Buff Indians Castle Age

There’s no way Indians can play in castle age and carry to Imp. They can’t really pack a punk. They’re good counter picks to some civs, other than that-meh. Only CA seems viable, but unit itself has a lot of problems without any bonus. Only Celts have this transition problem, but they’ve even PALADIN (very bad tho). But upgrading to Cavalier means they can make a transition to their comfort units. Also very smooth castle age play. For Indians-they just DIE.

If we agree, pls upvote and share how to buff them.

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I thought that indians were stronger in castle age and then they lose power in imperial.

Do you use cavalry archers? This is the transition you want. They have FU HCA. True, they have no direct bonus for them but sultanate and their booming potential and the camels complement the CA very well.

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give them step lancer and apply the civ armor bonus to them

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Or maybe do you wish for battle elephants (with extra PA) in castle age? Steppe lancers make no sense for indians, historically speaking

their CA is just Generic. As I already addressed this, CA is overall a weak unit upto a certain mass without any bonus.

And indians have 2 eco bonus useful for massing them: cheaper villager=more food for upgrades. Sultanate=more gold.

And the better camels are good to defend CA against cavalry and skirms. So the investment is easy to protect and hard to counter.

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That’s a good point. But massing CA takes time. Also Sultans need a castle- generally researched on way to imp

I agree with this part, but their effect is good enough to compensate this requeriment. Think that they affect all gold income (tradecarts, relics, goldmineing… not sure about market abuse)

Based on their winrate, Indians seem fine. Their early game is just an average game, but they are much stronger in the late game. As result the have an winrate of almost 52%. I dont really see any reason why we should buff this civ in the castle age. They seems totally fine to me.

Note: The win rate of this civ seem to vary over the Elo, but at every elo range the have a win rate above 50%. Which just shows that this civ is pretty much balanced.

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i woudl not mind elefants either. but i have given up on that fight.

step lancer would not be too off historically either if viewed from a pure mughdal empire standpoint:

The Mughal empire is conventionally said to have been founded in 1526 by Babur, a warrior chieftain from what is today Uzbekistan, who employed military aid in the form of matchlock guns and cast cannon from the Ottoman Empire,[11] and his superior strategy and cavalry to defeat the Sultan of Delhi, Ibrahim Lodhi,[12][13] in the First Battle of Panipat,[14][15] and to sweep down the plains of Upper India, subduing Rajputs and Afghans.

Bose, Sugata; Jalal, Ayesha (2004). Modern South Asia: History, Culture, Political Economy. Routledge. p. 28. ISBN 978-0-415-30787-1. Having set up a small kingdom in Farghana in Central Asia at the turn of the sixteenth century, Zahiruddin Babur was initially more interested in conquering Samarkand. After several futile attempts to expand in a northerly direction, Babur settled down to rule the environs of Kabul in modern-day Afghanistan. From there he made a raid into the Punjab, and then in 1526 defeated Ibrahim Lodi, the last of the Delhi sultans, in the first battle of Panipat. Babur’s use of Turkish cannon in this battle led some historians to include the empire he founded in the category of ‘gun-powder empires’. It is now clear that this sort of technological definition of empires is neither very accurate nor very appropriate. The Mughals in any case were more reliant on cavalry in making their conquests, although artillery was also used in an innovative way for selective purposes.”

Ok, i forgot that indians in AOE2 are not the delhi sultanate exclusively

Completely disagree. Indians are a bit weird and therefore maybe harder to play but nevertheless can be super strong civ in castle age. Vs knights you have camels that are also better at raiding bevause of extra pierce armor and dmg vs buildings. You have light cav that are have up to 5 pierce armor so they can counter archers. Both units are easy to produce from several stables while booming since your vils cost less food. In case you face pikes you can make ca. So basically you have a mobile counter to throw at everything your opponent can make backed by a strong eco bonus. You just need to make the right transitions.

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Whats ur rank boy?

Cause indians got a massive buff with the extra PA on LC in castle age, you can’t beat lc+camels with the common meta units, you need pikes, meaning no mobility, making it so easy and predictable so the indian can just switch to CA or even HC.

Indians is the civ that only forum warriors and low elo legends consider weak cause of the lack of knigths, they don’t understand how strong their economy and army composition is, even with the so called armor nerf indians are one of the highest 1x1 win ratio civs and the a top tg civ,what else do you want?

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I’m 25550+. Hera also considers Indians weak in a lot of cases. His rank tho…

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I have kind of given up on Indians. They have no unit which receives full upgrades (apart from CA which have their own problems, discussed later in post). There castle tech and units are kind of under whelming.
Yes they do get fully upgraded CA’s. But it takes ages to mass them to make an impact. Also, as Indians second eco bonus shatgani (which is suppose to help CA and other army prodcution indirectly) requires castle also takes lot of time to research.
Yes they were buffed by providing 1PA per age starting from castle age, but they also lost PBA, which means in mealy fight Indian cavalry favors worse.

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I think indians have one of the best castle ages in the game.
Best boom, strong camels and light cav. They even can make EA to buy time against archer civs.

Don’t think they need any buff in castle age. Maybe sometimes they are already behind at that time because their early game isn’t the best. But castle age on it’s own is not bad, it’s actually very strong.

I guess steppe lancer will buff indians to highest extreme. As the bonus indians have is food bonus. and food units are easily affordable. Maybe that’s why knights aren’t available for indians.

Indians have top tier castle age eco, maybe you are just not good at booming. Quatity of army is also a bonus.

I don’t think Indians need a buff, but Indians used lots of horse cavalry historically so adding atleast one unit fits.

I think it would fit well to give them spepp lancers that were used in Northern steppes of India.

Also keeps the uniwuness of no knights.

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I have to agree that Indians are a very strong civ in Castle Age, with good eco and military. They just fall off in Imperial when all of the holes in their tech tree are revealed. Elephant Archers are too niche and too expensive to carry their late game, and Imperial camels have not been worth the hype since they lost armor (Saracen camels perform better).