They probably could’ve just changed the civ’s name to Oceti Sakowin and then everyone would be happier.
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I mean, there were zero Dakhota or Dakota references as well. The Nakoda are not part of the Seven Fires, they are their own nation situated more north, in Canada.
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When is this update coming?
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Sometime after the KotM event ends in 9 days.
That’s precisely what the German civ is. The Russian civ works like that with the Slavic nations as well. As for Wales, well, the Welsh, Irish, Scottish, and English all get amalgamated too, into the British civ. There’s a lot of amalgamation that’s done for the sake of simplicity, clarity, and to make distinct civs in a game. I can only imagine what some of my Nigerian colleagues might think about the Hausa: the West African mash-up. Many of us can play this game too. But Age 3 is a history-inspired game after all, not a history simulator. The game is the key part: RTS with a rock-paper-scissors combat system and a 3 resource economic model. History is woven into that model, and it will, by necessity, be imperfect.
This comes off as historical framing. Very few leaders that go to war sell it as a purely offensive enterprise. You tell people there’s a threat that you’re going to eliminate. Also, offense and defense in a war both involve the same sort of killing. The US likes to frame its wars as defensive wars too. I’m not sure that’s an entirely accurate portrayal, or that it needs to be in a game where the goal is to eliminate the other side.
There’s probably a balance reason for the weakness. You give a stronger early game with hunting bonuses and quick food, with the trade-off being a weaker late game economy. If you happen to play one of those other civs that’s a slow starter (Ottoman, good Lord, the Ottoman start), you really appreciate when you finally get your economy rolling and get to feel like you have more power. That works in a standard 45-60 min supremacy game. It really doesn’t for treaty where you effectively play the whole game in the end-game economy. There are several civs that suffer here: Iroquois/Hauds and India also come to mind.
The suggestion of an all-hunting economy is interesting though. I’ve thought about how to do this with the Iroquois/Hauds. They did do some farming, but certainly not much cash cropping. In the mean time, the fur trade was central. It get appended as a quick fix and substitute for early game mining. Fixing it is a challenge though. After age 2 and the huntables and mines are gone, the passive economy is all gated by wood. To automate your economy, you spend a ton of wood in Age 3 and 4 to build a ton of mills and estates, and upgrade them, while also balancing all of the various military upgrades and other tech also gated by wood. It forces hard choices, and those need to remain.
So, do we need a “building” that spawns huntable animals over time? For Iroquois/Hauds, it would spawn deer, elk, etc at a certain rate. For Sioux/Lakota, it could be bison. Or make it map-dependent with a card to get the high-output bison. Harvesting from these animals would give both food and coin. The idea being that when an animal was taken, out of respect to the animal and the life that was taken, all of it would be used and nothing wasted. That generated furs and other products that were traded. The art could look like a forest or a meadow or prairie, whatever, maybe a trade post in the corner. But you’d task up to 10 villagers on it and that would control the rate of animal spawn and harvest. This way, you don’t have to have farms and plantation/estates while retaining a lot of the other balance points already in the game. And you’re not obligated to spend your shipment cards on INF bison cards or something when other civs are not forced to and can use theirs for military advantages.
Thoughts?
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Some nice changes, nice to see some buffs for brit rangers even if they are minor.
I think the biggest change is 100 starting wood for lakota lol They seem to be moving them away from their old style of play and encouraging something new which is nice, good to see mortars available for the natives too.
Though I no longer play inca, I was shocked to see they’ve halved huaraca damage vs artillery and cavalry. Nerfing the instant garrison to the fort was enough. Inca seem to be the new spain and constantly nerfed every patch and it’s shocking. I’d love to see their win rates, I’m assuming many lower level players just don’t understand the civs units so they have a higher than usual win rate like aztec had.
Really good changes to italy as well but I’m shocked not to see a single change to malta which are still in need of some minor buffs imo.
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I don’t know if the same thing will happen to them, but the sendings from the basilica seem too slow to me, I suggest that they can be sent a little faster, maybe 40 seconds would be a more appropriate time?
