Poor Hiawatha :(

Let's hear it for the Iroquois, the worst civilization in the game.

Many posters here - in their infinite wisdom - mention Denmark as the lowest-tiered civ (despite the fact Harald is actually extremely powerful: the best civ at pillaging/skirmishing and a competent straight-up warmonger courtesy of the free pillage-healing as well). Denmark's - or anybody else's - shortcomings don't hold a candle to the Iroquois, who are so poor they can in fact be considered the game's sole truly 'broken' civ.

The main issue with the Iroquois is the map generation. Hiawatha is actually very, very good - a reasonable unique ability, a situational, but exceptionally powerful wildcard unique building (it can range from "decidedly worse than the building it replaces" to "the best unique building in the game", depending on map conditions) and a very solid unique unit. This is an incredibly strong civ - so long as the only map type you ever play is Boreal! Returning to reality, though, Hiawatha is awful: Despite the Iroquois 'forest' starting bias, far too often you will either end up on a) a sea-based map or b) the so-called 'forest' your bias put you in consists of just a few shrubs and patches of wood, several of which will have to be cut down to access luxuries. In either case, all three of your abilities - the trait, the building and the ability - are all almost completely nullified. I prefer setting up game conditions so I don't know what challenges I'll be facing beforehand so my favourite map type is 'Shuffle', which generates a completely random map. While any other civ can thrive on 'Shuffle', I'd say that this gives the Iroquois a decidedly detrimental start with little/no forest 66% of the time, with a decidedly strong start with plentiful forestation being as rare as perhaps 10-15%. Even picking 'Continents' or 'Pangaea' (thereby 'cheating' by avoiding the risk of naval maps) don't seem to start the mohawks off much better than this - the chance of a low-forest start remains much too high. Hiawatha is different from other map-dependent leaders like Elizabeth or Suleiman because even though these are much better on their preferred map type (naval), they still have other fallback options if they luck out. Hiawatha is uniquely helpless; if he doesn't have any forests, he doesn't get any other help whatsoever!

Adding to Hiawatha's frustrations - and almost as if to add insult to injury - even if the map generator god was kind, Hiawatha still gets shafted come the Industrial Era: Forests only count as roads, not railroads, so unless you're prepared to lose out on the hefty 25% production bonus in all your cities, you'll still have to railroad your forests, nullifying the main part of the advantage from the unique ability for the second half of the game. Personally, I can't fathom how the developers thought this would be balanced. Forests counting as railroads would be goofy, agreed, but maybe compensate the poor Haudenosaunee in another way, eh? Make it part of the Iroquois unique ability that "Upon discovery of Railroad, roads provide the production bonus of railroads" - or, I would even settle for this slightly more interesting twist: "Upon discovery of Railroad, receive a free Longhouse in every city". And give us the ability to replant forests, damnit (this could be a Iroquois unique, as well)!

As a final note to this sad story of the pitiful would-be forest-dwelling civ, if only they had any, that Longhouse really should have had a gold upkeep of either 1 or even 0. Even the Civilopedia mentions that a Longhouse is an efficient structure so it makes little sense it costs as much as the regular Workshop.

TLDR - presenting the rebalanced Iroquois

UA: The Great Warpath of Doom

Units move through Forest and Jungle in friendly territory as if they were Roads. These tiles can be used to establish City Connections upon researching The Wheel. Caravans move along Forest and Jungle as if they were Roads. Upon discovery of Railroad, Cities count as connected by railroad if they have a City Connection. Workers may plant forests with the discovery of Scientific Method.

UU: Same kickass unit as before

UB: Longhouse
+2
+1 from each worked forest tile
Maintenance: 1

I think simply giving them the ability to plant forests would make them fine. Maybe a discount to railroads build on forest tiles? I think there's a mod out there that allows anyone to plant forests, but that would be cool if it was an Iroquois thing

ixias said:

I think simply giving them the ability to plant forests would make them fine. Maybe a discount to railroads build on forest tiles? I think there's a mod out there that allows anyone to plant forests, but that would be cool if it was an Iroquois thing

Click to expand...

That would be evil, I would just spam workers to plant forests EVERYWHERE.

Nice suggestions.

I agree that just the ability to create a "Planted Forest" would go a long way to making the Iroquois more exciting. A "Planted Forest" would be identical to a normal forest except for yielding no hammers if chopped. Available at Construction maybe?

Edit: Probably should restrict it to inside the cultural borders ...

Olodune said:

Nice suggestions.



I agree that just the ability to create a "Planted Forest" would go a long way to making the Iroquois more exciting. A "Planted Forest" would be identical to a normal forest except for yielding no hammers if chopped. Available at Construction maybe?



