[C&E] Questions & Suggestions

[Huey Omehaktl]

Hello guys, I absolutely love this mod aim, and just made this account to know more about it.
I wanted to ask, are you trying to add that feature that makes if Spain captures a native settlement, the name is changed?
If that is the case, can that be for both sides??

[lolIsuck]

Hello guys, I absolutely love this mod aim, and just made this account to know more about it.
I wanted to ask, are you trying to add that feature that makes if Spain captures a native settlement, the name is changed?
If that is the case, can that be for both sides??

We have yet to start a script discussion so no decisions there yet, just some loose ideas. We could implement it, it's quite a lot of work though and the player could change the names of his settlements himself. This would of course not be the case for the AI so perhaps we could make it an AI-only script, having the player decide for himself.

[Frunk]

Hi Huey, welcome to TWC! Awesome to have you here and I'm glad you're interested in C&E!

Further to what lolI says, it's a bit of a tricky one. If that feature only exists for Spain and only applies to cities they (historically) conquered, it might be easy enough. We do have over a dozen European factions, so the question we'd have to ask ourselves is do we implement scripts for them as well? Then, implementing the reverse for the native factions as well; all that might make things more complicated.

Certainly an idea worth considering! +rep for that. It might not be something super important which we try to add to a first release, but it can be looked at in the future.

[Huey Omehaktl]

I understand. Also I know it would be a lot of work to try to figure out how the Mexica would call a settlement on Missisipi (and yet making it historically accurate to their lore), so also much creative work .
And by the way, if in any distant time you even think about changing the game music, I could suggest you some native american music which fit to the original themes thematic and also its only played with Meso American instruments or so, because there are some nice themes on the Total war series, but some of them aren't accurate to natives (Like clash of nahua, even if i love it.)
Anyway, good luck with this mod, I will be patiently waiting for updates.

[Metal.Pigeon]

Another thing that I'm a bit concerned about is that it would need a lot of scripting, which not only takes more time to do but it also causes lag/longer turns on lower-end computers. Maybe not for every settlement in the game, but perhaps the major ones (Tenochtitlan, for one).

We actually did have a brief discussion about music, since I personally did find it a bit strange that the Europeans didn't get European music in the expansion. Anyhow, that's hardly a priority, but it is something that we'd like to look more into sometime down the road. The main difficulty here would be finding non-copyrighted music; easy enough for the Europeans, but it might be a bit harder to find something suitable for the natives.

[Genghis Skahn]

If you haven't decided yet, I think that the Teutonic family tree (best general becomes new faction leader) would make the most sense for Europeans, as leadership in European colonies wouldn't be done like leadership on the mainland.

Let this be a warning to you: The Teutonic family tree system is fundamentally broken compared to a standard family tree, even if the standard family tree is ahistorical or what have you. Teutonic factions get WAY less FMs than family tree factions; it's totally unbalanced. I'd suggest you never adopt the Teutonic system if you want more gameplay balance in the mod. Not to mention, you basically never know who your next FL is going to be.

Source: I've tested the Teutonic and non-Teutonic factions for ~1 year for EBII. non-Teutonic factions always have more FMs than Teutonic factions, and when we finally removed the Teutonic system from EBII it really improved gameplay for the factions which formerly used it.

[Huey Omehaktl]

I must say that the idea i am going proposing now could kind of get out of what is our standard total war game mindset of "go and conquer the entire world" but going anyway:

I know that the vision of the natives about the world, wars and such was not same as Europeans. So wouldn't it make sense to add some features like "florian wars" on diplomacy that allows you to declare a war on your enemy which objetive is not to kill everyone, but to hold as much captives as posible, to increase public order, or something like that?
I also heard that in North America (at least) most tribes weren't interesed on conquest at large size (even if there were still fights and skirmish.) so is this going to be depicted in anyway? (perhaps with more limited command and formation options to imitate native individualist style of fight until research or european ideas) or maybe adding some kind of restriction that prevents a determined faction to conquer large amount of land until development reach some point or something like that.
An example of this, is how Mexica were unable to expand further north their empire, because they had some kind of system which involved moving their army to the frontier of the empire each year to ensure order. And this obviously was possible only up to an extent, because there is only so much land their army could march to before running out of time or strenght.

