Hi there, i’m an Historian, i really like this game and since history is my work i want to ask all of you if i’m the only one who feels like this about mesoamerican civ.
Mesoamerican Civ have acces to mounted units by converting a stable, i feel this is amazing but i don’t think is enough. For example is very difficoult to counter gunpowder units with incas , maya and aztecs, but even the weak xholotl warrior can turn the table tank to the 100 hit points. now to the core of the apple. Mesoamerican people endured most than more poeple imagine, incas fough for 40 years, aztecs for more or less 5 years and maya for more than hundred . so in this time they of course aquired horses by buying them in a sort of " black market". so why don’t make a techology in the imperial age that make them build stable? simple as that you can balance the civ. What you guys think?
It’s not necessary.
All three have above average Skirms, which counter Hand Cannons, Eagles would do ok against Bombard Cannons. Missing armor and all the other upgrades means that cavalry will basically never be viable, they take too much damage, and die too fast.
Why would you want to take out the uniqueness of the meso civis?
i’m surely not a pro player but when it comes to fight against turks or hindustanis, all you mentioned is not enough, 60 jannissar will shred everything that is not mounted. maybe i play only against people who spam gunpowder but i can assure that also bohemians and spanish are not easy to counter. but maybe i’m the one who is not good enough
My point is that in history they got horses, so this uniqueness is not right. and also is unbalanced when it comes to fight against , turks, spanish, hindustanis and bohemians. but as i stated before, maybe i’m just bad
Maybe a type of mounted archer inspired by Plains Native horsemen would be a good regional unit for Meso civs once they convert a stable?
They’ll shred most things though, including cavalry if they can land hits. The thing about the Meso civs is that they are very gold reliant, and can definitely fall off lategame, particularly Aztecs. Adding a weak-ish cav unit definitely isn’t going to fix that. And it’s not even something that should necessarily be fixed.
Then dont pretend to understand the issues these civs dont actually have Vs gunpowder.
I think your idea is fine and certainly also historically researched. The core issue of the older Age of Empires games is that all civilizations have too many basic units like swordsmen, pikemen and archers. I would be in favor of reducing these in every civilization and occupying them with special units. I think your suggestion for the mesocivs to acquire horses or to provide battle tested riders from the imperial era onwards is a good approach that you can also expand to other civilizations so that the game himself becomes more realistic, more balanced and thus better. Thank you for that good input.
the difference between you and the other inseder that replyed to this discussion is enormous, you are unpolite and your answer literally add notthing to the discussion, next time please keep your opinion for yourself
Existing American civs are fine in terms of balance, even erring on the stronger side in standard settings. There’s no need to rework them to give further relevance to an easter egg unit, or undermine the role of the eagle warrior, which is a well-balanced cav substitute with some interesting tradeoffs.
If you want to create a scenario depicting native cavalry usage, or propose a new American civ that has meaningful and historically inspired access to cavalry, I can respect that. I initially gave such a bonus to my Purépecha civ on the basis of their peaceful reception of the Spanish, as well as a legend of a princess that captured horses and led a revolt (although this is not well attested by primary sources and was likely embellished and/or conflated with the Mixtón War). But this would be a good bonus for a Mapuche or Tlaxcalan civ, or for various historical scenarios, such as the Chichimeca wars or the Inca escape to Vilcabamba.
Then don’t pretend this game exist only for pro player. A game pourpouse is to have fun. Even if you are not a pro gamer. I’m not suggesting something that will change the meta. You guys have to pick a side, pro player always say that xolotl ##### ### also say that introducing them will be broken
I don’t think Meso’s not having cav hinders the fun on lower levels of play.
Part of the fun is figuring out and playing around the certain limitations of particular civs.
If you don’t want that turn on “full tech tree”
Besides that I think the community is for the most part in agreement that balance changes shouldn’t go against the core design philosophy/identity of a civ and in case of the meso civs their basic idea was to design viable civs around the absense of horses and gunpowder in the tech tree. So whatever balance changes would be applied, giving them either horses or gunpowder is a no go.
