Free fletching for Indians?

ok this might sound very strange since Indians aren’t an archery civ, but hear me out:

Indians are a very strong pocket in team games, arguably too strong, where they always go cav. Free fletching won’t make this any stronger.

In 1v1s and in the flank position this would help Indians survive the Castle age with freely upgraded xbows, skirms & defensive structures.

In general free fletching/bodkin/bracer would be a very strong bonus, but since Indians lack Arbalests it’s not too OP for them.

Free fletching would also buff Indian CA and Elephant Archers, 2 units I’d like to see more of, for variety. Indian CA could be compared with with Tatar CA, and I think they’d still be slightly worse.

I would combine the change with a nerf. I still like the idea of increasing the age-up cost, but maybe others would find it more palatable to reduce the vill discount.

Getting fletching should still require a blacksmith.

TL;DR: Free fletching could buff Indians in 1v1 & flank position without effecting Indian pocket. After that a nerf could put Indians in A/B tier across the board.

Let’s not force an archer meta by implementing it directly into a civ trait. If something is too strong, let’s make it not too strong.

I think that would be too op. You already save about 150 food in Dark Age and early Feudal, and now you add to that 150 wood from blacksmith and 100 food 50 gold from fletching, which results in 450 resources saved for archer rush. Isn’t it too much? Plus, it becomes very easy to defend against archers since you only need 1 Archery Range Skirm production, whereas other civs need to add blacksmith and do upgrades. Besides, Indians are far from being the worst civ in 1v1 and are one of the best in teamgames.

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hence why I said:

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Recently handing out free techs seem to be to go to suggestion for balance buff. Isn’t it boring? I would rather research them manually. It’s fun to work towards post imp. There must be better ways to balance than removing parts of the gameplay into automatim.

What? Why on earth you want to buff indians? They have a great eco, and can go for xbos into CA. Please, no

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Sorry for missing some of your points.
Increased Age-up cost is not the brightest idea in my opinion since it’s an unintuitive penalty (starting resources penalties are paired with eco bonuses in tech tree).
Requirement for building blacksmith before obtaining fletching isn’t great either, because all other free techs do not depend on building things. The game should be consistent in its mechanics.

And the fast tower fest

I think there is a fundamental balancing problem with them having an option which is reliably good in team games and also good against some civs (camels), and not having any other good castle age options. Xbows can’t be upgraded, so you don’t want to commit too much to them, plain castle-age CA are a bit lacking.
They just can’t keep up with Aztecs, Britons, Huns, or even Tatars in 1v1.
This is a proposal to attempt to put their 1v1 strength strength on the same level as their team-game strength, so that they can then be nerfed in a straight-forward way. (I’m not particularly committed to any particular nerf.)
see for an example of someone diagnosing this problem earlier today: the last sentence of this post

The sentiments I’m seeing here are

  1. it’s too strong (which isn’t a relevant argument in the context)
  2. please don’t make archers / tower-rush stronger (it’s true most civs don’t get a strong tower bonus in Feudal, probably with good reason)
  3. free techs are boring (not sure how that is relevant when the bonus is specifically designed not to be relevant in post-imp with the current meta Indian strategies)
  4. free techs currently don’t require the building. This seems like a very strong point. I must have misremembered how free techs work. Getting free fletching as soon as you hit Feudal would be too strong.

Seeing the balance of these reactions, I won’t be implementing this proposal in my mod.

I’m still considering a free xbow upgrade or a Fletching discount.

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You go for x bows in early castle. Change to CA in late castle, and then go up and make HCA… it seems a viable option for me. Not every civ have to be top tier in every position…

I don’t see how not having arb is relevant, here. It changes your gameplan in the long run but for the time being free fletching is a super aggressive feudal bonus that can straight off kill your opponent. Even if it’s locked behind blacksmith (which I highly doubt would be implemented because the game has moved passed locking free techs behind buildings) it’d still be op. No single civ should have free fletching.

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Free Fletching is a really powerful buff. Indians won’t be OP but for sure stronger. I guess we should more focus on weak civ before talking about Indians.

Yes I totally agree.

Regarding Indians, the best way to buff them, if we really want to, is by archers. It is also possible to give them back arbalest, very good for 1v1, but not that great in TGs where you go camels anyway…

Indians may need a strategy to go vs meso civs, and 1v1 different from camels, arbs may work. For instance, despite the issue of historical accuracy, I think that BEs is one of the worst way to buff them…

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I’m working on a mod, trying to buff all the ‘weak’ civs at the same time.

I do agree. I’d like to buff their castle age military, and there’s only 3 options there: archers, cavalry, melee. A melee buff will never work, and I don’t want to buff the camels.
I don’t want to effect the post-imp composition though.

For the archers then, what’s the best way to buff them? Fletching discount? Xbow upgrade free? All unit upgrades 50% discounted (with a compensation for the ImpCamel upgrade and UU upgrade cost)?

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Imo arbalest was removed because camels were simply too strong. Indians camels were cheap paladins. Now both camels and Indian bonus for camels have been nerfed. So they can get arbs back…

India is yet another perfect example of how much the meta could change if they would just flipping buff the hand cannons already… Ffs

Italy, porky, spain and india all have amazing unique bonuses/techs for a unit that is almost never used… Yet is implied to be game changing (didn’t include turds because they have their own better HC)

Access to gunpowder should mean a heck of a load more than it currently does.

Atm reading “gunpowder” in a civs description is almost a waste of time.like wtf is going on with indias description? (camel and gunpowder civ like really wtf? As useful as atheism is in the game)

And unsurprisingly none of the “gunpowder civs” are top tier. And even struggle to be mid tier. With Spain relying on cheese and India relying on TGs… And the rest being garbage tier

I think it could’ve worked if India didn’t have a great eco already. On top of all the advantages the others mentioned.

If HCs were actually a viable tactic then they could have that option to choose from instead of needing to be buffed else where…