Hypothetical designs for The Last Chieftain civilisations

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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This is a thread where we can share our ideas for the upcoming new civilisations. Ofc nobody should get upset if their ideas aren’t reflected in the released DLC. It’s just for fun, to collect some ideas how the new civs could look like.

In my design I would add a new “Chasqui” Scout to Incas, Tupi and Mapuche. Muisca would get the Eagle. Incas would get the bonus of “Chasqui move 10 % faster”. Mayans would lose El Dorado and the Elite Eagle Warrior upgrade. Instead they would get a tech that makes their Eagles a trash unit. This is because in my design of Muisca THEY now get the 100 HP El Dorado Eagles.

Muisca

Straggler Trees yield 40 % additional Food
Feudal tech in the Barracks: Supplies - Infantry Units + 15 HP
Siege Units deal +20 % damage
Castle age UT - Gold Mines last 30 % longer
Imperial age UT El Dorado - Eagles +25 HP
UU: - fast attacking Skirmisher unit with good bonus against Archers, some against Infantry, but lower Pierce Armor
TB: Skirmishers +1 PA per age
Tech Tree: Miss ofc all Cavalry + Gunpowder, also Bracer, various Monk techs including Redemption, building upgrades, conscription etc.

Tupi

Builders and Repairers refund 25 % of the spent ressources
Castles provide a continouus Wood Trickle (60 W/Minute)
Monks regenerate HP (150 /Minute) while converting and gain max HP (+10) per successfull conversion
Castle age UT - Gives Shrivamsha and Pagoda Shield to Infantry (4/2)
Imperial age UT - Archer Line deals Bonus Damage against Siege Units (+3)
UU: Poison Archer - deals good damage against all types of living Units over time (not Siege/Buildings!)
TB: Relics generate Wood in addition to Gold
Tech Tree: Miss ofc all cavalry + gunpowder, Heavy Plow, Blast Furnace, Architecture, Hoardings, Fortified Wall, Siege Engineers, Illumination

Mapuche

Receive +225 Stone on age up
Houses can be upgraded to Markets (175 W)
Chasqui +1 Attack per age
Monks conversion benefits from elevation bonus
Castle age UT - Cavalry units cost -35 F
Imperial age UT - Get access to lategame units and technologies (Elite Xolotl (+50 HP, +2 atk, +1 PA), Hand Cannoneer, Bombard Cannon)
UU - Food intensive durable Cavalry unit that resists conversion and bonus damage, but less Speed and Armor than Xolotl
TB: selling (and sending) Stone doesn’t cost a fee
Tech tree: Get basically everything except Bloodlines, Cav Archers, Hussar, though ofc as mentioned some techs are locked behind the Imperial UT

Chasqui Scout possible design:

Name Chasqui Scout (D) Chasqui Scout (F) Chasqui Scout (C) Chasqui Warrior Elite Chasqui Warrior
Armor Class Infantry Infantry Infantry Infantry Infantry
Armor Class Shock Infantry Shock Infantry Shock Infantry Shock Infantry Shock Infantry
Produced at Barracks Barracks Barracks Barracks Barracks
Production Time - 30 s 30 s 24 s 24 s
Production Cost 50 F, 25 W 50 F, 25 W 50 F, 25 W 50 F, 25 W 50 F, 25 W
HP 45 45 50 50 60
Speed 1,2 1,2 1,2 1,35 1,35
ROF 2 2 2 2 2
Attack 3 Melee 5 Melee 5 Melee 6 Melee 6 Melee
Atk Bonus 6 vs Monks 6 vs Monks 6 vs Monks 8 vs Monks 8 vs Monks
Atk Bonus 3 vs Siege Weapon 3 vs Siege Weapon 3 vs Siege Weapon 3 vs Siege Weapon 3 vs Siege Weapon
Atk Bonus 2 vs Skirmisher 2 vs Skirmisher 2 vs Skirmisher 5 vs Skirmisher 5 vs Skirmisher
Range - - - - -
Accuracy - - - - -
Melee Armor 0 0 0 0 0
Pierce Armor 2 2 2 3 3
Benefits from Infantry Upgrades Infantry Upgrades Infantry Upgrades Infantry Upgrades Infantry Upgrades