Edit: Probably should restrict it to inside the cultural borders ...

Click to expand...

Having it late enough and making it take time to plant would pretty much negate the chopping thing. I'm thinking at Fertilizer would make it early enough to be useful, but late enough to ensure the chopping spam doesn't happen (at that stage, the production boost is minimal). And it would be nice to have a restriction for cultural borders so that you didn't create basically a Great Wall

Fertilizer tech would also make sense.

A few additional points I didn't get into the OP:

- The 'no movement penalty in forest/jungle' should arguable also apply outside of cultural borders, or at least on neutral territory (ie, excluding enemy lands). Would it be overpowering? Very powerful, yes, but hardly overpowering. Compare the Iroquois to the Inca for a second - the Inca are just better all round. Yes, they have to build roads first, but then they still pay no maintenance on them. And the Inca 'no movement penalty in hills' applies everywhere, even enemy lands. In general, there are more hill tiles than forest tiles on any given map so the Inca movement advantage is much larger than the Iroquois'. It also gives the Inca a much broader array of options since they can both play tall and peaceful (taking advantage of their excellent homeland terrain from the starting bias) or go warmongering and build a huge empire that will *still* not pay much upkeep for roads since hills are abundant. With the Iroquois, however, as soon as you leave your ancestral lands the forest density plummets since forests just aren't as common. The Iroquois are basically land-locked and forced to stay at home, so to speak, unlike the Inca they are 100% reliant on a map generation that far too often doesn't help them at all.

- Speaking of cultural borders... Yet another incredible annoyance with the Iroquois is due to how the game picks tiles for border expansion in cities: Forest tiles basically are the lowest priority, which means the tiles you need the most are the ones the game will pick last! Also, these tiles are much more expensive to purchase with gold. The end result is that unless you squash your cities right up beside each other, you'll either a) not benefit from the UA at all or b) have to spend a fortune to purchase those tiles. The Iroquois UA is just lame, really, not because it's bad in itself but because of how the game de facto works. When you hold it up against 'Andean Road' of the Incans it really becomes clear how lacking it is.

Just make it so that I don't use 2 movement points going from a road tile into a forest in my territory.

forests not counting as railroad for iroquois is perfectly logical.. otherwise industrial revolution would've happened even earlier than it did for us.

I have to disagree with even the direction that 're-balance' went.

We're seeing eye-to-eye in that the random map generation can really screw with the Iroquois; but in my opinion it's the UA that suffers most. The Forest tiles have to be in very specific spots to make this useful, otherwise your 'free roads' can be roads to nowhere, or take roundabout routes to reach the destination you'd want. Finally, there's the awkward issue when settling early-game that there's usually a break in your tiles from one city to the next. This leads to awkward gaps in your roads, worse still if those tiles actually ARE forested: now you have an ugly barrier between one chunk of road and another.

The Road effect could be largely captured with a free Woodsman promotion to military units; compare to Songhai getting free Amphibious and Embark with Defense promotions to all units. I would want the UA to be slightly more than a free promotion though, so I'll throw in an extra bonus that's somewhat useful early-game: again, see Songhai for barb camp clearing.

The Mohawk Warrior is an okay UU in my opinion. While not requiring Iron can let you spam them, or get you out of the occasional jam, you'll still need Iron to upgrade them later. The bonus to fighting in Forest/Jungle is nice... but compare to the Jaguar that gets that plus two other sweet promotions, one of which allows the Jaguar to move at double speed in forest, regardless of whether or not it's friendly forest. Still, at least the Mohawk has some real, tangible advantages over Swordsmen - it gets a pass largely in its current form.

The UB needs the most fixing as it can end up being straight-up worse than the base building. If the +10% Production bonus of the base Workshop was added back to the Longhouse, it could be one of the stronger UB's out there: every Forest is potentially a Mine +1 food. Compare to the effect Petra has on a city - Iroquois cities in Forests would be very strong.

So, where does this leave the Iroquois? With this set of UA/UB/UU:

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Unique Ability: The Great Warpath

All military units start with a free Woodsman promotion. Improvements in Forest and Jungle constructed 25% faster. [This would include chopping Forests down]

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Unique Building: Longhouse

+2
+10%
1 Maintenance
The Longhouse gains +1 per worked Forest tile, up to a maximum of +10.
[+10 subject to balance changes]

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Unique Unit: Mohawk Warrior

[No change, except that he has a free Woodsman promotion from the UA.]

