Gendarme spam wins over sepoy alone due to train time, France can maintain 120 pop, and India trains too slow. Adding in Howdas with sepoy though, does counter gendarme spam. ( in legacy Gend spam works on many counter units BTW)
A army of 100 sepoy vs 120 pop of Gends the sepoy should win.
The ones saying Urumi take too long are correct, but I still use them in legacy, they are worth the time and pop issues that they can create, if you use India to fight more in waves rather than trying to hold a line like a Euro civ. That is why I advocate for the buff to come to make Urumi arrive faster, use small buffs that do not change the nature of the civ rather than total reworks… giving them cannons, or different export options.
Mansabars got a HUGE buff with population reduction, no one wants that type of unit poping out of castles. Japan has to deal with the same with its Dymos, Natives to get explorers back, etc…
I will grant you the point about the masabdars. But attacking in waves is only possible if there is a fall back base when the enemy is swarming your front base. That means more wood expenditure which means wood crates which will block access to urumis.
As far as I can see there are 3 key issues which we all are identifying:
-slow train times
-No late game eco buffs
-No proper access to artillery
by attacking in waves, I do not mean retreating that much, its asubtle thing.
India really needs to fight at its barracks, and only draw back to keep near them, so that they rejoin the newly popped units instead of the opposite where new units join the front lines. With a giant mahout and urumi pop, clears some space and it can inch forward with more barracks.
The only train times other than urumi shipments that could be messed with are for Camels. Which are very poor to use in Tr, but if they could be a 1 spammable unit for tough situations that would be a good thing. I still would not devote any card space to buffing camels, but in times of low pop that is what needs to be done I would train some. This is what I use the Taj mahal for. To rebuild an army in a bad situation.
Karni mata needs to back to how it was.
They do not need artillery. They have options at the consulate. do you ever increase the consulate gather rate? perhaps to train cannon batches only, to get a better value to decrease the cost of the units that come with them.
Daymios ride horses plus Japan has GP for speed bonus IF they want (the option is there), natives rescue is free while lakotas ride a horse too.
This units can wait back on the battlefield but Mansabdars have to go to figth to boost units of their same kind (only 1 kind of unit, despite WC and daymios) while cost twice. At least they could be trained instantly.
Its a fact that far from their base indians lost a lot of potential cause mansabdars. Its not the same for japanese that retrain daymios constantly reaching the battlefield in seconds (+train unigs +shipments), but who cares.
No I find India especially food and sometimes wood starved to ever try to devote any extra resources to the consulate. And I don’t think consulate armies can be made cheaper. they can be made to arrive faster sure which again I have found to be a waste because in a tr 40 match at most you may use the consulate armies 4-5 times if lucky.
I still find it absurd that India has no proper access to canons when historical accuracy would dictate them having great bombard style artillery as their cornerstone .
They dont need artillery but they have to get it from consulate?? They need it or dont?, cause in one sentence you have 2 points of view.
Exportation is useless in treaty cause you cant relie on it unlike influence. Indians should have a bonus on exportation rate (a bit):
chinese get faster shipments from there.
Japanese have the strongest unit and a lot of export (who thought that it was a good idea??).
India could have better gather cause it was the British jewel of the crown.
To be fair the game’s time period is supposed to be set in the time period which precedes India becoming a colony of the British Empire(technically large swathes of the subcontinent were the property of the East India Company in the final phases of that time period). So I can see why no export buffs are given.
But then why are India’s native canons not in the game? What is this strange selective reasoning.
We have HC cards as Royal green jackects, British East India Company and Sepoy revolt. Also there were a big producers of tea and this way each asian has a bonus related with consulate, extra gurkhas are a shame.
Also, and I dont know why people dont think the same, Indian consulate is useless for treaty/long games. They dont have any upgrade or long term benefict, just 4 villagers (at leats now they can be retrained).
It seems like you use urumi as if they were stand alone independent units. You have to use them more like they are cannon. They need cover and support from other units.
Is the speed buff from the wonder really worth it to bring a dymo to the front lines faster than the benefit of buffed troops? I think not.
Do natives really get a free Hero revive when it takes 25 villagers several seconds to produce? and also then inhibits some strength they need? No. it has a cost to it. And justification of speed does not equate for Iros, that get unit buffs, and Aztec that have a strong hero unit and gets more XP, which enables more coin shipments.
Waiting this, I said that option is there. Also O have seen players use it to boost samurais to reach melee.
Villagers are going to be there with WC dead or alived. They spend less than 5 seconds to rescue, meaningless.
Also they boost every unit unlike Mansabdars.
this is a game, and while India does not train such things naturally like cannon, is made in a way to balance the civ.
Even Euro civs experience this missing certain units like musketeers, and others for certain civs. It may seem absurd for many other things too. You can still get them though. 4-5 times is 15 cannon and that is not bad, with 60% increase could get about 23 (if using the brits) for nearly free!
What time do you fur trade at? I think people get too greedy with it. I trade with 5 minutes (arrives at 5 minutes) to build up food so that I can delete down 20 vils after my start army gets to 200 pop. If you trade early enough this is fine, but if you wait for like 3 mins or less, cant do it. It works if you micro well and can get good kill ratios with Indias strong units.
Consulate armies are already a great deal (about half the cost) so yeah not much cheaper can they be made.
25 vils for 5 sec, plus the switch over time is still like 150 resources worth of gather time, and what it does is weaken your troops, or cause you to get a little under popped as units train way too slow… so you lose more units thus the cost is in that. balancing native firepits are another issue though.
I don’t bother with fur trade as gold is never an issue as far as I have experienced with India. Food always is.
And what balance reasons are there again for not giving access to artillery for India. Why should India rely on the consulate for that if India does not rely on the consulate for anything else. No eco or military upgrades comes from the consulate for India(except 4 more villagers).
All the other Asian civs have competent enough artillery of their own why make India the exception.
That is just how India was designed… with high value unit pop space efficiency, so that if a euro civ does not use cannon they lose to that kind of strength. So it makes India have to overcompensate to counter cannon, that is part of the balance. They also have their own bonuses, not needing to spend that export on other techs is its own bonus because that export can be spent on units and India is strong with out them… though they should never have messed with the Karni mata so now maybe they would. ( just better to fix Karni)
Not fur trading is questionable… coin is a slow gathering resource for them but fur trade turns their fastest into even more, so it really does add a lot to the civ. Overall you will not be able to produce as many units buying them that way. You will be spending long times to gather the same amount of coin, that would other wise be lots more food for you, is possibly why you seem to run out.
India is also no exception, Siege eles are under rated, thier mobility and health enables them to do things other cannons can not. And now flail eles are better per resource and pop space than mahouts! Seeing how good they are now is sad in so many ways.
India’s infantry is no where near that powerful that it can counter other good infantry civs(which again have access to artillery of their own). Their elephants are powerful but very population inefficient and very expensive so are again meant to be used sparingly. Their buffs are not strong enough to make up the difference. Their eco isn’t great enough to withstand a long bruising engagement for long. They are the literal jack of all trades master of none.
Chinese and Japanese have their own bonus and can train (better) units too, what kind of argument is that??
Getting canons from the consulate is not an Indian bonus, at least they could be as Japanese isiolationism, training units 1 by 1
you don’t use urumi… so… how can you say India has no special infantry bonus? before Sweden, India has one of the best musketeers (other than Ashi) and Gurka.
Pair the urumi and mahouts together and they will slaughter infantry faster than cannon will.