Haudenosaunee - a lategame, circus civilization

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
1

The Haudenosaunee is a lesser-played civilization in treaty mode. I always had a hunch, but then took some time to test them out in a skirmish game against Extreme AI. I learned the reason why -

Haudenosaunee

Military: Great, but literally loses half of its functionality when you’re out of wood.

Tomahawks are strong musketeer units and are great meat shields against heavy cav. Feels better at tearing heavy cav apart than Imperial Musketeers. Fights well on par against its European counterparts. But they are hard to mass when you’re shit out of wood.

22 range makes Forest Prowlers feel very nice, as you definitely feel like you’re sniping from afar. The extra 2 range makes it easier to engage with more enemies on the battlefield, and using the attack bonus from the community plaza gives you 47 x 3 attack against infantry, making them hit harder than Cassadors.

Cavalry is a different story.
The lower HP and wood cost on a Kanya horseman (hussar equivalent) blows. Yeah, it’s a cheaper unit at 100F and 75W, so I know it’s gonna get worse stats. But for 2 pop, it does sub-average at its job. I definitely felt them dying faster on the battlefield than hussars would, and it is not sustainable to mass them due to the heavy wood cost on your economy. 4/10 for what they’re worth, even considering that they’re cheaper units for cav. And even with the new update and the community plaza training time reduction, they still don’t train as fast as I’d like them to. But that’s just me. The reduced cav training big button was definitely necessary, so kudos to the devs for that.

Musket riders - not bad. It’s cheaper than a dragoon and has similar stats. But it feels expensive because your eco is crap. They do their job alright. They hit a little harder than Portugese dragoons if you use the community plaza attack bonus. I have no complaints about this unit.

Siege/artillery:
Seige Discipline - This card makes siege units cost 1 less population than normal, and it is an absolute beauty of a card. This makes seige rams and mantlets cost only 1 pop each and enables the Haudenosaunee to do some really fun plays with them. And light cannons will only cost 4 pop with this card. Pretty damn good for a cannon if you ask me.

Costing 1 pop makes mantlets extremely useful in battle. It’s very, very nice having 10-12 on these on the front line. When fully upgraded, they can have 900+HP and 0.50 ranged resist. They are GREAT at screening and protecting your units, ESPECIALLY for just 1 pop. (What other unit gives you 900+ HP with 0.50 ranged resist for 1 pop?? And they have 100+ attack too, so they’re not just sitting ducks.) But once again, this strategy is not sustainable because of the high demand on wood late-game. It’s such a good unit, but you can’t use it all the time cause you’re broke.

This siege ram is also a lesser-known superstar. With the Siege Discipline card, it only costs 1-pop, again for a siege unit. When fully upgraded with the other siege cards, I remember seeing him have like 167 siege attack (can’t remember exactly). In terms of comparing population, an Imperial oprichnick can around like ~150 x 1.25 for 2 pop (187.5 siege attack). But 2 of these guys will give 334 damage for the same amount of pop. And since they only cost 1-pop cost, it makes it so easy to flank with them on the side while you fight the main fight. They are amazingly excellent at their job. 5 of them can take a building down in less than 12 seconds. But yet again, it’s not sustainable because of the drain on wood.

Light cannons. Eh. For killing units, they are the middle ground between a falconet and a culverin. 4-5 of them are pretty effective together at taking down masses of 20-30 infantry. But the greatest thing about this unit is that it has 32 range and 4 population cost with the Siege Discipline card. With 32 range, you can literally use this as a culverin and snipe out enemy cannons before they come at you. They don’t do a bad job of tearing up mass infantry, and you can even somewhat fight culverins if have to engage them in a culverin war. At 4 pop each, your army feels slightly more versatile and not as “stuffed” compared to European civs. I actually really like these units a lot.

Eco: Sub-average. And the biggest weakness is the lack of WOOD.

Booming, you always feel like you’re behind. When you hit Age 3, you can make 2 more TC’s and spam settlers faster than Russia with 25 villagers on the community plaza. Even if you hit 99 villagers much faster before the other civs, you will still watch your eco fall behind due to the lack of eco cards and economic upgrades available for you. Luckily, you have fur trade. Despite using this at 35 minutes in NR40, I was still behind in score, but I was able to get all my unit upgrades to Legendary, with some decent amount of food and gold to start with, but very little wood.

After getting all your Legendary upgrades and building walls and gates, I was low on wood (1-2k). This is already bad, cause making 40 tomahawks takes 1k wood by itself. And I didn’t even make Kanya horseman or cannons yet.

I had like 10-15 villagers gathering wood on the side, but it still wasn’t enough. I wish I had the factory, or buildings that made free wood for me.

