Those things all arose out of military technology, which is the point I was making.
I wouldn’t say “similarly unknown,” the oral history of the Lakota, at least, can be traced back to about 2k years ago with surprisingly high accuracy due to the religious nature of the culture orienting around stars. The religious rites in place base themselves off the stars, so it’s as simple as calculating how far the stars have moved since their beginnning.
The Thule, Inuit, and Mik’maq are the best choices, but please don’t lump them all into one category. It’s as bad as the people who keep trying to turn the Lakota into a generic Plains Native civ.
The navigation technology is not a military tech. Metal is not just a military tech. Steel tools alone are a huge technological advantage. Writing and organizational technology is not military.
You are just more familiar with that history. I would not be surprised if the Puebloan descendants have similar oral histories.
Only Mik’maq are Algonquin, I would not lump them together with arctic peoples. An Algonquin civ would be more of a representation of the peoples that preceded the modern Mik’maq or Algonquin. You’d probably have to draw from a few related modern peoples to reconstruct their precursor.
Como chileno te puedo decir señorita Ana, que los mapuches no cayeron por ser grandes estrategas sino por superioridad numérica, Pedro de Valdivia el Conquistador de Chile tendría como paje a Lautaro quien seria su mano derecha Pedro le enseño todas las tácticas de tercio y de combate de infantería Española lo que no pudo prever es que este le traicionaría y se iría con parte de su pueblo (por que si, se tiende a tener ese error que solo habían mapuches en la Araucanía cuando habían otros pueblos como los Huilliches, Tehuelches o promaucaes la etnia de la cual desciende Lautaro) es curioso ver en la historia como Lautaro mato a muchos caciques y poblados indígenas solo por no querer unirse a su causa de echar a los Españoles y a diferencia de los Británicos, los españoles no dejaban sabanas con viruela para que los indígenas se contagiaran, Los Españoles eran motivados por 3 cosas 1: La Gloria, 2: La riqueza 3: La evangelización. No por nada desde México hacia abajo hay tanto mestizo ya que gran parte de los conquistadores Españoles se mezclo con los pueblos indígenas que se encontraban en la américas. (.)
This is where I dislike your ideas the most; It’s all about reconstructing what was on extremely limited information instead of drawing on the known and concrete histories of people who could use the representation. Timeline-wise, most of these civs (really only the Seven Fires, of the ones I want the most), would be only slightly out of the timeline - the Chinese go till the mid-1600’s, and the Seven Fires would only push that by another 50-75 years at the most.
The game would do better to push their timeline a bit and represent people who could appreciate the representation over reconstructing possible examples of what could have been. When I chose the Haida and Seven Fires, I did so because those two civs were most oriented around interaction with other people - the Seven Fires were a trading empire, and possibly the largest one in North America, while the Haida were a slaving and raiding empire. From a gameplay standpoint, it would make sense for them to be able to attain weapons they didn’t historically have through raiding and trading, with both civilizations having civ-specific ways of gaining that.
But I wrote that in September of '21. At this point, I am 100% against Native Americans being in AoE4 because I do not believe that the devs could make a Native civ without resorting to making the civs living stereotypes. After seeing what they’ve done so far, I’d rather see no Native American civs at all.
That will be the case for all North American peoples. The Lakota may have even been part of the Mississippians during the period covered by AoE4 and AoE2:
Siouan language speakers may have originated in the lower Mississippi River region and then migrated to or originated in the Ohio Valley. They were agriculturalists and may have been part of the Mound Builder civilization during the 9th–12th centuries
You’re pretty much asking for peoples from the era depicted in AoE3 to be added to AoE4.
The Siouan language family is a massive one - it’s unlikely the Lakota specifically were part of that. Lakota is a newer form of Dakota, from what I can tell, but the culture itself has been on the plains for the last 2k years at least, if not longer - the religious rites of the people centers on the stars and being in specific places at specific times. One of the best examples involves the necessity of being in the Black Hills at a specific spot (that I will remain unnamed because the tribe doesn’t want tourists flocking there) at the solstices and equinoxes. Due to precession of the stars, a fairly accurate estimate can be made as to how long these practices have been going on; Precession for these specific rites puts their age somewhere between 2500 to 3000 years old. The original constellations that demanded we be there for no longer rise when they once did, but we continue to be there at the same time each year.
That far out-strips the age of the Mississippians. The Lakota culture has been on the prairie for likely thousands of years, but our Dakota and Dakhota siblings may have, indeed, come from the Mississippians fairly recently, and through their larger numbers, given us a new language - Lakota. However, due to the star-centric culture the Lakota have that isn’t shared with the Dakota or Dakhota, a good argument could be made that the Lakota culture has been on the prairie significantly longer than the language of the people has been Lakota.
It’s a really weird concept, that a people might keep their culture but take on a new language, but if Dakota or Dakhota became the lingua franca of the area, it would make sense for the old Lakota culture to drop what language it had and to adopt a new one, as the Lakota have always been a trade people while our Dakota and Dakhota siblings were much more static in their traditions and cultures.
