Sioux Redesign ideas.

[SiegeDance]

I think Sioux are in a need of major design changes, than any other civ so I decided to throw some ideas that might help make this civ enjoyable as well as easier to balance, and make sense too.

SIOUX REDESIGN IDEAS:

SIOUX BUILDING REQUIREMENTS: Isn't it weird that Sioux buildings cost wood when they are mostly made of animal hides for the most part? Especially the TC and the teepes should cost all food, as they are all hides basically.

REGARDING TCs: Make the TCs cheaper and faster to build and weaker as well. And give TCs the original teepee hitpoints aura within a large radius. Remove the gathering aura. The overall affect of the aura increasing depending upon how many teepees are built on the map. That gives the player an incentive to expand and make new TCs and have a good nomadic feel to the civ. While still having the aura to defend the base when attacked. Also the base hunting gather rate for the sioux villagers can be increased as they will need more food now, for the teepees as well as the TCs. They can start with hunting dogs already researched.

REGARDING TEEPEESS: Increase the LOS of teepees making them more as an early warning structures against raids, that can be cheaply thrown around on the periphery of the base. This could serve as a nice alternative to having walls. Also, you can build them around the villagers mining far away from base and the villagers will have more time to react to raids. As the sioux units are fast and can handle raids faster if they see it coming. No walls needed. And also make a few bisons spawn around TC, every few minutes or so, depending upon how many teepees are built on the map. Less teepees, lees bison spawn.

CARDS: Nomadic expansion card, further decreasing the cost of TCs and teepees and making them slightly weaker. Friendly territories card adding attack aura to TCs and also speed aura to the villagers. Aggressive Policy letting the warhut units build buildings, increase buildings attack range and LOS but also making them slightly weaker still. Improved buildings card make the buildings more resistant to siege units like cannons as such. Move the Great Hunter card to age 1.

MILITARY CHANGES:

1. TC BIG BUTTON. Ship 3 Dog soldiers for every TC built by the player. 1500 food will be hard now because of the TC and teepees food requirements. This will further set a general direction for the way the civ is played. Rewarding when played in a more nomadic expanding style.

2. TASHUNKES: Make them trainable by the WC from the colonial age, like Chinese disciples. Better at raiding villagers and siege than anything else giving them a specialized role. Numbers of tashunkes trainable increasing with age, also their stats.

3. BOW RIDERS: Add a negative multiplier to Bow Riders against villagers, like all other ranged cav.

4. RIFLE RIDERS: Remove rifle riders light cav tag, and their bonus against Cavalry as well. Sioux already have BRs and they scale really well. Give the rifle riders bonus against only light infantry and artillery. Give them ranged resistance rather than hand resistance as their range isn't good. They would still be hard countered by goons as well as other melee cavalry, as well as musks, pikes and such in melee. Sioux would have a good way to deal with skirms this way from range, as they lack any siege like falcs, and as wakinas are not upto the par. And it makes less sense continue boosting wakinas as they are mainly cav centered civ.

5. CETAN BOWS: Cetan Bows are pretty okay now. Their attack range can be made better against structures. Just would give a nice way to safely go at structures from afar, with the siege dance past fortress age, especially if the opponent walls in and turtles.

Sioux would still need BR to deal with cavalry, and Axe riders being the main cav for the sioux like Hussars. Tashunkes focused on raiding and sieging. Rifle riders more specialized, and especially, when the opponent goes heavy on siege and light infantry. Dog soldiers well, they are what they are. Their hitpoints can be decreased slightly tho.

[Imperial Noob]

I read "Sioux Resign Ideas"

[[Armag] diarouga]

Please...

[Imperial Noob]

TCs and teepees for food sounds very interesting. I would actually like to see it done. In other games buildings can cost food np.

[Kawapasaka]

Is Sioux really such a special case that you have to go completely off the RE rails to make it balanced? Never see these kinds of wacky suggestions for other civs. The Teepee Karni Mata aura already seems like a pretty huge re-design.

