Delhi Sultanate: 1v1 weaknesses

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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Since it’s release days I don’t want to say if anything actually needs a nerf or buff - just want to discuss some observations. I’ve been playing the past 15-20 games as Delhi, while in team games they are fine (in fact the larger the map the better they are) I have an extremely difficult time in 1v1.

My problem is dealing with early aggression, especially with early knight civs. It seems to me that the military strength in the dark and feudal ages just don’t trade very well at all. If one, for example, reaches feudal the same time as a French player their first Royal knight will come out in 29s with a total investment of 300 gold and be on its way. French can skip entirely on wood in dark age.

Now in a 1v1 land map it’s at your base within a minute. If you are Delhi you have either built palisade with spears. However the cost is ridiculous. You NEED a Mosque and a Barracks, assuming you get all eco buildings you are looking down at 400 wood and then another 20 for 1 spearman and 15+5 (depending how much you need to wall). However to be ready for the knights you need well over 1 spearman. You are easily looking at about 600 wood needed on an open map to deal with in the early feudal.

On the eco side the French can skipping on wood and creating vills 10% faster means they will have more vills, much more food and gold. A Royal Knight has 190hp and 29 attack. vs the 70hp and 18 attack of a spearman. A spearman will take 3 hits and give 3 hits. The R-knight has 3 melee armor, so that total damage is reduced to 15 dmg per hit. The knight can solo 2 spears, so you need at least 3, which need a total of 5 attacks together to down the knight, leaving you with 2 spears with 1 on very low hp. With 4 spearman you can take down the knight and lose 1 spearman (154=603=180, so by the time the units exchange 3 hits the knight will kill 1). With 5 you can take no loss. So to suffer no loss you need to meet with 5, for a cost of 300 food and 100 wood. So you will need 300 more food and more than 400 extra wood, for a total of 700 resources than the French to deal with a knight, while you wait 2 minutes for the hardened spears to kick in. Mind you thats a barracks that can’t produce for 2 minutes! You either build another barrack or ignore the upgrade, at which point the free tech is completely meaningless. All the while they have had a better eco and map control. To deal with this you will need to severely outspend the French to match their military and eco (which is paradoxical since how do you outspend someone that has more vills than you?). As Delhi need to be Imp/post-imo to leverage their strength it becomes a tall order because the French will have undoubtedly reached Imp much earlier

Since the way the tech for Delhi works you are looking at a 2min 2s research time for hardened spears, IF you have 1 Mosque. If you have 2 scholars that’s down to 1min 41s, with 3 1min 23s. Other civs can spend 275g and can have a hardened spears by the time 1st royal knight arrives, they also can spend another 125, which would equal the cost of having 3 scholars, for a +1 dmg upgrade. A +1 hardened spear means that you can kill a royal knight with 3 spears with no loss. Heck 2 hardened spears +1 spears can deal with a knight. So at equal cost other civs need less resources and deal with it more cost efficiently. In any case you are looking at much more than 2 minutes for hardened spears, at which time you will probably have 3 knights roaming around.

The only games I have won vs. French with Delhi are on water maps. On land maps, while undoubtedly you can deal with it, the economic cost disparity is so large I just don’t know how I can match a French army in the late game.

Edit: The faster vill creation is insane with their eco cost reductions, tbh. With 0 idle TC: In dark age @ 180s other civs have 9 and they have 10, in feudal by the time you have 8 vills they have 10 (tho French feudal is so cheap that lead is bigger) so a 3 vill lead assuming same feudal timing. At castle they ae making 10 vills for your 7. With greater eco, cheaper drop off, free melee dmg tech, cheaper eco techs, cheaper units, etc. The point of Delhi is that you should beat your opponent in resources spent for upgrades, but against French it doesn’t really matter because they have so much more eco that they simply harvested and saved more than that difference. So the entire “strong” point of Delhi is still outclassed by the French…

