Healers at Co.munity Plaza (August PUP

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
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Musketeer: “As soon as I got on the ship bound for the New World, I was suddenly teleported to the battlefield in the middle of the land. Then I’ve fired dozens of times. I’m lucky I’m not dead yet, and I’ve never run out of ammo.”

It’s a game.

The Chinese banner armies in history is by no means composed of two types of soldiers as in the game. In Chinese history, there were barracks and stables, but just no academies that were deliberately set up for military education. In the history of China’s defense, there were forts, frontier armed towns, and border garrisons, but there were few buildings that meet the definition of “castle” in English. Even so, when we talk about how Asian civs can remove stereotypes, we don’t ask for the real culture and appearance of Asians everywhere, especially the essence (the core I stated before. I finally found the correct word.) of these civs.

Then, why must the plaza and ceremonies in the game be the same as the gatherings of the native people in real?

The best answer must be easy to understand rather than confusing, at least in my opinion.

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Priestesses should not cost pop, inca have also been at a disadvantage from the lack of a good priestess shipment card, only having access to a team card for them in age 2 while aztec get 3 warrior priests.

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They also shouldn’t be able to convert units. It makes absolutely zero sense that they can do this. As far as I’m aware, the priestesses stayed within their temples and didn’t go out proselytizing. And it was the Inca that were converted to Catholicism, not Inca converting the Spanish.

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The Inca are designed as a civ for AoE2 players.
Having a defensive design and bringing back the feature to convert units.

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These things being shoehorned into a civ where they clearly don’t belong makes it considerably worse.

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I know it’s culturally unreasonable, but what new abilities or buffs should they get to make up for their lost old abilities?

I thought about it. If people don’t like it because it cannot work without villagers, why not use something similar to a consulate?

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Let’s first have a concept that the effect provided by each ceremony has its own standard maximum, which is called 100%.

Then, like a consulate, there are the options: A (default), B, C and D. Representing:

A → generates 0% of the effect of the selected ceremony, but villager gathering efficiency -0%.
B → generates 20%, but -5%.
C → generates 40%, but -10%.
D → generates 60%, but -15%.
(These percentages are tentative and can be adjusted based on balancing needs.)

Additionally, there can have up to 10 units working on it. Everyone tasked there can increase some percentage of the effect, which based on the population it uses.

0 pop: llamas → 2%.
1 pop: villagers, Haud/Lakota healers → 4%.
2 pop: Aztec/Inca healers → 6% or 8%.

when it’s full of people, you basically get a 100% effect or even a bit more.

In the early game, villagers must focus on gathering as much as possible, and this building can still provide the effect even if no one is there. In the late game, 99 villagers lost 15% of the efficiency, which is almost equivalent to letting 15 villagers work on the plaza without gathering resources, which is similar to the current situation.

The appearance and name of this building can remain as a plaza, but can also be changed to a religious building such as a temple or any other suitable building. I have no comment on what it should look like or what it should be called.

I’m not going to claim this is a perfect solution. Just sharing an idea.

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tbh i still think the xp generation is fine considering Xp is anything from fame to just experience so a ceremony that is generating xp is basically par for the course for all civs (churchs generate xp now)

then its most the other stuff (train speed, atk, minutemen (which tbh i hate as a mechanic for natives), respawn and so forth)

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Cultural problems aside, here’s a breakdown for specifically the Haudenosaunee and Lakota:

My personal problem with the Community Plaza is that it creates an on/off gameplay loop that forces the player to rotate their civ’s strengths by directly weakening their own economy - the problem with this is that the two civs in question already have the weakest economies in the game and some of the most brittle militaries available - the Lakota especially are extremely frigid with the options available to them, with their cavalry units out-classing their infantry in every way possible, but neither civ is particularly flexible in how they can respond to any given situation.

For both civs, this just leads to a gameplay pattern that is extremely unforgiving while simultaneously being dimensionless - they have no choice but to do this, and they have to do it well, or they’ll lose. The Devs, with the DE, have given both civs a bit of leeway to make mistakes by buffing them a bit overall, but ultimately (again, especially with the Lakota) both civs require overtuned military units in order to survive, which in turn just pushes them towards dimensionless gameplay to take advantage of their overtuned units, which is just a self-enforcing loop to be extremely aggressive in the early game because they have no late-game presence and a military they can’t usually afford to use.

The Plaza is at the root of the design problems for both the Hauds and the Lakota, and both civs need to be rebalanced and redesigned without it, with a new civ “gimmick” to utilize.

Personally, I’d rather it not be a religious aspect of the culture, but one more related to trade - the Lakota especially were a significant portion of the trading heart of North America. Oddly enough, I think the “Consulate” type option might be best with the ability to ally with other nations around them for unique units and techs, but done in a way that isn’t the same as the Asian Consulate or the New World Federal States or the African Alliances.

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yeah i think its a very much hated thing about the native civs, not to mention everytime you need to switch it takes like 5 seconds

So sharing a random idea

  • for a lot of the existing effect ones, maybe the ceremonies can be sort of turned into techs.
  • ie they are things you unlock for the civs by putting vils and healers on to work on it.