[Frunk]

Let this be a warning to you: The Teutonic family tree system is fundamentally broken compared to a standard family tree, even if the standard family tree is ahistorical or what have you. Teutonic factions get WAY less FMs than family tree factions; it's totally unbalanced. I'd suggest you never adopt the Teutonic system if you want more gameplay balance in the mod. Not to mention, you basically never know who your next FL is going to be.

Source: I've tested the Teutonic and non-Teutonic factions for ~1 year for EBII. non-Teutonic factions always have more FMs than Teutonic factions, and when we finally removed the Teutonic system from EBII it really improved gameplay for the factions which formerly used it.

That's very useful information mate, thank you. If it proves to have a very negative effect when we get to play-testing, we will certainly look to change them. +rep when my daily limit resets.

I must say that the idea i am going proposing now could kind of get out of what is our standard total war game mindset of "go and conquer the entire world" but going anyway:

I know that the vision of the natives about the world, wars and such was not same as Europeans. So wouldn't it make sense to add some features like "florian wars" on diplomacy that allows you to declare a war on your enemy which objetive is not to kill everyone, but to hold as much captives as posible, to increase public order, or something like that?
I also heard that in North America (at least) most tribes weren't interesed on conquest at large size (even if there were still fights and skirmish.) so is this going to be depicted in anyway? (perhaps with more limited command and formation options to imitate native individualist style of fight until research or european ideas) or maybe adding some kind of restriction that prevents a determined faction to conquer large amount of land until development reach some point or something like that.
An example of this, is how Mexica were unable to expand further north their empire, because they had some kind of system which involved moving their army to the frontier of the empire each year to ensure order. And this obviously was possible only up to an extent, because there is only so much land their army could march to before running out of time or strenght.

Hi Huey, that is a very interesting idea about the Flower Wars! As yet, we haven't planned any such depiction/representation of them in-game, but I think something could certainly be achieved here. It would add a very interesting dynamic to the Mexican factions (and it could maybe be anachronistically extended to others like the Inca, too). We'll have to brainstorm just how we go about it, whether it's a simple bonus for capturing troops or something more complex.

As for the North Americans, it's certainly true that they were imperialistic like many Central and South American factions and Europeans. History already dictates that the North American rosters are somewhat limited already, so access to technologies like horses and guns is almost necessary in many cases to give them a fighting chance against particularly the Europeans. These will more than likely depend on "contact" with such technologies in battle, a la the scripts used to give the Apache horses and guns in Americas.

Building technologies are also a bit of an issue for North Americans. We have some ideas on how to build upon the base created in the Americas campaign for the Apache specifically. They were depicted by CA as "sedentary nomads", I guess, but truly representing nomads in Total War is difficult so I won't be too critical here. Part of the narrative behind C&E is the European "cultural invasion" of the New World, which is basically my way of saying that the North American tribes will adopt imperialism and sedentary settlements as a response to the European invasion. The latter is as simple as allowing them to upgrade their tipi settlements to palisaded ones.

We haven't reached a scripting stage yet and I've literally just begun working on buildings, so exactly what we will do, I'm not yet sure! Awesome food for thought though. Again, a +rep is on the way.

Regarding the Mexica, I'm not familiar with that system of army mobilisation to their borders. From the research I have done more recently, I was under the impression that the main reason their expansion (which had progressed rapidly for many years) was halted was largely due to conflict with the P'urepecha. I get the impression that the P'urepecha could well have come to supersede the Mexica in terms of strength and territory were it not for the arrival of the Spanish.

[Huey Omehaktl]

Hello again, as you liked my idea, I would like to deep a bit more about my thoughts:
To make factions of natives more uniques, several things could be added:
-Different styles of battles, for example there were ceremonial wars in which you could win without the need to fight, this could be some point system but not really sure yet.
-About the florian wars, it should be something like the Jihad, you put some army on that and then the bonus of the wars are others. Also it isn't necessary to massacre everyone, you can just retreat in any moment after capturing as many as you can. (Perhaps catapults or deadly weapons should be forbbiden on this game?)
-Several diplomacy options (for example England could make an alliance with some natives, in change to receiving French captives)
-New weapons like those designed on North america based on the muskets design (the war cub) that arent necessary fire weapons or cavalry.
-You should be able to trade special tech like weapons, cavalry, formations, etc , with Europeans, these are the kind of techs that take a lot to win by war.