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i totally understand what u mean, but ur build order probably isn t solid enough. I play Delhi since closed beta, and they got a few buffs since then and while their early game is very difficult to get down since there are so many details a few knights are not as dangerous as they seem just don t freak out and make sure to have a very solid build and to keep making units non-stop as well as scholars from ur Landmark. U can easily be age 2 in 5:10 start a scholar and have 3 pikes out that are already starting to build walls when the first Knight comes u need to make sure ur vills don’t die and at 5:30 u already semi walled in with enough spears to zone out. Then u add either a blacksmith and a mousqe when hes booming or an archery range and then a blacksmith when u scout more commitment to aggression . Make sure to get the upgraed so u can garrison scholars in ur racks and archery range and to get the vill upgrade at ur tc. It s free and only takes 20s,it s a huge deal vs knights. And always always keep making a scholar from ur age 2 landmarks all they are ur investment into everything. Every scholar u have more is a scholar closer to victory.
A good balance in eco to aim for is 11 on wood 11 on food 4 on gold and then u just keep adding to wood and food until u can capture sacred sites to age up and make units nonstop, never stop making units. U will be surprised how fast u can kill someone when u have an overwhelming amount of units and 1 ram .

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Right, I have no problem surviving the early game. What my point is that the French player is much further ahead in every aspect and when you get to the late game. My eco number look roughly the same, though I occasionally juggle the vills depending on needs. My issue is the cost efficiency…

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ur units will be more cost-effective the longer the game goes on, Delhi infantry is extremely strong wouldn t be surprised if they have the second-strongest man at arms which are insane in this game. Btw as well as elephants in age 3 are almost unkillebel with scholars behind u should have no problem matching french in age 3 or late age 2. And if u ever get to age 4 u will have all upgrades with in 1 m 45sec min. u can even send all ur scholars from the front back to ur base build a university garrison 10 of them inside it and get all ur tec in under 1 min than u full imperial age tec 1 min after hitting it. GL beating ur units than.

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I do understand what u mean, French is just extremely simple and u just get all this stuff for free. literal every bonus or landmarks has the same text on it. This is cheaper, gives u free stuff and is better than what ur opponent can make. French is the Civ for people that have self a steam issues and don t want to think to hard to win a game. Behold when someone acutely uses his brain as well as playing french.

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Yeah, as I said, game gets better longer it goes and u can leverage that advantage. In team games Delhi just stomps, imo. The elephants can be good, but it depends how well your eco has been up until that point. While you get every tech in the game for less than 1800 gold, the ramp up is quite slow and you are really vulnerable.

Some maps like mountain pass, where the choke is slightly easier to hold work better. If you are using Scholars to boost military buildings early-mid it’s a huge sacrifice to research speed. I tend to like to get to about 12 Scholars, as you hit Imp you can research almost everything in less than 1 min. Then shift all scholars to military buildings and you can just overwhelm the enemy. And add more scholars post imp for the heals. Regarding the elephants, ultimately I just don’t think they are good or cost effective, mostly due to their mobility and massive gold cost and pop space. Siege units are faster and keep up much better in the offensive tempo. I prefer the siege-infantry combo since the pop-limit makes them a lot more effective. I’d much rather have a mangonel than an elephant, since they reinforce faster and are just overall much more synergetic with infantry. The tankiness of the elephant is really just moot at that point when you can spam infantry so quickly.

The problem as well with your solution for elephants in age 3 is that unless the French player has let all map control to you and played passively the slow speed and cost you can only use the elephant defensively. Moreover, despite the healing, elephants get rekt by crossbows, especially the French ones as they have good melee armor.

Really the only civs that are just super hard are French and Rus due to the early heavy cav. To me, it seems, that the French especially seem to beat Delhi at their own strengths, their siege is better to boot.

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Well u can believe me or not i don’t think that Delhi is weak i main them and i m currently in top 65 of the leader boards u can add me in game (Mr9been) if u want and i show u a build order that destroys the current meta french are doing. It’s so one-sided u will say easy after the game

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