So the war ceremony for example can be a tech that is slowly increasing the stats of your unit over time until a capped is reached, say 20% atk - or kinda unlock tech levels for that tech - say 5% then 10% then 20%

The train speed one will also slowly increase train speed of all units to certain levels. so to put an extremely narrow example, 1 vil on the ceremony will generate 1 research point per second and after 100 research point you unlock the new level, increasing train speed by 10%

I do want to get rid of the minuteman training and the respawn ones, they make using a core unit very unpleseant and gimmicky though i dont know what could be done about that

I think a good model is the incan native american allies shipment, where you get a native embassy and select one native ally that will always be available + some of their techs.

I have said that this should be standard for all native civs, it gives access to potentially very important techs and units, it gives a guaranteed buff to lategame army numbers

To make it less of a card problem, it could be reworked to a big button instead where you unlock this - maybe reworking that new button at the native embassy to unlocking a native ally and make outlaws standard

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Honestly, a good new “gimmick” for the Hauds and Lakota would be an economic one, while still implementing the Incan variation of the Native ally thing.

For the Lakota, a building to infinitely spawn wild bison from. This would remove their dependence on their home city to sustain an economy and let them flex cards, as well as give them reason to use the hunting cards, as the farming cards would be irrelevant.
For the Haudenosaunee, a building to infinitely generate wood would be better - but either as a building that spawns trees or simply a unique variation of the Farm/Estate that allows for the gathering of wood. Either would work, but spawning trees would make natural resource spawning as the clear new “gimmick” of the two North American civs and would be fairly simple to balance around - it would also ensure the two civs would have a late-game economy, allowing them to be given more dimension and better balancing throughout the game’s stages that doesn’t pour 80% of their power budget into the Commerce Age.

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I think given the PUP they are somewhat moving in that direction, well the natural resources thing anyway.

The North American trade card makes their natural resource eco much more important and Haud now have basically infinite trees that is also their coin source. I do agree somewhat that Haud still kinda need an infinite wood source that in generatable , we do have the precedent of the indian mango grove that no one uses, that could be reworked as a haud thing (maybe trainable from travois)

I also think estate should just be removed for lakota & haud and the tribal market made into their lategame gold source. It can be a tech that unlock infinite gathering for the lategame but still counts as natural resource gathering, so cards will stack - it will allow them much easier eco transition in the late game when mines runs out.

edit: also with the healers now acting as essentially free xp in the late game, I think its ok if Lakota relies on hunt for the lategame ( especially with North American Trade) , the home city is effectively the training building

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Unless the blockade tech was removed, the Lakota player could get their entire economy choked out with a single tech. Once late-game hits, the Lakota military is generally too expensive for the player to spam out well. If their entire economy is technically capable of being choked out with a single tech on the side of the enemy, it isn’t a well-designed economy (regardless of how difficult that tech is to get - but let’s be real, if you’re fighting the Lakota that late, they’re gonna lose anyway.)

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then we can remove that, its baically never used anyway, I dont think anyone cares

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This all sounds more like the need to adjust the units’ stats rather than removes the plaza and ceremonies.

I’m not sure the changes you’re craving can make the game more fun, but I can imagine that my suggestion for the plaza could improve the player’s experience.

Let the Warriors be levied at TC just like the Militias, and change the effect of the related ceremony to strengthen the Warrior’s stats.

Agree this one.

If the Lakotas hadn’t domesticated bison as a cow-like livestock, I wouldn’t recommend it. It also goes against the cultural accuracy you always emphasize.

Bison may be able to become a unit in TC that can be transported from home city at the a little bit cost of resources like the Papal units. It doesn’t cost XP, so it’s better than the Bison Card.

Anyway, this thread is about the plaza. Let’s not digress further.

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The point made is that the existence of the Plaza forces this to happen due to the on/off gameplay loop it creates.

There’s no way for the map to infinitely produce bison, but it was absolutely historical that the prairie nations would force the bison where they wanted them. A Buffalo Pound wouldn’t be ahistorical - just a necessary interpretation of history to exist within the game’s capability.

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Thats why I think the tech solution is viable - make it a permanent effect that you unlock after a while. there would be no on/off loop and you get something that buffs your units.

how about something like new fangle thing that malta and ethiopia got now where you get something with every shipment. So Lakota after a tech or shipment (maybe great hunter, will get 5 bisons with every subsequent shipments), it allows the bison to not eat into the cards lategame, while still allowing other cards to be used

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Then let’s replace the ceremony of increasing military units’ attack power with a new ceremony about economy such as generating coins or any suitable else.

Anyway, as long as the plaza is decoupled from the unit’s attack power, you can safely adjust the units’ stats without having to completely remove the existing plaza design.

Seems to fit perfectly with my idea of shipping bison from home city.

The deadliest downside to the existing bison card is the cost of experience points, so I suggested it to be a ship similar to the Papal units at Natives’ TC, and you only need to spend some food and wood, then you can wait for them to arrive shortly after.

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Actually a better idea is to offer a tech for Aztecs in the community plaza that would boost wp effectiveness at the cp by 25%… for balance purpose just cap the cp to 20 “gatherers”.

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Another good idea is to increase the amount of wp you can train to 15 but cap the gatherers to 20, 15 wp and 5 villagers gives you the exact same bonus as 10 wp and 15 villies but without the expense of your eco.

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porque voce reclama de tudo e apenas um jogo jogue não da pra ficar 100% fiel a cultura

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