Balancing Bengalis, Burmese, Dravidians, Gurjaras and Elephant Archers

Hi, in my opinion these civs are either too strong or weak. Some changes could make them more balanced.

Bengalis

  • New Bonus: Newly built Town Centers spawn 2 villagers
  • Receives Thumb Ring and Hand Cannoneer
  • Paiks no longer affects Elephant Archers
  • Paiks costs 275W/275G rather than 375W/275G
  • Elite Ratha upgrade costs 500F/650W rather than 800F/800W

Their mid game is very weak because they lack bonuses and proper units. You don’t always get to the Ratha which is not even that good (I mean Mangudai or War Wagon level). The new villager bonus would boost their economy and the addition of Thumb Ring would allow them to stick to the Archer-line in the whole game. Hand Cannoneer is needed because they are really weak vs Eagle/Halb. Paiks shouldn’t affect Elephant Archers after Thumb Ring. Dravidians should have the faster firing EA, not Bengalis. With the cost reduction of Paiks and the Elite Ratha Upgrade fully upgrading the Ratha wouldn’t cost more than now.

Burmese

  • Receives Leather Archer Armor

Burmese need a counter against Crossbows. Gurjaras would have the identity of weakly armored Skirmishers/Corssbows, instead of them.

Dravidians

  • Medical Corps’ effect is tripled to 60HP/m
  • Receives Siege Engineers (Or BBC), Husbandry and Parthian Tactics
  • Loses Hand Cannoneer

Having +20HP/m for an Elephant unit is a joke. It is like Berserks having 8HP regeneration. Their Elephant Archers feel useless but they are supposed to have the best Elephant Archers. Giving Them Parthian Tactics and Husbandry on top of the general buffs would make their EA useful. They don’t need Hand Cannons because they have EA, Arb and Infantry to counter other Infantry. There is should be one civ to lack Hand Cannons among the Indian civs. They would be fine without it, unlike the Bengalis. Also they just die vs Siege civs. You would have your own SO or Bombard Cannon to counter Siege.
Gurjaras

  • Loses Leather Archer Armor
  • Receives Parthian Tactics

Gurjaras have the tools to counter archers thanks to the Shrivamsha Riders so they don’t need the second archer armor. If Shrivamshas Riders were too bad at countering archers the devs could buff their stats a little bit after the skirmisher nerf. Also this nerf would nerf their Crossbow play and Gurjaras wouldn’t feel that oppressive. Parthian Tactics balances out the -1/1 armor that Elephant Archers would have.

Elephant Archers

  • Receives 5 Cavalry Archer Armor and 50 HP (both Castle Age and Elite)

Elephant Archers are completely useless.

3 Likes

Imo they mostly need something to get their castle up earlier. The Ratha would be fine (though different than probably intended) if you could produce them right away in castle age and don’t have to wait for a castle.
Though in general the ratha design could be overthought and made it either melee or ranged. The mix causes a lot of issues with the design. I just don’t think this has a place in the game - a unit that is it’s own melee/ranged comp… In germany we have the wording “Eierlegende Wollmilchsau” Which means “Egg lying wool milk hog”. And it’s used for an attempt to put everything in one single tool or whatever. And it usually fails miserably. And the Ratha looks like it’s supposed to be that.

An Idea I had is to enable bengalis to build castles in feudal (thouigh heavily nerfed ones that can’t effectively be used for a feudal castle drop. That way they could make a castle on the way up and then start producing rathas right away when hitting castle.

1 Like

OP in a lot of situations while doing nothing to address their problem.

The whole design of Paiks UT is not to give Bengalis TR. HC will be okay.

Fine. Still they need a buff in castle age, neither earlier nor later.

This is the easiest solution which didn’t happen in past 6 years. So don’t get your hope up to see this change.

Fine but why SE or BBC? How this 2 are accomplishing the same goal?

Okay. But again I don’t think this will ever happen.

Now they are broken in BF. They should get 2 CA armor, 3 for elite. No more HP.

Did you misspell “Urumi” as “Ratha”? 11

How so? Isn’t Ratha one of the coolest and one of the best UU by most players? Of course they are not “S” tier but not less than “A” tier.

Don’t take it personal, I think you can do better. You know very well that this is impossible to balance. Ratha available in stable/range is more acceptable. I’m actually thinking about introducing only melee Ratha in stable.

I’d give them Scale Barding Armor for free.
Then they’d have a really strong Feudal Age and could be up to Castle Age with 4 villagers more than others and build it up from there. Their late game really is not too bad. Mahayana could include all economy units, but their weakness clearly is the early game.

It’s only food and wood, so in my eyes it’s already quite a cheap upgrade.

60 HP/min sounds a lot, but I agree that it needs to be at least 40 HP/min.

One of those two should be enough in my eyes (either more Cavalry Archer Armor or more HP).

If you give them free cav armour they should have all cav armours free

I’d give them Scale Barding Armor for free.

I think that’s too ahistorical. The Bengalis famously had terrible cavalry, so bad that they had to import horses from elsewhere. There’s not even a vaguely abstract reason to give them a cavalry bonus. It’d be like randomly giving Mayans Hand Cannoneers just for balance purposes.

3 Likes

I was thinking that this would be too strong. Also Ethiopians for example also only have the Pikemen upgrade free, but not the Halberdier upgrade.

But since…

… I didn’t know anything about their history, it might be a bad idea to give them free Cavalry Armor in the first place and I will take back my suggestion.

