A few months ago I made a post about how I thought that the USA and other potential new American civilizations could be implemented in the game as a new Civilization group. I still believe that the US shouldn’t be the only post-colonial civilization and that it needs more new mechanics to further distinguish it from the European civilizations.
Lately I been thinking about the subject and came up with a couple of new ideas for Post-Colonial American civs.
A 4th resource: Prestige
“Prestige” as a resource is meant to represent how well respected these new nations are on the World Stage. Prestige is earned by performing some specific tasks:
Building Town Centers, Trade Posts and Forts
Destroying enemy Town Centers, Trade Posts and Fortifications
Researching Technologies and Upgrades
Killing enemy Hero Units
Reaching certain Milestones: “Collect 10.000 food”, “Collect 10.000 gold”, “Send 10 shipments”, “Build one of each ship type”, “Have over 90 settlers working simultaneously”, etc.
By building monuments.(More on those later)
Once accumulated, Prestige can be used to access increasingly powerful upgrades and units from foreign nations in the State Capital or other equivalent building. These can include:
Squads of Powerful Mercenaries
Bank Wagons
Factory Wagons
Fort Wagons
Groups of Immigrant Settlers and/or Military Units
Unique Technologies
Large Crates of XP
Unlike Exports and Influence which are generated passively as your economy grows, Prestige requires you to play more actively, expanding quickly and targeting major enemy buildings or working towards certain milestones. It also makes a more interesting way to get more Immigrants, replacing deck cards.
National Heroes:
As the concept of modern Nation-States and Nationalism emerged, so did the idea of seeking and glorifying “great men” in one’s national history as a way to unite the people. The USA has its Founding Fathers, Brazil has figures like Tiradentes, José Bonifácio or Princess Isabel, Colombia has Bolivar… You get the idea.
These national icons could be represented in-game as special heroes units(For example: Washington or Bolivar as generals of their respective countries) or as Monuments. Monuments are unique small buildings that represent one of these famous figures. They can be unlocked at the state capital, or other equivalent building, at a hefty price. Building these monuments will grant you Prestige and a unique bonus related to that figure. Think of these monuments as a small scale version of the Asian Wonders.
personally i really dont want more new world nations, USA was already controversial but at least they can argue some level of progression in the periode and did end it as an emerging great power.
i also see no point in making the US more unique, they already have a completely different homecity and age up system, and they got like 10 unique units and 2 unique buildings, they really dont need more than that.
I guess a better name for this resource would be - “Liberty”. At the end of the AoE 3 timeframe, postcolonial states were fighting for their independence. “Liberty” is more suited to the nature of these civs.
In fact, USA civ is too unique even without the 4th resource. Even adding 3-4 consecutive postcolonial civs (Mexico, Brazil, Gran Colombia and potentially Argentina) that would resemble mechanics and the number of unique USA civ content would be too diverse. Adding more mechanics etc is an unnecessary complication and exaggerated content for those civs.
They definitely need such changes European civs, which after the African DLC have become too outdated and boring in my opinion - too few mechanics, etc.
I’m working with the situation we have at the moment. I too would have prefered for the US to have remained only as a Revolutionary civ for the late game, but since the devs already made the decision to promote the US to primary civ, that’s what we will have to work with.
My big problem with the US is that it’s awkwardly designed. It’s in this weird gray zone between being a European Civ, sharing many of their buildings and units, and being a new type of civ with unique mechanics. I feel that it needs to detach itself from Europe a little more so it can really shine as a properly new kind of civ.
I also don’t like that the US is completely alone as the only “American” civ. All other civilizations fit within a certain group of civs with shared mechanics, but each with their own unique twist on it. Imagine how other countries could use the States(or Provinces) age-up mechanic, or how different nations could have different versions of the State Capitol with different upgrades.
Sure, Brazil, Gran Colombia, Mexico and the rest of the american nations never reached the global power status that the US did, but that doesn’t exclude them from being potential civs. All of them have plenty of history and culture, with a good dev team, you can create great content and gameplay for them, just like any other civ already in the game.
I will probably sadden you, but the USA did not even define as the Empire, unlike the two countries from this list that you think are only suitable as revolutions because they were not powers. Brazil declared independence as latest from this list - 46 years after the USA. A lot of people want the Brazilian civ after adding the USA civ.
Mexico
Brazil
Gran Colombia
Argentina
It seems to me that these civs could and would be even more interesting than the USA civ.
Personally I did not like the inclusion of the United States very much because it is against the argument of the game. They only bother me for that reason. If they improve the revolutions to a level that emerging facsions feel like entire empires, there will be no need to implement them as facsions proper.
It irritates me that they have so many Unique Units and other “uniqueness enhancers”. Besides, in place of the US revolution, they should give a new revolution, e.g. Australia - the simultaneous presence of the US revolution with the US civ is bizarre.
now that mexico is a reality, maybe Argentina could be to. is one of the largest countries in the south, a young history but full of events, cultures, influences, native peoples, factions, armies, and possibilities of ages, aesthetics, cities, and blah blah blah… or maybe all that you had mentioned, theyre all great and diverse
MUTYLATOR5553EntombedCurve02 I really liked how the gameplay and mechanics of Mexico look, but if the trend continues, where is the mechanics of revolutions?
A fourth resource would be interesting. For example, imagine that a European DLC arrives and the fourth resource is used in a building similar to the consulate where Europeans have access to technologies or riches of the new world that come from their colonies.
For example, you enter this building and depending on the colony you want to support more, it will give you certain bonuses and / or units. If you choose to support a colony in Yucatan, it will give you access to corn cultivation and the production of your mills will increase by 10%. If you wish to support a colony in the Caribbean Sea, you will have access to whale oil which translates into a supply of coins that would come from that colony.
