Why are native mighty fortifications so weak compared to all other civs

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
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Euro civs, Asians and Africans all get cannon attacks with aoe that does siege damage on their upgraded fortifications,
while natives are left with with regular arrow attacks directed at single units at a time
and at best for the the Inca fort with a ranged aoe attack that does ranged damage,
that is rather pathetic compared to a fort or even to a fortified outpost that does siege damage.

Talking about Inca forts, their multiple arrow attack should be the standard for all mighty fortifications,
doing siege damage and firing a volley of fire arrows to make the siege damage more apparent.

While I’m at it, wouldn’t it make more sense for native TCs to fire a volley of those fire arrows at ships instead of using a cannon attack for civs that don’t even have gunpowder or artillery?

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The Lakota + Aztecs don’t have grounds for cannons, but the Inca + Hauds do. Give those two cannons, but have the upgrades for the other two increase the number of arrows shot.

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IIRC the fort attack is range damage, not siege damage, it fires a cannon but that is just aesthetic. This is for balance reasons

the only building that does siege damage is the malta fire and the late game outpost

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the incan fort is actually a lot more powerful then the regular fort due to the way their arrow fire works, similar to the reason why gatling guns are much more effective against unit masses since they dont over kill

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but for stuff like war huts its probably fine for them to have a siege damage upgrade in the lategame, though you will have to again probably adjust it to not turn warhuts into basically gatling guns

I would say best to keep it single shot for again balance reasons, it can be an arrow or like ballista/stone thrower shot but best to keep it single shot.

Multi shot attack is very tricky to balance

edit: it will also have to mechanically and by feel be very similar cause a lot of TC micro relies on hearing the sound of the fire to re target and stuff

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Now I feel a bit stupid for not realizing that forts actually do ranged damage after all these years, explains why forts do so little damage to artillery, lol. But my point still stands and I don’t get how you come to the conclusion that Inca forts are in any shape or form more powerful than Euro forts. They do 6x10 damage so 60 damage whereas while every shot apparently does splash damage for every shot, it doesn’t really translate into good performance against units, comparing strongholds to gatling guns makes no sense, they do not perform similarly at all, gatling get fielded in larger numbers and have a way higher rof and also have multipliers and can target different targets within the same volley. I’ve had a couple of skirms withstanding several volleys of stronghold fire before any of them dropped while a fort does quick work of them since it mostly one shots them, but the most stark difference is against artillery, forts aren’t great, but they get the job done, strongholds do next to no damage to artillery.

First the stronghold vs a bunch of skirms

then the fort

fort vs falconet

then stronghold vs falconet

and that’s with an unupgraded fort, strongholds only get more aoe but no more damage.

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Did you forget inca forts get more range and also get boosted attack when garrisoned? And can make 3 default age4? And is cheaper and has great hp buffs? And can hide units in it for a variety of plays?.

Also the reason natives dont typically get super higher attack is they can have 2x a much outpost style buildings. Haude can get 25. Aztecs have noble huts plus warhuts for 2x the number. Inca have kallankas and strongholds. Lakota by design has weaker fortifications for teepee and mobility buffs.
Its a popular card in competitve native decks sans lakota or supremecy haude. No reason to buff this.

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Just note that Kallanka arent defenses, they dont shot.

Also, remember that natives get acces to town dance

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it wanst noticed in TAD until like 2015-2016 so you are not alone there

but on the point of the incan fort its due 2 interaction that makes them a lot more efficient lets say is due to

1- Wasted damage if the fort cant one shot

2 - weirdness of the aoe mechanic

to demonstrate here is a vid of a fort and a stronghold attacking 15 vet skirm ( the fact that they are vet is important

it can be seen that both the fort and the stronghold kills 15 skirms in about the same time, despite the stronghold doing less than half the damage of the fort

this is partly due to the fact that the the fort is having to shoot twice in some cases since it cant one shot the skirms, this is the more likely scenario since most units will have about 150 hp with range resist by the time these buildings are around

but its also due to a weird quirk of the splash mechanic which comes into play alot more with more units in that the splash damage is spread to the area, so if you have massive splash in an area, you can ironically get less damage to the other units in the area since not all of them will get hit by the splash

where as if you have little bits of splash damage like the stronghold, you are less likely to waste splash damage since its more evenly spread.

against single targets, the fort will perform better like with falcs, but against a bunch of bunched up masses of infantry, the stronghold will perform much better then their numbers say.

increasing their splash area only improves them in this regard, and you can garrison them for more damage.

in most games people have to respect a fort, but they fear the stronghold


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