I actually don’t think so. If they still can’t open with BE in castle age and have to go for Ratha, it is still same.
I think it will be same tier as Franks but my hypothetical civ didn’t have BL to balance that.
You won’t open battle elephant in castle age no matter what (unless you get free heresy but let’s keep it realistic 11). Cav armor for free would give them super strong scout opening and you might skip range because of that so be faster to castle age and have easier time booming and defending to afford your expensive late game army. Maybe you can even make the case for light cav sometimes. Anyways I think it’s a nice idea for bengalis.
All the 3 civs need a buff. Dravidians have wood bonus but any advantage u get early game from that bonus is lost because the civ have terrible stable units in castle age and don’t have bombard canons in imp either. Gurjaras also lack so many upgrades in imp and have weak military overall for late game.
IMO, Shrivamshas should become a regional unit and each of these civs have a special ability on them. Like Gurjaras ones dodging more projectiles, Bengali ones attacking faster, Dravidian ones regenerating hp.
This would actually be a nice way to bring this bonus back.
Understandable. Rathas are already in a decent spot so they would only really need small buffs. Ideally just having Paiks buffed should do the trick, but if not a small stat buff or a buff to cost or training times. But a Feudal/early Castle buff would be probably be more important so Bengals can actually start training Rathas.
I wonder if this is intended as compensation for attacking faster and being more resistant to bonus damage and conversion.
Nooo, leave Shrivamsha Riders as a Gurjara UU. They already have Siege Eles and Ele Archers as regional UU.
But, what are people’s thoughts on giving Bengalis HC and/or BBC?
That’s just a ram replacement and its not going to address the weaknesses these civs have.
that’s just as good as having nothing. They’re the worst unit ever and the only situation where they’d somewhat make sense is Black forest 4v4 TG. There are plenty of threads which explain why they’re the worst unit by design. They were already quite weak and now they’ve been made even weaker. What’s the point in having a regional unit that’s completely useless in 1v1 and almost completely useless in TG.
His point being Khmer elephants are actuallyusable in situations where elephants are needed because they have speed, high damage output and a strong food eco to make a lot of elephants.
Try to boom and hope opponent goes AFK.
You don’t want to lose an S-Tier civ, don’t you? 
Faster foragers, free mill upgrades AND the extra hp on scouts. Once you hit castle age, most probably a min or more before your opponent, heavy plow is free and farms get faster, knights have extra hp and LOS. A few mins down the road you have enough stone to drop a castle on the face of a recovering opponent.
So Magyars get an extra attack, Turks get an extra armor. Those are quite powerful too but those civs aren’t nearly as strong as Franks are.
Not that I want a great and useful bonus like that go waste on a terrible civ like Bengalis but it would definitely not make them OP by any means. It probably might give them enough lead to compensate for the useless castle age they have.
That will be very bad decision honestly. BE is just not a go to 1v1 unit. You have to go for Ratha. A range opening is therefore a better choice as you don’t need to switch your eco from food to wood. Scout opening is still a decent option for Bengalis. But Scout → Archer → Ratha is a better choice than Scout → LC → BE imo.
With their such terrible performance, any good bonus will look nice for them.
No I mean the defensive range you make after scout opening when opponent has more archers. Granted if opponent does several spears you still need it. If you wanna play xbow as castle age opening you still make a range ofc. Btw you don’t need to adapt your eco here. You put some more vils to gold and that’s it. With bengalis you wanna focus on booming either way. Even when you play ratha.
And having a head start to castle age is also great as you can safely put tcs down and get monks mangonel to defend from opponents aggression. It’s not like you have to open with archers or a cav unit in castle age. That’s why the bonus fits the civ imo.
Dravidians need a pretty fundamental buff, yes. Apart from water/hybrid maps the civ is pretty bad.
Bengalis I wouldn’t call it necessarily a buff but rather a change. The civ is good but it’s a pretty onesided because you play ratha boom basically every single time. They need better options in midgame. Again I think free cav armor would be one way to do it. Another would be giving them something like free sanctity and/or siege weapons receive less bonus dmg.
