I guarantee you they will right back in S+ tier top again after the fresh round of nerfs are in.
With Inca nerf and the minor nerfs to Brits and Dutch potentially, people will realize how sleeper OP Lakota really is.
Their early eco is actually extremely strong contrary to popular belief (any honest Lakota player will admit this), combined with their early army potential.
This snowballs into mid and late game, which is also very strong eco-wise as long as a player knows what they’re doing.
Suggestion:
-50f start, Increase cost of Tribal Marketplace to 30w (this would affect Haudenosaunee as well).
Lakota needs more significant changes than this, a small redesign rather than plain nerfs. I was hoping this patch would bring some changes but turns out I was wrong.
Also hard no to the tribal marketplace nerf. The fact that it exists in the first place is a nerf.
It is generally accepted that lakota late game is trash. Their economy is heavily nerfed by the fact that they need 25 villagers on the plaza.
Sorry to say that your reasoning is fallacious at best.
Do you realize they don’t have to get Placer Mines? That saves a market and the upgrade, which costs 175w and 75f total. It’s not a nerf at all, it’s always been considered a buff.
Then they don’t have to build houses, so they’re in the clear for hundreds of wood. Ok so different civs are different, right?
Then they get a 4 settler card in age 1, the best furrier in the game by a mile, and arguably the best Explorer in the game.
Then you said their late-game eco is trash.
First of all, a good Lakota player doesn’t let the game go to late-game most of the time, but if they do - the 25 villagers on the plaza provide what’s considered worthy economic value.
Every dog soldier that comes out is worth resources. Not gathering with 25 settlers will obviously net you “less” resources in the stockpile, but it doesn’t mean their eco is bad - not at all. Their unit survivability is one of the best in the game, so they don’t have to spend as much resources remaking them - and yet out of the gate they can make 5 of any unit in Age 2 and that number only goes up as the game goes on.
And if you’re at max pop, those villagers will make the existing units on the field considerably stronger by switching the dances up with no need to put them onto farms/estates.
All that being said, the late-game eco of Lakota isn’t bad at all. You act like they lack eco cards in their deck when they do not.
This, combined with their terrible late game and early unit composition is part of their problem. It heavily skews the entire civ into a singular playstyle, an issue no other civ in the game has to the extent that the Lakota have. They have no late game and their infantry is subpar and they completely lack artillery units. This shoves 90% of their civ’s power budget into their cavalry, and then when you consider they are designed for early game and early game only, you get a civ with 95% of their power budget into the early game, specializing in cavalry.
That makes them the most single-functional civ in the game by far. They don’t need nerfs, they need a full rework from the ground up to make them more flexible and more true to the culture.
It wouldn’t be too far of historically and it would give them a lot more gameplay options.
Without the Advanced Arsenal upgrades it wouldn’t be too strong.
Maybe they should ignore teepee aura or they might be too OP.
Actually, that’s not a bad idea. Gatling guns would have been far more likely to be captured by the Lakota than a ■■■■■■■ howitzer. At least a gatling gun can be pulled around easily.
I’d also petition to remove the howitzer and replace it with something else, more like a gatling gun or a horse gun.
The Howitzer is Imperial Age only and just there for treaty, I think it’s fine, even it’s not historical.
Gameplay over realism in this case.
Horse artillery or Gatling Gun would make more sense historically and make them more flexible in Industrial Age.
Maybe one trainable and the other one shipment only?
Gatlings trainable with a card, horse guns trainable from a BBT. Maybe add a BBT to the teepee? Could be a 1-time only thing, like the Incan Light Cannons, but it’d be more interesting if it simply enabled Horse Guns in the Corral.
Remove the howitzer entirely, the Lakota don’t need help with siege. Their best siege units are cavalry, which already are super strong into walls defended by artillery. Throw up a couple teepees and take down the walls.
Horse guns would be overall more useful than howitzers, and captured gatlings would be more interesting as an Age 3 card to let them have some flexibility in the mid game.
I have to disagree, they need the mortars. Their entire siege is single handedly countered by dragoon type units, if the enemy has several layers of defended walls, there is no way lakota can get in. Their cav only really works when they manage to sneak around. Walls stop lakota dead in its tracks to the point that the concept of nerfing them sounds ridiculous.
If anything, it is the horse gun that they don’t need.
I can agree with gatling guns though. They could be useful.
IMO, for what it’s worth: their army snowballs into an unstoppable deathball in the mid game and partially into late game, if anything they are vulnerable in early game. Upon what are you basing the claim that they have a “bad late eco”? Them having less eco upgrades than other civs? How often do players in 1v1 supremacy actually include many eco cards anyways? The answer is not that often, therefore making their late game eco on par with other civs in many many circumstances in 1v1s… not to mention they have the best map control and gather hunts the fastest and can ship hunts.
I don’t know of any other game mode besides treaty where late game economy matters, so understand I’m solely referring to treaty games when I refer to a civ’s late game economy. Otherwise, every civ tends to have a comparable economy to some extent.
But even then, if a supremacy players wants to turtle and go for the late-game, the Lakota player isn’t gonna be able to do much to stand against them.