(All my civs have very early eco Bonusses, Tupi probably the most general one that comes really to shine in the midgame. They have various builds and tools available to deal with almost all situations. But they also have exploitable weaknesses, weak timings or subotimal bonusses for the midgame that can allow opponents to take over initiative. Mapuche is possibly a “problematic” design with getting 225 Stone in Feudal, as it can be used for a super strong initial tower rush. However they will also fall behind very fast when this isn’t successfull. Ofc the idea behind that bonus is to make a super fast castle drop build with them, so they get also early access to their UU Cavalry.)

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Muisca: overall i like these ideas. many of them feel like they fit in with the more traditional aoe2 civs.

I thinks this might be confusing as it isn’t super clear what counts as a straggler tree. (Also did you mean 40% additonal wood? or do you mean 40% food in addition to wood?)

this seems like a strictly stronger version of the Celt’s bonus (attack 25% faster). it affects rams (and trebs?) in addition to mangonels and scropions. at the same time +20% damage means that strafing shots will almost always kill mangonels in one hit, and direct hits kill up-hill.

lower pierce armor is difficult: even just 1 less armor immediately doubles the damage this unit takes from the archer-line. (also if this unit is affected by the team bonus it ends up taking 1 damage anyway, which might make it very strong)

Maybe fiddle with the HP instead? (eg lower PA but higher HP, to make it more of a generalist unit)

i wonder how relevant this is early on:

eg skirmishers already only take 1 damage from archers
elite skirms (castle age) only take 1 damage from crossbows

here it mostly just means that the skirm player can delay/forgo upgrades. so here it is a weaker version of the Korean’s free armor techs.

the only impact will be in imperial:
a normal arb (with bracer and chemistry) deals: 10 damage
a normal elite-skirm has: 4+4 armor
where it halves the damage taken (similar to Lithuanian tower shields), which is quite substantial for a free bonus.

missing bracer will make their skirms a lot weaker
missing conscription is huge. it would make it the only civ that misses conscription, right?

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Tupi: less of a fan of this civ

how does this work? is it just “buildings are 25% cheaper”, but you only get the res back after the building completes?

if so you definitely need to exclude Farms from this, and probably also any stone buildings.
Even then it’s a stronger version of Malian’s “-15% cost”.

not a fan of trickles, this means each castle generates more wood than a feitoria?
I think you need to be careful what their water tech tree looks like. If they can survive without losing too many castles they will be unbeatable in late-game water

interesting idea, i don’t mind it. find it hard to judge the healing speed

i don’t like it:

  • first of all I am not a fan of experience bonuses like this
  • this will be buggy as hell when picking up relics, as that kind of resets the unit
  • it makes monks even snowballier.

ewww. shrivamsha shield is one of the most hated mechanics in the game (and not just by me, even T90 can barely contain his disgust everytime he sees them). especially if it affects the “Chasqui scout”, which is kind of like an eagle, right?

this is interesting. i think it comes in a bit late though: in imperial age archers die so fast to massed scorps/onagers that this probably isn’t enough to turn the battle.

I think something like “archers deal +1/+2 damage to siege in castle/imperial” as a civ bonus might be more interesting. suddenly you need to be way more careful trying to counter archers with siege.

I like the idea though.

2 questions:
-how is poison damage different from normal damage? damage over time is really badly implemented in this game as it deals its damage so quickly anyway, and units can be affected by several stacks of DoT at the same time. So it’s functionally identical to extra damage.
-with the bonus damage against siege from the UT. why not just have this be a high damage archer?

