European Natives for European maps

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
61

Almost all of these suggestions are extremely specific 1-2 map natives. They would need to be more broadly distributed (at least 5 maps) to be a viable pick. And Romani could absolutely be an option.

Here’s a few examples of ones that are widely spread enough to fit nearly all of Europe:

Romani Caravan

Region: Anatolia and all of Europe

Units:
Romani Vagabond - A fast stealthy unit that excels against mercenaries and heroes (Native equivalent to Spies and Ninjas). There’s probably some better names for this, maybe Romani Rogue or Romani Trickster
Vardo - A Romani wagon (Native equivalent to the South African Trek Wagon)

Upgrades:
Tinkerers - Ships a Tin Mine and improves coin gather rate
Nomadism - Economic units move faster and have more health
Fortune Tellers - Temporarily reveals your opponent’s line of sight and increases the Vagabond’s line of sight

Hansa Kontor

Region: All of Northern Europe

Unit:
Reiter - Light ranged cavalry with a 1.5 rate of fire

Upgrades:
Trade Privileges - Trade route yields increased by 30%
Trade Embargo - Temporarily blockades an opponent’s shipments
Free Cities - Defensive buildings are stronger? Suggestions?

Catholic Monastery

Region: Most of Europe

Unit:
Hospitaller Knight - A swordsman unit with high health and siege resistance. Siege resistance would represent their presence at many historical sieges such as at Rhodes, Malta, and Candia. The resistance would be more suited to resisting building and ship fire than for taking on artillery.

Upgrades:
Christian Schools - Same as Jesuits
Flying Buttress - Same as Jesuits
Holy Orders - Something similar to the Ignatian Spirituality card that Ethiopia has (would synergize well with Hospitaller Knights)

62

nothing good will come of adding the romani to the game.

63

forts and outposts deal ranged damage, not siege damage, fyi

64

Really? That’s quite counterintuitive if they’re supposed to be the counter to ships. What about town centers?

Also the wiki says Fortified Outposts have a siege attack.

65

anti-ship is a different attack from the ranged one, which deals siege damage. i will have to confirm the cannon outposts but i believe it is just ranged damage (blockhouses might be siege damage). Forts definitely do ranged damage, they just tickle iron troops.
i will double check outposts.

outposts do ranged damage to fishing ships and siege damage to war ships so idk the whole thing is screwy

66

I mentioned this problem. Defensive buildings should attack fishing boats like a normal boat.

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67

That is really screwy. I don’t see why they wouldn’t just make them have one single siege damage attack and balance it out with something like a x0.25 to artillery and x3.5 to ships.

68

i believe grenadiers are one issue of note, same with rams, mantlets etc. they take half damage - (siege unit) and resist half of that damage for a net 0.25x. idk if you want a unit to resist building fire i think “siege unit” is an absolute necessity

69

Hospitaller Knights were usually on the receiving end of the sieges, so resistance to just cannons and ships would fit thematically. I’m just not sure how practical siege resistance would be for a heavy infantry unit since cannons are such a had counter to them.

70

Five maps is a rather arbitrary number, and some minor civilizations are featured on far fewer maps. If I recall Huron are only on two maps, three if you count Plymouth and New England as separate. Nootka was only featured on a single map, Yukon, until Warchiefs and DE added additional maps placing the Nootka.

Furthermore, I would expect the European continent to be detailed in a way that each region of Europe would have a few different maps, so not just one map for all of Iberia, or all of Metropolitan France, for example. I have also put some groups on American maps because these maps had colonial communities in various parts of the New World (like Basque fishing villages in modern eastern Canada). Other groups I’ve proposed, like the Kalmyks and Tatars, can find a home as far away as the Himalayas and Manchuria. Finally, they can do some stretching to put some civilizations not precisely where they were, as they’ve done (rather notoriously) with Zapotecs, or how some of the African maps have Sudanese far further west than they actually were, etc. I had hoped that my proposals would highlight Europe’s cultural diversity, and that shouldn’t be paved over with something generic like monasteries or trade buildings.

If there are problems with some civs like the Swiss or Belgians, we can fix it by turning those into mercenary camps. I’ve tried to make other groups like the Rhinelanders/Hessians abstract to fit all of West/Central Germany. Bavarians are rather specific, but they can come mean any South German group(without using the term German) for the people of any German-speaking community between Stuttgart and Saxon Transylvania. The Wallachians represent the Aromanian people, who migrated across the breadth of the Balkans, as this map shows. Tyroleans can be found on North Italian maps, and can be stretched to show Austrian settles in Hungary, the Balkans, and Bohemia. Groups like the Greeks, Albanians, and Circassians were ubiquitous in the Ottoman Empire, being found in practically every major city.

