Civ Concept: the Nahua

To date, only around 500 bodies have been found in the enclosure of the Huey Teocalli related to sacrifices in a period of 80 years during the Mexica period, all sources that indicate figures close to the tens of thousands come from European chronicles and these are related with chronicles of myths that were not observed in person by the conquerors, an example of this is the event of the consecration of the Huey Teocalli, the evidence archaeological does not support your claim.

How a population of 250 thousand inhabitants in Tenochtitlán could support 200 thousand sacrifices a year? Even if it were slaves or prisoners, how could they have an army large enough to capture so many? it is absolutely ridiculous, please share your sources (not even the craziest Spanish chronicles share the figure of 200 thousand sacrifices, the most exaggerated, made by Fray Diego Durán is 80 thousand, and no serious anthropologist or archaeologist takes it into account , it’s just ridiculous)

https://www.inah.gob.mx/boletines/6576-libro-desmitifica-el-sacrificio-humano-entre-los-mexicas-a-traves-del-analisis-osteologico

This publication is where they describe that to date only a total of 519 have been counted

:point_down:

And of course, I am not saying that this is the total number of victims, because in fact, in a period of 80 years it would indicate that they were almost pacifists hahaha, but it does show that the total number is much lower.

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The building over water and channels concept sounds interesting but I think it won’t work well on random maps.
It would depend to much on what map you play on. Many maps have no water at all while being able to build “bridges” might be OP on other maps.

I kinda like the idea of being able to stack landmarks.
How about the idea that you can choose wether to build ontop of an old one or building a new one.
On each Age up after the first one you can choose to build over an existing landmark or build a new one to improve/modify it’s bonus.

That means that there are 2 Feudal Age Landmarks that can have 2 upgrades each, 1 Castle Age Landmark that can have one upgrade and 1 Imperial Age Landmark without upgrades.
Or maybe enable that mechanic for the first Town Centre too than you can already choose in the first Age up if you wan to build over or build new.

About the units. I think we need to see how they want to design future civilisation.
Do we really need a direct replacement for all of the 6 core units or not?

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Lots of good points, but I did want to comment on the unit types. I’m tenatively optimistic that, as long as new units retain the same role as a replaced unit (e.g. palace guards and MAA) the game will remain balanced even with a large amount of variety. Essentially you have a different tool, but it’s purpose is the same as a different civs tool, and the counter play is therefore (hopefully) not radically different. So I think having a UU for each unit isn’t necessarily wrong, even if it’s not the direction relic goes (it could be unnecessary).

I share the same criticism as Skadi. If you base the civ around water, what happens on maps without any water? Which are, as we all know, going to be the majority for most players.
It would be a nice gimmick for specific scenarios (similar to the Naga bases in WC3:TFT), but it’s definitely not workable as the defining trait of a civ.

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What the OP failed to do here is to zoom out and first ask the fundamental question: “Does it make sense to add ‘faction X’ if you take into consideration that the game is about factions that excelled in the area of military between 500 and 1500”.

If you were to answer this question for groups such as Polynesians, Inuit, Sámi, Maori, the “Nahua”, “Seven Fires” and many, many others; the answer to this question would be No.

OP also failed to answer this fundamental question in the other topic that she made. I assume that it is for that reason that she decided to abuse the flagging functionality.

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The game is set in 1000-1500 AD. Noting in it is really based on anything before that.
The Feudal Age starts after 1000 AD and the Castle Age ends before 1500 AD. All elements that don’t fit into that time have to be Dark Age or Imperial Age only.
(I really hope we don’t see something like the Huns again)

What does excelled in the area fo military mean?

Where do you set the line?
It is absolutely subjective to say Nahua (Aztecs) didn’t excel in the area of military enough to be added to AoE4.

You can argue that they would have lost a war with equal numbers and ignoring diseases against all of the existing 8 civilisations.
But if we take the weakest of those 8 and pretend it’s not in the game yet. You could argue that it’s too weak because the 7th weakest is stronger.

The argument that they are much weaker is also subjective. It’s you saying the line is there. That is your opinion. Not a fact.
The developers and other players can chose if they want to agree or not.

Why are you so passionate about certain civilisations not being added to the game?
No one takes anything away from you. No one forbids you to play with your knights and castles or what ever you prefer.
Or do you expect that every content added to the game is just made directly for your taste?

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I did note that they would have the ability to build small, artifiical ponds to gain their bonus from as well, and I was thinking one of the Landmarks would be the Great Temple to Tezcatlipoca, from Tenochtitlan, which would act like a source of water built near it.
Another could be the Gardens of Texcoco, which would act like a canal to all buildings near it.
Etc.

This is my fault. The only units that are UUs are the Teocalli units, and even those are fairly simplistic variations of normal units.
Tlamani, Cuextecatl, and Papalotl are from my notes. This was copy/pasted. Those are the lower warrior classes of the culture and just meant to serve as an indicator of what they could look like and the weapons they’d use, but not intended to be UUs by any means. Just normal infantry units.

There are mostly two reasons I would say.

One is that some people just don’t want to see stone age civilisation warriors beating ironclad soldiers in same numbers because it looks ridiculous and takes away from historical setting experience.
That one can be fixed by smart civilisation design though.

Second one is more selfish one.
Because its actually kind of zero sum game. If they add these civilisations in first DLCs that means they don’t add some real historical powerhouses until maybe 5 years later if at all. They just don’t want to trade civs like Turks, Japanese, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth etc for them.