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Mapuche:

that means they can drop a castle when they reach CA without mining any stone, right? seems VERY strong. especially with the conversion resistant UU
Also a fairly toxic tower rush is probably possible

how does this work?
does this market still provide +5 population?
does it change shape?
is it visible to your opponent?
can this be traded with?
can it make trade carts?

and what’s the benefit?
for 175 wood i can just build a market, which plugs a pretty big hole in the wall

+3 attack for free is a lot on any unit. compare that to aztec’s garland wars, which is expensive and only has its effect in imperial age. (yes, it also affects champions, pikes and jaguar warriors)

i wonder how this would play out. tbh Arena doesn’t have hills, so it doesn’t change much there..

with the free castle this can be picked up almost instantly in castle age, right? might be necessary to make knights without bloodlines useable

I like the flavour of this.
if this is faster to pick up than chemistry it might be super strong, or do HC and BBC still need chemistry? if it’s slow it will be hard to pull off as castles usually make trebs at the start of imperial age. if you win the treb war, you don’t really need BBC anymore, if you lose the treb war you have no castle to research this.

I think an interesting alternative would be to unlock alternate versions of these units eg “native gunner”. this would make it easier to balance this tech by allowing targeted stat adjustments.

I think this civ should also miss at least one blacksmith tech? especially FU cav feels a bit strange for an american civ. could always just incorporate the stat change into the elite upgrades

i assume none of the other civs get gunpowder? might want to add that to clarify.
Also i see you wisely didn’t mention anything about water tech trees, presumably awaiting the looming water rework?

EDIT: an idea for the muisca might be to limit them at fletching. this severely limits their tower rush and castle drop potential and would push them harder into their unique units (+ hand cannons don’t care about missing attack upgrades)

EDIT2:

also interesting. with the extra stone they have they might be able to pull off some crazy FCs though. do you like getting phosphoru rushed? 11

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I agree that’s a bit rsiky design. But I think if you are prepared for that it’s not that oppressive, especially as they lack a meaningful eco bonus. And the fimp is hintered by the UT blocking important imperial techs.
It’s bold yes, but it would make a very unique civ design.

yes
no
yes
yes
yes

You can make it in dark age or on the way up, that’s the biggest benefit. Also it’s up instantly, you don’t need to construct the market. This is crucial for various buildorders that I intend to be possible with this civ.

Yes, but Chasqui don’t scale as well. I wanted to give all the chasqui civs unique flavours, and the free attack is one that is possibly the weakest because it doesn’t make them stronger against the ranged units which almost all civs should get in imp.

Yes, that’s excatly the intention here. They already have arena bonusses. But I wanted to give their Monks a Bonus on other Maps aswell. And it also plays into the idea they are a civ from the Andes.
If I would give them any other direct Monk Bonus, this could make them way too strong on Arena.

Yes indeed. It’s ofc Xolotl for them, but that’s the basic idea. They get Scouts and Xolotl without Bloodlines, so they need something in Castle age to make them usable.

Yes, it doesn’t replace the Chemistry requirement. It’s indeed just intended to make their fast Imps a bit weaker as they get the other timing Bonusses. It gives other civs at least one timing they can try to utilize against them.

No that’s actually intentional. They are designed as a “cavalry” civilsation. But ofc their Cav doesn’t scale as well as Paladin or Hussar, so that’s why they also get a broad tech tree otherwise.
As you might have noticed they don’t get any Bonusses to their general Infantry, Archers or Siege. So they need at least something else in the lategame to work with.

It’s the main feature of this civ. They get the stone they either can use to build defences OR sell and use it otherwise. Clearly they get amazing Feudal and Castle age Powerspike with that. But also the shortest lasting ones because they miss almost any other bonus there.

PS: I will answer your previous posts later aswell, it’s a lot you posted here

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Yes, that’s what it means. They basically get 200 Food from chopping all 5 Straggler trees around their TC, that’s their eco bonus. It’s another early food bonus with different flavour than the others which are already in the game.

