What makes the settlement uniquely South American?

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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Genuine question here. Rven more than pastures or men on horses with lances, the idea of a generic catchall dropsite or a settlement is the most universal thing on earth!

With a reskin it could probably be for a few more less than stationary civs could it not by its design and function alone.

No really other than flavor which the Champi and slinger provide in spades what makes it uniquely south American

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South American here, but not Native South American, especifically from Colombia. I believe they went with the idea of settlement as a unique Native South American building mainly because most Native South American groups did not live on settlements that we (from a modern Western point of view) would identify today as villages, towns or cities. Though each group had different ways of organizing themselves and the land around them, here are some examples of how some groups lived communally and how that might have inspired the idea of having a unique settlement building:

  1. For instance, most Muisca families lived on houses that were very separated from each other by long distances ans scattered throughout the “countryside”, with various families living on a single large house. However, there was a “central settlement” or “cercado” were the chief resided, which was a wooden-walled settlement that contained the temple, the home of the chief (and the homes of his family and servants) and the communal place to store food and other kinds of produce, such as textiles. Every so often, the dispersed families would gather at the “cercado” to participate in temple ceremonies, trade their goods with other families or groups, and give “tribute” with part of their produce to the chief that “ruled” over them. In the case fo the Muisca, this “cercados” might as well be the kind of settlement that the game refers.
  2. Another case would be the “shabono” buildings of the Yanomami people of the Amazon. Instead of having a “regular” village or town (and by regular I mean various “private” homes one next to the other to form an urban settlement) various families lived on a single communal building know as the “shabono”. The “shabono” is a huge circular building shaped like a donut with a round central courtyard in the middle, were up to a hundred people can live in and were food and other produce is stored. This “settlements” were later abandoned or torned down when the agricultural cycle of the land around them was over and they “re-settled” them somewhere else to begin a new farming cycle.

In both cases, and in many other cases throughout various Native South American groups, there was no concept of private property o privately owned houses. Instead, most of the land and housing and storage buildings were held collectively, in many cases in a large single structure that oftentimes was the only building of a “settlement”, such as the “shabono” of the Yanomami or the “cercado” of the Muisca. It was more likely for a settlement to be a single structure housing all of a particular community (and their produce) than a group of “private” or particular single-family houses as it happened in Medieval Europe.

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The Mita system and its predecessors kinda align with it. Its hard to explain as a non english native speaker, but the diferent levels of elevation were administered diferently with each having their own general economic activities, but being fairly self suficient despite that

Also the Mapuche lived in massive houses around which all activity happened, so theres that

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If its about elevation? Then civs in the mountains probably built mountain settlements. Im not too privy to Cuman major cities either and Incas definitely had large metropolises

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For the mapuche it was similar to the Muiscas.

They lived in a wide spread territory, in relation with one linage, called lof. A varying number of lof gather around a religious places and they form a rehue, a few rewes gather in an aillarehue (lit 9 rehues) and all the rehues of the coast, central fields, the base of the mountains or the mountains form a butalmapu.

This was one of the reason it was difficilt for the spanish to fight them. They could be fighting only one lof, and they could attack that lof, but the mapuche would hide in the friendly lofs around, and if they attack the other lofs, the surroundig lofs would react, and if they fight the rehues, they would retreat to the friendly rehues around, and if you attack them , the whole aillarehue would react. And if the spanish menace was to big, they would call the whole butalmapu to fight. And even if you defeat the butalmapu, there would be 3 more to fight. And some time all the butalmapus were called to war.

I think this is why mapuche settlements can train pikes and skirms, is the representation that no matter you destroy the principal building, soldiers will continue to came from other places

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You’re right about the Incas, they are are mostly the exception to the rule elsewhere in South America outside of the Central Andes. They did have large urban conglomerations and maybe they shouldn’t have access to the “settlement” unique building in-game

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Im just saying nomadic steppe peoples and other non city based barbarians seem more settlement fitting as well

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I found this about the Tupi on an article titled “Tupinambá Chiefdoms?” writen by William Sturtevant on the book Chiefdoms and Chieftaincy in the Americas:

tupi
tupi1166Ă—447 81.7 KB

It seems that the Tupi also lived on large comunal buildings known as “malocas”, were even hundreds of people could live in a single structure. Moreover, the Tupi seem to have lacked especialised buildings for ritual or storage functions, they did everything under the same roof were they lived, which was the “maloca”. In that sense, I believe the in-game “settlement” building refers to such “malocas” and the fact that they were used not only for housing, but also for storage (and even ritual) purposes. Also, the architecture of the in-game “settlement” buildings looks very simlar to the architecture of various indigenous Amazonian “malocas”.

Here’s the Feudal Era settlement building in-game, as well as some pictures of various “maloca” buildings of various lowland South American peoples:

maloca-settlement
maloca-settlement1786Ă—1015 2.53 MB

Picture 1 taken from WikiCommons, picture 2 from the Age of Empires Wiki, picture 3 and 4 from the following article: https://www.banrepcultural.org/biblioteca-virtual/credencial-historia/numero-351/la-maloca-amazonica

The resemblance of the Feudal Era in-game building to the traditional architecture of Amazonian Malocas is obvious, so maybe these buildings inspired the appearance and function of the in-game “Settlement” building.

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The ingame appearance shouldn’t hinder the ability for non American civ to have a settlement that looks more area appropriate

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I mean, in terms of function, I don’t recall the other civilizations of the game historically having a single building for both communal housing, food storage and ritual practice. Maybe the Germanic Norse (Vikings) or the Goths had something similar, but certainly the Italians, Chinese, Arabs (Sarracens), etc. had separate specialized buildings for this functions.

What this in-game buildings represents is that, a single communal housing structure were food is stored in societies in which there was no early concept of private property and single-family housing. In many cases, an indigenous settlement in the Amazon or Tupi territories was just made up of a single maloca buildings that served all of those three functions (housing, storage and ritual practice).

I do believe that naming the in-game building as “Settlement” makes it very ambigous, since all humans had some kind of “settlement”, but I think that they had “malocas” in mind when designing this building for the game. They obviously couldn’t go with a more native sounding name, since each indigenous groups calls malocas by a different name (and the Muisca, Mapuche and Inca didn’t even use malocas at all, though they had structures or “settlements” with similar functions).

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i suppose a name like longhouse and giving it to some Germanic civs with the same function wouldnt be unreasonable: Giths, Vikings, Vandals. Its hard to wrgue for barbarian named civs like Franks Teutons bohemians Britons and Celts

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That could be reasonable, as well as giving the Pasture building to the Mongols as well. I think that this new “Settlement” builgind that’s coming with this new DLC could also be potentially given to Native American groups of North America in a future North American DLC.

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Great idea honestly. It would give the building some much-needed identity and explain why only some civs get it, while being generic enough to be usable by more than one civ.

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Nomadic civis should get the pastures and SL line before anything else.

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