Balance for natives

I have not see many suggestions on this topic, so I just wanted to throw this out.

Natives are awesome, but they need to be more balanced so they could compete against europeans in late-game.

The fact that natives depend too much on wood affects their performance.

A cool idea would be to give the wood dance to the other native civilizations. Moreover, having priests (like aztecs) or animals (like incas) that could walk in the fire pit (plaza) would also help natives be more competitive in the late game. (You can even make these priests or animals available until age 4, or maybe through a card)

If this is not the case, then having an infinite mango grove could benefit them as well.

Europeans have factories, china has the tower and a factory, the Japanese have their shrines, and most of india’ s units do not cost wood.

My opinion for the Haudenosaunee and Lakota is to give them the ability to regenerate forests near them over time, to mirror the practices of both cultures to cultivate living forests. If anything, replacing their farms with small groves that are slower than farms, can hold more villagers than farms, and also produce wood alongside food.

The other idea is to simply give the three base Native Civs a dance to produce mango grove rickshaws over time, starting in Age V as either a replacement or in addition to the last wood gathering upgrade.