The Last Chieftain - My predictions and guesses

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

Guessing AoE II DLC contents is always a fun for me. So here are my predictions and guesses about the upcoming DLC - The Last Chieftain:

  1. Eagle Warrior line will not be added for these civs. We will see a new regional unit instead.
  2. Slinger will be expanded to all new civs. Base stat will be weakened a bit and probably Incas one will remain the same.
  3. This one is a bit stretch. Official description says " The Last Chieftains introduces three new civilizations, all of them for play in Ranked, and each with their own unique units, and technologies." Based on this I have a feeling that just like Khitans Pasture techs, these civs will have some different UTs outside of Castle.
  4. One of the civs will finally have 2x2 farm after 2 decades of suggestion. I hope it will be balanced as you can fit 32 villagers in a place of 8 pastures = 16 herders. So raiding will be very difficult.
  5. At least one of the following will be added as either farm or forage bush replacement - Banana tree, Potato farm and pineapple bush.
  6. Legacy of The Three Kingdoms DLC will be presented on tech tree. For example, Jurchens is the first civ without LS, Wu is the first one without Capped Ram, Shu is the first one without scorpion or Iron Casting. I won’t be surprised if a civ doesn’t have Bodkin Arrow as that is the only possible blacksmith tech that is left behind. The civ may have some strong skirmishers bonus to compensate that. Similarly maybe one civ won’t have either mangonel or Rocket Cart.
  7. Getting early access is a trade mark for DE civs. I’m expecting E.Skirms or TR or in Feudal for a civ. Or early access to some blacksmith techs.

Now for civ specific guesses.

Mapuche

ezgif-4c03dddea912a504
ezgif-4c03dddea912a504393Ă—393 285 KB

Since they will not have cav armor, they will have either of the following -

  1. Infantry armors also affect Cavalry.
  2. This cavalry UU gets extra armor after each kill or get extra armor if there are x amount of units are together.

Musica

[Can’t upload picture for some reason. Neither jpg, nor png.]

UU is holding Javelin with a shield. A skirmisher that cost gold and better will not be unique enough. I don’t think they can switch weapon like some are suggesting. I think they will be a counter-intuitive unit like Cataphract. They will have bonus archer armor and will destroy skirmishers as well as melee units and will be countered by archers and maybe heavy cavalry.

Tupi

ezgif-43aadde5f020ec87
ezgif-43aadde5f020ec87393Ă—393 322 KB

Everyone is saying the unit is Poison Archer. I am not ruling out the possibility of Foot Archer version of Lia Dao. But wouldn’t it use blow-gun? I think the unit can also be foot archer version of Coustilier.

3 Likes
2

Corn farm is more likely

3 Likes
3

What do you mean? That it would have a charge attack? How would that even work on an archer unit?

4

nervous black kid
nervous black kid500Ă—600 50 KB

3 Likes
5

For me the javelineer would probably be a pierce armored infantry with ranged pierce attack and attack bonus against archer, like ranged huskarl but weak against building. You will probably use this unit like a mix of militia and skirmisher line. At the very least I got this hunch with how in aoe3, the javelineer is a type of musketeer unit.

Got me thinking that this DLC will also introduce man portable ram, perhaps as a trash siege unit? Since we haven’t got that kind of unit criteria. There may also be a civ that also got trash ship, perhaps the one without bodkin arrow civ will get it and also lacking Galleon upgrades.

Some other mechanic that comes to my mind is

  • ranged attack with bonus vs unique unit
  • melee ranged attack with multiple projectile (something like chu ko nu, a slinger with multiple stone?)
  • infantry/archer with dodge ability
  • something something that use aura to buff foot archer (kinda like centurion or monaspa)
  • regenerating or bonus stats on kill archer
1 Like
6

I don’t think this will happen with this DLC. In general Devs don’t even like taking away Bracer these days.
I have had ideas what could a civ look like missing Bodkin and you need really strong compensation for that - either basically a "free bodkin bonus, which would be absurd. Or the civ needs something else that can be used against other civs ranged units. For example defenses that are way stronger/cheaper than normal.

And imo it doesn’t really make sense to do this with that expansion. It would be way more fitiing to do this with another one like a Teuton split or whaterver. There would be several central european civs that could fit that type of design.

I don’t think this will happen. Slinger in it’s current form has various design issues that would become very appearent.I also think these new civs will have other strong tools they can use against infantry and don’t need the incan slinger.

We already have an example with the xianbei riders, this one just gets a direct attack boost. Could be possible, really dangerous unit. I see a lot of question marks on this if it’s possible to implement without being either useless or completely broken. In general I’m not the biggest fan of charge attacks, as they make stuff even snowballier. Xianbei is kinda OK because the charge Damage isn’t as massive and sometimes almost completely blocked by armor. But this one would be different. Archer type units are already quite snowbally, so idk if that kind of charge really makes sense here.

I think Mapuche will somehow get acces to the stable at some point. Maybe via a unique tech. And I also think they should get some bonus that allows them to make their cav UU comparably early. Because they are designed to utilize that on open maps. So they need to get them out early otherwise they would need to be designed completey broken and it would be even worse than the Monaspering of Georgians before the nerfs. I think devs learned from that mistake.

1 Like
7

“Chuckle I’m in danger” would’ve worked here as well.

