my trouble has been my interest, indeed fascination with the various nations of pre colonial north and south america being weighed against the fact i genuinely enjoyed the lakota on TAD as a civ - both playstyle and unique units. The voice lines are made up but easy on the ears (especially the chief, he sounds so chill). Unit roster is a fun flip on the usual infantry dominated age 2, the full pop space and mobility is rewarding and enjoyable to play, etc. But ana is right, the whole civ is just vaguely plains nation themed with a handful of historical references to a few specific battles
3 Likes
The original had more references to the Cheyenne than the Lakota. It was weird. The DE is better, but 12 unique things that specifically relate to the Lakota is… lackluster, to say the least.
Yes, but only if the devs acknowledge the stuff they need to fix with other civs too, maybe a ‘roadmap’ of which civs they will be making more accurate in future.
The main problem is the devs were all trying to adjust to the US political climate in 2020 and thus insisted on “better” representations of Native Americans in order to make them more historical. But OP and others are not blinded that they would not have bothered doing anything if they weren’t going to suffer bad ‘press’ for it (of course correct me if I have remembered this wrong).
The devs just made the problem even worse. Changing around buildings, names and not doing it in other areas that were more important. Obviously they could have added more historical accuracy, otherwise Ana would definitely not be wasting her time here. But this was a rushed attempt after some big political tensions in the USA (the original, dated files of AoE3DE have none of these changes in the 2019. You can access them with a .bar file reader).
That claimed to have had an epiphany and thus decided to ‘remove inaccurate representations of civilizations in favor on more authentic ones’ (just while adding Inca fantasy civ and removing cotton cough cough). And when they don’t bother with the majority of inaccuracies, or blatantly make MORE inaccuracies (while saying they are wanting the game more authentic!!!), people will get pissed off. Ana’s behavior is reasonable in my opinion, as a devoted ‘student’ of her blood history, to be very annoyed at devs who claim to have spoken to community leaders to fix inaccuracies of native civilizations, only to achieve little to nothing, or even a reversal of their aims.
I blame this failure on the rushed attempt at ‘being woke’ (on the surface they sound like they were sincerely just wanting to be more accurate but this is clearly false considering the other changes made to 3DE (and the old files not containing these changes until after something happened in US), the apology note you receive when you first buy the game, as well as lots of things Microsoft and World’s Edge have been broadcasting about on certain months). I am 100% certain if the devs were sincerely as passionate about history they would have been doing their best to better represent Native Americans and everyone else.
Anyway to summarize, I hope that some day changes will be made out of passion rather than politics. I would love to see @AnaWinters’ ideas come into the game. And I encourage us all to be searching for ways the game can be made to more accurately portray all civilizations. We should work together, not fight. I can’t understand why you would be against mainly name and sprite changes taking place (some mechanical changes could happen but the majority is literally fixable with new artworks or names).
On that note, bonne nuit mes amis 
3 Likes
Of all the messages for people to read on this thread, this is the one message I think everyone should note before they argue about me wanting to make the Lakota more historically accurate.
That is exactly the problem. The Devs promised to make things better, but instead they have actively done nothing of note and not fixed any of the actual problems that were there initially - The mini-rework of the Lakota is appreciated, but also borderline insulting. They promised to make changes, but found that too hard, so made a few random techs instead, mostly by renaming existing ones?
They fixed nothing about the gameplay problems of the Lakota and still haven’t fixed anything they promised to with the launch of the DE.
2 Likes
I would say Pueblo is the most unique culture both in architecture and life style. Also for their famous ancestors who ruled the Great canyon and later the plateau from above. Their resistance against colonist were also tough and tensile.
You seem to post a lot of these type of posts where you excoriate everything about the Sioux civ and demand that it all be changed to some new, undefined ideal that represents your particular tribe. You said it yourself that the original civ was a bit of a catch-all for the prairie tribes, just as the Germans and Chinese are amalgamated. But you want your particular tribe elevated to major civ status while the other prairie tribes get cut out and resigned to minor civ status. There’s a lot of historical lecturing, complaining, and demanding that comes with your posts, and it’s off-putting. In fact, the last time I engaged with you in conversation, I had put forward a suggestion for reworking the economy of the civ to better reflect the bison-hunting economy you wanted. Instead of any sort of productive discussion on the suggestion, how to balance it, so it could be added to the game, you went back to lecturing, complaining, and demanding. It sounds like you’re more interested in complaining than in actually doing the work to have a productive discussion where you actually say “yes”, and provide a vision of what you want to see, rather than saying “no, not good enough” to everything.
Even in this thread, you didn’t put forward a suggestion of what a hypothetical 3rd tribal civ would look like. Which one would you choose, given that so many are equally protective of their culture and as opposed to the idea of modern, potentially compromised depictions of them in games and movies as the Lakota are? How would you structure the new civ? You have 2 infantry-focused civs (Inca, Aztec), 1 siege-focused (Iroquois), and 1 cavalry-focused (Sioux). What type of game play would the new civ have? And, since you’re asking about using this new civ as a vehicle to completely rework the game mechanics of the tribal civs (and here’s the meat and potatoes question), rework them to what? What changes would you implement to make these civs more accurate and better representative - while still easy to learn, fun to play, and appropriately balanced for competitive RTS play? What would you say “yes” to?
Ultimately, Age 3 DE is a remaster. It has an obligation to stay reasonably true to the original game and it’s core concepts. What you seem to want is to completely change the civ, remove core mechanics and themes that were central to an entire expansion pack in the original game, and completely upset a delicate balance which has been tuned over many years of patches. The FE devs have made several waves of changes to the game to attempt to make it more accurate and to have it better reflect tribal culture, far more than the Euro civs have gotten, and yet, it’s still not enough for you.
