For the love of God, change this mechanic for natives of Ethiopia and Mexico

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
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This change only affects modes that involve the late game such as team games, FFA and mainly the treaty, sup mode does not abuse this mechanic, so don’t come to me with comments “the game cannot be balanced around the treaty”, for The modes mentioned above are the only ones that suffer from this and this mechanic needs to change urgently.
The natives of age ups don’t count population and you can catch several of them with these civs

In the case of Ethiopia they are: Somalis, Sudanese and Jesuits, with the prominent units being:
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In the case of Mexico they are: Jesuitsa and Aztec Pueblos, with the prominent units being:
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honorable mention to the Hausa who also manage to have access to the Berbers, Akan and Yuruba, however Hausa is less problematic as their units are not insanely strong like those in Mexico and Ethiopia.

I’ll give a classic example of a match up on the Andes map, with both sides using the map’s natives, a player with a conventional civ will have 46 more units, due to the map’s natives being 26 Quechua Huaminca and 20 Quechua Bolas Warrior.
Now if you are mexico or hausa or ethipia this number is much more, in the case of mexico it is 78 more units, in the case of ethipia it is fucking 95 more units on the andes map.
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This is if we are looking at a 1v1 scenario, in team games things are much worse because one player can use the natives on the map and another can take Mexico, Hausa or Ethiopia and use the native build, so two players will have natives while on the other side only 1, which will result in a shortage of around 40-30 units in the fight.

and basically you will lose the game because of these extra units, because either you will be drained because the mass of the enemy’s army is greater or you will lose territory in a violent push.

either all civs have access to free pop natives or none do, because you can’t play against it.

One solution that I see would be the V age age up option, which allows native units to enable the training of these units in indigenous embassies, or cards that enable the training of native units free of charge, to try to reduce this population gap that the build of natives of mexico, ethiopia and hausa generate.

Another alternative would be to remove this free pop nats mechanic and leave only natives on the map as free pop.

because it’s unhealthy, play against it, it’s stressful, you can’t do anything against it.

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Civs have strengths and weaknesses, africans have no factories in late game and some civs can do huge overpops like aztec for example. This just happens to be a particular strength of ethiopia, also if mexico chooses those age up options they are sacrificing potentially better options.

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These civs are the top two for treaty tho because neither really have any weakness.

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Don’t forget ethiopian has mountain monasteries that boost units and buildings HP in a large range by 10% based on the FINAL HP of units.

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i suggest a -x% gather rate/-x% unit strength aura to each different civ in treaty mode. the x-number to be dramatically iterated out of all treaty game each patch until it meet 50±2 avg win rate.

maybe we can stop the treaty balance issue right here, not affecting supremacy

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This is not true for these two civilizations in the sense that, without counting the nats, they have perhaps one of the best and strongest armies in the late game that compensate for their low coin generation, in addition to both having economic tricks that compensate for this. To this we must add the auras both civs have, which makes the game even more unbalanced. I think the best solution is to simply make these units cost population, since for example, European civs when they acquire access to natives (like the French or Germans), they cost pop, which for balance is fine. However, I think that civs like Hausa and Inca should have some bonus that offsets the population cost of their natives, since it would be a good nerf for those two civs, perhaps not so serious for the Inca.

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in case of mexico it is somewhat related to supremacy actually. Both Chimayó Genziosas and Native treaties scale based on how many native alliances you have. With mexico getting not one but two new alliances you can get up to 7k res in units/upgrades out of Chimayó which you pay only 1 card and 1k res for and Native Treaties gives up to 2k res as an age2 shipment

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Absolutely not. This would destroy their usefulness early on. At least for Ethiopia they’re already very expensive prior to sending Loyal Warriors and adding a population requirement would doom them.

For the Africans, I would like to see natives go from a pure influence cost to influence + wood so that they are more attainable in the early game but also harder to sustain in the late game. Very late game influence generation could also be toned down a bit.

This approach is dumb. Making natives have a population cost muddles what they’re supposed to be and in several cases they still have a build limit. I’d much prefer just giving everyone reliable access to a limited number of 0 pop natives in the late game so that civs that already have them don’t have such an overwhelming advantage.

Inspiring flags are easily the stupidest thing in the game. I would welcome their removal. The MM aura also isn’t a great mechanic.

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It gets ridicolous due to travois spamming plus their huge HP and aura.

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I’m saying it isn’t a good design. Not that it isn’t strong.

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exactly, a civ with one of the best boom and sustain in the game, with very strong units that will fight with 32 more units without costing pop and without ###### #### of the map.
12 of these units are fucking goons with 48 area damage and 8 eagle runners.
Try this treaty build on FFA, you won’t regret it

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It is easier to make them cost population and balance around it to compensate for this in the early game, since only 5 civs can train natives without population, than to give all civs cards/bonuses to have natives without population. This would mean creating many cards and corresponding mechanics. The aura of the mountain monastery is too powerful; it significantly boosts the hit points of all Ethiopian units. While this may not be entirely practical in supremacy where you typically move across the map quickly, it is quite useful in treaty games. Additionally, the mountain monastery is quite difficult to destroy as it can have up to 7000 hit points. I don’t think nerfing auras is the key. Perhaps just making natives cost population and nerfing broken units (chinacos/javalines) is enough

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Which they have already been steadily doing to integrate all new features into the old civs. Just reuse a lot of the existing cards like Reconquista, Prince-Electors, Ancien Regime, etc and make them allow a limited number of zero pop natives.

I know what it does and I’m not disputing its strength. I meant it’s not a great mechanic.

Javelin Riders have gotten a ton of nerfs and are pretty reasonable now. They aren’t totally broken broken like Chinacos.

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Ça râle déjà à propos de la France avec ses unités Bourbons trop puissantes via les améliorations indigènes avec pop, alors sans ce serais le mur des lamentations.

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That’s mainly an issue with overtuned Euro native roided up with French cards. They can still get those natives zero pop on some maps.

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En ce cas il ne faudrait pas réduire la puissance des natifs européens ou bien up les natifs amérindiens et asiatiques ?

Je dirais pour les européens et les africains qu’ils ne ne sont pas à plaindre par rapport aux autres.