You just need to be sure to make the most of it while you can. Still, if you can manage to pull it off, you'll enjoy a short but memorable military advantage over your enemies. Ownership of sufficient trading posts really makes or breaks this strategy. Your economic home city shipments are replaced by more militia, ironclads and forts. Revolts aren't to be entered into lightly however as they impact your resource gathering by converting all your villagers (current and future) into militia. European civs can also opt to declare Revolution instead of aging up to the Imperial Age. Unfortunately, the poor fool carrying the explosive is literally hoisted by his own petard and sacrificed. These explosive units are really ideal for taking out big structures in a hurry. One of my favorite new units is the petard. The mercenaries take a while to recruit but it's nice to have an extra building pumping out units every now and then, particularly when it offers a unit type that you don't have access to any other way. The Saloon allows European players to buy mercenaries with gold. The European civilizations get some neat additions here too. While the individual benefits are nice to have under the right circumstances, the benefits of having a working Fire Pit are so low that you're often better off keeping your villagers assigned to regular gathering duties.
When you task your villagers on the Fire Pit, they'll begin dancing and generating power that can be spent to recruit new units, increase the combat damage of your units or even boost your population growth.
The Native American Fire Pit is an entirely new building that lets players gain some minor but notable bonuses. The WarChief even gets more powerful over time, so he can make the transition from exploration and treasure grabbing to serious fighting. This makes it much easier to make a quick treasure grab early in the game when you've only got a handful of fighting units. In addition to being able to grab treasures, the WarChief can also grant military bonuses to nearby units. The WarChief, for instance, serves as a sort of heroic explorer for the Native Americans. That doesn't mean that there aren't some interesting additions. Sure, we like the WarChief unit and the Fire Pits and the Sioux's lack of housing but there's nothing in any of the new civilizations that requires you to think differently about how you approach the game. Same resources, same basic unit types, same buildings, same home city concept - it just feels like the developers changed the appearance and names of the European civilizations to fit the new American ones. The American tribes are certainly distinct from each other and from the Europeans, but we wish they had played a bit differently. It takes a while to get going with them, but once you get a feel for the different unit types, they're just as effective as any of the other civilizations. Rather than relying on quick mounted strikes, they focus exclusively on infantry. The Aztecs are almost exactly the opposite. This gives them a mobility that's hard to counter. The Sioux are like the Hun in Age of Kings, a cavalry-focused civilization with little need for complicated infrastructure. The Iroquois make use of a wide range of European style units, making them a nice choice for players who still want a bit of familiarity. The Aztecs are only available in multiplayer unfortunately. Most missions in the campaign offer a chance to fight with and against a force composed of Native and European units.
The Iroquois, the Sioux and the Aztecs are all in play now and each offers a slightly different flavor. Warchiefs shifts the focus from the Old World civilizations to the peoples who were already living in America when the first European explorers started to arrive. While it gives the expansion a "been there, done that" sort of feel, it was so enjoyable the first time that we don't mind being there and doing that again. Given that last year's Age of Empires III was pretty fantastic, it's no surprise that the developers aren't inclined to shake things up too much with the latest expansion, The WarCheifs. Their approach has been to pile on lots more content without really trying to throw in a lot of new features. Ensemble hasn't made a bad expansion yet.
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