At least Bengalis are better at defending than Dravidians because they have strong Monks and dropping a Castle early on has more value. Their Elephant Archers are actually very powerful but underrated. Rathas are good but not comparable to Mangudais or Camel Archers. In fact they are very awkward to use because of their clunkyness. Thats all the good about them.
Their economy bonus has low impact on open maps. So basically it is a weak economy/weak military civ while every other decent civ has one of these two at least. Like Vikings with good economy and Lithuanians with good military.
They don’t have CA/Knights. Elephants are usually too costly for 1v1-s so they need a cheap alternative. Giving them Thumb Ring would make their Arbalest usable.
They straight up die to Goths/Meso/Incas/Hindustanis because they can’t counter high pierce armor Infantry.
So I suggest:
Give them Hand Cannoneer
Give them Thumb Ring
Remove Elephant Archer from Castle Age UT to compensate for Thumb Ring
Ratha switch is too expensive overall so cheapen Castle Age UT or/and Elite
Newly constructed TC-s spawn +1 or +2 villagers starting from the Castle Age
What about giving them Elephants upgrades cheaper or Elephants units return some cost
Personally I would give them the attack faster for the Elephants units as a civ bonus (or team bonus) and give them something else as a UT
Bengalis are actually pretty powerful in closed map teamgames (and apparently Deathmatch). I think it’s fine if some civs are stronger in other situations. You’re going to lose variety if their performance on Arabia is the sole indicator of how strong or weak the civ is.
Real question. Why a lot of people think that balancing a civ, whether buff or nerf, must have to be done by at least 5 buffs/nerfs and not just 1 or 2?
ratha are awful to use. toggling individual units between melee/ranged has no place in aoe. we need to control lots of units and don’t have time for this moba stuff
also allies are all dead before you can make rathas
civ should be removed from the random pool. as well as many others
So how fast are ratha firing then? We assume it doesn’t affect their melee attack?
Or you’re saying ##### (apparently p a i k s is a dirty word) should only affect melee elephants?
I really don’t like the idea of making the civ more generic with a blanket buff like TR
I also don’t think we should buff their eco, until we see how good my elephant buffs are. It might make them too oppressive when BE start being less useless
As a Elephant civ I think developer don’t want to have a Khmer 2.0 that eventually become a cav/archer civ. Elephant civ suppose to be bad Archer (lack of TR) bad infantry (no final armor upgrade) bad cav (no Hussar). They push too hard on the elephant but elephant unit justdoes not work in Castle except malay supprise cheap elephant and Gurjaras team game ram Elephant partner with teammate.
Therefore give them Hand Cannoneer is fine but it still cannot solve the castle age issue
Hi this is actually what I guess from the developer. However there are only 3 elephant civ which the sample size is so low but there is a clear track and let me explain a bit
when Khmer release,
Archer line no TR
infantry no Champion
Cav no Hussar
Its win rate is too low that until Hussar and farming bonus added to Khmer and it become too OP with elephant so that the elephant is nerfed
After the fail, developer make another elephant civ named Bengalis and still no TR no infantry final armor and Cav no Hussar. I think developer will try to buff Bengalis in all different way but not giving TR and Hussar to them. Therefore +3/3 armor for free on monk which suppose to be a pretty strong UT (but was too hard to pick because 200 Food 300 Gold is too expensive and need castle). And Ratha buff will not be easy because Ratha can be too OP in pro player hand.
If developer keep buffing Bengalis without touching all other existing elephant (or foundamentially change elephant), I guess the path will be reinforce the identity of monk and here is some wild guess
Monastery -100 wood
Monastery spawn one monk when builded
Monk can auto Convert nearby unit but need 3 time CD. Or they die
Monk can be produced in TC. Maybe with 100 food instead of gold
Monk can gather res like villagers but cannot build
But what about Burmese? They had good infantry and above average cavalry. Only archer was lacking. That being said, on release Bengalis had a lot of similarities with on release Khmer But with all the Khmer changes, and Bengalis getting a monk bonus, Bengalis is more similar to Burmese than Khmer now.
I wish to know your definition of “useless”. Unless this means less than 55% W/R, you’re wrong.
I hardly consider Burmese as Elephant civ although developer label it. I at most consider elephant at a secondary tag of Burmese and in fact elephant is not the main thread of this civ
Khmer have civ bonus, UT, UT, UU on elephant.
Bengalis has the best elephant bonus which is Elephant units receive 25% less bonus damage, and UT. which Mahayana allow Bengalis to have more farm and spawn 2 Villagers make it easier to farm which also apply to other play style but they are nearly force to play elephant becauase all other unit are bad. If they have any other good unit, Bengalis will probably become that kind of civ. For example if Bengalis have TR, with its exsiting eco bonus people will probably play it as archer civ, just like Hussar in every khmer late game and Viking knight in early AOK and Viking archer meta until TR removed from Viking.
While when Burmese release, it only have one UT which is related to elephant (Manipur Cavalry also but becauase its UU is much better in Castle age and its infantry and Hussar are much better in Imp which make this UT also unpickable). In the meta it shows that Burmese is nothing to do with elephant from the beginning and most importantly its elephant is not a good option to compensate its weakness of againist archer civ. But becauase Burmese has amazing UU and late game infantry make this civ not too bad.
