Lakota and Haudenosaunee Messenger-Class Cards

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
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"Messenger" class cards

So the “Messenger” class cards are, overall, kind of interesting but overall are one of the barriers preventing the Natives from having proper access to Mercenaries. I would have made this a post on this post but this seemed broad and important enough to require its own thread, as it’s only tangentially related to the Mercenary problem and has its own issues worth talking about.

Lakota

Support Cards

It only takes a single read-through to find some immediate problems with the Lakota Support cards - they can send aid from themselves twice. Why? Why can the Lakota send Lakota Support twice, as two different cards?
First off, the only “Support” style cards the Lakota should have are from the seven Lakota tribes - Hunkpapa, Oglala, Sicangu, Oohenunpa, Mniconjou, Siha Sapa, and Itazipco.
Any more beyond this is unnecessary and should be treated more as Mercenary-style cards. Seven is enough.

The Cree

After this, it’s worth noting that the fact that the Lakota can send Cree allies is truly bizarre: If there existed an “I hate the Lakota” fan club, the Cree would be the president of this club. The only thing the Cree would do upon being sent to the battlefield by us would be to immediately join the enemy’s team.
The Lakota being able to send Cree allies makes about as much sense as if the campaign’s US Revolutionaries could send Hessian Jaegers.

Replacing the Cree

The Cheyenne Dog Men are fine. The Cree are not - I propose to replace them with an entirely new unit, the Inun-Ina Cloud Sisters, a unique Inun-Ina cavalry riflewoman.

As to what the goal of the Cloud Sisters would be… toss out some suggestions. There’s a lot of cavalry available to the Lakota, and this is giving them more, so making them niche is encouraged.

Two New Warchiefs

To push the Messenger-class cards more into Native units and encouraging the Lakota player to use the Dog Men and Cloud Sisters, two unique hero cards would be gained, able to be sent in Age 3 - Chief Roman Nose and Chief Pretty Nose. Acting as powerful versions of their own units, they would empower Native units in unique ways, letting the Lakota push out more towards map control to gain control of Native sites. Other Nations have more cards to upgrade and make use of Native units on the maps, or simply have more synergy with Native sites than the Lakota do, so this would give them a way to push more into something they don’t normally do without it being super out of the way, since both Cheyenne Dog Men and Inun-Ina Cloud Sisters would be buffed by their own Warchiefs.

Summation

So I’ve got more thoughts on the Haudenosaunee at a later point that I’ll post further down, but I wanted to write out this main concept for the Lakota first, since the Haudenosaunee one would be similar. With the simplification of the Messenger cards - pushing the Support cards down to 7 from 10 and simplifying the Cree and Cheyenne cards down a bit and removing the Comanche Support cards entirely - room is gained to give the Lakota a chance to have cards specifically for Mercenaries, even if it’s solely just a basic equivalent to Dance Halls, Atonement, or Theaters.

PS: “Inun-Ina” is the autonym for a group of people that the censor dislikes: Axrxaxpxaxhxo. Take out the X’s to read it, or look up what tribe Chief Pretty Nose belonged to.

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Mercenary based on the Carbine Cavalry?

Also, does anyone know why that’s censored? It’s not because it has ho in it, that’s for sure. Nor do any other components get censored.

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I like your ideas. Could you please link me a source concerning these " Inun-Ina Cloud Sisters"? I’ve never heard about them and would like to know more. Thank you!

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Whether or not you agree, the Santee and Yankton-Yanktonai have always been included as part of the “Lakota” civ. Limiting the support cards to the Lakota proper is unnecessary and exclusionary. But I agree it’s really dumb to have two of the cards just named “Lakota Support” and they should give them a better name.

It is a bit strange, the high point of their relations was when they would agree to a truce so they could go fight other enemies. But adding the imagewould be very redundant when the Comanche and Cheyenne already cover the region. Unless the Comanche were elevated to a full civ, I don’t see a justification for adding them. A good compromise could be to rename the card to Assiniboine Allies. They’re kinda halfway between the two, being a Sioux people, but also part of the Iron Confederacy.

Instead of a bunch of cards making the Warchief so insanely powerful that it can one hit cannons, having a few cards to send more of them with more moderate stats would be much better. I’m not sure if this necessarily needs new cards though. It could just as easily be tacked on to existing cards like the support ones or the ones that buff the Warchief.

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Unfortunately, the Inun-Ina are an endangered people and largely extinct. Sources on them are iffy and all I can really find online is that they had 8 “Secret Societies,” and information regarding these societies seems to be fairly well protected, or at least only known by a very narrow sect of people.

Finding the “Cloud” name required finding someone from the tribe (who told me specifically “Cloud is fine,” as far as the name goes for the unit) but as they were last online two years ago… I don’t have a whole lot of faith they’ll show up anytime soon. Given how COVID effected the tribes…

As for the Sisters part, I simply wanted to reflect on their warchief, Chief Pretty Nose, as leading a group of women in the same manner that Chief Roman Nose would be leading a group of men. For both tribes, gender was largely irrelevant in hurdles to joining a warrior society.

That’d be a cool direction to go.

No pieces of the Dakota tribes are implemented in the game beyond the use of their names. There’s no reason to keep them, either, as they weren’t particularly close to the Lakota during a lot of this time period.

The Cloud Sisters wouldn’t be added as a minor civ on any maps, solely as a unit available to the Lakota through cards - Potentially, if expanded upon, they could be available as a Mercenary unit unique to the Americas if the Native Americans get Mercenary unit inclusion and reworked to be able to use them.
The Dog Men would remain as a pure Native unit while the Cloud Sisters would be Mercenaries.

Meanwhile, Chief Roman Nose and Chief Pretty Nose would have auras specifically to empower Native and Mercenary units, respectively. While not entirely historical, it is worth noting that Chief Pretty Nose fought for the Lakota (alongside other Inun-Ina) as a sort of “blood payment” they had to satisfy. It’s a tenuous connection at best, but it’s the closest I can find to any sort of Mercenary-style units in the Americas.
This also works into my goal of giving Mercenary access to the Native civs, through the use of the Trade House.

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There’s also the Powhatan Confederacy using Chicka-ho-miny warriors.

The Chicka-ho-miny were a client state to the Powhatan that lacked a central authority figure and were instead governed by a council. So instead of mustering warriors by asking the leader of the nation to gather his men, as the Confederacy did for full members, the Mamanatowick (the head of the Confederacy hierarchy) had to pay Chicka-ho-miny warriors in copper for their service.

Because they answered directly to the Mamanatowick, Chicka-ho-miny warriors were also used to keep the other member nations in line. Like any private army.

Edit: For some reason Chicka-ho-miny is censored if you spell it right, I.E. without the dashes. This needless censorship of indigenous peoples’ names is starting to annoy me.

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I should specify that I meant specifically among the Lakota/ Cheyenne/ Axrapxahxo area I was looking into.

I’ll look into other areas at some point, but I’m focusing largely on this area and then to find something for the Haudenosaunee in a similar aspect (but not quite the same).

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I like that you’re trying to bring some diversity and uniqueness to native civs. Devs should definitely consider some of your ideas for future updates. It’s a shame that so far, only european civs are getting reworked.

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