Stop putting words in my mouth. A definitive edition should extend the core gameplay of the game, not redact it. The core gameplay of aoe iii didn’t feature playable indian civs - fact.
So the core gameplay does not include playable “Indian” civs.
Which means you could just pretend they don’t exist and consider them as a new addition to DE.
Now why are you pissed because they are “redacted”?
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No it should not happen. The civ needs an archaic ranged infantry, regardless of the culture. No one will actively send villagers to fight instead of to gather resources.
But you can allow villagers to have bow skill and good attack stats, maybe by a card from age III or IV, like Warrior Culture. That will help the defense.
I seem to see a lot of descriptions about sexual orientation, but sexual orientation should not be a detail that games need to describe.
I can say again and again, it still makes sense.
It represents the level of attention people pay to an issue. When people discuss a certain issue, the handling of that issue by people will naturally become more active and helpful, until fewer people pay attention, or people focus on other issues instead. It’s a decent presentation, and in any case has nothing to do with stereotyping, there’s no reason why it has to be removed.
If you want to argue about making sense in the game, every civilization has something can be said about it.
How would one send an army to the other side of the world in seconds, no matter how far away? Why would the home country be willing to help just to receive something called “experience”?
Why don’t you have to pay for each cuirass worn by cavalry after spending a one-time cost to research cuirass? Why not have to pay regular salaries for every surviving military unit after spending a one-time cost of training? Why can the factories continuously generate resources without manufacturing costs and raw materials?
Even why must there be military buildings for a civilization to have military units? Why do you have to have something calles town center to increase the number of settlers? Why must there be a trading post to trade with natives?
This is the game, you can’t ask for real sense. Compared with the above examples, and even compared to the Maltese teleportation, the explanation about the plaza is a design making more sense.
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hot take:
The “concept” of the way the firepit/plaza works is not bad in and of itself. The real issue i take with it is that its too good to not use, everything is balanced (or unbalanced) around it and it costs too much.
Allow me to elaborate a bit. There is no fundamental way to ignore just how good the aztec 40% ish damage buff is in the lategame. Its really expensive, but its so strong you are Forced to use it. In fact, your units are quite weak without using it. But the disco / discussion also is supposed to be your train time advantage, which you also Must use to have any decent chance of keeping a good population count up. Aztec can’t get better train times because they have the disco instead. So now you get slow training, lower damage units balanced around a perpetually expensive “tech”. Its constantly costing you just to make your units on time, and strong enough simultaneously
If the techs were much weaker and cheaper, like 5 vills max, and could just be a tiny advantage to get a slightly better boom, an extra shipment, or a nice little 7 or 8% dmg buff in there. normalize power levels on units and buff train times, I could see the mechanic being rewarding, but not required, and greatly lower the skill ceiling.
But, as much stated above, the mechanic is also rooted in either very private cultural things, and stereotypes.
I’m not sure what the best answer is, honestly, but making the plaza even stronger and more accessible seems to be achieving the opposite of its intended outcome.
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But they’ve been a dlc before de.
Now why are you pissed because they are “redacted”?
Because I don’t want the original version to be redacted for woke reasons? For all i care, you could add the comanche or a new tribe and not have them mine or dance or be fun and perform all kinds of cancel culture on them because it’s the year 2023, just leave the pre-DE content as is. Otherwise - make a new game
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Read the damn paragraph. It explicitly describes the duties of three different societies, each of which were employed often as scouts. I don’t really care if you feel comfortable about it, it’s a completely different culture from your own.
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I think an eventual good compromise is to put more efforts into improving the visuals, animations, names and icons of the options, and their effects. Don’t just make the same few tents for every civ. Maybe add some more small civ-specific visuals and mechanics as well. Each native American civ could have their culture and religion more faithfully portrayed, instead of a group of people standing there waving their hands.
Like I’ve said before, this and the “tribal marketplace” just seem to me like the minimal effort to block criticism.
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The original version is there. Nobody has touched it for 15 years. Nobody ever will. You’re in safe hands.
I’m not sure which culture you’re from but I have a few good guesses. You’d be grateful coming from a culture which never NEEDs to be redacted for woke reasons because it rarely was portrayed offensively stereotypical in the first place.
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Remove the Plaza. The high-intensity micro just screws the mid-late game efficiency of these civs. They already lack good economies in the late game, forcing them to give up 15 additional villagers just to temporarily keep up with effects that other civs get as a baseline is just awful. No matter how the Plaza is tasked, it will never make up for the effects that other civs get and don’t have to micro for.
I really don’t understand why people are so attached to it. It’s not like it’s historical, it’s not like it’s an interesting depiction of Native culture, and it’s not like it’s well-implemented - it’s more like people are reaching for it simply because of nostalgia, and no other reason.
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The original version is there. Nobody has touched it for 15 years. Nobody ever will. You’re in safe hands.
