That could be fixed by slightly increasing the cost of native trading posts such as: 200 Lumber + 100 Gold. Or in some similar way.
I don’t think balance is an excuse not to improve the game.
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I also thought before that native sites were underused as the trade routes are way more attractive because of the resource advantage they give. My idea was that native sited provide some economic bonus like a wood and food trickle, that would help in affording their units and techs so you can spend a bit more in other things
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The ceque system that the Incas can send in early age is very strong, but if you rush native, I don’t see why the other civilizations in the game can’t have it.
On the other hand, the natives are great, some units are very strong and their upgrades are very useful, but players pass on them simply because they forget they exist, but that does not mean that they are not worth it.
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Natives are good in the late game as you can add a lot troops to your army if you can grab multiple camps
IMO it would be lazy design to simply add an XP trickle to native TPs. It’s redundant and devaluates the trade route, and it wouldn’t work if the value is anything less than that of a trade route. Just look at churches. Nobody includes them in their BO despite the included xp trickle.
Native TPs need some way to quickly make up the up-front 200w cost. I like that idea with unique passive abilities. they could easily just convert one of the upgrades. free units is nice too, but at 1 res/second is the standard which amounts to ~1 unit every minute and a half or so, or worse for cav. Sufi would take almost 5 minutes to get an elephant. That’s why I propose the 1-time batches. It would be an age2-shipment worth of units, to be clear.
The point is to make them attractive in some way and at the same time not break the balance of the game.
It could be several things at the same time already mentioned. Passive bonuses, experience drip, units generated automatically over time (3-4 minutes?).
Once I read a proposal that native villages could allow creating villagers as well as Cree, this would be nice too. (It could be enabled in 3 or 4 years).
So the dev have to remind the players.
I actually saw the players build churches in the matches.
Is that an unique card of the American native civ?
It depends on the civ, ofc. Some really need that xp tick.
I think the first step is to adjust the cost of natives, and reduce the wood cost, maybe move some of it to food instead. What’s the point of being free, if they require as much wood as a house?
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I don’t know what letter you mean because I haven’t explored that civilization enough. The point is that it could enable the creation of 5 villagers similar to the native Cree.
Kinship Ties
Villagers can be trained at Native Embassies, and allows the Native Embassy to be built if it isn’t available.
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Well, that already happens through the knowledge that each one has, if you are doing water boom in saguenay or in new england, and you do not build TP in a huron position to improve the collection of whales, it is not the fault of the devs, it is self-blame for not knowing or forgetting it.
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Exactly AssetiveWall! That is the first step!
1. Native trading posts settlements should have a lower cost because they’re basically a barracks with one single unit under build limit thrown in the middle of the map. And you still waste 100wood to build a native embassy nearby your base. 300w to make 15 pikes…just bad
2. Second step is balancing the build limit based on their category and not just random. I.e:
archer unit: 18 units
skirmisher unit: 16 units
pikeman unit: 18 units
cavalry unit: 14 units
dragoon unit: 12 units
cavalry archer unit: 14 units
coyote runner unit: 16 units
That will make balancing cards, minor civs, major civs much easier and predictable.
3. Don’t consider cards while balancing them at first.
4. Rebalance the crappy cards into being more useful (team more minor native, native lore etc) and nerf the ones that would be broken if natives are meta (i.e: that asian cards that increases speed by 20%):
5. Create a cheap general tech in Fortress or industrial that can increase the max limit of minor natives by a bit. That will solve the dilemma of needing more settlements as the only way to increase the build limit.
6. Now balance them taking cards in consideration (inca cards, native warrior combat)
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I STRONGLY disagree with you. I want to use minor natives but every time I try the risk is always just too high and the reward is just too little.
Trading posts on settlements should be lower…that is the first step if you want me to use a random barracks around the map with one single unit (which I have no freakin’ idea whether they will be useful to me or not),with build limit and still get 100 wood to build a embassy.
If stacking cards and playing as African civs, France or Inca is the only way to use them then they are far from integrated in the game.
problem is that native TP and TR TPs are the same building. they’d have to split the building to change the cost, and that’s a UI mess. You can’t really change the cost of the building, you can only make the building more worthwhile.
Well, we are just in this forum to make them more attractive. What’s your proposal?
The more points of view, the better.
I would say that the “Advanced Trading Post” shipment should provide you with a drip of exp of at least 0.8 exp / s to any TP built in a native village (and that is not like the ceque system, that works with all the tambo built), that way you can supply the exp that you may lack with a TP and a church.
Is this worth a shipment and 220 beef? That is debatable, what is going to make it more feasible to build a TP in a native village? Of course.
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I leave you a guide, African civ. are missing
Regarding the native embassy, its cost should be lowered to 0w or 25w and its construction limit should be limited to 2, since it is only useful to train native units closer.
I already made a thread to this topic Make the old Minor Civilisations great again
My idea is basically just give every minor civilisation (besides the Africans) an additional technology.
In some cases old technologies and units should be reworked so they can have new features like poison damage.
I’m aware of that. Yet, having two trading posts (Route tP and Native TP) might be the easiest of the solutions.
Trickling XP is an improvement but it’s worthless: no one uses Church and if I want XP I’ll build a route trading post post anyway.
They had to bypass a second window for UI when they made Embassy available for settlers and Dutch Envoy.
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Perhaps it’s time to accept a 2nd window just like in Age of Empires II.