I understand delhi has been touched often for balance and what-not, however IMO; delhi still has it’s singular optimal playstyle. AND Delhi win rates are still bottom 3 though it matchups has slightly improved in win rates.
CURRENT META
Tower of Victory has come a long ways which is good but at the expense of scholar nerfs. The healing WAS too strong especially with herbal medicine, however now scholars are too weak too slow and squishy to fair in the original duel function it use to play (until castle upgrades for walk speed and some healing buffs). So high level players opt for TOV feudal and only make 1 scholar before sacred site gold kicks in. Even then they only make enough scholars to sit in each production building and later more to pick up relics assuming the original scholars died.
IMO returning to omegalulz healing is NOT the answer; but maybe adding the ottoman aoe healing could return the scholars safely to the battlefield as in integral part of the Dehli composition? Make a mosque feudal upgrade that grants aoe healing of 1 HPPS then adjust the House of Learning mosque healing to now also add +1 to this new delhi aoe healing for a total of (+2 AOE HPPS). OR!!! Make the aoe buff be an effect unlocked with going Dome of faith!!! Then further enhanced by House of Learning. This will force Delhi to make a choice of TOV infantry att speed OR scholar cheapest and aoe healing!
More on Dome of Faith. Bc scholars have been regulated to feudal production speed and sites capturing; DOF comparatively gives no meaningful benefits over TOV. The scholar is half price yes, but with the meta being to only make 1 scholar in transition to feudal using TOV; going DOF means you can afford 2 instead of 1 BUT at the expense of taking muuuuuch longer and losing attack speed??? And since we longer have an incentive to mass scholars? What is 50% cost saving really worth if you only made 6 to 10 scholars all game? (Imperial delhi already has its own thread)??
ATTENTION TO DOME OF FAITH
I suggest giving DOF some combination of the listed:
- Ottoman aoe healing to scholars. Either researched or automatically obtained.
- Adding unique scholar buffs only researched at the DOF or better yet unlocked by building DOF; like the House of Learning upgrade to scholar aoe healing. Maybe bringing some of the castle and Imperial mosque techs available an age sooner!!
- DOF should come with efficient production and piety instantly researched to open up build orders that skip dark age mosque. Yes you’ll take 26+s longer on wheelbarrow thie way but it’s would speed up age up and open up more viable 2nd TC play OR even sacred sites into faster castle.
- Less flashy…DOF now produces scholars for free and starts with a scholar instantly created (this instant scholar is in addition to the original free scholar). Production rate of 1 free scholar per 80s (results in 21 scholars by 30mins)…very functional perk and would marry well with a combination of the above suggestions. IMO its strong by in itself but very boring by itself.
- DOF upon being built reveals all relic and sacred site locations. Low level QOL and minor high level optimization perks.
- Since healing has been nerfed and delhi has lost starting wood there is no feudal scare of delhi having scholars created “too” quickly. So remove the 50% longer production on DOF scholars. Instead make DOF reduce all mosque research times in half specifically in the DOF and cut the training time in half for the DOF exclusively.
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Diamond and Above rank 1 v 1; YES LOW SAMPLE SIZE; yet already strongly collated with previous patch trend lines.
Diamond and Above rank 1 v 1 april 4 patch (7000+ samples)
Doesn’t it take the Delhi forever to age up though?
Fast castle (with the exception hre mali and certain maps/mu) is not as viable as it use to be. So more civ are going the semi fast castle or straight feudal play.
Delhi doesnt requires more time to age than anyone else is just that if they go fir a straight age up they get NOTHING instantly special that isnt standard with aging up. All their age 3 perks are techs that need to research and if you age fast then its fair to assume you have low scholar count so all those age 3 “perks” are virtually unavailable for another 5mins?? Then in that tme the other will also age and likely have had a better feudal establishment and or instant age 3 rewards.,…
So you HAVEEEE to play feudal as delhi (linear…). Then bc of the mosque and mill start you cant OPTIMALLY go into 2 TC feudal so at decent level of play you have to play aggressive delhi feudal with sacred sites gold sellng as your “eco”.,…which by the way they nerfed. Still very very very linear!!!
Surprised you didn’t even mention Elephants.
Two unique units. Both of which are unusable. Too expensive. Too cumbersome. Too weak.
Make them faster. Slash their price and stats. Give the War Elephant splash damage.
And add a Feudal War Elephant with no armour and just a dude on top. Would’ve prefered that over Ghazi Raider.
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Another idea for Dome of Faith.
Instead of making it give 50% discount on scholar cost at 50% training time;
Dome of faith will remain a mosque and train scholars at standard price (130g); but will now improve the rate of researching all techs effective by scholars by 50%.
The dirty math comes out to getting 3 to 4 free scholars by simply building dome of faith. Which is extremely strong!!! For an eco centric build option to oppose the standard TOV.
FOR EXAMPLE.
Wheelbarrow with 1 scholar researches in 4min (practically longer bc you build the mill before the mosque so…)
With my suggested 50% research speed buff of DOME OF FAITH, Wheelbarrow with 1 scholar would research in 2min 40s!! Likewise all your feudal upgrades with 1 scholar with suggested buff would go from 2min 20s down to 93s!!
And the proper way to look at delhi research is the time it takes for standard civ to afford and research a tech. Example horticulture cost 150 res and 45s research time. So standard civ front load the cost and recoup on the backend. In my suggested DOF BUFF example of 1 scholar would result in a 93s research time which nets dehli being 48s deficit. BUT most civs will NOT have enough resources to frontload all techs? And even when they can afford to front load the cost, will they also recoup the cost within 48s of having the tech?? Most likely NOT.
This change would be leagues ahead of french 30% technology discount!! But not abusive bc scholars still cost 130g!!
The thread wasnt aim at the viable unit selection (although i slight disagree with you on elephanto viability). But instead how there is currently ONLY ONE VIABLE way to play Delhi on an OPEN land map:
Mill, mosque, TOV (few still do DOF??), then feudal aggression, sacred sites. THEN base on MU and how well you can keep the sites, you all in feudal (typically…) or go settle the score in castle. If you can’t win by castle??? And you do NOT clearly have map/eco advantages then going to Imperial is an auto lost!!! All the season 4 and trending season 5 win rates suggests this.
A bit off topic but french is th only civ that is comparable to delhi in imperial age. Every other civ either has a much better imperial or would cream/cripple delhi in feudal/castle on an open map scenario long before an Imperial can be considered.
JFC is that true? I haven’t played this game in years so I am unfamiliar with balancing. That is horrible to read. An Indian civ needs to have reasons to train elephants on every side of the ball. I am disappointed they dont have elephants in place of siege or an economic elephant unit. The two units they have are boring and, apparently, not even worth using.
So the capstone unit that defines a civ’s entire theme is not worth using. Even the balancing is eurocentric haha