[Imperial Noob]

Is Sioux really such a special case that you have to go completely off the RE rails to make it balanced? Never see these kinds of wacky suggestions for other civs. The Teepee Karni Mata aura already seems like a pretty huge re-design.

I would like to see suggestions for other civs

[aligator92]

All this stuff is off the wall crazy.
This would certainly not make the civ easier to balance

[SiegeDance]

TCs and teepees for food sounds very interesting. I would actually like to see it done. In other games buildings can cost food np.

The fact that Sioux have many bisons cards, three hunting cards, a politician that further improves hunting and provides bisons, they were meant to hunt for food, even late game. They don't have good livestock options, no farming options. The bison cards need to be made viable someway, they have four friggin cards. And TC's and teepes should cost food otherwise if the sioux hunts never run out, it would be kinda broken, and hard for the opponent players to deal with the amount of units sioux player would be able o pump out with so much faster food gathering. So the Food requirement for buildings will keep that access food in check, and the weaker TCs will make player opt for multiple TCs and bases.

Is Sioux really such a special case that you have to go completely off the RE rails to make it balanced? Never see these kinds of wacky suggestions for other civs. The Teepee Karni Mata aura already seems like a pretty huge re-design.

Yes Sioux are a special case, as many players would be just fine and happy to see it removed. That karni mata teepee was really a cheese fix attempt at fixing a broken civ and not certainly in a right direction. And it's not just about balance on paper, it's about making it enjoyable to play as well.

All this stuff is off the wall crazy.
This would certainly not make the civ easier to balance

Is it? Indian villagers cost wood. Chinese villages can garrison villagers, and they can shoot out. British houses gives a free villager. Japanese houses collect resources. Asians have a single building that can switch between a farm and plantation for goodness sake, Japanese have moving barrack and stable, even an artillery foundry in the industrial, Indians can stop the battle anytime they want if they are ambushed or not prepared, etc etc. There are many off the crazy things already. The idea of Sioux Teepee and TCs costing food and becoming cheaper, weaker, and faster to build isn't crazy if you look at all the civs, and it makes a lot of sense too with Sioux. They are supposed to be nomadic, not sit in one place and fortify their town. Their buildings should be weaker, cheaper, and faster to build. With focus on multiple operating bases than just one.

Military changes wise, at least the sioux cavalry units will have a certain specified role, which is not the case now. How can you balance a unit like Rifle rider? Which has so many counters and can counter so many units as well? And two cav tags? That's what stopping from reaching proper balance with sioux units. Tashunkes? Where does that unit fit in now? Axeriders can do what they can, much better, and with less risk. Giving a proper role to units will help in the balance as there won't be too many factors to look after. That was reason BR should have a negative multiplier against vills. One less factor in balancing, and it's not going to make a civ less unique.

Also that BB Dog soldier BS. Now that players would require to expand and have multiple TCs to produce enough DS, and multiple bases means, much harder to defend raids, so the sioux cav will no longer only be looking to raid others but also will be more vulnerable to losing building and villagers of their own, as their building will also be much weaker .

[Kawapasaka]

Suggestions to make Sioux's eco better late game are all nice but I think it's just impossible to compensate for the lack of walls and artillery by buffing other areas. Even with all these changes, what is Sioux supposed to do about cannons and goons behind walls? Unless your suggestion with cetans is to make them basically an Arrow Knight, that was a bit vague.

[SiegeDance]

Suggestions to make Sioux's eco better late game are all nice but I think it's just impossible to compensate for the lack of walls and artillery by buffing other areas. Even with all these changes, what is Sioux supposed to do about cannons and goons behind walls? Unless your suggestion with cetans is to make them basically an Arrow Knight, that was a bit vague.

The very point of making TCs cheaper is to enable multiple TCs and bases for Sioux feasible without sacrificing much on other areas. And reason for Food cost for TCs and teepees is that they have good food cards (with some tweaks required), and to make them less reliant on wood as well. This way, if the opponent chooses to turtle and boom, Sioux can boom as well, with villagers pumping out of multiple TCs. and there is an incentive for the opponent players to raid sioux more as well, as the buildings will be easier to destroy, and if they don't Sioux can have good eco too. Would make for expansive gameplay.

