Imperial Camels - Why not make them generally available?

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
21

When not considering game balance I like the idea of different civs having more unique units/buildings/techs.

Krepost is nice.

22

I counted the number of units get the camel, which is 12. The Cumen is the first nation to get camels, but not heavy camels. I think it is an easy mistake to make, especially when information is coming from a suspect and bias source, such as you have proven to be.

23

I said “11 heavy camels civs”. Of course it didn’t include Cuman.

Feel free to check whatever I says on the wiki. It’s on their tech tree part and emphaziced both in the strategy and trivia section.

24

Yes, the only nation to have Camels and not Heavy Camels. It was a mistake because I was counting camels, and you were providing information on only heavy camels.

I think I mentioned that in my response.

Not sure why you cut out that section, but once again, here is the full section.

Once again, I mentioned exactly why I made the mistake, which you cut out and then repeated for some reason.

25

It’s because it’s way less relevant than the fact I’m biased according to you isn’t an excuse since you can easily check what I say by yourself (seriously, what’s the use of quoting if it’s to copy the whole post? Of course I have to choose). And it’s a bad justification anyway: literally everyone else noticed it, because there are been tons of vids about the new civs 1 week before release, and if you didn’t watch that, you could easily notice that there is no option to upgrade your camels once you reach the Imp age as Cuman. Exactly how everyone noticed Tatars are the first to get only 1 infantry armor upgrade, or that Bulgarians are the 2nd to lack crossbows.

26

And yet I didnt. I didn’t play Cummens regular because of their broken status, and because no other nation has camels but is missing heavy camels

Which means, like Cavalier and Paladin, there are stages to Camel, and why it’s okay for a small subset of nations to have Imperial Camels, just like it’s okay for a small subset of nations to have Cavalier and Paladin, but not all nations that have Cavalier to have paladins.

And there are nations like the Celts, that have Paladins, but are missing a lot of other things.

27

So you didn’t bother to understand the whole picture? Also, Tatars were broken too, and I bet you knew about their infantry, right?

Let’s say it again: Imperial camel isn’t different enough from Zealotry, Farimba or Maghrabi+discount for being promoted to a special status. If Imperial camel had the same effect but was just a UU at the castle, that it didn’t renamed Heavy camels, and that instead of Shatagni Indian had Imperial hand cannoneers at the archery range, you would be defending giving Imp HC to Portuguese, Spanish and Turks.

28

Let’s say it was just an upgrade like Paladin and available to only a small subset of units.

29

It’s not done yet as far as I know? Also, it won’t change the fact stacking say, Farimba and Imp camels is as dumb as stacking Zealotry and Maghrabi camels. All the camels civs, as far as I know, are balanced, unique and fun to play (besides Indian on fish maps, and it’s only because of an unrelated bonus). Why would you mess with all this just so that more civs get a fancy name on their camels?

30

I wonder what do you get by opposing EVERY new idea on the forums?
unit queue
new unit stances
imperial camel changes
other balance proposals
everything

You opposed auto scout to the very end. But after it was implemented, you completely changed your mind!

1 Like
31

I hope not
 UU’s should be unique


32

Battle Elephants are not unique units(UU). They are regional units available to 4 civs. I don’t see a problem in making them available to Indians as well.

2 Likes
33

Imperial Camels are part of what give the Indians civilization such a distinct identity. Even though I could imagine the Saracens and Berbers getting the upgrade as well, I don’t mind the unit being exclusive to the Indians.

5 Likes
34

Hey ma’am, are you from the Age team? When I first played Indians, I thought it was unfair for them! Indians in Middle Ages, or in the time of Prithviraj
 Were Hindus (got fixed with the architecture set), didn’t use camels, didn’t have gunpowder. We were mostly elephants, monks and infantry civ wrt the tech tree. Much as what Burmese are reflected, swapping the Arambai to the Elephant Archer mostly. I guess it is too late to change the entire playstyle of this civ.