I get that the game is Total war ish enough to not allow such changes like nomads, so its fine for me.

About the Mexica, its true that they were already a Empire on decadence, so they were going to probably be replaced anyway.
(Perhaps their culture wasn't lost as much, though)
Also, I am curious, what kind of building are you planning to do?? I may brainstorm a few ideas soon.

[Genghis Skahn]

That's very useful information mate, thank you. If it proves to have a very negative effect when we get to play-testing, we will certainly look to change them. +rep when my daily limit resets.

EBII used the Teutonic system for the "barbarian" factions for some 1-2 years before it was removed. I seriously suggest you save yourself the trouble and just don't bother with the Teutonic system, the lack of FMs vs a family tree faction is totally unbalanced. Learn from the crushing failures of past/existing mods, my friend; the whole EBII team can vouch for the Teutonic system's failures. It was possibly one of the worst additions to EBII in it's history, and man what a great boon to the former Teutonic factions when they finally switched to a family tree. Sure, it was ahistorical to add family trees to a number of the former Teutonic factions, but MAN, was the gameplay much more balanced without any trace of that godforsaken Teutonic system in the mod.

They were depicted by CA as "sedentary nomads", I guess, but truly representing nomads in Total War is difficult so I won't be too critical here.

It may be worthwhile to check out the way EBII handles nomadism--it still has it's limitations of course, but it may help you guys out in some small way with regards to depicting nomadism in your own mod. Certain nomadic regions with the mixed hidden resource can also be converted to cities in EBII, but this conversion can only be done by the human player, as the AI is too stupid to convert settlements. That's something you might run into yourself, I am honestly not sure if the AI is smart enough to perform any kind of city to castle or castle to city conversion whatsoever.

[Frunk]

Hello again, as you liked my idea, I would like to deep a bit more about my thoughts:
To make factions of natives more uniques, several things could be added:
-Different styles of battles, for example there were ceremonial wars in which you could win without the need to fight, this could be some point system but not really sure yet.
-About the florian wars, it should be something like the Jihad, you put some army on that and then the bonus of the wars are others. Also it isn't necessary to massacre everyone, you can just retreat in any moment after capturing as many as you can. (Perhaps catapults or deadly weapons should be forbbiden on this game?)
-Several diplomacy options (for example England could make an alliance with some natives, in change to receiving French captives)
-New weapons like those designed on North america based on the muskets design (the war cub) that arent necessary fire weapons or cavalry.
-You should be able to trade special tech like weapons, cavalry, formations, etc , with Europeans, these are the kind of techs that take a lot to win by war.

I get that the game is Total war ish enough to not allow such changes like nomads, so its fine for me.

About the Mexica, its true that they were already a Empire on decadence, so they were going to probably be replaced anyway.
(Perhaps their culture wasn't lost as much, though)
Also, I am curious, what kind of building are you planning to do?? I may brainstorm a few ideas soon.

Very interesting ideas mate. I'll respond to each.

Ceremonial wars: Do you have any historical example of this that I can read about? There are a number of things we can achieve via scripting, I suspect.

Florian wars/Jihads/Warpaths: I'm doubtful we'd be able to make use of the Jihad or Crusade mechanic for that specific purpose, because multiple factions would then be involved. Even so, I think (and currently I have virtually no scripting knowledge) we could still do something pretty cool with scripting, and perhaps tie that to missions (i.e. 10 turns to fight a battle and capture x amount of warriors, maybe). Food for thought and something I'll definitely look to include down the track.

A general mantra amongst our team at the moment is to start off with a basic mod, and then we can add much more to that after achieving an initial release. Some scripts might be included on that.

Speaking of Jihads, though, we've decided to keep the mechanic in place with Warpaths, which the Great Spirit factions will be able to participate in. Not at all historical or even very logical, but it's an added dynamic which makes things more interesting!

Diplomacy options: Sorry, slightly confused by your wording here. Can you elaborate please?

New weapons: There are already a great number of surprises in store which one of the other guys might be able to tell you about. I'm not sure if the war club is part of that but it's cool!

European tech: I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "trade", but the Americans will mostly be able to unlock some European technologies through contact and combat, similar to the Americas campaign.

