How would you buff the Indians?

Their elephant archers +1-3 attack, +20-40 HP,
and +1/1 armor
Increased power over range

Quality over quantity, price remains the same or increased by a small margin. They’re weak to conversion and seem lackluster in some regards.

I personally think that they complicated things for Indians with this upgrade.

Their cavalry is weaker now in melee, which balance things for the late team games, but for 1v1, I don’t think that we can fix them now.

Their main weakness is that they lack both the full cavalry line and the arb upgrade, depriving them of the 2 main line of units.

They don’t really have other options, camels don’t work every time, and you can’t buff them too much (because of TG…), so most times you resolve to light cav (which now have a temporary +1PA) and skirms.

HC comes in too late, and EA aren’t a viable units (they could get +1 range though…) and Indians will never see BE.

So onestly, I don’t see a way to buff them without touching the latest patch. They can be decent in mid game, but they lack a final powerful unit to kill the opponent in the end (no arbs, no cavalier and nerfed IC and hussars).

This is definitely too much, but even if they would get this, their prohibitive cost, slowness, and the need to train the from castles wouldn’t make them the solution that the indians need.

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  • all of indians special units elephant archer, camel rider, hand cannoneer need food and gold…
  • indians are very very weak against infantry rush civs, (spears/huskarl/eagles in particular)
  • elephant archer and hand cannonears arrive very late after upgrades.

i believe the solution is to add arbalests so as to give them an option to use their wood resource on archer line so to counter infantry early while keeping it meaningful in the late game as well. still no solution to huskarl/eagle rush though.

That would be very positive. Another option is giving them knights, or giving camels a bonus vs infantry.

Like as civ bonus, camels get +2 or similar vs infantry. This way they are nerfed vs paladins with respect to the old Indians (-1MA, useful for TG) but they do not melt to infantry. Overall, a camel with this bonus should perform similar to knights vs infantry, worse vs archers and ofc better vs cavalry

Vs archers Indians are still decent, with CAs, FU skyrms and top eco…

Ok a lot of people suggest (and with good reasons) to give them arbs to fix them.

What if instead the HCA would fill the role of their powerful late game unit, aimed at closing the game.

I know that CA aren’t good because of their frame delay, but HCA are good in the late game as your main units, and Indians get HCA FU.

So instead of giving them arbs, I would give them a bonus to make HCA more accessible for them, my idea is HCA upgrade cost is 50% cheaper, so from 900f and 500g to 450f and 250g, almost at the level of the arbs upgrade, but with all the advantages of being a HCA.

If this is too little, it could be added partian tactics too at half the price, so another 100f and 125g saved.

This could give the Indians a smooth transition from a castle age made of light cav and camels to HCA, for a mobile and flexible composition.

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Very simple. Knights + arbs

Arbalests would be all they need…

Arbalest is very good 1v1, quite useless if you are pocket in tg and you still have the best paladin killer

Knights would not do it, and it would also break the unique aspect of being the only civ that has Stables, but no Knights.

Indians will need help in Imperial Age, not Castle Age, where they would just spam Knights due to their Boom, and just become the new Huns.

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If Indians really turn out so under powered in 1v1 imp that further tinkering is needed, than giving them back arabalest which they once had back seems to be the most logical solution.

Non battle Elefants could buff them in castle age to allow a all in type of malay Strategie, also in 1v1.

And elite battle Elefants could buff their imperial age in a balanced way, since they would lack 1 meele armor, not sure about monk techs thought.

Giving Indians knights is the worst solution in my opinion. Don’t want just another xbos and knights civ. Compeltely destroy all their unique appeal.

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Having a cheaper HCA and PA upgrades could help them, they wouldn’t be better than other civs, but they would become more accessible in 1v1, and they wouldn’t be directly influenced by their cheap vills bonus.

True, but it’s a bit boring, my suggestion instead would use a unit that it’s already viable for them, without touching the balance of their tech tree, and touching only the upgrade would buff them mainly on 1v1, it wouldn’t be OP in team games (nothing new at least, since they can use them now…).

On top of that, you could add a +1 range to EA, so that indians would have one more reason to chose EA over HCA in some occasions.

nah, they need something bulk to help against the likes of goths and meso in castle age.

The issue is, they actually gotstronger in the Castle Age, and weaker in Imp.
Indians do not need anything for the Castle Age, they will need a good answer to Huskarls and Eagles.

which is why i said knights. elephants isn’t a good answer to those.

Buffing Hand cannoneers
Hand Canoneer: Cost: 45F 50G -> 40F 50G (Or any other reduction)
Training Time: 34s -> 30s
and Shatagni
Shatagni: +1Range -> +1Range and Attack (and/or accuracy 65%->75%)
Maybe make sultan give 15% or/and that it gives a bigger yield from goldmines (goldminer drops 20G, you get 22/23)
Would definitely prefer if this nerf would be reverted and civs that can counter imperial camels be made more attractive in TG. It could be much more intreresting if the solution was counterpicking.
Such as Byzantines/Italians/Tatars(already got a buff but would like to see cost and t.t. reduced to flaming camel)
Possibly give Eagles more bonus atk vs camels. If you also give Hand canoneers bonus vs Camels it isn’t even difficult to counter-pick Indians.
Sorry for ignoring your one rule on my latter suggestion but whether or not I obey it my suggestion is: Buff Hand Canoneers, Shatagni is a tech that makes them unique so it should be emphasised on.

Easy solution - Extra PA applies to CA and/or HC as well. No need to remove Ring Archer armor or Parthian Tactics.

Complex solution -
TB : Camel rider line +3 attack bonus vs building and siege
UU :

  1. EA cost changed to wood from food.
  2. EA speed increased to 0.9 from 0.8.
  3. EA range increased to 5 (at least for elite)
  4. EA +3,+4 attack bonus vs building and stone defense moved to +2,+3 vs infantry and pikes respectively

UT: Get +1 range for HC free. New UT - All gunpowder units and EA +10%/+15% movement speed.

Adding heavy scorpion could also be considered, especially against Goths (heavy scorpions should be population efficient enough at least).

A crazy idea of mine is hand cannoneers 100% accurate (to static units). They are a “gunpowder civ” after all, and the one imp UT doesn’t quite do its justice imo.

Plus they should not be go-to late game units in team games.

Decreasing the value of the upgrade to Imperial Camel Rider. 1200F, 600G to 800F 600G

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There are people on this forum like MatCauthon3 and ArshiaAghaei who argue Elephant Archers are not at all useless because Viper said “They’re okay guys” one day when he killed with them with 40+ EA in a game against low ELO people.

While all the other pros have clearly said word to word “They are trash” or “Viable only in DM maybe”.

and viper was the one who tested them, while the others just reacted to patch notes. oh. and viper didn’t say “they are okay guys” he said “Seems not to shabby”, “Very impressed by how they performed there”, “i have to say i’m really impressed” “they seem really solid” “i’m really starting to like this unit boys” “right now it feels like they really have a place in the game for late game Indians” while being attacked by cavs, pikes, and arbs.

but go ahead and keep pretending viper said they were only okay.
furthermore keep relying on the word of people who didn’t even use the unit before giving there opinion.

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