The Camel Rider to Heavy Camel Rider upgrade costs 325 food 365 gold but increases bonus vs Cavalry from 9 to 18, bonus vs Camels from 5 to 9, gives +20 hp and +1 attack. While the Imperial Camel Rider upgrade costs 1200 food, 600 gold but gives no additional bonus damage, same +20 hp and +2 attack. It seems to do very little compared to the previous upgrade.
This is unlike any other upgrade in the game where the final upgrade is the most expensive and improves the unit line significantly. Like Paladin upgrade is so much more expensive than Cavalier but also gives +40 hp, +2 attack and +1 p.armor, Halberdier upgrade increases bonus damage vs cavalry from +22 to +32 and gives +2 attack and likewise for other melee units.
Even other unique Camel techs like Zealotry and Farimba seem to upgrade more for less cost. With plate barding armor removed, Indians seem to be a civ that needs to play all-in castle age in 1v1 or play only CA-Hussar in Imperial age.
In my opinion, the Camel Rider upgrades need a change. Heavy Camel Riders should get +16 vs cavalry and +8 vs Camels and Imperial Camel Riders should get +19 vs Cavalry, +9 vs Camels and 1 melee armor. This way Heavy Camel Riders still kill regular Paladins 1v1 but aren’t left with a ton of hp and would get killed when Paladins outnumber marginally. Just a single cheap upgrade making Camels powerful enough to counter two upgrades over knights seems to be a bit unfair. And the upgrade to Imperial Camel Rider would actually do something worth the cost.
I think it’s the Paladin upgrade that’s unusual. +20hp, +2 attack, +1 p.armour would fit in with the pattern of the rest of the game much more neatly.
Heavy camels need to be able to counter paladins because there are quite a lot of camel civs that don’t get halberdiers, and pikemen don’t actually counter paladins. On the flip side paladin civs should have no problem fighting camels since they all get halberdiers. So I don’t really see any unfairness on this side.
Saying that the imperial camel upgrade is the only one that gives little benefits for its costs is innacurate to say the least. The hussar upgrade is much worse, for 500 food 600 gold all you get is +15 HP . And you wait 0.1 less seconds between each attack ig? So yeah it’s pretty much worse bloodlines.
And heck the Indians had to be nerfed because of that upgrade. So that’s not exactly weak or overpriced really.
The idea with imp camel (btw it also gives faster creation time) is to have a more universal unit compared to heavy camel. Sure heavy camel gives you much more value but I guess the main point is that you don’t need improved stats vs cavalry for imp camel. You can’t really compare it to cavalier/paladin bc imp camel is only for Indians so heavy camel needs to be able to deal effectively with Paladin and heavy cav UU. Maybe you got a point for it being overpriced for 1v1 but in the end Indians don’t even need it here, anymore. They already had all the tools in late game and now with extra pierce armor on scout line in castle age they got their knight replacement for mobile archers counter. Imp camel is just a nice to have option to upgrade if you have a camel mass and the res to spare.
I can follow the logic of why the Camel (Rider) upgrades are what they are. The upgrade to Heavy Camel Rider is an upgrade of a counter unit. It’s a unit you should be making to kill cavalry, and the upgrade makes it better at killing cavalry. But for the Indians Camels are not a counter unit, they are their main cavalry unit that happens to be a little worse in some situations and better in others. So the Imperial upgrade is a general unit upgrade, increasing the regular stats of the unit.
Does the design work? Debatable, given how fragile the balance between “Indian Camels are OP” and “Indian Camels are useless” seems to be. But that’s where these choices seem to be coming from.
I wasn’t implying that Heavy Camels shouldn’t counter Paladins. Right now after fighting Paladins they’re left with 15-20% hp. This seems a lot for 1 low cost upgrade. If the bonus is reduced to something like +16, they’ll still counter Paladins but not too cost effectively. I know Paladin civs can add units to counter Camels but that’s just a topic of army compositions, and Camel civs can also add anti-halberdier units and its about individual micro & macro skills. I’m not saying Heavy Camels are OP or untouchable for Cavalry civs. Its about the difference in how much the player has to invest for that. The Paladin player spends about 4x resources.
