Flaming camels

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

So, I have never seen a flaming camel used in pvp. Not even once. And as far as pve goes, I used them once, and that was that. Kinda pointless, never used them again.

The flaming Camel costs 70 food and 30 gold to produce. It takes 20 seconds to train. In comparison, shotel warriors take 8 seconds… with berbers its only 6 seconds. We will get back to THAT later.

So, flaming camels also have no pierce armor. They are easily countered with only 55 hitpoints per camel. Literally a few ballista shots and an archer bolt or cav archer bolt and your camels are worthless. That is 70 food and 30 gold you will NEVER see again.

So, you end up having to hide your camels as a tartar player, and keep them as a pocket defense until your opponent goes for cavalry. But… the problem is that the common counter to cav archers is skirms, and the common counter to hussars and keshiks and steppe lancers is halberdiers.

Also, cavalry can run away from flaming camels. The ONLY time camels are useful is when there are massed elephants with no ballistas or archers covering them.

Camels are also useless vs buildings compared to petards. So yah.

How do you think camels could be made to be actually useful? I think the following levers exist.

  1. cost
  2. creation time
  3. health/armor
  4. speed
  5. Damage and damage bonuses… for example low base attack means less dmg vs seige than a mangonel attack…

Lets say that the camel were buffed. What would an extremely buffed flaming camel look like?

  1. Bonus damage against pikemen, skirmishers, cavalry, ships, and siege.
  2. Affected by bloodlines and affected by blacksmith armor buffs.
  3. Speed buff from 1.3 to 1.45 (on par with hussar)
  4. Costs 30 food and 15 gold
  5. trained in 8 seconds (on par with shotel warriors)
  6. Trainable from siege workshop.
  7. Able to be garrisoned in town centers… :smiley:

This new flaming camel is spammed and stored in TC’s. When the enemy drops 40 paladins on your tc to destroy it, out pops your 3-5 camels and paladins go bye bye in the fire… ofc this is op, but you get the picture. There is so much more that the flaming camel could be than a useless and worthless unit.

2

They are a meme unit. Leave it at that. I don’t want to see a million flaming camels if they only cost 30 food and 15 gold, that’s ridiculous. I don’t recall great epic battles in history made entirely of flaming camels.

They mostly should only be made if you have masses of trade in a team game. They damage cavalry and elephant units very badly with high gold and food cost. That’s their role, leave it at that.

3 Likes
3

They are already affected by bloodlines, but making them benefit from cavalry armor is actually a good idea. With a little buff on speed (1.35, like knights) and the ability to be trained from siege workshop, it could be truly valuable.

4

Don’t think so. Against heavy cav civs they are an insane combo with cav archers, as they make it literally impossible to engage the cav archers. But ofc it’s situational and very lategame.

5

The cost is fine for an Imp unit; I would reduce the creation time a bit (10-15 sec)
The armor should benefit Flaming Camels like any other Camel in the game (we can open a new discussion topic on the Blacksmith benefit for Petards)
Speed is fine, they are an Elephant counter anyway and the last buff makes them really good against any type of cavalry (especially elephants)
But agree with @casusincorrabil; you don’t want to see a meme unit as the main counter of the heavy cavalry

6

welcome to meme focus of devs :smiley: that is what is most important, not actual use