Continuing the discussion about the civs that needs some balance, the indians are actually pretty much fine, they have a good tech tree (lack the knight, but even if the camels doesn’t fully compensate, it’s the only way to balance it), good eco bonus, but my complain is with their UU.
The Elephant Archer is a unit taken directly from AoE1, and adapted for AoE2, but if look at the 2 units, the EA of AoE2 is a lot worse that it’s counterpart (link to the stats below).
- It have so many flaw this unit:
- It take a lot to be massed from a castle.
- It have a high cost.
- It have a LOT of counters, from pikes and ES, to camels, to all siege, to monks, and even CA deal bonus damage vs them.
- It doesn’t shine either for HP (280 vs 250 of the BA and 450 of the WE, both units with better advantages) and low attack, even a CA have more RoF, and since the indians have FU HCA, I don’t see the point of making EA.
They don’t even supplement the lack of arbs, since arbs would have a greater damage output, and with all those counter and a ranged attack they aren’t that much of a meatshield (rams, camels and hussar can fill that role a lot better), they don’t counter a particoular units or have an innate resistance to some attack.
- So here it is my Ideas:
- Give them multy-arrows attack similar to Kipchaks, so to improve their attack and actually make them worth to be trained (they would be still different from Kipchaks or chukos).
- Buff a bit their anti-standard buildings attacks, so to give them a role and giving a reason to be preferred over the rams.
I get it that UU shouldn’t be the most powerful unit of a civ, neiter should be OP, but they need to fill a role. I would like to consistently see every UU in games, because they add more diversification, not for the look of course, but for the unique role that can cover thanks for it’s specs, and it’s this diversity to me is the real fun of AoE2.