Instead of having 2 camel units, turn one of them into Naffatun.
“Two developments around the year 850 increased the power of the oil czars. The first was the increased demand from a new fighting corps established in the regular Abbasid army called the naffatun , or naphtha troops.” That’s besides the fact that camels were mostly used for transporting and marching. It would be a good idea to have 1 camel unit and players get to choose on whether to have that as a camel rider or camel archer. Or camel archers can just be removed and be added for a Berber civ at some point.
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Camels would have been interesting as special “trade cart”, I don’t know if this sort of mechanic from AoEII will exist in AOE4. And eventually, camels traders being in same time “trade caravan guards”, they would have a capability to fight and defend themself a bit.
Another idea, would have been to make the camel transporting the imam, or a doctor.
I mean, a bit of imagination if they want some camels.
I think the camel archers could be keeped. Because it was used by some turkic warriors , and Abbasids hired a bunch of turkic mercenaries and slave-soldiers. I really hope than the design and language of the unit would be based on that in the game.
The melee camels don’t have so much sense instead. It should be replaced.
I agree than more diverse units, like adding naffatun would have been more representative of abbasids.
Instead of making them a camel civ… giving them a focus of unit, just looks wrong.
And I don’t even know where is the mamluk part in their design … from their description. It should be removed honestly. Nothing looks like mamluk sultanate in their kit. Mamluk never used camels, and were famous horsemen.
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Agreed. If they wanted a camel civ, then it would’ve been better for Berbers, like maybe Umayyad dynasty.
I don’t understand the obsession with representing everything Middle-Eastern with camels. Horseback warriors were used extensively in that region, and camel riders didn’t necessarily bring their mounts to the fight. The Arabian horse is well renowned since ages.
I could go on but you can see the point. There’s no need to limit civ designs to caricatures for “the wider audience” to catch on
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Yup. Besides, they seem to ignore how effective were the Naffatun.
Really not, ummayad troops were a mix of iberian levies and iqta cavalry, arabian junds and mercenary cavalry, feudal galicians and light berbers, numidian style javelin thrower, not camels. Also the special guards were the abid (sudanese) infantry guard and the saqaliba (slav) cavalry mamluks. So no camels at all.
Naffatun is a bit niche dont you think? Its a fact that most civs in asia had incendiary/grenade alts around the same time as they had handcannons. But its also a fact that alot of things were reserves for defence and siege battles - with the exception of the Chinese who tried to make it a workable field weapon with mixed success. This sort of unit might best be a universal dedicated siege trooper - weak vs units, but does alot of siege damage vs buildings and other siege engines. The game does need a ####### alt and most other civs have a hint at using something like this.
For abbasids - both the unique units are pretty solid. Only thing I can think of is pulling the camel riders down to age 2 (230 hp, 10 attack, 2 melee armor) as well and optimizing the unique techs. Camel rider shields and camel handling are pretty cheap but also have pretty small effects. There’s really no gain or loss as I see to not just adjusting the techs into the base stats of the camels - camel riders have 3 base melee armor and both camel units move at around 1.75 base speed.
Its worth pointing out that while camel archers were mostly berber auxiliaries or mercs, arabs did maintain a standing camel lancer army. They were better suited to trade and logistics due to how temperamental camels were, but they were a relevant part of the military - even if not to the degree the aoe series insists.