I did draw the architecture in the top post of this page, if that’s what you’re referring to
That’s pretty rad! Thank you. Incorporating Iroquois cannons would definitely require the devs pushing up the timeline. 
lol very fair. Would a 50% increased wall-building speed be more reasonable?
Reducing the enemy LOS effect would not negate a unit’s attack range if the units can still automatically shoot at you, while the player themselves is unable to see what their unit is shooting at. Would that be interesting or terrible? lol
And thank you!!! I appreciate it, good sir!
1 Like
You are welcome! 
And yes that seems to be the case if they are going to have access to cannons. Instead of just giving them the [Bombard Cannon] the Haudenosaunee could instead have a unique artillery piece that is similar to the [Light Cannon] from [Age of Empires 3] to a certain extent.
This artillery unit can be named [Portable Cannon] and will be a weaker counterpart of the [Bombard Cannon] in terms of firepower but could be cheaper.
The [Trebuchet] could also be replaced by a unit called the [Flare Archer], which is an idea that I came up with myself. Although the very concept for this unit isn’t exactly new since I took a lot of inspiration from the Aztec [Arrow Knight] in [Age of Empires 3].
Maybe the [Castle] building could instead be renamed to [Stronghold] when playing as any of the Native American civilisations in the game so that it has a less Euro specific name. The same could be done for other civilisations in the game who did not call their own fortified structures to be “Castles”.
1 Like
I like the Flare archer idea alot! (as well as the canoe). What would you think about something like this as a regional pre-columbian substitute, as you mentioned in your linked that arrows as trebuchets may not seem as compatible?
And I don’t know about the portable cannon substitution, only because the Iroquois have so many other main areas of interest and potential UU to focus on.
And sure, why not!
1 Like
I came up with a potential Iroquois siege unit for AoE3 based on the Skraeling “catapults” mentioned in the Viking sagas and the strong links between Lacrosse and war.
1 Like
the imperial age buildings sometimes kinda feel scandinavian with those windows and roofs, and the shapes of some of the lines
@Zartusht I am glad that you liked the [Flare Archer] unit concept that I came up with as a suggestion. Yeah as I stated in this post of mine, a Trebuchet would without a doubt be superior to the bow in terms of range in reality. But since the bow is probably the closest thing to a launcher to them for ejecting projectiles that could harm buildings from a distance realistically speaking, it would then probably be not that bad if there was a siege unit in the game that is armed with a bow that can shoot from an absurd range.
Ah the “Tīpao”, I came to first learn about it from @M00Z1LLA who suggested that it could serve as a siege unit for the Tongan Empire in the event that they were added to [Age of Empires 4]. The problem with the Tīpao is that it seems to have been a throwing device that was used by the Māori which was a Polynesian ethnic group. It would therefore be kind of awkward if the Pre-Columbian civilisations had access to it, unless they had enough of interaction with each other where it reached a point that the knowledge for this throwing device of the Māori was passed on to the Pre-Columbian societies or was adopted by them somehow through this Polynesian tribe.
1 Like
I have seen this post of yours before on the [Age of Empires 3] forum section but I did also create a post back in July on this section of the forum, where I suggested that a new general unit called the [Staff Slinger] could be trained from [Siege Workshop] building and serve as an early siege unit during the Feudal Age.
A unit using a lacrosse stick could serve as a unique version for the [Staff Slinger]. Though a problem with the lacrosse stick is that it wasn’t really a weapon for warfare but a tool for a sport meant for settling tensions between tribes as stated by yourself.
1 Like
I’d recommend the “Demon’s Head” as described in the Vinlandsaga which is a sort of very janky stone thrower.
Honestly I believe people worry too much about these things, I doubt 90% of the civs already ingame ever built anything resembling a Scorpion anyways.
2 Likes
By the time of contact with Europeans, lacrosse was primarily sport. However, what is described in the Viking sagas sounds very similar to a lacrosse stick, but it is being used as a weapon. I think it’s likely that what the Vikings described was some kind of staff sling and over time that weapon gradually transitioned into later lacrosse sticks. Or it may be possible that it was some type of proto-lacrosse stick that was being used as an improvised weapon.
1 Like
In the case that you don’t happen to know about this, I managed to find information on the Wikipedia page for the Trebuchet that mentions about a siege weapon called the “Cheiromanganon” (The Hand-Trebuchet). It was apparently used by the troops of Nikephoros II Phokas around 965 CE and a similar hand trebuchet called the “Shoupao” was invented by someone by the name of Liu Yongxi and presented to the emperor in 1002 CE.
The Staff Sling was a component to the hand trebuchet which was operated through a lever mechanism by one person. It was basically a one-man traction trebuchet. Although more unlikely the Native Americans mentioned in the Viking sagas could have possibly used something like this than just a Staff Sling if the sphere that was launched from this pole of theirs was actually about the size of a sheep’s stomach.
1 Like
I was hoping to get the Gable roof structures to more-so resemble the Native American architecture photos I’d posted a little bit ago Do the designs look too European, even compared to them?
