How Native American civs COULD be balanced and realistic

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
41

This is wrong and it irks my inner mongol.
It is sadly very but understandibly misunderstood conception of the Mongols.

However mongols were very capable of building ships and eventually formed capable naval forces.

Infact during the siege and battle of Xiangyang (1267-73) in central China, Genghis’ grandson and successor Kublai Khan built a massive navy that transformed his army of Mongol horsemen into a joint naval-ground force. The Mongol riverine navy played the decisive role in the victory at Xiangyang.

This was before the conquest of Goreyo and complete controll over the chinese.

As the campaign in China progressed, Kublai ordered captured Chinese shipyards to begin the construction of 5,000 warships of varying sizes and used Chinese defectors to begin training 70,000 Mongols as sailors and naval infantry. In the coming years, the Mongol fleet would continue to grow in size, and in 1273, following the operations at Xiangyang, Kublai would order the addition of another 2,000 vessels and 50,000 sailors and naval infantry. His Mongol shipbuilding and naval training allowed him to replace the men and vessels he lost in battle and to maintain pressure against the more experienced Song navy.

Yes the mongols incorporated Chinese design into their shipwright.
But this is nothing new and this is what made the Mongol army so formidable.
They adapted and quickly integrated technology that could give them an advantage. And even improved upon them by using the vast accesability of knowledge.

We see this especially in their siege and early use of gunpowder.

Mongol ships actually differed alittle as they improved upon the Chinese design through the help of Arabian engineers. Which is why I think they have the Light Junk as a unique naval unit. Being a hybrid Dow and small Junk. (Using the arab sail technology to improve their ships speed and manuverbility)
And later when they conquered Korea they would implement korean technology to improve upon the Junk designs even more.

In a way yes. Mongols had their own ship technology. But quickly adapted the chinese ones as had elements which were better.
They then took the use of learned menn from across their empire to improve upon the technology

Ofcourse they employed ships from the conquered chinese and koreans, which were common practice of any nation of capturing ships.

Ships have the unique ability that it is always a valuable asset regardless who built them.

So you could in a sence say that the post-mongolian era.
The ships of asia were actually of Mongol design.

Or to be more exact.
Asian design as the mongols simply just improved upon existing designs, this improved design ofcourse became widely employed and replicated and further improved upon as the ages went pass.

So yes.
Mongols were fully capable into Navy, and did not just simply purely use Koreans and Chinese for their navy.

While certainly they employed a lot of koreans and chinese, afteeall they were subjects of the mongols and thus a valuable resource to put into use.

But mongols also had trained sailors and captains fully capable of sailing and commanding fleets.

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42

AoE4 definitely needs at least one civ from Africa (in my opinion, Mali), one civ from America (in my opinion, Inca), and obviously the real, actual medieval empires - Roman /Byzantine Empire and Ottoman Empire. After all this is still “Age of Empires”.

This is basic minimum representation of human civilization.

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43

Well, if you wanted realistic and balanced, there’s ALOT to cover.

First, percentage changes are an aoe3 thing. Only a few imperial/unique techs/landmarks give percentage changes in aoe4, so having civs with stacking percentage improvements is waaaay to much. Adding to that, the chance based effects are another aoe3 import - things like bleed chance and stun chance. I recommend replacing these with bonus vs non-heavy and guaranteed slow, respectively. Translate the rpg-esque elements into consistent and predictable elements.

Second, everything in the post about bronze and iron is, unfortunately, wrong. Iron is ALOT harder than bronze. Meteoric iron in particular is known to be 2-3x harder in unworked form than plain cast iron. There’s a wide variation, since meteorites don’t really care about how much metal they have is actually iron as opposed to nickel or chromium (etc), but the many lattice structures consistently outperform bronze. You can find videos of recreated bronze gladii, age hardened with modern techniques, clashing against steel swords - the bronze sword gets scored by the steel on every clash. Iron vs steel is closer, but rigid iron tends to scuff the steel and then shatter after enough impacts. The middle ages had some solid steel working, so any possibility of American civs having comparable metal weapons breaks the realism part of the design, be it bronze or meteor iron.