Buildings: Like I said, we're keeping things simple for now, so I'll be adding what I can from other mods. There are a few buildings which will need to be created from scratch, though. It's particularly difficult to provide variety for the American factions, though, and particularly the North American ones. Currently, I have a handful of buildings to give them beyond vanilla, but not many. I'm keen to hear any ideas you have!

EBII used the Teutonic system for the "barbarian" factions for some 1-2 years before it was removed. I seriously suggest you save yourself the trouble and just don't bother with the Teutonic system, the lack of FMs vs a family tree faction is totally unbalanced. Learn from the crushing failures of past/existing mods, my friend; the whole EBII team can vouch for the Teutonic system's failures. It was possibly one of the worst additions to EBII in it's history, and man what a great boon to the former Teutonic factions when they finally switched to a family tree. Sure, it was ahistorical to add family trees to a number of the former Teutonic factions, but MAN, was the gameplay much more balanced without any trace of that godforsaken Teutonic system in the mod.

It may be worthwhile to check out the way EBII handles nomadism--it still has it's limitations of course, but it may help you guys out in some small way with regards to depicting nomadism in your own mod. Certain nomadic regions with the mixed hidden resource can also be converted to cities in EBII, but this conversion can only be done by the human player, as the AI is too stupid to convert settlements. That's something you might run into yourself, I am honestly not sure if the AI is smart enough to perform any kind of city to castle or castle to city conversion whatsoever.

I'm ashamed to say I haven't played EBII yet, despite downloading it ages ago. I'm installing it now and will have a good play very soon.

Were there any ways you could "minimise" the consequences of making the Teutonic factions normal again? I haven't got to the point of thinking about how family trees for "normal" factions will function in any case (things like princesses, mostly), so this ties in with that question. This might be a stupid question, but what workarounds did the team attempt before finally pulling the pin on the Teutonic system? There were no scripting solutions, I assume?

[Genghis Skahn]

I'm fairly certain there was basically nothing we could do, it was hardcoded stuff essentially--I can't think of one solution that could even be tried, or was tried. Basically what happened, after oodles of testing, it finally hit home that it was fundamentally broken, and unbalanced gameplay for any faction using it. By the time the switch was made, there were little who could oppose it, since it was so fundamentally flawed compared to a family tree.

We disabled princesses, FTR, so that could help you out with respect to family trees.

A general mantra amongst our team at the moment is to start off with a basic mod, and then we can add much more to that after achieving an initial release. Some scripts might be included on that.

Not a bad mantra to have; may I suggest these simple tutorials/traits I've designed?

Subcommander hidden tracking trait to allow your secondary FMs in a stack to gain experience.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...1#post15422170

Settlement-specific capture traits; a simple but effective trait addition for any mod.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...-capture-trait

General raiding trait system which could possibly be useful for the American factions:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...ing-via-traits

Feel free to reject these ideas too, of course. Sorry if it seems like I'm advertising, but maybe they could give your EDCT an early leg up?

I love the setting of this mod, btw. Good work on the map! Although, I gotta say, the Ottoman and Russian factions are a bit weird .

[Frunk]

I'm fairly certain there was basically nothing we could do, it was hardcoded stuff essentially--I can't think of one solution that could even be tried, or was tried. Basically what happened, after oodles of testing, it finally hit home that it was fundamentally broken, and unbalanced gameplay for any faction using it. By the time the switch was made, there were little who could oppose it, since it was so fundamentally flawed compared to a family tree.

We disabled princesses, FTR, so that could help you out with respect to family trees.

Not a bad mantra to have; may I suggest these simple tutorials/traits I've designed?

Subcommander hidden tracking trait to allow your secondary FMs in a stack to gain experience.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...1#post15422170

Settlement-specific capture traits; a simple but effective trait addition for any mod.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...-capture-trait

General raiding trait system which could possibly be useful for the American factions:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...ing-via-traits

Feel free to reject these ideas too, of course. Sorry if it seems like I'm advertising, but maybe they could give your EDCT an early leg up?

I love the setting of this mod, btw. Good work on the map! Although, I gotta say, the Ottoman and Russian factions are a bit weird .

Thanks for the insight. Advertising is more than welcome here, too! I will check all those out. When the time comes, perhaps you might even be interested in joining the team? I've learned that being part of one mod is time-consuming enough, so I totally understand if you just couldn't. When it comes to recruiting and "leading" this mod, I've been pretty passive, so far. Work is self-driven. We haven't yet set any tasks; we're just working on things towards a common goal. I think it allows our team members to have a greater influence on the mod the way they want things to exist, as opposed to what I might really want, or what anyone else really wants.