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from the way they are doing this i think they envision inca age 3 as almost like jan abus with huaraca and bolas being a death mass somehow
I’m at work, but I saw this and needed to clarify something: The Lakota in their current state are not like how the Russians are an amalgamation of Slavic cultures or how the British are the Scottish, English, and Welsh all at once. The Lakota are as though the Slavics, Germanics, and Iberians all got shoved into one civ.
The original top tier cavalry unit of the Lakota was the Dog Soldier - this is akin to giving the Russians the Imperial Gendarmes as their best unit. The Cheyenne were centralized in northwestern Montana - the Seven Fires were centralized in Southeastern Dakotas.
The level of amalgamation is an absurd level that isn’t present in any other civ in the game. Even the Hauds are distinctly the Haudenosaunee, but the Lakota have one thing that distinctly makes them Lakota - the Tokala Soldier, which wasn’t even added until the DE. Prior to that, they had more Cheyenne references than anything from the Lakota.
The rest is also super problematic and a heavy misunderstanding from your end, but trying to type this on my phone is annoying so I’m leaving it at that until I get off work.
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yeah seeing these new changes being tried out, the new lakota is going to be defensive as ■■■■, the target locking cetan is a massive dps boost, the free tribal market means you can can encircle yuor base with it as we defensive emplacement and the eco teppee boost also ironically is a raid defense since you are encouraged to build them and they provide HP for the vils so your eco is more raid resistant
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I’m hoping for this. Studying the clashes between the Lakota and the US, you’ll notice that just about every battle was fought inside Lakota territory, near the borders.
Their fight was to defend their borders. They agreed to borders and leaders like Chiefs Eagle Woman, Sitting Bull, and Crazy Horse heavily regulated to their followers to stay within these borders to avoid further clashes with the US.
That’s what I mean by defensive warfare - the Lakota were not a warlike people, their empire did not arise from conquest. Rather, a majority of their sphere of influence was because they made friends out of their neighbors and pushed away the enemies of their friends through trade strangulation.
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My experience in the PUP is that Lakota is now a pure FF civ. You will not want to spend too much time in age 2 now, if you try to aggressive, it will be equal to an all-in, since there’s no age2 villager cards anymore. You will want to get age 3, 8 vili and adoptions card to boom off 2-3 TCs, while laming with cetans and rifle riders.
Personally I think their age2 is a bit overnerfed. I’d at least move the axe rider and bow rider alliance buff cards from age 3 to age 2. Their age2 is so bad you can’t even beat the extreme AI in age 2 anymore.
However, once you reach age 3 you kind of need to be aggressive and take the map. Since tribal marketplace no longer costs wood, you gather your gold more consistently now, and you will almost always want 2-3 tribals active at the same time.
Realistically, you can’t wall off with tribals alone, you are map/spawn dependent. You still need to roam and take map control, you just can’t do it from age 2 now.
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yeah as it is age 2 is a bit risky, though arguably that makes early defensive-esque play kinda make sense, you dont want to push out early so you are sort of defensive with like a ring defense trying to get to age 3 and then push out
true but i remember the period in esoc where lakota had the stackable eco buffs, the play wasnt walling off per say but that a combination already spamming tepee for eco makes sending the card that also buffs attack much more worth it and makes pushing the lakota base a nightmare since you have jacked up units while in base the eco is very strong
The PUP isnt fully in that direction but it is somewhat there, so arguably a defensive age 2 with tepee buffed cetan and then pushing out in age 3 with map control is very real
Or just straight FI into the card that auto upgrades infantry into guard and then spam guard wakina cards and then send the +20% hp card and then the +75% siege card for clubs
I do agree that they probably should get 5 vils back.
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In all my games against both people and AI, it never made sense to stay in age 2 and turtle and play somehow defensively as lakota now. There just isn’t enough to do and you get outboomed by pretty much every civ if you try to do it. Each time I tried the “old” way of lakota, with staying in age 2 and being somewhat aggressive, I lost. Hard. When I started doing almost naked FFs, it went much, much better. Since you no longer need to chop to mine, you can pretty much FF like any other civ. Which is what I’d recommend now anyway.
