Influence as a resource for Native Americans

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
1

What if Native Americans had Influence as a 4th resource like the Africans.
Instead of being represented by Seashells it would be Fur for Hudenosaunee and Lakota and artefacts for Aztecs and Inca.

Main reasons for this idea:

  • The Community Plaza is not a good game mechanic and needs to be replaced
  • Give Native Americans a good was to obtain mercenaries and foreign weapons
  • Give Lakota a way to mine Coin

My ideas are mostly focused on the Lakota but I also have ideas for the other 3 civilisations.
Many of those ideas originally came form other people and came up in multiple other threads.

General Influence

  • All Mercenaries (including Captured Mortars) as well as all units and technologies from Minor Civilisations only cost Influence.
  • Influence can be gained from Trade Routes.
  • Trading Posts next to Minor Civilisations trickle Influence
  • Live Stock does not trickle Influence
  • Influence can be shipped from the Home City in crates
  • Each civilisation has one unique way to gain Influence

North Americans

Tradehouse: Trains mercenaries and provides some technologies (for example Arsenal technologies).
Everything here costs Influence.
Does not train Outlaws.

Three Sisters Garden: Allows to collect Food, Coin and Wood but at a lower base rate then other Farming buildings.
Maybe it could also would also work like a Hacienda and would allow to train certain units that used to be exclusive to the Community Plaza?
They should also allow for 10 gatherers to make it worth to use a Travois for it.
Replaces Farm and Estate.

Coral what if it also worked as a Livestock Pan now that the farm is gone?
Alternative just give them a Livestock Pan.

Lakota

Lakota now have 2 villagers:

  • Khuwa (Hunter) cost 120 Food (Mounted villager)
  • Wozu (Farmer) cost 100 Influence (Dakota villager)

Both train as fast as a normal villager.

It’s not the only civilisation that can train 2 different Villagers at the TC (the Italian have the Architect) and also not the only civilisation that can train a foreign unit in the TC without a Home City card (Native Scouts for the French).

Khuwa produce influence from hunting.
You can choose their influence rate at the Tradehouse:

  • 70% Food + 60% Influence
  • 100% Food + 30% Influence (default)
  • 130% Food + 0 Influence

100% = collection rate of a normal villager.
As a comparison: Coureur des Bois collect all resources 25% faster also cost 120 Food but train 12% slower.

They can’t collect from farms nor mine. So only hunt, berries, livestock and trees.
They are stronger then all other villagers (excluding revolutions) but they have a 0.1x modifier against villagers (Coureur des Bois already have 0.25x vs other villagers) and 0.5 vs. heroes as well as bad siege damage.
They are also the fastest villager because they are on horse back.

Maybe add a big banner technology that allows you to irreversibly transform them into military cavalry units for a cost. Similar to Norse Gatherers in AoM.

Wozu are Dakota language speaking villagers that collect 20% faster from farms but are weaker then normal villagers. All other resources are normal speed, including mines.
Haudenosaunee have a HC card that allows them to unlock the Wozu too but with a low training limit (20).

That means trees, berries and livestock can be collected by both villagers at the same speed.
Also both villager types share the same training limit so you can choose how many of each you want.

Lakota Start

A Town Travois and the War Chief
When the TC is unpacked it spawns 4 Khuwa and 2 Wozu (one more villager then now because the TC needs time to build)
One of the resource crates is an Influence crate.
Camp Movements feature is active from the beginning that means most buildings can transfrom into Travois. Maybe at a 10% construction cost to it and left the HC card remove that.

Buffalo Pound: Can be shipped from the HC twice. They produce 1 Bison per minute which equals 8.33 resources per second which is better then a Factory with 7.15 but it requires some villagers to work on it.

Haudenosaunee

  • Villagers produce Influence when chopping wood
  • Can build Three Sisters Garden and Tradehouse too.