At some point, you’re no longer discussing this game, you’re talking about a whole new game with a whole new structure and focus. If you want a new game, that acts as a history simulator for your particular North American tribe, I think you need to consider developing that as your own separate project.
5 Likes
The Germans and Chinese can be created out of various times their respective empires ruled over the entire area. There is no time when the prairie was ruled by a single nation, and many of these nations had very little to do with each other - a civ that could equally represent the Crow and the Comanche is not a well-designed civ - especially when the catch-all comes from them being so generic that they still don’t represent either.
I’ve literally created a mod to rework the Lakota into the Oglala, and started on the other half of it to rework the Hauds into the Mohawk. I learned to code civs specifically so I could do this. I can specifically point out a few aspects of the new mini-rework the Lakota received as most-likely having roots in my mod and suggestions.
See this:
I’ve literally got a rework mod that answers the basics of this questions, but I also invited people to DM me for access to the document I have that outlines the idea I already have. I didn’t want to put it in here because it’s long and unrelated enough that it would constitute its own post for discussion, provided this specific post was successful enough to show that people would be interested in a third civ and a potential full rework.
The Lakota now have 12 references to their culture and history in the civ, and they are all simply renames of previous techs (and unit, in the case of the Tokala Soldier.) All 12 of these are a result of the DE. It is not unreasonable of me to want the Lakota civ to be as stereotypically inaccurate as the Indians are - I’m not asking for a Native simulator, I’m asking that the Lakota be in the game at all.
The thing is, most aoe3 civs are umbrella civs. This isn’t just a problem of the lakota.
I am aware. But at least those umbrella civs are specific to that culture - there’s a wide amalgamation involved to make the Ottomans, but at least the civ is specific to the region.
The Lakota don’t even have that. They’re about as accurate to the Crow as they are to the Comanche or Cree - That’s like making a civ that is accurate to the Egyptians, Spanish, and Iranians all at once.
Guess what?
Right now the Portuguese are the second last civilisation on the poll Which civilizations do you like the most? (MEGAPOLL)
The last being Lakota and the Haudenosaunee are relatively low.
So why not rework both the Lakota and the Portuguese?
1 Like
Yes please
(20 characters)
1 Like
There will always be a bottom in a ranking.
When the Lakota and the Portuguese move up, there will still be new bottoms.
So, do you mean never-ending reworks?
Don’t talk so easily.
I can understand very well.
And I don’t think replacing units affects the essence of mechanics of the civilization, and while it’s still more complicated than simply renaming or reskinning, it’s still a relatively easy change to introduce.
Compared to insisting on the requirement of an 100% entire remake of a civilization, it is an update more reasonable and can be expected.
Yes.
I mean seriously. There is never a perfect state. As long as the game still attracts new players and as long as the game still sells DLCs why not constantly improve the old content?
It’s ok when those changes take time. They should obviously focus on new content instead of just working on old stuff of course. But in the face of constant new content the old one needs a facelift from time to time to keep up.
3 Likes
I think, you don’t realize yet, what’s the difference between an update and a rework for a civ.
If the old content is bad enough it needs a whole rework maybe multiple times over the curse of many years.
Sometimes small updates are enough but not in this case.
2 Likes
It’s up to the developer to judge, not you, her or me.
What we can do is give advices and suggestions so that dev have something to refer to when they decide to make a change. Always asking them to make changes and constantly blaming developers for not doing enough, doesn’t really help.
The most uncomfortable thing is that, she thinks people don’t like her pointing out stereotypes,
but what people actually don’t like is that, even when people agree that improving to reduce stereotypes is good, people’s more realistic and feasible suggestions for improving are always severely refuted and criticized by her with some words like “not enough”, “not good”, “must be entirely removed and reworked”. She gave those “allies” very little, almost no encouragement.
Even though the dev and people respect the culture of the Native Americans, she seems to think that people are still discriminatory or malicious towards the Native Americans when they don’t think to have to do as much as she asks due to other reasons.
2 Likes
By the time of AoE3, Puebloans were a minor player and a shadow of their ancestors. They’d be a better fit for AoE2 and AoE4 which are set during the peak of the ancestral Puebloans.
2 Likes
I am against changing the German civ to have new mechanics like this, there is (almost) nothing wrong with the Germans. Cards can be added but new mechanics shouldnt, that changes the feel of the civ, the playstyle. Same for the othet civs. If you want new mechanics I rather have them add new civilizations.
And in a game where most unit gimigs are already done and most unique units are just the same as generic ones but slightly better in certain categories, we do not need more of these. It would clutter the game and make it more complicated then it needs to be.
Its fun to think about, to think about mechanics for such civs, but that is where it should stay at. Thought experiments and ideas.
That idea is a “what if”, based on the premise that many people want more Austrian or Prussian flavors but more German civilization is definitely not going to happen.
Creating a new civilization requires many new mechanics. My stance is that a problem that can be solved by simply adding a new mechanic doesn’t need to create multiple mechanics and use the few slots left to make a new civilization. Of course, this does not mean that the present German civilization necessarily needs to make such changes. It’s just that some people think that the old civilizations lack as interesting mechanics as the new ones.
Isn’t that what we are doing here.
The devs are doing an amazing job so far. Even better then the AoE2DE devs despite that game being the cash cow of the franchise.
Never say never.
AoE2DE just completely reworked the Indian subcontinent.
2 Likes