My (very amateur) research points to her being ethiopian but only later converting to judaism. Not that it matters much since she’s mostly a legend anyway.
The controversial one you mentioned is putting the Mandé peoples (like the Malians + Soninke) and the Bantu peoples together. I am definitely not professional in linguistics but I guess the Bantu peoples themselves are not controversial as a language family.
But anyway the definition in linguistics is not the point, just find a name for the umbrella civ.
I did not mean the ancient Fulanis were equal to Soninke or something. I mean, their heyday was almost in the timeline of AoE3. In the timeline of AoE2, they were living in the land of many West African chiefdoms, kingdoms and empires, which mostly the land of Soninke territory I guess.
As the Fulanis as well as the Wolof are likely not in the top 6 of the potential civ (at least in my concepts), the Soninke should be fine to cover them, for the somehow close interaction in the history and for the similar archer gameplay style.
Yes she’s Ethiopian but if you wanted to be more precise and eventually argue for a split along with Axumites (long shot) she came from this kingdom: Kingdom of Simien - Wikipedia
Well, I did say my only criterium for that list is possible appearances in the TAK campaigns.
I also did some research on the Songhai and is planning to make a civ craft about them soon. From what I learned so far the “raging bulls” seemed to be an improvised tactic used at the Battle of Tondibi in 1591 against the Moroccans, I failed to find other instances where they used a similar tactic and I didn’t find any supporting evidence which suggests that war bulls were a regular part of their military.
Oh really? Being described as training the bulls in the imperial stables, rather than gathering them from villages and herdsmen, it seems to make senses to me that this was at least prepared rather than improvised. Just because the bulls were carefully described in this battle does not definitely mean that bulls did not appear in other battles.
Even if they were improvised, it does not prevent them from being UU. The Flaming Camel is a precedent. I think having military animals is a really cool thing. From the perspective of designing the content of an entertainment work, it is very suitable to regard it as a major feature of the civ. In the case where there are bonuses to strengthen the knight line, so far I still prefer to set the bull as the UU in castles instead of another heavy cavalry.
Well they certainly raised bulls and cattle for meat consumption, but I failed to find any credible sources which suggest that “war bulls” were a stable part of their army.
Um I see. It’s just that it is fine to me.
- It’s weird and doubtful to me that the places described as “imperial stables” trained and prepared the bulls just for food in the usual time. It’s difficult not to read it as having potential military use or at least servile use for royalty and nobility. At least we know for sure that those bulls were eventually used in the war against the Moroccans.
- Even in only that one battle, the Songhai people used about a thousand of bulls for war, not for logistics but for directly charging and attacking. Even if the bulls were not a stable part of army, the number was huge and the strategy itself was pretty impressive and unique.
- The Flaming Camel is just based on the use in the Invasion of Delhi by Timur’s army. Even if we only refer to one war, there is no reason the War Bull cannot be a UU. Not to mention in my concepts they are not suicide unit, so it should be fine to make the bulls kept in imperial stables be the UU in Castles.
Songhai feels like the one civ in the game that should outright lack chemistry.unlike other civs gunpowder vs infantry was the actual reason for their defeat
2 Likes
I’m not saying they would be unbalanced if they lost Chemistry, but I personally don’t see the need specifically for this reason. Lacking Chemistry does not reflect the history of failed battles against gunpowder weapons.
Using my concept as an example, you can see I’ve made them unable to access any gunpowder units (as well as Bombard Tower), and I’ve given their UU bulls a weakness against gunpowder units. On the other hand, even though I gave them bad Archer line and Skirmisher line, which seems not matter even if losing Chemistry, I still wanted them to have fully upgraded Cavalry Archers as an option when they desperately need ranged units depending on the situation.
Additionally, all civilizations have Chemistry, including the Romans, Huns, Goths, and Mesoamerican civs. Perhaps the Chemistry, to a certain extent, represents not only the invention or usage of gunpowder, but more broadly arrow poisons and any other chemical that helps increase the killing power of projectiles.
Yes, I agree, it would be nice to have an African version of the Tatars, although a West African civ would have to be more cavalry to differentiate it from the Malians…
Yes, Ghana or Hausa could be (since they are civs before the year 1000)…but we have to wait to see if they do a TAK 2…
I like the changes to the Soninke, they feel more distinct now
I dislike any kind of negative bonuses, if you need to lock a bonus behind a disadvantage either make it a UT or replace the affected generic unit by a unique unit. If I were to use +1 pierce armour on knights somewhere I would either make it a UT or remove bloodlines, even with bloodlines they would tank 25% more hits than a generic knight. The problem with that is rebalancing camels and scouts, which I agree, its very messy.
Im not sure how good this is, but I guess its good enough to help in the early game I guess
I think you dont understand, the whole value of the Feitoria in early game is the food and the limiting factor is the pop and resource cost. This produces a less valuable resource at a very low rate.