The intention is ofc to make it a similarly strong bonus as Celts or Slavs. Maybe 20 % will turn out too high. But I chose that because it would make +2 and +3 attack for Scorpions for them, which I really would like to see. I think this could turn out to be a very good Scorpion but not too strong. The other Siege units would ofc also benefit. But theoretically it should be most impactful for Scorps because with factoring in Armor their effective DPS would increase the most.
It’s hard to tell if higher damage is better than ROF from celts. I think it’s probably very similar. But if it’s indeed stronger, it should be tuned down accordingly.

I think it can/should have a bit more HP than the Skirms yes. But the less Armor is actually very intentional to differ it from the standard Skirmisher line. They drive by having way higher damage output. Also it’s one of the few tools of the civ against strong Infantry (besides the Scorpions).
I think this could have a nice flavour to the civ. But ofc there might be other potential design choices for the unit.

Yes this is one coherent tweak to their Skirms. With the unique skirmisher unit there would be the question when and why should they use the standard skirm line in the midgame. So the answer is, that their Skirms get a natural timing boost with free pierce armor. And in the lategame missing bracer brings them back to a “normal” endstate, so at that stage their UU Skirmisher unit should be your favorite (also because that one costs some gold ideally). But ofc if you run out of gold, you still have solid Skirms.

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Repairers just use up less res effectively. And builders “refund” whilst constructing the building. So you get that part of the res paid back over the time of construction.
It’s ofc similar to Malians wood bonus. But different in the two aspects that Malians get it “upfront” which is worth way more than the refund. And ofc as you pointed out, Farms and Stone buildings and repairing is affected aswell. If 25 % turns out being too much this can be adjusted ofc.
Malians ofc have a second eco bonus in addition to that, so it’s not that it necessarily needs to be weaker than malians. It should be probably be in affect slightly better than the Malians wood bonus. But ofc with a different flair to it. And yes it affects farms.
But I also wanted the civ to miss out on Heavy Plow, which I forgot to mention in the opening post. That’s why they get so many wood bonusses, because they need it for their food eco.

Well that’s some of the aspects of these designs, they have some really funky bonusses they can try to play with on different settings. One aspect of it is also that it gives you addictional ressources to play with on Arena like maps or Nomad after dropping a castle. Especially as their eco Bonus is ofc designed to be the strongest on booming situations - so they can also get a nice eco boost on an al-in aswell. The weakest they are possibly then on the classic “balanced” eco/military play. And this is an intentional design anachronistic to the latest other civ addittions.

I probably would go to 120 actually. It would mean that a light cav would need about 1/3 longer attacking to kill a converting Monk.

Fair points. But it’s intentional. The design is exactly chosen so you have to fear the Monk snowball. However with missing illumination good monk civs can get a window in Imp to stop that snowball even when falling behind earlier.

Yes it affects them. But if the shield recharges slower than that of Shrivamsha and it’s also less than the Shrivamsha it’s less abnoxious. I think the shield is way less problematic with Infantry than the Shrivamsha. And ofc if 4/2 Shield turns out to be too much it could be reduced.
The chasqui isn’t exactly as an eagle, it doesn’t scale as well and has no Bonus against Cavalry. So there are ways to deal with them better than against the eagles.

I wanted to put it behind a UT because it could be oppressive with this civ if it was a free Bonus. In general I agree that it could be interesting as a general civ Bonus for an Archer civ.

I mainly added that here because again I wanted one speciality for the civ to chose the Archer Line over the UU. So giving Archers a Bonus vs Siege and the UU being terrible against that seemed like a good solution to me.

The Poison damage is indeed just a DoT like the Bleeding damage we already have in the game. The poison damage should be spread over a longer time indeed but not too long.

I like the feature on a ranged unit though because it makes that ranged unit more effective in lower numbers with meatshield. And less oppressive on high numbers because it would have absurd overkill when microed.

And if you want to play that style you can still use the standard Archer line with Bonus against Siege in the lategame. So I wanted exactly to create that significant difference between the two lines and both have their legitimate right in the roster of the civ.

