No lol. Just like Japanese they are a really good all in civ
Gurjaras are an insta-lose against Archers, because Shrivamshas are utter garbage.
Agree
They don’t have proper units. They are trash.
Worse Monks, Siege and Cavalry. 0 mobility and the “broken” Wootz Steel is worse than Japanese Infantry.
Better late feudal to castle age. They can work pretty well
How is is better? Japanese have the ability to make Knights and Cav Archers in early Castle Age which is far better. A little extra wood over Japanese won’t change anything.
They get the best skirms in the game and good cavalry isnt important for the strat they should be doing
And extra resources for all in strats is huge
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you have other tools vs archers, like Mangonels and your own archers in feudal/castle and Hussars in Imp. Elephant archers are also a good archer counter.
Rathas are rly solid and I dare say too cost-efficient (but it’s likely OK because it’s UU and rest of Bengali tech tree is unimpressive). They also can field probably the best Elephant for 1v1s overall, they have a rly good Elephant Archer, they still can do something like Halb + Elephant archer, and they can do FU Light Cav which is better than many civs. Their late game isn’t looking too shabby, even on Arabia, with FU Skirms, FU Light Cav, Rathas, Skirms, Elephant Rams…
I don’t think they do, if they do it’s only marginally so, Byzantines, Vietnamese, Lithuanians are also looking pretty strong. Even so, Skirms is not a unit where “having the best” is very impactful, most of the times it allows you to trade a bit better vs gold units and that’s it.
And Hindustanis, the original Indians are TOO good. So lasty this dlc don’t add much on meta.
I think it is. It makes going archers against Dradivians a bad idea.
And I think the extra damage makes them the best early game
Dravidian Skirms go from 3s reload to 2.4 with their faction buff, it’s not THAT huge of a deal and in Castle age if you mass them vs Crossbow play, you go vs Scorpions/Mangonel, not vs more Crossbows.
Like if you seriously think Skirms are THAT good of a unit, you should think Vietnamese is OP, 42 HP and 4+4 attack and 9 pierce armor… yet this unit is rarely seen.
And idk if you calculated how many resources you save with Byzantine Skirms for example, if you make 20 you get 5 “free” Skirms (worth 300 resources total).
Yet none of these civs is considered OP, in fact since firerate matters only in extended fights, while most of the time you will be kited, I’d rather have the cheap Byzantine Skirms than Dravidian ones.
At least the next wave of stats are in
So we have multiple sources proving gurj are nowhere near as bad as some people like to make out
https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/uo3hxv/new_civ_win_play_rate_stats/
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According to those stats, Chinese are bottom 10 on the same ELO bracket (1200-1600), hmmm. 
Meanwhile Dravidians also are bottom 10…but damn, Bengalis are really bad, again according to those stats, almost at any level they’re at the bottom BY FAR!
Wow, that is bad.
Time to pull out the big buff suggestions guys. Maybe give them caravanserai? 
I agree, Gurjaras should be bottom along with Bengalis, Dravidians, Goths, Spanish and Burmese. The new civs are a joke in terms of power.
Gurjaras are basically ALT+F4 vs Archer civs, because Shrivamshas are a joke.
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Especially early on, but generally speaking, winrate is a terrible metric for evaluating civilization strength.
None of these bonuses are yet being used to their maximum potential, and familiarity is a big aspect for any civilization’s success… especially if their bonuses are less orthodox.
I have to disagree.
Gurjaras have 54% winrate at 1600+ elo as well (with 7% usage, more than Mayans!!!). I (at 1900 elo levell) saw a lot of Gurjara one-trick recently and they gained insane amount of ELO.
I think their feudal age economy is too great (I can get 300w 400f with 19pop start). It is almost Mongol starts but last longer.
Also Shrivamshas are not a joke - they destroy small amount of archers, and also they are pretty cheap considering their strong early eco.
If anything Gurjaras may need a nerf now LOL
Source: AOE2 Stats Dashboard
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yeah they might have the best early game eco. Still, I would like to see a small Shrivamsha buff. I am not sure how you would nerf their eco, because in mid-game the trickle of food is worse than the eco of many other civs (like Britons), and also the trickle of food is locked behind you having a mill to begin with (drush and pressuring mill is probably an underutilized strat vs them). As people learn to play vs Gurjaras, I expect their winrate to drop slightly.
It’s true that it’s easy to gain a lead in Dark/Feudal as Gurjaras but at the same time if you nerf their eco I think doing 20 pop comfortably would become hard and 19 pop, impossible.
anything destroys small amount of archers…
I don’t consider 70f 20g cheap. Like if you think that’s cheap, probably you think countering Meso should be really easy since Longswords are 60f 20g, so since they are also cheap killing Meso should be trivial, instead most Meso have an extremely strong Castle Age push precisely because Longswords (even after Supplies - that not every civ gets) are somewhat food-intensive for EARLY Castle age.
Anyway, we both agree that Gurjaras are really good in Dark/Feudal, likely the combination of Camel Scout + Mongol-tier Dark Age eco means they have THE best Feudal in the game atm. This allows them to create a lead and do any Castle age strat from there, from 3 TC boom (with a vill lead), to fast-ish Imp into wet noodle Hussar spam, to some scuffed Armor Elephant + a bunch of random units Castle age pressure (Hoang would love this civ and I think you can do a better Hoang than with Celts with this civ atm), to standard Crossbow 3 TC play. Since early game is more important than late game in AoE2, that explains their above average winrate.
I would look at nerfs to Camel Scout to make it trade more evenly in Feudal (currently it 3 hits Scouts iirc) and/or Mill bonus BUT at the same time I think the civ is balanced atm (54% in my view is mostly due to people not having fully theorycrafted how to beat this civ yet and once that is done I expect their winrate to drop), BUT at the same time I think their eco is too weak in Castle/Imperial AND Shrivamshas are too weak (and elite upgrade too expensive), overall the main reason the civ feels so strong in Imp is that you (generally) always hit Imp first as Gurjaras AND with a vill lead and at that point even 7+2 attack Hussars can do work
tl;dr:
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nerf Camel Scout in Feudal slightly and possibly Mill bonus (but also with care that if Mill bonus is lost, whole eco is lost). Interesting way of nerfing Mill bonus would be that Sheep trickle gets better as eco upgrades get better (that way you nerf it in Dark age, where it’s a bit too strong, and buff it in late-Feudal/Castle, where it starts being too weak).
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buff Shrivamsha (medium buff) and Imperial Age play (slight buff, something like last Archer armor or Blast Furnace might be enough here).
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The only thing that’s a joke is your statement. If you really claim that you either haven’t played with the civ or you don’t know how to do it. Gurajas are a really good civ and the shrivashma rider is a really good anti archer unit. Just because you claimed the civ is bad when the dlc came out doesn’t mean you can still claim that after people actually played it.
I have played the civ and Shirvamsha Riders are garbage, they are not even good vs Archers as many pro players have stated the same.
I played them quite a lot the recent days and if you play them properly (mass up then atk archers from multiple sides) it feels super powerful.
Also which pro player do you refer to? I’ve heard 3 talking about it so far. Daut said potentially more broken than steppe lancers upon launch. Tatoh said really good unit. And hera said 2 days ago after initially thinking the unit is underwhelming he completely underestimated them. Also the civ is super popular across open and closed maps atm. I face it even more than hindustanis on ladder.
I watched the game where he said this, Hera misplayed heavily, Daut got to Castle age first, and Hera had a request to tech into Berserks. All in all, combining everything, I think the game was won on timing and eco, not on military.