Again, adding the Roma would be a really, really bad look. The developers have already aired significantly on the side of political correctness over a litany of different matters with this game, to the point of overwriting aspects of the original version. They will not add them because the Roma are a marginalized group that faces heavy discrimination to the present day, and what you propose only plays into many of the negative stereotypes. Obviously the “Vagabond” refers to the stereotype that Roma people are all thieves and beggars. Finally, as I’ve said, the Roma are pacifistic, they don’t get involved in wars or national politics, and would never make an alliance knowing their people would get thrown into the frontlines of combat.

1 Like
71

It is not, see below:

Also, Huron are on 4 maps currently (they are also on Great Lakes and Saguenay).

Tatars from Eastern Europe aren’t really the same thing as the people in Manchuria, but you could probably stretch them to quite a few maps. It’s more super specific stuff ones like Crimean Goths that are unrealistic, especially when they overlap with better options like Tatars. Tatars, Greeks, and Circassians might be plausible options, but only if you go well beyond Europe.

That should be fixed, not doubled down upon. I made a post complaining about it.

Mercenaries (high population) are kind of the opposite of natives (no population). A settlement to hire the existing mercenaries probably could be workable though.

But we already have a German civ (and mercenaries) that can cover most of these peoples, I don’t think we need 10 more flavours of German (I realize suggesting a Hansa Kontor is a bit hypocritical, but it is widely distributed and not entirely German).

“Vagabond” is a pretty neutral term and if it is a spy unit, it’s not really a front line warrior. The Romani are widespread and overlooked, so it would be plausible for a few of them to be spies and informers. I also suggested a Vardo as a secondary unique economic unit and based none of their techs on thievery. Some of them did even get involved in politics and conflicts (like this guy Ștefan Răzvan).

Overall, it’s probably a pointless argument since we will likely never see European maps.

72

Screenshot (73)

It looks like they get a second attack that deals siege damage and area damage after the Fortified Blockhouse upgrade. According to the wiki, Outposts get something similar.

It makes it even more silly that Forts are limited to just ranged damage versus land units.

73

yeah i seem to recall that about blockhouses. maybe forts should deal siege damage with the star fort or revetment techs?

74

Probably something they should have by default and then improved with Star Fort. Just compensate with a x0.25 or maybe x0.33 vs artillery so it’s not too oppressive.

75

For the Huron, I miscounted, but I understand the point. Obviously I don’t expect all the civs I proposed to be featured. The Crimean Goths were simply a throwback to AoE2, to show that the iconic Goth civilization still existed in at least some sense.

Regarding the camps idea, I didn’t mean it as a place to hire mercenaries, although my Swiss proposal does unlock the recruitment of Swiss Pikes from the preexisting tavern and equivalents. Rather, I meant in merely an aesthetical sense a tent camp with soldiers standing guard and doing different things, to make it believable to find the Swiss or Walloons in places outside of their homelands. Otherwise they’d function as static native settlements.

Regarding the “Germanies,” I felt this had worked well for Napoleonic Wars and would do a better job representing the diversity of the German states rather than the monolith of the German civilization. Prior to the end of the Second World War, German communities lived across many places in Europe outside of what we would consider modern Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, and these communities should be represented as well, from the Alsatians in eastern France to the Volga Germans in Russia. This argument also seems to somehow only be aimed at German minors; minor civ “subsections” of major civs like the Quechua to the Inca, or the proposed Mohawk to the Iroquois and the like don’t seem to get the same sort of critique.

Regarding the Roma, I’ve already made my point that they are better left out completely, as it can be very easy to depict them in a disparaging and discriminatory manner. Many of the indigenous Americans, Africans, and Asians already had to be reduced down to pitiful stereotypes, boiled within 1-2 units and 3-4 techs.

And finally, maybe we’ll get Europe, maybe we won’t, but it’s fun to speculate and imagine what more this game could have.

2 Likes
76

I would rather they just add Knights Hospitallar to DE2 as a special unit for Christian civs.

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77

Separatist groups from the respective nations could also function as “native Europeans.”

78

It could work. Personally, I believe that there are a lot of possibilities when speaking about European minor tribes.

Other possibilities could be mercenary camps based on ethnicities or more local states.

For example, Bavarians or Bohemians could be minor tribes for a center european map, Albanians and Serbs for a Balkan map, Greeks and the knights of Malta for water maps, Swiss for a more wester european maps, Scotts for the british islands and so on.

There are really a lot of possibilities, such minor tribes could be visually represented as mercenary camps or major cities, it really depends by what theme you are going.

1 Like
79

Do we need minor civs in European maps? It would seem shoe-horned in. The gimmick of the European maps could be the lack of minor civs, and also pre-made neutral cities in the center of a couple of maps.

80

It could be companies, factories or anything else that differentiates them from the native settlements.