After taking away Parthian Tactics from Bengalis without giving them really any compensation, Bengali late game is quite bad, which is odd, because the civ looks like it’s supposed to be, among other, a late-game boom civ from its design.
While before they had inarguably the best Elephant Archers of the three civs, now they are on par with or slightly worse than Dravidian ones, which have much stronger late game options to support them (Wootz Steel Infantry, Bombard Cannons and Siege Onagers with discount, fully upgraded Arbalest, and Skirms with bonus attack speed).
The other options that Bengalis have just do not scale into the late-game:
Rathas: Elite Rathas have only 10 HP more than regular Rathas. Why? Paladins have 60!!! HP more than Knights. They also have only 2 more melee attack than regular Rathas, while Paladin gain 4 attack over Knights.
Elite Battle Elephants: Same deal. They are great in Castle Age, but then only gain 50 HP and 2 attack on the Elite upgrade, and that while having a much larger health pool.
If you do the math, Elite Battle Elephants have almost the same cost to raw combat power ratio as Paladins:
Elephant: sqrt(HP * (DMG - ARMOR)/CD) / COST = sqrt(320 * 13/2)/170 = 0.2683
Paladin: sqrt(180 * 14/2)/135 = 0.2698
The Elephant has the advantage that it deals a bit of trample damage, but then has the MASSIVE disadvantages of being much, much slower, and taking INSANE bonus damage from the Spearman line.
If anything, I believe this bonus damage needs to be reduced. Halberdiers turn Battle Elephants completely useless the second they show up. You don’t even need to amass a good amount. Just a few Halberdiers looking into the general direction of your Elephants will get them obliterated.
Because of this, Bengalis cannot keep up in the late-game with any civ that just has generic Paladins, let alone civs that have even more powerful options.
Bonus damage against elephants can’t be reduced without massively buffing War Elephants, but a way to counteract this is by giving Elite Battle Elephants a little bit of elephant armor, so they resist bonus damage better.
Yes, you can go Battle Elephant + Heavy Scorp, and if the opponent doesn’t have Bombard Cannons, Siege Onagers, Mangudai, and/or Cavalry to snipe your Scorpions, that’s actually pretty good.
If one have Mangudais there are no halbs…
Protect your Scorps with your own BE against cavalry, they will be nearby…
SO is pretty expensive, even more than EBE. Onager and BBC can be troublesome, but you still have your own Light Cavalry and Monks with extra armor, Redemption and Block Printing.
Mongols doesn’t need Halbs, because there’s no unit combination that Bengali has that can beat Mangudai + Siege Onager.
Battle Elephants cannot protect Scorpions, the Scorpions will die before the Elephants can deal significant damage. You need your own Halbs to protect them, at which point you can just forgo the Elephants completely and play a good Siege + Halb civ like Celts or Teutons.
Yes, I am not interested in strategies that don’t work above 1000 ELO.
You come here immediately being sarcastic while proposing complete nonsense that can be easily be countered in a multitude of ways, and even if it isn’t, isn’t exceptionally powerful. And now you’re doing the same shtick that people like you always do when they run out of arguments: Walk away from the conversation, acting like you have won. I knew it was a waste of time, but I still engaged with you against my better judgment.
Try to play a TG vs Battle Elephants that are protected by the other player’s Arbalests/Hand Cannoneers and such, then see how unstoppable Battle Elephants can be (and why Battle Elephants had to be nerfed MANY times in the past). If you make Halbs not so effective at countering them then you get a broken unit very spammable from Multiple stable in the late game so it becomes a nothing but spam one unit to win.
Same thing goes for Elephant Archers, just because the unit is unusable earlier on aggresive maps doesn’t make it bad, why 2k players are using them several time at BF games?, see how not even Siege Onagers counter them properly (I would even say Siege Onagers counter much better Mangudai than Elephant Archers), Bengali Elite Elephant Archers were quite broken because Paladins can’t even do enough damage, Arbalests and othe ranged units were useless (Skirmishers bad as well) and even Monks can’t counter them properly (I even saw 2k players that were struggling to counter these Elephants in 1v1s as well in S-tier tournaments, but the “more expert” reddit/forum people were still thinking they were bad because they rushed them out earlier and lost ).
I think the game would be better if Skirms would counter Elephatns and NOT Halbs. (btw also historically accurate)
BTW I also never understood why only Malay get Heresy. For me it’s so weird how the devs try to push Monks to counter Eles super hard. I don’t see why it needs to be that excessive. And if I want heresy on one of my units, it would probably be the eles (if I would make them, which I don’t because I usually don’t get heresy…). There’s a reason why Paldin Civs usually get that tech… Why the heck then not for Eles who would need it even more?
Easy, the weakest Elephants don’t bring any value for the player that converts them, so why bother to lose units that are more needed for the Malay Player than the opposing player?
It’s not that you can’t make them work at all, but whatever you go for, there is a civ that does it better than Bengalis.
If you wanna go for Elephant Archers, you pick Dravidians, because Bengali ones are no longer superior, and Dravidians have much better support units. Halbs to keep the Paladins away, Bombard Cannons to snipe Siege Onagers, and Champions and Urumi to counter enemy trash.
If you wanna go for Elephants and support them with Scorps, like the other poster suggested, you just go Khmer and you have much better Scorps, Hussar and Cavalier to snipe enemy siege, and with Ballista Elephants another power unit as an option.
Bengalis are only superior in the Monk department. Yes, their Monks are excellent, but not game-changing in a post-Imp 130 villagers slugfest.
And that means Bengali Elephant Archers are bad now? answer is not, they still do better damage than Rathas in Imperial while also still absorbing skirmishers damage and not being so weak to Monks (heck you even have Light Cavalry with an uncalled +2 attack vs Skirmishers, and Monks with extra armor and less pop space to protect them vs Siege) while Dravidians Elephants will still suffer a lot vs Skirmisher spam (their Light Cavalry is essentially terrible to even help), adding Champions is then an expensive choice for 1v1s and Dravidian Siege will still be weak to civs with SE or proper bonuses, Dravidians also have really bad Monks to consider.
Guess why Khmer do so poorly on arena in 1v1s, the civ got no unit to deal with enemy Siege (no Bombard Cannon/Monks with Block Printing), that army comp you mention is simply soo expensive to get as well and as soon you face Halb/Siege Onager you are doomed.
So if you mean why Elephants are not so used in 1v1s is mostly because of these limitations, not the elephants themselves.