Now, I told you that story for reason - if we have to use metal for native Americans, then advantages of bronze over iron/steel are that its can take shock better since its softness lends it ductility, and its lower melting temperature allow for it to be worked in primitive furnaces - as such it can be made into effective arrow/javelin heads and maces/hammers. Noone expects arrows to actually pierce armor in the medieval times and mass weapons would benefit from the weight of the bronze. Bear in mind that copper alloys are denser than iron so they’ll be softer AND heavier then iron/steel weapons - be sure to find something to reflect that limitations of bronze. For instance, the Romans had to limit the length of their swords and amount of armor due to the longer swords bending too much in fights and bronze plates being too heavy.

Nobles can get long blades of meteoric iron. Its hard and brittle but more balanced than stone weapons - you could maybe reflect that as higher base damage but lower bonus damage than stone weapons. Iron is lighter then bronze/stone so nobles could also have faster movement and attack speed. The tendency to shatter and rarity of iron could be reflected as a high cost.

Concepts are good on the unit pool and I agree with the choice to refrain from water shenanigans. Gameplay wise, I agree with the direction of making them eco power houses. Aztecs and Inca afaik had humongous populations. To end my rant; a few thematic suggestions:

  1. Reflect their lack of horses and compensation thereof in a strategically relevant way- no unit should have anti cav damage bonuses/bracing since there was no need for native Americans to develop anti cavalry tactics. Balance should be achieved vs cavalry via stat tweaks and general anti - light/heavy bonus damage. Even the spearmen should be built to counter short weapon using infantry (maa, palace guards ,etc).

  2. Lack of complicated metallurgy makes for ultimately worse tools and weapons, but a significant advantage of primitive technology is that the raw materials are readily available - this can be translated a cost and train time reduction of all native American units and a much larger selection of trash units.

  3. One thing about the natives is that they made real good use of guns and cavalry once they got a hold of them - the ones survived European plagues anyway. They were dependant on alliances for guns, but they really got a hold of horsemanship. This can become a unique mechanism for American civs to adopt the cavalry of their particular opponent; say I’m fighting the Rus, the age 4 landmark could give me access to horsemen, knights and horse archers; or vs Abbasid we get melee and ranged camels. The unque techs dont carry over, but original melee/ranged techs/bonuses apply.

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44

Very good insight here! And I agree with your 2 first points.

If this was AoE3, then I also think point 3 would stand solid ground.

but for AoE4 I just don’t think this would fit very well with them. but lacking Gunpowder units will be a rather pressing matter as there must be something added to replace lack of gunpowder.

For the lack cavalry, that also becomes a major balancing issue. However. I don’t know if these might sound like a crazy idea that might not fit with AoE4, same way as trading for gunpowder units and artillery.

But have a unique building that you can garrison?
And if you have the same building somewhere else on the map, the units you garrisoned can be taken out of that building. Sorta like how the Tunnel ambush stuff works for other RTS games. (example the GLA tunnels from C&C generals, or the Zerg tunnel thingy from SC2)

You could limit it by only being buildable in stealth forests, and call it Forests paths or something. As the whole garrisoning thing just kinda represents their Warriors being out on the “forest”. Noone really knowing where they are or are hiding. Allowing them to set up more Suprise attacks, and sort of psuedo-mobility boost for their infantry.

45

Hmm, I still think being able to abduct cavalry tech could and should be a thing for native american civs. Horses really changes the military potential of those guys in a big way, yknow?

As for gunpower, I dont really want a direct equivalent to that - just feels a bit too disingenuous. See, gunpowder and equivalents imply a certain level of industrial ability. It’s a pretty solid fact that native americans just could not compete on the scale of their enemies, even if they were four star badasses pound for pound. Allowing gunpowder equivalents takes so much away from the identity of existing civs that I’d rather stack up the early and mid game phases as a compensation.

