The Indians are a really strange civilization. Keeping aside talks of the historial accuracy for the moment, I want to stress that Indians have the 10th highest win rate in 1vs1 and 2nd lowest play rate. Taking the stats from pre-DE, the Indians back then were 9th rated in win rate. The 1 position slip is just a trifle.
People have just made a bad name for Indians now. They actually have been buffed.
Stable units +1p armor in Castle Age. Camels +1p armor removed.
-> This is an okay bonus for the Indian stable, basically making Light Cavalry as a replacement of Knights, instead of Camels. This bonus would have been broken if Indians had Knights. The Camels are slightly resiliant against arrows making them equivalent to Cataphracts and Leitis.
Stable units another +1p armor in Imperial Age. Lose Plate Bard.
-> This is also another good bonus and it achieves its goal - nerfing the Imperial Camel in late game. Gaining +1p armor on Camels and Light Cav due to lack of Knights is negated in Imperial Age, when Cavaliers are rare. In team games, people usually go for Paladins or any other unit. Cavaliers are rare unless they have a strong buff like Stirrups. At this stage, the lack if Knights does not hurt. So the camels can be normal again.
It is not too bad to lose Plate Bard. You save research time, 350F, 200G but lose 1 melee armor. 1 melee armor isn’t too much important and rarely affects fights.
Closing thoughts: yeah the Indians are a peculiar civ, lacking Knights and Arbalests both. But their economy and win rate are solid. The meta doesn’t suit them well because they lack Knights, but also, they have perfectly servicable Crossbows and a good scrush and also a good boom. It can be difficult at times, but otherwise the civ is good.
Maybe the low play rate is due to lack of a go-to unit in Castle Age. They don’t have Knights at all. They lack Arbalests so there is always a drawback of massed crossbowmen. Light Cavalry and Long Swordsmen aren’t common. Cavalry Archers take time. All other units are counter units.
They should get a slight bonus to incentivise Cavalry Archers in Castle Age, everything else seems fine, like Cavalry archers frame delay reduced or Cavalry archers created 25% or 30% faster.
So you say that the civ was slightly buffed but it still needs new stuff just because people don’t pick it “enough”? What can I even say.
Maybe if people didn’t need the bonuses to tell them what to play then we wouldn’t end up with civs with comically exagerated bonuses. Heck people will say Sicilian are bad, their military bonus affects all their units so the game isn’t telling them what to spam 11
Indians have always been an amazing civ, in normal rdm maps they have seen the light in way more matches than the overrated slavs.
Saving food in the most created unit in game is just the best economic discount that can be used to boost different army compositions or simply just a better boom, they got buffed instead of nerfed, lc with 5 PA in castle age and +6 free hitting imperial for lc line seems fine, even for their camels +4.
They just need as the other supposed gunpowder civs to get fixed the HC and improve their UT, +1 range makes no difference if they have to walk 3 steps to fire again, they can’t be microed, FE devs removed that element, for them HC needs shield units cause they do nothing by their own.
Lol what?
Indians lack the last cav armor upgrade now, their Hussars are esentially the same as other vs archers while being weaker in melee.
I would rather pick Turks with free LC and +1PA than Indians.
That’s why he said early imp. Since it’s free and instantaneous there will always be a time window where Indian have better pierce armour on LC/camels than other civs.
That bonus gives the time window to switch to cav archers which are just so strong when fully upgraded and massed. Daut just showcased how to play Indians against Larry. If Indians had bad bad cav archer they woild propably be complete trash since hand cannons are non really in the game if you want to win…
Yeah, exactly. The Indians are basically a Scouts → Light Cavalry → Heavy Cavalry Archer civilization.
What the gamedoesn’t tell you that Heavy Cavalry Archers are better at micro than Cavalry Archers are. This wasn’t true before DE. So players usually avoid that route.
The Indians can’t play meta. They have a food bonus which means they will Scrush. But the follow up to that is confusing, due to lack of Knights and Arbalesters, making Crossbowmen a questionable choice.
1 melee armor makes a difference. In the ImpCamel case, a Paladin now needs 10 hits to kill one, instead of 11. Sure it doesn’t affect the outcome in a 1v1, but on a large scale the ImpCamels will have more casualties. It is especially important in multi-player games, ImpCamels will be a bit more manageable for the opponents.
Indians in castle age are quite good:
Build archers? Light cav will kill you
Build Knights? Camels will kill you
They are a civ with a good economy that specializes on soft counters, but has no good option for the main units. That makes them unique and interesting, however they heavily fall off into obscurity in Imperial age. The Imperial camel by now is just… meh. Worse than both Saracen and Malian camel against anything. I still think the Imperial camel upgrade itself should again add 1 more pierce armor to it.
This means Indian camels are still worse in melee than other civs camels, but they are decent against archers. Right now Indians just lose in Imperial in 1v1, and their camels are nothing special in Imp teamgames either.
It would still be a heavy nerf to their imp game compared to before the patch: Imp camel is expensive, you need to tech into it first to stand a chance against archers, and your camels are worse against melee.
Against mixed armies yes, against crossbows no. They take the same amount of shots from a crossbow to be killed (40) cost much lower overall ressources and can much easier surround crossbows due to the faster movement speed. And no, it does not affect your uptime. Scouts are much cheaper than knights. For two stable Scout production you need 18 farmers (and therfore 3 lumberjacks). For 2 Stable Knight production you need 14 farmers (therefore still 3 lumberjacks) and 14 miners.
So you need 31 villagers for knights(and get a little bit of extra wood out of it) and only 21 villagers for scouts.
I totally agree with you. Keeping in mind the Indian economy being focused on saving food in Dark to Early Imperial Age, I can justify going for Scouts to Hussars.
The Turks on the other hand have better scouts in feudal age and better hussars in mid imperial age, but I still prefer Indians because of that food bonus.
For context, you can assume them to be equivalent to Tarkans against archers. 7 vs 8 attack. 3 base pierce armor. 2 vs 2.1 attack rate. But much faster and easier to mass unit.
that doesn’t mean much because knights still do more damage and attack faster. yeah crossbows take the same number of hits to kill LC as they do knights, but the knights are still going to kill the xbows faster.
When did I say it’s bad? The statement basically is the reason of their low pick rate, which I want to adjust. Indians have a bad pick rate despite being a top tier civ.
Sorry interchanged the two. The Standard Cavalry archer is actually better.
to put in context te frame delays of well known cavalry archer units:
Mangudai (both) - 23
Elephant Archer (both) - 24
Cavalry archer - 35
Heavy Cavalry archer - 46
Genitour (both) - 30
They have a bad pick rate? Then too bad for the people who underate them. No need to give the Indian buffs to tell people how to play them, “not losing” is good enough of an incentive.