The Ottomans and the Russians are part of that mantra. In a perfect world, we'd have more American factions and unique content, but we realise that we'd never finish (even the amount of work we've set for ourselves already is a huge ask). Adding factions like them fills gaps in the map and, at least, provides a unique experience.

We're not a major mod like an SS or an EBII, we're not a fantasy mod like TATW, and we're not an historically accurate mod. We're a small, non-fantasy, historically-inaccurate mod. So, we may as well run with that. There are a few more surprises in store, as well, which I'm guessing might not be popular with everyone, but oh well. We're a bit of a niche, I reckon.

Once C&E is released, and if it develops a bit of a following, hopefully it can be used as a base upon which something more historically accurate can be created, and then the players can choose to play that if they prefer. Starting small.

[Huey Omehaktl]

Very interesting ideas mate. I'll respond to each.



Diplomacy options: Sorry, slightly confused by your wording here. Can you elaborate please?

I meant that there should be more diplomacy options to make this a bit more important to the game.
For example you could get "ask for captives" and a given amount, maybe even to "hire" another faction units for a while (like mercenaries) like some options.
(So instead of paying with money, you can pay with units).

European tech: I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "trade", but the Americans will mostly be able to unlock some European technologies through contact and combat, similar to the Americas campaign.

This is just like the diplomatic options before.
You could get to "trade" an technology that is only avaible for Europeans, for example "advanced firing techniques" for native artillery. Something that natives themselves couldn't research by their own, because of the time it would take in real life. And then they could buy this new artillery.


I've also thought about the apparition of a new religion, which creates a more high rebelion rate on the Europeans regions, it would also bring a higher state order on native lands.
Its called the "Ghost Dance" religion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Dance). It would be kind of non-historical, but who cares?.
The requisites would be to reach certain year and to have lost (x) regions to Europeans or being at war with more than 2 europeans.

[Metal.Pigeon]

@Huey Omehaktl: I don't think it's really possible to add any diplomacy options and the way prisoners are handled are hardcoded. There are also going to be lots of mercenaries available for hire anyway (in their native regions, of course), so I think that might be a nice way to represent that. Otherwise, I think the typical offering of an alliance along with some money might be the best solution. We might also try to get a different campaign AI that's more willing to take reasonable offers, including that nigh-impossible to get military access.

The standard native religion already causes unrest in European settlements along with increasing public order in native lands. It won't really be possible for two different religions to both have positive effects on the same settlement at the same time, but maybe the Ghost Dance could be represented in another way; maybe it can spawn native units around a European settlement in North America if they manage public order particularly badly, as a kind of insult to injury to a revolt. It would definitely help even the playing field between natives and Europeans, with the plagues and whatnot. +rep for the idea!

Regarding European technologies, there will be things other than guns and horses. I don't want to spoil too much, but things like the pikes used by the Aztecs made with European swords and gunstock clubs will appear for the North Americans. The latter won't really be post-contact though and it'll just be some visual variety among the clubmen ranks; it really won't be worth the space it would take up in the unit rosters, especially with so many other factions that we want to flesh out with as many unique units as possible. We're not at a consensus yet on how the natives will unlock these (we aren't really even finished with most of the native factions yet), but it'll be a bit more believable than the way the Apache and Chichimeca get it in Kingdoms. It may be something that is gained after x amount of turns with an alliance or trade with Europeans, or after set turn numbers like Third Age.

And a last note on native unit formations: they will be very limited for the most part, with notable exceptions to, say, pikemen (spear wall). For the sake of gameplay though, gunners will still fire by ranks and cavalry will have their wedges/shooting circles.

[Demokritos]

Just discovered this mod. Looks like a reason to reinstall M2TW! Keep up the good work, guys.

If you need some inspiration regarding the native content, you might get it from a read here.

I did some research regarding the first nations of America in the StartPos Mods and Colonialism 1600 AD for ETW (even though nothing of it was used for the first release of the latter mod). You all set about the native factions, villages, rosters etc already? What about native names for the natives?

[Frunk]

Hey Demokritos! Thank you for the kind words! I will check that link out.

