you’re right, if half a sentence is correct it means the whole thing is correct and I cannot acknowledge the other portion. It was also incorrect for me to use ellipsis to indicate portions were edited for sake of clarity. this is, of course, not standard practice the world over in quotations and/or citations. Again, my mistake
The Aztecs and Inca should not be considered in this report of the Lakota and Hauds anymore than the Ethiopians and Hausa should be considered. They are a separate faction and should be tested as such.
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That’s what I mean.
You’re not going to buy mercenaries with Unity, I’d assume.
The concept is mostly about them.
Lakota first then Haudenosanee and then maybe Aztecs and Inca.
I’m debating things.
I’m interested on hearing more about your ideas.
No I didn’t assume that.
I just think it would be weird to spend it on things like Mercenaries.
Which is the reason why I came up with the idea of adding Influence to Lakota (and possibly other Native Americans) because it fill out this role for Africans.
You replied to my ideas in my thread, why shouldn’t I reply back?
Your Unity concept is more interesting for Aztecs and Inca then for Lakota and Haudenaunee.
Influence is pretty much just coins 2.0.
Those seashells were used as currency in many countries around the Indian Ocean and beyond. They are therefore essentially just fancy coins.
Venice was one of the biggest powers involve in trading them that’s why I suggested Influence for Italians before they were added to the game.
It could honestly just been Export tbh.
Maybe I should have left out Aztecs and Inca in my proposal.
Even the Aztecs and Inca have a lot of differences between each other.
The Mexicans have been added to the game since and they had some influence on the Spanish civilisation already. Maybe some Mexican aspects could be applied to the Aztecs in some way, especially things from the Mayan revolution.
But that would be more on the military side and this is a thread about economy.
People keep complaing about Incas and Aztecs being grouped with Lakotas and Hauds but are suspiciously fine with them being grouped with each other. Incas and Aztecs were as disconnected with each other as they were with US natives.
I don’t think anyone is grouping them together so much as grouping them away from the Lakota and Hauds.
Ideally, Mesoamerican and South America should be their own regions.
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thing is, the playerbase with aoe3 perfectly reflects the sheer scope with aoe3, there’s so many experimental ideas that were tossed together that its a miracle the game turned out as good as it is, not quite aoe2, but second to aoe2 only
To maybe lift a more interesting ideas from other aoe games and from a “american” civ
Dehli sultanate in aoe 4 has the mechanic where all their techs cost no res but takes a long time to research which can be reduced by tasking their scholars to the buildings (same with building productions)
a similar concept can be seen implemented in the US civ with Hamiltonian economics & sprinfield armoury setting tech cost to 0 ( probably inspired from aoe 4)
we can expand that concept somewhat I feel. US native civs maybe can have some if not all of their tech cost to 0 and their healers and vils tasked to reduce the research time and or/ have special techs (replacing some of the big buttons) that can only be researched when they are tasked to do this. And they should generate XP while they are doing this.
Personally I just find adding an intermediate res (influence or export inspired) mechanically uninteresting
edit: adding on to this idea, units like mercs, cannons and maybe some kind of consulate type idea could also be “free” but takes very long to “train” but could also be reduced by this kind of work
I’m kinda wary of just making techs free, I just don’t feel like it could be balanced, but if AoE4 does, then there’s got to be a way to make it reasonable, and it does kinda fit all civs, certainly an interesting idea to explore, to have the 4th resources be basically manpower.
I’m rather wary of keeping it alongside the Plaza though, the civs basically would need an insane number of civilian units to keep up with everybody else.
There definitely has to be some level of adjustments for aoe 3.
In aoe 4 i think most of the time the research time is somwhere x2-x3 longer - there are exceptions to this as well so we can adjust if something takes too long (to take and aoe 3 example springfield armory increases research time by 2.5)
in aoe 4 it sort of works because there is a lot of techs to research so you just queue a bunch of techs right at the start of the game to time their effects when you kinda need them depending on the build
in aoe 3 for a lot of civs I think there isnt that many technologies to even research in the early game so it might be more prudent to have much cheaper techs in the early game for maybe a 50% research time rather than free for x2 research time.
An interesting synergy and why I think it suits the native americans specifically is they have time dependent big button techs that could be very intresting if you can queue them early but have them arrive later when you need them (the inca kancha tech for example is widely regarded as useless, but if its free but say arrive by the time you reach age 2, thats good value, haud’s big button which are mostly res is also not useful at all but if they are free they are essentially crate timings)
Where I think there is a much more interesting implications is if they are also increasing the speed of say shipment time/train time so instead of the plaza providing individual bonuses that you have to switch around, it kind of just boost your civ slowly all round
ofcourse the crazier idea is to have mercs, cannons or special units that can maybe be queued at buildings for cheap or free but have long train time which can be reduced, kind of like how skull knights, the chinese wonders and dojos work. It would be more passive eco that is not prone to dangerous power spikes
This is an idea that could be pursued for the Aztecs + ####### Potentially, purely as a Mesoamerican foundation for the inclusion of other Mesoamerican cultures.
I like the direction, but it would be a weird direction for the Lakota + Hauds.
I can’t believe the one South American civilization ingame’s name is still censored.
