Native civ designs is a failure now

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Native civ designs is a failure now

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Post by fei123456 »

Current Aztec looks like RE Spain: extreme huge XP, very bad shipments, poor eco. No 5 vills, every unit shipment are ridiculous, making it impossible to do a standard colonial play. Instead they get FAST age up with 2 noble huts, which is stronger than 3 upgraded outposts, and annoying arrow knights shooting from miles away.
So it is just designed to play in home, building towers, defend with a warchief and 100+ minutemen, and go fortress every game. Is this how an RTS game is played?

And Inca. Do anyone remember what are the big button techs from each buildings? Aztec for units, Haud for resources, Lakota for upgrades, and what about Inca? This is a Frankenstein-like civ that are piled up with a lot of unrelated things. Their house tech, 300f 300w 300g for 4 vills: can anyone tell me what the hell is this?
Pikemen that are as expensive as Ashigaru, and bow as Yumi archer: it's impossible to compete with any opponent in battlefield with these units. So you have to build mass houses, towers, walls, send 50 100 150 Chimus to enemy base, hoping that he is bad at countering raidings. Fun indeed.

I don't wanna talk about Haud and Lakota, as they look like "civilizations" at least. But a horse civ builds warhut and go bow club rush sounds weird too, and Haud may be the most boring civ in this game now. Old style builds, worst eco among all civs, a lot of new shipments that are useless in supremacy.

DE designers used to provide some interesting but imbalanced things to you, then they do some huge nerfs and give you some treaty shipments instead. And the game becomes neither interesting nor balanced in the end.
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Re: Native civ designs is a failure now

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fei123456 wrote:
16 Feb 2023, 09:36
Current Aztec looks like RE Spain: extreme huge XP, very bad shipments, poor eco. No 5 vills, every unit shipment are ridiculous, making it impossible to do a standard colonial play. Instead they get FAST age up with 2 noble huts, which is stronger than 3 upgraded outposts, and annoying arrow knights shooting from miles away.
So it is just designed to play in home, building towers, defend with a warchief and 100+ minutemen, and go fortress every game. Is this how an RTS game is played?
I missed about a year of patches. What happened to Aztec? Fast 2 noble hut age up? 100 Minutemen?
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Re: Native civ designs is a failure now

Post by fei123456 »

10 mace-9 mace, 9 mace-8 mace, 6 coyote-5 coyote, puma nerfed, 5 villagers removed, added an age 1 shipment that can halve age up time once.
So the meta is to send 2 towers, boom 10 priests, defend with a super hero and endless minutemen, go age 3 with 2 noble huts in 55 seconds, and endless arrow knights.
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Re: Native civ designs is a failure now

Post by aligator92 »

Ah ok, it uses that card.
It really is beyond me how anyone could think it is a good idea to remove 5 vills from a civ that has the fewest eco upgrades in the game and was one of the civs that actually likes to stay age 2 for a bit
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Re: Native civ designs is a failure now

Post by Garja »

The meta is indeed arguably bad. Rushing is not a thing "at the equilibrium point", so ye the plan is to usually boom with what the civ has.
To be fair, Inca natural meta always been like that just because of the kancha houses. Aztec also always had the 10wp strats, just now they all perform better.
It is true that Inca BBs are redundant for the most part. Only the 5pike and the lama BB find occasional use. Aztec BBs also are out of fashion. I guess occasionally good later in the game to overpop.

Btw, don't send 2wh with Aztecs, it is not any good. Also Inca units might be expensive (it's mostly food tho) but they are good and the civ is quite strong.
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Re: Native civ designs is a failure now

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Post by callentournies »

Lakota has always been a poorly designed civ since, almost by design, they win any upright fight but lose to buildings. So people just build buildings. Lakota produces the most obnoxious games (maybe im just bad). Devs tried to return lakota to being a horsie civ by nerfing the fuck out of its bow pike shipments (4 clubs? lmao) but jesus, 4 clubs. Horsie civ needs early age 2 options to not just lose to inf, cuz they have to make horse. Idk. Lakota gets DE'd hard. It's to DE's fault -- and my wonder -- that that makes me actually feel bad for Lakota.

