Problems with South American Maps

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
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Hello everybody! I wanted to shed some light on some of South America’s issues in the game, mostly regarding the maps available.

1. The variety of biomes is really scarce: The continent has nearly every biome imaginable, from Colombia to Argentina, yet in the game we only have jungle, coastal jungle, temperate forests, the dry-season Pampas, and the weird semi-tundra of Patagonia. There could be maps featuring the Chilean fjords and deserts, the salt flats of Peru and Bolivia, snowy maps in Tierra del Fuego, an Atlas-like map in Paraguay, or maps set in the wetlands and swamps of Argentina and Brazil.

2. The number of maps is tiny: SA has only 8, compared to North America’s 21 (24 if Central America is included), Africa’s 24, Asia’s 25, and Europe’s 39 (!!!). I mean, even if each South American map were split in two, there would still be fewer maps than in North America.

3. There are few local natives: We only have the Mapuche, Quechua, Tupi, I guess the Carib are fine… and then there’s the Zapotecs??? Why are the Zapotecs even present in South America? Their historical territory is roughly 2,000 km (or 1,500 miles) away from the Andes map. It’s like having a Habsburg royal house on the Niger River map.

In conclusion, South America could really use a bit of attention: a couple of new maps, more biome variety, and, please, some new natives to replace the Zapotecs, whose presence here makes absolutely no sense.

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Wanted to point out that the Carib absolutely fit: they populated the Orinoco basin and other parts of Northern South America. They can also work as a stand in for the related Arawak people of further southeast, like the Guyanas. Otherwise I agree with everything.

I would like the Muisca, the Guarani, the Aymara, and the Tehuelche, at least. And please, remove the Zapotecs from South America. They don’t even make sense in most of Central America, either.

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Oh, no problem with the carib actually. It’s just that they are not entirely local to South America like the other natives listed (except the zapotecs obviously)

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Yes, with a South American DLC they could add at least 25 new South American maps to the game…

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There are many people wanting a Brazil DLC so that would be the perfect chance to add some more South American Maps.

European maps are pretty strange, they mostly just reuse terrains and vegetation from other parts of the world. Asia is also very underrepresented considering that over half of the world population lives there (and also used to live there back in the day). Africa is simply just half way down, only the top half.

But of course Australia and Antarctica are the most underrepresented continents with 0 maps. Even the Arctic is getting a map now.

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To be honest, I think the only way they’ll add more maps to South America is through a full expansion that adds two or three Federal States (we can suppose that they’re cheaper to make than other types of civilizations) or two Native American civilizations, like the Mapuche and Guaraní.

I mean, they COULD add Antarctic maps alongside South American ones. After all, Argentina and Chile have some of the southernmost cities in the world and have been conducting expeditions to Antarctica for almost all of their modern history. Argentina was even the first country to establish a permanent population there! A frozen archipelago, a coastal Antarctic map, or a Tierra del Fuego map where the player starts in South America and travels on an icebreaker to Antarctica to build a base! They could even add penguins to the Araucanía and Patagonia maps!

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They could combine Brazilians with Mapuche or something, why not have two very different civs from one continent in one DLC.

Adding Australia in a DLC would be harder unless they make a general Oceania DLC with playable Maori and then add Australia as a revolution to the British.

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My cope/hope is that since they have the assets and research from the Age of Empires 2 DLC mapuche civ may be a very real thing in the future.

Mapuche and Brazil would do really well marketing wise at least even if it’s a rather odd pairing.

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For thematic reasons, I guess. Why pair Brazil with the Mapuche when there wasn’t any kind of relationship between the two? (I can be wrong). You could pair Brazil with Argentina instead, given their multifaceted shared history, which traces back to the first European settlements in the Southern Cone. The Mapuche could then be paired with another less-demanded native civilization, such as the Guaraní or the Tupi, which also share the classic and timeless trope of conflict with Europeans and the American republics.

I would also argue that no DLC has ever had more than one type of civilization, but that’s something that could change at any moment, in my opinion.