In hindsight, yes. Too bad i already bought de though, on the assumption that it was definitive. But you’re correct - in general, purchasing games in 2023 isn’t a very smart move.
Wrong. The civ I’m from has just as many elements in this game that can be considered insulting or humiliating. I just don’t give a crap because it’s just a game
That’s why I also need to continuously add disclaimers like “without touching the core gameplay” in the ideas about many other things…
I have rather wild ideas on some other aspects and I tend to support writing about radical changes for the devs to look at but eventually it would be a compromise. The devs would take some of the ideas but still need to make it practical.
I think there are a few veteran native civ players who are pretty accustomed to their pacing and prefer it does not change, which is also the exact reason why not many people play these civs (their unique but odd pacing). Honestly I don’t know what would be a good move.
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I propose the wild ideas knowing that the devs will trim them down. There’s a fine line between too wild to be considered and potentially usable if we cut it down, but I’d rather walk that than give a weak compromise that solves nothing and changes little.
The civs have a 7.6% playrate, which is about half of what they should have (read upwards on this thread for that). Lakota are currently severely underperforming, and a tier chart I saw recently put them dead last. The Lakota, at least, could use a complete rework and a very small sect of players would be bothered.
The Haudenosaunee are more well-played and generally tend towards S or A positioning tier charts, but it’s usually due to their insanely fast rush abilities more than just about anything else. Realistically, they’re not played for any of their unique aspects, they’re solely played for their ability to do one thing super well.
If that one aspect can be preserved in some fashion, a rework would do them just fine as well.
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Yeah sure. I think practicality is not what we should really care about too much.
I wrote that because the post I’m replying to talks about practicality and the impact on the gameplay.
From what we can see easily, the European civs are played the most. They’re the simplest. They are followed by the Asian civs, which is likely because they can often do many of the same things.
The Natives and Africans are dead last - I think the Africans feel unpolished, like a solid idea, but one that wasn’t cleaned up particularly well before being used.
The Cattle gimmick requires a lot of micro, but this is one position where I’d argue that the high micro is fine - some civs should be hard to play, and the Africans fit this position.
The Native civs, however, are not that difficult to play. Everything about them is simple… except the Plaza. The Plaza requires more micro than everything else about them, and it’s not helpful to their gameplay, and it unnecessarily gimps their late-game, completely removing their viability from treaty games altogether.
The proposition I gave sets up the Tortuamerican civs with the potential of creating many more Native civs in the future, should the reworks prove popular, and simultaneously creates more simple gimmicks for the Natives that feel more natural to play. The Native civs revolved around natural resources already - they’re strong in the early game because of this. It’ll feel natural for players to try and push that advantage as long as possible, but they’ll still wear down in the late game (for all but the highest elo players) because they won’t be entirely capable of refreshing natural resources as they go, and they’ll still lean on the Three Sisters Garden for the bulk of their economies in the late-game.
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I don’t even know who you think you’re talking for since there’s been many, many, many threads claiming how the chinese civ is wrong and the many ways it could be fixed, most of those threads coming from the chinese community itself.
(Also they also fixed the voice lines because I mentioned how everything had grossly inaccurate accents in the TAD version of the game.)
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Hey, my discussion of this stuff has nothing to do with my personal feelings.
I never mentioned my feelings, so don’t try to assume I have a opinion and posted personal feelings about your culture.
I mean, you describe some reference to the potentual scout/spy unit in the game but also sexual orientation is really something that games don’t need to describe. We don’t need to know whether this French skirmisher or that British musketeer is straight, gay or trans. Maybe Winkte was a scout group historically made up of gay men, but in the game it’s just a name and a skin or a card after all.
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this sums up my above post quite well
the cattle are actually quite a solid bonus, and the units arent balanced around selling cows, just resource macro. it’s a good mechanic, although i agree they both feel unpolished
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The Winkte were a society of gay men and trans women, specifically chosen because of that.
You’re the one who avoided actually reading the three different scout groups I offered because one of them was based on being two-spirit.
Eh, my statement about the Africans feeling unpolished is more of a general thing. I’ll concede that the cattle gimmick is one of the things the civs do well - it’s other things, like their military being a little unclear or the fields being annoying, that feel unpolished.
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And I indeed read them. Can you stop labeling me?
I don’t care that much about why those scouts were chosen, any more than I care about the criteria by which the French Grenadier Guards are chosen. For me, it is enough to know that there are suitable references that can be used as units in the game.
There are so many things can be try before removing the plaza.
For example, the advanced plaza card can reduce the tasking limit from 25 people to 15 people (that is, the efficiency of each person is +66%), and allows the plaza to choose 2 or 3 ceremonies at the same time. To lower the micro requirement, maybe make the unit garrisoned instead of tasked on top of it, so that the entry and exit of people can be better controlled. Ceremonies can gain a base rate that increases with age advancing.
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