I do mean church. Not capitol. The church upgrades are not available. Hausa is more or less fine but Chinese Indian and Inca are missing a lot of upgrades. Also advanced arsenal is one card that unlocks a lot of upgrades. To achieve the same thing non european civs have to send multiple cards.
China repelling volley, LOS card, arti hp+attack+combat
India missing a lot of those upgrades anyway, got improved in recent patch.
Inca, a lot of different support cards plus speed cards
And they are still missing the cav archer range (comes with support card for aztec ERK), but not other civs.
Haude and lakota only unlock basic arsenal with a card compared to europeans who unlock advanced one.
The deck space efficiency is just bad for non europeans because of this.
Hausa ethiopian haude and lakota has basic arsenal, inca china india aztecs has no arsenal. Japan is the only non european civ to have almost full arsenal.
Europe advantage in late game is largely economic and unit options, not individual units strength. european musketeers are one of the weakest musketeer type units, even if you are british and portugese you are really competing more with cost than raw stats vs things like ashigaru.
the only significant advantage european nations have late game is usually their artillery.
Im mostly talking about deck space…not how strong the civs are. Thinking how many cards you need to put in deck to achieve the same effect as advanced arsenal, for non euro civs. How often do u put all those cards in deck?
And you need to wait for shipment availability rather than just do upgrades whenever you have resources. Yet there are still a lot of upgrades missing completely
you also need to age up for many church updates thus waiting just as much as non euro
imo this whole debate is pointless, you want every single civ to have the same units etc. go play aoe2, its not like the non euro civs don’t have a ton of strengths that euro ones lack
Perhaps because different civs are different?
Also I have no idea what you’re on about asian civs needing cards to get those upgrades: they get them for export, not HC cards.
The only ones that need HC cards to get those upgrades are indeed the native american civs, and out of all them only Lakota could argue an existential need for them, but this is to slow down the civ intentionally.
Also, the cards we’re talking about here are niche at best: the explorer dog is hardly a game changer, and the hot air baloon (should be available in industrial age) will actually do very little in terms of actual usefulness in the game.
My conclusion is, don’t waste time on him, odds are he doesn’t know how to play non euro civs properly, given the questionable examples on this whole thread he keeps posting
I’d also like to argue that euro civs are usually easier to play and more straightforward in design compared to Asian/Natives/African civs. It’s a healthy game design for easier play styles to be slightly less rewarding, so I’d say euros are MORE than fine. If anything I feel like picking euro civs is ALWAYS the safer bet if you’re unsure about a map or matchup
Think of garen from league of legends, super easy character to play but his potential is limited, the most he’s ever really gonna do is chase and spin on you
Then thatsceven more wrong. The churches give training speed in age 4 and them some wall/healer hp techs ans LOS boosts. Asain civs have analogues to all of these. Unique euro church techs are gated behind a card anyway.
The deck space efficiency of asian civs is fine. They have stronger cards that combine stat boosts with the effects of arsenal techs - given that they have perks for shipments its even better for them. Find me euro a card that gives my skirms +1x heavy inf and +15% attack/hp in one shipment, Id send that every game.
A new card could bundle the hot air balloon and explorer upgrades:
1 church wagon:
In addition to enabling church from age 1, enable hot air balloon and enable an upgrade for your hero (also gives you a dog as a companion).
(Some "new" cards for ancient civilizations)
‘…designate particularly low-value or “not worth a slot” cards as another category, the “buy-together extras”.
‘The metaphor: whether you shop online or eat at a restaurant, you’ll be asked if you want to pay a little extra to add some snack to your main dish.
‘Imagine that in addition to the main deck, you also have a small “sideboard”, where you put in “extra” cards that may help you in small ways. When you have a shipment available, you can ship these cards alone if you want, but you’ll more likely order a high-value main card, then add in a sideboard card at an additional resource cost, and they ship simultaneously as a buy-together bundle, thus saving the precious time & opportunity of shipping.
‘Or in another perspective, they become upgrades you use the other cards’ shipping duration to research.
‘To designers, this opens up a whole new space of cards that are allowed to be below baseline value, or only occasionally useful, with a tweakable cost.’
Yes, I know it’s a suggestion way beyond the scope of AoE3DE’s changes, but in a hypothetical gameplay sequel to AoE3, I feel it’s a worthwhile alternate to the more obvious approach of “cards that cost 0.5/1.5/2 or more shipments”.
It does not need to be available for research from age I. It could be available from age II. Also this card would usually be sent after sending 3 villagers, so by now you are already moving into the second age.
Most rushes are telegraphed by deck - less about surprise and more about just having too much momentum too stop.
Thats aside, as long as its available in any other way from a card shipment I really dont mind much. Heck, it could be an age4 upgrade somewhere - thats eve historically relevant cuz they tried first tried using it for scouting just before WW1.
My only criteria is that the more niche exploration related cards find some place thats accessible enough for them to see occasional use.