From what I understand, Lakota has far more loanwords from the surrounding areas than Dakota, and much of Lakota acts as a shortened version of Dakota - for example, the Dakota word for “woman” is winyan, while the Lakota word is simply wi. The Dakota word for “chair” is chanakanyankapi, but in Lakota, it is simply oakanyanke - they share the same root words, but Lakota has vastly shortened it.
The Lakota culture itself is likely significantly older than the Mississippians, but we have as much physical evidence for this as we have cultural evidence of the Mississippians.
That’s some fascinating history, thanks for sharing.
I don’t think it’s quite as simple as you’re making out. It’s very unlikely that Lakotas are a plains people that simply borrowed the language from their otherwise unrelated Dakota and Dakhota neighbours. I think it’s far more likely that Lakota, Dakota, and Dakhota are all overwhelmingly the same population and the original plains culture that imparted the star-centric traditions is only a small component of Lakota ancestry. Genetics should be able to confirm how related the Lakota, Dakota, and Dakhota are. If there are 2000 year old remains of plains peoples, genetics could definitively prove you right or wrong.
Either way, the Seven Fires culture you were proposing is far removed from the original plains people. The horse riding culture of the 1600s and 1700s (which is waaay too late for AoE4) came about after the apocalyptic decimation of the population by disease, and the introduction of horses by Europeans.
The Mississippians came out of the Mound Builder culture that’s as old as 3500BC. The Mound Builders may even be the origin of many Lakota ancestors as well. The distribution of Siouan languages covers both the Mississippi and Great Plains regions so there is some type of connection.
Despite being somewhat “lost” civilizations, Mississippians and Puebloans/Anasazi are by far the best fit for the AoE4 timeline and their architecture fits well with features like landmarks. Their successors may have changed since the days of their ancestors, but this is true of all North American natives.
We don’t know this one way or another. There’s plenty of evidence that Natives built heavy fortifications on par with early castles and that sieging them was a common thing, but we have no idea how they went about sieges. There’s no record of their strategies used in these sieges, aside from things like the Incan battles where they dropped boulders on walls. The Haudenosaunee in particular had remnants of the old, larger and highly defensive structures built into their smaller villages that the colonials encountered when they arrived in the Americas, but by that point, disease had reduced the numbers to the point where those large cities were no longer feasible, as there was no population to occupy them.
The main problem with gauging the possible outcomes of a non-disease afflicted Americas is that there’s not enough information about their capabilities available, outside Tenochtitlan’s direct sphere of influence. We know that Tenochtitlan was capable of massing an army of 300k in a matter of weeks when absolutely necessary, but we can’t even gauge how effective said army could have been as it was wrecked by disease shortly after.
We don’t even know the language or cultural customs of the Mississippians, let alone enough to build a theoretical civilization out of them. The Ancestral Puebloans are pretty much the only ancient North American civilization we know enough about to potentially create a civ out of - otherwise, we need to extrapolate off of what is known of the more modernized nations that colonials encountered on their explorations westward and the oral histories known therein.
I picked the Haida in my selection of North Americans because they have a solid history of residing on Haida Gwaii for - at the very least - the last 10k years, and the evolution of the PNW Potlach Gov’ts could be expressed through them, as one of the most influential nations in the PNW, accompanied by an exciting and very expressive aesthetic that players would enjoy.
I picked the Seven Fires because their history - while significantly shorter in span than other civs present in the game - offers an excellent evolution through distinct eras that other Native civs don’t have to such an extreme. Taking the Seven Fires from the Dog Days into their heyday of cavalry would be an explorative evolution that hasn’t been seen in any previous installment of the Age franchise, as it would take a civilization from an agrarian model in the earlier ages of the civ into becoming simultaneously more nomadic and defensive, a trio of traits that has never been combined before and likely doesn’t have any other good examples the game could use for such a unique playstyle.
I don’t think so. Native Americans are a Aoe3 thing, and definitely a post imperial stuff. I don’t think they make sense with the existing medieval civs like HRE or so
It’s not really a problem for AoE4. The game’s timeframe is basically over by the time disease was decimating the Americas.
AoE4 civs are not that complex. Pick some archeological sites for landmarks. Give them some economic bonuses that revolve around maize farming. Their unique unit could be as simple as a Tomahawk to replace MAA. That’s really all you’d have to do specifically for them. The rest would be creating a base unit set for all natives.
What exactly would you be basing this off of? You can’t just take the culture from the late 1800s and assume it was the same in the 800s. Haida are a good fit for AoE3 but not great for AoE4.
This is not going to happen because it’s the opposite of how the game works. You start with an unestablished settlement surrounded by abundant resources and then consume those resources to build your empire. Not to mention that this period of transition occurred outside of the era of AoE4 and that the Seven Fires only did this irl because they lived in a apocalyptic world upended by disease. I could imagine this dynamic occuring in a game like Humankind, but not an AoE game.
Spearmen and archers were very common worldwide
You could have eagle or jaguar Warriors as a heavy infantry, maybe give eagles an Anti siege bonus and a little more speed
Even slingers to replace xbows role
But i really have no idea of natives american siege warfare options
