HCs and champions comes way later. Elite Eagles will be knocking the door far earlier
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Do you think that is good idea, become elephant archers with attack bonus against Eagles?
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My suggestion for Elephant Archers would be to change them into a different unit altogether, like a gunpowder unit (i.e. Gun Mahout/Jingoist). Indians are already considered a gunpowder civ so giving them a gunpowder unit for an unique unit would be perfectly fine. That way they can at least be more viable because theyâll do more damage, and the tradeoff can be accuracy and minimum range.
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I agree. Indians should receive an elephant bombard cannon.
They will retain their high hp but their range will be only 6 + 1 from Siege Engineers and +1 from Shitgani. Their cost, dmg and armor should be adjusted. Generally, they should be a more beefy and mobile bombard cannon but with lower dmg and range.
The Elephant Archer should be a regional unit for Indians, Dravidians and Bengals. The latter two will be new civs. Its damage should increase, their hp and armour adjusted.
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+1
It will fit perfectly as a regional unit.
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Really good idea.
For me, I would like to do something below if I can rework the civ:
- Make Elite War Elephant +30% faster.
- Remove Mahouts and add its cost and research time into Elite War Elephant upgrade.
- Remove the fishermen bonus from Indians.
- Indians get a new civ bonus that elephant units are trained +25% faster.
- Add Cavalier, Elite Battle Elephant and last infantry armor to Indians and remove Imperial Camel and Hussar.
- Replace Elephant Archer with War Elephant for Indians.
- Introduce Aswaran into the game, a heavy cavalry which can regenerate like Berserk.
- Introduce Immortals into the game, a tech that returns melee unitsâ 20% cost if they died.
- Replace War Elephant and Mahouts with Aswaran and Immortals for Persians.
- Keep Sultan since it is really important for Indians eco but maybe it can be renamed.
- Add Imperial Camel to Saracens.
- Adjust the effect of Zealotry that only Mameluke +30 HP but training camel +25% faster.
Adding 300F 300G to an already expensive upgrade (2000F 1200G) is nuts. And then add 50 seconds to the 75 second research time of EWE? Yeah thatâs going to be too much time and resources on a unit you might not even use, those resources would be much better spent on other units and techs, especially if both of Indians UTs are to remain unchanged.
Innately making War Elephant 15% faster and EWE another 15% faster without increasing research cost for EWE upgrade would make them more appealing to use. The upgrade cost is expensive enough as it is, but the time can be extended to 100 seconds at most if need be (EBE research time is 100 seconds).
You mean one resource cost right? Because Persians build pretty expensive units especially Paladins, and being able to return 20% of their total cost (Not just Food/just Wood/just Gold) if they died is going to be broken especially with the eco bonus that they have. Also if you throw Eles (Which would also be considered melee) into the mix and they somehow get wrecked by Halbs thatâs a lot of resources youâre getting back to maintain pressure some other way (e.g. HCs). Perhaps returning one resource cost e.g. Food or Gold would be better.
These are ideas I can get behind. It didnât make sense at all that Indians missed out on Knights when they did have heavy cavalry such as the Sowar, and missed out on the last Infantry armor upgrade when their Infantry is pretty solid.
Although keeping the tech name Sultans is fine imo because the Indian civ did actually rule with Sultans for a time, itâs understandable if people want it changed as many people associate the term with Arabs instead.
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You must research Mahouts while you gonna use War Elephant in the imperial age in the current game.
So, it just simplify the steps, does not influence the total cost and research time.
Not a bad idea. But that will be cheaper than the current version, I do not sure it becomes better or overpower.
Good suggestion. But Persians will have no elephants in this version.
So I add the heavy horsemen back. Because I give Imperial Camel from Indians to Saracens, I do some adjustment for balance, such like removing Indians Hussar and making Indians halbs better.
Lets go back to the main topic. I see two problems with indians and elephant archers.
