Haiti

The Haitan revolution could really do with an update or a rework, if you ask me. As it stands, Haiti has a very small home city deck that doesn’t really seem to do much for them in terms of flavor. There’s a heavy focus on Pirates, and it kinda glosses over the Hatian revolution at large.
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There’s 7 cards, with some regular revolutionary cards that ship forts and citizens, with the other cards shipping Falconets, Tupi Blowgunners, Privateers, and their most interesting card, which allows Pirates to use a ranged attack, collect from treasures at a double value, and allows Privateers to generate extra coin.

I think there’s a couple interesting upgrades that could be done to Haiti. I think they should give a card, like the Barbary States, that ships a Pirate captain, which acts as a second explorer. I also think, that instead of passive coin generation from Privateers, they could instead grant coin with every ship or building killed, which I think would be a lot more flavorful for pirates, if they want to go in that direction. They could also add cards relating to the Haitan Revolution itself, maybe with some German and Polish mercenaries/settlers that were historically spared in the Revolution. Maybe some Polish Winged Hussars and some German Settler Wagons? There could also be some cards tying it over to its African roots as well, maybe getting a couple Hausa units or African Mercenaries involved.

I also think it could be made a bit more available to different Civs overall. Maybe the British, since the Haitians were available to the British in the original AoE3, or maybe the Maltese. Not because of specific connections to Haiti, but they were in the Caribbean isles and that could be a revolution to help represent that, also another pirate choice besides the Barbary States.

Anyway, I just wanted to bring attention to this topic since I just did a Revolutionary Haiti game as France and I wanted to put the spotlight on it, since other revolutions like Argentina and Gran Colombia had received new cards and a bit of a soft expansion in the latest update, and I think Haiti is a good target for the next update, what do you think?

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There’s literally nothing Haitian about the Haiti Revolution, which is somewhere between sad and dumb.

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I’ve posted on this a couple of times if you search for Haiti.

The bottom line is that whilst Pre-Haiti San Domingue and Hispaniola as a whole was a Flibustier/Pirate haven (more precisely, Petit Goave and the island, Tortuga) this was way before, so is completely absurd to represent an independent late 18th/early 19th century, black Haitian civ with a Euro-flavoured pirate civ of the 1600s.

Revolutionary Haiti units suggestions (taken from a previous post)

  • Toussaint Louverture - Mounted Leader unit
  • Haitian Infantry - Musketeers (in Euro-French style of attire)
  • Haitian Chassuers - Skirmishers with Stealth Ability
  • Guerillas - Melee Shock Infantry with Stealth Ability
  • Vodou Shaman - Healer unit (Vodou was a substantial element in the background of the revolution - the Haitians wanted to get rid of the forced Catholicism from the French and be free to make Vodou (Voodoo) the predominate religion) - this is not a novelty thing, it’s completely within context.
  • Lakous Wagons - wagons that build a Lakous (self-sufficient family compounds)- which ingame would be a large structure of connected houses (providing more pop than standard houses) as well as farming space within for villagers to farm food. Like a scaled-down Hacienda.
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About Polish - better wait for Poles civ. Winged Hussars in Haiti sounds dumb. Uhlan speaking in Polish will be a definitely better. Maybe Polish Legionaries of Duchy of Warsaw (Napoleonic Wars) would be also good unit for Haiti.

About German - maybe give Haiti shipment of Mercenary Camp and also shipment of Settler Wagon. Germantown Card from Germans Home City also would be great for Haiti. Hessian Jaeger also would be nice.

I find it so weird that people feel compelled to talk about subjects they put zero research into.

Anyways, for actual unique unit names:

  • Pickets, although not precisely a name unique to Haiti, are nonetheless iconic of the Haitian Revolution, just these groups of reconoissance, light infantry units carrying little more than guns have become one of the most important remembered aspects of their independence struggle.
  • Cacos have muddy origins on… some part of the early 19th century, even though they are “most” known for the US invasion of the island around 1915. Long story short they were mountain brigands who every now and then offered their services to whoever was willing to pay. Not that they were too reliable tho.
  • Zinglins are rather difficult to research because they don’t really have a standardized spelling of their name, I’ve also seen them spelled like Zinglits, Zin Lings, Zing Lits and many, many more variations. They were basically the private militia of Faustin Soulouque, one of the emperors of Haiti (yeah, people declared themselves emperors of this tiny nation at least twice.)
  • Someone upthread mentioned african body guards in Haiti, and they were right! Henry Christophe brought a personal bodyguard directly from Africa to secure his legitimacy. They were not Hausa though, they were the Royal Dahomets, conveniently enough, we do have a Dahomey mercenary already ingame! The Amazons, who’d make a really good shipment for this revolution.
  • If we want something resembling just a generic guerrilla unit, we could go with Mawon, which is the local spelling of the word Maroon, very fitting for the whole idea of the Revolution imo.

Oh yeah, Voodoo priests are called “Oungan”, which to be fair would be appropiate here since Voodoo is sort of an extra-official second main religion in the island and one of the things the country is most known for. Lakous are probably also very good card material, the description in that post is pretty accurate to what they are. Maybe worth noting that they normally have a Peristil in the middle, a sort of Voodoo Shrine.

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