Currently, the Dromon is only available for Romans, Huns, Byzantines, and Goths. Which makes sense, because they only existed at a time when there was no gunpowder at that time.
If you think of it, the Vikings used mostly longships, and them using Cannon Galleons, a ship with way advanced technology centuries later, is too out of place. Aztecs, Mayans and Inca have no answer for shore bombards, so they really need to have Dromons. Sicilians/Normans were more prominent during the 10th-11th century, at a time when there was no gunpowder in Europe yet, so they be better off with Dromons.
Dromons only thematically make sense for civs that existed during Late Antiquity. Potential new civs that could receive them are the Alans and Vandals. I feel like they should be fairly exclusive to represent a specific time period.
Catapult galley (water Treb) instead of dromons for meso civs, vikings, cumans, maybe Persians is good. Byzantines could have both but it’s a rather rare case.
The Dromon is very powerful. It is superior to the Elite Cannon Galleon in ship vs. ship combat for sure.
So I don’t think it should be handed out to many civilisations.
The Dromon doesn’t even support regional sails.
Maybe there should be a new ship that basically combines the disadvantages of the Dromon with the disadvantages of the Cannon Galleon into one ship that has a more neutral design and also allows for regional sails like most ships. Firing a single weaker Trebuchet projectile and barely outranging fully upgraded Towers and Castles (12 range).
This ship would be a little cheaper to make up for that though.
Visually it should have a traction Trebuchet on the deck to make clear it’s a single projectile ranged unit but it’s also not as powerful as the counter weight Trebuchet you get on land.
This ship could be given to all the civilisations that have no gunpowder units besides the Cannon Galleon to replace the Cannon Galleon.
Right, I’d remove trebuchets for those civs if there would be something more specific to them and powerful enough to not break the balance (and I’m sure there is, it’s just I’m not an expert on meso America). A civ theorycrafter from YouTube came up with a wonderful treb-like unit for a Polynesian civ so I’m sure an expert on the subject can find an equivalent for meso civs too.
In general I’m in favour to make civs more unique rather than making everyone looking European which really feels like a mock given past history of those people.
Also by that logic why not give them cannon galeons directly?
I did something just like you’re proposing in my Constantinople custom campaign. I took caravel and make them fire trebuchet stone with same range as trebuchet but low attack since you can get them from castle age and upgrade to elite in imp. They’re also very slow, slower than a cannon Galeon.
They did have wheels, they just didn’t use them that much since the environment wasn’t well suited for them.
AoE3DE solves that issue by having different looking trade units for each continent that don’t always involve a cart.
Mesoamerica is not all kinds of environments though.
There is archaeological evidence that they knew about wheels and knew how to make carts with wheels.
We don’t really know why they didn’t make more of them.
But anyway it’s something they knew how to make, unlike Trebuchets, Catapults and Galleons.
Aztecs and Mayas are in mountains and jungles and Incas are mostly in mountains.
Not much flat land that makes it easy to build wide roads.
The Inca had llamas at last.
The Spanish also mostly just used horses and not cards in those areas.
But they could have made them if there was a need for them, like if there was a trade route though flat land that is also used by allies that also use carts.
Unlike more complex things like Trebuchets that’s a lot less of a historical inaccuracy.
It’s very silly that a man with a cart is faster then any infantry unit though.
I don’t really understand what’s the point in making a civ identical to the other when you have the possibility to do something more apt to them, I think it would also be more respectful towards mesoamerican history to try to depict their true identity instead of giving them even more European looking units and techs.
That said if you want to give dromons or cannon galleons to Incas fine it’s just lack of imagination and lazy design imho. At this point just play with all techs enabled…