That aside, they have the least cards relating to estates and mills in the game. They straight up cannot compete, especially when the Plaza is taken into consideration, which removes 25 villagers from their economy.
Not only do they have an inherently weaker economy, but they have to remove 25 villagers from their economy just to keep up with the military of other civs. That leaves them with a 74 villager economy, operating at sub-standard levels of production.
Just build walls and don’t let your villagers get killed out in the wild… This sounds like a match-up specific thing, where Lakota is favored (like against US or china).
The longer the game goes, the worse it is for Lakota. And since their army is mostly cavalry based, massing counter cavalry is an effective choice.
The 25 vills on the plaza adds value, (i.e. resources) does it not? Whether it’s war dance or spawning tokala soldiers from the plaza with dancing vills, it adds significant value, so it does not equate to “having a 74 vill eco with subpar production.”
Saying “just build walls” is not factoring in how fast lakota can deny you natural resources, or the fact once you’re walled in without hunts or mines the lakota player is booming with the TP line and free roam of the natural resources whilst having a powerful army. Bow riders are one of the strongest units in the game with massive DPS, (definitely the strongest age2 unit by a long shot imo)
No. It absolutely does not, not when 90% of the time your plaza is going to be on the fertility ceremony just so you can keep up with the normal production rates of other civs. The Lakota, Hauds, and Aztecs lack the base training rate improvement techs that other civs have, which means that trying to fight without the fertility dance is pointless, as your units will take 2-3x longer to train.
Example: The Lakota have one cavalry training improvement - Riding School, with 40% improvement. They don’t have Fencing School, but they do have War Drums, which is only 33% improvement. This is weaker than Fencing School, at 40%. However: the Lakota do not have Mass Cavalry or Standing Army, which means they lose out on an inherent 25% bonus to infantry train time and 35% bonus to cavalry train time.
Sure, the fertility ceremony is technically stronger, but that leaves your units at an inherent disadvantage - Native units are strong, but they’re balanced with the plaza at max strength in mind, so they are not that efficient when the plaza isn’t focusing on them.
But focusing the plaza on them means you can’t train replacements at any rate to remotely compete with the replacement speed of the other nations, but focusing the plaza on training rates means your military is now dying at a much faster rate because they’re now cost in-efficient, since they’re balanced around the plaza being focused on them at all times.
Lakota could use a card to enhance coin gathering for their late game but they certainly don’t need anything for food considering they are the best hunters in the game in addition to infinite hunts. Although for me because their hunting is so good I can then allocate more villagers to coin so I’ve never had a problem with playing them late game. They’re not very dependent on wood too.
I think it is a bit more interesting if you mention which civs you’re having trouble with playing against lakota.
By walling up, it doesn’t necessary mean giving up map control. You are not supposed to stay behind the wall and hope the lakota doesn’t take map control. In fact, due to tribal marketplace being capped to 10 villagers, lakota has a very clear and exploitable weakness. Their army can be countered by single unit compositions, and you can easily deny their gold income since they need 2 active mines to get on equal footing with other civs.
The only civs that are having trouble with lakota are by design:
China, since they cannot mass one single anti cavalry unit.
USA, which are hard countered by cavalry comps in general.
All other civs should be able to field proper responses to lakota harassment while still protecting their home base and villagers. Walls help a lot. You can wall off important objectives on the map, like gold mines, forests, hunts. You don’t need to wall off treaty style.
@Erchere ranks lakota as S tier in his treaty tier lists so i dont think they’re particularly weak in treaty or supremacy. its just a lot more difficult to play Lakota to the maximum capacity in comparison to a simpler civ such as dutch or ottoman
IMO, the Lakotas are fine, I might just help their lategame economy a bit, which is far behind compared to other civilizations, let’s remember that the Lakotas have a formidable cavalry army, but very expensive.
The Lakota can mass a lot of army in the early game, but initially it is not very strong, in the mid game is when the Lakota achieves its maximum fighting capacity, when it could send the combat improvements, and it has enough villagers, that with time is lost and they stay behind.
On a well-executed rush, the Lakota most of the time loses, they can’t repel armies, unless they use teeppes, and in team games, many players require a Lakota to enter a trade before they can get the upgrades of combat, and they lose disastrously, at which point the Lakota must choose whether to rebuild an army or try to improve their economy, they cannot do both at the same time.
To summarize, it has advantages
Good echo in early and able to mash fast.
Good army in mid game and late game.
Very good economic boom option.
Disadvantages
Extremely weak against rush.
Bad eco in mid and late game.
It has no walls, so it depends on teepee
Worst skirmish of the game.
With anti cab as goons, they lose.
PS: All WCs are great, but I think the strongest is the Haudenosaunee WC, the Lakota is not bad, but I would say that he is the worst.
these have all kinda changed on de. Lakota on DE has walls. Wakina aren’t exceptional skirms by any means but they do have the same base damage and shadowtech as forest prowlers. they are super low hp BUT since lakota usually has a large amount of cavalry to tank, generally speaking if your wakina are taking fire in skirm vs skirm you’ve probably messed up badly. All in all I personally find lakota extremely strong lategame if you have your teepees, bison shipments, and are good with firepit micro.
also lakotas chief is bonkers, the best by far now that the azzy bug abuse is fixed