Haudenosaunee (Iroquois): In Concept and Practice

If I can use my own country as a basis, native tribes kinda work like ambiguously existent para-governments, so their representatives’ words sometimes have official power kinda like those from the representative of a fully fledged country would. Obviously, most people don’t worry about this kind of representation enough to make these demands (unless it’s something more de jure like Persia changing its official name to Iran) but for some reason native tribes do.

Native nations in the US are sovereign nations in their own right, and they tend to on the lookout for media involving usage of Native American images. We deal with a lot of problematic portrayals and try to work with media to avoid problematic stereotypes because it can genuinely lead to less crime on the Reservations - it’s not uncommon for non-Native peoples to go to the Reservations to commit crime because of one reason for another.

It’s also to try and push the younger generations of the tribes into pursuing a higher education and try and work towards fixing things on the Reservations. There’s a lot of reasons behind it, but it works in the favor of the tribes in the long run to keep an eye out for things like this.

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Yikes, I’d appreciate it if we didn’t have AoE3 exclusive arguments here when there’s literally a whole forum for that. It just kind of bloats the thread and makes it less accessible for people who are here for civ design/AoE2. Frankly I’d rather not talk about AoE3 here at all except as it may share considerations that are relevant to my designs. My goal is to create historically inspired civs that are viable and pay homage to the nations/cultures that inspired them. Beyond that, I’d rather not get bogged down in unnecessary drama.

While in general I’m not concerned with whether something is considered “offensive” by small groups (any more than I’m concerned with whether it’s “accurate” that the Aztecs get Trebuchets), in cases where Tribes or Nations have specifically spoken against something, I consider that to be worthy of respect. If that wasn’t clear enough in the Hisatsinom thread, let it be clear now.

That seems a little hyperbolic. I get that there are a lot of difficulties with the lack of records, and a lot of things would have to be filled in with educated guesses or comparisons to cultures descended from the Mississippians. But the region was vast and fairly important in its time, and there’s really no comparable civ in that area. Furthermore, if civs like the Haudenosaunee and Taino are ever added, it would be nice for them to have someone to fight besides the Spanish or Aztecs. Otherwise you end up with silly situations like the Incas who are alone in South America and have to fight other Incas in their campaign :rofl: To me, it’s worth making the best possible presentation of a Mississippian civ, and if it ends up lacking too much in key areas, so be it. If nothing else it would be great to have a handful of Mississippian units/buildings in the Editor.

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Unfortunately, it’s really not. We don’t even know what cultures came from the Mississippians, only that some did. Personally, I think fewer nations came from the Mississippians than people think - for example, the Seven Fires are sometimes theorized to have come from the Mississippians, but I doubt this - the Lakota, one of the Seven Fires, has religious rites tied to the stars that date back almost 3k years. This puts them on the prairies significantly longer than the Mississippians ever existed, and before they were a culture.

If we at least knew for sure which cultures came from the Mississippians, this might be a possibility, but we really don’t even know that.

Be that as it may, I personally consider some level of coverage for this area important enough to risk making a design that turns out to be somewhat ahistorical. On the bright side, this arguably gives a great deal of design flexibility, but I will try to keep it as anchored as possible to what is known.

This in theory is similar to how it works in my country, except:

  1. The cases where a native “country” is actually considered a country and those where it’s considered just an extension of the containing national territory don’t have a clear distinction and seem mostly arbitrary.
  2. Afaik, even natives care more about being represented at all than being faithfully represented and don’t bother too much (especially if it’s a romanticizing representation, like the one you used as an example), even considered their poor situation (probably even worse than what you described).

I think this contributes to me simply not understanding the point (at least point 2, considering how little people tend to care about this type of requests coming from other countries), but I admit this might be too off-topic at this point.

I mean, like I said above, maybe, but at the same time I think it’s relevant if this is an actual suggestion and not just some “for fun” thread for the sole sake of throwing ideas around. Granted, I simply assumed it’s the former, so my bad if I ended up causing all this fuss for nothing.

Isn’t this contradictory?

Exception or clarification =/= contradiction. It’s the difference between paying attention to some oversensitive SJW type and paying attention to a representative organization that has some gravitas and that advocates for its peoples’ interests (i.e. the Tribal Nations in question).

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Speaking of AoE3 though, the one think I like about their design that I think is applicable to this civ is the Mantlet. I’ve added it as a secondary UU that replaces the Siege Tower for the Haudenosaunee.

