I don’t know give them something
i don’t know what you guys want, the problem with the unit isn’t the strength. its the cost combined with how long it takes to mass them up in any reasonable number.
you could give them regen + extra arrows and they still won’t see 1v1 use. how often do we see war elephants? same problem applies.
4 Likes
Make them bombard elephants with short range. Like 5-6.
Let’s give them cobra car stats and make them cost 20f 5g. Maybe you’re happy about them then.
2 Likes
Replace the gold cost with wood cost.
with their current stats? good lord that would be a nightmare.
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Trash powerhouse units 11
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They could substitute the food cost with wood cost at best… but I don’t know if this would solve their problems.
The only change that I would personally made to them is giving them +1 more range. Not so much to see them more often, but it would be balanced in my opinion.
Considering that they basically are HCA, with the same range but not the same speed (and that indians don’t get arbs), +1 range would compensate that.
on the other hand, they have insane health and extra pierce armor, which is an advantage in its own right.
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It was a half-joking suggestion. I mean, look at post 1, 3 and 4 in this thread.
I know it’d probably be OP with the current stats (so those would have to be adjusted), but making EA trash powerhouse units would greatly buff Indians 1v1, without making the unit OP (or even particularly useful) in team games.
In the trash phase EA are weak vs 2 of the 3 trash units, and the Indian player would have to plan for it with castles and an expensive upgrade, so trash EA wouldn’t even necessary be a no-brainer.
Still a big boost for 1v1, hopefully.
yeah, weak, if you consider them taking something like 40 shots from skirms to kill weak.
they also do 9 damage a shot (after armor) to halbs.
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True, but that is balanced by their high cost and slow TT (since they comes from castles), both acting like a bottleneck.
The idea is that this way are a bit more versitile, even in low numbers (which is how they should be played in my opinion), then you support them with others units.
Then again, I don’t play much with elephants, so I may be wrong…
It’s OK to leave EA alone to be a good team game unit but situational in 1v1. I would prefer to give other thing to buff Indians in 1v1. Elite EA +1 range may be acceptable.
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Very weak, compared with how well they do against gold units.
Assuming trash EA actually get balanced (I know the suggestion is slightly silly, and not likely to happen) the Indian player would have to do their best to use the elephants against gold units, and to use gold units against the trash.
What about this?
Shatagni became a civ bonus.
New imperial UT: Kerala elephants. Elephant archers train XX% faster
(this tech could affect battle elephants in case indians receive them)
But they would still have the high cost and the need of a castle that will act as a bottleneck.
So I don’t think that it’ll solve their problems…
2 Likes
I wasn’t joking. Bombard cannon on elephants is no joke. Of course, they will have slow reload time (how do you reload a cannon while on an elephant) and will have terrible range. Think of it as a sort of ranged battering ram. Should be slower than Persian’s war elephant and more expensive. Also with minimum range. Very op if used correctly, very useless if your army is comprised primarily of it.
The bottleneck effect is not such a problem when an unit have little training time. Also, you would still need the castle for the UT.
I would reduce their price through that UT but thats malay niche.
The cost issue can partially be solved by buffing Sultans, if we dont want to reduce EA cost
With both more gold available and a lower training time the unit may become a bit more viable. In fact, if the effect of both UTs are too much high massing EA could be too easy.
This will solve at least 40% of their problem. Other 60% is their speed imo.
I used to want this for a long time until I found out how good 1 less range is in an archer vs archer fight. Mix 1 EA with 10 xbow/HC and give opponent 3 more archer than yours instead of the EA and see the difference. EA is a very good meat shield in this case. The problem is even with husbandry, their speed is significantly low compared to archers and you can’t control the army of EA+archer easily. I think increasing their speed to 0.9 from 0.8 (and food cost turn into wood cost) will solve almost all the problem.
Decrease cost to make it massable, increase creation time by a large margin. So much so that it will see use consistently due to the cost and limited by creation time to make it balanced. Of course the more castles the easier it’ll be to mass, however even that can be taken into account when adjusting the creation time.