After the latest nerf to the Indians, I wonder, are there any genuine camel civs anymore? By that I mean civilizations that their strongest strategy is to go camels and camels play a major role in their army composition.
Saracens:
Even though they have Zealotry and the Mameluke, people still play them for their archer bonus (+dmg vs buildings) and not for their camels.
Indians
Their camels have been nerfed by losing one melee armor and losing +dmg vs buildings.
Berbers
They have cheaper camels but the Camel Archer has been nerfed and their only camel bonus is a bit weak and locked behind a UTech.
Is there a point of going for Camels if you are one of these camel civs?
Other civs get FU Camels such as Turks, Tatars, Chinese and Persians while others get some bonuses but are not FU like the Byzantines and the Malians. In all these cases, these civ do not go for camels as a main unit in their army composition.
Are the civ bonuses to be blamed or do camels need a tweak?
Currently there isn’t any point, and that’s due to the design of camels.
If you’d want camels to make sense as a main strategy, you’d have to rebalance the stats, massively reducing the anti-cav bonus damage. (And increasing other stats to make them viable again.)
There’s no way a unit which deals more than double damage Vs cav is going to be viable when there isn’t any cavalry around.
Imho, Indian Imperial Camels were great but the latest nerfs are hurting them. They were the only civ I could think of going for camels as a main army composition.
I think the opposite happened, and that the nerf of the imperial camel has actually increased the viability of other camel civs like berbers, saracens or malians
Fully Upgraded Cheap Camels are nice. Unique Tech is just a decoration, you don’t need 2 monks to heal your golden army. But maybe cheaper Hussars+Any ranged unit can make camels unreliable.
I don’t think they lost their identity, Indians are still going for camels every game i play against them, and they support their camels with CA since Indians have a full upgrades for their CA. Saracens too still using camels if they faced cavalry civ and about Mamelukes they need to reduce their insane gold cost, 85gold is not cheap at all, Berbers still have their camels same as Saracens if they faced a strong cav civ, and even other civs that have camels but not as their main unit but they are still in use. In general you should not look at camels as an offensive unit, actually camels are better to use as defensive unit especially if your enemy got a cav civ with mass knights, only the Indians can use their camels as an offensive unit because they have strong bonuses for their camels starting in castle age unlike Saracens and Berbers who their Camels are good in late game.
Camels are a counter and they should never the core of you army unless your opponent is going for cavarly, just like you shouldn’t go for skirms if your opponent is going for kts.
My argument here is that Camel civs should have camels as their main offensive units but this is not the case for Saracens and Berbers. Indian camels have been nerfed as well.
While I agree on Saracens being played much more as an archer civ than a camel civ, that doesn’t hold true for the rest.
Indians, even with nerfed camels, remain THE camel civ. Camels are the core identity of the civ, both with the lack of knights and imperial camel. Berbers have the cheapest fully upgraded camels in both castle and imperial age, and camel archers remain a fantastic unit. Malians regularly go for Farimba camels, specially in pocket position.
Really, despite what some people here want to say, there is no “camel problem”. There may be a Saracens identity issue, but that’s a specific issue of one civ, nothing more.
If Berbers are not focused on camels, what is their focus then ? Knights ? Yes they are formidable in castle age, but with the lack of paladin it’s always the goal of a Berber player to eventually transition into camels and camel archers.
I really can’t see how one can make an argument that Berbers just don’t use camels often enough, we must be playing and watching different games.
mamelukes no, imp camels are counter units too, they just get a bonus that makes them good vs buildings. they still stink vs non cavalry (archers, infantry).
Considering that Indians get no knight line, I would argue that their camel line is supposed to act as a knight line replacement so their role is not restricted simply to countering other units.
