Ratha is still a useless unit because it dies to Elite Skirms, while being harder to mass than Elite Skirm.
IMO the villager bonus is also very clunky, as you can only actually take advantage of it in Imperial (by making more TCs in Castle age). I feel like being up a couple of vills in 1v1 might matter more and that’s why you can only take advantage of it in Imperial, but having more vills doesn’t really matter when you don’t have a good unit to go with it. I guess your best option is Archers, but without Thumb Ring it’ll also be clunky.
which happens to a lot of UU CA, so actually is irrelevant, and if it wasnt the case, the game would be broken. it dies less than other UU CA and other UU CA arent useless…
camel archers (arguably the best castle age UU “actual” CA) dies in 10 hits, PT ratha will die in 21. ratha train in 18s, camel archers in 25s. so if out massing and dying to skirms is the issue, camel archers should also be useless?
conqs train in 24s and die in 13 hits. are they useless?
scorps(another counter to CA): generic FU CA die in 7 hits. PT ratha in 18 hits. pass through only doing 1 damage. for CA type unit thats a huge buff. and we can argue it can now actually counter scorps, which are supposed to be a hard counter (albeit slow)
im not saying bengalis wont still be bad in certain matches, but in the right matchups, it certainly helps them
for example forcing franks into skirms is excellent. so with buffed monks helping to counter knights/siege. and buffed ratha being MUCH more cost effective knights, and massively better vs xbows. it definitely helps them in certain matches. and if anything now forces a trash switch in some cases, which lowers the opponent’s aggressive potential
apparently not in castle age. apparently the camel archer comes out slightly ahead. not saying mangudai arent excellent, just it seems the consensus is the camel archer is a better unit at that point; cheaper, higher dmg(6 vs 7), better armour(1PA), weaker counters (its a camel, so camels do even less dmg in castle age)
but obviously mangudai scale better and become even more excellenter (and better tech)
edit: just ran the numbers. seems camel archers have better dps vs knights and vils (the likely targets for CA type units) while taking less dmg from counters, and being cheaper. so maybe thats why?
You can ask yourself why Camel Archers aren’t useless. Could it be, that if the enemy goes Skirmishers, you have a very powerful Knight play to follow it up? Could it be, that upgrading Camel Archers fully is not as obnoxious as with Ratha?
Could it be, that Ratha in its design requires you to have the most upgrades for a single unit there is, for a payoff of an underwhelming unit because it functions as a weaker Knight and a slightly tanky Cav Archer (which Bengalis already have in the form of Elephant Archers)?
We don’t even need to make the comparison with Mongols, but in the end it is still very much so true - if you force your enemy into Skirms, then what? Congrats, your enemy is now effectively countering most of what you can make, and the only thing that can stop it is your Light Cavalry and Elephants!
They’re really not. Yes, Scorpions do well against CA, but guess what, you’d have to get to fight them for that. They’re a nice defensive tool, sure, but more of a soft counter as they have no actual bonus damage, and the CA can just spread out (or even dodge) to lower the incoming damage.
Free attack for archers is very, very abusable in feudal age.
Assuming you mean “free archer attack upgrades from blacksmith”, having fletching for free together 2 extra villagers would be very useful for a tower rush. Free fletching also help in water maps although in a lesser degree because no one maked galleys in feudal.
But the best part of this would be the ability to start an archer rush (or tower rush) without building a blacksmith. The enemy would have a very bad time trying to make skirms with armor upgrades to counter this.
In case you mean +1 pierce damage besides blacksmith upgrades, that would be even worse once fletching is researched. It would be like the bohemians chemistry crossbows for free in feudal.
However, if instead of fletching we consider bracer, i have to aknowledge that the impact of having only bracer for free would be much smaller. It is an interesting power spike in imperial age that would help to tech into rathas or EAs without the abusability of free fletching in feudal age. Also they would save 500 resources that you may use elsewhere. If bengalis are still alive in imperial age, then they could make use of this power spike.
I am not totally convinced about free bracer but also not totaly opposed to that. They could become an fast imperial arbalester civ in arena.
However, i am opposed to free fletching because of the early aggresion potential that doesnt fit bengali’s identity.
The faster training of Camels is only useful part of the bonus. Faster elephant production without food eco bonus is not useful or a food discount on elephants isn’t that useful.
