Healers at Co.munity Plaza (August PUP

With healing wheel HC card that boost healers working at plaza, whats the point of priestesses?? They cost pop slots for a same work rate. Also aztecs suffer from this change, as their civ feature is to have a stronger plaza than others.

Add to this the fact that fertility dance is less powerfull to train villagers, another hit to their boom capanilities.

What do you think??

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I think the Community Plazas are stupid stereotypes and the civs need to be rebalanced without them entirely and given a new cultural “gimmick” - and while we’re at it, split the Hauds and Lakota from the Aztecs and Incans.

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I think this wheel HC card should send an extra healer, this card has no value to use in age1 at the moment

Devs wont do that, they wont remove a core mechanic of that civs.

Its thought to balance treaty matches I guess, to avoid losing villagers there.

I understand it BUT:

  • 1st of all when incas were added they get a special healer too, at least She cost 2pop slots unlike WP. Then devs changed it to 1pop. Ok special healers are a feature of native empires in contraposition to northerns tribal ones.

  • Now everyone can work at plaza with healers, if they send the card they become as strong as priestesses, so…Why priestesses?

  • With the card northern plazas reach 30 workers (10x1.5 + 15/15 villagers and pop slots) while aztecs reach 35 (10x2 + 15/ 15v and pop). Inca are the worst as they need to spend 30pop for 30 dancers if tvey want the max effect.

Inca and aztecs needed that plazas cause their lack of cavalry and artillery. Tribal units are strong enough as they are currently

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Perhaps the Aztec and Inca healers should also get better with the change, or maybe there could be the another card to make their healers better again than the native North American healers who got the card effect.

Villagers no longer dance around the fire, but gather in one place to discuss public affairs. How can this still make people dissatisfied?

Whether it’s a firepit, a plaza, or some other type of building, or even no longer a building, some core elements still have to be maintained. That is, let some villagers create special effects and abilities for the civilization by not gathering resources.

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The point is to remove that - reskinning the firepit doesn’t remove the fact that it’s still perpetuating the “magical woodland elf” stereotype. The villagers aren’t doing anything on the Plaza that makes sense, they’re still essentially waving their hands and magically making things happen across the map.

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And Spanish Missionaries magically make their soldiers stronger?

I don’t like the Plaza either but it’s not the only case of “magic” in the game.

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European soldiers carried unlimited ammunition. Asians can make allies at consulates with Western countries that are at war with it. African princes even have the ability to make beasts kill each other. So the game we played was Harry Potter?

Here, it’s not a stereotype, it’s how the game is designed.

I remember they actually do something. All the villagers looked at a speaker and listen quietly to him/her, who sometimes raised the arms to show how enthusiastic he/she gives a speech. Maybe ask the dev to give them more detailed actions, similar to the villagers at the tribal market will take care of the fur and so on.

Let us take a broader perspective to understand the existence of the plaza. There, people discuss, listen, and express opinions, which in turn determine the tribe’s policies.

The villagers decide to pay more attention to the struggle against the enemy, and gathered together to discuss tactics, so the army became more aware of how to fight the enemy (attack increased). Decide to focus on economic development, so have the opportunity to give back more resources to the home city, and to get more help (XP and shipments) from the home city. Decide to focus on population development, so the families of the tribe were better cared for, and the population of the tribe grew faster and had more warriors and farmers…

Basically, it’s a tribal “capitol”. Based on this, it can even be requested that those capitol techs at TC should be moved to the plaza to be more in line with its meaning.

If we’re okay with the European capitols as well as the existence of all techs (just one click and it works all over the map), I don’t see why a more realistic plaza would be considered magic.

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30 range wololo for inca

25 wp overpop for aztec - 20 if too op

Historically it’s kind of accurate, because the presence of priests in the armies served as something motivational. Even today, there are chaplains for most of the armies of European and American countries, even if the states are secular.

According to Which civilizations do you like the most? (MEGAPOLL) the Lakota and Haudenosaunee are the least and the 3rd least popular civilisations right now.

Aztecs and Inca a lot more popular but the Community Plaza makes less sense for them. It was designed around North American Indian stereotypes.

The Lakota rework didn’t help them to get more popular.

