I think we can all agree that Ethiopians are in a fine spot but some things are not fine with the civ:
With the introduction of the Urumi Swordsman, Shotel’s role of glass cannon high attack infantry is now completely pointless, Urumi Swordsmen with Wootz Steel are strictly better in the role and are created fast.
Just like Mahouts, old Orthodoxy and old Panokseon, Royal Heirs is pointless to reseuarch if the UU fails at its role.
Useless team bonus sadly.
So what I propose:
Give Standard Shotel Warrior +1 PA and Elite Shotel Warrior goes to 2 PA, the training time speed is moved to the Elite shotel Warrior, so that in fact gives them a new role of a raider infantry unit that can be easily spammed but less durable in melee in account of the bare 50 HP and 0 base melee armor the Elite Shotel holds, Ethiopians have quite bad hussars (no bloodlines and Plate barding Armor) so having a strong raider infantry UU in the late game is needed, the elite upgrade is expensive enough to make it balanced given that Ethiopia eco is not that great at that point.
New Castle age UT: Ark of the Covenant, Costs 400w and 400g, don’t know what kind of eeffect could get, but could be either Gold miners generating wood while working at a rate of 33% or all foot military units regenerate 25 HP per minute, but could also be a buff to their Monks that lack both block printing and redemption, Monks get +5 range (The longest ranged Monks of the game).
New Team Bonus: Relics generate wood in addition to gold at the same rate.
What you think.
How does that make Shotels pointless? Its another civ’s UU. Better DPS, sure, but Shotel’s higher speed and PA mean that Urumi isn’t strictly better in “that role” (not that it’s competing for it). Also better vs. buildings due to the Urumi’s gimmicks not applying there. Shotels are probably more useful to Ethiopians than Urumis are to Dravidians.
Sure, it’s kind of boring. Would add to its effects instead of scrapping it though. Maybe it could give Shotels a tad more HP as well, or a slightly lower cost. Agnostic as to whether +1 PA is a good idea, but open to it generally for several infantry UUs. Don’t have a strong opinion regarding Shotels, but a buff could be on the table.
Kinda niche, like half of them, but would be fine if the upper limit on building LOS was extended (if Ethiopian-teamed outposts towers had more LOS after Town Patrol). Maybe outposts don’t cost stone as well.
Should definitely melt the faces of all enemy units when it’s unveiled. /S
Don’t think +5 Range for monks really fits the theme of the civ (in game), and I’m not wild about too many more trickle bonuses (especially wood). Healing units or increased gold gen for relics (for an Ark tech) would be interesting, but I think just adding to the effect of Royal Heirs would do.
I know it’s a very niche thing, but Shotels are a really fun surprise shock unit, like on closed maps when you don’t really expect it. It’s really funny to watch a group of them chop TCs down in three hits. Because they’re fast, they can just run from place to place. Urumis cannot.
Urumis have a wider use case (and role in the Dravidian’s main unit comp), but not every unit needs to have a wide array of uses. Shotels function well enough as a panic unit, or some really annoying raiding unit. Due to their low HP, I’m not really sure if giving them armor does much.
Having longest ranged Monks would be funny, because they miss Redemption. They’d be like Chinese monks in functionality. However, I feel like double-collection gimmicks are becoming a little trite.
Not a every civ needs a raiding unit. Shotels are great vs high pierce armor infantry like eagles huskarls ghulam against which ethiopians struggle otherwise. Shotels are a much more values addition to ethiopians than urumi are to dravidians btw.
Is funny how you three say Shotels have more value to Ethiopians than Urumi is to Dravidians and yet you see high level games where pros make more use of Urumi Swordsman than Shotels, even Viper rated Shotels lower than Urumi, which already say a lot.
I don’t think they serve the same role tbh…
I which Urumi would be more Shotel-Like actually. Shotels are the better raiding units with higher mobility. Something Dravidians are basically completely missing.
And Etiopians are one of the archer civs that still somewhat can hold it’s own on arabia in comparison to other archer civs like… just for example… Dravidians
I would like to see a speed buff on Urumi so they can play/feel more like Shotels…
Shotels are nice. They can snipe Mangonels and, occasionally, Skirms, and can serve as a small raiding unit for an opponent who relied too much on Siege to defend the Ethiopians push.
I had suggested this earlier and will suggest it now. The Ethiopian TB isn’t bad, it’s just not very practical. Instead of outpost and towers +3 LoS, it could be all buildings (except walls, gates and farms ofc) +2 LoS. It is much more useful this way since you are obviously making houses atleast. The new bonus isn’t limited by the Town Patrol tech too.