Sioux has fast units, so it makes sense not to have walls. They can easily respond to raids and attack if they see it coming. If teepes have good LOS, and they are free from their aura duties in the base, they can be scattered around cheaply on vulnerable areas, to give a good warning against raids, to boost warhuts effective range, to give villagers farther from base time to deal with raids, etc. The auras should be given to TCs, the efficiency of which depending upon the number of teepees, on the map, encouraging expansive play. This will also give time to opponents as well, as they can raid and destroy building much easier, and distract enemy's forces from their own base.

And for Cetans, yes I meant giving cetan a good range when attacking buildings, as a good poking siege unit. They would still be light infantry, but with as much range (only against buildings) but far less damage than Arrow Knights as Sioux has siegedance, to boost the damage in case. So the Cetan's siege damage won't be OP in the colonial age. After fortress at least they will have a choice against turtling players.

[aligator92]

@SiegeDance My point is not, that these things are too unique compared to things, other civs have. My point is, that we have spend years to balance the game around all these unique things and now you basically want to create an entirely new civ, that has nothing in common with RE or EP Sioux. Making it necessary to completely reconsider 14 MUs and killing a large part of the work of the balancing team. So no, what you propose does not make Sioux easiier to balance as you say in your original post. It makes it a hopeless endeavor instead.

[Kawapasaka]

Sioux has fast units, so it makes sense not to have walls. They can easily respond to raids and attack if they see it coming. If teepes have good LOS, and they are free from their aura duties in the base, they can be scattered around cheaply on vulnerable areas, to give a good warning against raids, to boost warhuts effective range, to give villagers farther from base time to deal with raids, etc. The auras should be given to TCs, the efficiency of which depending upon the number of teepees, on the map, encouraging expansive play. This will also give time to opponents as well, as they can raid and destroy building much easier, and distract enemy's forces from their own base.

That's still just nowhere near as good as walls. I'm talking true late-game here. The Sioux player has to be hyper-alert to the minimap, even during big (maybe even constant) fights where the opponent can just quickly pop 5 cav across the map, and also have units on preemptive standby to intercept, making their fighting army that much less effective. 1v1 maps aren't very big either, which certainly doesn't help. I think you're really over-valuing early warning to late-game raids. Yeah, it gives you time to hide all your vills but idling vills is massively more valuable late-game. The idea of multiple bases is probably even worse here because even more units would have to be committed to defending them from raids than would be needed for a single centralised location.

So yeah, Sioux gets an early warning system that might help them out a bit as they use every single ounce of their apm trying to kill cav running through their eco. Meanwhile every other civ gets an extremely cheap, zero-pop method of completely denying any raiding short of 20+ opris. I just don't see how you can balance that out.

[SiegeDance]

@SiegeDance My point is not, that these things are too unique compared to things, other civs have. My point is, that we have spend years to balance the game around all these unique things and now you basically want to create an entirely new civ, that has nothing in common with RE or EP Sioux. Making it necessary to completely reconsider 14 MUs and killing a large part of the work of the balancing team. So no, what you propose does not make Sioux easiier to balance as you say in your original post. It makes it a hopeless endeavor instead.

The other civs are played frequently and are fairly balanced even factoring for their uniqueness, that's why you fail to notice how weird and crazy things are already there in the game. They seem normal because of that as they are accepted by the players already. It takes time.

Btw, as you said after so many years of balancing, how close do you think we are in terms of balancing Sioux, without making it a frustrating (i mean an utter murderous rage) result for the player who loses, and making it fun and rewarding enough for the winning player? I don't think we are any close, as we thinking in terms of quick and simple fixes without addressing the underlying bad design.

And I don't think it will take much time to balance around new changes. But no, the balance atm hasn't reached anywhere near the point we can call a step up from RE when it comes to Sioux.

We can agree to disagree though.

