Absolutely I do! Glad to see you still playing. I do not play much anymore as legacy is hard to find FFA players on and DE is out of my PC specs.
Thank you for the recognition, Though FFA was a rather small community I was kinda known for my India play.
It was the last civ I learned how to play, I thought it was terrible at first, then I got bored with the rest and tried to figure it out and became my favorite FFA civ. I started with using the Chakrams and War elephants, but soon realized they were just draining my coin and not as effective as their other units (though chakrams good vs some civs like Britis) and could play much longer and better with urumi and saving my coin. At times nearly every unit fighting in melee mode, it really is a melee civ. (tiger, mahout, urumi synergy, then sometimes the sepoy get in on it! when they try to cav spam their way out)
I basically only use the consulate armies to defend my base behind my walls when someone counter attacks, I hardly noticed the lack of cannons. (except for my start army at TR ends I use the British brigade and not the Gendarmes. People expect it less, and harder to counter)
Most people canât win enough. They canât win most of the time somethingâs wrong. They need buffed. Of course they just move up the ladder and still have the same problem and continue to complain about all the things that either hold them back or propel the other guy forward. If you ask me that alone is the games greatest problem. India is not underpowered. Leave it alone! This games biggest problem is itâs fanbase desires it to be tied in increasing and ceaseless knots.
That doesnât make any sense though, they arenât producing anything that could be exported. A plantation for Asians that lets them gather export (in addition to coin) at an increased rate would make way more sense.
The thing is though, if you want to use villagers to produce Export then just switch the consulate over to gather more export but less resources. its effectively the same thing. I basically never see anyone do that, so who would want to gather export at a rice paddy? or new plantation building.
It could be added to the card Gorshaks (spelling?) to make that card more viable (it also supposedly increases gather rates for sacred fields, but in Legacy was bugged to have to be sent in a special order with the tech upgrade at the field. and I am not sure if that was fixed for DE. )
For me I think export is fine as it is, as there are options to get more but people must not find it valuable enough to use them. But if something were to be changed or added I could see that as being a good option.
These is a post on forum that explains the Export , it essentially tells that export is really inefficient, especially for India than other 2 asian civs. Also, After the addition of african civs, and their Ultra high Influence gather rates, and many other changes. Export has really become under whelming and certainly needs an update.
Goraksha ( without context, it translates to, âcow conservationâ ) XP from cows still becomes unusable in long games.
Export has to be an inefficient resource. For the value of the units is much greater.
for 2400 (without the cheaper card) you get 5 falconets, value 2500, and 16 skirms, with the reduced cost card its like 2000 res for all that. If Export were to gather fast it would be really cheap cannons. its why Japan gets the only trade card that gives less export per coin sent.
If anyone really wants more export they can use the built in mechanic to get more. Its not much different than taking vils off a coin or food and having them work on a plantation.
India should not really be a cannon civ anyway. But it would be nice to buy cannons for their cost and not need to send the big armies that give hussars as well. (like china can send 1 heavy cannon)
Xp is always valuable, I just notice though India gets a noticable buff in XP pre TR with that sacred field mechanic, but then Post TR its much more streamlined with other civs since the kill xp comes in way faster.
BTW in legacy when you send that card it cheapens cow cost, but depending the order (i forget) of upgrading the building or sending the card was bugged to not actually give more XP. So you may want to test it out if anyone uses that card, I think you have to make the fields, and upgrade the building before sending the card. I no longer use it in any of my games on legacy. I think I calculated it only got me 1 maybe close to 2 extra shipment by the end of TR. make DE fixed it if someone brought it to their attention. i hope so, it wasnât the worst or best card for me to use. i preferred having extra castles and the HP buff.
Just curious what other kind of trade off would you suggest for gaining more export?
If the trade route gave a really reduced number of export that would be a fair trade off, but since units are like 2/3 the cost at the consulate needs a big nerf to do that.
I was really thinking about this topic this last week and I wanted to put down what I would consider my minimalist list of things to adjust for india that would have minimal affect on current 1v1 balance.
Professional handlers > mahout decreased by 2 population (from 1) . I think most people can probably agree with this. It would greatly improve the unitâs viability in age 5 when everyone is at or near 200 pop. Iâve never known anyone decent with india to use that card 1v1 so likely not controversial
Grazing. Camels trickle food, elephants trickle wood and sacred cows trickle (coin?). this card is so bad, this would give it additional functionality and would buff the civs lategame eco. it shouldnât be terribly relevant to 1v1,except on like, araucania llama spawn- (but india already can get back to back shipments for 14+ min there so thatâs not my balance problem) assuming it would have to affect all livestock, it could just be cows maybe?Also plays into the unique sacred field mechanic.
Jat lancer > 3 pop. ez fix to that unit and makes them almost worth using from the atonement card. almost.
Consulate church. This could be an ottoman consulate Mosque, or the dutch consulate. dutch has lots of effects from the arsenal so it would be risker, adding a Mosque to the otto cons affects india only and would normalize their train time. this would require dropping the riding school lite⢠from âterror chargeâ but would otherwise be hopefully minimally impactful for 1v1. Normalized train times would be very welcome.
Karni aura > act on current rate instead of base rate. this would make the aura much more noticeable on imperial teched vills and much less like 1/3 of an age 1 card. wouldnât drastically change its effects in age 2/3/4
I think the solution is to make export more like influence.
Export is this stuff you collect by chance and takes a long time to get and when your 1 falconet gets destroyed itâs a huge loss.
Asian civs are unbalanced (Both UP and OP at the same time) almost by design. The idea was to have the consulate supplement your armies but the execution of the idea is just awful.
Meanwhile influence is actively gained by maintaining livestock, trading routes and buildings (mountain monestary and university). If you influence is low you can invest in it by making more livestock, building trading routes etcâŚ
Chinese should have their trade card rework by trading food to export and India should get more export per villager (it was the jewel of the crown), japan is fine by having their coin trade.
a big difference is that the african civs require influence for pretty much everything. its not like native units or shipments or mercenaries cost export. i think export is great how it is right now and the already complex macro for india doesnât need another resource to think about. i do think ânative craftsâ needs a rework and maybe even a 500 export shipment age 3 or 800 export age 4 wouldnât be excessive, but truly I dont see a need to fiddle with something that works fairly well
how is it great how it is?..you get it as a waste product.
You canât invest in export, you either have export or you donât. You canât reliably improve it or influence how much you get. Even favour in AOM had more user control behind it.
export is a product of villager count. you invest into it with town centres, a few specific shipments, and the consulate rate toggles. It is meant to behave like xp, not like a food/wood/coin/influence. You can invest into it to a certain degree, but not an unlimited degree-- this is the same with XP. you cannot build an unlimited number of trading posts to farm xp, you cannot build a limitless number of churches to farm xp. It is a passive bonus reflected by your total economic power. Treating it like a normal resource completely destroys the concept of it behaving like a âsecond home cityâ - - which is its intended design.
One spicy idea for lategame would be a shipment that lets you train an additional Mansabdar for each unit type: So 2 Mansabdar Mahouts, 2 Mansabdar Sepoy, etc.
We might need to adjust some stuff (notably Sepoy being RG units), but itâd be a cool risk vs. reward mechanic that relies on you being able to train Mansabdar units from the Charminar Gate.