[March PUP ] India losing its workhorse

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
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Sepoy :

Hands down sepoy will becoming very mediocre, I tried new Shottel warrior and oromos, vs mohout, and vs sepoy/gurkha, and also against rajput.
So as an Indian player, now I dont have any decent melee unit, sepoy and rajputs are almost equivalent in melee now, and still less effective than the old sepoy. Sepoys are’nt as affective as they should be on cavs like imperial ulhan etc.
Straight melee damage drop from 45/sec to 31/sec at base stats.

I remember the sepoy Imprial uprgrade giving 60% update came just after a game my sepoys got slaughtered by imperial ulhans. The increased siege damage doesn’t seem to be very useful apart from early rush/supremacy games but then , we also have a better sieging unit : rajput…

Just did a 40 sepoy vs 40 french halb, 10 sepoys left :slight_smile:
thats how bad the sepoy is nerfed. I dont thing anything else explains the situation.

Question being , why do I now need an extra card to achieve same stats !? is it fair ? especially when the damage is already over-nerfed.

This update will take away the major workhorse of India : Sepoy.
Especially in treaty, as they’ll die to the new units and cav, also loose the melee battles they used to win.

Siege Ele :

They got slight buff against the walls, good for pop efficient but so does other mortars also got it. I would like if siege ele got slightly better against euro mortars but its just athought.
(On a side note : Im a lil worried about japans’s, but thats bout it.)

Karni mata :

Meanwhile Karni mata boost is also gone down to 10% (Damn that was soo un-needed)
If it was so problematic, they could’ve gave an incremental increase in aura depending on the age.
something like : age2 - 10% , age3 - 12.5 , age4 - 15%(and stays the same)

Resource/unit compositions :

So now everyone’s mortars can hit unit and will damage the workers on the mills and other units around the building.
As a civ with almost average anti-cav capability, I have 2 similar options of Sepoy and Rajput. For melee Rajput costs 35w, meanwhile sepoy the ranged gold option.

How and why would one prefer India in treaty ?

Conclusion:

Lost its only legacy famous unit sepoy, especially feels more pressurised on wood.
India is now more disadvantaged against artillery and cav civs.
Siege eles are a lil more pop efficient coz of wall change as they need lesser hits.
Export can become relevant yet its too much shipment pressure now, on already shipment dependent civ that India is. And yet still I dont see the Foreign trading company card becoming relevant anytime soon, due to still remaining in-efficiencies.

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Didn’t rajputs get a good buff, it appears devs want to encourage you to use them as well particularly vs cav which I can understand because india players just make sepoy and gurkha.

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We yes you are almost right, Rajput’s siege got healthy increase and the meleege damage got minor decrease, but their cost make them less trainable/spammable, meanwhile as Rajput is buffed, and sepoy is nerfed, they both perform almost exactly the same thing, and compete for the similar spot and Sepoy still being the goto choice but now it’ll be significantly less effective.

Both units providing no particular any significant advantage in a huge mass situation, and meanwhile both have the same weakness i.e. artillery.

This might be not prevalent in supremacy/early game but in late game and in treaty, there are simply no units to hold the lines, which was sepoy earlier.

Meanwhile with nerfed karni mata, its not possible to keep spamming

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The rajputs overall damage got buffed though because rate of fire got increased, that combined with a lower cost and more siege.

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they should also buff Zamburak, they seem really fragile.

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Not really it not a buff, melee damage reduced to 14 (from 18), but ROF improved to 1.25 (from 1.5).
so in 7.5 seconds :

With new stats : 6 Hits x 14dmg = 84dmg in 7.5 seconds

vs

in OLD stats : 5hits x 18dmg = 90dmg in 7.5 seconds

that will simply add to non-conclusive competition between Sepoy rajput and Zamburaqs, and none of being good at their job. (exccept rajput in a very specefic case, i.e. against elmeti)

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But why do you want india to be good at treaty…they are good at supremacy. And some civs are better at early game some are better at,late game. India is that,kind of good rush civ

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Because some people enjoy playing a particular civ.

