Just tossing out this crazy idea. Out of all the elephant civs, Bengalis generally have terrible trash units. No fully upgradable scouts, skirmishers, or spearman-line units. They solely rely on their elephants. To that end, I will just throw out this wild idea that both elite elephant archer and elite battle elephant upgrade should be 50% cheaper. That way, they can do a terrifying elephant attack in the imperial age.
Thats a huge buff to their early imp aggression.
Do they need this? They are already top tier on closed maps, this just buffs them further there while doing nothing for them on the more open maps where they struggle. Imho we should either let bengals as they are now (maybe even some small nerf on closed maps, e.g. more expensive Pa iks and accept that they suck on open maps, or buff them on open maps.
Terrible? Their skirms only miss TR (which is nearly useless for skirms anyways, as it does not boost their attack speed), their lcav is fully upgraded, their halbs lack the last armor (which is kinda big). As compensation, they get about 13 additional pop.
Their trash war potential is surely not amazing, but id say with the pop bonus as compensation they are nearly as good as generic FU.
2 Likes
Bengalis are already a good civ and they are shaping to be a top tier arena civ, and even on Arabia they have above average full Feudal thanks to the 2 extra Vills and the possibility of Bloodlines.
If we go by the metric that we should buff all civs that are lower mid tier on Arabia, then let’s buff stuff like Turks or Bohemians too.
how are their trash units terrible? They got Halberdier which is already something to be happy about, they have FU Light Cav which puts them above for example Franks or Britons in terms of Light Cav spam, they also have FU Skirms. Pls stop judging the strength of a civ by “they are missing this or that last Blacksmith upgrade”, this is not how you should be reading the game. Instead for example Mahayana (their Imperial age UT) more than compensates for whatever deficit might arise from missing last infantry armor, allowing you to spam some 80+ trash army vs the enemy 70 ish and I would much rather have that than the last armor in a full trash war. As for gold wars, Bengalis have some of the best Monks, those should dissuade opponent from making too many Knights in Castle age. Even on Arabia, 2x Monastery is a common Bengalis opening in Castle age. Even in Imp you can probably use their Monks to counter full Paladin to a degree (and full Paladin is the only time you really NEED that Halberdier upgrade). But fear not even if you don’t wanna go the Monk route, Bengalis have Halberdier upgrade, imagine you are something like Turks, BAM, you are pushed off of gold by Paladins, you just lost the game.
They have very good Skirms, they have acceptable Siege (including Siege Elephants which don’t have many of the weaknesses regular rams have), they have Arbalest.
of all suggestions, this is very naive, they already got crazy bonuses and arguably on maps like Arena, their Elephant Archer spam is shaping to be problematic. Having so many upgrades and resistance to bonus damage means that Skirms BARELY beat them, and you generally need pristine macro to spam Skirms, if for 2-3 min you are pushed either off of Wood or Food (by Bengalis FU Light Cav which is very good at raiding!), then your Skirm production stops and GG. Also Skirms aren’t a great unit in Imp because a handful of Light Cav beats basically infinite amount of Skirms but Skirm is the only counter to Elephants in Imp also.
This is actually a good suggestion BUT Bengalis are the last civ that needs this, because Bengalis already have options, the only map where they can feel lackluster is Arabia, sometimes. Elite Battle Elephant is a bit too expensive yes, given that in some ways it’s better than Paladin (damage) and in some ways worse (vs Halbs and at raiding eco). The upgrade could be cheaper but give this cheaper upgrade to a civ like Burmese or Dravidians who are struggling on ALL maps instead of Bengalis of all civs.
Their elephants are already terrifying in Imperial Age, the problem is that if you buff Battle Elephants to the point where they are sometimes a viable 1v1 unit, they become oppressive vs some civs. For example, Gurjaras or Turks, having only Camels as a counter to mounted units, would be left with 0 counters vs Elephants. Civs like Malians that also miss Halberdier and rely on quantity over quality would suffer in Imp vs Elephant civs. Elephants best stay niche. They are already as viable as they can be without feeling oppressive. The only change I can get behind is if we buff the Elite upgrade but the problem is that most Elephant civs are already top tier without Battle Elephants being played (Khmer, Vietnamese, Malay).
Please L2P.