The aztec changes, typical with DE's design intent, go in the wrong direction. Instead of leaving 5v for normal stuff & unit shipments, they remove it and double down on gimmicky firepit stuff. At least they adjusted some numbers on some units, but they deleted space from aztec as a rush/contain civ, and added to hero laming and etc. They might also still be in an alright spot.

Mostly I have little comments on these civs -- the natives have never really appealed to me though I've gone thru Lakota and Aztec phases when they had eco options.
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Re: Native civ designs is a failure now

Post by callentournies »

It's really hilarious, if you watch the aztec meer between oliveza and julliank right now, it's just AK vs AK, with mm and hero spamming from the firepit.
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Re: Native civ designs is a failure now

Post by Don Nameless »

:lol: embarrassing how these civs are reduced. I honestly didn't play much with them but it was fun to play and change the usual civilization routine, aztec I didn't play it often because too complex but I played a lot in lakota and a little iroquois and inca but with all these strange changes they honestly don't push me anymore play them and I'm starting to hate them (I intend to play them sooner because I don't play anymore :smile: )
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Re: Native civ designs is a failure now

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Post by kaister »

Starting to enjoy the twc civs less and less. Azzy was alot of fun earlier in de, but funny how the changes to azzy since de released which were meant to fix azzy hero + mm laming have made the civ rely on those two things to be good. every age 2 unit shipment has been nerfed but somehow they've added a card to buff the wps. go figure. Issue with the warrior/wc spam was always the fact that you could go 10 wps by 6 mins and can't really punish it since they spam out all the mm. would be like giving brit manors an outpost attack by default and then wondering why you can't rush brits when they have 50 vills at 7 mins and you got half that amount. Azzy rush has been nerfed almost universally, but the turtle campy playstyle has got buffed multiple times (8 100 hp warriors > 6 200 hp warriors, wp uprade card, cheaper/faster age up cards).

Lakota is near impossible to balance, but making drastic changes to the civ EVERY PATCH makes it even more impossible.

Haud dock start was deemed too good, so it's been made to be shite. How does a travois take longer to build than a vil lol. However, port water boom being so good is just part of the game. Or something like that idk. Honestly seems like devs are trying too hard to hold onto some parts of the game. For example, azzy warrior priests can't be touched at all. They'll nerf everything else about the civ to the point where ffing and going for a mid map warrior spam with arrow knights is the meta. While balance wise azzy aren't in the worst spot, the rush/contain civ that azzy was for the first 15 years is dead, and its now a weird gimmick firepit arrow knight civ
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Re: Native civ designs is a failure now

Post by firstaim »

What I get from dev is they don't like rush.
All aggressive civs were nerfed hardly and only otto comes back now.
How could they ever think to nerf Lakota to 5 clubman? Do they think 5 clubman > 6 musk or 8 pikes?
No they just don't like these civs.
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Re: Native civ designs is a failure now

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Post by kevinitalien »

fei123456 wrote:
16 Feb 2023, 09:36
and what about Inca? This is a Frankenstein-like civ that are piled up with a lot of unrelated things. Their house tech, 300f 300w 300g for 4 vills: can anyone tell me what the hell is this?
Pikemen that are as expensive as Ashigaru, and bow as Yumi archer: it's impossible to compete with any opponent in battlefield with these units. So you have to build mass houses, towers, walls, send 50 100 150 Chimus to enemy base, hoping that he is bad at countering raidings. Fun indeed.
Inca is just a disaster in every aspect, unbearable civ with these natural wall who create shit pathing called Kanchas ( why the fuck they are square houses ), unit dumb ( snare at distance, chimus run around, unkillable pikeman ), dumb card 45% more hp with more attack for TC ( coupled with building with 1 billion hp already just lol )

idk what to say about this fort, you can send a card and your fort can be invisible lmao, can garrison lmao, 30 sec for build lmao, 350W 350C LMAO

Chincha Raft, wtf is this boats lol
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Re: Native civ designs is a failure now

Post by aligator92 »

kaister wrote:
16 Feb 2023, 22:06
... the rush/contain civ that azzy was for the first 15 years is dead, and its now a weird gimmick firepit arrow knight civ
:cry:
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Re: Native civ designs is a failure now