Not even like 15 minutes into the fight, I had to stop using cannons, rams, tomahawks, and Kanya horsemen frequently, and relied on the 500W from the infinite Age 4 card every few minutes. It was not a good time. I literally just had to rely on Forest Prowler/Musket Rider (a skirm/goon combo), and that was still hard pull off because the enemy kept using artillery against me. What did I have? I had to pull back my infantry and flank with my Musket Riders to manage. Where’s my light cannons at? I also didn’t have anything to effectively siege with half the time.

Hell, I could still win fights, but I didn’t even have enough wood to build an FB to claim my well-fought land. What’s the point of having cards that enable you to build extra War Huts if you don’t even have wood to build them?

???

TL/DR: In the late-game, Haudenosaunee can’t do shit without wood. It was like boxing with one arm.

The Haudenosaunee is actually a GREAT civilization, with a lot of potential in treaty. But man, the lack of a reliable wood source really kills the civ’s endgame. They literally live in the woods, how do you lack it?

A wood trickle wouldn’t be enough. I was struggling with 500W every few minutes from the infinite shipment. That’s like being forced to only use 20 tomahawks, a few Kanya horsemen, or 1-2 cannons in that time, but you can’t mix them. If the fight any more intense, you’re out of luck.

Even an infinite shipment of 800W would be manageable. An infinite 1000W shipment in Age 4 would be even more doable. Compare this civ to India!

Haudenosaunee needs a lategame wood option?
  • Yes, it makes sense. Give them wood
  • No, they are fine or OP for some reason.
0 voters
7 Likes
2

I think it has a great lack of wood, as I already proposed in another topic, proportional the ability to generate forest travois, similar to Grove Rickshaw, with a limit of 5000 w or infinity (although it is already something a little broken), it would be good for late game and would also make a very good skill for team games. To balance them, give a penalty on collecting wood and a collecting limit of up to 10 villagers, similar to how mills work. Another alternative is to provide a card similar to the one the Aztecs possess, which allows you to exchange the costs of wood for gold.

2 Likes
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5000W will still only delay the inevitable. I think that is a great idea if they could generate an infinite source of it, with a check like you said. A limit of 10 villagers on that forest travois and shipments of 500W on top of that would suffice.

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My idea would be that in the industrial age they could generate these travois at the community plaza, and that it is not like the Indian who has to request them as shipments and in a limited way (incidentally, India could also obtain a way to generate these travois without having to ask you by sending).
On the other hand, I would like to add a comment that does not seek to generate controversy with anyone, I do not know the haud culture very well and I know that the developers have expert advisers on these matters, it would be good to consult them if they can think of a good way to provide wood to the civilization without threatening its culture and history.

2 Likes
5

My view is also that the Haudenosaunee should have a late-game option like a card or a Big Button upgrade for switching the wood cost of Tomahawks and Kanya Horsemen to gold. I do not think that the problem can be solved with resource shipments, although it may work to give them something like Mangroves.

3 Likes
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I agree there is no good reasons not give them an option for the wood issue Late Game. After all, most civs already have an easy access to infinite wood.

Maybe a card that make Farmers slowly generate wood would be nice and thematic?

There surely is more to be done with the crap eco overall, but a good start would be to at least add a tech in the Estate to give 30% increase to coin. Why do Natives only get a 90% increase when Europeans get 110% and Asian 120%? (without cards, this is just the tech tree, but anyway in general Natives have worst eco cards than the others also…)

Something also has to be said about the over reliance on the Community Plaza for Natives to accomplish basically the same things Europeans can do by default with some cards + techs in LATE GAME.

Did you know that Europeans cavalry with card + church tech is created faster than Lakota and Haude cav EVEN with 25 villagers on the Community Plaza?
European : -85% training time (Riding Shool + Mass Cavalry + Immigrants)
Lakota: -84.5% (Riding School + 25 vill Plaza + FREE immigrant bonus upon reaching Imp)
Haudenosaunee: -83% (New Big Button + 25 vill Plaza + Immigrants)

This is because the 224% faster speed of creation only apply to the remaining creation time of the units (after discounts), so it has less impact the more discounts you get. For infantry, the Haude get the same reduction of 83%, better than Europeans at -75%.

In Supremacy games, the easy access to the Community Plaza makes an interesting option for Natives, but in Late Game/Treaty, needing 25 villagers to get the same result the Europeans get without any sacrifice seems unfair at best. (The Europeans techs are pricey, but so is keeping 25 villagers on the Plaza)

More or less the same can be said about the War Ceremony. The 28% attack increase is pretty good, but most Europeans civs do have access to many more cards than Natives to upgrade. Just the Advance Arsenal gives 10% HP and 15% Attack to Infantry PERMANENTLY. Haude infantry cards are pretty good however, but it is not the same for Lakota infantry who have close to nothing.

7

Chinese old han Army need it too!!!