And of all the civs that get Heavy Camels but not halberdiers Malians, Saracens get upgrades for their Heavy Camels which would again make them cost effective. Berber Camels are cheaper as such and Mongols have their uu. When the bonus is reduced by 2, they’ll still win all Paladins 1v1.
True, but Hussar is a gold-free unit. And honestly I wouldn’t mind if Hussar upgrade cost is slightly reduced or light cav upgrade cost is increased or their base attack is reduced to 6. So that the Hussar upgrade seems beneficial.
Why so? Indians don’t get knights and they get the worst unique unit in the game, no arbalesters, no siege rams, infantry lacks last armor. Unlike Aztecs, Indians weren’t an S or A tier civ before the nerf. They were reasonably good on maps with shore fish like Mountain pass, Bedouins but never OP in 1v1. They were quite powerful in TG because of the extra p.armor which made them very effective in archer-cavalry combo fights but I’m not saying that should be restored. I’m only suggesting that the Imperial Camels should at least be much better than their predecessor units in what they’re supposed to do.
I didn’t suggest a big buff for the bonus of Imp camels itself. Instead I suggested +1 bonus for Imp Camels from what they currently get and -2 bonus for Heavy Camels. That doesn’t overly buff the unit.
By the same logic, Imperial skirms is only available for Vietnamese in 1v1 but they get +1 extra bonus vs archers, +2 extra bonus vs CA, +1 p.armor compared to Elite skirms. And the upgrade cost is quite reasonable too.
Yes exactly. But 2x the bonus for an upgrade thats even cheaper than a halberdier upgrade seems a LOT while no bonuses and just 1 additional attack than previous upgrade seems too expensive for something that costs this much. Even if its meant to be a general unit upgrade and not as a counter unit, something more needs to be added. Right now its like 2/5 of Farimba + 2/3 of Zealotry but net cost is much more and those techs affect other units too.
Honestly if they wanted a Camel unit to be the unique unit and main-line unit of Indians, it can be added as a castle unit with maybe Shatagni making them producible in stables. Different costs, different stats etc. Elephant archers are pretty useless and flawed by design anyways.
Well yes and I don’t think with the extra +1 imp camel would be too strong but rather the concern is that heavy camel would be too underwhelming against Paladin. Already heavy camel doesn’t really counter Paladin (at least not in equal numbers, they are only effective in terms of ressources, here). And it gets worse when you have civs like Lith or Teutons.
Imp skirm increases overall stats a bit but it’s still not really a good unit outside of countering archers. So I guess unless you’d increase their stats vs archers the upgrade would be pretty useless. Probably it’s also good vs halbs in trash fights. However, the main point is that elite skirm is already super strong vs arbs (imp skirm just makes arb even more useless, here) while heavy camel is rather a soft counter vs paladin. That’s why I don’t like the idea to nerf heavy camel just to make the imp stand out for that one civ (that really performs fine nowadays).
I Don’t know if i would call the heavy camel a soft counter to paladins.
they win cost effectively.
they win supply effectively.
the upgrade is also much cheaper, with going from camel to heavy camel costing less then 400 food and 400 gold, while going from knight to paladin costs 1600 food and over 1k gold.
Yes and that’s the main point why they are counter after all. But it’s still way worse compared to halbs (which are trash btw).
Yes but some seconds faster creation speed doesn’t make it a hard counter imo.
