Also, the map of present day India is wrong in the Jammu & Kashmir and Laddakh parts.
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No it is correct by international standards. Read about LoC and LAC.
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I think there was a king who moved the capital and people to 1000 of miles and then moved back.
Was he from this dynasty?
Anyway the Mughals seem the best bet in that case for the Indian civ replacement. So even if they were Turks they ruled India. Or do you prefer a Hindu civ like the Rajputs?
Yes. And he is quite infamous as we site bad examples on his name.
Or more correctly, on the name of his dynasty.
Indians are a tricky civ, their eco bonuses are all good (cheaper vills, faster shore fish, sultans UT), then main problem is their tech tree that is a bit weird.
The IC simply wasn’t designed well enough, since it doesn’t compensate for the lack of the knight against archers, but it makes it even stronger against other cavalry, which wasn’t something really necessary.
That being said, the bonus for extra PA on the LC do compensate for the lack of knights, at least against archers. While I don’t like it very much (too overlap with tartars and turks) it does its job.
The IC instead could use some minor nerf, like not affecting their TT, or giving a bit less bonus damage vs cav.
Having FU HCA and skirms does solve their late game range units, but are all generic. HC are decent, but their UT has 2 main problems:
- giving more range to an already inaccurate unit isn’t a great idea, instead it should give more accuracy, or both.
- it’s ridiculously expensive for affecting a unit that is already rarely seen, so maybe having it cost less would incourage people to use it more often.
Lastly, the biggest weakness is the EA, is simply useless for its cost and limits on training. It have the same range and attack of an CA, but without the same speed. It cost way more to upgrade and yes, it resist to archers and skirms, but often skirms themselves are a better option. It just doesn’t have any reasons to be trained, that’s why they should give them at least the range of an arbs (or even 1 more for the elite version), to compensate for it slow speed.
EXACTLY !! you summed up exaxctly what i meant ahah
Yes. mughals should get their own civ. medivial indians were more about archers. We had no mughal influence for majority of aoe2 timeframe. Historically also, indians are more of a ‘gadha’ or ‘archer’ civs. prithviraj was an archer.
Indian camels need something. With the unique Imperial upgrade they should be the best camels in the game. Currently that award goes to the Saracens (which should IMO be #2 given they lack Cavalier, but Indian should be #1 with no knight line at all). The Saracen camel has 10 more HP, both in Castle Age for free, and when fully upgraded. Their unique tech is also much cheaper than the Imperial Camel upgrade, and with full blacksmith upgrades the Saracen camel ends up with 1 more melee armor. The Imperial Camel has +2 attack, but no additional bonus damage.
If you have Indian vs Saracen camels, the fight can go either way depending on the first hit (same for Malian camels). However, I don’t think this is a good comparison because you typically don’t make camels to fight camels. Against enemy cavalry the +2 attack does very little, and the missing armor and health have a big effect. They can both beat any civ’s Paladins in equal numbers, but the Indian camels will have less health remaining at the end.
Maybe the best example is to look at the camel vs an Malay Elite Battle Elephant. This is a fight that the Saracen Heavy Camel wins, but the Indian Imperial Camel loses. Note that the Malay Elite Elephant costs 42 gold + 72 food (114 total), while both Saracen and Indian camels cost 60 gold + 55 food (115 total). The camel is a more expensive unit, especially if considering gold availability in 1v1, and Indian Imperial Camels cannot even win the fight in small numbers (it gets worse with large battles and trample damage from elephants).
Ranged units are hard to compare, but I also think Indian Camels need more Pierce Armor to be a versatile unit around defensive structures and archers. If the old +1 pierce armor with Plate Barding was too strong for Hussars (although it’s fine for Turks, and Tatars have a better upgrade), then maybe the Imperial Camel itself could have some additional melee and pierce armor.
Indian economy is good, but that’s not enough with their limited tech tree. Very few units can be fully upgraded in the late game, and winning in Castle Age is not always an option (not to mention that castle age games completely ignore their Hand Cannoneers and Imperial Camels).
