Delhi is already the top dog at 1600+, something I thought was impossible.
What do they have that other Civs dont have? ELEPHANTS. Many people dont know how to counter them. Many dont know how to play them. The game’s campaign is generic… English/French then it has Mongols/Russian. People who played campaign has some experience on those Civs. But on Delhi, nope.
So far as Casual, I only play against AI right now… all Hardest AI and I can pwn them without abusing their weakness (as AI is weak on any early rush). And you know what’s the hardest matchup I have against Hardest AI? Against Delhi. Played English vs Delhi. Played French against Delhi. Even if I rush the Hardest Delhi AI and weaken them at start, it still keeps coming back. What I realized against them is that the AI in general are sneaky on getting resources all over the map. When it’s on Delhi, it’s like they spread like a plague as they are everywhere. Even if I destroy their main base. They would keep on coming back to surprise me with a freaking army I thought it wont exist.
There is something about Delhi. In the hands of a good player, Delhi would surprise unfamiliar players and most noobs.
BTW, against Elephants, the best counter to them are cheap Spears on front and mass Mangonels. They wont have much counter on Mangonels if they amass Elephants as Elephants ARE VERY EXPENSIVE. If they do amass Elephants, keep it busy with Spears/Mangonels while you raid the whole map with Knights. That’s why you see Pro Delhi players put walls everywhere becoz they know their weakness. Their slow Elephants cant catch up with the fast Knights.
That has a lot to do with so many of the 1600+ players switching to a new viable Civ to spam, as opposed to Delhi being better.
Keep in mind that there are only a few hundred active players at 1600+, so any big shift in pick rate will up the win rate for a Civ.
Yeah surely the WR is a bit inflated for Delhi because top players are trying them but the pick rate difference is lesser than 2%.
Free tech is just fundamentally very strong, I am just a bit of surprise Mongol couldn’t do better.
1 Like
Free tech is strong in castle and very late imperial. It isn’t particularly strong in dark age or feudal age compared to the bonuses most other civs have to begin with (without having to research any eco upgrades).
Most of the higher elo games are well past castle age and good players tend to defeat the second age rush with ease.
1 Like
I stand corrected. I didn’t realize they had the ability to generate that filter in the tools section.
At any rate, I still think the meta will adapt and Delhi is going to drop. English are one of the few civs without a significant eco bonus in Feudal relative to Delhi. Their major Feudal bonuses are longbows and early MAA. They ALWAYS go longbow, which makes sense, but against Delhi they need to abuse the MAA. There’s nothing special about Delhi in this matchup… they aren’t doing anything the other civs can’t do just as easily (make gobs of archers to counter the spear/longbow combo, with maybe some horsemen). I think the outcomes have more to do with meta than objective civ strength. And as I said previously, if Delhi does get to castle age, tower elephants with MAA trounce longbow/spear.
1 Like
That’s not the point. You don’t have to win with the Feudal push. You have to handicap your opponent. Just about any civ should be able to establish an advantage against Delhi in Feudal that they leverage into late game. But right now I think (a) the meta is respecting Delhi too much in Feudal and not abusing that enough, and (b) most civs carry their Feudal strats into Castle, so players tend to fail to account for the fact that Delhi always does a major tech switch in Castle.
Atm I don’t think the civ is OP either. It’s way too early to decide, but the civ is definitely strong which is a good thing. French was considered the strongest civ at launch until eventually people learned how to counter them, same can be truth for Delhi.
it is because 1.125 from the madrasa is an average, first read the entire thread that I shared, look at the image, it is 5 min and 54 seconds, you speak for the sake of talking and without reading everything
I am not sure what you saying but I don’t see thats the reasons Delhi’s free tech not being good either way.
in Delih, the reduction is exponential for each scholar housed, in the madrasah there is room for 20 scholars, which avoids having to build several mosques. For example if I want to research chemistry, with 12 scholars, it takes 22m30s that I divide by 1.125 ^ 12 which gives 22.5 / 1.125 ^ 12 = 5.47, that is 5 m with 28 s. If I build 2 madrasas that time is practically half.
1.125 is the average
Heh. I drafted that, checked it, and thought I deleted it. I didn’t mean to reply to you at all.
It is good! I never said it isn’t good. I said it isn’t OP, or even as strong as it’s perceived to be because people oversimplify the argument. It tends to get reduced to cost of scholars vs cost of research. People forget:
- Those scholars are produced slowly over the course of the game (it’s not like you just pay a bunch of gold and get faster techs immediately), and they take up population. If you put those resources into building another TC and producing villagers rather than scholars you would collect quite a lot of resources. Not enough to totally offset, but quite a few.
- Waiting several minutes in imperial to get the benefits of actually reaching imperial results in a major disadvantage vs other civs hitting imp at the same time. Note Delhi’s win rate plummets between 32 and 50 minutes. This is an even bigger issue in team games that are more often decided in imp.
- You might get all the techs, but almost never use them all. The meaningful savings really only apply to the techs you use, which is a smaller number than the massive number of resources people usually throw out in these discussions.
- Most of the other civs have really significant eco bonuses of their own. In the first half of the game almost all of those are stronger than Delhi’s free techs by a decent margin IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE GAME. HRE makes the free techs look like a joke. Abbasid have golden age and half price vills. French making vills faster is a huge deal. Mongols have, well, all the Mongol things. Etc. etc. etc.
I’m not arguing Delhi isn’t really strong in Castle. They are. They are fantastic on hybrid maps. They are average in very late imp after all their techs come in (even being quite strong for a short-ish span that usually occurs around 50 minutes when they usually get an unexpected tech switch due to free upgrades that’s hard to counter). I’m only saying that on pure land maps the current meta has Delhi grossly overrated. They can still win. But their current win rates aren’t justified by their actual bonuses. When the meta shifts, it’s going to drop significantly.
There’s no dispute on full water maps. Everybody knows Delhi and Abbasid are garbage on those.
Meta is more leaning towards delhi because everyone and their dog wants some elephant fun. Delhi was the underdog for a long time since they nerfed it. And I still feel it’s an underdog. It’s only highly represented because most high level players love playing delhi. It’s one of the few civs which have a very unique game play mechanic. Other being mongols. Rest of the civs are different too in their own way. But delhi is just so much more fun to play and enjoy. Bear in mind there are plenty of major bugs left in delhi to fix, so please be mindful of them too when asking for balance changes.
Professional Scouts Need to Reduce Tech Costs. In the last version I also played Delhi, deer are a luxury resource. Because Delhi research is too slow.
But in this version, Pro Scouts earnings go down. Other civilizations need to produce armies to compete for holy sites, so professional scouts are no longer available. This has helped Delhi gain a number of advantages. In Age 2, there will be no food shortages fot Delhi. This will help Delhi through the toughest times
Another point is that animation cancel greatly enhances Delhi.
Hmm, I don’t know, like I said most of the higher elo games tend to be well past castle age thus the free tech is almost always worth the time. and no matter what you think the free tech is OP or not — top players are still calling Mongols beings OP that makes Delhi beating Mongols in WR at 1600+ seems pretty OP to me.
Where did you get that? Delhi isn’t beating Mongols in overall 1600+ win rate, or in the 1v1 civ matchup.
Delhi’s overall win rate on the new patch is already dropping. It’s going to eventually balance out as the meta adapts. With the play rate spiking, people are going to learn how to counter them properly. They were so rarely played on land maps prior to the last patch that it’s disrupted the meta.
1 Like
Aoeworld of cuz. Delhi was on top at 1600+ when I was checking around 1 PM EST, now it went back to second place with 130+ new games recorded.