Maybe a bigger redesign of both of them would be a good idea.

Aztecs and Inca would be better of with something like a temple instead of of Plaza too.

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As far as I can tell, aura boosts are based on raising moral of an army, which makes sense.

Talking about a problem and somehow making a massive different from across the map makes no sense and is still just a reskin of the firepit with no problematic issues taken out.

(And yes, I have the same issues with the Asian Wonders that do this, like the Golden Pavilion or the Temple of Heaven - the Tower of Victory is questionable, but it could be seen as just a momentary moral booster from leaders.)

IMO the Hauds and Lakota need to be a different “culture” than the Aztecs and Incans - the two sets of civs are about as related as the Mongols are to the English. Grouping them into a singular playstyle is inane. (Again, I am aware that the Incans and Aztecs aren’t anything alike either, but I’m playing fast and loose with what I got.)

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Now that they’re actually useful, it would be great if their name could be changed back to Medicine Man. “Healer” is painfully generic and a term that should be reserved for the class of units, not a specific unit. “Medicine Man” is not an offensive term, and it was completely unnecessary to change it.

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Medicine Men weren’t always Healers, and Healers weren’t always Medicine Men. The Healers heal as their primary purpose, but Medicine Men are spiritual leaders and figures - healing wasn’t strictly a part of their duties, simply something that often coincided with the job because the tools were there anyway.

Well, that’s a ranking, so there will always be civs at the bottom.

Redesign is not a problem, but like I stated, the core should preferably remain (villagers don’t provide resources but provide abilities and effects). Completely removing the core of an existing design means risk, and possibly regret. Just thinking of a solution to present it in a better way, for example it doesn’t necessarily need to be a building. This is my heartfelt and firm recommendation.

Then how could you even explain what the technology in the game is?

As far as I heard, according to reports at the time, the problem with the firepit was because Lakota advisors felt that visual representations of dancing were considered too stereotyped, rather than the existence of these “techs” (yes, ceremonies still counts as techs).

However, the naming problem persists. Using the same word is confusing. Do you have any good suggestions for a name change in this regard?

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So what you’re saying is they served a role roughly equivalent to Priests and Imams? :thinking:

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In fact, this game has far more stereotypes about Asians than Lakota, but we accept that because it’s just a game, not real history. There’s no need to weigh in.

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Maybe that’s exactly what should chance.
This feature is apparently not very popular. Maybe finding something different that makes for more interesting gameplay would be a better alternative.

I mean, what we called them literally translated into Healer, so I’m not sure what you’re looking for here.

“The Fire Pit works magically in that having people dance around a fire somehow gives warriors on the battlefield more power. On the other hand, the Western people get power through logical means: like the development of technology or increasing their capacity for war by developing their forts. This perpetuates the old, tired “savage vs civilized” dichotomy.”
(Anthony Brave on the firepit/plaza changes)


From my perspective, the initial problem isn’t solved. He states that the Western people get their power through logical means - through the development of technology or forts, but the Community Plaza doesn’t change the inherent problem where the Native civs are actively not developing technology or expanding outward, they’re simply talking about things and making things happen magically on a global scale that ends when they stop talkin about it.

I’m going to heavily disagree - the Indians, Chinese, and Japanese are at a low tier level far below the European civs, but even with recent reworks, the Lakota and Hauds still remain below even those three civs in just how utterly awful their design is.

So should we first analyze why it is not popular, right?
Is it really because of its cultural significance? Or is it simply a flaw in the gameplay? Is this flaw so fatal that even the core has to be completely replaced?

Personally, I would think it’s unpopular not mainly for the cultural significance, but because it costs resources to build and villagers can’t provide resources when they’re there (which is deadly in the early game).

I’d first try making it free to build like marketplaces, and decrease the limit to 15 villagers or less, while increasing the efficiency of people there to compensate. Even making the effect of the ceremonies themselves more powerful, or the villagers there can generate a better XP trickle, or adjusting the ratio of the number of villagers there and the efficiency to help early game (for example, the effect could be already obvious when a small number of people are tasked, and the growth of the effect will slow down when more and more people are tasked). Then, watch for a while.

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