I think the Burmese should get access to Elephant Archers.
Their Elephant Archers could also benefit from their civ bonus (+1/+1 armor for elephants) and their UT (Howdah, +1/+1 armor for elephants). The Burmese are missing Leather Archer Armor and Ring Archer Armor.
Burmese EEA: 0+4/2+5
Bengalis EEA: 0+3/2+4*
Dravidians EEA: 0+3/2+4
Gurjaras EEA: 0+6/2+2
*In the upcoming update, Bengalis will lose access to Parthian Tactics.
What do you think?
100% agree. Burmese suffer from archers being really difficult to counter for them. Elephant Archers are not a foolproof solution, but they would certainly help more than their poor skirmishers currently do.
Also the civ will not miss Cavalry Archers. I would argue they have the worst Heavy Cavalry Archers in the game.
It also works thematically, as they are geographically close to the Bengalis, who focus on elephants.
I agree, and I think Howdah should also give Elephant Archers extra range. Not only does this make sense, but it makes them easier to utilize as a support unit.
I’m fine with Burmese getting elephant archers. SOTL did a video once about SEA civs getting DOI elephant units. I mostly didn’t care for historicity reasons and overlap reasons.
But as far as I can tell Burmese actually used ele archers and think they’re dissimilar enough from arambai to be ok.
I second this.
That will be boring. Change BE +1/+1 armor civ bonus to EA +20% or maybe even +25% HP.
Devs are already making both Bengalis and Dravidians EA similar. Having same HP and Armor won’t be interesting.
I don’t quite know what’d be optimal but I agree it would be boring if burmese, the civ whose identity is in large part built around terrible archer armor, gets an an archer unit whose armor is heavily compensated by other bonuses.
At that point just give them the armor. Maybe Manipur cavalry tho…weak armor but good attack vs archers???. Give them a real glass cannon feel. That might work.
Is that a good identity though? Yes you can’t have civs that are strong in everything, but having a civ that goes “I fold if you make this unit everyone has access to” is not a great design.
Personally I thought Burmese’s identity was more “Monks, elephants and the weird Arambi”
Having just one unit to help ease that severe archer weakness won’t make the civ lose its identity. You still need to switch to the elephant archers to put up a defense, so there’s still skill involved. So it’s not “oh you might as well give them the armour” as it’s still not as easy to counter archers for Burmese with just one unit to help.
I think Burmese, Khmers, and Malays should all have access to EA instead of CA. Historically speaking this makes sense because they were all in the Indosphere and absorbed strong influences from India. The only SE Asian civ having access to CA should be the Vietnamese (representing the historical Dai Viet) due to their proximity to China.
The Siamese, if ever they get introduced, should have access to EA as well.
The Chams are an interesting case. If they get introduced then they should not only have access to EA but also have a unique upgrade to it. Instead of upgrading EA to elite EA, they could upgrade it to EC or Elephant Crossbowmen. This is to reflect their usage of crossbows.
Very true, and this is actually historically supported. The martial art krabi-krabong implemented elephant-mounted combat into it, and it would be using either a polearm or a bow.
Is Burmese EA gonna be like Persians CA architecture? Everyone wants it yet devs won’t care.
I almost forgot they had a UT exactly the same as a civ bonus. Such a lame design… I know there’s Britons too but at least Yeoman benefits towers too.
That isn’t what I was saying. If you have an ele archer, and Burmese don’t get the second two archer armor techs, but then you just give that archer unit (the ele archer) +2/+2 armor (+1/+1 as a bonus, +1/+1 as a UT), then it’s basically the same as having those missing armor techs.
I’m 100% ok with giving Burmese options against archers.
I even made a suggestion toward this end.
Honestly, I’m on the fence about it as well. Burmese have never sat quite right with me. It feels like most civs when being designed have a cool thing they want to do, and have to be nerfed so as not to be OP. Burmese have felt the opposite, have a thing they’re really bad at, and compensate so they aren’t under-powered. I’m not asserting it’s a GOOD identity, only that it IS part of their identity.
Exactly… by now both of these are such obvious changes… what are they waiting for?
Agree on Burmese and Malays but not Khmers.
Don’t want Ballista Elephant to lose some of it’s role.
You would think that after several PR blunders, doing things the majority of players have asked for would be a good way to help build trust back again.
Have the players asked though? Most players are too casual to do things like visit the forums or join AoE discord channels. And I suspect a sizable number won’t actually care (they might think “nice change” if they see it, but otherwise ignore it).
On the Persian architecture issue, I have checked.
Multiple different platforms (steam reviews, reddit, FB comment sections etc, youtube comments) I have seen people asking for the change. I’ve done polls in various different online discussion boards, and every time it’s a vast majority of people that want change. In fact the “I don’t care” option is usually around 8-10%, and it’s still higher than “keep them as they are”.
So while it won’t please literally everyone, it will for a reasonably large chunk of players.
Wish more people understood that. Saying this ever since the change.
Optimal is a difficult term to define. I think we should try variety and avoid extra armor for Burmese EA at all cost. Extra HP is a different way to approach that while still maintaining variety. Even more variety will be Howdah gives EA +1 attack, +1 range which makes more sense as EA have Howdah but BE doesn’t.
Except these aren’t random samples - they’re samples of people who care enough to find such surveys (and care enough to answer it). What I’m noting here is that it is difficult to get a representative sample of AoE2 players. People who are “meh” tend not to leave reviews. People who are “meh” aren’t as likely to be on reddit, or Facebook, or on YouTube watching AoE2 videos. By the nature of these surveys, you’re likely to get a small vocal sample (which biases heavily towards people who would care) rather than a representative sample. And that’s before the possibility of the question itself biasing the responses.
These surveys were not hidden. They existed on the front pages of several discussion forums in plain view. And some you didn’t even have to click on the topic to vote.
Yes you cannot catch everyone; but given the limitations, I felt I got a pretty broad swathe.
That’s highly subjective. People who are vaguely interested about the game itself tend not to do this. People are interested in the game (but not necessarily supportive of specific changes) will be on these sites.
The devs cared enough to change the architecture of other civs to more accurate ones before; Persians are the odd one out at this point. So it’s not like this sort of change is foreign to the game.
I mean it won’t be a bad change, but then you kill any reason to Burmese to ever use Arambai again.