Improving Native Tribes (TP)

[araulius]

As far as I can tell, native tribes are hardly used at all, and are generally only useful for a strat specific upgrade. I'd like to know if the community has any interest in making native tribes more worthwhile and useful. If you do, Do you have any ideas on how that could be accomplished? If you think that native tribes are already useful enough, can you explain why? I think there's a lot of untapped potential regarding native tribes, and could drastically change up the strategies and meta. Which I think would be cool, as these features are rarely used!

[Rikikipu]

Again, I agree. Nats TP is one on the main feature of this game and is actually not used at all, which is sad. It would give some intersting bo's if it were balanced I think .
I see three issues :
- Pop limit
- Cost effecitvness maybe, since units costs wood.
- the fact that you can prod your units only at the tp location.

[thebritish]

I think making the build limit of native amb. to 10 or maybe make it unlimited+making the native's unit build limit increased by +50% or by +100%
Making them to cost real pop is also good.

[fei123456]

we'd better buff some age 2 native shipments.
e.g. 500g 8 cherokee/8 cree (960 resource only). 500g 6 huron mantlet (900 resources). 500g 6 cheyenne/6 comanche (900 too).
these shipments are too weak obviously. if we buff them a little, for example, 500g for 10 cree riflemen, it'll be a good way to counter a sepoy rush, or i can do a 700g cree timing push too.

[_DB_]

Why not play on cascade like umeu

[P i k i l i c]

Depends of the civ, too. Natives can become very cost-effective with french or iroquois home city cards, but there are many, so it requires a lot of shipments

[tedere12]

its fine going for cree tp whenever you have extra wood. I still remember the dog soldier tech on lakota native tp on gp nila and how op it was

[cedarfarms]

yeah the problem with natives i always find is that you just can never create enough of the units if you were to say solely make native units, so i think you could increase the build limits like 50 or even 100 percent and this would give people more incentive to utilize the tps. But at the same time, many native tribes do have really good techs which are certainly useful in games. Two techs that i feel are under utilized on two of more popular maps, cheyenne tech giving 12 bison to your hc point, and the tiger claw natives i think it is Bhakati or something, but they have a tech that grants a 40 percent bonus on berry bushes.

[v1pus]

Any thoughts from the EP team on this subject? There are lots of cool units / ups which never get used.

[fei123456]

native units, healers, plz buff them in the next patch. as we have already improved the balance in current patch, we should try some new ideas in the future.

[forgrin]

We have to be careful about increasing pop limits etc. because this can really affect treaty. Maybe make native TPs only cost 100w so the initial input cost is lower?

[Dsy]

Some natives units need some optimalizations in price/value thats all. Making tp-s cheaper is bad idea everyone send native age 2 units card then. Overbuff native is a bad idea aswell cause they can be trained super fast early colo.

[Mimsy for President]

- reduce some techs cost
- if you build 1 TP of 1 tribe, the other TPs of this same tribe are significantly cheaper (free with ATP). Not sure if it's doable.
- cheaper native embassy

[deleted_user]

This seems too hard to balance w/o significant changes. Perhaps making some units cheaper is the only way to do this.

[g06092]

Maybe the mentioned shipments, perhaps a little increase of the limit and very small buff on really weak units like the Comanche cavalry archers. Don't forget that natives are not supposed to be played in every game and to be so powerful that you always choose to use them. They are supposed to be used in specific situations, not as main army. Also it's more than obvious that some civs will have better natives and for some civs certain natives will be always useless, just because they don't benefit from the upgrades. Does Russia needs hand infantry attack increase (halbs are shit for many reasons) or archers attack increase?

[Papist]

If buffed, some natives would be useful, because they compensate for civ weaknesses. The power of age 2 skirmishes and ranged anticav cannot be understated.

[lemmings121]

its hard to do, but imo it deserves a good look...

And i'm pretty sure there are a few cost efective upgrades (considering the 200w initial investiment) that people just dont use now because they dont remember that they exist in the rare ocasions where they are needed.

hell, I'm printing Durokan's native guide and will find ways to use it. yolo.

[momuuu]

I think viable/strong natives would be detrimental for the game. Imagine dutch with a very strong ahe 2 anticav unit for example.

To me it just seems like its better to keep natives where they are at. Maaaaybe slightly buff it but seems so much effort for something that can potentially ruin gameplay on some maps.

[musketeer925]

I think a native buff would have to be something that doesn't buff the natives directly, but encourages you to use them for other reasons.

Possible ideas:
- Having natives nearby increase kill XP (similar to the aztec warchief making battles provide more XP). Something XP related would help make the native posts compete with Trade routes and add another interesting dynamic to the game.
- Making natives give a small bonus of some kind to nearby units. This would make sense logically as well, since having local guides would definitely make fighting a battle easier.

Just throwing out random ideas.

[_NiceKING_]

We have to be careful about increasing pop limits etc. because this can really affect treaty. Maybe make native TPs only cost 100w so the initial input cost is lower?

Treaty community isnt willing to combine treaty changes into the rush patch. I guess you shouldn't worry about treaty in the EP.

[forgrin]

We have to be careful about increasing pop limits etc. because this can really affect treaty. Maybe make native TPs only cost 100w so the initial input cost is lower?

Treaty community isnt willing to combine treaty changes into the rush patch. I guess you shouldn't worry about treaty in the EP.

This was written before the treaty patch thread existed I didn't know there were plans for a separate treaty patch at the time

[_NiceKING_]

We have to be careful about increasing pop limits etc. because this can really affect treaty. Maybe make native TPs only cost 100w so the initial input cost is lower?

Treaty community isnt willing to combine treaty changes into the rush patch. I guess you shouldn't worry about treaty in the EP.

This was written before the treaty patch thread existed I didn't know there were plans for a separate treaty patch at the time

Ooops didn't look at the date

[lesllamas]

What if native TPs got a god-tier vision upgrade? Don't touch the upgrades and units, but make it so that building the native TP gives you a really sweet auxiliary bonus akin to an extra outpost worth of vision. Makes thematic sense as well, because being homies with the natives should equate to much better knowledge of the area.

[forgrin]

What if native TPs got a god-tier vision upgrade? Don't touch the upgrades and units, but make it so that building the native TP gives you a really sweet auxiliary bonus akin to an extra outpost worth of vision. Makes thematic sense as well, because being homies with the natives should equate to much better knowledge of the area.

So like automatic ATP for native posts? Not bad. With garrison or not?

Also, do you have netplay? I heard you play maylayyy

[lesllamas]

I can't recall if ATP grants more vision, but yeah the general idea being to upgrade the building itself.

And no, I don't have netplay. But I am active in the Norcal melee scene so if you're in CA we might end up at the same tournament. Did you go to G3?