I can still remember an interview or article, about the Warchiefs. One of the programmers or designers, cannot remember completely talked about the new civilizations. Here is mentioned that initially they were planning on adding four new civilizations. Inca’s were among them, but he explained they had to cut one civilization, because of time restrains. They ended up cutting Inca’s from the game, leaving us with the civilizations we got in the Warchiefs. This was because they felt they would be too similar to the Aztecs. I think this sums it up for the new Inca civilization.
The Incas have a very similar unit selection as the Aztecs. Two good examples are the priestess and priest, maceman and skull knight. Both were pretty unique and cool units for Aztecs, but now the Incas have basically the same, but even worse the Inca ones are better. The priestess can convert units and the maceman is trainable, whereas the skull knight can only be gained from the fire pit.
Not only are the units similar, the idea behind Inca is similar. Good defence, like wall upgrades, which were also a thing for the Aztecs, but now also for the Incas. The strategy of what I see is also very similar to the Aztecs.
All in all this doesn’t only make for an unoriginal new civilization (not to mention the houses just being a combination of the longhouse and shrine, yet better) it also makes a whole other civilization (Aztecs) useless. Why pick Aztecs, when Incas do the same, but better?
The Incas however weren’t the only new additions to the natives. There were some new changes to the existing ones, primarily the Sioux (Lakota now) and Iroqouis (also name changed).
Both of the previous civilizations now have to build a special building to gather coin. This was done, because those civilizations never really mined coin in real life. This in itself could have actually made for a cool new mechanic, which could have set the natives apart from the existing ones, and maybe give them some wellneeding buffs. Needless to say, it did quite the opposite.
The point of the building was to remove coin mining, yet the building is bound to a coin mine, not only that, villagers are still tasked to it, making it a barriere in coin mining, both unnecessary and actually nerfing the natives. It’s a change that didn’t benefit the game and I think a quote from the original developers fits in here. It wouldn’t be any fun to have slaves. Now what has that to do with the fur trading? Slavery was unfortunatly part of the colonial history, yet it’s not in the game, because it wouldn’t be any fun. This building might be more realistic, which is also debatable, but doesn’t add value to the gameplay and actually hurts it.
Then a small thing about the minor civilizations, when the Warchiefs came out, they replaced the Sioux, Iroqouis and Aztecs with new ones, because they were now playable, yet DE, has not replaced the Inca minor civilization, which is just odd really and I would like to see it happen.
In general I would have liked the developers to have put less time into the Native changes and some more in the new civilizations. They both, Swedes and Incas, have a house bonus, which we have already seen four times in the originals (Chinese, Japanese, British, Iroqouis). It would have been nice to see something new, more creative then the same old. The Swedes also feel pretty underwhelming, but that might just be me. Their unique units just feel weak/odd as their Musketeer and Dragoon counterpart have more melee attack then range, making me wonder why they even have range.
Also the games performance is pretty bad, lag spikes when anyone ages up and lag spikes in general.
Well to end on a positive note the new revolutions are pretty cool and some new cards are fun.