Baltic Powers has come out and we’ve finished the European colonial powers.
So future attention will be on a potential new asian civs.
The problem: Asians civs are kinda janky heavily stereotyped and imbalanced in weird ways.
But we’ve got hints on how they can be fixed through the new DLCs we’ve gotten
Here’s my proposal If we focus primarily on the consulate (non isolation).
First things first, building a consulate and allying with foreign power adds cards in your deck like American Federal cards or the Danish Customs House. This replaces technologies in the consulate. But they do not cost a shipment point but rather export much like how the basilica sends units.
Once you send a consulate shipment you may be able to train some foreign auxillaries in the consulate (for Normal resources) as long as you remain allied with that country.
Now i’m going to be a bit pedantic as to how the consulate is at the moment,
Why would anybody want to waste export on crossbowmen unless they’re desperately losing, allying with Portuguese should give canonneers just like with Ethiopians.
Dutch give musks and Mortars? Why would a japanese player be inclined to spend precious export on those when they already have Ashigaru and Motaru?
From a historical basis there’s no way Russians should be able to send a factory wagon, as russians were historically late to industrialise. The Dutch wouldn’t send a church wagon either…as historically the dutch were allowed to continue to have relations with japan because they didn’t proselytise Christianity.
If Asian civs are in a good place then we can actually think about having new ones.
The Asian civilization in this game is a hodgepodge of stereotypes about Asians by the Big huge. As early as the Rise of Nations they produced, the shaping of Asian civilization was also full of various stereotypes.
Bro, you didn’t even talk about the actual stereotypes in the Asian civs, like how they are all based on religion and spirituality tropes (monks, monasteries, do not eat meat or livestock etc etc etc).
I think the consulate is the least of the problems.
China and India need an advanced arsenal and a church or mosque via consulste.( church of China, and Mosque for india ).
A way to rebuild these wonders would also be very useful, because some cause permanent and completely irreversible damage to civilization.
For India, losing Karni Mata is like losing an Age III economic card, it’s like playing with Refrigeration or Distillery.
Japan loses training speed when it loses its shogunate (even if the card is sent).Beyond the loss of the Shogun himself, the Golden Pavilion is another completely irreversible loss.
China is losing its Porcelain Tower, which already yields less than a factory, in a completely irreversible way.
Losing a Wonder is such a huge blow for Asian civs that you practically never see them played in FFA.
The ones you see playing never come out victorious.
In team games, too—if an Asian civ gets rushed, depending on what they lose, you can effectively knock them out of the game for the rest of the match.
Asian civs are in a weird uroborus of having bad gameplay because they are based off on stereotypes and leaning into stereotypes to justify bad gameplay. And worst of all, is the kind of bad gameplay that F both the players and their enemies.
3 infantry roster is bound to be broken, look at the mexican salteador or, more important to this case, the trifecta of being good at everything, the Yumi, Ashigaru and Samurai. And then, we have the missuse of the export mechanic. Lets be honest, it was implemented only to roleplay the movie “the last samurai” and it has little to do with the actual mechanics of european economic relations with the far east. Even when europe really intervened in eastasian afairs during the XIX century, it against the kingdoms and not in their service. Mix this two issues together and you got consulate system that jumps between the gratiuitously overpower and the redundant and unnecesary. Asian civs, i.e, would need for crosbowmen or musketeers only if they lacked that role or their own units were weaker than the european equivalent, which never is the case. Not only is more probable for an euro to lack musketeer, but asian units got upgrades, plus various way to empower them, and doesn’t even have a need for an arsenal as euros do. Heck. Since Asian civs, can’t alienate players as native americans did (God forbids a weeb throws a tantrum), they don’t have any economy weakness that historically put them in the backfoot during the Age of Imperialism and would actually make the export mechanic to have a mechanicall niche as well as a good historical characterization.
The only solution that i find is to rework asian civs from the ground up. Remove most of the “mystic powers” -we are in Age of Empires, for goodness sake, not age of Mythology-, rework Indian and Japanese rosters into 5-6 infantry units/3 cavalry and neuter their late game eco or/and their units power’s scalability. A player with fully upgraded ashigaru don’t need redcoats, but if their musketeers couldn’t stand up with late game euro musketeers, they could find a reason to buy a tech that depicts bolt action rifles/foreing advisors/ trade deals.