Rn I think its useless early game and very mediocre late game, with the only value on late game being how fast you can geneate it.
If I were to balance it I would make it
I dont have any problem with it, but it feels kinda meh for an imperial UT (sure Franks get also a fairly expensive tech for less, but I think the case of Franks is more balance than anything) and the fact that it requires conscription feels annoying.
My problem wih it is that rn it feels like Kanuri are already quite good and this feels like a bit too much.
I still think its too situational tbh, but the new effect makes it stronger, and maybe its fine. I just feel that locking a farm alternative behind a UT is weird, specially when you get so many goats by just playing normally
Didnt realize that, its interesting. Although I think rn the unit options for it are too wide.
This one to me is just too weird, but I guess its fine
I also think two camel cost bonus that dont stack feel weird
I think free blacksmith archer techs and cheaper archery ranges could be used for two diferent civs. The cheaper archery ranges techs is much weaker short term, but could be given to a less powerful civ while free archer line techs is very powerful. This fits in a middle, ita too strong to have something else but too slow to feel unique
Dont really like auras but its fine honestly.
I like it, but I feel like a lot of people will misinterpret it.
Weird, but considering that its kinda expensive to get markets going its probably fine, but not very useful overall
It sounds like it will be a mess to balance team games with tihis, but maybe its fine
Too weird honestly, cant say what I would do to fix it but just feels too weird and hard to balance. Basically the value of this bonus is squared over time.
If you want to have something livestock related I would consider moving one of the Kanembu bonuses here and rebalance the Kanembu later. Or maybe each economic building spawn a cow, even if it feels similar to Kanembu.
Seems like their gimmick wont be used at all, but sure, its fine
Why not just a melee shield or something like that? Really feels like a messy idea
Its fine, although maybe a bit hard to manage.
Overall this is prob my least favourite civ of yours so far honestly, sorry
The Gambesons costs 100 food and 100 gold. If it can affect cavalry, I believe that it will drive people to try it after the Chain Barding even if it costs 200 food and 200 gold. Considering you’re buying something bigger and better, the price increase isn’t necessarily make it a disadvantage.
Losing Bloodlines will make all Stable units including Knights severely weak against cavalry.
In addition to making Gambesons more expensive, I had considered another option, which is that the effect of Gambesons on cavalry will only take effect in the Imperial Age.
House, Outpost: 2 gold per building
Mill, Lumber Camp, Mining Camp: 8 gold
Dock, Blacksmith:12 gold
Barrack, Archery Range, Stable, Market, Monastery: 14 gold
Siege Workshop, University: 16 Gold
TC: 22 gold
Wonder: 80 gold
Farms, Palisades (gates) and Towers are not expected to be affected.
In the Castle Age, the population is usually still far from the cap. If the Songhai cannot control gold mines at that time, they can keep getting gold through extensive use of remaining population space with the Weaving Workshops. That’s what I think it’s good for in the early game. Even if they don’t actually lose control of the gold mines, they can still stimulate gold income through this method. The accompanying disadvantage is that in the late Castle Age when the population is gradually increasing, this method will easily cause the population to reach the cap, so the effect of -5 population brought by the UT is very useful in my opinion.
The Weaving Workshop isn’t entirely intended to be an inferior copy of Feitoria. They should develop strategies different from Feitoria’s, based on their cheap cost of only wood, and the feature that they generate only gold and can be built in the Castle Age. Probably, all-in Castle Age is the strategy that can maximize the value of this building, rather than fast Imperial similar to Feitoria.
Would make it what?
This is a statement problem. It is supposed to provide basically the same effect as the Conscription.
Obviously it is unnecessary to require the Conscription. However, I feel that the Conscription would still always be researched first because the price is cheaper.
1 Like
Oh absolutely,Im not saying its a good oidea without anything big to help camels or something like that, but +1 pierce armor in knights is huge!
If you dont have gold yeah its useful but thats not a problem isually in early To mid game
And population isnt a problen early game but ypu still need to build a lot of houses for it, and creating villagers is much easier
Oh my bad, I would makw it work like the Gurjara bonus, buff the first one a lot and every one extra you build is weaker and weaker
Oh its fine then. Would prefer if it also affected Siege workshops and monasteries but Im fine with it
The real purpose of this UT is to allow livestock to generate gold, definitely not to replace farming. The ability to purchase livestock is simply to prevent players from holding no livestock for this effect.
The price of livestock should be high enough, such as 50 gold for a goat and 75 gold for a cattle, to prevent players from abusing it. In theory, because of the civ bonus you receive free goats by (at least part of) technologies, so you don’t really need to buy livestock for this effect unless you’re already killing them for food.