My proposal for a buff - Some of food eco bonus - Lumberjack generate food at 4:1 or 5:1 ratio. That would prevent them from being super slow. The additional food would help them get a timing lead, do eco damage to opponent and build sufficient eco for mass Rathas or Elephant archers. This along with the upcoming changes for Elephant archers might make this a usable civ.
Agree. I just wonder, what is the Bengalis’ identity in feudal age? The archers are the only potential to scale-up, and (not an expert, just brainstorming), I think the best way to take advantage of the +2 vils at feudal is to fast feudal on open maps, but that doesn’t help with the actual amount of res brought-in to go into archers. The civ does feel a little less potato in castle, but only if (good luck on this) you are ahead in military and equal or ahead in eco. Granted, I purposely haven’t played them much, so my game sample size is limited to the few times I’ve had the misfortune of random-ing as them when I don’t pick-civ. I do wonder if free fletching upon completing a blacksmith and clicking the icon, similar to loom for Goths, then the rest come as soon as up to castle and imp, respectively. I think cutting bracer from them will cripple them even further, if one has been able to make it that far, and any hope of competing would be reduced. Thoughts?
I understand and even agree with you, but just for exoerimental thoughts. What if you give Bengalis free blacksmith attack upgrades for archer but remove crossbow and arbalest from their tech tree?
This way you have an advantage in feudal that doesn’t scales well in castle age. You still have that «hole» in castle age until you mass eles or rathas.
Hear me out…Feudal elephants. Wait, wait…just hear me out…Feudal elephants. Make them take longer to train and a little weaker to archer fire, somewhat like the eagle scout. I realize they would be slow AF, but if they make it to the opponent’s base, it would cause the need for reaction for sure. Just brainstorming, I’m sure better players and more creative people will be able to list >1000 reasons why it’s a bad idea, but who knows…
It’s definitely do-able. The matter is tweaking. We know a point exists where feudal elephant would be 100% useless, so we know there’s a point where they at least won’t be OP
The biggest issue with feudal eles is the lack of monks(the true hard counter to ele rush)
It also means the castle ele rush can happen sooner /in greater mass. Because the perfect timing would probably be to start massing them on the way up to castle. The very high food cost still holds them back, so along with long TT, and poor stats it’s possible
But this would help them more on closed maps imp. Not open maps
Just lol.
This is what we call “changing the goal posts”
So do you want to talk about the weaknesses of ratha and Bengalis in general now? Instead of your original point of being outmassed by skirms?
I like this one, but isn’t it a huge buff? Give actual comparative stats. Why must I Always work this stuff out myself?
Let me go do it now. But my bet is it needs to be lower. And potentially scale with age.
Edit at 1:4 that’s like a free vil on sheep with 4 jacks. I would make it something like 1:6 at best. It’s a very big buff. Even more so considering we change the build order to who knows what (same how gurj took a while to find optimum order)
I think this lends itself well to an FC build. As you put more Vils on wood, and the free food gets a faster up time?
Especially with x-bow being more expensive soon, I think axing this from the civ’s tech tree is a bad idea. It’s just hard to make elephant civs work on open maps. Burmese are a shining example.
That makes sense about strengthening their mid-late game on closed maps. It would be a good Turk counter, though, 11. If you had to upgrade them to get to battle elephants as well, that would be helpful as opposed to just immediate upgrade in castle. Could also consider removing the final armor upgrade to reduce power in imp a little.
Yeah there’s a few ways you can juggle it to make it better one way or another. I also don’t think the armour makes that much of a difference, as you generally aren’t killing eles with arbs anyway, and they have siege elephants. So if anything this actually hurts their LC more. Which I don’t think is a good idea, because the civ already has terribad mobility issues.
So would rather find another change.
I’m not sure about this though. The counter to Turks afaik is outliving their terrible eco due to fast imp. So the ele rush might work better against booming civs? I don’t know arena cheese well enough though.
But I do think high damage units (like Jans or HC) are better off than xbows Vs eles.
Not that any of this necessarily really matters, as I don’t think we’ll get feudal eles anyway. Even if it’s do-able, Devs might not think it’s worth the effort with the tweaking required.
My man the civ is already pretty great drush/maa archers or straight archers and boom. You can realistically make only wood/gold units with this civ until you have enough food to switch into elephants. Its literally an archer civ with rams that don’t cut into your wood. With the additions in the PUP this civ is going to be and insane arena civ
