Hello again!Last week I talked a bit about native American progression, so this week I will talk about a couple of specific game mechanics we’ve introduced for the North American natives.Like I said last week, our most important goal is making Native American nations more interesting to play. One way we did that was by adding progression to bridge the gap between the early tech levels/National ideas. However we didn’t really feel that was enough to make them feel unique.First of all we decided to let them trade. When we first designed the new trading system, there were concerns both that early Europeans might find it too hard to trade with their early colonies and also that trade might come across the Atlantic even before Columbus sailed that way. Now, as we look back on it, as you can when a project has been released for a while, we realize that the system can already handle this quite well. This change along with lots of others will come in the free patch. Now, to the expansion features!A lot of Native American tribes were migratory in their nature, moving around the same general area searching for new food sources, better climate or terrain, or just fleeing aggressive neighbors. This inspired us to give small Native American tribes the ability to move. This means that you can take your population from one province and move it to the next unsettled province over. When you do this you will lose any buildings you’ve constructed, but you will gain a boost in power across the board. Only one province nations can migrate. This, together with the Native American buildings, creates a very interesting dynamic where you get a few smaller migratory tribes that don’t have a strong economy of fortified settlements, but that can develop their abilities through native advancements much faster than the larger settled tribes and get stronger armies, better diplomatic relations etc.But how then, do you defend yourself when you are just a one province migratory tribe and there are tribes with two or three provinces or even strangers come across the seas? We all know the average lifespan of a one province minor power, don’t we? Well, one thing you could do is join a federation. Federations are a Native American specific mechanic that works like a defensive alliance, except it has a leader. A Federation’s leader is changed every time the current leader dies and is selected based on, among other things, the tribe’s prestige and diplomatic reputation. The leader is the only one who can invite new members to the Federation. Now the final piece of the puzzle here is that this sort of defensive alliance is only valid against attackers from outside of the Federation; it does not apply to states inside the community. So if you invite the warmongering Iroquois into your federation, this doesn’t really help you. This means that you need to find federation partners that are powerful, but not expected to be a threat; otherwise you are not protected as well.What emerges is what can be seen as the life cycle of the tribal nation. Your start out as a small migratory tribe, moving to where the resources are, staying away from bigger threats or banding together with similar tribes for protection, while at the same time developing your tribal society. When the time is right and then you settle down and become a sedentary society, acquire new territories, build more advanced structures until you are ready to take the next step and become a modern state that can compete with the global empires across the world.