If it’s built near a trade route, you can train soldiers from it to counterattack attackers on the route more quickly, rather than waiting for rescue from military buildings further away. Don’t forget that it can also be garrisoned by trade carts to protect them. It can also be used to build on the front line for tower rush and soldiers can also be trained directly from it to battlafields rather than from distant military buildings.
As for its unit roster, having fewer units is fine. I just listed all the potential options.
They do stack. After -40% gold cost, it is 55 food and 36 gold. Then after this UT turning the rest gold cost into food, it is 91 food.
Gold mines are sometimes lost even in the Feudal Age when encountering very aggressive opponents. Mining gold mines directly is definitely the fastest, but you can also build Weaving Workshops while letting villagers mine at the same time, as long as there is enough population space.
I would like buildings like Feitoria and Weaving Workshop should also provide population space themselves, or instead reduce population cap instead of using population space directly. For example, the Weaving Workshop can use 15 population space and also provide 15 population space, or it can lower the population cap by 15 directly. That is, they can be built directly without houses, but still reduce the available population space.
This is indeed an interesting suggestion. This will encourage players to build at least 1 Weaving Workshop no matter what the situation.
There is no technology free for this civ, firstly. And then, the free Fletching line will be broken in my opinion.
Cheaper Archery Range technologies cannnot help in the Feudal Age, and cheaper Fletching line save too less resorces. As the civ has less benefits in the Feudal Age, I think they can have both.
Obviously the rate can be tweaked.
You will always have a Market sooner or later, but you can have multiple Markets, and it is not difficult to rebuild them after losing them.
For your reference, the Gurjaras receive 0.4 food per second when having 8 sheep in Mills, just needing 100 wood for a Mill but it is usually impossible to gain more food and once lost it is difficult to recover.
When facing multiple players at the same time, Palisades with Revetments might be less solid than in 1v1 I think.
Have you heard of the Hacienda of AoE3 Mexicans? This is in reference to its mechanics.
As long as there are villagers farming at Hacienda, you can choose to have Hacienda produce food or spawn villagers or cows. More villagers farming there, more quickly there spawn.
I made changes so that villagers still produce food normally when harvested from Farms near Saqiyah, but Saqiyah takes longer (perhaps every 300 food harvested) to spawn 1 villager or cattle.
It is visually similar to the Folwark. A Mill replacement, and Farms are encouraged to be built around it. But the benefits of Folwark are immediate, while the benefits of Saqiyah are later.
Frankly speaking, the reason why Saqiyah can choose to spawn cattle is so that when you already feel that you have enough villagers, it will not continue to spawn villagers and cause population pressure. It is not designed to be a livestock bonus.
Frankly speaking, I initially used it as a melee shield. But then I discovered that it is very risky. Merely being able to ignore just one strike from Halberdiers might be broken.
Change it to extra HP, and the balancing work might be much easier. Offsets up to 15 HP, regardless of which unit the strikes come from, and regenerate over time.
It’s okay. Everyone has their own taste.
I would be very happy with those African dlc’s. What I would change is Soninke or Songhai to Hausa.
I agree that Bantu is a casting a very wide net, however I would not complain much if they would be added, however more realistically I think that with the East Africa dlc we will get Turkish campaign instead of a third civ.
If we get only two civs in the West Africa dlc, I hope for Kanembu & Hausa + Battles of Africa.
Kanem Bornu and Hausa boarders were close together but Bornu did not control Hausa.
Yes, for me Bormu, Sennar, Kongo and Zimbabwe can enter both AoE 2 and AoE 3…Hausa too but in AoE 2 would have to focus on the rise of the Sultanate of Kano (1349-1385).
You can definitely have your own picks, and the Hausa is not a bad choice either.
My picks are these six civs, since the time when Hausa really had a strong regional influence was in the AoE3 timeline. They fit in and are a civ in AoE3 already.
I think it would be nice to have Soninke and Songhai to complement the game with the Ghana Empire and the Songhai Empire. That could provide a continuous history of West Africa.
Regardless of the Bantu, I think the Turks’ campaign would be more likely to appear in a DLC related to Europe rather than Africa. It seems more likely that the Turks’ activities in the Balkans and Eastern Europe would be a reference for their campaign and combined into a DLC with other civs also active there.
For example, the current Dracula is made up of Turks, Magyars, and Slavs, so that might be most likely a DLC made up of a new Vlach civ, Dracula remake for the Vlachs, and new campaigns respectively for the Turks, Magyars, and Slavs.
By the conclusion of Idris Alooma rule, he had successfully expanded Bornu’s influence over vast territories, including the majority of Hausaland, the Tuareg of Aïr, the Tebu of Bilma, Tibesti, and even the Bulala of Kanem.
According to accounts from the Bornu side, seemed that they did control Hausaland at the height of their power, and I was just stating that.
The Middle Ages seemed not the most glorious period for the Hausa city-states. As the most powerful city-state of Hausa, Kano was still a vasal of Songhai and Bornu.
1 Like