And gurjaras certainly don’t need a buff. I guess hindustanis are still the best out of the new civs but gurjaras are really strong as well. You have good eco and very good counter units.
Are you kidding? They have one of the strongest unit comps there is. They are pretty gold dependent and they don’t have great trash, yes. But as long as you do have gold their units are insanely strong. You just play camel shakram bbc or shrivamsha shakram bbc and the only thing most civs can do here is raid your eco.
Bottom tier for open maps, mid-tier for closed. Good probably for casual Black forest TG, otherwise extremely bad civ overall. Siege weapons receiving less bonus damage is going to help only against Mongols. Other than that its going to be useful in late game if you’re siege pushing but you won’t be able to get to that point most of the time.
whaaattt…what unit comp??..
I don’t know whether you’re thinking some weird multi unit combo like Shrivamsha, camel, chakrams. These are food intense and very difficult to get to and you won’t have sufficient time. Early-mid castle age is weak and you’ll be on the back foot against most common civs. Post boom if you get to such composition, you’re on a time window before gold runs out. Almost any civ except Turks will win once you’re out of gold. And on most maps, gold is limited. This civ is much better when you compare to the super weak Dravidians or Bengalis but still a mid-tier civ overall for the common ranked maps.
Nah ratha and boom is a really strong strat. It’s the only thing the civ can really atm which isn’t too great design wise but it’s really strong.
Good monks, good siege, strong eco, good UU access to arb and pop efficient late game option. Probably above average but also not a top civ.
You have good eco, a really nice food cost reduction so in imp its actually not too difficult to afford these. And in early game it is also not a problem because your units are really cost effective. Shrivamshas is quite food intensive but once you get decent numbers they annihilate any ranged units. And shakrams are just a universally strong unit when massed. The civ maybe isn’t the easiest to play but it’s incredibly strong. It has 3 core units that in and of themselve are kinda op.
Thing is if you get there you kill everything. And it’s not that the singular units cost a lot of cost. It’s way cheaper than any heavy cav civ.
So far everything points towards the civ being good on many land maps. I have never had such a winrate with any civ since DE launch. Look at tier lists or winrates if that’s something you see value in.
strong strat to die. how will you boom with no army in open maps. There’s no advantage early game for gaining a strong lead in early-mid feudal age. Even if you manage to take some lead in mid or late feudal age with archers, there’s no knights in castle age. Whatever Rathas you do from 1 castle can be cleaned up or chased away by elite skirms or camels. And even if you do somehow manage to defend without taking much losses, you have to hit imp and get so many upgrades after which Rathas become strong. Opponents will just treb your castles down with their generic imperial units.
All of these are undisturbed boom into imp things. You get castles up, then you get the unique techs, and then produce these armies. In castle age, its extremely difficult to do combos like Shrivamshas + Camels because the rate at which food is utilized is too high while food is the slowest gathered resource. Unless you have like 10 cows garrisoned in two mills and you’re collecting food from shore fish on maps like Monopole, Sacred springs, Badlands or Fish n fish, you can’t fight the evergreen meta combo of knight-crossbow.
Not being the easiest to play is the reason why I said they’re mid-tier. Quite like Cumans. If you somehow take a risk with the unique gameplay and it pays off, they could be great. But otherwise its too tough.
The thing is, its hard to get there. And they’re pure food and gold multi unit combos which is much less effective than hussar-ranged unit combos. And once you lose the army, you have ran out of gold, no more units to make other than hussar without blast furnace. I guess you winning with them might be an outcome of Gurjaras probably doing quite well against some of the most frequently picked civs like Franks, Huns and Lithuanians at mid elos.
