Ideas to help Bengalis against Skirmishers

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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Hi everyone. Marry Christmas!

As the title says, as far as I know, people think the most fatal weakness of the Bengalis at present is their difficulty in resisting Skirmishers.

An idea that came to mind a while ago (about two weeks ago) was:

  • Lose Light Cavalry, but +3/+3 armor in Castle Age not only benefits Monks but also Scout Cavalry.

On the one hand, the extra armor helps the Bengalis against Skirmishers, on the other hand, the loss of Light Cavalry not only for the balance but also reflects the historical lack of horse cavalry strength of the Bengalis. But that would also make it stronger than the Teutons’ Scout Cavalry, which makes me hesitate if that’s appropriate.

I started thinking of other ideas:

  • Ratha’s base rate of fire gets faster, as a buff to the unit itself.
  • Elephant units fire faster as a new civ bonus.
  • Castle Age UT no longer provides faster rate of fire.
  • The extra resistance of elephant units is no longer a civ bonus, but a new effect of the UT.
  • The UT will also provide additional resistance to Ratha.

Basically those switch that civilization bonus and the effect of Castle Age UT.
Ratha can gain better resistance by spending resources, which I hope can help Ratha become a more decent UU to face Skirmishers.

I do not guarantee that these ideas are suitable suggestions, so I call them ideas rather than suggestions. Sharing it out, just to see what people thinks.

Btw, another idea a while ago was to give Archer line and EA line +10% speed (from the game starts or from Castle Age, or +5%/+10% in Castle/Imperial Age) for the Dravidians to offset the lack of Husbandry and make their Archers a power with an advantage. Not sure if it’s a good idea either.

greeting.

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Merry Christmas to you too!

+3/+3 for free is much bigger than Light cav upgrade. Outside of killing skirmishers, those scouts will just kill all ranged units, dive under the tc and kill villagers, cause enormous idle time. So I don’t think +3/+3 is a good idea.
Probably the old Indian bonus of +1 p.armor and +2 p.armor for all cavalry units (including melee ratha) and plate barding removed might be a better option for early and mid castle age.
For the later stages, I think simply reducing Ratha’s bonus damage from skirms in melee mode would make them a usable unit.

This is a good idea. If any civ were to have a speed bonus on archer line, this would be the most appropriate one. I’d still prefer a rework of their unique unit and their infantry play but sure this would be a nice useful buff too.

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Hi & merry chrismas !

I think you must be mistaken about Bengalid strugling against skirms, as they got their own skirms + BL light cav + scorpions + mangonels. And Bengalis outscale economically most civs from castle age to mid imperial thanks to the free villagers…

I guess you are refering to the skirm + knight combo ?

In this case +3/+3 scouts wont help much, it looks even worse than light cav with armor upgrade against skirms (one damage/ skirm hit), and I don’t think you want to pump scouts against knights…

Elephant boosts shouldnt help either.

I don’t play Bengalis so I dont know how much helo they need, but if I had to buff them against skirms+knights, I would rather do something with their xbows (resist bonus damage? bonus PA? cheaper range upgrades ?) or siege (cheaper scorpions ?)

Btw, with the Bengalis monk armor, is skirm+monk a thing against skirms+knights ? skirms now need 20 to 40 (without bodkin arrow) to kill a Bengalis monk.

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It is a coincidence that I was about to open a thread for Bengalis and you just made one. Guess I’ll put my proposal here instead of having 2 threads for the same topic at the same time.

What about Ratha loses “Archer” armor class but keeps “Cavalry Archer” armor class?

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Or, don’t make ratha a cav unit. Make them weak to skirms, but not to pikes (or vice-versa)

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Bengalis can already make Light Cavs to fight Skirmishers which have FU in Castle and Imperial Age excepting Hussar.

If they absolutely must have an answer to Skirmishers, and FU Light Cavs isn’t enough (you only need a few if the opponent is going FULL Skirms else if you see Knights you should be adding your own EA/Monks etc.), give them +2 bonus vs Skirmishers as a civ bonus for Stable units.

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Hello. Marry Christmas!