8

1

The same way it work on cav and infantry - a charged high damage arrow with a long cool down and regular damage arrow in between.

You mean infantry with ranged melee attack?

Yeah, sure. No gimmick, just pure stat.

Interesting. So very high ranged melee attack like Gbeto but a bit spread out.

Possible as they have a shield. Although I won’t like it.

Both sounds really bad and boring to me. So, I really hope not. But knowing devs, both have a good probability to be official.

9

I’m surprised none of them seems to get a secondary UU.
But this could also be a thing for any of these civs. Especially Muisca if they “only” get a Skirmisher UU this could be a bit too little defining for the civ. So whilst I don’t hope so (I hope they get a meaningful Infantry Bonus that allows their Infantry to be more durable so they synergize better with the UU Skirmisher) there is the potential that devs give them an Infatnry UU aswell.

10

Got 500+ upvote in reddit for the current meme. Probably will use your suggested one if this DLC doesn’t introduce such a civ. 11

Not so fast. We can see literally the bare minimum. They all may have a 2nd UU.

BTW, I have seen some comments on reddit that Tupi or Musica (I can’t remember it correctly) never built any stone structure. In that case, unlike Huns of AoC, this civ may not have a castle. Instead they may get a weak wooden Castle as their UB.

11

I hope this can be a relatively generic light infantry unit so that it can also be available to existing civs. The Eagle should be unique to the Aztecs (some say it could also be available to the Maya, but at the very least it definitely should not be available to the Incas).

I think it’s more likely that the Incas’ Slinger would be the same as others’, but they could have an upgrade in the Imperial Age, like: Slinger (regional) → Huaraka Slinger (Incas only).

Typically, these would be the reasons that cause balance issues.

Smaller farms should be more suitable for densely populated civs. However, these three clearly are not, even compared to the existing Native American civs.

Bananas and pineapples are well suited to replace berries on the map, just as zebras and ostriches replace deer.

However, if they are to replace Farms, I personally hope it would be just in visual. In my view, the skin of Farms is quite suitable for regionalization, not just for Native Americans. For example, East Asians, Southeast Asians, Bengalis, and Dravidians could have rice paddies. If the stats were also different, the risk would be too high, since Farms are a core pillar of economic balance in the game.

This is the worst approach. Having unique elements is wonderful, but being unique for the sake of uniqueness, at the cost of too many other aspects, does not make civs more interesting and accurate. This trend by the devs in recent DLCs has often been criticized.

My guess is that this cavalry unit would be trainable at Castles, and the civ would have no other cavalry units, so the armor would be directly a part of the unit’s stats without requiring additional upgrades.

Also, I guess the civ would basically still not have access to the Stable like the others. But, if they acquire a Stable through conversion or other means, this cavalry unit could also be trainable there (possibly replacing Xolotl).

Perhaps the Imperial UT would unlock the Stable for the civ and for Native American allies on the same team, just saying.

?

I just think it might not be that complicated. Being simple like this is fairly fine.

Regarding the design of the Guecha Warrior, I used to imagine it as a foot version of the Arambai, based on information on the internet mentioning that one of the weapons they often used was darts. I also imagined it could have another mode besides hand-thrown: using a blowpipe to shoot darts, which would be more accurate but have a longer reload time.

This doesn’t really capture something like poison arrows; it feels more like an instant, powerful strike.

If the Composite Bowman had a charged attack like this but with worse other stats like lower movement speed, reload speed, or HP, effectively becoming a glass cannon unit, then it might fit well and could even be more interesting than it is now.

12

One of the users suggested I give this bonus to my Micronesians civ. That’s probably the best-fitting candidate for any future civ to have the bonus, due to the small size of Micronesian islands.

13

I had suggested the 2x2 Farm for the Vlachs before. 11

14

Oprah You Get A
Oprah You Get A620Ă—465 277 KB

1 Like
15

do we then get smallcrops also?

16

That’s very unlikely. Devs don’t really do that. It took them more than 1 year to add SL to Mongols.

That is possible.

I don’t think Pasture techs were the reason of them being unbalanced. The pasture cost and work rate were the main problem.

I also wish so. For farms, I’d expect potato or corn, maybe in 2v2.

Yeah, same. All 6 BE civs, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans and 3k can get a paddy reskin. Not sure about Jurchens.

More reason to think these types of design is coming. 11

A stable with just scout cav line will be interesting.

Sorry, typo.

Tell that to balance team. No UU since TLK is just pure stat unit. All have a special ability.

We don’t have any confirmation that they have to poison archers. Chronicles added a foot archer with a unique charged attack ability that works on short distance without any CD. So it is natural that we may see an easier charge ability.

17

Rice wasn’t really grown in Northern China, especially back during the 3K period, so I’d say that Wei, Jurchens, and Khitanguts should grow millet and/or wheat on their fields.

18

Yes, anything is possible… we should expect civs with at least 2 UUs…

1 Like
19

Yeah, I was sure about them. Not sure on Jurchens. And apparently also wrong about Wei.

20

If it is not like this, they could just give the new civs Eagles, like they did with the Incas.
And unfortunately, even if it isn’t accurate, it would not be particularly controversial since that is just following precedent.

Yes, the Pasture techs were not the core for Khitan balance issue, but the techs for the new civ’s new buildings could potentially be the one for their balance issue.