They’re quite decent and probably a top-20 and not a bottom-22 but definitely not a top-10 civ. The only tierlist I saw since the DLC was from Hera. He placed them in C tier for all land map along with Bengalis, Turks, Sicilians, Celts etc. I felt that was a bit too low for them. They’re definitely somewhere in between in B tier. Against those tier civs or the civs worse than them like Dravidians, Goths you can definitely get to those compositions.
Well the point is you have a defensive castle and if that’s in a good spot your opponent might have trouble attacking you. You send some rathas to other spots. If opponent goes really aggressive you can delay boom and get mangos and monks. From a defensive point of view all this is rather easy to work.
Your opponent being faster to imp might be a consequence of this play, yes. But don’t forget massed ratha are really no joke. It takes some time and res but bengalis have very good eco to make this up. Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying it’s the best strat in the game but everybody seems to be doing it with good success. And for some reason this strat feels pretty smooth to play.
Well cumans is a whole other story and imo much weaker than gurjaras. With not the easiest to play but powerful I rather mean something like old indians because of good eco and mobile counter units without access to knights.
Also they remind me a bit on chinese. As you garrison all your sheep asap you are forced to push to deer. So you don’t get to scout your opponent early which can make you vulnerable to early drushes. But contrary to chinese you can be insanely fast to feudal age and its actually super easy to fight maa rushes or basically any other form of feudal aggression except for trushes maybe.
You don’t need to tech into these early on. It’s perfectly fine to play the archer skirmisher mango game in early castle age and then you just adapt. Pure knights you won’t face as this doesn’t make any sense vs gurjaras. Pure xbow play will lose vs shrivamshas at some point. Siege pike forward is in theory good vs the civ but the strat itself isn’t the best generally speaking. Most people play the meta of making some army and add tcs at some point. That’s precisely where gurjaras excel. All your units are incredibly cost effective. So it might not be easiest civ to play but it’s also very tricky to play against.
Your units cost gold but they are pretty cheap gold wise. Shrivashmas you can produce more or less endlessly before running out of gold. The only unit that comparably cost much gold is shakrams but it’s a fast ranged unit that you don’t intend to lose (like cav archers or so).
Btw cheaper hussars is so much better than having regular cost hussars with last atk.
First of all it is way too early to sort them into definive tiers. All we can do at this point is make guesses. My guess is they an A tier civ. I think it really depends on how well players will punish their dark age because gurjaras mid game and late game are very strong.
Btw hera himself admitted that his land tier list was a bad one so he made a new one for arabia. He placed gurjaras as top of B tier (and believe it or not bengalis as A tier just because of that ratha strat). And in drackens new arena tier list they are A tier. I think one might even make the case of putting them into S tier here.
Not actually true according to stats.
As you can see only 5 civs have won more than 50% of the time against them.
It’s actually a typical picture of something we would call an “eco” civ.
Like I said in the other thread it looks like archer civs with good timings and/or gameplans can pose problems to gurjaras, but there are also some cav or siege civs that are good against them.
Back to Bengalis. In my Other Thread I made a proposal how I think the Ratha could be “adjusted” in a way it would perform much better (as it probably/most likely was intended).
I think this could work, but ofc it’s only my attempt to somehow save the civ from it’s current status.
My Ratha design (ignore the chariot, it’s a different topic/idea)
You’d spend all the extra vills on collecting stone till your first castle is up and thereby lose the only eco bonus you get. And still you can get hit by xbows from behind the woodlines if you try to go straight castle up Rathas play. And even if you get castle up and start doing Rathas, opponent can just stay at base and do 1 or 2 tc imp into arbs + treb or bombard canons with all the Arbalest civs. Cavalry/Camel civs can just boom into Palad-skirms or Camel/skirms, raid, take map control and eventually kill you.
It really is a joke till you get elite, parthian tactics, ring armor, bracer, melee attacks, chemistry, ballistics and Paiks. It definitely can’t fight and win against imperial age units without all these upgrades.
