When it comes to my recent camel plays, my most-picked are Hindustanis and Saracens.
This tier list is my opinion, as everyone has their own opinions.
S - Better than fully upgraded.
A - Slight better than fully upgraded (some power bonuses may compensate their not FU status).
B - Generic Fully upgraded.
C - Missing techs, but emphasizes quantity over quality. Byzantines lack Blast Furnace and Bloodlines, but compensated by their discount.
D - Missing one crucial tech. No bonuses affect them, and they are not fully upgraded.
F - Missing more crucial techs. Cumans lack Heavy Camel, and Ethiopians lack Bloodlines and Plate.
byz are s-tier as it’s not really viable to play knight monk against them, cause their camels are way cheaper.
Cuman camels also can sometimes besituationally overpowered. Especially when you make the cuman boom and get pressured by knights + siege (the usual strat to punish the cuman boom). As it is way easier to squish out a lot of camels than wait for the pikeman upgrade. Normally you would like to go for the steppes but in that situation the cuman camels are very handy to push back.
These lists are really shallow and miss the important element of in-game experience for such a tierlist.
At least there could be attempted to explain why certain civs are placed where, but for me it doesn’t even looks like the person who did it has enough experience to make a Tierliest to “teach” people in the forum what to expect from these differeent camel variations.
And tbh i don’t think such an explanatory tierlist is even possible here from someone who isn’t seen as one of the top players in the community, as AOE2 is such a complicated game and basically everything can be situationally s-tier.
I’ve seen Ethiopian camels as a killermove against a korean War Wagon + Siege push - and at that time where the War Wagons were seen as “OP” and nerfed a lot of times since.
Yea, as someone said already, Byzantines are misplaced.
Their camels are 25% cheaper, so you can make 33% more of them. While they lack bloodlines (and blast furnace in rare games) making them weaker than Saracens, Berbers and Hindustanis, they should be at least A tier.
Now of course Byz lacks eco bonuses but this is not camel civ tierlist, but camel tierlist.
Malian and Gurjara ones clearly belong to S tier because Gurjara ones cost less food, get better melee armor, train faster, you even get them at the start of the game, and most important, you kill mounted units harder than others, Malian Heavy Camels with Farimba are also better vs anything, 14 attack isn’t something that can’t be ignored.
and Ethiopian Camels are clearly too underrated, with Royal Heirs they actually win vs Gurjara Camels in castle age and also compete vs cavalry in Imperial.
Gurjara Camels are known for their cost-effectiveness and the ability to hold one on one against Hindustani Camels. Additionally, having a feudal age version makes them versatile in various stages of the game. Players often appreciate these strategic advantages when choosing their military units in different situations.
