It seems Bengalis are dropping in their playrate. The reason of course is their niche design. However what euro-centric people fail to comprehend is that just like 3k, the design from the start is off historically and sucessive pathches have put off people who tried the civs because the civ desgin gets worse over successive patches.
Here are some changes which can put the civ back together
Tech tree - REMOVE ‘Arbalest’ → Add ‘Thumb ring’
Change 1:
Team bonus: “Trade gives 10% food in addition to gold" → Cavalry units +2 attack vs Skirmishers.
Bengal is a flood plain and very productive in agriculture. They had so much cash crops the bonus should have been burgundian vinyards like. They never needed to trade for food. A +2 attack over skirm armour class is not a bonus in any sense. More armour on Ratha could have fixed that. Its a lazy band-aid, Its better as a team bonus.
Naturally Bengal was a population dense region due to its fertility compared to the rest of the world let alone India. It did not start with Mahayan buddhism. In practical terms, it saves one house worth of resources in feudal age and probably more which will allow for more cavalry to defend till late-game.
Change 3: Castle age Unique tech - Mahayana
Monastries work 100% faster
Its perfusion for monks as a defense mechanism. Bengalis need a castle desperately since they lack Knights and rely on Ratha. Monks should be Bengali response to cavalry and siege pushes. Relics give twice as much gold and techs research twice as fast.
Change 4: Imperial age Unique tech - Paiks
Elephants and Ratha attack 20% faster
Finally the food and gold savings enables an elephant flood. The cost of this tech can be changed whenever there is a balance issue.
These changes will make the civ play like franks or goths of elephants.
I always hated the civ design. When they came out, I was really surprised to see how devs are so bad at balancing. I knew Bengalis and Dravidians would be the weakest civ and I was right.
They got through quite a lot of changes. But still a very bad and weird design with Mahayana and cavalry +2 attack vs skirmishers. So I agree with most of your changes.
Also shockingly no real food bonus. Even though rice and fishery is what they were famous. Also nothing regarding to textile. Atleast fishing ship need something. Like fisherman and farmers drop more food by %. That’ll atleast keep midgame playable.
While I agree your proposed changes make the civ relatively better than they are now, I don’t think it will still “fix” them. Elephants are too niche to closed map tgs and death match. Ratha as a castle unit that takes bonus damage from skirms is always going to be hard to balance but making them more mainstream and not as just a phosphorus style unit is the way to fix this civ. Plus they need bombard canons or some new unit with similar properties.
Wouldn’t want to waste farm drop off on a civ without knights, lancers or hussar. I think Fishermen and shepherds drop-off 10% more food should be good
Bengalis werent shephards like Middle Easterners or Steppes. Farm would literally be more useful. Their identity is the elephants. This would help to get out atleast Elephant Archers as defense mechanism without sacrificing eco too much. Also food ele rams
I don’t think these changes would really do much to change Bengali play rate or style. Their identity is somewhat niche (with elephants being off-meta in 1v1, and with monks being micro intensive). I suppose most of these changes would be fine, but I don’t think it would do much to change how the civ works. It would be a tweak that makes Bengalis a bit faster to boom, but reduces their post-imp potential. Fast castle Rathas might actually become weaker due to Paiks getting moved (one less tech for them to double down on Rathas in castle age), but it would transition better into other strategies. Early monk gameplay is essentially unchanged (castle UTs usually come too late to help monks all that much). Early game economy is slightly better, but reduced pop space is mainly helpful in post-imp (where the reduced effect makes it weaker). Their water gameplay is mostly unchanged (though would benefit a tad from the pop space bonus being available early. My predictions could be off, but this is about what I’d expect. And I could be underestimating how the reduced pop space would help their early economy in conjunction with the free villagers.
You could think of it as trading food away, or trading food to their allies. But it does still reduce the need for farms.
Ratha cavalry archer armour should be increased from 1 → 2 and melee armour should be decreased from 2 → 1. It gets trample damage like elephants. So it should the same level of armour as elephants.Then the unit will be better against E skirms and bad against infantry & cavalry. Moving paiks to imp will also help with this design.
Exactly, 20% faster firing Ratha and elephants are better off in imp age.
Fine. It can be intrepreted this way. But the cavalry +2 attack vs skirms is worse than hindustanis team bonus or even persians attack team bonus on archers. How could it become a main bonus?
so that balance team wouldn’t need to slap random civ bonuses on weak stable civs - Siege units cost -33% wood, Cavalry +2 attack vs skirmisher, Archer/Infantry armors are free, Eco techs research 100% faster, CA +2 attack vs archer and so on.
While I agree Bengalis badly need attention, I don’t agree with all of the proposed changes.