Whatever extra vills you got, you’d spend on making castles and it ends up hurting the eco more. Unlike other fast ranged unique units, these have low damage output and are more expensive than foot archer unique units. In maps like Regicide fortress where you have a castle to begin with and you’re going to be walled and safe, you can use them well. Otherwise its going to be a high risk trying to play all-in rathas.
what I meant was Cumans have this risky feudal tc play and simultaneously the cheaper buildings. So if you commit in feudal age while your opponent tries to go castle early, you can potentially do damage before they push you with siege. Likewise if you make your opponent believe you’re commiting to feudal and 2 tc and boom and hit castle age without taking much damage, you can make a lot of knights/lancers and push with stronger rams. Very similar story for Gurjaras. You can either force opponent to add scouts and then go camel scouts yourself and do damage in feudal age. Or just do the standard meta of castle age, but boom with just a few skirms and camels and monks. Then mid castle age with the good food eco, do a mix of Camel/shrivamsha with stronger elephant rams and push. Both of these are unconventional and high risk-high reward type strats similar to the ones Cumans have.
Nothing like chinese. With Chinese, early game defense is tough but once you get past that, you have 2 extra vills and techs cost less. And you have full upgrades on knights and crossbows. Its the meta-est play.
One unit raids or pushes are weak but all standard meta compositions would work perfectly fine.
Exactly. So its not a S tier civ but just a civ that has flexibility.
I just quoted his tiers as you recommended me to watch some tierlists. Anyways I feel Hera over or underrates new or changed civs. In his previous Arabia tierlist video from Kotd-3 times, he rated Turks and Koreans as A tier but never picked them in any tournaments with mostly land maps in the map pool. I definitely think Bengalis will follow the same suit. Wonder why dracken placed them in A-tier for Arena. Do they have good monks or is castle drop chakram raids strong on Arena?
hmm, its only about 15k games. But that’s surprisingly good performance at 1600+ elos. Didn’t expect 55+% against Chinese, Vikings, Britons even over just 2 weeks. Would be interesting to see if this scales to bigger data over a longer period of time.
If you’re up against something like hindustanis or gurjaras sure that’s bad but with regular cav civs I highly doubt you can engage in late castle age. You can kite their units forever. And xbows get completely shredded once rathas are in decent numbers. You can try one tc imp arb push I guess but even then you gotta be really careful with your units bc if you don’t have a large arb numbers fully upgraded castles rathas will win when massed.
I think the way you play against that strat is going aggressive in feudal, atk from multipli sides in early castle age so that they cant boom behind making rathas. Because if you let them do that it’s very difficult to play against massed rathas even if you’re first to imp.
Of course all that is still preliminary. Maybe there is more counter units than skirm and heavy camel. Btw playing skirm here in imp is bad because bengali can just add scouts.
Apart from the fact that shrivamshas are probably the best raiding unit in the game you don’t need to push or raid. You just make counter units to opponent and keep map control this way. This basically forces opponent into double unit comp in castle age so it’s a civ that forces opponent to play off meta while you can play reactive.
I quoted that list because the one you quoted was crap for multiple reasons. And I agree with what you say about his tier lists. Still it’s one of several indicators available atm. Some people take win rates as reference. Some people tier lists. Other use players opinion they articulate on stream. All these are flawed for one or several reasons. But that’s all we have right now. And all these say gurjaras are strong.
They could execute an insanely fast fc castle drop but shakram isn’t great for pushing so no. When the civ came out I didn’t think at all it would be good on arena but dude was I wrong 11.
First off all it’s the best civ for relic fight hands down. Having that camel is just huge for getting map control in light cav fights.
Then your eco is really good for pumping out scouts early and still add tcs on time. You cant punish there BO on arena. It took me some practice games to get a good BO down but if you have one it’s insane.
Then you have great units. Shrivamshas riders is the single best unit in the game to defend from stuff like jannisaries or organ guns. Your opponent does that you go double stable and you clear all these pushes. Monk rush is also bad vs the civ because they have all the defensive tools you could wish for here (great scout play, access to heresy, quick and ranged UU).