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A bonus that I like for Mapuche is that Cav benefit from infantry armor upgrades. The attack upgrades are already made to benefit cav and infantry, and this way you wouldn’t have to tech through a whole cav armor tech line for just one unit (the presumed UU) but they would benefit as you upgrade your infantry.

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Could be interesting if devs went the road of putting the whole Stable behind a paywall UT.
The issue I see with this - and why I opted to give them even scouts from the begiining (be it without bloodlines) is the hard transition. And THEN ofc it would be helpful if the Infantry armor would also apply to cav.
But I think I also have to remind that would require their UU to be absolutely bonkers in the lategame. My design would allow to make it actually notably weaker than Paladin or other UUs because you get to it faster. I wouldn’t like if Mapuche would then end up with the strongest cav unit in the game just because otherwise nobody would use it, as there is no incentive.

That’s actually one important touch/catch here. I made the UU conversion resistant because we yet to have a usable gold melee cav for Arena. It’s still subotimal because it has no range. But at least it’s an option for Mapuche to make a few of their cav UUs from the castle which would be a unique playstyle.

Yes. That’s also a very good comparison. Because current Garland Wars Eagles would have +4 more Attack and +1 Pierce Armor than these Chasqui. Also a Bonus against Cavalry. So as long as there is Gold on the map theses Chasqui aren’t even that strong. And even when Gold runs out, they would lose to Hussars (25 HP left in 1v1). Yes the bonus looks strong, similar to the Shields UT one for Tupi. But as the Chasqui are designed to scale very bad, it’s actually just bringing them to a “solid state”. Only the incan ones ending up with +1/+2 armor, 10 % faster movement and 25 % food discount are then really dangerous, especially against ranged units.

I think you ment Mapuche, not Muisca.
Only if they would get the ranged upgrades before the castle drop, but then they will sell their stone anyways to empower that build. So I don’t think it’s a real issue here. The direct castle drop will be very powerful and usually if you don’t go for ranged units (and mapuche will probably go for siege/monks/cav from there) you don’t get the ranged attack upgrades just to upgrade one single castle.
I think the limit for Mapuche is already that they don’t get any other Bonus to work with. Even the castle age UT to lower the cost for cav units might be too expensive to pick up in that situation. The only thing they then can go for uniquely is their cav UU which without the UT pickup should be actually weaker than Knights with bloodlines against the “power units”. And cost more.

(this is for the Muisca)
Yes, but I feel it’s an essential tweak here. The civ gets 100 HP eagles and their other Infantry is also really strong with flat +15 HP. Also their gold lasts super long (depending on when they pick up that UT). Their Siege does 20 % more Damage. It’s a super dangerous lategame civ and taking away conscription seemed for me a good way to limit their oppressive capabilities a bit, giving the other civs a bit more time to find solutions.
Something we already know from the Mayans and the Muisca with the better Siege could be even more dangerous than the current Mayans.

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:popcorn:

Get your bingo cards ready.

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After last time? No thankyou.

And stop boosting only unique units. We all see what you’re doing and we want none of it.

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A dev comment in this economy?

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You have beaten me. I was planning to make a similar thread “The Last Chieftain : Predict New Civs UU gimmicks and Castle Age UTs”.

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I think the new civs should be heavily focused on the Feudal and Castle Ages, so most of their bonuses would probably revolve around those stages (just guessing, though).

I’d prefer if they didn’t have access to cavalry or any gunpowder units (except for the Muiscas with their UU).

I’m really curious about how monasteries and infantry will work for these civs, and what kind of “new” eco bonuses they might get. I’m also wondering what new regional unit and unique (regional) building this DLC could introduce. On top of that, I hope the American civs get something new with this DLC — they’ve been neglected for a while and could really use some rebalancing to bring them back into the spotlight.

Finally, I’m hoping for unique units that are interesting without being too gimmicky. I’m not a fan of the 3K DLC overall (I actually hate it), although the new skins are amazing. I really don’t like the Traction Trebuchet, and I’m also not a big fan of overpowered Castle Age units that have no real use in Imperial.