Bengalis should be Okay against dealing with skirms. It is non of the issue as long as it have access to FU light cav. Bengalis are much better in dealing with skirms than civ such as Ethiopians & Koreans. They forced to use expensive seige to deal with skirms because their light cav can’t tank skirm fire.

The issues is more of weakness vs halb. Ratha’s bonus damage vs halb can be buffed. But Ratha’s other stat no need to buff. Bengalis are now very strong civ in closed map right now. Watch Grand melee final game.

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Problem is there is no “Skirmisher” armor class. And I don’t see devs creating that only for 1 civ.

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So your idea for helping Bengalis agianst skirms is to give them scout cav that excels at raiding and agianst archer. take two hits from Halbs and deals 2 less damage to Skirms while taking 30 less hits. Or you could just give Ratha’s the 25% BD resistance.

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I think the devs will tend to allow the stats of the two modes different only in the way they attack, since it is intuitive, even though it’s technically possible to have one of the modes to gain higher armor.

It might work to have the elite melee Ratha have this attack bonus.

Maybe it is indeed a misunderstanding, what I understand is their main units, such as Crossbowmen, EA, Ratha, are almost all countered by Skirmishers.
They can only rely on the economic lead and use ordinary ways (Skirmishers, Mangonels, etc.) to counter the enemy Skirmishers. But sometimes the economic lead is a very unstable advantage. For example, there were some people having reported that the advantage of extra Villagers is not obvious until the late game.

Using Monks against Skirmishers doesn’t feel cost-effective, even though their Monks are hard to kill. Of course, if the opponent is also using cavalry or siege weapons at the same time, converting those units to attack Skirmishers is an effective way.

Welcome.

I am not sure. There does not seem to be such a unit so far.
As far as I remember, all units that use the Blacksmith Archer armor techs have the Archer armor class.

This got me thinking that ideally, the melee Ratha should be as pure cavalry, and the ranged Ratha should be as cavalry archer. It is a problem with this that two modes cannot share the same armor techs, which brings me back to an idea I came up with a long time ago, which is to have archers and cavalry share the same armor tech line.

Seems like too much. I wish they could not have such a hard problem with Skirmishers, but I also don’t want Skirmishers to be no longer a weakness at all for them.
Perhaps this +2 bonus could be part of Elite Ratha, like suggested above.

How about Elite melee Ratha +2 attack against archers? I guess it is fine.

The recent changes to Parthian Tactics should improve this issue?

My ideas of switching the Castle Age UT effect and the civ bonus does just this.

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Don’t have Bengalis access to Onagers?
And also really strong Battle eles?

I don’t see skirms as the major weakness of that civ.
The biggest weakness are actually camels as they counter almost everything bengalis want to make and have that mobility Bengalis can’t really deal with.

But Knights also work on open Maps.

In General, Bengalis weakness is like that of Dravidians just that mobility aspect.

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I guess you’re right. Though opposite is not true. Mameluke used to be an Archer until recently.
Also Ratha can be given +100 armor to Archer class instead of removing it totally.

A civ bonus?

recent change didn’t affect any Bengalis unit.

Neither is accessible in Castle Age 1v1.

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I hope too that Urumi can be a clear functional UU with a simple mechanic to solve some of the shortcomings of the civ, rather than a purely strong infantry.

For example, the melee attack of Urumi can be changed to have no charge, the damage value is x but it is always trample damage and can cause y attacks at a time, that is, the attack on the stats is displayed as “x (y)”.
(In a way, it’s like being able to fire multiple arrows, but it’s a melee unit.)

This makes it do (x - z) * y damage when attacking an unit with z melee armor.
This should give it a significant advantage against units with low melee armor such as siege weapons.

Monks. And Pikes if needed.
I think the Bengalis are decent enough to deal with the cavalry.

I guess these civs were never intended to be excellent mobility civs from the start.
This is acceptable as long as their slow push is of sufficient force.
Additionally, it’s possible for the Ratha to be a useful mobile unit as long as it gets the buff.

Yep. As I recall, this was originally an idea I got from a discussion with you.

Really? I thought PT would give CA +2 against Spearmen, and then give special CAs like EA and Ratha an extra +2 more (become +4 in total) against Spearmen.

But honestly, I thought they were not that afraid of Spearmen, especially in the late game with enough economy to accumulate enough EA and Ratha and spawn Skirmishers.

