Give Burmese Leather Archer Armor Poll

I think it’s pretty insane they don’t have even this basic armor. I seriously dought, it will break Burmese and make them most OP civ ever if they gave them this little leg up. Is there some historical reference as to why Burmese have such bad archers, that they don’t even have leather armor?

At the very least, their skirmishers won’t be total glass cannons. WIth Leather Archer Armor, they can make some use out of their archery range by at least making semi-decent skirmishers.

If somehow this makes the Arambai broken. Just nerf their armor. So, that means it will act as a nerf in someways since they will need Leather Archer Armor to make Arambai it’s strongest. Remember, they still missing Ring Archer Armor, so their skirmishers will still be quite bad overall.

  • Yes. Give to them.
  • No. Don’t give it to them.

0 voters

Alternate solution (brainstorming mode):

  • Give them Heresy (but remove Faith)
  • Howdah back to +1/+2 armor
    So Elephant could be better used from CA to tank arrow fire
2 Likes

this is a bad idea. there is a reason the only elephant civ that has heresy is malay.

2 Likes

This would make Burmese Battle Elephants rams that can fight back and do a lot of damage to melee units.

Honestly I don’t see too many other realistic solutions to make the civ a little bit more consistent and playable vs archer civs.

I understand that having junk archery range is kinda part of their identity, but I am personally not a fan of civ with negative attributes as defining identity. The lack of decent ranged units in the mid game also hits hard the viability of their elephants, since the only situation you want to play eles on a semi-consistent base in 1v1 is in conjunction with crossbows, to counter enemy skirm, provide some meatshield, maybe destroy some production buildings, gain momentum and hopefully force a transition into pikemen or monks.

1 Like

+1 for howdah
I’d like that.

They’re nowhere near as powerful as rams vs buildings, not even with manipur tech.
They do like 1/5 of the damage of a capped ram, and like 1/6 of a siege ram. While taking way more damage from defensive structures.
FU castle does just 5 dmg to a ram, but would do 30 dmg to a BE with tweaked Howdah.
Oh, and also BE (aside from khmer ones) can’t even match foot archer speed with husbandry.

Mmm… In order to prevent any other civ to have viable CA Elephants ?
Well, I’m being a bit sarcastic.

That said, I’m indeed not sure that it could be a good idea. Heresy might be too much (especially with a -50% discount).

However :

  • Burmese are meant to be an elephant civ
  • Their BE seems to be the anti archers unit of their tech tree, especially because of Howdah.
    So there could be a solution that helps them toward this role. This is the key idea here. Heresy is only an example of a technical solution.

A less dangerous option could be to add a Conversion resistance bonus to Howdah. This one would also be easier to adjust.

When that was balanced, howda gave 1/2 armor, elephants had 50% trample damage and elite battle elephant had 16 base attack.
I don’t believe giving burmese heresy will break them

Can we stop with this idea that full upgraded elephants with heresy are not a problem? This is true especially for Burmese that have a discount on monastery techs

1 Like

Why is a problem? FU elephants would cost a lot to get going. Specially with heresy. And in Imperial age, you’re not ussing monks to stop 40 EBE.

Strong? Yes. OP? Not so sure

1 Like

Yes, you are gonna do it. Literally every time I see a Persian doing War eles at 2k8/2k9 elo (and believe me, it happens on closed maps) the first thing you do is slap down 3/4 monasteries to convert them. There’s a reason the only ele civ with heresy is Malay

Also, eles are mostly an option for closed maps and they do not need any buff in that settings, especially considered their already strong monks and infantry.

You won’t buff them on open maps like that, not in the way you intend anyway. You’d probably just buff their all in options

1 Like

War elephants are much more unstoppable than Burmese ebe. Yes I see your point, and if they got heresy they should lose faith. But again I will go for other buff before that.

Faster attack rate could be, altough it should be a really small percentage

This would only be useful for castle age skirms at best. I think there are better ways to buff the civ. If you’d end up making crossbows, you’ve just made any transition to imp really hard for yourself…

1 Like

I think giving Heresy to Burmese is better buff. Especially considering their monastery discount.

At least we will get civilization with viable elephants. Giving Burmese something special comparing to other Southeast Asia civilizations.

Don’t forget WE cost 130F / 70g which is 2 times more resources than monk cost. And you need much less monks than WE to defend. And pikeman still destroy WE.

Obviously, Heresy will also affect other Burmese units, including knights and infantry. But again this will make Burmese special, peculiar in some way.

Just need to make arambai tankier. Like +1 pierce armor, 5 HP etc…

1 Like

,
they need more options outside arambai …
You can make arambai “tankier” by buffing their meatshield, for example.

1 Like

Arambai are barely an option at all anymore. Too expensive to mass early on for what they do. Too fragile to be used as a main part of the army in the lategame. They deal nice damage in imp but die like flies, and for a unit that costs so much that shouldn’t be the case in imperial age.

Look at War Wagons, a unit which costs only 17 more wood than an Arambai, while being an absolute tank and viable in all stages of the game, either for cheese 2 castle war wagon strats, or being part of core army in late imp.

The Burmese civ has now been skipping arambai and mostly been played as a generic cavalry civ with slightly better infantry and good monks.

2 Likes

The problem about this is that they dont have much for using all their bonus at the same time

Take malians as comparison. Both malians and burmese have free eco techs and a wood bonus, infantry bonuses, decent cavalry with one nice imperial UT for them and a ranged, frail, speedy UU.

Malians can make more use of their bonuses overall whatever the strategy they adopt. Wood saving buildings always are helpful for transitioning to other kind of unit. They also have a fantastic tech tree before imperial age so they can choose to be anything in castle age.

Burmese, on the contrary, use to commit in one unit type because their transitions feel weird…

1 Like