I think not giving mesos light cav from castle age was a mistake.
Monks could have been a reasonable “soft counter” to eagles, giving one more option than the milita line.
But especially in the lategame missing one part of the trash triangle is awkward, especially as it is the one raiding tool you usually have there. This kind of design forces the civs to be designed to get advantages before they can then snowball to a victory.
And in TGs they could have CA with various bonusses, freing them from their one-dimensional playstyle there atm.
I also don’t share the perception of civ getting their identity from missing stuff. We see this in dravidians who have no knights but also nothing that can compensate for that missing. Maybe it makes some kind of identity, but it’s not a good identity.
Imo missings like Bracer or plate barding armor are already on the edge of disabling entire lines after early castle age.
And vice versa the most picked civs are usually those which are designed around specific bonusse to certain lines. Franks, Mongols, Britons, Lith, Ethiopians, Malians…
Nobody says Franks Identity is defined by missing Arb and Bracer. Many people probably don’t een know what BS upgrades Franks have even if they pick them all the time.
On the other hand we have now Malay who perform quite well. But they aren’t picked a lot. Malay are quite famous for missing a lot of crucial cavalry upgrades.
I think good bonusses make for a compelling civ identity, not missings.
I agree that the concept was that, but you missed the point, the whole discussion is about that the concept of all meso are pretty wrong. I’m an Historian and i don’t want to bother you with historical accuracy ina game. but as someone said under this post, what make civ unique is being different not having less opportunities. let’s be honest, the meta is composed by heavy scoprion or onagers and a gunpowder spam. if you play a meso civ, you will not be able to compete, eagles are not a replacemente for cavalrly and slingers coul not kil elite jannissar. you have to face the reality that the aestetic you have of meso is just wrong, they used cavalry they used gunpowder, especially the inca. so giving them that in imperial age is more that accurate. not saying they should have a bonus , just not ######### them away of possibilities
Did the inca adopt and use guns and cavalry on s large scale duduring the middle ages?
Is Incas too weak? Does Incas need cav to be stronger? The suggestion does not make sense history-wise and balance-wise.
…is it though? I feel like if anyone goes Heavy Scorpion - especially in 1v1 - you’re probably on the backfoot already considering how easy it is to counter.
(small edit, apparently time is not real and the thread was in fact started after Incas got strongly buffed)
I don’t think the suggestions presented by OP would’ve done anything to ‘help’ Incas. Being able to make Xolotl Warriors in Imperial Age is literally bad. You get no armour on them, and you don’t have Husbandry, so you have useless fragile units when instead you could use the resources and pop space to make Eagles or Kamayuks.
Now, if the infantry armour affected the Xolotl Warriors, that’d be another story. Incan Xolotl Warriors would get 6 (or 8 if Fabric Shields affected them) PA and that’d be somewhat reasonable as a meatshield. But that’d simply be too convoluted for a unit in late game that simply doesn’t warrant the cost. After all, the problem with meso civs post-Imp is not that they cannot make Xolotl Warriors reliably, it’s that they lack Light Cavalry/Hussar. They cannot just spam Hussar to win the game when there’s no gold left.
You could argue this is already implemented with converting a Stable, since you can only do it with Redemption - a Castle age technology. This would fall under the definition of ‘in this time they’ve acquired horses by buying them’.
that’s completely false.
Mayans is still one of most powerful civ at the moment for high elo and incas are good at every level. Just aztecs fall behind since they nerfed 2 of their bonuses
Maybe because they are an anti infantry unit? As people said above you have skirm to counter them.
It’s not “meta”. But against Mesos this often works in the latgemae BECAUSE mesos don’t have the light cavalry line other civs usually spam when facing this kind of composition.
It’s ofc only a lategame comp, so most games don’t even get there anyways.
But in Arena this might be one of the reasons we don’t see mesos picked there anymore. Civs like Turks or Bohemians just have too good matchups there against the mesos also because of this exploitable weakness they can play so easily into.