Post by fei123456 »

kevinitalien wrote:
17 Feb 2023, 02:11
Inca is just a disaster in every aspect, unbearable civ with these natural wall who create shit pathing called Kanchas ( why the fuck they are square houses ), unit dumb ( snare at distance, chimus run around, unkillable pikeman ), dumb card 45% more hp with more attack for TC ( coupled with building with 1 billion hp already just lol )
Inca (colonial) units are bad at fighting, but insane at raiding. Chimu kill villagers fast and can't be snared, spearmen kill buildings fast and you cannot defend with a few infantry (they kill them with high stat), even bows have 4.5 speed. So they just build lots walls and spam bows at home, send endless spearmen and chimus into your base, aiming at a base trade from the beginning. What a weird game design.
kaister wrote:
16 Feb 2023, 22:06
and its now a weird gimmick firepit arrow knight civ
2 noble hut age up makes it imbalanced. 2 noble hut > 3 upgraded towers, can train units, can receive shipments (6 skulls lol). So you can do nothing but keeping away from them, and arrow knights just shoot under noble huts freely. It used to be a slow age up and you may try to deny this with colonial push, but after the halved age up time shipment it becomes unstoppable.
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Re: Native civ designs is a failure now

Post by callentournies »

firstaim wrote:
17 Feb 2023, 01:49
What I get from dev is they don't like rush.
All aggressive civs were nerfed hardly and only otto comes back now.
How could they ever think to nerf Lakota to 5 clubman? Do they think 5 clubman > 6 musk or 8 pikes?
No they just don't like these civs.
Otto isn’t Otto anymore. They’ve removed 200c and tower age up and consolidated abus combat in age 3. With EP era mosque upgrades it’s a decisively age 3 tc boom civ. Its whole identity of low eco strong units strong tempo is gone. It now has stronger units with eco, and still some tempo.
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Re: Native civ designs is a failure now

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fei123456 wrote:
17 Feb 2023, 07:14
Inca (colonial) units are bad at fighting, but insane at raiding.
Inca age2 units are actually great at fighting. I'd pick Inca units over euro units all the time.
2 noble hut age up makes it imbalanced. 2 noble hut > 3 upgraded towers, can train units, can receive shipments (6 skulls lol). So you can do nothing but keeping away from them, and arrow knights just shoot under noble huts freely. It used to be a slow age up and you may try to deny this with colonial push, but after the halved age up time shipment it becomes unstoppable.
It's not necessarily just that, because the 10 WP FF was 100% bullet proof against aggression even without fast aging. In fact I think the fast age card is not part of the build (I mean it is to age2, then slow age to age3).
It's just that AK got a little buff and so did the warriors from the firepit (insta shooting, 6 --> 8). But most importantly people just woke up and realized this strat is a thing, when I was basically toying with erk+ak back then in EP already.
It's still beatable btw, but it's incredibly annoying to play against.
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Re: Native civ designs is a failure now

Post by Kynesie »

Playing age2 with azteck with all the nerfs doesn t looks great with 5v-4v,10->9,9->8. It s sad because all of this wasn t really needed.
AK are good for sure but they are many MU where i prefer to go mainly otontin slinger ( just 5 AK to get the range), at some point AK mass lose strength when army size increase to much.
callentournies wrote:
16 Feb 2023, 21:21
It's really hilarious, if you watch the aztec meer between oliveza and julliank right now, it's just AK vs AK, with mm and hero spamming from the firepit.
So they are playing it badly , ERK wins AK easily and with the speed , the range isn t a problem
kevinitalien wrote:
17 Feb 2023, 02:11
Inca is just a disaster in every aspect, unbearable civ with these natural wall who create shit pathing called Kanchas ( why the fuck they are square houses ), unit dumb ( snare at distance, chimus run around, unkillable pikeman ), dumb card 45% more hp with more attack for TC ( coupled with building with 1 billion hp already just lol )

idk what to say about this fort, you can send a card and your fort can be invisible lmao, can garrison lmao, 30 sec for build lmao, 350W 350C LMAO

Chincha Raft, wtf is this boats lol
Some thing you say seems outdated, the invisible fort card is practically useless now, and the 45% hp lost his utility with the age 2 tc card for 500g , most players don t have this 3 cards in deck atm. Chincha Raft are not op since some patch, like try a chincha VS an african war canoe , the canoe win with 350/800 hp left, while just costing 50c more.
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Re: Native civ designs is a failure now