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This modified Iroquois can now move quickly around the map while scouting early-game, and has a faster start on constructing Improvements, such as lumber mills. They can also chop Forests faster to clear for farms slightly more quickly. Constructing a bunch of Trading Posts in Jungle will also be faster.

They'll come into their own once the Longhouse is online. The extra production on a Lumber Mill tile will make them just as attractive as Mines for production, with the added benefit that they provide 1 Food. They'll grow to a larger population than other Civs in that position. This is strong, possibly dangerously strong, and I see it being the biggest highlight of the Civ.

The Mohawk Warrior and all other military units now enjoy movement bonuses outside their own territory, and therefore can pose a stronger threat when attacking into someone's turf: possibly to claim some nice Forest terrain. Defensively, they move a bit slower but are again more reliable.

Overall, I think this set of changes could turn the Iroquois from a bottom-tier Civ to a reliable powerhouse. They're probably not Babylon/Poland/Mayan/Korea strong, but they'd be strong.

Problem with vanilla Iroquois-

UA is broken. You need a straight line of forest in your territory, between two cities. Forest road does not connect with regular road. Movement in forest in your own terrain is useless, except for barb fighting. Most of the time, you chop forests, as the yield is too low.

UU- Basically a swordsman (bad unit), that requires no iron (a common resource), and better at fighting in forests/jungles. not a great unit.

UB- Worse than original. 10% production usually means a decent 2-3 production at the build time. You are unlikely to ever work more than 2 forests, even as Iroquois.

Rebalancing- UA- Great Warpath- Double movement in forests/jungles, all units fight 20% better in forests.

UU- Mohawk Warrior- Double movement in forests/jungles (means it can move 4 forest tiles). When fighting a stronger unit (melee strength) gain a 5% combat boost.

UB- Longhouse- +3 production, +10% production. +1 food per worked Camp.

This would make a decent Iroquois civ.

The Iroquois were great before gods and kings when they nerfed liberty. Free early settler. Build second settler. Free worker. Use workers to chop abundant forests to build w.e you want very quickly. Rush Mohawk warriors which is the most underrated UU. Don't need iron, so you just mass em. Go conquer your neighbors. Upgrade em to rifles, use UB to mass em too, and conquer the world.

The Iroquois were arguably the best civ before gods and kings. Its just that when they nerfed liberty they ruined any viable strategy with em besides just hoping you have tons of forests and build tall.

Hiawatha has the trees not as road bonus. .. i don't know if that was very useful because some trees need to be chopped down sometimes.. however, like all other civilizations, Hiawatha also has a good bonus andit is the longhouse which if used with lumberjacks in forest tiles you could make so much-needed more production.

Strategist83 said:

Upon discovery of Railroad, Cities count as connected by railroad if they have a City Connection.

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You know, they already do that. You won't get the movement bonus, but the production bonus is there.

The ua says that Iroquois get a road connection bonus, the ua doesn't say that you get a railroad connection bonus from jungles and forests.

They get production bonus from forest connections but not movement bonus.

reddishrecue said:

Hiawatha has the trees not as road bonus. .. i don't know if that was very useful because some trees need to be chopped down sometimes.. however, like all other civilizations, Hiawatha also has a good bonus andit is the longhouse which if used with lumberjacks in forest tiles you could make so much-needed more production.

Click to expand...

Even with Lumber Mills, forests still only provide one food, and 3 production (4 with Longhouse). The 1 food makes it a unworkable tile, you want every tile you work to have 2+ food, or a huge production tile, such as a Silver mine, which also gives gold, plains academies are also workable. 10% production is almost always better.

jlim201 said:

Even with Lumber Mills, forests still only provide one food, and 3 production (4 with Longhouse). The 1 food makes it a unworkable tile, you want every tile you work to have 2+ food, or a huge production tile, such as a Silver mine, which also gives gold, plains academies are also workable. 10% production is almost always better.

Click to expand...

If you use trading post then its
1 food 2 hammer 2 gold
+1 science with free thought
+1 gold with commerce finisher.
+1 gold during golden ages.

Use internal trade routes for food.

jlim201 said:

The 1 food makes it a unworkable tile

Click to expand...

Uhh...

So meta is to hit Scientific Theory way before Chemistry, and if you actually work the numbers you end up with more hammers without the 10% than with it. Works out to only a handful, but then Civs like Russia, Huns, Rome, are only getting a few as well.

The problem has never been about longhouses, only getting the map to use them. It is only the games with little to no forest that are the problem. Much like no floodplains/marsh as Dutch. If you are ignoring forests when playing Iroquois, you are voluntarily playing with less food and hammers.