Depending on the situation and how you look at it, This may be a good bonus for a civ which lacks Knights, or maybe too strong.
“Stable units +1p armor per age” → “Cavalry +1/+1 armor per age”
Cavalry instead of Stable units: For the 1% who plays Battle Royale and for the 50% who are not on the forums but play campaigns. This is useful. It doesn’t impact the regular RM/DM/EW multiplayer or singleplayer games at all. So I don’t see a reason why to avoid it since Indians lack Plate Bard (which affects all cavalry).
+1 melee armor too per age (overlap with Teutons?): Not really. Teuton bonus is for infantry and Knight line, whereas the Indian bonus is for Light Cavalry and Camel lines. Thanks for the almost disjoint tech tree of the two civs. It is like Manipuri Cavalry and Indian team bonus, but for the Civilizations, the units affected are disjoint.
+1 melee armor, why?: Since Plate Bard gives +1 melee armor too, I thought to add that to the existing bonus. Light Cavalry get +1 melee armor to fill in the role of Knights slightly better. The +1 melee armor is not a big deal against camels and pikes. It basically helps against sword infantry and eagles (meso civs) and other light Cavalry units. The Indian camels become one of the best in castle age again, now for a different reason, helping them against other mounted units a lot more and also surviving against infantry. In Imperial age, when they lack Plate Bard, it is a straight +1 melee armor on their cavalry compared to what Saracens have. Their Imperial camel won’t suck and will be better at what it is good at. Previously it was strong against archers which made it difficult to counter, but it is not the case now. The +1 armor on cavalry will still help against meso civs and Goths at surviving; not a huge deal, but something is better than nothing.
What if it is too strong?: +1 melee armor in Feudal, +1p armor in Castle, +1p armor in Imperial. Providing some potential for a better Scouts into Light Cavalry play.
You do realise the devs intentionally reduced the imp camel MA by implementing the change. Wtf would they suddenly do a 180 and give them even more MA?
CA is included under all cavalry… Ffs man and you want to give them +2MA??
Indians are fine now. I think many people still underestimate the EA, so I think there is also a bit room for further improvement.
Not that EA would be OP, but they have very nice situational usage.
My statement doesn’t change the elephant archers at all. What are you guys thinking?
What do you call scale bard, chain bard and plate bard collectively? : cavalry armor upgrades. Read their description. They give cavalry units more armor.
Bloodlines affects Cavalry Archers too. The description says “mounted units”, not cavalry units.
I just say that Indians are balanced right now. They are above average in almost all elo and still very good pocket civ in teamgames.
And I see also some improvement potential in them because many players still have not understood that the EA has good situational usage:
Against archer civs just make a few of them in castle age to buy time for your boom. Their insanely high hp + pierce armor means they take ages to be taken down.
I think if people see this strat working the overall winrates of indians will climb a bit, making them one of the best overall civs among most elos. Maybe not in pro play, but still quite high.
Not need to rediscover hot water. Revert last indian change (give back last cav defense tech, remove the weird +1pa thing except the original +1pa to camels), create an special imp camel class and tweak the values arround that (for example, giving all archers +1 attack against that unit/class)
Why though? Your suggestion is a plain buff/free plate barding without an investment. Also you are right, there is little overlap with Teutons but with Tatars Silk Armor.
They already are. +1PA is good but their real strength lies in the +4 vs buildings.
It doesn’t suck, it is a pretty good unit. Also why make it better at what it is already good at?
The only change they got was -1MA in Imperial Age, that’s no big deal when you kill any cav with ease and counter infantry with FU cav archers or gunpowder. I don’t think they need a buff.
If you take even one point of damage off the Imperial camel, they go from killing Paladins in 8 hits to 9 hits. That makes the matchup extremely close once you consider the Paladin attacks faster. They only have 2 attack and 20 hp over the Heavy camel, and this costs a lot of resources to acquire, very comparable to Paladin cost. We’re just talking about the MU most affected by the Imp camel’s bonus damage, and not general use (in which it’d be tremendously weakened)
How would you nerf it? One attack off really hurts the Paladin MU (and the unit in general), and it’s not like the Camels have any armor you can take away. Really curious to see where you’d hit them.
Heavy camels and Imperial camels have the same bonus damage against those units. I’d like to say I don’t think units should be worsened in aspects because of an upgrade.
I only checked the Cavalry bonus damage differences (In a previous post in the forum, looks like the bonus damage vs Cavalry is the same as well), I assumed they had more damage against Memelukes and Camels too, but they don’t. So this change should be reverted.