4 Likes
35

I was never a fan of Imperial Camels being Indian only unit. Let’s be real here. India was Elephant focused civilization in RL. On top of that India was divided into more civilization compared to now. It’s possible to make a DLC just focusing on Indian subcontinent.
Indians can recieve Battle Elephant instead. It won’t be that broken and top of that Elephants got nerfed heavily. Mongols got Steppe Lancer with serious bonus kicking in. Why not just give Battle Elephant to them?
Now back to Imperial Camel I think the next civ that deserves most is Turks. They got the worst trash unit line in the game. Imperial Camel will be more helpful to fill the anti-cavalry role. It will help them a lot.

2 Likes
36

I feel like Ele Archer should’ve been more of a Archery Range unit than a UU. Instead they could’ve gotten Gun Mahout(Elephant Gunner)

1 Like
37

Berbers and Saracens got strong bonus for Camels tho. 160+30=190 HP Camel. Berbers with Regen and Cheap Camel.
I feel like Turks is the better candidate for that.

38

Turks could get Imperial camel. I like the idea. Don’t get me wrong, historically, berbers and Saracens would make more sense, but they already have their ut, and thus they would be OP

3 Likes
39

Welp, technically I don’t get anything more than anyone else from getting involved here, but there is still much to discuss, so let’s do a little breakdown

Because it’s much more likely to be a bad addition than a good addition

Welp, more specifically it was “raiding stance”. Allowing units to chase villagers by themselves is NOT okay. Some other might be fine after all. Razing stance might be acceptable, for instance, because a unit that focuses buildings is super easy to kill anyway.

Short answer: because you don’t throw all the balance out of the window just so that more factions get fancy reskinned camels. Especially when their camels are perfectly fine and really good already, and even more especially when the game is at last close to have all of its civs balanced close enough to each other.

I never opposed the idea of Vietnamese eco upgrades costing no wood. Nor do I oppose the popular buff idea to goths of making their housing bonus +10% instead of +10.

I kept repeating that auto-scouting would be just a dumb AI making a much worse job than manual scouting, and that there was no need to worry about it becoming the best option. I did change my mind tho: now I think it’s a VERY dumb AI.

40

I see two problems with imperial camels and indian in general.

  1. Their team bonus giving camel attack bonus vs building doesn’t work with most other civs. At the latest patch, out of 35 civs, only 10 other civs have camel in their tech tree. Take out byzantine, Ethiopian, and mongols which lacks blood line or final armor upgrade or both, the bonus doesn’t work for them anymore as their camels won’t last as long under defensive arrows. So, this bonus can realistically benefits only 7 out of 35 civs (only 20%). Team bonus should be something that can benefit majority of the civs.
  2. Many other players are complaining Elephants archers are very situational and are not as useful in reality and that indian should have battle elephants for historical accuracy.

To conclude, imperial camel is formidable only with other indian camel bonuses. Even if given to other civs, some of them may not even use it as they have other better alternatives that can perform the functions well. (Think of other civs that has camel, ethopian, mongols - better seige to take down buildings, byzentines, malians - cheaper or more armored harbaldiers to counter cavalry etc. No doubt, some will benefit greatly and become OP, Berbers, Saracans, Tartars, turks)

For these reasons, I would like to propose the following change.

  1. Give battle elephants to indian, remove camel +1P armor bonus and make fishing bonus as team bonus. This way, instead of camels raiding the towns, Indian get elephants which are designed to resist archer fire and take down buildings. They can still have imperial camels but they are now reduced to just cavalry counter and no longer OP as heavy cavalry, raiders + building attack. On top of that, they get a team bonus that works for all civ on maps that has shore fish.
  2. To differentiate from other Rise of Raja civs, make elephant units attack 33% faster for Indian. In this way, elephants archers will get a buff simultaneously.
  3. To balance their elephant advantage, remove Hussars from tech tree. They already have 3 eco bonus, 1. fishing bonus, 2. villagers discount, 3. gold production +10% and 2 other trash units in herbaldiers and skirmishers. This way, not only they will be losing a late game trash unit, their faster attacking elephants will become more susceptible to monks overall. Not only that, they will no longer be able to use their potent hussar + cavalry archer combo and thus will encourage more towards elephant + elephant archer + handcannoner combo instead.

If further balance is needed, we can always change the price of unique techs and price of elephant archer.

1 Like