Hindustani nerf ideas

Hindustanis right now have too many options against archers, infantry, and cavalry. To balance it a little bit, I propose the following nerfs.

  • Villagers are 6%, 12%, 18% and 24% cheaper in Dark/Feudal/Castle/Imperial age.
  • Remove Bracer from their blacksmith.

Their eco boost in the dark age feels too much. Reducing it for the dark age will make it more balanced for the other civs in 1v1.
They already have an eagle-like Ghulam, so removing bracer will make their skirms less impactful and let them struggle a bit against arbs in the late game.

What about nerfing their castle age discount instead? Make it 10, 15% starting in the castle age

They have worst eco than before since they lost their fish bonus, and the discount is still the same as before. Ghulams need castles and are as squishy as shotel warriors on meele fights. So certainly the problem isn’t their eco or ghulams.

They feel strong because they have 3 clear power spikes. One is their +25% faster attacking camels in castle age (this is ok so don’t touch it), the second is +2 range HC (which I think is not a big deal) in imperial, and the third is siege elephants over rams.

Imo reducing their HC range to +1 like before (personally I don’t like this nerf but oh well) and setting siege elephant MA to -3 to bring them closer to rams could be enough.

I don’t like either of these to be honest. Bracer also applies to their CA, which already took a loss with Parthian Tactics being removed. I really love the cheaper vils, it’s a really smooth and enjoyable eco bonus, please don’t change it. I don’t actually think Ghulam is really that OP either to be honest. Sure, it’s good against archers, but it dies quite hard to a lot of other things, and it requires a castle to make. Just leave them alone for now I think.

17 Likes

No need to nerf anything at all imho.
Wait at least a month and then we’ll see the stats.

17 Likes

i agree with the eco being the same as before, but disagree about ghulams. Ghulams replace the former elephant archer for them, which was barely used. Thus, having ghulam available is an improvement from before.

Although it is also true that their cavalry doesnt have extra pierce armor in castle age against archers. So if archers were a problem for them, they would be losing more matches before late castle age.

Over these three power spikes, I would focus in camels and elephants. Maybe camels are stronger than before against cavalry civs, thus improving their winrate against those civs
Shatagni HC came into okay too late in open maps. They are not a decisive factor there.
Elephant replacing ram, even without bonuses, can be a big deal for them thanks to their food-based eco. In my matches at low elo I am having no problem spamming siege elephants but it costs me a bit to spam BBC because my eco is usually a food_based eco since feudal.

Actually, I wanted to properly test their armored BBC…

My conclusion: probably their winrate is inflated due to cavalry civs and the addition of siege elephants

2 Likes

Do we have average win rates of Hindustanis? Average win rate = Average of all the 41 win rates against other civs.
In that case we could see if they are really bad against archers or not.

Hindustanis are fine for now, the people is just hyped with them
Also yes look a civ that’s barely a week old now need a nerf while Mayans and Chinese don’t (civs that are already too strong since like forever) XD.

3 Likes

Yeah, this pretty much sums up everything. They are just anti-meta and smooth to use.
Aside from very small tweaks, I don’t think they need to lose techs or receive notorious nerfs like those OP is asking for. The civ is ok.

This is so true! They were my favourite “cav civ” before although I mostly play archer civs, and now that I am picking them a lot I feel that my eco goes brrrr brrrr

Two days ago a magiar player accuded me of cheating when after ageinc up to castle

1 Like

I would actually tend to go the right opposite direction, give them flat 12 % reducttion from dark age, no changes to that.

They are not even that better they used to be.

1 Like

We are forgetting one important buff they received.

Caravanserai! It comes into play in imperial, but contrarily to HC caravanserai can be used in every teamgame match

My idea is that Hindustanis have too many options that not only counter enemy attacks but also allow them to give a counter-push. It gets a good power spike once they reach castle age. Moreover, ram elephants cost food instead of wood, which they are saving a lot due to cheap vils. If we reduce the vil discount by a little bit, it will delay their castle time for a slight amount of time, helping the enemy a room to deal with the power spike. Removing bracer sounds notorious, but it comes into play very late in the game. But my idea is, for example, Italians have UU that counter cavalry so they don’t get halbs. A civ should not get both a good trash unit and a gold unit to counter units that counter their play. As they have Ghulam, if they have a weaker skirm, it won’t hurt a lot.
We are giving an Indian civ too much while other civs like, for example, Bengalis, are very weak in open maps, and mediocre in closed maps. What about balancing out civs in such a way that there are more civs that can counter cavalry civs, but not that hard?

The food discount isn’t that strong though. You’ll only get smoothness: 15% cheaper villagers only gives you 1 extra vill if you are going for feudal aggression, or 2 vills if you are going for castles aggression. Either way, by the time you hit castle age, you should be attacking already. For comparison, you get more villagers instantly from the very start of the match as chinese or mayan. Or you get 3 extra vills in theory as lithuanians, or 1 extra as persians; while waiting for the training time to end. For me, the cheaper vills is good because that bonus reduces tc idle time. Nothing else. It won’t give you snowballing eco like other civs. On the other hand, bengals spawn free vills. That’s as flexible as vikings.
As for taking away bracer to make their skirms weaker just because of ghulams, I think ghulams themselves are hard to deploy at the right timing. Since they can be blocked by even light cavalry and pikes. You’d need to clear those first or attack on a different front to make sure you can castle/tower/tc dive with ghulams.

Imo ghulams only look like too good against archers because when used together with siege elephants, these eles can soak the meele damage. Because they also are affected by cavalry armor, but their armor classes give them 10 or 11 weaknesses at the same time. So nerfing them too much isn’t a good idea.

I think the civ just needs tweaks. For example, on another thread I said siege elephants should cost -10f. And in this thread, I’m complementing that with -3 base meele armor just like rams. They’ll take more meele damage and won’t be as expensive.
This isn’t even a real tweak to the civ. This is more like a general change anyway xd.

Instead of taking away bracer, we can also consider thumb ring. We can take thumb ring away from hindustanis and give that to bengalis.

Why Take away Thumb Ring, what is the purpose of doing that?
And def Bengalis don’t need Thumb Ring, otherwise Rathas and ele archers become too strong.

3 Likes

How come they become too strong when almost everything they make is hard countered by skirms. Bengalis have very few options to counter skirms other than light cav.

1 Like

This would kill their cav archer even more

2 Likes

imo both hindustanis and gurjaras camels are too strong, their atk speed bonus and bonus damage should just tweaked down a bit.

1 Like