Might have to think of something else to buff their ealry game then.

well they could address bengali EA taking almost full damage for starters

4 Likes

Don’t feel bad for not knowing history or take it back due to this. This was proposed by me first who knows a thing or two about Bengalis. (I am a Bengali myself). Some people liked this idea as Bengalis don’t have knight. So this bonus will never be OP or anything. I also think it will be bad idea because BF player will complain about their BE. All defense upgrade free + bonus resistance + conversion resistance is too much free stuff for only one unit.

Or Feudal monk. Originally game developers wanted monk to be a feudal age unit. Since devs are trying to implement some original ideas in expansion civs (Even Khmer house is actually an original game idea), maybe we can balance feudal monk only for one civ.

If the bonus won’t be OP why would it matter if people complained about a niche game mode?

Either one or the other is valid. Not both.

Personally prefer to buff elephants independently which will in turn buff all the relevant civs instead of trying to buff each civ independently while simultaneously trying to buff them in a way which validates elephants outside of a niche game mode

1 Like

Because to me it seems like devs do care about BF as well. Otherwise we would see elephant buff earlier. Like faster speed, taking less bonus damage.

I prefer both. Some BE civs, Bengalis, Dravidians, Burmese, Malay need buff outside of elephant units.

Best Castle age bonus in the game? 5 TC boom on Arena into auto win?

the reason Bengalis miss Thumb Ring is just so that they don’t become another “fast Imp into Arbalest” civ. This is probably good design, we have enough of those anyway.

As for Hand Cannoneer, I don’t see how they NEED Handcannoneer, they have their own Champions, their own Halbs, Battle Elephants can counter infantry and to a degree Rathas too. They have enough anti-infantry potential, Handcannoneer is not needed.

Elite Ratha with FU beats Elite Mangudais cost-efficiently and I’m fairly sure regular Ratha with the most important upgrades beats Mangudai, too. While the Ratha moves a bit more slowly than Mangudais, making it a bit less of a power unit, saying that “it’s not even good” is preposterous.

which is also what the devs deliberately are trying to avoid here since the civ is classified as NAVAL and ELEPHANT civ. You wanna fast Imp into Arbalest, go play Ethiopians.

which is mass Scorpions, booming and going to Imp faster, or even doing Castle Age Elephants to stall until Imp. Burmese do not need help, people need to L2P. +2 armor on Skirms is needed only when opponent goes FULL Crossbow anyway, which is rarely the case even on Arabia where 3 TC boom is the more favored strat.

sure Medical Corps needs help but I would start with 40/s, 60 is pretty massive.

how to make a unit instantly broken. I mean sure what could go wrong when Skirms would do 8 damage per shot vs a unit with 230 HP. 28 shots to kill a unit that is roughly 3x as expensive as a Skirmisher, and fires faster. Would Skirms even be a counter unit anymore? I think not 11

I suggest playing the game more and posting balancing ideas less. I could see maybe bringing the negative cav archer armor from -7 to -6, but that’s about as far as I would go in buffing Elephant Archers.

Just a side note: why do you guys think Bengalis lack Supplies? Without knights and with full cost militia they are really bad positioned against meso eagles as well imho.

I agree.

Unit comparison doesn’t come with battle between them only. Mangudai is one if not the best UU in the game, Ratha at best top 5-10. That being said I highly disagree with “It’s not even good”.

Doesn’t work. Archer player will just avoid scorpion and raid your eco and go imp faster than Burmese.

People don’t need 6 years to L2P.

EA needs more for Bengalis and Dravidians. Unless these 2 buff in other area, EA needs 2 or 3 more bonus armor and maybe even small attack bonus vs siege.

So that they are forced to use elephant or ratha in every game.

2 Likes

What about doing this but also removing the extra vills in imp? That way the buff isnt as big on arena

Sure

It shouldnt affect Rathas either. Rathas can get their melee attack buffed for free

The Rathas already have a super cheap elite ipgrade and do t need a buff

Hm not sure about them getting Parthian

They will prob need to do so.

The extra hp isnt needed

Why only melee? They can buff both. For both ROF reduced to 1.67 from 2.0. Or can be 1.8.

The ranged version would benefit from thumb ring

Oh. Didn’t realize that.

BTW, Ornlu just made an 1v1 Arabia tier list. And as expected Bengalis, Burmese and Dravidians are just trash.
fgtdr

Much weaker bonus compared to what they have now. 2 extra vills per tc is extra 4 vills by mid castle age as compared to 2 extra from 10th or 11th min onwards and 4 extra vills from early castle age onwards. And if this was intentional, there’s no need to nerf one of the worst civs in the game. Granting thumb ring and a slight cost reduction in UT while great doesn’t justify nerfing the only eco bonus a civ without knights, ca gets.
Imo wood cost of Rathas should be lesser, something like 50w or the amount of damage they take from skirms in melee mode should be reduced or their base speed should be higher. Apart from that they should get some military bonus to help them fight till they get Rathas like free bloodlines or free elite skirm upgrade.

this is still much inferior compared to every other elephant UT and Dravidian battle elephants are just useless with no elite nor plate barding. This should rather be gold infantry and elephant archers regenerate 30 hp/min.

definitely not. Shrivamsha Riders are a mid or late castle age unit after building some eco. Without +2 skirms they’ll struggle a lot against early archer aggression. I’d rather suggest they lose thumb ring.

That would be a tough balance but they’d need some food cost reduced.

from -7 to +5 or -2?

Man people don’t even notice, but Bengali’s new town centers already spawn two villagers.