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Uh oh. This can’t be good…

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In game, a straggler tree is a tree that isn’t on a forest terrain. So it will actually include more than just the 5 stragglers that are placed around players’ TCs (which aren’t placed on every map). And it isn’t always apparent which trees are stragglers. Some maps include neutral trees that aren’t close to players, and these can sometimes end up next to forest trees. And if a map has many trees that aren’t on a forest terrain, this bonus will be especially broken (so much for maps placing forests on rock terrain).

This (and several other bonuses) clearly would need some rebalancing. The ability to castle drop upon age up is pretty significant. An alternative use is to combine it with “selling Stone without a fee” which in feudal age would basically be a more useful Saracen market bonus (sell 400 stone, use the gold to mass archers - would need lots of wood, but can delay the mining camp for a bit). Sending stone without a fee is also pretty broken (as sling strategies are very strong: with this, you can spend your time mining stone while your ally fast castles into castle drop/guard tower rush)

Also, no mention of navy in this (though naval likely isn’t a focus of American civs)

I wouldn’t say it’s strictly stronger, since 25% faster firing is effectively +25% damage over time, even after accounting for armor. +20% damage would apply before armor, but I suspect the after-armor damage would still be less than 25% more overall. But while I think the bonus is worse than the Celt bonus against buildings, the ability to one-shot consistently is very strong. Scorpions would be notably better against units with high pierce armor. Rams wouldn’t need any adustment (since they’d be weaker than Celt rams). Neither would trebs (Saracen trebs get +15% after a UT).

Poison damage doesn’t apply to buildings/siege units. If the poison archer is a low-damage unit, then it will deal 1 damage on impact and then poison would still deal its full damage to targets. Against siege units in this case, it would only deal the 3 bonus damage (as siege units tend to have high pierce armor).

Best comparison is Burmese bonus: infantry +1 atk/age. Not a bad bonus, but while Burmese are a good infantry civ, they tend to get forgotten about (being known more for Arambai and missing the second archer armor tech).

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My Micronesians concept only gets +50 stone upon aging up. That’s much more reasonable.

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First - I thought about the Tupi design and came to the conclusion that the two critizied bonusses were indeed too strong.
But I also found a way to implement the concept of “pitfalls” into the design concepts of these civs.

Whilst Muisca and Mapuche “only” get standard pitfalls, Tupi get a Bonus and a UT applying to them.
Pitfalls are comparably cheap single-tile buidlings that can be walked over and are invisible for the opponents, but have a Charge that when completely depleted will make them visible. That charge is depleted by enemy units or Buildings having LOS on the pitfalls. Bitfalls when revealed can be filled in by Villagers. Otherwise units with a attack ground attack can also “damage” them, but this process is comparably slow.
he pitfall activates on the first enemy unit to walk over it. They are not super cheap, something like 20 W, 10 G or so. Construction time is about 10 s. And they can usually only kill one “cheap” unit. Knights for example would require walking over 2 pitfalls to be killed. T This is achieved by giving them certain types of Bonus damage, especially against cavalry, camels and siege. Notably the standard Infantry (militia) and loomed villagers shouldn’t die in a single pitfall, so there is at least one unit type that pitfalls are less effective against.

So here is my new Tupi design:

Tupi

Pitfalls are 20 % cheaper and 100 % faster constructed
Builders and Repairers refund (10 D / 15 F / 20 C / 25 I) % of the spent ressources
Castles provide a continouus Wood Trickle (60 W/Minute)
Monks regenerate HP (120 /Minute) while converting and gain max HP (+10) per successfull conversion
Archer line +1 F, +2 C, +3 I Bonus damage against Siege units
Castle age UT - Gives Shrivamsha and Pagoda Shield to Infantry (3/1)
Imperial age UT - Pitfalls deal extra area damage (about 20 % in a 2-tile radius)
UU: Poison Archer - deals good damage against all types of living Units over time (not Siege/Buildings!)
TB: Relics generate Wood in addition to Gold
Tech Tree: Miss ofc all cavalry + gunpowder, Heavy Plow, Two-Man Saw, Blast Furnace, Halberdier, Architecture, Hoardings, Fortified Wall, Siege Engineers, Illumination

Maybe it would be better if Muisca just start with 5 special trees that yield 100 W and 40 F around their TCs. This would achieve the desired effect.

