[Poll] Should AoE4 get Native Americans?

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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Do you believe it would be a good idea to add Native-Americans somewhere down the line?

  • Yes, but historically accurate
  • Yes, but largely beef them up for balance, and disregard historical accuracy
  • No
0 voters

Age of Empires 4 is seemingly aiming to be much more historically accurate and realistic than the previous AoE games, and thus, this bridge is one people will need to cross sooner or later.

I do not think it is viable to add Native Americans while keeping the game mostly accurate (ie. weapon reload times or that sort of thing apply to every civ, not just one).

The main reason is the technological and strategic inferiority of the Americans. Therefore, adding them will mean giving them large liberties in historically accuracy, liberties that African, Asian or European civs will ever have. This thereof would ruin realism, as it did in AoE3 (and to a lesser extent, AoE2, although AoE2 is much more symmetric than any of the games). Natives in AoE4 will face many more problems than any other region does, and will require much more ‘glue’ to hold together.

If you want Americans, how do you propose to give them even a slim chance against literally any other civ, and do you want to do this at the large expense of accuracy?

The only ‘alternative’ is to present them as historically accurate, and thus making them really hard to use and really easy to beat.

My conclusion is just to not add them at all, so the game remains realistic. Maybe we can add campaigns with them, but just not as a playable faction.

I would prefer we kept to Africa, Asia and Europe this time around.

Isgreen quotes:

“I love that responsibility. I want that responsibility. I want Age of Empires 4 to be a trusted source of history. I think we can do that justice; I would be over the moon if people were like, ‘man, this is legit!’ because there’s been some shaky history in the previous Age of Empires games," Adam Isgreen said at the time.”

“We’ve gone to great lengths to make sure that our history is accurate to the places.”.

“This is a fresh start for us. We want to modernise the series and that means we are going to do things differently.”

Potential Idea on how to balance (at least for land battle) and depict accurately

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If they are going to aim for more historical accuracy, I see it a hard decision to add native american civilizations to the game, at least with what I’ve seen for now. AoE II was not that serious with historical fitting, but aztecs fighting the rus or mongols in the Dark Age or Feudal Age in AoE IV
 huh


That said, if they take some liberties when expanding the game, I still think that a thematic DLC (like AoE II’s The Conquerors Expansion) would be a good scenario for adding some aztecs, maya, spanish and/or so.

They have already told us that AoE IV is going to extend its chronology to the Renaissance (at least its early stage), so if they explore and expand that via DLCs, who knows


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Please tell me what liberties you think they will need to take.

I believe they will need to take many liberties to be balanced. Each liberty reduces accuracy.

My main concern is the game turning up like AoE3 again, with illogical history and physics (arrow take big chunk off ship, lol?).

from the game scenes it already looks like onyl siege would be able to destroy walls. Any non-native unit is better equipped historically, and could easily fend off ladder-men or whatever.

This is just one put, but there is also the ship factor and general pike/crossbow/gun vs spear, sword, bow

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Hmm the trend so far seems to be for a historically accurate natives.

Will be interesting to see how that is implemented haha

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Idk how they want them to be historically accurate and still be decent civs, they need eagles to be a replacement to cav, they need a way to siege stuff, an idea for Aztec to siege stuff could be a unique tech called garland wars that makes infantry to increased damage to buildings, even though that’s not entirely how it worked in real life, I think something like that would have to be done for balance reasons.

That’s why a voted for beefing them up for balance.

We can give them a replacement to siege and cav, but not without sacrificing some accuracy.

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They won’t be, which is I think the point :wink:

Won’t do anything if inf can’t attack walls (there are no screenshots of them doing so thus far).

a lot is more literal. You need to make their weapons stronger, armor better, canoes invincible, obisidian cutting through stone walls etc.

I vote for no addition becaus it would just become Native-American genocide simulator :joy:

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Yes, I feel gameplay should come first and historical accuracy second, if there is a chance for both then that’s good but if there isn’t, gameplay should be priority

So far I have seen cav attack walls, so an alternative would be to make the Aztec replacement to cav be able to take down walls at a reasonable time, another alternative would be making the tech enable infantry to attack walls, both work.