[SiegeDance]

That's still just nowhere near as good as walls. I'm talking true late-game here. The Sioux player has to be hyper-alert to the minimap, even during big (maybe even constant) fights where the opponent can just quickly pop 5 cav across the map, and also have units on preemptive standby to intercept, making their fighting army that much less effective. 1v1 maps aren't very big either, which certainly doesn't help. I think you're really over-valuing early warning to late-game raids. Yeah, it gives you time to hide all your vills but idling vills is massively more valuable late-game. The idea of multiple bases is probably even worse here because even more units would have to be committed to defending them from raids than would be needed for a single centralised location.

So yeah, Sioux gets an early warning system that might help them out a bit as they use every single ounce of their apm trying to kill cav running through their eco. Meanwhile every other civ gets an extremely cheap, zero-pop method of completely denying any raiding short of 20+ opris. I just don't see how you can balance that out.

I know walls can be handy but I think it's manageable with sioux. Consider things like multiple TC fire, much safer villagers, and you can also choose to make more warhuts around as they won't need wood for the TCs and teepees. I think Sioux can respond pretty well. Problem as of now is, Sioux losing villagers and buildings to raids hurts them more than any, and is often times unrecoverable. I think with cheaper buildings and much better safety to villagers, it would be good enough safety measures for a fairly mobile civ.

And btw how many matches have you seen that really went so late as you are referring? I'm talking 1v1 though.

[aligator92]

...
We can agree to disagree though.

We will have to

[SiegeDance]

...
We can agree to disagree though.

We will have to

No problem.

[SiegeDance]

Meanwhile I will continue to make my points more clear.

A thought experiment. Let's consider this civ as if it just came out as a DLC civ. First easily noticeable differences from the rest: Faster cavalry, no houses required, no walls, no artillery, bad late game eco potential. Gives an impression it's supposed to be an attack minded civ, focusing on constant raids and attack with no regards for defense and eco. That's is how it has always been played. And that is where it sent the wrong direction for further development and balancing.

WALLS are an important mechanics of the game, otherwise few other civ would also lack it. So Sioux lacking walls, I think the devs wanted players to utilize the faster cavalry as a defense mechanisms, not to raid and attack with impunity all throughout the game.

Now where this thinking went wrong? Because the opponent player as of now doesn't have enough incentive to raid sioux, as they fairly have a campy base and you can't raid with melee cav (because of early BRs), and their buildings aren't any weak to siege. So it's always the Sioux that is the aggressor, and other civ just camp, turtle boom defend until they have good eco and outmass. Now if the sioux are designed in a way to encourage an expansive game, that would make other players opt for raids.

And one unit that's causing the problem here is the BR which pins the opponent units in base. If they have negative multiplier against villagers like every other ranged cav, that would make sioux raiding potential as good as any other (because of ARs), but not OP. Also redesigned Tashukes can do the raiding job. This way opponents can raid sioux with Hussars or other cav. Sioux will either have to lose out their early raiding possibilities by going BRs, or go for raid with AR and Tashunkes, but being equally vulnerable to raids themselves by opponents cavalry.

The cheaper TCs will help here as villagers can be more safely retreated back, and if opponent chooses to turtle and boom, sioux can expand and have good map control and have good eco too through multiple TCs, without requiring random eco bonuses like karni teepes.

The decision of making TCs and teepes cost food is to utilize the cards that they currently have. Also this way, they can go for age up, or expand with the food that they have with them. Much more choices. Though one bison card has to be an infinite card for this to work. Also great hunter card to age 1 is a good choice.

This will also make the DS BB slightly more difficult to obtain, because they would require multiple TCs to be worth the food cost. Not as lame *wait for the time and win right away or lose* option.

[deleted_user]

I wouldn't waste your breath too much

[SiegeDance]

I wouldn't waste your breath too much

Very helpful. Thank you.

[edeholland]

Is it? Indian villagers cost wood. Chinese villages can garrison villagers, and they can shoot out. British houses gives a free villager. Japanese houses collect resources. Asians have a single building that can switch between a farm and plantation for goodness sake, Japanese have moving barrack and stable, even an artillery foundry in the industrial, Indians can stop the battle anytime they want if they are ambushed or not prepared, etc etc. There are many off the crazy things already.

