Lakota Economy Rework

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
21

Given that many Native American groups, including the Lakota, consider Black Hills a sacred site. I wonder if a slight adaptation of the concept of Mountain Monastery could be simply applied to the Lakota.

Introduce a building named “Sacred Site” or other suitable name to replace the current Tribal Marketplace. It can be built on top of mines which are considered sacred hills, and Villagers can be tasked on top of it.

Visually, Villagers will have some spiritual or religious activities on Sacred Sites, such as astrology or playing musical instruments. In fact, Sacred Sites have a trickle of XP, and Villagers on there can boost the trickle substantially. In addition, players can switch the exchange rate so that some (or even all) of the XP trickled by Sacred Sites can be converted into coins.

If Sacred Sites will consume the content of mines, the Villager should be able to boost largely until the mine is “depleted”. In this case, the building will not disappear, similar to Mountain Monastery. At the time, Villagers can still continue to work there, but the trickle will be meager.

If Sacred Sites won’t consume the content of mines, it would be somewhat similar to Shrines, occupying the resource source and providing a trickle. It’s just that the gatherers there are Villagers rather than wild animals, so the benefits of each gatherer are far more than each animal of Shrine.

The Gunslinger is the upgrade of Pistolero, and the Lakota can already train it at Embassies and upgrade it with the card.

I would like a new card named “Gold Rush” which makes outlaws stronger and allows the Lakota train outlaws with less population and cost. Maybe it will need a minus effect to balance, like Villagers and buildings -8% HP. However, I don’t think it should affect the Mortars. There is already Advanced Captured Mortars for them.

22

It’s not just raids. There are mines in both bases so it would help with both attacking and defending. Situating a forward base around a mine would also take advantage of this. It’s not much different than the current Tipi aura or an inspiring flag.

It also just fits perfectly with the theme of the Lakota. They fought fiercely to protect their land, and this would be a good way to represent that.

Turtle opponents are giving up map control and faster gathering resources. Avoiding fights near mines restricts the actions an opponent can take and still helps you.

If you actually read my suggestion you’d see that 3 Buffalo Pounds would only support ~6 hunters on their own. If you want more bison, you’d need to task Villagers to “herd” them at the Buffalo Pounds. All you have to do to balance this is adjust the number of Villagers that would be required to spend their time on bison generation instead of hunting.

I’m suggesting it could mostly replace Farms, not entirely replace all agriculture. You’d probably still need 2-3 Plantations and 0-1 Farms in addition to Buffalo Pounds. And if you lost the Buffalo Pounds you’d need a lot more Farms. The Lakota used tobacco and were surrounded by farming peoples so having agriculture is not really an issue in my opinion.

Trap Lines would be supplemental like Cherry Orchards, not something that lasts into the late game. There’s no connection between mines and fur bearing animals so trying to force a connection between them is dumb and futile.

23

The civ was only ever designed with Lakota references, using battles only the Lakota participated in. It was never a representation of the full Seven Fires.

I still like my own approach to gold the best - Villagers inherently have a gold trickle of something like 0.05 gold/sec, and gathering near tipis increased the bonus to 0.2 gold/sec as well as giving a small gathering bonus in general. It didn’t involve the gold mines because having one civ that doesn’t interact with them is fine - It’s both a strength and weakness of that civ.

Granted, I also gave tipis the ability to passively gather from mines using the torp mechanic, encouraging players to set up economic posts near gold mines. With how the Khuwa worked, it was fine.

The Japanese were surrounded by and had connection to people who hunted, so why can’t they hunt? India was near and in contact with people who didn’t find cattle sacred, so why can’t they slaughter cows? The Lakota didn’t farm because it didn’t suit their lifestyle and trying to do so would have been detrimental to their nomadic lifestyle.

24

Don’t think it’s a good idea for balance.
If the effect is not big enough, I don’t think it’s worth giving up the ability to get coins from mines.
But if the effect is big enough, it will make their early game too strong, and they don’t need any buffs in this aspect anymore in my opinion.

But even if the Lakota control the map, they will still not be able to get any coins from the mines at the time.

Very little help. Opponents don’t need to fight you near the mine, anyway, even if you can get close to the mine, you can’t gather resources from it. But opponents can still attack you anywhere there are no mines nearby, such as near woodlines or prey, and then you not only have no combat bonuses, but also no resource income from mines.

If you want to reduce the performance about agriculture in the game, you not only need to reduce the use of Farms, but also reduce the use of Estates, because they are actually all agriculture, the only difference is food crops and cash crops. If you only reduce the use of Farms but ignore Estates, it loses the meaning.

When the use of the estate has to be reduced, and they can’t use the mine to get any economic income, their coin income is a big problem, especially in the late game.

