I think they’re overpriced and almost useless on closed maps.
Weak to archers, cav archers, monks, infantry, and elephants. Unable to force fights against light cav, similar to halbs. Less pop-efficient than melee cavalry while costing the same gold as a Portuguese Knight.
As “same type counter” camels are strong on maps where other cavalry is strong too. Open land maps.
Similar to Skirmishers on ranged dominated maps, though ofc associated with a gold cost.
I personally think it’s a bad design choice. Because games then culminate in a unit bottleneck - and ofc on some maps they can become kinda useles aswell. less for skirms, but for camels definitely yes
Camels are more of a niche unit. They are mainly a counter to the popular knights & skirmisher combo. They are not designed to be an all-purpose power unit like a knight. I think it is a fine design choice.
Usually you do not want to go camels if you are not expecting knights on the other side. (Heavy) camels are pop-efficient against knights (paladins) while being cheaper and faster. They also beat skirms and siege much better than the pike-line. They are still cost efficient against portuguese, but not against poles, which is fine as it is a special case (just like Huskarls counter Mayans and top-hussars counter Aztecs)
Note that most camels civs have underwhelming pike line: only Persian, Byzantines and pre-rework chinese had both good camels and halberdiers. Saracens, Berbers, Malians, Hindustanis, Gurjaras, Turks, Mongols lack halberdiers, Tatars have bad halberdiers, Ethiopians have bad camels. So you can see camels vs pikes as a way to balance the way how well civs can counter knights.
They cannot force the fight against light-cav or cav-archers but force them to run without stopping. If your opponent lose attention for a couple of second, he will suffer heavy losses.
On closed maps, you usually have better options than camels, but some specific civs like Hindustanis would absolutely make them.
hindustanis specifically usually go ghulam on these maps, but there are ofc other civs that can opt for camels in specific matchups. Saracens against civs without redemption eg.
Yeah, they suck, absolutely not worth paying 60 gold.
Barely cheaper than a knight, yet much worse against almost everything compared to a knight. They’re not even good against every melee cav. Slower than light cav, so you can’t mix them with light cav freely either.
And that bad unit often means you have no good halbs, which is another drawback.
Camel absolutely deny knight. What are you even talking about? As the winrate of cavalry civs has become higher since DE, the winrate of camel civs has also become higher.
That is precisely point of the Scout Cavalry, be faster than the rest of units and disposable, acting as a meatshield to divert the attacks of the enemies toward them while the strong units can attack from behind them.
Counter units (like the Camel) are supposed to be weak versus everything else, because they are supposed to do one specific job. You could also say that Pikemans are weak because they useless against everything else that is not cavalry, but that’s why you need 2-3 different units in your army composition to cover each other weakness.
Pikemen cost no gold, are almost twice as cheap, better against elephants, and less vulnerable to monks.
Why do camels cost 60 gold then if they’re supposed to be nothing more than a counter unit?
Because that is what the devs decided originally, and nobody has seriously proposed/tried to remove that gold cost since then?
Also, inside the price you also pay for mobility, pikeman can’t force fight with knight or cav archers.
What do you mean pikes are less vulnetable to monks ? That monks won’t convert them all ? Camels are faster and deal more damage; piked do not have the conversion resistance like scouts.
As for why camels cost gold, simple: their design is to being hard to make in late 1v1, while pikes are supposed to be affordable in late 1v1. Camels still have significant advantages over pikes:
In comparison, pikes/halbetdiers advantages are:
But if you believe they are that bad, nothing forces you to play camels. Just play as if the civ had no camel. After all, most aoe2 players played for 20 years as if the milicia line did not exist past 10 minutes of in-game time and as if the scorpion line did not exist.
I am expecting imperial camels to be Hindustanis clear best option against cavalry, and ghulams to lose to hussars. So maybe nobody plays cavalry against Hindustanis because of the fear of the camel trandition. Or maybe it is just my bias in favor of the imperial camels + hand cannoneers combo.
Because mobility is the key in open maps besides the points mentioned by Zelly.
Even the cheap Polish knight not breaking the game shows how bad camels are.
the cheaper Polish Knight lacks some very key smithing techs
Imperial Camels transcending the traditional role of the counter unit make me think about a Swiss Guard unit being a unique upgrade to the Halberdier with lots of melee armor and bonus against infantry
What would be the castle uu then?swiss are mainly known for pike infantry.
Well, good point.
Although if it’s a wider South German civ instead of just the Swiss, the choice is bigger. The Swiss had the Reisläufer with pikes and halberds, Swabians had Landsknechts with zweihanders… Admittedly both fit the main Barracks units lol.
Could go the Shu way maybe – the Coiled Serpent Array tech encourages the use of both the standard Spearman line and their UU. So the Reisläufers trained from Castles and standard halbs trained at Barracks could complement each other in some way.
This implies we need more Germans asap. And sadly Id rather not as fun as a hit and run Euro civ with say a mounted crossbow and possibly even parthians to drive home how mountain skirmishy it was backed by massive forces of spears and skirms
This topic is not for imaginary civs and units.
The exception is a hypothetical good camel worth its cost, because the current one is awful.
It feels like any argument that says camels aren’t F tier is gonna risk being ignored
She is definitely missing too much reasoning.