We could certainly use some more input on the first nations and for that matter all of our Native American factions. We currently have plans for four North American native factions: the Apache (haven't found/decided upon an autonym yet), the Iroquois (the Five Nations), the Cherokee (the Principal People) and the Sioux (the Seven Council Fires). The Apache is obviously a vanilla faction so we can make use of them, while we have a number of assets we are using from the defunct Colonialism: Total War mod for the Iroquois and which Metal.Pigeon is currently doing great work building upon; in fact, I'd say it's quite well developed at this point. As far as the Cherokee and Sioux are concerned, things are a lot less developed, so if you can offer anything there, we'd certainly find it very useful! I can say that we'd even be open to replacing the latter two factions if there might be better alternatives.

Making accurate/aesthetically pleasing/unique/fun-to-play rosters, let alone creating said units, for the North Americans in particular is proving to be a bit of a challenge, and a hurdle that we'll need to overcome. I'm hopeful of going on a big recruitment drive for modellers (among other roles) as soon as I have the time to resume working on this mod. I'm not sure if this is something you might know about, but I have long wondered if models from ETW and other later titles can be converted back to M2TW, perhaps with some adjusting. If yes, might there be some assets from Colonialism 1600 AD you think might be useful to us?

Village names are mostly taken from my painstaking searching via Google Maps and Wikipedia. If I couldn't find an historical settlement, I often opted for whatever native placename I could find. Check out the Map Preview and let me know what you think/if you have any questions. I have "explanations" for every placename saved and some of them are rather imaginative, if I do say so myself. They can definitely be improved.

Research into navies/ships/boats/canoes/rafts is something that has been on my to-do-list for a while, and a few months ago I started a draft which I haven't shared with the team yet because it's not finished and got sidetracked with real life commitments. I am keen to give the native factions more than just generic canoes/pirogues or what have you. The Muisca, for example, might get rafts because that's all I believe they had historically. I'm undecided whether they'd be able to research/build pirogues or something else. Regardless, these canoes/rafts are going to be literally no match for European ships, hence they'll be represented as fleets (e.g. one unit might be, say, 20 pirogues), which means if you have enough of them, they might believably stand a chance against a ship with guns. The natives might have access to mercenaries or privateers as a way to make them a bit more competitive on the high seas. Once again, your input is welcomed!

Like I said, I'm planning on recruiting very soon, and sparking up the existing team who have been no doubt busy with life themselves will get the ball back rolling. You would be more than welcome to join!

[Demokritos]

I guess I could lend you a hand once in a while regarding the native content. Currently, most of my freetime is spent on trying to complete the final edition of my recolour mod for Rome 2, and this will probably stay a priority for a long while yet.

But I have some sketches of native rosters, building chains etc developped earlier when engaged in other mod projects that perhaps could be used here as basis for further work by others or myself when I get the time for it. Count me in and I'll present them in the developpers' forum.

[Metal.Pigeon]

Of all the North American factions, we definitely have the Iroquois worked out the most. That being said, a lot of the current unit models are still a bit rough (quite a few vanilla assets, being pre-release and all, and we don't have too much in the way of building trees yet. Just a heads up.

[Demokritos]

Of all the North American factions, we definitely have the Iroquois worked out the most. That being said, a lot of the current unit models are still a bit rough (quite a few vanilla assets, being pre-release and all, and we don't have too much in the way of building trees yet. Just a heads up.

I'd be very interested in seeing what you've come up with for the Iroquois so far.

My own idea for interesting native faction rosters is to use authentic native names of nation names, tribal groups, clans, war societies etc and sometimes combine it with the English word for whatever troop type they can described as. Among the Iroquioan-speaking peoples, for example, boys on the verge of becoming real warriors were called "half-knives". These boys usually fought with special eagerness, courage bordering to recklessness etc in order to earn themselves a name and status as a "real" warrior. Such a unit from the Mohawk branch of the Five Nations could then be called Ganien'kehaga Half-Knives. And so on.

As for native factions, I'd suggest replacing the Apache and Cherokee with the Comanche and Creeks. The Comanche played a larger role historically than the Apache, and the Creeks, who'd rival the Cherokee in importance and character, belong to a different language group than the latter, who share their roots with the Iroquois, which means that we could get a more diverse feel from the units etc in this corner of the map.