Yep, and it takes us 13 years to get reasonable close to a balanced game. Just because there are "crazy" things in AoE3 doesn't mean that adding more crazy things makes the game easier to balance. Like you said, changing building cost to food it gives the player

Much more choices

which definitely makes it harder to balance overall.

[Trapandy]

souix could use more eco cards late game maybe stronger cannons w faster horses than iroquois and weaker rifle rider

[SiegeDance]

Yep, and it takes us 13 years to get reasonable close to a balanced game. Just because there are "crazy" things in AoE3 doesn't mean that adding more crazy things makes the game easier to balance. Like you said, changing building cost to food it gives the player

Much more choices

which definitely makes it harder to balance overall.

Let me explain why my ideas are not as crazy as they seem to be, and how it can fix the problems with Sioux.

If we look at sioux eco cards, it's all HUNTING. It's very evident. So every eco potential, whether early or late, should come by making these hunting and bison cards viable. That's their eco design. But not well implemented as of now. No need to boost their income for other resources. They just need a constant source of hunts and it's very doable by minimal tweaks to their bison and hunting cards. Better than completely removing a card and making another work completely different like how it is now.

But there are RISKS. Yes, there are risks that the food gathering might become too OP this way with never ending hunts. This is why Sioux need to rely on food more, in its infrastructure as well. And TCs and teepes (not other buildings) are the prime candidates for these. This might seem a change to fix above eco card changes, but there is more to this that can fix this civ once and for all.

Problem with the current sioux, no walls but they are also unraidable because of Bow Riders. You raid with melee cav, which BRs counter. And BRs are good raiders too as they don't have negative multiplier against villagers. Result: Opponent can't choose to raid and leave their base at the same time. Which make other civs play defensively, and with EP maps and resources, they very well can and defend. And once they boom, they can outmass and recover units faster than sioux. The only saving grace for sioux? BB DS timing. Win or lose right there. It's boring as anything.

The first important change: BRs should have negative mutiplier against villagers. What this will do is Sioux has to utilize Axe riders or Tashunkes to raid. In which case they will be vulnerable to counter raids too by units like hussars and other melee cavalry.

But Next problem? Sioux poor defense and lack of walls. If they loose much in raids, it's often game over. Even if both players trade equal losses, it is more damaging to sioux player. That is where Cheaper, weaker, replaceable and faster to build Sioux building will come. This will serve both purposes, giving more incentives to the opponent players to raid and the chance of their success, as well as the Sioux player to protect their villagers and recover any building losses as well. Also the Sioux faster cavalry will no longer be seen as OP broken things but rather as a necessity to their design. That's their defense. Faster response to raids. Also even without any late eco cards, they can have good eco with multiple TCs and hunts.

BB DS: This has to be implemented differently. This is either too strong in some cases and probably the only chance to win a game in others. So that was my take on making the DS numbers depend on the number of TCs, rather than on a fixed timing. And this costs food, as well as the TCs, not so easy to get to this way. But still a strong and relevant part of the game later, rather than choosing to decrease their hitpoints now.

And RIfle riders need to be fixed. Redesigned. They have a huge potential. Either by removing their heavy cav tag, or light cav tag, and adjusting other stats accordingly. It's supposed to be such a unique unit for sioux but never seen expect for that Evening star timing.

And what's the loss here with redesigns for a civ if it can make it more played and enjoyable. It's not like it's being played regularly in tourneys. Changes can always be reverted if it affects other civs meta way too much.

[sebnan12]

u couldve won like 10 sioux games meanwhile instead of writing this

[SiegeDance]

u couldve won like 10 sioux games meanwhile instead of writing this

Actually, writing this was easier than winning with sioux. And it's how the case is with Sioux currently. There is no fun either in winning or losing with them. You can only write about them and hope it becomes the next bestseller.

[deleted_user]

I can give props where props are due - that's a good attitude.