Trying to waste time by building teepees or somehow encircle yourself with all sorts of obstacles is not worth it. Just FF 
I appreciate the rework! I’m just worried about two things:
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I feels the economy took a hard hit that is not offset by the new changes since they’ve been diluted into more variables which require more attention, more cost, more choices.
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Siege dance was really good for cavalry and pushes. The dance was nerfed and the power was divided into big buttons, cards and wall bonus. It looks like a nerf for the average supremacy mode (although good for tretay).
GREAT!!! You listened to the feedback! POGGERS!
Bhakti having two units with the same role is really odd. Perhaps we should transfer War Elephant to a brand new native?
OK, I’ve made a comment here but repeating it:
Wouldn’t it be easier/simple if we had an exclusive NTP travois (NTP= Native Trading Post ) out of Explorers & Embassy that are cheaper (100f, 100w) but would set up the NTP much slower than building it? Think of like an “Emissary” from your city.
I feel that would’ve been simpler than the conversion method and would still respect the old way of making an alliance with Explorers (which is expensive but faster).
A new Theravada temple would be the best fit for War Elephants. It’s distinct from Mahayana Buddhism (Shaolin and Zen) and is practiced in Myanmar, Thailand, and Sri Lanka where elephants are a pretty big deal. It could feature on Ceylon, Bengal, Parallel Rivers, Indochina, Siam (blank space), and Himalayas. Deccan could also probably feature them since War Elephants would fit, but the type of Buddhism practiced there isn’t Theravada.
I also think Bhakti temples should appear on the Indonesia map. Hinduism was very widespread there at the start of the game’s timeframe and it’s still practiced in Bali today.
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I hit upon this in another comment earlier, but the main thought is this - there is zero doubt that the Lakota wars this is based off of have the Lakota fighting purely defensive, from the Wounded Knee Massacre to the Battle at Greasy Grass. Each of those takes place within the pre-defined borders the US and Natives agreed upon, and each is the US breaking these treaties. The US has a long and bloody history of breaking treaties made with Native Americans.
The agricultural methods of the Haudenosaunee would be best represented by… gaining food from chopping trees. Literally no other way to describe it, but in terms of raw output? The Haudenosaunee should be second only to the Aztecs in food output from “farms”. (I say “farms” because their concept of how their agriculture worked had nothing to do with farms as we know it, but it was far more effective than anything the European colonizers brought over.)
The Haudenosaunee should be capable of mining and farming normally (although making the Hauds heavily dependent on wood would be a good choice), but the Lakota should be incapable of farming or gathering from mines. The entire economy of the Lakota was dependent upon bison - in my own mod, I pushed food costs of the civ up so high that even the Lakota buildings were costing 50% food/wood. The Lakota relied on the bison for everything.
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Haudenosaunee should get a way to generate new trees and Lakota one to get new Bisons.
Keep the tribal market place but give it a completely different purpose.
It works like the African grainy but the improved collection rate is completely transformed into coin.
Maybe the Lakota could get a building like the Mongol Ovoo from AoE4 or the maintain monastery that can be build on top of a mine.
It has a build limit (+1 per Age up) and trickles coin. The trickle rate is lower when the mine depletes.
The balance is going to be a bit tricky.
I don’t think that necessarily has to impact the gameplay.
I mean the enemy base symbolises a forward base that is build in Lakota territory. Then attacking it would be defensive.
If we play on a none American map the whole matchup is obviously fantasy anyway.
About the farms.
Lakota didn’t farm but they know how to farm, right?
So they should be able to farm but not need to farm in most cases.
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More?? 5/8 units cost wood currently. Also the civ has travois to saving wood (or thats the purpouse) and free market upgrades. Their dependency on wood is the highest in the entire game…thats enough by far
Edit: I forget that Aenna existed
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Aenna only cost food so 3 units that don’t cost wood.
But yes, very wood dependent already.
So giving them more lategame ways to get wood might be a good idea.
So they can do something other then spamming the two same units every time.
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