The original design of Europeans fit pretty well with the (American) colonial theme. Not so much with TAD though. But now with a full scale European map set, there are some assets of the old European civs that need some minor tweaking to fit the theme better. It would be really weird if Europeans are building an American colony in Europe, and Italy and Malta being much more “European” than others.
Buildings
Next to Hauds and Lakotas who were really tribal confederations, Europeans have the smallest towns and buildings. Asians have wonders. Africans have palaces and universities. US and Mexico are somewhat similar to the Europeans, but the former got a capitol early and the latter got a big church. Now Italy can build 3 huge churches bigger than forts. Comparably all other European civs look like small colonies.
The building style is kinda colonial well but that’s a not a big problem. I’m not talking about adding full new buildings either, but some aesthetic changes and small tweaks.
As I have always been preaching, capitol is a wasted building slot for most games. May consider moving it to an earlier age with some new functions.
Churches can be made bigger
Now that Italians can get 6 or 7 tavern equivalents and 3 huge churches, I’d say increasing tavern and church limit should be considered.
Incas and Aztecs have the same problem. We can talk about that later.
Shipments
Again, native American ally cards make sense if the game is only about Americas. But with all the expansions, Americans got native American allies, Asians got Asian allies, Africans got African allies, new Europeans got European allies. It would be pretty odd if the old Europeans still send native American allies around. It makes less sense for Russians and Ottomans.
Give them respective European ally cards. As some of them look quite powerful, maybe limit thr numbers.
The native embassy is still quite useless if it’s just for training one or two units. It is possible to give it generally an Inca/US/Mexico mechanism, ie sending a card to enable a certain ally at the native embassy.
For example:
British - Hannover
Germans - choose one over many
French - Bourbon
Spanish - Habsburg or Bourbon
Portuguese and Dutch - now they do need more relevant royal families. Giving them Habsburg would be quite odd.
Swedes - Vasa
Russians - Oldenburg
Ottomans - Phanar
Italians and Maltese - Habsburg or Bourbon
As the native ally units are very underused for most European civs (except Maya holcan rush favored by the Spanish AI in TAD?) it would not affect the original gameplays much.
One big advantage about AOE3 compared to other AOEs or even other RTS is the deck system, as it is possible to add cards without interfering with the old playstyle at all.
Yes, especially germany could profit from a ‘native allies’ card, since many of the royal houses have german units. It would be the easiest way to fix the whole HRE problem… Just name the card “A.E.I.O.U.” or “tu felix austria nube” for historic flavor
Edith: maybe let them choose one ally out of the german royal houses for ballance (Like with the Inca Card)
I think the original European civs should have a Home City Charter sending a Basilica (big cool church), but similar to the Italian one. Additional Unique Units for each civ would be trained there.
The second thing is the Capitol, which could also be available in Age 4, and would get an improved look in the Imperial Age based on the Houses of Parliament in Europe. In Age 5, it would be possible to train Drummer and Flag-bearer and additional skills for the Explorer (e.g. Inspirational Flag). Optionally, you can also build a palace using the Capitol, which would generate XP and beautify European cities.
All European buildings could have a more continental appearance on European maps.
In the case of Taverns, I would prefer the Mercenaries and Outlaws selection more suited to civs - not only for European civs.
For civ Germans I think they should get a lot of new Home City Cards that would send us more German units (which would come from German Royal Houses) e.g. Bavarian Card, Austro-Hungarian Card etc. Additionally, Germans civ should be able to train these units in their military buildings . In this way, civ Germans would truly become civ Germans (+ nations under the rule of the Habsburgs).
I think that with the next European DLCs, the number of European maps and Royal Houses should increase so that Europe would be covered in such a way that everyone would be satisfied. Potential new Royal Houses for European Maps:
House of Ascania - Anhalt, Saxony, Brandenburg, Saxony-Lauenburg, Lüneburg
House of Nassau - Netherlands, England, Scotland, Luxembourg, Orania, Nassau
House of Luxembourg - Holy Roman Empire, Austria, Bohemia, Hungary, Croatia, France, Luxembourg
House of Rurik - Ruthenia, Russia
House of Romanov - Russian Empire
House of Stuart - Scotland, England, Ireland, Great Britain
House of Medici - Italy
House of Savoy - Italy, Spain
House of Ottoman - Ottoman Empire (more focused on the European part of the Ottoman Empire)
With these 9 brand new Royal Houses, Europe would become Minor Nations complete.
Completely new European civs should definitely be: Danes, Poland-Lithuania, Prussians and Ukrainians (Cossacks). Potentially, Austria-Hungary civ could also be added.
Livestock Pen - should give us the opportunity to train additional animals, e.g. pigs and poultry.
There should definitely be more options for a revolution. On European maps, European civs could only be allowed for European revolutions. Revolutions should become more attractive and less chaotic.
I think it would be a good idea to combine native embassy and capitol into something like a “parliament”.
Trains native allies
Select a European royal house ally. Obtain some of its techs and units.
The old age 5 techs.
Asians and other native Americans can get some similar improvements.
One thing that is usually overlooked with Inca/US/Mexico native embassies and African alliances is that they actually give the civs more upgrades than average, and it is not map-dependent. So it is one additional stable buff.
The other thing I’ve noticed is that Italians and Maltese both get the battleship card and can also rebuild it in the dock (a bug or a new feature?).