Influence collection rate (can be changed at the Tradehouse):

  • 80% Wood + 40% Influence
  • 100% Wood + 20% Influence (default)
  • 120% Wood + 0% Influence

Meso Americans

Temple: replaces the community Plaza.
Allows to train special units (Like Warrior Priest or Skill Knights) and mercenaries as well as research special technologies.
Everything costs Influence here.
Villagers and Priest can do ceremonies like at the Community Plaza but there are less to chose from and there none that provide global bonuses anymore.
Does not train Outlaws.

Aztecs

  • Villagers collect Influence from Mines or alternatively from killing enemies (maybe only near the Temple)
  • Can build Temple
  • Can train captured Falconets at the Temple
  • Can still build Farms and Estates

Inca

  • Their Kancha Houses produce Influence instead of Food
  • Can build Temple
  • Can train captured Falconets at the Temple
  • Can still build Farms and Estates

More thoughts

There are a bunch of smaller things that need to be changed to, like where do Warriors come from or how to get Healers.
Also the economy has to be balanced.
Right now the harvest Ceremony allows for faster villager training speed and there has to be a replacement for that.

All numbers are up for debate (and for testing).

Also there is no Tribal Marketplace anymore.

I think Africans are still unique enough even if Native Americans also have an Influence mechanic because the mechanic works different enough.
Also the Africans have the alliance system that the Native Americans don’t have.

6 Likes
2

generally solid suggestions, but then the game truly departs from original vision, although to be fair, all of the above is on point, that i can agree with, but i don’t see it happening within 3 DE, maybe in some new future title

3

The original vision of the Native Americans was to be used to glorify the past of the US with absolutely zero thought towards how the Lakota and Hauds are getting used in the meanwhile.

By all means, the more it departs, the better off we’ll be.

4 Likes
4

thing is, it would be a right thing to do honestly, but i doubt FE will have spine to do so without risking criticism from certain parts of playerbase that wouldn’t react well to changes

5

Luckily this is not the AoE2 community.
The AoE3 community is a lot more open to change.

Also my ideas could only be applied to Lakota and Haudenosanee at first and then if popular Aztecs and Inca could be reworked too.

6 Likes
6

As long as the change makes sense. There are still players of the old game who don’t want to play DE.

Each community has its vision and one or the other does not necessarily have to be wrong.

2 Likes
7

This is honestly a bad idea. They shouldn’t be getting influence. Neither export. Introducing influence and having so totally different ways of getting influence from the legacy influence civs is akin to introducing the tribal marketplace for hauds and lakota just for the sake of political correctness, and we all know that simply doesn’t fly. Fundamentally changing the way an resource works between civs is not a good idea. The game keeps some coherence in the way resources are obtained, and we should strive to keep that up. We simply don’t need another overly complex tribal marketplace.

However, you did pick up on the fundamental issue here: the 4 civs should be split into 2 groups, aztecs + inca and Lakota + hauds. The first group is clearly more ancient and more ritualistic and religious with magics and stuff, while the second group advanced and adapted to live to present day. Once we move past the fact that all 4 civs need to fight with spears and bows, we can talk about reworking their resource model. Honestly, I’d keep lakota and hauds as is, including with the community plaza (you can add some reworks of what vilies do there, like when doing the damage dance they start sharpening weapons or something), but give something more religious to aztecs and inca.

5 Likes
8

Great and concise list of changes.

Devs, make it so :wink:

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9

The Lakota do have a religious barrier against mining. This same belief prevented them from farming, as well. The Haudenosaunee had no such restriction, so implementing it onto them was just a poor choice all around.
The tribal marketplace is a stupid solution, however.

All four civs have representative peoples living today. Of the four, the Inca and Nahuatl are more populous than the Hauds and Lakota, though the latter two are more closely tied to the version of their culture that exists in the game IRL.

This is just entirely incorrect. The Hauds + Lakota used guns, and the Lakota were the first to use the repeating carbine from horseback, and they did it effectively enough to drive back the US by a significant margin.

I’m just gonna be honest here, but I don’t think you know a damn thing about the history of Native Americans. Everything in this comment is just… wrong.

1 Like
10

“Conservative AOE3 player” sounds like a really bad satire but it’s real.