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A Delhi MAA already beats a French one that clearly looks a lot more armoured.
Any MAA is equal or stronger than a French one despite it looking like the most heavily armoured one next to the HRE one (that only has more attack and speed not more HP or Armour than the others)
While HRE knights are the weakest in the game.

I do agree that AoE2 style Aztec blacksmiths are stupid. That’s why my concept for the Aztecs doesn’t give them one.

You can say that you want those more but you shouldn’t say that some should never happen and than come up with “objective” arguments.
The civilisation added should be decided now many people want them not how many people veto against them.

One of these is not like the other and has no place in a medieval game, stat.
Being against the inclusion of Aztecs and in the same breath campaigning for a state from the future is pretty bizzare.

Yes and that is my gripe with game already. I think European knight should have higher base armour than Asian lancer but cost more etc. Same with basic Asian composite archer they should cost more money but get more dmg per shot. But that doesn’t mean we should go from from 10 to 100 now.

Also there is only so much additional armour does for you from some point. Difference between full plate armoured knight in combat with soldier in nearly full Lamellar armour is not that great and will go down more to skill than armour probably.
Both cant be hurt by swords, spears, arrows easily etc.

But difference between fully armoured soldier and unarmoured one is great. Pretty much any blow to unarmoured one is debilitating. To overcome that disadvantage is really hard and if added to the game should be represented and balanced well.

Motive aside. If they are objective than they can be used to move your point forward. Why not?

I agree to a point. (Still think historical authenticity should have precedence over that)
Well the European poll on this site is good representation of peoples needs.

Yes my mistake should have been just Polish kingdom. But in that case Hungary would be probably better option.

Also dont put words in my mount. At no point I was against including Aztecs. I just want to do it right or not at All.

Those two mechanics are completely broken. They add things that break basic rules of the game and add ability to terraform. Thats way too much.

OP can’t mass flag. By definition it will have to be multiple users.

There’s no terraforming happening - the Canals are visual things, not actual terraformed bits of water. They’re basically just buildings that units can walk over.

And building over water wouldn’t be hard to balance at all, tbh. Just limit the distance they can build out from shore and you’ve pretty much solved that.

I’ve mentioned this in many civ discussions already.
But why do we need every civ to be the “greatest hits” of history?

Also power is relative. Why has one of the most powerful militaries in the world lost to basic guerrilla tactics in Afghanistan and Vietnam? It is completely arrogant and ahistorical to believe that small nations are something to dismiss.

Let me point to another RTS that introduces smaller factions whilst still making things interesting:
Rome 2 Total war.



You’ve probably never heard of many of these factions. But a lot of them were important local players in antiquity. And ultimately the objective should be to provide people with interesting experiences and fun campaigns.

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Ah okay. I pictured something closer to digging in Stronghold.

Yeah, Giving them ability to build on shallow water would be still very strong. I don’t know if they would even need all those bonuses.

I mean, I intentionally made their military on the weaker side for its lack of diversity - they may be able to deal with cavalry and heavily armored units just fine, but they themselves do not have a cavalry unit. I tried to give them an economy to reflect the incredible efficiency of Tenochtitlan and Texcoco, one of which was larger than any European city at the time while still managing to essentially be a zero-waste society and clean as hell. Plus all three of the cities had required schooling for children.
Their economies were nothing to sneeze at, and I wanted to portray that.

Because the game, following a documentary style approach, attempts to do just that.

Also power is relative. Why has one of the most powerful militaries in the world lost to basic guerrilla tactics in Afghanistan and Vietnam? It is completely arrogant and ahistorical to believe that small nations are something to dismiss.

Because it also is something that has to do with a willingness to pay the (social) costs of really pushing through and reaching the goal. With Vietnam, the USA was overwhelmed by the anti-war movement. Afghanistan was never meant to truly ‘win’. They wanted to implement a social change that would never work. No serious person would argue that Vietnam could ever truly win against the USA, even if they would have a navy with which to send their troops to San Fransisco.

Also China during the Middle Ages COULD HAVE taken South-East Asia if they really had to. Thing is that there was nothing to gain from it and the costs would be too high.

Let me point to another RTS that introduces smaller factions whilst still making things interesting:
Rome 2 Total war.

Yes, because that is the purpose of the game Rome 2 Total War and these factions fit the context and purpose of that specific game.

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Even more factions in Shogun 2, and there’s only a handful of significant ones:

Military power shouldn’t dictate who’s in or who wins imo, it’s a video game that already has a tonne of historical inaccuracies. AoE2 has a bunch of minor civs already, but the game still flows and plays nicely.

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Ok if no one would take that seriously why do you have to write so many posts against it?
If you are so confident that no one in the right mind would add them, why do you spend so much time arguing here.

Btw. I would be all for adding Angola. A modern war RTS without at last a bit Asymmetric warfare would be boring.
Not that Angola doesn’t have a strong army with modern equipment though.

We saw how Vietnam or Afghanistan ended for the Superpowers.

Cool than how does your documentary explain why the Holy Roman Empire as the worst knights in the game?

No one argues that a Native American Infantry should win a 1v1 against an European MAA.

In AoE3 the Aztecs even thought about 19th century infantry on even footing, AoE4 is very far away from that.

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