights into their representation.
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I want to help, but at this point I’ve come to the conclusion that the playerbase would whine forever if the Lakota and Hauds were changed to actually be representative. The only way to do either any justice would be to remake them from the foundation upwards - Currently, neither civ is anything more than a vague amalgamation of stereotypes and there is nothing in either civ that specifically makes them what their namesakes are.
The Lakota could be renamed to Mandan or Cheyenne without changing anything and it would be just as accurate. The Haudenosaunee could be renamed to Huron or Miq’maq and it would be nearly as accurate as it is now. No other civs in the game have such an absurd level of vague genericness to their creation.
Which is sadly how AoE worked back then. Nearly all civs from vanilla, TWC and TAD are build on stereotypes, some worse then others.
I guess TWC was the worst because nearly everything is generic and or stereotypical.
Portugal could be renamed to Italy and it would probably be even more historically accurate.
But yes the North Americans need a coin rework (the old and the current way are both stupid) and the Latin Americans need some other rework like adding a temple building.
Not sure how much sense that would make historical but Native American mercenaries would be nice. That would allow the Native civs to have some trainable Mercenaries and American maps wouldn’t just have European Mercenaries.
This way more different cultures could be represented in the game or some cultures could get additional representation.
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The point I’ve been trying to emphasize is that cultures like the Mandan and Cheyenne are nothing like the Lakota - it’s akin to being able to rename the French civ to Spanish and still have the entire thing make sense without changing anything else, from the civ’s flag to the voicelines and card references.
Portuguese and Italian language are similar but yeah you couldn’t just rename the civ and call it a day. You would have to change the flag and some card references.
The Lakota flag, at least, is so vague and unreferential that it could represent virtually any plains nation in existence, and the only card that specifically references the Lakota culture itself is Onikare, but the problem with that is that it’s an alternative word for Inipi that is likely borrowed from another language entirely - the R sound doesn’t exist in the Lakota language.
All the Support cards from the messenger could easily be given to any other culture in the general area - they aren’t specific enough, and don’t even cover the seven Lakota tribes, or any specific coverage of the rest of the Seven Fires nation, or traditional allies of the Lakota, like the Arapaho, although they can ship in Cheyenne.
I guess Sioux weren’t that different to Germany or India when you think about it.
Now they turned them into Lakota. That would be like turning India into Mughal but keeping all the Hindu elements or turning Germany into Prussia despite nearly everything about that civilisation not being Prussia related at all.
India is a lot worse then Germany though.
But yeah AoE3 struggles to represent civilisations that weren’t just one big empire during the AoE3 time line.
Again, I don’t think you’re quite understanding how absurdly vague the civ is - it’s not like being able to call India the Mughals or renaming Germany into Prussia - it’s like having the Swedes so ridiculously vague that you could rename them to the Russians and the civ would be just as accurate.
The Cheyenne and Mandan aren’t part of the Seven Fires - the Mandan were enemies of the Seven Fires for a long while, and the Cheyenne speak an entirely different language, but you could rename the Lakota into either of those civs and it would be entirely as accurate. The entire foundation of Cheyenne culture is different from Lakota culture - the differences between the two should be astronomical in proportions. The two nations may have been allies, but they were about as alike as the Portuguese are to the Russians.
There are only two distinct features in the entire civ that even so much as hint towards it being Lakota, and one of them isn’t even Lakota, it’s just something that happens to be associated with the Lakota due to what was likely a translation error. The other is just the name of a unit.
That’s what I didn’t realize before. But after thinking about it I guess you’re right on that. Despite some Lakota or Mohawk (?) names, the civs look very generic. The units and techs are more like “(arche)typical native Americans”.
But I tend to believe the reason is more likely that the civs are released early. Only after TAD (more so in DE) civs got more historical and cultural references. Before that we got a lot of stuff like “cheap houses” “early xxx unit”. And these actually got reworked with some cultural flavor in the new DLC. So I guess the representation of native Americans still has a good chance to be improved.
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There’s 3 Lakota names in the game - the Tashunke Prowler (with incorrect grammar), the Tokala Soldier (surprisingly, correct), and the Onikare upgrade (which isn’t Lakota at all). The flag isn’t even specifically representative of the Lakota, it’s just a generic flag that could be applied to any of the plains nation cultures.
The flag, especially, needs to be reworked. There’s a reason every modern Lakota flag puts a tipi at the core of the flag design - the tipi is at the center of the culture’s theological and philosophical studies and is representative of the core values. I don’t care if they completely make up a new flag design, but it must incorporate a tipi as the core design. The tipi is at the core of Lakota culture, theology, and philosophy.
I don’t know about the Haudenosaunee words.
That would be entirely reasonable. Most of the Mughal’s subjects were Hindu.