Not really, Aztec swords and spears were not horrible

This, we will have to do yeah

Or just make canoes be able to mass super effectively, for example an average normal ship navy in the early game would be like 3-4 ships, and average canoe army in the early game could be like 20-25 canoes, quantity over quality, and its even realistic because a canoe wouldn’t take as much wood to build as a European battleship, for example

I think your overreacting on this one, if we do one of the suggestions I mention above we won’t need that.

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show me

They just bounce of armor yea h very good. Compared to Eurasian arms, they are also weak

I feel gameplay and accuracy should be intertwined. Not two separate entities but one singular entity that combines both. All African, Asians and Europeans can do this well, the Americans just mess it up.

They would be rammed and blown out of the water, and capsized when a cannon hits near it.
They would do 0 damage to any non-native vessel.

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.

At 2:18 and at 3:30, the one at 2:18 Chinese cav is attacking towers, at 3:30 Delhi cav is attacking the English walls with the same siege attack animation as aoe3

Again, flaming arrows would be a perfect fix to this

That likely isn’t going to happen, Abbasid never actually used camels in warfare, they have them just because it gives more depth to the game by having different unit types, so even old world civs aren’t accurate to the full extent

Historically, the Aztecs utilized number advantages against their opponents from Europe, Aztecs can always be a quantity over quality civ, and even then Aztec weaponry was still powerful enough to kill a person.

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Incas used huge boulders to destroy the Chancay kingdom’s walls, used smoke to suffocate enemies and penetrate the Chachapoyas sky fortress, and surrounded and blocked the Chimu city of Chan Chan in the famous event known as The siege of Chan Chan.

We can pretend the aztecs could do the same. Perhaps give them inca units.
Like aztecs carrying boulders to imitate a ram, using smoke to destroy walls overtime (DoT damage), or locking and bypassing enemy gates and walls thanks to a special unit.
I don’t see a reason not to add aztecs or mayans, if you are so worried about siege.

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.

Yeah that’s another good idea instead of having infantry do extra dmg to walls, because this would give an interesting dynamic to it that’s unique.

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It seems thi s will only be for towers and gatehouse, not the rest of tthe walls.

Lol no way :joy: You think a boat would sink to some flaming arrows?

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Much smaller Spanish forces destroyed them

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Look, incas had siege. Legit siege strategies.

Aztecs and Mayans didn’t
 but we can pretend they did for the sake of the game.
Siege is not a reason to just leave them out.

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It is not just about siege. Combine lack of siege, lack of ships, lack of metal armor/weapons, lack of gunpowder
way too much to ‘pretend’

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But Incas and Chimu had ships and bronze blacksmithing too. Complete body armor in the Chimu’s case.

True. Aztecs and Mayans didn’t.
But Incas and Chimu are both native american civs just like them.
Why not extend their units to the Aztecs and Mayans??

As I said, I see no reason to not include Aztecs and Mayans in Age of empires IV.

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They will be fine without gunpowder, it typically isn’t super useful unless your civ has a powerful bonus for it.

Well we’ve just seen this is false at least for Inca, so no reason why Inca cannot be in the game

They had ships just not particularly good ones, but since the ships were also small there is room for quantity over quality.

Metal armor would be the only thing we need to pretend, their arrows were good, their swords and spears could kill someone still if in large numbers.

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Because it is honestly the same thing as giving Mangudai to the French.
Just because they were in the same continental landmass, it does not mean they had the same technologies.

In any regard, it is good to see that the majority does want Nat-Am civs, but not the cookie AoE3 version where they have unrealistic buffs.

As I have always said: authenticity, not representation, sells!

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Garland Wars was ritual combat to capture sacrifices, not burning stuff. It was also unique to the Aztecs and their immediate neighbours.

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Meh, just give them inca units and ships.
But with aztec and mayan skins.

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You do realize that Flaming Arrows actually did almost nothing to Late Middle Ages ships, and that the range of Cannon vastly dwarfed that of any Bow, much more any from the Americas, right?

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