Mantlet:
Slow moving siege unit that launches multiple spears with a small anti-archer bonus, and can be used to scale walls when adjacent. Units behind the Mantlet take 1/2 damage from ranged attacks.

Mantlet

Mantlet Stats

HP: 185 Speed 0.8 Attack: 4 (3 Spears), +2 vs. Archers, +2 vs. Cavalry Archers. Armor: 0/8
Range: 7 Reload Time 2.0 Does not garrison, but units tasked into it are dropped off on the other side when adjacent to a wall, like a siege ladder.
220 W 140 G

-Also added AI names, Wonder, and the obvious campaign choice.

This is just one point I want to make. The Huns and Cuman wonders were buildings they took over, hence the ruined state, they didn’t build them. So not sure how you would make something up as easily while still having a basis in reality, although I’m sure it would be possible.

Sure, the point is to pick something iconic about the civ that can be represented with an impressive building. If you can find a named structure that’s still standing, all the better (although IIRC even some of the wonders that most closely resemble a specific structure have features that are a combination of multiple known buildings as well, like the Franks’ Wonder). But the Cuman & Hun wonders establish the precedent of it not necessarily referring to a specific building, among other things.

In this case, the Haudenosaunee were famous for their Longhouses, some of which were very large, and that attribute isn’t yet reflected in their design, so the Longhouse of one of their famous leaders seems like a solid choice, (and is likely to have existed as well).

Both of them are based on the buildings, albeit in their ruined form. The Cuman wonder is based on Sarkel Fortress, and the Hunnic one on the Arch of Constantine.

They could have a wonder based on a village
It would be novel for the game

I’m going with a Longhouse, so sort of similar, but more iconic for them. A village might be needed for the Taino/Caribs or something, but we’ll figure that out later.

Anyway, I’ve made a visual tech tree, added in OP.

Also, credit to @Seicing for the Civ Icon.

No one single person “owned” a Longhouse. They were massive buildings because they would have a couple families living in them, and when the Haudenosaunee were at their strongest, these could house up to 100 people.

If one were to make a significantly asymmetric design for the Haudenosaunee, the Longhouse would replace the Town Center and each Longhouse would be unique and named for a specific clan and bring a unique upgrade.

I’m aware of this on some level, there just isn’t really a good shorthand way of expressing this in English. I mean it in the same sense that you would say the Country of John/John’s Country - it’s not that John “owns” the country but that he belongs to it, or he is associated with it and part of its community. So the intent was a Longhouse which would have been used or somewhat associated with one of their leaders, but in English it’s hard to use genitive without implying possession. If anything, the Longhouse could be associated with a specific tribe (maybe Onondaga as Keepers of the Fire), or the wonder could represent the meeting place of the Grand Council.

Unfortunately that would be too asymmetric for the base civ design given the constraints of the game and community (but would certainly be worth doing in their campaign). While I prefer the mechanics of AoE2, there’s unfortunately far less room for civ differentiation than in AoE3 or 4. I’d love to make the civ far more unique, but some people already get butthurt when I suggest a civ with 1 or 2 more unique attributes than any other civ has (6 being the highest currently).

I am aware that AoE2 is basically completely symmetric civs, so I can’t fault you with that. I’ll offer advice as I can, but ultimately, I don’t think AoE, AoE2 or AoE4 offer enough asymmetry from Eurocentric foundations to offer good gameplay designs for Native American civs. Only AoE3 and AoM are inherently asymmetric enough for potentially good Native American designs, and AoE3 is still pushing the boundary of too symmetric for good design - the Lakota and Hauds present in that game are problematic at best and downright stereotypically harmful at worst.

Again, using my own country as a base, so I don’t know how well it translates to the US, but I think most people would care more about being represented at all than being misrepresented, unless it’s something outrageous.

From what I can tell, Native Americans would rather not be represented at all than represented poorly, or without any input from us.

I think it’s just the definition of “poorly” that varies in this case.

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A poor representation would be acceptable if there were Native voices in the making of the thing at hand - an example of this would be the Lakota and Haudenosaunee civs from AoE3.
If those two civs were made any worse, I think Anthony Brave would have asked for the two civs to be removed outright. I’m still on the verge of asking for that, as both have major issues that stem from the Eurocentric design of the game.