Exactly what the title says. Before commencing, keep in mind that Indians already have a very good win rate. The win rate is mostly due to the awesome villager bonus and a good castle age UT.
In my opinion, the play rate is bad because they lack some good military options in Castle Age. They are one of the only 4 Civilizations to lack Knights, which are a very popular unit. However, unlike the other 3, the Indians also lack Eagles and Arbalesters, thus making Crossbowmen a questionable choice.
The only thing going for the Indians in military options is the +1p armor on Cavalry in Castle Age and basically free Plate Barding armor in early Imperial Age.
The Cavalry Archers are an underpopular unit. However, Indians have good cavalry archers only in the post-Imperial age.
The Light Cavalry in Castle Age is also an unseen unit. It is rare to see with Civilizations like the Mongols which have 2 good bonuses to support them. Light Cavalry in Castle Age are made to counter monks mostly.
In Imperial Age, the military options look good. The Imperial camel is much better than other camels here. The Indian Castle Age camel was just a slight improvement against archers. Their Hand Cannoneers have the greatest range. They have good Hussars and Heavy Cavalry Archers in Imperial Age.
I think it’s a fundamental flaw to make camels to fill the role of knight. It is quite absurd even the mesoamerican civs can produce xolotol warrior while Indians can’t. Giving them knight and without cavalier upgrade seems OK to me.
False. Unless they converst a Stables, they cannot produce Xolotls.
Because Monks + Redemption already consumes all your Gold in Castle, you will never make Xolotl warriors, as Knights without Bloodlines, Husbandry and any of the Armour upgrades, are virtually useless.
Mesos either go for Crossbows + Egles, or die if they try to go for Xolotls. It is far less viable than Indian Camels.
I think they have such a narrow play style/tech tree, with nothing particularly good, if someone wants to do something they can do it easier /better with another civ.
But i think a lot of india’s higher elo win rate is from their scrush into whatever is needed.
Xbows are still a decent stop gap into CA. And it’s very viable (due to the low tech upgrade and sharing of tech) to go archers into xbow into CA (buys some time to mass them) and ultimately the ele archer shares the same tech as CA.
Meaning you have the CA or camel for killing everything except archers, and the ele for screening against archers with its high PA
So the lack of arbalest imo isn’t a huge draw back from a balance pov.
And while kts would be cool, i dont know if they’re maybe worried the food saved on vils will help a scrush into kts too much maybe? Or maybe it is just a identity issue.
The waste of time shatgatani or whatever its called is a big turn off though imo.
Ive been maining vietnam to prove how oppressive laming is, but ill give india a go next.
That’s an oversimplification of the villager discount bonus. And it really fits into the theme of food bonus = good win rate.
No questions on scrush. It is great. If you manage to do a 19 villager Feudal Age, you save 160F on villagers in Dark Age. 160F is a lot and is basically free floating, unlike 150F saved by Burmese (free wood upgrade), Magyars (free forging) and Bulgarians (free M@A upgrade). 160F = the cost of 2 scouts.
But if you are going archers (foot/Cavalry), the food savings are not being utilised properly.
They aren’t being used to the maximum. But because you will almost always need food for teching, and the inevitable aging, nevermind vil production. Any food gained/saved is always worthwhile unless you’re doing an all in that doesn’t use food.
And even then most all ins only happen in castle age. So the food saved is always always beneficial until then (as opposed to the other examples you made, like poor magyar going archers)
Not that it really matters since we get the idea, its only 10% Discount in DA so the saving is less.
Yes, Indian economy is sick, you use 160 food for 4tc booming, while other civs use 200 or 150 for 3tc , but their tech tree and bonuses make the civ so awkward and boring to play.
Camels can’t replace Knights-line properly. People don’t pick Indians because they are trash against the popular Aztecs, Mayans and Incas and Goths. They are also bad vs Archer civs.
I still don’t get why Forgotten Empires made this civ like that, this was the 3rd Arbalest+Camel civ after Byz and Saracens. Camel+Infantry would have been much better, considering we don’t one out of 37 civs. Indians will be a mess forever, unless they get major changes.
I personally don’t play them much because I don’t really understand them.The civ seems to have incoherent bonuses and I just can’t figure out what to do with them. I think they’d be more popular with new players like myself if there was a clear civ strength/play. Also, camels are really underwhelming as a main fighting force.
Sidenote: The Elephant Archer also seems like a terrible unique unit. Takes bonus damage from skirms, too slow to get away from halbs, its size makes it vulnerable to cannon and onager shots, and it’s much weaker than the Khmer Ballista Elephant, while only being 10g cheaper.
1 on 1, no. The higher attack and HP alone win the battle for Cavalry Archers. The mobility is something which cannot be quantified and so is the range disadvantage.
Unlike you might expect, Elephant archers are much better against Onagers and Bombard Cannons.
Consider the regular case of Arbalesters against Goth Onagers (just because Goth Onagers lack SE). Both have the same range. Goth Onagers still have the potential because the attack of Onager is good enough to kill low HP Arbalesters and the Blast Radius is such that a group of Arbalesters usually get caught in the fire.
Now with Elephant archers, it is different. The have a much greater HP. Also an onager shot will affect 3 units mostly because of the tankier size.
It is actually the same idea why onagers are terrible against warships, because they are big enough that only 2 or 3 are caught in the attack.
Bombard Cannons are like Mangonels (40 attack) with a much greater range but much smaller blast radius. They even have an attack bonus against ships.