Yes, Bengalis have a very rich culture of agriculture and fishing and this should be reflected in game. While the trade bonus itself is great, it doesn’t really help the Bengalis outside of team games. So getting rid of it as a bonus for another civ down the track would be good. What I don’t agree with however is moving the Cav bonus vs. Skirmishers to the team bonus. It’s as you said, it’s a very lazy attempt at a fix. It also overlaps with the Persians’ and Poles’ team bonuses (Which are already superior to this bonus anyway) and is vastly inferior to Burmese Manipur Cavalry. Get rid of it altogether. Instead they should have this as a civ bonus:
Food from Farms and Fishing last 25% longer.
Hmmm if only the devs didn’t remove a certain tech from their tech tree that did just that. Give it back to them.
No this is too strong. It should stay as a unique tech.
Firstly I don’t agree with switching the order of techs. Paiks is fine in the Castle Age because you want to have your Ratha be able to deal with archer attacks quicker (The same reason devs switched Howdah and Manipur Cavalry around for Burmese), and Mahayana’s current effect will have the most benefit in Imp, when you would have a sizeable number of Villagers and Monks. So my suggestion is to leave Paiks in Castle and Mahayana in Imp. But what I do think Paiks needs is to give the 100% accuracy that Bengalis miss out from lacking Thumb Ring.
Secondly, your suggestion for Mahayana’s effect is WAY too strong even as an Imp tech. Either pick cost or training time, not both; or reduce the value from 33%. Also, this should be the team bonus instead. Lithuanians already have dibs on Monastery speed, but an unstaggered TC speed bonus would be too strong if available from Dark Age (Exhibit - Persians). So here are 2 suggestions for their team bonus:
Villagers and Monks train 25% faster starting Castle Age.
or
Villagers and Monks cost 20% less starting Castle Age.
TLDR: My suggested changes:
Civ bonuses:
C̶a̶v̶a̶l̶r̶y̶ ̶u̶n̶i̶t̶s̶ ̶+̶2̶ ̶a̶t̶t̶a̶c̶k̶ ̶v̶s̶ ̶S̶k̶i̶r̶m̶i̶s̶h̶e̶r̶s. Food from Farms and Fishing last 25% longer.
The thing is, for Villagers the number is far more intense because of how vital the unit is for any match and any situation. Villager boni benefit every single civilization, and increased training time, even 5%, can give one team a very solid advantage.
AFAIK the only Villager-related team bonus is the Korean one, but line of sight on Villagers is at the very least a niche case.
I agree their design definitely has room for improvement, but calling people euro-centric here feels unnecessary.
If anything, I’d just like to see them do better in the mid-game, especially around the early Castle Age.
This sounds good. Even though at first I wasn’t a fan of buffing their cavalry, since encouraging them to use horses more doesn’t really feel all that historically accurate.
That way, mining stone to drop a castle as soon as possible somehow becomes almost a must for them, no matter what kind of game it is. On open maps, they need the castle for Ratha or to safely boom, and now even on closed maps they rely on it to get the -33% villager training time for booming. To me, that actually feels like pushing them more into their typical late-game strengths instead of giving them more flexibility in the mid-game I’m looking forward.
If they could tweak it so exchange the Arbalester upgrade for having access to Thumb Ring, I think that would be really helpful.
Mahanyana is essentially a fallback mehanism in case, Bengalis fall behind in eco due to prioritising a castle.
If its a closed map, they’ll directly go for 3 TC boom in castle age. In closed maps too, if opponent does a castle drop then you can still drop a counter castle. But not die using ‘mahayana as a crutch’.
The bonus could well be “Villagers are 50% cheaper and monastries work 100% faster”. It would preserve the monk and villager niche of the current bonus. Then the bonus would become such a niche, you wll need extremely precise build order timings to be able to make it work. But it will benefit one TC push strategy and will be extremely good in castle age. In open maps, at least every relice will be twice as valuable and you can add second TC without worrying about resource strain.
This will be a particularly good change for Bengalis. However Ratha may need nerfs to ita armour or HP after that.
Hindustani already exist and by that time, you already made a lot of vils to get the Castle. So I don’t its not OP at all. Even if we assume its Imp tech then its still not as strong. It’ll be more about getting back into game again if you lost your base to enemy aggression. You are getting Persian and Hindustani tech(actually reflects history in a sense if you consider their influence on Bengalis in history) but for a cost. You can always adjust balance 33% to 20%.
Turks have a better powerspike when hitting imp with free chemistry and then artillery which gives so much range. Not to mention instant upgrade for their light cav to hussar. You can break-in and destroy Bengali base before he has massed 8-10 elephants to come knocking on your base.
We saw what happens when you give huge HP and armor to ranged units from Hussite Wagons and Ballista Elephants.
Yeah, let’s re-invent the wheel by giving Parthian Tactics to the Bengali elephants. They are super expensive by costing 5 more gold than a knight anyway. And Bengalis are a new civ, not a forgotten, insignificant OG civ, so they deserve the best of the best.