Of course those cannons were received from the English (remember the Iroquois-English alliance thanks to Pocahontas) and during the Beaver Wars (Beaver Wars - Wikipedia) that’s why they have the light gun on aoe 3…
Of course… Everything is framed within its historical period and playing aoe 2 in the period of aoe 3 would help more people move to aoe 3 at least to try it …
The Peacemaker story of Iroquois tradition credits the formation of the confederacy, between 1570 and 1600, to Dekanawidah (the Peacemaker), born a Huron, who is said to have persuaded Hiawatha, an Onondaga living among Mohawks, to advance “peace, civil authority, righteousness, and the great law” as sanctions for confederation. Cemented mainly by their desire to stand together against invasion, the tribes united in a common council composed of clan and village chiefs; each tribe had one vote, and unanimity was required for decisions. Under the Great Law of Peace (Gayanesshagowa), the joint jurisdiction of 50 peace chiefs, known as sachems, or hodiyahnehsonh , embraced all civil affairs at the intertribal level.
c. 1570 the Confederation was established by The Great Peacemaker and Hiawatha following a peace treaty that united the five nations into a confederacy…
Leaders from five Iroquois nations (Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, and Seneca) assembled around Dekanawidah c. 1570, French engraving, early 18th century.
From Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1880-1881, edited by J.W. Powell, 1883
Iroquois Confederacy | Definition, Significance, History, & Facts | Britannica
Yes, those dates are the only thing that could make it a medieval civilization…But we don’t know if they’re true…
Yes, it can be…In aoe 3 the castles are exclusive of the Asian civs, the Europeans have the forts (obviously of the eighteenth century type), the Africans have the palaces and the American Native and Meso civs do not have any type of fortification, except the Incas who have the fortress…
And if you do a siege infantry unit?..
1 Like
That is indeed a good potential factor! I personally like AOE2 more because I feel it makes a good balance of “Easy to play, hard to master” as opposed to AOE1 which is “easy to play, easy to master” or AOE3 which is “hard to play, hard to master” due to its complex mechanics.
Thank you for the sources! Much obliged. The Mann&Fields “August 1142” findings I pulled from were made in 1997, and the “August 18 909” date I mentioned was published in 2013. The main reason I would perhaps trust them more than the other 1700s/1800s sources is due their recentness.
You could still have a point when it comes to bias. Native Americans mostly claim earlier dates, and Caucasians mostly claim later dates. Who knows.
What we do know, is that by the time the Europeans show up in the late 1500s and early 1600s, the Innu, Algonquin, and all other ethnic groups in the area are fleeing in terror from the Iroquois early on. (I mainly refer to the ventures of New France).
I think it’s a pretty safe bet to settle on a medieval date. Even if you wouldn’t just go off of them, the archaeological record shows that the Iroquois as a people are around throughout medieval times. Even if they’re just separate ethnic groups, based on the effort and engineering it takes to make a pre-contact settlement like the CapitalCity/Wonder seen above before European contact, they’re still powerful and coordinated in the Middle Ages.
This is news to me lol - Hadn’t heard that before
Of course, the same aoe 3 seems hard, but it is not so much once you get used to its mechanics … I play it since its launch and never consider it a hard game, maybe yes complex for people who are not used to playing more modern RTS…
Of course, that is, perhaps they are medieval native peoples, but there are no reliable records that can locate them from what we know as the medieval period per se… We only know of them from records after 1600…
Yes, colonial issues I suppose… the Iroquois allied themselves with the English and their enemies the Algonquins allied themselves with the French and killed each other throughout the seventeenth century… For something many Iroquois allied with the British, both in the American War of Independence (1775-1783), and in the War of 1812 (1812-1815)…
I’d say AoE3 is easiest to actually play. However, there’s a lot of concepts to learn right off the start that are a bit of a barrier to getting to that point. But once you do it’s the most streamlined gameplay.
I personally find the upgrade card-home city system, upgrade-revolution system, and the multiplicity of counter-units to be much more complicated and specific than AOE2
May I ask what you think is harder to learn for a newcomer about AOE2?
AoE2 is not harder to learn, it’s harder to play. It’s way less streamlined than AoE3. You have to intensively micro every mundane aspect of your eco. AoE3 skips all that nonsense with more natural resources, no drop offs, infinite farms, and crates to speed things up. You also don’t have to build a million production buildings to build up a big army. It cuts out using half your APM on dull repetitive eco tasks and let’s you actually play the game.
This is what prevents most people getting into it, but it’s also something that makes the game infinitely customizable and unique. The deck system takes a lot of prior knowledge and learning to set up properly before you even get into the game. So there’s a huge barrier to starting off, but once you get that figured out it’s actually an easier and more fun game to play.
90% of games don’t see a revolution happen so it’s not a major factor in the game.
It’s actually dead simple and far more intuitive than AoE2. The counters actually align with real life and aren’t arbitrary and forced like AoE2 (javelins shouldn’t beat archers). The whole counter system is basically covered by one picture:
1 Like
@Zartusht Another important thing when playing [Age of Empires 3] is to be open-minded about it. Don’t judge the game from an [Age of Empires 2] perspective, see it with new eyes. By doing so you will see more clearly for what the game wants to be and possibly appreciate its identity.
It is fine if the game isn’t to your liking, we all have our own different tastes for what we like or not. Just don’t hate on the game because it deviates from the formula of the previous two games, which is something that some nostalgists do and that is a petty reason.
3 Likes