Only barely. In equal numbers they still win but not by that much. Also you gotta consider real game scenarios. Usually you don’t have these fights in islation but you have castles, tcs and other units around. It doesn’t even matter too much which units. This leads to a lot of situation where equal numbers of paladins win against heavy camel. Imo this still makes them a counter but I don’t see how it’s a hard counter.
but halbs require at least 2 halbs per paladin, and the halb upgrade is actually more expensive then the heavy camel upgrade. don’t get me wrong - i love halbs vs paladins. but they both have their advantages over each other.
no - the point is that they win 1v1. which even the halb doesn’t do.
and yet you’re ignoring the huge difference in upgrade costs and training time, which means it should be easy to have more camels then paladins.
you could say the same thing about halbs. but the halb can’t force an engagement nearly as well, and requires a numbers advantage to win no matter what.
True, not even sure if I’d call halbs a hard counter to Paladin11 Well, maybe but that’s beside the point guess.
I was answering to the aspect of population efficiency. In that regard costs doesn’t matter. Unit and upgrade costs do certainly favor heavy camel which is why they work as a good counter. But in terms of pop efficiency like a late game scenario with FU units + some trash units and buldings around heavy camel suddenly doesn’t perform all that well.
I mean these question always depend on what the game plays out and so, what civs you use and also what the term hard counter means. To me something like Elite skirm vs arb is a hard counter or halb vs heavy camel. Even paladin does a better job at countering arbs than heavy camel does against paladin.
what…they destroy Paladins man. If its a TG where both Paladins and Camels have archers behind then maybe not. But if its a straight up Paladin vs Heavy Camel equal number fight, Heavy Camels will win with quite a few left at the end of the battle. Franks may be able to fight off and eventually outnumber because of Chivalry and Lithuanians with 3+ relics might kill. Other than that all other Paladins lose 1v1 to Heavy Camel on flat terrain battles. And in groups th
they get +1 attack and against a lot of infantry it ends up being quite effective. They also get +1 p.armor which halves the damage they take from Arbalests from 2 to 1. This just makes them quite strong and effective even when fighting near enemy base. And Arbalests are not the only units they’re used against. Heavy Cavalry archers, so many unique archer/ca units will get shredded by Imp skirms while the same number of generic elite skirms would lose that battle. Imp skirm is an extremely valuable upgrade for that cost. Anyways heavy camel is not a soft counter for Paladin. Except for Byzantines, Heavy Camels of all other civs will pretty much win all generic Paladins by quite a decent margin. In a 40v40 like battle, about 5-10 heavy camels or maybe more will be left alive. And all this for just a dirt cheap 325f, 365g upgrade.
With -2 bonus, they’ll still counter cost effectively but might lose in same numbers at times. And right now Imperial Camels are also not a generic unit like Paladins. You might be able to break some buildings but you can’t get a cost effective trade against most infantry nor clear up a big group of archer units.
Late game 1v1 unless you’re playing Wolf Hill or a map similar to that with plenty of relics, nothing other than Hussar is pop efficient. The relic gold u save is to make a treb or two or add a few rams or save up for some tech u missed or mix in a few champs. Anyways I’m not comparing Heavy Camel as a generic unit vs Paladins as a generic unit. That Paladins are way better. But Heavy Camels do kill Paladins quite well and the Camel → Heavy Camel upgrade does way more than what Heavy Camel → Imperial Camel does. Imperial Camel doesn’t seem like a unit line’s final upgrade. Its rather an expensive mix of techs like Farimba and Zealotry. Does very little for a lot of cost.
Ones paladins are out of the picture, camels are not cost effective against anything else. So if you make it less cost effective against cavalry, this is going to be a big nerf to almost all the civs who do not get paladin. What could be required maybe is to make camels less effective against paladin but more effective with all other things so it is still valuable and can be used as a power unit.
Heavy camels are fine…they are only good at countering close combat cavalry…nerfing them would be bad…I agree that Imp. heavy camel could get something like 10 more HP (or 20 bonus damage vs. cav) for its very high cost…or make the upgrade cheaper (1000 food 500 gold)…I actually dont like the fact that Saracen heavy camel is almost as good as Indian for less price and faster upgrade time (bcs you can upgrade zealotry and heavy camel at once…but you have to waint 2 min for imp campel)