- Their team bonus giving camel attack bonus vs building doesnât work with most other civs. At the latest patch, out of 35 civs, only 10 other civs have camel in their tech tree. Take out byzantine, Ethiopian, and mongols which lacks blood line or final armor upgrade or both, the bonus doesnât work for them anymore as their camels wonât last as long under defensive arrows. So, this bonus can realistically benefits only 7 out of 35 civs (only 20%). Team bonus should be something that can benefit majority of the civs.
- Many other players are complaining Elephants archers are very situational and are not as useful in reality and that indian should have battle elephants for historical accuracy.
For these reasons, I would like to propose the following change.
- Give battle elephants to indian, remove camel +1P armor bonus and make fishing bonus as team bonus. This way, instead of camels raiding the towns, Indian get elephants which are designed to resist archer fire and take down buildings. They can still have imperial camels but they are now reduced to just cavalry counter and no longer OP as heavy cavalry, raiders + building attack. On top of that, they get a team bonus that works for all civ on maps that has shore fish.
- To differentiate from other Rise of Raja civs, make elephant units attack 33% faster for Indian. In this way, elephants archers will get a buff simultaneously.
- To balance their elephant advantage, remove Hussars from tech tree. They already have 3 eco bonus, 1. fishing bonus, 2. villagers discount, 3. gold production +10% and 2 other trash units in herbaldiers and skirmishers. This way, not only they will be losing a late game trash unit, their faster attacking elephants will become more susceptible to monks overall. Not only that, they will no longer be able to use their potent hussar + cavalry archer combo and thus will encourage more towards elephant + elephant archer + handcannoner combo instead.
If further balance is needed, we can always change the price of unique techs and price of elephant archer.
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Just going to copy paste to save myself the timeâŠ
plenty of civs have highly situational team bonuses.
Japanese Bonus is useless on land maps, Saracen Bonus has been a standing joke sinceâŠthe beginning?, Spanish and Portuguese bonus is only useful in team games and Incans bonus is a standing pun.
11, not 10.
Elephant archers are a great team game unit, just like every other Elephant UU in the game. as for historical accuracy, this game has never put historical accuracy over gameplay or balance, and has numerous historical inaccuracies. (chinese missing gunpowder, goths having crappy cavalry, iron age units being used by franks and celts as unique units, long swordsman using a shield, Turks without siege engineers, Meso civs with steel, armor, crossbows, and wheels, throwing axeman throwing a double sided axe, mamelukes throwing scimitars, various campaign inaccuracies)
literally one of the strongest and weakest team bonuses i have ever heard of. map where you can fish? busted. map where you have no fish? useless.
all off the backs of one of the best economies in the game.
Imp Camels arenât OP by any stretch of the imagination.
and is useless on any map without shore fish.
oh great, letâs just bust there elephants even more, because having pop efficient cost effective units with high dps definitely wouldnât be an issue at all. I watched Viper beat Malian Pikes and 2H swordsman with Elephant archers as is, canât imagine if you made them attack 33% faster on top of that.
thatâs not even remotely close to a fair trade in the slightest.
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The new Elephant Archers are great. Especially in the Imperial Age where the extra armor from Parthian Tactics really brings out their tankiness. They certainly have a place in team games now as a late game unit after booming.
As an anti-archer archer, Elephant Archers are like a more population efficient Rattan Archer. With Post Imperial upgrades, I tested a 2,040 resource Elephant Archer army (or 12 Elephant Archers) against a 1,980 resource Rattan Archer army (or 22 Rattan Archers) for battle performance against every other gold arrow unit in the game with an equal resource army. The 12 Elephant Archers did as well, if not better than, the 22 Rattan Archers against equal resource arrow armies. Notable results to me were: Elephant Archers beat Rattan Archers, Rattan Archers lose to War Wagons but Elephant Archers win against War Wagons, and Genoese Crossbowman and Camel Archers are still a hard counter to Elephant Archers but the Camel Archers will have to kite the Elephant Archers instead of taking a straight fight.