Post by kevinitalien »

Kynesie wrote:
18 Feb 2023, 08:58

Some thing you say seems outdated, the invisible fort card is practically useless now, and the 45% hp lost his utility with the age 2 tc card for 500g , most players don t have this 3 cards in deck atm. Chincha Raft are not op since some patch, like try a chincha VS an african war canoe , the canoe win with 350/800 hp left, while just costing 50c more.
Osteo has this card and he traumatized me with his run around chimu pike unkillable building, may be biased LUL, also concerning the invisible fort, its not about the fact its good or not, its gimmicky as fuck xD

About chinchas its not on water the problem, they kill everything on land cuz they have 22 range for a canoe so when you want to build an outpost or smth you can't and i speak age 2, even the vel has 20 range but no this one for some reason its a canoe and has 22 range and you can't build anything close to the sea
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Re: Native civ designs is a failure now

Post by Kynesie »

kevinitalien wrote:
18 Feb 2023, 10:23
Osteo has this card and he traumatized me with his run around chimu pike unkillable building, may be biased LUL, also concerning the invisible fort, its not about the fact its good or not, its gimmicky as fuck xD

About chinchas its not on water the problem, they kill everything on land cuz they have 22 range for a canoe so when you want to build an outpost or smth you can't and i speak age 2, even the vel has 20 range but no this one for some reason its a canoe and has 22 range and you can't build anything close to the sea
The invisible fort is totally useless, yes it s gimmicky, but delete the card or actual state is the same... Inca has many gimmick things, but fiew are really good. If it s gimmicky and bad,is it a problem?

The range in age 2 for chincha is nice indeed, but you should compare warships against other warships first and here they are not great for a long time. Loosing the 2 warships vs 2 warships 0-2 against any other civ hurt a lot. Warships for cover land is 10 times less the meta than years ago, it can happen ofc , but with less whales and tc not close to sea , it s usually not a good position to be
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Re: Native civ designs is a failure now

Post by alistairpeter »

I still love rushing with Aztec, the ages up fast politician + 700w then unit shipments (9 mace train puma) took me to 1700, although I didn't maintain it for very long (how does that equate to PR26 in TAD? better or worse?) and dropped to 1600's. When that rush doesn't work I have tried the Garja maya jav rush to some success when musk type units seem useful, this rush is very fun. I do like to send wp but mostly for the xp or fertility boom if I have enough hunts. 4 wp on fertility with spice trade vills can turn out okay if you don't have anything better to do with your shipments, but I don't put spice trade in all of my decks. inf 600 coin can eventually be used to buy wood in a tight colonial game or for massing puma. These days I see a lot of games where the market prices are like 60-80 coin for 100 food, if the other guy spam sells the buyback price can be okay for you, especially if you know the other guy messed up that bad anyway.

I think the eagle free eagle scout is enough to make up for one missing mace, and the ability to train 5 no pop units right on top of tc will more than makes up for the other missing one. The rush is still potent, and somewhat unexpected now that no one else seems to do it. There is also a rush I've seen aging up to colonial with the war hut, and sending javs as soon as aging up and going for coyote as a faux musk huss. Rushing doesn't feel as good as it used to in some ways (especially vs Brit) but it is definitely still viable. The hardest time I have when doing these rushes is when facing CM, seeing 2/3 of my units getting one shot is frustrating, especially when the civ has some type of auto gather building and they don't mind idling vills.

If you get the aggression going early enough the chief xp will put you in a position where shipments are always rolling in, and you can use each one to get more xp if you stay on top of the game. Walls can also shut down a rush pretty hard, I have gotten a little better at doing timings over all ins vs defensive strats like these, but sometimes the other civs eco just will outpace you. The thing that I find makes rushing harder to do isn't because I send 17/19 mace it's because every map is infested with hunts, which is probably why so many more things are possible now with the same civs we used to know. The enemy can sit in their base for much longer before they have to push out, and if they wait until they have lived long enough to use every hunt they herded in it's likely they outmassed Aztec. The 10wp on xp is pretty amazing, and if you have stacked recourses you can put it in fertility to save money on another warhut and spam them out real quick, then back to xp or war dance. The fact that they no longer take up pop space makes them a little more valuable, even if you kept just one he can take a break from xp to heal age 2 units if that ends up being more useful than 1xp per second. The war dance is what you get instead of an arsenal, and is a must during big fights. The rodeleros can be good vs Germany and a lot of age 2 civs, but I'm not fully convinced on them. Coyotes are the one unit you can upgrade, so if there's a unit to spam, that's the one if it fits the matchup.