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Dude,
Mythology ≠ History
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You think chauhan dynasty is a mythology?
No never said that. Read again the part that I quoted.
I have kind of given up on Indians. They have no unit which receives full upgrades (apart from CA which have their own problems, discussed later in post). There castle tech and units are kind of under whelming.
Their 1st UU, Elephant Archer is just an example of a poorly design unit, with high costs and is countered strongly and easily by trash(helbs) and monks. Its an huge investment for an anti-archer unit role which a skirm can easily perform.
Their 2nd UU, Imp Camel: Yes they were buffed by providing 1PA per age starting from castle age, but they also lost PBA, which means in mealy fight Indian cavalry favors worse. Moreover Imp Camel upgrade is also costly.
Yes they do get fully upgraded CA’s. But it takes ages to mass them to make an impact. They have no direct bonus which helps in CA production. Also, as Indians second eco bonus sultans(which is suppose to help CA and other army production indirectly by generating gold faster from all sources) requires castle, also takes lot of time to research.
Summarizing,
Yes Indians do have very good eco, but they lack units/firepower to convert that eco into.
For me Indians civ is viable only till castle age or at most till early Imp.
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EA’s are only countered easily if all you’re throwing at them is masses of EAs, but that’s a terrible idea anyway. EAs only strength is having higher hp. That means you get less dps per resources. Doing that indiscriminately is never gonna be a good idea, any more than sending halbs into champions is a good idea because you get more hp per cost.
EAs are super tanky. That’s their role. Throw one EA into a group of archers and you can double their total hp. They try to take you out with a mango, you can literally just let the EA afk attack it until it dies, and it’ll win, no micro required. If they send a monk at you, you just send the EA back(Because what the heck ELSE are they gonna be converting?) and the archers snipe the monk and poof, problem solved. They send halbs at you, and…what do they expect to happen? They’re sending halbs into a group of archers to kill ONE elephant. Good luck.
And what if they send archers? Well, archers do 1 damage to EAs, so again, good luck.
Now you could potentially send skirms, but even in that case, the group with the EA will do better than the group without it. Either way, you’ll need to counter the skirms with something else, so nothing new there.
And why use the EA instead of skirms? Because skirms are only good against archers, EAs are tanky against everything. An EA can tank knights, siege, whatever. Anything but halbs, but the archers or HCs handle those.
Anyway, moving on from the EA.
Everything else except for the lack of knights up to castle age is god-tier. FU xbows, FU+ camels and Light cav, basically every tech except treadmill crane. If you need to raid, their camels are technically even better than knights by a pretty good margin. They’re way cheaper but have almost identical stats. 10 building damage(same as knights), 100hp(same), 1 less pierce armor but because of the lower cost, that doesn’t even matter. Lower melee armor, but when is that ever gonna even be relevant? Against spears it doesn’t matter. Against knights they win anyway. Unless they build infantry they’re screwed, and if they build infantry, you’ve got FU CAs!
People complain they don’t have knights, but if YOU have camels, THEY can’t build knights, so who’s the one who really lacks knights?
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Just decrease the cost of elephant archer upgrade a bit, and it will become much more viable.
Also, their hand cannoners are not as bad as before. They can deal against siege pretty well because of huge siege hitboxes and extra range of shatagni. Just put a couple of elephant archerd in front of HC and they are safe.
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What a surprising fact. I had to double check myself, and yes, a mangonel and a castle age elephant archer are equally matched (they actually both killed each other with the final shot in my test). The EA is cheaper, so this is a good trade. I’ve seen Ballista Elephant’s get destroyed by mangonels before, but now I realize that was because of their Siege Armor class and Mangonel’s bonus damage.
However, the scenario you describe faces the same problems as the rest of the Indian tech tree. They have poor options in Imperial Age. Massing crossbows is a bad idea when you lack the arbalest upgrade. You lose a lot of momentum if you have to replace the entire group with hand cannoneers or cavalry archers when going from Castle to Imperial Age.