Well. this is debatable. Did you see Ethiopians even picked in the tournament recently? I remember Hera picked in Grand melee final and lost. That is the only once. Dravidians actually more picked in tournament. Archer nerf make Ethiopians plunged as civ which entirely relied on powerspike of archer.
Ethiopians can have better castle age than Dravidians because access of Knight but Dravidians have better early game with extra wood which give more flexibility than food/gold and Dravidians have better late game with better trash/ access to HC and Elephant archer.
Also Ethiopians struggle against civ having better skirms such as Dravidians because they have actually no better choice against skirm than their own skirms except expensive seige.
TGM settings favorized cav and economic civs a lot. Even Britons were rarely picked.
The thing is also with the drafting system it’s really hard to understand for us what’s going on there really. Maybe Ethiopians just had bad matchups against pretty much all the favorable civs on the maps they were otherwise an option.
Maybe Ethiopians were just decent but not strong enough to be top contender on any single of the maps.
Sometimes civs just fall in ot out of favor of the pros for basically no reason, they just don’t have a good feeling with them.
But if I look at the current arabia stats, Ethiopians look decent. Maybe because of the pike upgrade and the total Knight meta we currently have?
That’s why UU tier lists don’t really make sense. In abstract urumis might be better than shotels but in context of the respective civ shotels are perfect for ethiopians as they cover their weakness. You don’t need them often but when you do they come in clutch and are way better here than urumis because the latter are too slow to catch up with these high speed high pierce armor infantry units. If ethiopians had urumis the civ probably would be worse even if urumis are the better unit generally.
Although that is a famous claim, I don’t think the rumor that the Ark of the Covenant is located in Ethiopia has been proven. This, to me, is similar to El Dorado, an UT of Muisca given to the Mayans. If possible, I don’t want to have such mistakes.
Maybe we can reduce the training time of Shotel from 8 seconds to 6 seconds, and change the effect of Royal Heirs to infantry UU +X% HP for the entire team.
If along with the Urumi rework, Urumi no longer has charge damage, then tweaking Shotel’s stats to give it charge damage might be a decent option.
All great points except the new UT.
The eco one is the new worst ever. By the time you build a castle and invest 800 resources into this tech, gold becomes the scarce resource on most maps and not wood. Wouldn’t make any sense to invest into such a tech. They aren’t a naval civ either for wood to be the more important resource.
Foot military 25 hp per minute seems ok but paired with 2 p.armor and 4 sec training shotel warriors might actually make shotels a bit too strong. That’s completely fine if it comes at the expense of something big like archer bonus removed or knight line removed or halbs and hussar removed.
Monk +5 range is kinda pointless when they don’t have redemption and is broken if they have it. So that’s also not a good bonus.
So apart from the UT, other changes seem good. In the event that Elite shotels get 2 p.armor and 4 seconds training time, I’d recommend increasing the cost and tech time for elite upgrade considerably.
I completely disagree. Shotels are in an excellent place. Maybe they could be made a bit cheaper, but even that is questionable. They are insanely good in melee, being weak to arrows is their intended weakness. Without that, it would be impossible to counter them cost-effectively in any way.
What we can agree on, is that the UT royal heirs is among the worst UTs in the game. That could use a rework. But even so, it’s not really a priority at this moment because as you have said, Ethiopians are in a good place at the moment.
Doubt it. You could already do this if you really wanted to - mine 10-20 stone in Feudal for an early 2-4 outposts (later in the game you can have stone to burn). Most of the advantages you would get from doing this you can already get from good scouting, and your res/vill time is better spent actually making military to raid/get map control. And going out of your way to get extensive outpost vision is just asking for vills to get sniped. Saving 5 res (or having 5 stone cost converted to wood cost) on a building that can’t fight, produce, or house, is a nice convenience, but won’t be breaking any games.
Yes, and related (and probably even more true) is that Dravidians would be better if they had Shotels instead of Urumis - Dravidians need a Shotel-type unit even more than Ethiopians do, due to lacking knight, camel, or really any hard-hitting unit with decent speed and/or PA that can be used to raid, kill siege, etc. In the case of Dravidians, Urumis can be okay in Post-Imp, but are mostly a redundant strength given their already top-tier Wootz Halbs and Champs. It would probably be a straight civ buff for Dravidians to trade Urumis for Shotels.