As I said, it’s a bold bonus. But I think it’s not as oppressive as you might think. First the feudal builds.
Comparing it with Saracens is good, but I want to bring up Dravidians here first.
With my design of Mapuche they could upgrade a house to a Market (-175 W), sell 400 s and buy 400 W. Then they had 25 more Wood than Dravidians, but only 25 S remaining and also lost some Gold due to the Market price changes. The crucial difference here is that Dravidians have 2 further Bonusses in Feudal: Cheaper Infantry upgrades and faster firing Skirms. Mapuche get a Bonus to their Chasqui, but this will still be weaker than Eagles because it’s food intensive and has no Bonus against Cavalry.
So I think Dravidians have stil the better cards here than Mapuche - and Mapuche ARE desiged to be a very aggressive civ in the early game. Ofc it’s unlikely that Mapuche will use ALL their Stone to only buy Wood, but it’s very likely they will at least buy back the 175 W they spent to upgrade a House to a Market, because Wood is probably the most important ressource at that stage in early feudal.
Saracens is a bit different, as their Markets are cheaper and they get better prices for food (and wood) there. They are also not designed to be a super aggressive civ, though their Archers can be very dangerous. But I want to remind you, that Saracens have to pay less for the Market, so it’s not as strictly of an advantage. Saracens will have made a better deal when buying about 600-700 wood or food on the Market. So it might be stronger initially, but with time Saracens actually get the better end of it.
Castle age ofc is a different matter. And yes, getting exactly that stone you need for a Castle drop is massive. But the crucial part here is that they don’t have a good followup. If they go up super fast which they can their eco is a total disaster. If they go up reasonably fast they can setup a solid eco, but they don’t have a good UU for this kind of play. A cavalry unit that costs a lot of food and doesn’t has the best Armor, so even feudal archers can kill it. Ofc it’s an intended play, but it’s also nerfed by the Mapuche lacking a good utilization of that timing. The UU isn’t bad by any means, it’s just not the right tool at that situation. Ofc Mapuche will make some of them because they already invested in the castle, but they are far less dangerous than the classic “Phosphoru” units like Chariots or Organ Guns.
Is that enough to compensate for the possibly best FC Castle drop in the game? idk. Nobody knows. It’s very risky and bold to give that as a civ bonus indeed. (I also want to remind here that there are already civs that can get absurdly fast castle drops aswell like Khmer and they possibly would just be able to get it one Vill or so faster than these.) But if we aren’t bold and don’t try theses things we can’t figure out IF it’s too powerful and needs a nerf. Possibly it would already lose a lot if the Stone would just be 200 instead of 225, because it would mean the castle dropper would need to collect a bit or buy it from the Market, possibly even have to build a mining camp, further delaying the timing.

Well explained. Except that the Poison Archers in my design don’t benefit from the anti-siege bonus. So they literally deal just 1 damage per shot against Siege and Buildings.

And yet so far I’m the only one with full concepts. I hope to see some of you guys too. I have no issues to be interrogated about my concepts, but this thread is meant to be a platform for everybodies, not just mine.

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I also had some. But not motivated to post them anymore as 99% of civ design is completed at this point. That’s why I am only interested on guessing game.

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I believe I have full concepts foe Muisca running back maybe even over a decade and especially the denied Chimu

https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/s/TAxsK3Z5lH

Man this is OOOLD! I gotta update it

and geez has it really been 10 years of idea outflow? I mean no its been over 20