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It gives everyone except Genitour +2 now. Previously it used to give +4 to generic CA.

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If we talk about “main units”, then Britons, Ethiopians, Jpanese, Mayans, Vietnamese and civs with incentive to go for archers/xbows are in similar position. And Franks, Berbers, Magyars, Bulgarians and civs with incentives to go for scouts/knights are in a similar position wrt pikes.

Civs do not “have to” go to their main unit, you wont spam xbows as an archer civ against a goth opponent who finished a castle. Otherwise, you should specify the opponent civ (Koreans ? Byzantines ?), as there are not many civs who use skirms as a go-to unit, and you shouldnt assume you need to use your go-to units but your oppinent does not need to.

That’s why I thought you meant the skirms/knight combo, that is hard to defend against without good knights or camels.

If “late in the game” means 15 to 20 minutes, I agree. If it means late castle age onward, I disagree. At 20 minutes the 2 vils should have gathered 550 wood, it is better than Teutons eco.

Bengalis vil bonus is great and only has 2 drawbacks:

  • it kicks in late feudal (like teutons, vikings, malays, …), so your opponent may have damaged you already.
  • Bengalis got no knight/camel/sRiders to overpower your opponent in castle age with your (in most cases) better eco.

Sorry, this was meant as a counter to knights, assuming you were talking about the skirm/knight combo and not a full skirm composition.

I was thinking that in a regular skirm/knight combo, the skirms can take care of the opponent monks easily, but not against Bengalis monks, and Bengalis monks should have enough time for knight conversion before dying.

Yeah, if this can be implemented, it would be nice. Not sure how much it can be abused though…

I think Bengalis doesnt need buffs except maybe tweaks to Rhatas (damage reduction, cost, armor classes, idk). On the other hand, Dravidians are in big trouble against knight/skirms because of way worse eco and monks…

This sounds interesting. But the main question before the tweak is to decide (or say explicitely) which units the Urumi should be strong against, and which units it should be weak against. Dravidians mid game may be solved if urumis were (to some extend) good against knights

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This means that a combination of at least 2 types of unit is required to deal with Ratha. If only one type of unit is relied on, a sufficient quantity is needed.

While having x (y) trample damage, it might have decent (maybe 1 or 2) melee armor, 0 pierce armor, a little high running speed, and a slow rate of fire to wield a blade like a whip. Also consider giving it an attack bonus if needed.

Although it really still depends on the cost and the amount of x and y, I guess this should make them great against siege weapons. Once in sufficient numbers, should be able to hold up decently against Knights. It is very easy to be melted by the archers, but once close, it can melt the archers conversely. Facing high melee armor or units that are countered, such as Teutonic Knights or Samurais, will obviously tend to be at a disadvantage, but the UT may reverse this shortcoming.

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I had proposed the same in one of the earlier threads about Dravidians. If they lack cavalry mobility, it is best made up by mobility of ranged units. Archer Speed boost of 10/15/20 percent in feudal/castle/imp ages calculates to 1.055/1.1/1.15. The bonus is not OP for a civ with no unit discounts. They will still be slower than hard counters like cavalry, eagles and ghulam. They will not be better than specialist archers like plumed archers. So the hard counters will still work and with the correct counters they can be overcome.

Instead of slow light cav, they can be used as a good raiding substitute for Dravidians in imperial age as well. The food carry capacity bonus or faster firing skirms can obviously be exchanged for this. This will also make them a very good rush civ with a very unique playstyle.

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25% less bonus damage will mean 1 damage less from skirms. A 50% less bonus damage will be appropriate. The elephants sharing the civ bonus will mean that Bengalis can do a slow elephant + Ratha push in castle age with a solid eco behind it.

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1.5 E-Skirms have extra bonus damage vs Ca. Also do Ratha’s really need 50% percent to viable? CA still have a solid niche despite taking full BD and not having a melee option against skirms.

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I don’t see that colported weakness vs Skirmishers in that Chart.

For example Dravidians is one of the best Matchups for the Bengalis.

BTW thx for @coolios9876 for providing the stats on ageofstatistics.com . I hope you will find new ways to collect data in the future.

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