11

The original idea was to introduce a new resource called Fur but after thinking about it there was a lot of overlap with Influence.
Influence itself already works differently for both of the African civilisations so you’d expect more civilisations with the same resource to have new ways to gain it anyway.
The only main general difference to the Africans would be that the Americans don’t share the Influence trickle from Livestock.

That stuff belongs to AoM.
There is already a good Aztec mod for AoM and I think Aztec are high up on the list of potential new civilisations for future AoMR DLC.

It’s not just about the system being stupid in a historic context, it’s also not really a fun gameplay mechanic in my eyes.
Having a building that can switch between unit production and global buffs is not a good game design in my eyes.

AoE2 players are in a whole different league.
They start crying when anything about the original AoK/AoC civs is changed or if someone wants to add any uniqueness to a civilisation, even if it’s just unique sprites.
Every civilisation is supposed to play almost the same and you are supposed to only be able to choose between Crossbows and Knights in Castle Age.

The majority of the AoE3 community on the other hand celebrated as the Ottomans got a unique unit roster of all Royal Guard units got unique skins and stats.

2 Likes
13

this lakota start is probably completely busted

  • the initial TC will give an xp boost due to construction ( so need to remove xp bounty for its construction)
  • allowing even somewhat free movement of the innitial TC is basically inviting super early harassment, so unless it move very slowly (like mongols in aoe 4) - which kinda defeats the purpose of allowing it to move.

On the point of a 4th res for native americans, on this point I do want to add that XP is still a res in this game and I think that the devs has been pushing this more as a part of how the civs function

with techs like cooperation giving xp trickles while vils gather, cards that increases the xp gain from training units etc. Inca also has a lot of designs around XP incidentally through the Tambo and its native plays

Its also a core part of aztec identity in game.

XP was Fame in the early beta of AOE 3 and being able to do more with it is arguably a better way then having another res on top that you then have to adjust all unit costs around.

How that would be done would have to be a whole process (one idea is maybe converting xp to res/ or having some of the techs reachable using xp as a resource) but I personally dont like the idea of just adding like what for a lack of a better word “visible” res for units to collect and just having civs spend it.

That is anything just going back to aoe 2 and aoe 4 and not really the insanity approach that aoe 3 and aom went for

14

Actually naming it fur would be better than influence tbh.

15

You said it, additions and reskins not removals and their core mechanic deletion. If we do it with every civ then we should stop calling the game aoe III

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16

You’re living proof that anyone who says AoE3 players like changes is lying.

17

People continuously oppose “changes for the sake of changes”.

But rarely touch the equally bad practice of “staying the same for the sake of staying the same”

Meanwhile the “more conservative” AOE2 players are happy scrapping a 10+ year old civ.

2 Likes
18

If you mean Indians, there were complaints from day 1, but there are also people even now who wanted them to be kept as a single civ, like there were people who didn’t want Royal Guard units in AoE3 to get unique skins. Both games have annoying players who oppose change.

19

Realistically, Inca and Aztecs have nothing in common. The two nativa american civilizations that are somewhat, vaguely closely related are actually Aztecs and Lakota.

4 Likes
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I hate agreeing with this, but I have to. There’s a distinct trail between the two that’s a lot shorter than the trail connecting the Hauds and Lakota.

1 Like
21

Most of these ideas are very good. I really like the three sisters garden (I always thought this could be a nice unique tech for the Hauds) but why give it to the Lakota? Maybe Ana can answer this? I’ve seen her propose it too, which seems contradictory with their religion, but I may be wrong.

In another thread, I’ve suggested the term “fur” but the 4th ressource could even be called “goods”. And I’d prefer this ressource to be different from influence as to make it unique. I’ve suggested to add a small fur cost to every lakota and haud units with a horse or a gun. The market would allow to exchange furs/goods for other ressources. Maybe the market could even generate a small trickle?

As for the Mesoamericans, I have to disagree with the temple. Don’t get me wrong, it would be 100 times better than the plaza, but I say if we remove the plaza to the lakota and hauds for being too offensive and stereotypical, than we can’t simply keep it for the Aztecs and Incas.

I still disagree with giving access to cannons to the Aztecs. Morevover, the skull knight should be replace with the “shorn one”.