I don’t want to use a different civ just because I play treaty as opposed to supremacy.

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But in Aoe games civs are designed to have different strengths and weaknesses. Some are good at 1v1 some are good at team, some are good on land and some on water. Some are early rush civ and some are boom and late game civ, that’s why there is civ picking for different maps. It also encourages player to learn more civs. You can’t have india being good at everything

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Yes I agree that you should learn more than one civ.

I also am fine with different civs being good at rush, boom, turtle etc.

But different civs being good at supremacy vs treaty vs deathmatch is not something im comfortable with. All civs should be viable in treaty in my opinion, so all of them should have some late game feature that makes them competitive in treaty.

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@ausmht @Osprey23103109

Well this is not only about treaty , this is about being playable in treaty and the over-nerfing the CORE unit itself.
its about viability.

Just did a 40 sepoy vs 40 french halb, 10 half dead sepoys left :slight_smile:
thats how bad the sepoy is nerfed. I dont thing anything else explains the situation.

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How is that bad? They won, as expected.

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Well, a musk should always expected to win vs halbs. Its about the margin by which they won.
They are/were one of the most (for lack of better word)respected musks. and now they are done for.

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No when people think about good musk it is always about Ashigaru, or british musk, or carolean, or jans, sepoy is famous for age2 rush that’s it. As i said in previous post india is considered an age2 focused civ

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So should it become non viable after age3 onwards ?
I dont think there is that stereotyping intention to make soem civs inviable in certain game types or ages, otherwise captured mortars were not a thing neither the new cards that India and other civs received.

Sepoys were always better than brit musks :slight_smile: and always in a unique position where its slightly less tanky than janissary , but more damaging in melee to cav than a ashi.

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Of course I’m just talking about their reputation as a musk. India should still be viable after age 2, surely, and they are viable. Even after the PUP changes.

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For me the rajputs can also be eliminated from the game, it’s a nice unit but it’s never worth it to make them the sepoy is too much more versatile and convenient that they will make the rajputs lose their sense. I don’t understand where they want to go with these changes but every change for india is going in one direction to discourage rush and aim right away in 4 ages (nr10) except 11/10 india doesn’t have very fast rush (then i don’t know at what timing do you mean the rush). This change could have made sense if it slightly lowered the multiplier against heavy cavalry don’t lower it drastically, janissaries and sepoys have 2 specific purposes but are balanced in the opposite way, janissaries more life than sepoys but less damage and sepoys less life than janissaries but more damage with the sepoy which costs more than a janissary and the sepoy in fact does more damage than a janissary against cavalry but now it seems that the 2 units are in the same situation. For large masses of cavalry already from the 2 age I would say it will be necessary to use the card that increases melee damage by 15% if the sepoys are eaten by horses or do not do their job well (they are trying in every way to waste as many cards as possible to upgrade units because they are nerfed in stats and are upgraded in cards or add new cards to necessarily invest in, a bad approach to balance). However the sepoy still works well you’ll just need to support him with other units if he gets eaten by certain cavalry.

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I think it was a good tweak, sepoy was overperforming before, now you will have to remember that indians army isn’t only sepoy and gurkha… The move of the 10% buff from the imperial upgrade to the card make it more accessible in supremacy, which might reach industrial, but rarely imperial… And for treaty nothing changes since you would still send that card anyway…

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Before it wasnt a must because the other training card is enough and we could get other card in that slot, now there isnt any other option. There is no slots for flexibility

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The core question is , who will hold the Cav barrages ? Rajputs ?
Even with 10% compensating melee armour mohouts are loosing to french cav :slight_smile:
The new Oromo warriors, Dutch heavy cavs who gonna hold it “cost and pop efficiently”?

Meanwhile Karni mata boost is also gone down to 10% (Damn that was soo un-needed)
If it was so problematic, they could’ve gave an incremental increase in aura depending on the age.
something like : age2 - 10% , age3 - 12.5 , age4 - 15%(and stays the same)

Exactly the new change is extra pressurising the Indian deck, which is already heavily pressured with Ultra-critical mediocre cards.

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