As an anti-archer archer, 12 Elephant Archers having almost the same combat performance as 22 Rattan Archers means 10 spare population space you can use for Villagers or other military units. With 12 Elephant Archers creating in 300 seconds and 22 Rattan Archers creating in 352 seconds, an Elephant Archer army actually builds faster than an equivalent army of Rattan Archers, despite Rattan Archers having the faster individual creation time. Youâll find a gap between spare pop space and total creation time no matter how many units you use, so long as the two armies have almost the same total resource cost.
I didnât make tests with Castle Age units, because I assume Elephant Archers are far less common in early to mid Castle Age due to their high cost, like other elephant units. But in the late game the buffed Elephant Archers are a deceptively powerful team game unit. And they could be good enough to make full Archery Range play into Elephant Archers a viable strategy for Indians in team games, as the Indian Archery Range only lacks Arbalester and has full Blacksmith upgrades.
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Except there is a huge problem in your argumentâŠ
The fact that Rattan Archers movement speed is 1.1
while EA movement speed is only 0.8, which cripples them, and makes the huge HP etc redundant.
Infact RATTAN ARCHERS ARE 40% FASTER than EAs. While costing less than half(so Lanchesterâs Laws of Square numbers strength can be taken advantage of) And are not hard countered by Pikes, Monks or Camels. In fact, they destroy all these.
and this is why players would always prefer FU Elite Skirms as anti-Archer when Playing Indians, in a serious non-DM, non-Michi game. Because Elephant Archers are a Waste of precious GOLD.
And the Elephant Archer doesnât fill any real role in an Indian Army ecause the Indians are not really weak to Archers (forget Cav Archers) in the first place.
no, they just get wrecked by skirms 1v1, knights, most heavy cavalry, the list goes on.
iâve already seen what happens when pikes try to engage a mass of EA. Camels do a total of 25 damage a hit to EA, which means its going to take 14 attacks to kill an EA.
but question for you - if your opponent is fielding Camels, why are you making EA? shouldnât you make something more effective against Camels? like your own camels?
a Skirm vs a Rattan will win one vs one. a pack of elephants will take down rattan at a higher population efficiency.
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The Elephant Archer has the same weakness as every elephant does - speed and costs. But advantage for war elephants are that they can already do a lot of damage even without being in a mass number, elephants Archer do not. So it is quite expensive game to play with elephant Archer. But in huge number they are harder to counter than war elephants because they are not hard countered by halbs.
I think in general elephants need a speed buff especially UU from Persian. But the rest would be OK.
Also Rattan Archers can garrison in towers, EAs cannot.
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Have you ever seen somebody playing with towers? Better to save stone for castle. That is the next mistake in the game. Towers are quite useless with reaching castle age.
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Rattan Archers kill all Skirmishers expect Vietnamese Imperial Skirmishers
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Letâs just say⊠there is a reason⊠NO MANY reasons why you will see every pro player go Rattan Archers with vietnamese the moment they can
while on the other hand they donât even consider the idea of Elephant Archers except to satisfy the chat demand or have fun with the chat in CASUAL ladder games.
That is the case even when they are faced with archer masses too. They still go for FU ESkirms.
Because the fact is, Massed FU ESkirm can do everything an EA army can do(except pop efficiency), and infact catch and kill archers faster WHILE costing 0 Gold
And yes, this has happened even after the EA buff all the time with every pro streamer
@JonOli12, @MatCauthon3 and @Lonezwiebel
Your theories bear no weight against the large amount of practical observations. That is Rule 0 of Logical and Scientific Thinking.
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What numbers to believe in? One month Civ Winrates? For balancing Units?
I tried to give a proposal for Elephant UUs in 1v1. Every 5 minutes, you will receive one for free IF you have zero of them. Maybe a tech should unlock this.
The result is clearly balanced since one EA does not break the game. However you have a bonus powerful unit you can add for instance in crossbow fights.
This has the only effect to see more EAs (and as well BEs and WEs). But just one per time because it is free⊠currently you see zeroâŠ
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