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Chinese have Factory and Wood trickle from the Consulate, and Porcelain Tower, plus Sumptuary Laws.
They absolutely do not need any more resource generation in the lategame.

Hauds should have a ceremony for spawning Mantlets in the Community Plaza, like all other Native civs that can also spawn a unit with the CP.

4 Likes
9

I thought about the same thing too, just like how they did it for the Aztecs in the recent patch. But then again, that would also mean that they would need to increase the gold gathering rate too, to support the change. It still wouldn’t fix the wood issue for their artillery needs, but at least they’d now still have access to their musk/huss-type units.

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That goes for all native civs except for Incans, they’re all absolutely useless on Treaty; all they need is a dance that acts as a factory and boom, suddenly viable (although still severely gimped because of their lack of artillery and ships)

1 Like
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I don’t think Community Plaza ceremonies should be the answer to the wood problem. To put the CP on wood for any significant amount of time would essentially negate any use you could get out of the CP for speeding up unit production time or increasing unit damage.

2 Likes
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Why not?
It works for Incas.

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From my experience, it does not, but I am not a high-level player, so I might just not be using it right. However, the European and Asian civs (except for India) all have buildings that can generate wood for them passively. They do not need to sacrifice their wood production capabilities for any amount of time to increase unit production speed or to increase unit damage, and, oftentimes, their staple units do not cost wood anyway. My issue is mostly with the Haudenosaunee’s wood supply in the late-game. Their unit production time lags behind that of the European and Asian civs quite a bit without the CP on the Fertility Ceremony. I consider it unfair towards them to have to sacrifice that in order to obtain wood for what are essentially their Musketeers and Hussars. The Aztecs and Lakota are not as hamstrung by a lack of wood in the late game due to their best units not costing wood.

14

As a Siege civ, Hauds would always need a lot of Wood. Kanya Horseman needing Wood was always weird to me, and never made much sense, but I can understand Tomahawks needing it, since they are not just Musks, but also Pikes, and you have to consider the Aena cost only Food, and are the only military unit in the game to cost only Food.

Kanyas should cost Gold instead of Wood, but Tomahawks costing Wood is very understandeable, when Aenas cost only Food and Forest Prowlers cost Food and Gold.

I still think Hauds could really use a ceremony to spawn Mantlets, like other civs spawn their elite units.

15

Aenna are definitely great in the earlier stages of the game because of their food-only cost, but their lower range and lack of benefit from Counter Infantry Rifling make them a poor skirmisher option later in the game compared to the Forest Prowler. The option to spawn Mantlets from the CP would be cool, as long as it does not come at the cost of being able to train them. I don’t think that should be an answer to the wood problem, though, but that is not necessarily what you are implying. I agree that the Haudenosaunee are already a wood-heavy civ because of their siege capabilities. I think that is part of why the wood cost of the Kanya Horsemen and the Tomahawk in the late-game is problematic.

1 Like
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Aenna do benefit from Infantry Breastplate, however, and have a few other cards to boost them up, and they are all Age 2, not to mention that most of them also improve Tomahawks and Mantlets.
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They are never a great unit, but for the price (only 100 Food, same as a Villager) they do turn out quite good.

Incas can both train and Spawn Macemen, so I do not see why Mantlets would be any different.

17

Very true. Conservative Tactics especially is a very nice card to use with them.

Regarding the Mantlets, I was thinking of the Tokala Soldier and the Skull Knight. I’d rather have the option to train those, even at high costs, than to have to sacrifice unit production speed or the damage boost from the CP in order to obtain them.

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The issue is that the Skull Knight and the Tokala, are units that are not only much more powerful than normal, but also already have normal unit variants (Lakota have 2 Hand Cavalry to train, and Aztecs have Jaguar Warriors as Heavy Hand Infantry), while Macemen and Mantlets do not have either of those issues.

There is no Hauds unit that clashes in role with the Mantlet, and it is not particularly powerful unless you actually upgrade them with cards.

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A thematic approach to the Haud’s wood problem would be to give them unique farms that grow trees on one side instead of herdables, and then letting villagers cut down the trees. Each tree would take X seconds to grow to full amount and Haud’s would get access to a Livestock Pen replacement for cows and whatnot. This would mirror the Haud’s traditional agrarian methods focused on sustainability and solve their wood issue in-game.

4 Likes
20

I’d personally prefer them to stay as trainable units from the Siege Workshop, but made viable with access to late-game wood. The Warchief civs are already at a disadvantage in terms of economy and technology to the European ones. I put my CP on as a hotkey and kept switching ceremonial dances to squeeze all the effects I needed out of the civ. I don’t like the idea of using my CP to make mantlets when I could be using it to train units faster or increase their damage.

I like that. I’m no expert on their culture, but as a gamer, I think the civ needs their late-game potential unlocked for sure.