This is kind of the point: exports for silk, mahogany, porcelain, etc were a vital part of European imports but lack much importance for the exporters. If any, China, just to tell an example, was stocking onto european bullion (mostly extracted from American mines) thanks to the uneven trade ballance between western europe and the Ming, bullion that were invested in things that are already covered by normal coin in the game.
I suppose India has several issues. Its wonders are among the worst in the game. The mansabdar system isn’t a bad idea, but it works much worse than Japan’s Shogun and Daimyo aura. This is because you have to train specific units to buff a particular unit type, on top of the time it takes for them to arrive. I think it would work better with a Japan-style unit (trainable at the keep), or if units could individually receive the mansabdar upgrade — similar to the Atlantean heroes in Age of Mythology — while keeping the limit at one or two. As for the Tower of Victory, it’s essentially useless: it only grants a measly 15% stat buff to units every so often, and you also have to remember to activate it manually.
On the other hand, Indian cavalry is a disaster. The sowar is far too fragile for a unit that costs 2 population. The mahout isn’t worth the 6 population slots it occupies, even with the population reduction. The zamburak has potential, but it desperately needs the arsenal upgrade that grants +2 range. Essentially, India ends up relying on the flail elephant as its only viable cavalry unit. I feel the civilization desperately needs the Arsenal and Advanced Arsenal upgrades, at least for the late game.
Finally, not having standard artillery in the castle (such as falconets and similar units) creates a major problem. The siege elephant is great, but there is definitely a need for a trainable artillery unit that can deal with infantry masses. I suppose a shipment mechanic like the one used by African civilizations could work. Rockets help, but they literally cost 500 food for just two units.
I’d completely remove those units, especially since it would potentially free up the names for non-magic monk heroes.
I always thought the consulate was both poorly designed and an excuse for reusing assets (even the Japanese Isolationism stuff was there since vanilla), but thank you for explaining the problems better than I ever could.
There’s also the fact Indians cover too much, to the point they have multiple units representing their colonizers (which no other civ does), and entire ethnic groups each represented by a single unit, which is made worse by them all speaking Hindi.
Doesn’t this explain exactly why the export reflects this fact so accurately? Those exported goods were ordinary products in their Asian countries of origin, so they couldn’t be consumed like standard resources. But Europeans were so eager to get them that they were willing to offer Asians technologies, supplies, and even military support in exchange for them.
It’s exactly like having a coin crate shipment (maybe infinite) in the consulate, and the Chinese use exports to buy a lot of it, so they end up with a lot of coins.
It feels like this makes the game harder and complicated by itself. Currently, when I just needed soldiers, I only had to save up 400 export to get them. In that wau, I would have to spend maybe 250 export on other shipments first, and then spend maybe 250 food and 250 coin to buy the same soldiers.
What the consulate allies provide is definitely worth discussing. This isn’t just being pedantic.
They clearly each follow a specific theme. The Portuguese and Ottomans are about units, which can be further divided into naval and land units; the Dutch and Russians are about buildings, which can be further divided into upgrade-providing buildings and defensive buildings; and the French, Germans, and Spanish are about the economy, which can be further divided into trickles, crates, and XP respectively.
By forcing themselves to stick to these themes, they end up offering some rather unreasonable options. A Japanese Christian church should really have been something provided by the Portuguese, but because the Portuguese are locked into the theme, they can only provide ships.
In terms of usefulness, the themes also make the things they provide pretty narrow and lacking in variety. As a result, sometimes you only pick an ally for one particular shipment. The most obvious example is the Indians: once they get the villagers, they just immediately kick out the Ottomans afterward.
Maybe sticking to the themes isn’t actually necessary in the first place.
Leaving aside the point that the Wonders themselves are also a kind of stereotype, Asians should be allowed to rebuild them at least at a high cost. When a Wonder is destroyed, maybe TCs should be able to train the corresponding rickshaw.
tbh by the time period of the game ( and say the campaign) only ones that can have churches would be the dutch.