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The idea im trying to emulate as it were is councils of elites and the common folk that convene that would speed up the adoption of technologies or policies and rallying of people or allies which as a broad theme that kinda can works across the 4 civs
rather then trying to boost the eco or attack power of the civs and have them train units, which is just prone to massive balance problems and to me is just another influence, this would allow them to muster parts of their armies differently
The existing games have tried to do this with the various support shipments and native allies shipment but I think this can be pushed further
to pull an idea off the top of my head, like how african civs spends influence to train native warriror, TPs for native american civs can be like dojos and allow batches of native units to trickle out
same with say outlaws, mercs and cannons
this would be very good game play wise, giving these civs a strong incentive to take native TPs and be a strong differentiator against how other civs do things.
The point I’m making is that the Natives need to be split into different groups. Trying to connect the Hauds and the Inca into a single faction is like trying to justify Japan and Ethiopia into having the same foundation.
sure I can see that though I would say that there can be “shared” elements that can play out in different ways.
Like the theme of alliances is something that both Asian and African civ groups share but play out in different ways with the consulate vs alliance age ups.
Even the influence concept play out very differently between ethiopia and hausa, both themtically and mechanically
How much you want to that is arguable for design purposes
So I think the core theme of the council is one that can be shared, how that plays out will be the details
edit: also like culturally hausa and ethiopia arent even that similar so a larger grouping aint that weird to me
But so are the two African civilisations and they share even more units, buildings and features.
The current degree of separation between them is fine.
What if it’s not really technologies but permanent buffs instead.
So like instead of getting faster training speed while you are doing a ceremony you slowly increase the training time permanently even if you stop doing it.
There would be a limit of how much you could improve it. It could also be getting slower over time.
So the first 5% faster production speed would be a lot easier to get then the last 5%.
But I still think that mechanic would work better with the Aztecs and Inca.
Possible things you could get:
- +100% creation speed
- +25% attack
- +50% collection speed of each of the resources (Imperial Age techs removed)
- 10XP/Second
- +25 max population
- 5%/second health regeneration
- 10 Warrior Priest train limit (starts at 1)
- 16 Priestess train limit (starts at 0)
- 20 Skull Knight train limit (starts at 0)
Maxing out each of them would take a while and also depend on the bonus.
This would especially help them in long treaty games where they are currently not that good.
Also the units formally trained by ceremonies are now just slowly unlocked by them.
They could still automatically spawn a free one every time the limit is increased by 1.
But then you can retrain them at the temple like normal units when they die.
Cards shipping those units probably should be removed though.
Not all ceremonies are available in the first Age, some are unlocked later.
But those ceremonies would be done at the Temple, which replaces the boring Plaza.
Inca works but Incas is censored.
I’m 100% down for that general train of thought to be implemented for the Aztecs and Inca. While I would ideally like to see is the Americas having three major regions - the Tortuamericans, the Mesoamericans, and the South Americans (potentially four, but I don’t know enough about South America to know where/how to divide it) - if we must drop down to two, Tortuamericans + South/Central Americans is probably the best divide we’ll get.
This long-form Ceremonies would be perfect for the Aztecs, as it would allow them to retain their BBTs as pure unit shipments while they get purely upgrades from slowly working on these long-forms, which in turn would lessen the number of “core” cards in their deck and open up a lot more options for them.
To a lesser extent, it would also work for the Inca along the same lines.
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New Idea for Buffalo Pound:
- 1 per Age (start with one for free)
- Can only be build on mines.
- Does NOT deplete the mine
- Produces 1 Bison/Minute
- Holds up to 5 Bison (starts with 1)
- Bison trickle 9/coin per Minute
- Can be moved like the other Lakota buildings
- Bison are set free when building is destroyed or is being moved
- Bison inside can’t be hunter by other players (not even allies)
- Bison inside collect at normal rate (so they produce Food+Influence)
- Industrial HC Card removes mine requirement.
This way you have a trade off between keeping them and letting them trickle Coin or killing them to get Food+Influence.
So it works similar to African Cattle.
Because the mines are not depleted it is not just a reskinned mining.
The mines can later be used Wozu to gain Coin.
Wozu are trained at the Tradehouse which is available in the second Age but they have a train limit.
They can be unlocked in Three Sister Garden with a HC Card, this also increases their build limit.
I feel like people are way overcomplicating things about how buffalo would be produced at the buffalo pound.
The building should produce 1 bison/minute, with reduced food/bison to prevent allies from hunting well into the late game, or avoiding mills entirely in treaty games.
Buffalo Pounds act like Granaries, attracting bison.
And that’s all the special they need to be. They’re an incredibly powerful building as-is, trying to give them more focus is going to make the building way too feast/famine for the Lakota player. If they are the focus on gold as well as food, then a raiding force needs only destroy one building to screw over the Lakota player’s gold + food income.
Tradehouse would change “Influence” % gathered from Food for the Lakota and train Mercenaries + arsenal improvements.
However, the Lakota specifically need another building to generate gold from hunting. Part of the reason I want to ensure that the gold production isn’t related to the Buffalo Pound is that, ideally, the Buffalo Pound would be shared among other prairie nations, like the Comanche and the Iron Confederacy - the key difference being that both of them are capable of mining and can use their own villagers on the Three Sisters Garden into the late-game much more effectively than the Lakota.
EDIT: “Much more effectively,” the Iron Confederacy, yeah, the Comanche, no. The Comanche would take over as the hyper-aggressive early-mid game civ that falls off into the later game.
Also, related
Wozu is a Lakota word, the Dakota word for farmer is Wojuti.
ADD: it occurred to me a few hours ago that, while the concept of the Wozu is great for the Native civs, I used a Lakota dictionary to name them, not a Dakota one.
I kinda think that, if you just move the ceremonies to another building again, the problem I personally have with them will still persist.
Unless you suggest they will work differently on your model Skadi?