I suggested that because it’s indeed a good way. Change the coin Cherry Orchards to infinite, be buildable, have a build limit and determine the gather rate of Villagers on them based on the number of mines owned. You can use those 2 or 3 mines near your base to make the coin Cherry Orchards provide a decent income in lieu of using some of the Estates, also will not occupy too many mines so that allies can gather them.

Names are pretty much the least important aspect when discussing a mechanic. It should be that the name adapts to the mechanic, rather than requiring the mechanic adapts to the name.

You can call those coin cherry orchards Tribal Markets like I do in my concepts so that the current skin module of Tribal Markets can be reused, or any other name that fits the mechanic. If you don’t think the name of Trapline is suitable, just get another name, it’s not a big deal.

25

If that was the case it would have been called Lakota right from the start. They named it Sioux because it was supposed to be an umbrella civ. And weren’t you complaining about some of the units speaking Dakota? That sounds like a reference to something non-Lakota.

That way would be fine, I’m not too concerned with the exact way it is implemented. Having Tipis able to toggle it just gives a bit more flexibility.

According to some of the responses to this post, that’s apparently completely unacceptable.

This hinges on your assumption that the civ excludes all other peoples that aren’t Lakota. If not then it’s fine. Buffalo Pounds would already eliminate the need for anything but a few plantations so it would largely achieve a no farming playstyle anyways. It just allows them to be balanced by being a factory equivalent but still having a backup source of resources.

26

It would replace the Tipi combat buff, so it’s more of a sidegrade.

But they’ll be getting a lot more out of the hunts they control.

Since they’d also gather coin from hunts, Estates would also be reduced. And some amount of Estates make sense considering their tobacco use.

The name is not very important, but all those buildings are still themed on fur trading which has nothing to do with mines. And using “market” in the name causes confusion with the actual market.

27

I have to point out that the original devs of TWC complained about having to attend meetings on Native American cultural sensitivity when they were making their game, then proceeded to use two names that neither culture has ever used.

They were not giving one shit about accuracy. They wanted something to fulfil a stereotype to make money off of, no more and no less.

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28

The current military bonus of Teepee is primarily for defense rather than raiding. The Chief and cavalry cannot build Teepees, so the strength of their raids has nothing to do with Teepees.
However, having mines provide a military bonus makes the deadly raids even more powerful.

To this day I still think it’s easier to balance having economic sources provide economic effects rather than military effects.

In any case, the turtle player has nothing to lose.

Lakota is weak in the late game, and it is not easy to resist the counterattack of the turtle player. At the time, when the player came out of the base, it will found that there were still many natural mines that could be gathered. Normally, these mines should have been dug long ago, but the opponents were Lakotas.

Prey will run out. Even if you introduce buildings that can spawn Bison, the number of hunters is not enough to make you build less Estate.

29

So not much has changed since then.

Although I don’t really see using an exonym or endonym as an issue. It’s a zero effort change that lets them pretend like they’re improving something while actually doing nothing. It’s not like calling the Germans “Deutsche” is an improvement. Using more archaic names can instill a sense of the history like how AoE2 has Saracens and Franks instead of Arabs and French. Using Sioux allows the civ to be more of an umbrella, and Iroquois alludes to the time of the Confederacy.

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30

No. Just no. I’ve had way too many discussions on why to stop trying to present this. My mind will not be changed, my stance will not ever differ.

I do not give a shit about what the Germans call themselves. If German representatives contact Microsoft and ask to be called the Deutsche, I would not blink once over the change.

Why do you insist on wanting to change it to better fit your own, stereotypical and semi-racist views on history instead of allowing those people themselves to step forward with their own history?

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31

Calm your jets, I didn’t even suggest changing it. Wanting a civilization to be more inclusive and represent not just Lakota, but also Dakota, Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, etc is not being racist. And the etymology is pretty questionable, Sioux could mean little snakes, or it could just mean foreigners.

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32

The tipi designs are Lakota, the civ speaks Lakota, the game’s history is based on the Lakota, the language references are purely Lakota, Tokala Soldiers are specifically an Oglala Lakota Akicita, the game’s campaign specifically refer to Lakota battles and events, even the campaign’s MC is named in Lakota - “Chayton” is the anglicized form of Cetan, which means “hawk”.

They are the Lakota. My complaints about the Dakota are specific to the minor civilization units, which have butchered forms of Lakota as their voice lines that sound more Dakota than Lakota, but it’s not by intention - it’s simply because the voice actors for the units had no idea how to pronounce “Ohan,” or “Mani,” or “Taku,” not because they’re actually trying to use Dakota.

That aside

I’m surprised I missed this. While Paha Sapa is te######### an acceptable name for the Black Hills, the proper name is Hesapa.

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