That’s a good point, Malay feel more like what I had in mind when I imagined what Khmer would be like - although even their elephants I find kind of hard to use sensibly in a 1v1.
Not necessarily, cavalry civs that are very strong on open maps will have problems in closed maps, unless they have specific bonuses for that map type.
There are three main categories for maps in AoE2: open, closed, and hybrid/water. Several variations of Arabia have been made where the complaints have always been either ‘it’s too open!!!’ or ‘it’s too wallable!!!’. So I don’t agree with that ‘all sorts of gameplay’ is feasible on Arabia, or you’ll have to agree that Bengalis are feasible on Arabia.
Out of those three categories I’d probably only call water/hybrid maps niche. Closed maps are still popular, with their own strategies and varieties in gameplay. Having a weird elitist attitude over which map is ‘correct’ is not the way to judge a civ in my opinion.
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That’s why I said either hybrid OR closed maps. Huns, Lithuanians great for hybrid. Poles, Burgundians good for closed. And all of these are good on Arabia but have their strengths and weaknesses.
what I meant is if you get a more open generation of Arabia, it opens up the possibility of longer feudal play. And if you get a nice easy to wall generation, then its possible to wall and play castle unit or other different castle age strategies. So its a map which opens up lots of possibilities depending on the generation. So if a civ does well on Arabia it means they have a decent tech tree and mix of eco and military bonuses. And they’ll be good on open maps and definitely usable on either closed OR hybrid maps as well.
So its not like Arabia is “correct” but balancing based on Arabia gameplay would produce nice versatile civs imo.
Imperial UT Mahyana is a sort of eco bonus. Mostly for booming.
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Who cares ? Game will be finished until mahana hits.
Mahayana could be extended to 20% to help the late game. To get there their economy can be buffed by making them recieve 1 more villager per age up.
Bengalis too weak in early game, they cant manage to see late game.
(20 characters)…
Live example currently in Warlords. Villese vs Liereyy. 40 vill lead throughout the game and fully upgrade light cav-rathas dying to Burmese trash units 11
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On the contrary, Daut play with Bengalis and beat one of the strongest Arena civ (Turks). It means players rather than civ is deciding factor.
Liereyy is simply better late-game player with another level of micro/macro and really hard to win vs him when not pushed him until early imp.
Also vil lead is not the evidence of eco lead. Liereyy had 5 relics.
Also don’t underestimate Burmese trash. The unit he created most is Halb and Burmese halb is one of the best and unbeatable in trash war vs most of the civs. Not the problem for Bengalis.
Watch some wallhalla games. Bengalis one of the most successful civs. At this point people’s consider bengalis no1 civ on fortress.
The game you reference here was simply misplayed by villese.
The bonus seems resonable
This bonus seems very reasonable for bengalis. They can do FC pretty quickly and end up with 30 vills before 20 min which is insane.
The minus 25% bonus damage and conversion resitance for elephants should apply for ratha too. This could mitigate the skirm counter issue.
Elephant archers themselves need a big buff too. They get hard countered by cost effective trash units too easily. If you look at the below chart, only elite ele archers win with equal resources. Ele archers are just not useful at all.
Before Dynasties of India, Indian ele archer was a meme unit. Instead of buffing them, devs nefred them and designed Bengalis and Dravidians around them. The main problem with elphant archers is they can’t disengage against a skirm or crossbow fight. Their armour -4 is too strong of a handicap against skirms.
Elephant archers should have a base speed of 1 tile per second and have cav archer armour of 0.
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EA are way stronger than many people think.
The natural composition partner of EA is the Onager as it deals very well with mass skirm or mass Halb, which aret the 2 realistic options against a big EA ball. It’s also good against if the opponent makes his own siege against the EAs. (Though then you probably would like to have BBCs…)
The issue isn’t that EAs would be bad, it’s that you often don’t get to the eco needed to make that ### #### of EAs you want. Also you need to make sure not to be raided at home while pushing.
I also think that every good Gold unit should have a trash composition partner, and EAs currently don’t really have one. In my thread where I try to find new trash units to accompagnion the various Gold units that currently don’t have a comp partner I designed also one for the EA:
what is the chart meant to represent out of curiosity? The dream of 1k elo players to trade cost-efficiently into Skirms? They are counter-units for a reason, that being said, even so it looks like Bengalis EA isn’t really countered by Skirms so I guess you should be happy?
The unit is definitely not meme and it didn’t get nerfed when it got moved to Archery Range, it got a Food discount for a start and iirc Elite is cheaper too. Having such a unit in Archery Range and not in Castle is understandably strong, too.
Like Bengalis EA are good for sure after the latest patch, possibly Dravidians ones too, just people refuse to let go of meta strats like mass Knights/Xbow because they got too used to the BOs required for those.
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Isn’t the champion the cheaper alternative to onagers? Even though they might not be fully upgraded but Bengali EA are so powerful that their infantry is fine
This. EA are just identical to scouts into knights strat cost wise and are really hard to deal with if massed. I think the EA civs are probably fine
ofc you can add champs, but you will burn through your res faster. Also it hurts the poop efficiency of your comp, which is the big advantage of the EA.
That’s why I chose the Axeman to be kind of a champ alternative that is equally strong vs the halbs and skirms but without the gold cost.
Also militia line needs a lot of upgrades in addition to the already quite expensive EA upgrades.
But yes, it’s the alternative to onagers.
Yeah. Knight & EA takes very similar eco management.
Knight needs 270 resources (120 food + 150 gold) per minute per stable while EA needs 265 resources (141 food + 124 gold) per minute per Archery Range. But we will get 10% less number of EA than knight. (9 EA for 10 knight). Also EA needs to be one place to be useful. But knight can be spread out the whole map and can get more map control.
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I like this. Can someone do the math? It certainly helps with the “ratha are countered by all trash” dilemma
But BE still need a fix. They civ was designed around them, and they’re still unused. Not sure how much longer we need before people accept that they don’t need to “still be figured out”
Honestly I’m not too sure. Bengalis are picked in almost every draft and EA seem fine to me too.
Check this Survivalist match where he played EA as Bengalis. Game starts at 39min
An alternative fix would be to add a bit of anti archer and anticavalry armor to them so they become more an all round unit