Besides, Brazil and the Mapuche are two of the most requested civs. Why use them both at once when they could be the selling points of two different DLCs, each paired with a less-requested civ?

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The crux of the matter is that there was virtually no interaction between Brazil and the Mapuche; in contrast, the conflict between Brazil and Argentina is far more widely known, while the Mapuche are primarily renowned for their resistance against the Spanish. If there is any connection between the two, it is likely limited to the fact that both have contended with Spanish speakers.

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AND neither Brazil nor the Mapuche have any historical ties to Antarctica that would justify setting maps there (again, I could be wrong), unlike the Danes, who actually have a historical connection to the Arctic/Far North.

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Same reason they put the Hausa and Ethiopia together… or Denmark and Poland.

They kinda just are in the same geographic area.

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But the devs didn’t put the Italians and the Poles together, despite the two sharing the same region and being constantly requested before KotM, nor did they add Arctic maps until the Danes were in the game. So I guess there must be some kind of criteria for pairing civs the way they have been, as well as for deciding which maps come with them. Otherwise, the Italians could have been paired with a Morocco with african mechanics instead of Malta in the Mediterranean themed DLC.

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Honestly if it was up to me, Italians and Poles would’ve been paired in a European expansion with some European maps back in the late 2000s while having Danes and Swedes as part of the 8 original vanilla civs (10 civs altogether), then the Baltic Powers and KoTM wouldn’t be needed as DLCs nowdays as both DLC civs would’ve been in the game before DE.

Feels like the OG devs were focused on the pop-culture colonization theme stuff (tho Italians are weren’t exactly the ones involved except explorers during most of AoE3’s timeline) rather than adding less obvious civs like Persians and Mapuche (I would add them as the Definitive Edition base civs instead of Swedes and Inca, Inca would’ve been included in The Warchiefs along with the 3 existing ones).

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Back in the day, before KotM was announced, I was pretty sure the Poles and Italians would be the civs that ended up in that DLC. I also remember how upset many people were about Malta being present instead of Poland, only to end up loving them.

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Anyway, the post’s original topic has drifted a little. So, if anyone is interested in suggesting changes to the existing maps or completely new American maps, feel free to share ideas!

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This is not a valid analogy: the Hausa and the Ethiopians can respectively represent West Africa and the Horn of Africa (East Africa), and they share a common set of mechanics; whereas to represent South America, a combination of Brazil and Argentina would clearly be superior—the Mapuche cannot represent all indigenous peoples of South America, and Brazil and the Mapuche obviously would not share the same mechanics.

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And most of the North American maps are in Modern US, I think Modern Mexico only has 3

Don’t forget the Mayas, who also don’t belong in South America.

That wouldn’t fix the problem on the Brazilian side, imo. We could also have Guaicurus and Minuanes (who both had horses, like Mapuche and Tehuelches) and also Kuikuros. At least two of those would also appear in non-Brazilian maps.

Asia and South America have the same problem imo: maps cover too much irl territory. And Asia has the added problem of minor civs (still) being restricted to holy sites.

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There are also treasures and outlaws with an Old West theme, and out-of-place wildlife, like bears. That needs to change.

Anacondas could be good treasure guardians; they were already included in Age of Empires II, so they could bring them in here.

The Amazon River could have river trade routes, pink dolphins, and caimans guarding aquatic treasures, etc.

Emerald and salt mines on maps of the Andes.

Much can be done if game development continues.

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Didn’t mean to ignore Brazil, I just sadly don’t know enough about native Brazilian groups.

I hope the addition of the Sami (a native style Minor) to European maps (which traditionally had Royal Houses) opens up the door for minor civ styles to be mixed in Asia, Africa and the Americas as well. Particularly, I’d love to see TAR-style kingdoms in Asia. I think it’d be a great way to represent minor, but organized polities eg Sumatran sultanates, or even Korea (though I get that that is a controversial opinion lol)