The main problem with Bengalis is how expensive their good armies are, and how weak everything else is. This is the one civ in the game where it is absolutely intended for you to make some type of army composition involving elephants, their unique tech Mahayana makes it so you can have 160 vils and still make 56 army, with that eco, presumably elephants. But it fails to tackle the main problems with elephants, which are how vulnerable these units tend to be and how expensive they are to both tech into and to make in general.
My suggestions for making Bengali elephants more viable, specially in 1v1s are as follows:
2 - Give them the Gurjaras team bonus, or at least the part regarding faster elephant production.
3 - Give them Thumb Ring and change the effect of the Paiks unique tech to something that makes elephants cheaper in gold, something like “25% of gold cost of Elephant units is replaced by additional food cost”
4 - Increase the conversion resistance of elephant units even more. (Might be a bit of a stretch)
This is such a fun civ concept and it really breaks my heart to see them underperforming as much as they are right now!
this won’t do much as the unit itself is still very food intensive.
again, this does nothing for the actual cost of the unit, and actually makes the matter worse, with faster production you need more food per minute income to maintain production.
that would honestly be even worse, especially right up until mid imp.
Bengalis aren’t played on open maps anyways, which means it’s only a matter of time before the food cost becomes less of a problem than the gold cost. Besides, their eco potential probably covers the food cost quite well, no? Specially on closed maps.
you want to know why they aren’t played on open maps? because exactly the issue you bring up.
every civ should be at least playable on open maps, seeing as those are the most played maps in the game. your solutions offer nothing for that problem.
Let’s just see their EA performs after the patch. I know they still need buff but I think for now we wait before coming with more suggestions for any civ.
Unless BE is as meta unit as xbow-knight, none of your proposed buff is useful. Bengalis problem is not having any unit to play in castle age except for Ratha.
I’d buff the eco bonus somehow
Giving more vills by age or something like that, it could be something like +2/3/4 vills by age or the UT gives them more pop (about 20%) or include all units, not only vills
To buff their military you need to buff the elephants and that’s a complete discussion on its own
I was thinking that elephants return some of their cost when die but I don’t like it too much
The Ratha it’s a unit tht I don’t fully understand so far. I think the elite should give more power-spike
All buffs you mentioned are useless, except the third: Give them Thumb Ring, but exclude Elephant Archer from Paiks rather than making their Elephants cheaper.
Remove the idiotic Monk Bonus (3/3 armor) and give them: Two Villagers spawn near newly-constructed Town Centers starting in the Castle Age.
I know, but the main eco bonus for Bengalis is make more vills than your enemy faster and without affecting pop space
Buff them there
It could be a flat +3 vills per age or +2/3/4, if you boom 4 or 5 TCs when you click to imp you won’t need to train more vills
and what i said gives them that. you hit castle age, drop double tc.
you now have
+2 villagers for dark to feudal
+2 villagers for feudal to castle.
+4 villagers for 2 extra tcs.
meaning you have 8 extra villagers. that’s a significant buff and helps them in early castle age when they really need the help.
yahtzee. heck you don’t even need to remove the monk bonus.
Yeah they still have problems dealing with skirms and siege in castle age, so buffing their eco just makes them better wherever they were doing ok anyway, and doesn’t necessarily help them where they’re dying
Lacking knights, or some equivalent or even buffed LC, really hurts.You need a monster eco to offset that. And having to build (expensive) TCs to get that eco is almost counterproductive on arabia.
The entire civ is incredibly food heavy considering EA are insanely food heavy for an archer, battle/siege elephants are food heavy units and LC are the heaviest in the game.
And none of these are particularly that effective at dealing with protected siege or skirms. Leave your own siege. So now the match is dependent on whether you can somehow outplay with your siege, which has worse defensive units (elephants are significantly worse at defending anything compared to their counterparts like knights or xbows) and nothing to snipe the opposing siege (unlike for example opposing knight equivalent sniping your siege)
My suggestion is still the same: BE +0.05 speed. -10f +10g(or something along these lines)
You may justify monk+EA in castle. Since EA cost food and very expensive, adding some monk to heal them is a good idea. Also protect them from mangonel and most impotantly scorpions.
Give them Hussars so they can kill those skirms
Trade bonus should be at least +20% food and ship regeneration should be 20 HP/min
Mahayana needs a price cut
PT available in Castle age. This will minimize their awkwardness in Castle age. Right now whatever they play just dies to spears/skirmishers. 2 extra PA will help both Ratha and EA a lot. Also the tech is very cheap to afford in Castle age.
I really like this idea. It doesn’t directly improve their imperial potential, so people can’t argue about closed maps, where bengalis might be slightly better anyway.
And it still costs a fair amount for a castle age tech, meaning the powerspike still comes in a bit later.
But at least it allows the ratha powerspike to come in sooner and definitely makes the EA better than it currently is(whether EA will be good is still debatable).
That bonus damage Vs spears could at least help (especially if Devs actually give EA the +4 that it’s supposed to be)
I think it’s a very powerful tech for ratha though. So if anything that will be the point of contention. Gives them effectively base 3/3 ARM in castle age should help a lot Vs anything except skirms and camels. (Take 2 dmg from xbows, 63 hits to kill is nuts if it wasn’t a UU on such a bad civ)
I’m wondering if maybe to offset the ratha boost, PT techs slower in castle age?