46

If it was north american tribes, I could see them easily adapt horses and guns even.

But the Mesoamerican simply just didn’t adapt any use of horses.

It’s not that I don’t think they should have horses for balance reasons.
but it is just based from the info from the AOE4 devs, they wanted to keep the game as close to historical as possible.
not necessarily realistic. but at least somewhat historical.

So them having Gunpowder and Horses would be very unlikely. There is very little, to no records of the Aztecs, incas and mayans adapting weapons of the Spanish. Only in single incidents, example being where an aztec captain used a Spanish helmet and a sword, probably looted from a dead Spanish officer defending a captured Spanish fortress.

Regardless, they did adapt tactics to deal with the horses, and killing horses was a huge thing for the aztecs especially. As they would adorn their banner with a horsehead.

They equipt bolas and longer spears in order to deal with cavalry. Although to limited effect.
They even adapted special bronze arrow tips designed to penetrate Spanish armor.

Regardless, they will be a very though civilization to integrate to the aoe4 balance.

The only thing I can come up with, is allowing these civilization to traverse impassable mountains and forests. as a they would often do in order to fight the Spanish in a battlefield where they have the advantage over cavalry.
But how that would work in game I don’t know. It would give them unique opportunity to have safe zones they could retreat to and heal up where the opponent can do nothing about.

47

Have they even mentioned the return of native civs??? like for real??? was it confirmed? I dont wanna be happy in advance…

48

They have not.

We are just didcussing how to balance these civs for AoE4.

While they have them in AoE2. The difference is they had much more freedom in CiV design of AoE2 as they didnt need to be realistic.

Contra AoE4 that tries to limit themselves to be more historical appropiate

49

Ah we’re just brainstorming ideas for fun, pure theory craft. Nothing to do with the actual game.

50

Native American Civ is like Iron Age in AOE1 vs Imperial Age in AOE4, how can they be balanced?
20K men lose to few hundred Spanish, dude…

Or after they got guns, both Colonial age in AOE3.

51

I feel like the only plausible New World civilization that could conceivably be incorporated into the balanced multiplayer world, with a minimum amount of alternate history, and not just in campaigns in an incomplete way (like how the Anglo-Saxons in the first campaign aren’t a full civ) is the Inca Empire / Tawantinsuyu (Cusco for Ages I-III). It was more centralized than the hegemonic Aztec empire, already had native metallurgy, and in its rump form as the Neo-Inca State of Vilcabamba, was able to not just capture Old World technology, but also use it.

This, of course, was only possible through the help of captured or willing Spanish advisors, but that fact itself could be incorporated into a game mechanic whereby the Inca can capture weapons by looting corpses, or capture prisoners (maybe even with a bola - only half-serious) to accumulate a knowledge base about a certain technology. Let’s say the starting Inca civ starts out with slings, bows, spears, maces and axes. For historicity, they’ll be weaker but cheaper than their Old world equivalents, forcing the Inca player to plan careful raids or turtle (they did have good defensive warfare with heavy stone fortifications) in order to kill or capture enemy soldiers. Once you reach a certain threshold of looted corpses plus captives, you can start training crossbowmen, pikemen, even hand cannons (the Inca learned to use arquebuses near the end of Vilcabamba’s existence). Cavalry would require captives/bribed enemy villagers and a set period of horse breeding. What makes this mechanic fun is that it’s not just limited to facing the Spanish, like they did historically, but can plausibly be done with any non-Inca civ. Maybe to cut down on the amount of coding, this mechanic would be limited to the basic unit types and not any civ’s unique units

The important thing is that the Inca had the technological sophistication, population size and willingness to attempt this, and they did, so it wouldn’t really be alt-history to have these features in the game. Of course, water wouldn’t really work, but it’s an interesting thought to have adaptation be the core game mechanic behind a civ’s gamestyle

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