Elephant Archers have the opposite problem, I agree you should be using a few of them mixed in with other units, but in those small numbers they cannot really justify Elite upgrade at 1000 food + 800 gold. I’d say never, which means you end up with castle age units vs other civs with imperial.
This is a common theme with Indians, since they also lack Plate Barding and Plate Mail Armor. A lot of their units die just as easily in Imperial as they did in Castle Age. The Cavalry line at least receives the equal amount of Pierce Armor, but the lack of melee armor definitely affects their camels, swordsmen, and spearmen. The infantry also ends up missing 2 pierce armor, which makes them very weak to archers (think Goth champions and halberdiers without reduced cost, faster creation, or the option of Huskarls).
Their Siege is also surprisingly bad, lacking Siege Onager, Siege Ram, and Heavy Scorpion. Nearly every upgrade you’d be going to Imperial Age for is missing. They get cannons, that’s about it. May as well stay in Castle Age and push the offensive.
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I definitely agree that the EEA upgrade is way overpriced. Literally never worth getting, imo, except MAYBE in extremely long team games, but even then I’m not strictly sure it’s a good idea. Building that many EAs opens yourself up to so many weaknesses. IMO you could cut the cost in half and it still would only rarely be worth it.
I broadly agree that their imperial age isn’t as strong as some civs, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. They have a very strong castle age, and while they do lack some of the raw power other civs get on hitting imp, that’s at least in part because they’re already so powerful in castle; even then, they still get some serious upgrades out of it. Importantly, Ring Archer Armor+Parthian Tactics; boosting the armor of your HCA and EAs by 2/4 is absurd, especially on the EAs, even before taking into account the bonus damage, as well. Admittedly, this is a very reactive tech, you don’t need it until your enemy does something.
The ability to upgrade to Imperial Camels is likewise a very reactive tech. It’s not particularly necessary until your enemy gets to a certain point, it doesn’t particularly reward you with massive power in itself.
Shatagni/HCs is, again, a reactive tech. If your enemy is investing heavily into infantry or halbs to counter your camels, and you counter with HCs, and they build archers, the ability to match range with them makes a massive difference.
Honestly, I’d put Indians up there with Byzantines as a Defensive civ, the more I think about it. Their eco bonus is strong at getting started, but even stronger at recovering from damage. Almost all their primary bonuses relate to countering your enemy, rather than being particularly strong at one thing. Their UU is basically a Cataphract except against archers.
I think their stats speak for themselves. Despite being a relatively unpopular pick, they’re consistently in the top 10% of all civs as far as win rate is concerned. Not enough to be broken, but then, I don’t think we’re really seeing their true potential, either. The current meme status of the EA, for example; that alone could reduce their win rate by a percentage point. People feel like they can’t build them because everyone shades on them so hard.
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Pretty good description! Indians are indeed a defensive/counter civ like the Byzantines with an incredible eco. You can get away with 4TC boom while making army since you are saving so much res. All your units are exceptional at countering enemy units and since your eco is great you often hit Imp faster and can make use of that powerspike. Instant +4 PA on hussar can decimate enemy archers if used correctly. The melee armor doesn’t matter so it’s actually a pretty good bonus. I encourage more people to play and learn them, they are great.
Agree on the counter theme. In imp that gets a bit trickier but in castle age you have great counters to everything. However there are certain timings that can make indians feel awkward and I think that’s why a lot of pro players don’t feel comfortable playing them. For instance your light cav have extra pierce armor in castle age which is great against any archer play. But if the opponent techs into pikes you’d switch into ca that takes some and gives your opponent momentum to pressure. But nevertheless I don’t really understand why so many cry over Indians being to weak.
I wouldn’t worry about going CA until imperial age. If your opponent makes pikes, just mix in xbow, they are fully upgraded and only fall off in imp where they lack 1 attack and 5HP. Not that big of a deal against infantry