As you have witnessed during all this time all team games are about indians and khmer, devs lately nerfed battle elephants which was good, but Imperial Camel is just too dominant, every single team game has indians as pkt, that is really boring because you are forced to pick indians, the problem is not the civ but the imperial camel.
I know the goal of the devs is to make all civs playable, but right now there is not other mounted unit capable of fight or defend well vs imperial camel, in 1x1 it can be countered with halbs, yeah good but in team games they are unstoppable with few xbows or arbs, paladin civs stand no chance vs them, heavy camel already destroys paladin line, the imperial camel is just too OP, less training time, more attack and more HP and pierce armor.
The imperial camel is so OP that the other camel civs have no room in the current meta, that should be changed ASAP.
The alternative would be to give indians battle elephant(non elite) so you can nerf the imperial camel without weakening the civ.
Imperial camel should have less 1 attack(8 total), 21 seconds training time, and instead of +9 vs camel only +8, same with the bonus vs cavalry instead of 18 just 17, also +6 instead of +7 vs mamelukes, that way the imperial camel would still winning vs other camels and cavalry but it wouldn’t be so strong vs other units.
Cheap villagers with a dominant unit of 55 food 60 gold is a really bad combination, please nerf imperial camel so we can use other civs in team games.
Your knowledge is good man, but the stats says the opposite, look at aoe2.net 2k+ games have always an indian player, if a civ is being picked all the time, there is clearly something wrong, i’d rather to stick to facts than personal beliefs.
As the OG said, to compensate Indians get non elite battle Elefants. Helps out on castle since they lack knights and it is also a popular demand for years!
Indians still have other strong imp options and they would still have the best or second best camels.
Indians got the highest team game winrste (all elo), so a nerf is justified by statistics as well.
I think it’s a stretch to say other camel civs have no place in team games. Malians are a beastly team game civ because they’re great as a flank or pocket and have incredible damage output on their camels. Me and friend played a team game once where i basically died but it was a 2v2 between my other 2 living team mates, japanese and malians. Other team was Franks Britons. I raided and sniped enemy siege and supported malian front with onagers and watched as Farimba camels ate up frank paladins and mixed numbers of longbows like crackers. This was back in HD when the pathing was good. Saracens and Malians are both infinitely more flexible than Indians, and are the only ones to hold a candle to Imperial camel with farimba and zealotry. Given the fact that Indians have no heavy cavalry at all, I’m fine with the imperial camel being as tanky as it is; they take a long time to get in to, after all, and are a post-imp upgrade.
Imperial Camels trade the best out of any camels in the game, but the game isn’t about one on one fights. If you can’t out-produce them, start making something else and divert their camel armies attention by raiding them to give time for that.
But if I had to nerf them, I’d dial their attack bonus against buildings back. It seems a bit gratuitous to be able to whack down town centers and swarm castles without needing to wait for siege (of course you can do this with cavalier too but it’s more expensive and takes longer since cavalier don’t have a bonus vs buildings lol)
Imperial Camel is just a stronger paladin but with the purpose of being a paladin killer. Against paladin civs they are strong, against non paladin civs they are not.
I am happy to have a good counter to braindead paladin civs. Heavy camels and even halberdiers are not particularly good counters in imperial age to paladins once they are fully upgraded.
Imperial camels are also countered by cavalry archers and good micro.
Edit: remember that there are civs who can make their paladins better e.g lithuanians with up to +4 attack from relics, or Frank’s who produce them faster, or cumans whose paladins move faster.
Only one civ has imperial camels, and they dont get any further improvements.
Your post could apply just as equally to paladins. If imperial camels are nerfed, then you would be complaining about paladins.
**My suggestion is to give imperial camels to other civs where it makes sense, and then increase halberdier damage against camels whilst decreasing halberdier damage against cavalry. So it would be like rock paper scissors, like so (these figures are completely made up and just to illustrate the point):
Halberdiers = +4 damage to cavalry, extra +3 damage to camel units for total +7 extra damage to camel units
Imperial Camels = stay the same, but are given to more civs, so there are more counters to paladins and more variety of civs played in pocket
That is not true, every Khmer player sucks because the enemy knows you will go for elephants and they die fast against Halbs, Probleme they cannot run away like cavalry usually did.
Seriously, how can you think that giving a civ a unit that they won’t be able to upgrade and for which they have no bonus will be a compensation for nerfing their best unit. You won’t be able to mass your eles fast enough in castle for them to be useful and once in late-game you will just get stuck with the worse eles in the game.
Since many camel civs already have bonuses for them, it’s limiting the options to make the imp upgrade more widespread and even among those who don’t have a bonus it wouldn’t feel too good: Ethiopian ones are too bad to be worth upgrading, Mongol and Chinese ones would make 0 sense, Tatars/Turks ones barely make more, and Persian already have palas.
Wouldn’t the improved stats of the Imperial Camel be enough to make other civs’ lacklustre heavy camels worth producing once upgraded to Imperial Camels?