This is not something that needs to be carefully considered for each civ. Just give the same 1 battleship card to all civs. No need to wait for the rework of each civ. It wouldn’t cause more balancing problems than only giving it to a few civs.
I just believe devs should not hesitate adding some universal features especially some not-so-useful-in-competitive-games ones. It would not affect the well-established playstyles of existing civs, but opens up more varieties for them. That would do no harm.
As always I am not nutty about historical accuracy, but severe imbalance in representation bothers me. Even if not all of them are useful in a competitive game.
They also need to make sure the non-european navies don’t get left behind. Ironically the natives have the strongest navies right now, but the Asians and Africans could be pretty disadvantaged.
The fact that the Lakota can build canoes is heresy enough, but giving them a strong navy and the ability to fish is fucking weird.
For context - the Lakota don’t really eat fish. It’s not a cultural taboo, it’s just seen as rude to the fish.
I realized the context sentence needed context. Here: The Lakota traditionally have a deep sense of responsibility towards the beings they hunt to use the entirety of the beast’s body, otherwise it’s seen as wasteful and rude to the animal you killed.
The thing is, on a fish, well… there just isn’t much to use in the first place. The skin is wasted, the bones are too weak to be useful, and there’s not really much meat on the body to make it worth it in the first place and all the guts just get used to… get more fish. IE it’s wasteful and rude to the fish.
I get that there needs to be game balance so they’re going to be a lot more powerful than reality, but it’s pretty dumb that the Inca from the mountains and Lakota from the plains have the strongest navies.
It’s mostly due to the water dance and crappy naval combat system where canoes get massively overkilled and most big ship damage is wasted. I had some ideas for reworking it to make things a little more even.
Lakota didn’t even build canoes. Bull boats were all we had. Water was not our friend. Frankly, anything to do with a navy and the Lakota is going to be 100% fantasy.
In pure gameplay terms, if the Basilica has the same obstruction data as the Mexican Cathedral, it would be 7x5 tiles in area, which is 1 tile smaller than the 6x6 Fort. Although - yes, it’s big and very tall. The new DE content have not been perfect in keeping building scales consistent - have you noticed how much taller the Akan native site is than player buildings?
The Maltese buildings which reuse campaign models are another example. Campaign models were intended to be not used in standard games, and have looser restrictions on how big or small they can be, how distinctive their colors and silhouettes are, unlike standard buildings which were originally subject to much stricter standards of visual designs, and have finetuned silhouettes and color toning.
As a result, these buildings have unusual model sizes compared to their gameplay area: Depot is 2x2, Fixed Gun is 4x4, yet they look close. Hospital and Commandery are both 4x4, but the Hospital model, being originally made for a special niche building, is smaller and sparser than average 4x4 buildings (Barracks, TC), while Commandery is almost like a fort.
Bull boats would be cool. Lakota could have them instead of war canoes. I’d probably keep regular canoes so they have a little bit of flexibility on water.
With more advanced water mechanics they could have a role as a boat that’s good for boarding but not much else. That would make them crappy on water on their own but with the ability to fight back by capturing enemy ships.
Their swimbladders were used to make glue. And even is grasslands thee are rivers. lakes and creeks. Also muscles were used for lime.
But on main topic I do think there should be a slight change to livestock mechanics.
Cows being cheaper than sheep and goats is strange and the ranching cards have low immediate impact but some civs don’t need them. I would make cattle and water buffelo available by default in fortress age and rework ranching into something else.
Native embassies looking visually different on european, african, and asian maps Would be a nice change.
The age 3 mercenary contractor would be great if he shipped a tavern wagon. And it would be nice iff theatres/dance hall was like atonement for asian civs a different merc for each civ not just ronin for all of them.
Very nice ideas for the Houses but just a tiny correction mate, it’s the House of Osman for the Ottomans (Osmanlı in Turkish), named after their founder Osman I
House of Giray, from the Crimean Tatars, may help cover the Eastern European plains too
Personally I like the theme of European expansion to other continents, no other game does this better than AOE III. Not sure if European maps is the best direction to go in. Changes the home city dynamic a bit, receiving shipments from just a dozen or so miles away.
A whole new game to cover continental European wars in the 1500s to 1800s might have been a better idea. In fact that is probably what AOE IV should have been rather than revisiting the same time period as AOE II.
But the European maps are already there, with new very continental civs from the same culture group as the other Europeans.
I do not think “AOE3 as a game representing rest of the world excluding Europe” is a good selling point. It makes no additional profits to intentionally exclude that. In fact if the game is really designed to be restricted to that theme, 50% of the European units should not exist. None of the core game design can only be used to represent colonial warfare only and cannot extend to Europe.
In my opinion, Tatars deserve their own civ. They could be an amalgamation of the Mongols and the Turkic peoples. Such a civilization would cover a huge area of North and Central Asia and Eastern Europe (Crimea, Don). They could also appear in the future in the Historical Maps mode (a completely new mode appearing in the upcoming DLC) in many campaigns, such as the Russian Expansion to Siberia, the Khmelnytsky Uprising or the wars between Russia and the Khanates.
The problem is, how do you balance them in water or hybrid maps? Both from a military and eco prospective?
Is there some geopolitical nearby culture or ethnicity that could be used to justify the presence of water units and that could be inglobated in the in-game civ?
- yes, it’s big and very tall. The new DE content have not been perfect in keeping building scales consistent - have you noticed how much taller the Akan native site is than player buildings?