So you basically need to boom vs the civ and forced to play relic war for which you have disadvantage. And army wise your army likely gets countered by theirs. Arb (or any ranged unit for that matter) bbc push completely dies to shrivamshas. Arb halbedier completely dies to shrivamshas shakrams. Only scenario where that works if you get forward castle and push before they can mass. But guess what you probably cant do that because getting map control vs that civ is so hard. Any infantry unit the game has dies to shakrams. Also they have bbc and siege elephant. And to top that you can research UT on your way up to castle age so no matter what unit you make you never need more than 50 farmers. Therefore I think this one is gonna be S tier civ for arena.
Against 40 xbows with all upgrades, u need like 30+ rathas with bloodlines, husbandry and all upgrades to take a good engagement. And the thing is by the time you have that many rathas and upgrades, the archer civ player can go up and get more upgrades.
but why won’t there be large numbers of arbs. Its dirt cheap and you start production from feudal age.
Going aggressive in feudal is possible only on special maps like Land Madness, Atacama that are designed for feudal play. Otherwise in the standard Arabia, feudal age is just a namesake play. A few stray units roaming around the map to stealthily enter and surprise the opponent before walling is finished or if there’s any hole in the wall.
And what units do you have as Bengalis or Dravidians in early castle age to hit from multiple sides — NOTHING. You can’t split the army, you have no knights to shield your crossbows or just hit from multiple sides. IF you’re gathering stone for Rathas, you no longer have any eco advantage and will naturally fall behind almost all the civs. So you won’t be the one with aggressive position.
yes, this is the main advantage for Gurjaras but when the opponent does go for double unit combos, you as Gurjaras are also forced to go double unit combo. And you’re combo is harder to get in big numbers till imp as compared to opponent’s.
I did see win rates and play rates getting higher with elo in the stats shared by someone in the thread and was quite surprised. Maybe we need to wait and see what happens as time goes on.
why? because of the sheep bonus?? What’s the follow up after castle drop? Usually people do their uu like Janissaries, Conqs, Wagons or Organ guns. I’m just curious to know what people do after a tight build order for a very fast castle drop without a raiding uu.
Don’t camels just get converted easily by monks?
hmm I don’t play Arena much but I’ll try these out against the meta players. Looks interesting.
Well first of all the xbow player doesn’t want to have his army in one group. Usually you wanna have 2 or 3 groups when playing xbow. And 30 rathas is easily enough. You don’t necessarily need all the upgrades you mentioned. If have these however you’ll probably lose 5 worst case 10 units while opponent loses 40.
Also you can just add mangos while opponents can’t really do that (just a waste of res vs rathas).
Because you’ll lose xbows vs rathas. Unless you stay at home for the whole of castle age which isn’t good. You’ll have a nice time window in early castle age but after that it gets increasingly difficult to take good engagements with generic xbow. And at some point you will get pushed back. There’s no doubt about that. The question is were you able to make enough dmg so you can retreat to your base and go safely to imp.
Exactly. And that’s why ratha play is pretty good imo. Again I think there are some really good counter civs to ratha play and then bengali is pretty bad but against a lot of civs the unit seems to perform really well. Who knows maybe people will figure a way to make that play look bad.
Yes obviously that’s the number one thing to prevent. But it takes quite some time til monks get out. So until that point your opponent needs to stay at home with scouts while you can position your scouts as you want. Also oftentimes you have singular scouts running around to snipe monks sneaking around or so. Camel can just chase these (it’s super annoying microing these scouts because you usually wanna focus on other things).
If you eat the sheep after boars you can do something like 23+2 which is so early your opponent likely won’t have scouts yet. And you van even produce shakrams with that build. They even would be a strong UU for pushing if it wasn’t for the fact that they die quite easily to mangos. They perform well vs them when massed and you micro decently. But after getting castle up there is almost no dmg potential if opponent reacts with siege workshop in time. But booming and map control is the way to go with that civ so there’s no reason to go for castle drop anyways.