I would love to see more people play age 2 Aztecs bc every time I mirror I end up either playing vs water, or 10wp attempts. The 10wp attempt usually just works, but sometimes if you catch them early enough you just win. If they wall up and try to do the 2 noble hut thing I just do the FI. The 20inf champion mace+ huge HP chief + shadow tech scouts can take on the eagles and arrow knights if you can hold out for 20 mace and vills on firepit for skull knight, but rushing is much more fun and intense. When you rush you learn the value of an individual unit because your army can be so small every one will count. The best games will be neck and neck, and batches and shipments will always be popping out on each other until something big happens. These were the kind of games I used to like playing, and when you rush you force the hand of your opponent to play along.


The civ is a fun civ to play, but you can't just suicide your units with this civ because you won't have the eco to replace them, but you might have the xp. This is my take on age 2, I have no experience with the age 3 play so my references to low eco etc are based on what I know. The 8 vills + gold miner 40% and 10 wp on xp is not a bad economy, and any civ has a good eco if you want to go on water, but why do that when you could rush. I definitely play tons of matchups incorrectly, but some matchups don't even feel like they are worth expending the energy to bother with the attempt, especially if what I have to do isn't fun, or has a solid chance of a loss no matter how hard I try. If a player scouts the rush and does annoying turtle stuff with walls and cm your rush just shouldn't work and you have to try and get all the little victories you can and hope for an open fight if he comes out of his base, or you can try to bait him by only exposing half of your army. The trick is to be careful not to let the boomy civs get too comfortable, try to not let him gather crates, and try to push when he hits age 3, or even better would be during the age up. Some civs pop out tons of units and militia upon age up, and clean you up before they even get a single age 3 shipment in (Spain, Germany) so be careful not to get cleaned up and sack a snare unit to try and escape with some leftover army if you find yourself in that kind of scenario. I am really bad at macro, so only dealing with 20 vills is great, but if you have 5 idle vills you only have 15 working (very bad). I think the rush can still do some good work if you can use your troops to accomplish something early on, and win big battles. I am not saying an all in rush should work every game because they already don't; but playing age 2 with Aztec is definitely still viable and feeling out for the right times to push will get easier as you face the different civs.
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Re: Native civ designs is a failure now

Post by aligator92 »

@alistairpeter if you want to try age 2 play that is not all out aggro, you can play stagecoach on appropriate maps. Age with the warhut and send ATP as your second card. Grab 3 TP in transition and send 700w as 3rd card to get stagecoach and houses.
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Re: Native civ designs is a failure now

Post by bsound7 »

i like this as well for age 2 contain:

start tp + plaza + house, 3v, calmecac, age warhut and fast, 3 wp, 3 tp travois, 700w/4v if you can afford it, into unit shipments. you can pressure, contain, dance for 10 priests easily or send the calendar dance to get a free age while massing. pretty good against some civs. mayas are a nice shipment when youre going for the age up.
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Re: Native civ designs is a failure now

Post by siebja94 »

Its really sad what they done to the native civs! Native civs have also literally no answer to merc unit abusing and also lakota is missing still the 4 vills :( Changing cover mode for arschkuh priests is also a thing and that min man kills give now xp is just sad !
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Re: Native civ designs is a failure now

Post by aligator92 »

To be fair, WP being able to dance at full efficiency while in cover mode was always a bit silly
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Re: Native civ designs is a failure now

Post by bsound7 »

it was also a bit silly to remove attack move form wp. now you have to click each one onto their respective opponent, otherwise they will be running around trying to path around the plaza until they are dead
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Re: Native civ designs is a failure now

Post by Garja »

Jesus Christ why are they trying to nerf to the ground the only real competitive option Aztec have on DE.
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