I think having it be interpreted as strictly a “japanese” church is too restrictive rather then a church in “japanese” control is more fitting for the way this game plays
During the Sengoku period, it was the Portuguese (or more precisely, the Jesuits) who played a major role in spreading Catholicism in Japan. They, along with the Spanish who came later, did establish quite a few churches, although the buildings themselves were designed in the style of Japanese Buddhist temples rather than Western-style churches, and almost all of them were eventually destroyed.
The reason the Dutch were accepted by the Edo shogunate was precisely because they were willing to avoid mentioning or getting involved in anything related to religion while in Japan. They never had any churches in Japan.
The shogunate didn’t really try to control a church. Historically, they would simply destroy it once they found it.
yeah i agree the mechanics work decently reflecting that early modern period where you have random europeans jostling for infuence in asia and asian kingdoms just pitting them against each other or using them to fight each other
thats my arguement, the port may have introduced christinity to the japanese but that was done away with at that point.
the building of a church introduced by the dutch doesnt need to have the same meaning behind it as a port church would. it could just be a church for all the dutch traders in japanese territory which they had a trading port for.
making the idea of a church being able to be built from the cosulate having the necessary implication of introducing christianity to japan and therefore it should be the port is too restrictive I feel.
I mean, Christianity was so strictly banned in Japan before the Meiji Restoration that this wouldn’t have been possible either.
The Dutch in Japan completely kept Christianity separate from their daily lives. There were no crosses on their buildings or tombstones, and they didn’t even use the Christian calendar in their letters or when speaking. To gain the Japanese authorities’ trust, they would even report secret Catholic activities and help suppress them.
In fact, there was one time when they inadvertently wrote the year 1640, the year the warehouse was completed, on the wall of their warehouse at the port in Hirado. The Japanese discovered it, and as punishment, they immediately tore down the entire warehouse. The Dutch were also expelled from Hirado, and from then on, they were restricted to living and trading only on Dejima. The heavy financial loss taught them a lesson, and they never dared to use or mention anything that could be seen as a Christian symbol again.
If the Japanese allowed you to build a church on their territory, it was either during the Sengoku period, before Christianity was banned, when most of them were built by the Portuguese, or after the Meiji Restoration.
In short there’s absolutely no reason for the dutch to send a church wagon…
Giving church wagon for portuguese…Since they’re shared with India
I suppose It’s fine since there was a significant portion of ethnic Goans were were catholic during the AOE3 time period. But a Mosque wagon from ottomans would also make sense but there shouldn’t be both available to indians so church wagon could be given to Spanish consulate but definitely not Dutch.
That’s beside the point…What’s needed is a constructive fix for asian civs. Starting a Consulate overhaul is in my opinion the only logical way. Consulates were intended to be used for auxiliary units to fill gaps in asian civ armies. Or a few buildings they need but they’re not really used the way they were intended to be.
Part of it is that export is an uncontrollable resource so it must be used carefully. Shipments are a similar resource so by linking them it frees space to use more conventional resources for foreign units or buildings.
The Ottomans don’t necessarily need to provide a mosque. In India, they were mainly involved in military cooperation and trade. The Mughal Empire was already a Muslim-ruled empire, so spreading Islam wasn’t really the reason they went there. If the Indians need mosques, they should be able to get one through their own means, like a card.
There should be a fourth ratio option for gathering regular resources and export.
The shipments of building wagons should be infinite. This is just to allow players to rebuild them so the build limit could remain unchanged.
Remove the Livestock Pen Wagon. The sacred animals in traditional Japanese religion shouldn’t depend on sheep coming from Europe. Just add a new tech to the Shrines in Age IV, perhaps called “Divine Messengers,” which allows Shrines to train up to 30 Shika Deer.
All the Western allies would have still an empty slot in their menu. That slot could be used to provide an infinite shipment that simply delivers one artillery unit a time, with the type depending on the ally. That way, if you need European artillery, you wouldn’t have to spend more exports on the bundles.
