New Civ Idea - Assamese

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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“Various people groups have settled the fertile plains of the Brahmaputra valley and established various states since antiquity. Eastern Indo-Aryans such as the Kamrupi, various Tibetic peoples, and even the Ahom who originally hailed from Guangxi have found their footing here. The Ahom state that remained unconquered for more than 600 years. These groups coalesced to form the Assamese culture. The archers of Kamrup were famous for their accuracy and sharp shooting ability. Combined with incredible indegenously built gunpowder weaponry they proved a formidable force to reckon with to their enemies.”

TechTree

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Overview

As an archer civilization, the Assamese have fully upgraded Archers. Their archers get bonus attack vs Infantry making them deadly and these archers can regarrison in archery ranges to fire from inside while in protection acting as a tower. To further the advantages the Assamese also get a unique unit Ph u kan a commander unit that boosts the speed and heals health of nearby archers. This commander unit can also train another unique unit called Karpai Dhenu which is an archer with low health but with bonus damage against other unique units. The Ph u kan are built for free at zero cost and training time equal to the number of castles they own. For some more survivability of the archers it is advisable to mix in a few Elephant Archers into their army composition. Their economy is easy to manage as they can build storages as an all in one drop site in place of lumbercamp, mining camp and mill. Though they must require building barracks or dock along with the storage in dark age two fill in the two dark age buildings count. And their economic units, that is their villagers, trade units, fishing boats are cheaper. By researching Hengdang Sword all their militia line units gain pierce damage equal to the melee damage they deal, thus making them an excellent choice to mix in the army. Being the earliest inventors of indegenous toaps (cannons), Assamese are also able to research Bortop Mithaholong which replaced the gold cost of bombard cannons with food thus making them a lot more affordable.

Characteristics

Unique Units

Ph u kan = Commander Unit, trained at Castle, build limit equals the number of castles you own. Can train Karpai Dhenus, heal and speedup nearby archers.
sds

Karpai Dhenus = Archer with bonus against other unique Units, trained at Castle and Ph u kan
Karpai Dhenus

Unique Buildings

Storage = Acts as a common drop off site, contains all researches from Mill, LumberCamp, Mining Camp.

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Unique Technologies

UniqueTechCastle DE Hengdang Sword = Swordsmen do pierce damage equalling their melee damage.

UniqueTechImperialDE Bortop Mithaholong = Bombard Cannons gold cost replaced with food.

Civilization bonuses

  • Archer units +2 vs Infantry
  • Garrisoned Archery Ranges fire arrows
  • Economic units are 10% cheaper

Team bonus

  • Guilds research free

In-game dialogue language

Wonder

assamesewonder
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Dharma Expansion

6 Likes
4

Villagers or Trade units are cheaper?

This seems a stronger bonus of Japanese

1 Like
5

Yes, all civilian units.

It comes with a catch though. In order to upgrade to Feudal you will need one storage (100 wood) and one Barrack/Dock (175 wood). So you will need 75 more food than usual.

6

Sure

Sure

Not sure how to feel about this one. The damage increase is ridiculous, whike lacking the last armour hurts their spears. I would try to give them the last armour but reblance their swordsmen in another way.

No. Make it just cost half as much gold if you want, trash bombard cannons are stupid.

Seems kinda meh but sure

Overlaps too much with Hindustanis

2 Likes
7

FIrst your artwork is amazing.
Really nice with a lot of details. I like it very much.

I think you could have posted your Civs one by one so there’s more time to enjoy and discuss each of them.

If you like you can also insert your Civ Concept in the [HUB] . When all new civ creators do this, the hub works as intended and interested people can use it to look up older civ concepts they might be interested in.

Your bonusses are sometimes a bit over the top though imo. You don’t need to add completely new mechanics just for the sake of it. Most intended design effects can be achieved by traditional design means. So I will try to take your bonusses and tranlate them into more traditional ones that give similar effects.
Also if I see weaknesse or overwhealming bonusses I will try to adjust them.

Just make this the standard UU. Commander/Hero units aren’t a part of the ranked play so far and also aren’t neccesary. One big part of the franchise is that there aren’t these super overwhealmingly strong individual units, instead you have to care about all your army and eco to get the victory. Most Army comps work usually as 2 base unit lines that synergize well with each other + some siege. It’s already hard enough to manage these effectively.

Healing is ok (like monks), but “aura” type boosts aren’t part of the franchise so far. Part of that is also to ensure the units always feel the same to play with and against. This reliability is an important part of AoE2. You see an archer, you know how it interacts.

So instead the ###### could just be able to heal like monks. And to separate it from Archers it could just have higher speed and damage output. A bonus against UUs isn’t really a good idea for ranged units imo. This would immediately make a lot of melee UUs completely unusable what would be terrible for TGs.

It’s a bit too strong first, but also the effect is just basically a Damage boost. Ofc we already have effects like this in the game with Aztecs, Burmese, Japanese… What could be interesting is a bonus against Archers though. The civ as it is currently designed is quite weak to skirmishers. And they could possibly use the Swordsman line against skirns. Ofc they would also need Plate Mail Armor against the skirms to be effective. The Tech could be quite cheap and/or add an extra pierce armor to the swordsman line aswell.

Give it 10 garrison Space and the ability to fire arrows once garrisoned. Cost could be something like 50 S 100 W. Then it would make sense in various maps and/or situations to make use of it.

That’s too much.Maybe 50 % of the Gold cost replaced with wood or something like this. It could have the secondary effect to make the cannons garrisonable.

Nice, Quite unique bonus that doesn’t change much. Would be very strong when the civ had strong cavalry, but as it hasn’t it’s probably most useful in TGs as support against certain infantry specialist civs.

Make it the ranged can be garrisoned and fire arrows, otherwise ungarrisoning them could be double painful.

Easy economic pickup, quite similar to the hindustani bonus though. But otherwise nothing wrong with that.

Interesting TB. Why not Coinage? Guilds isn’t available to all civs but Coinage is. Also coinage is the Tech that applies to TGs. Free guilds could be a normal Civ Bonus.
(BTW shouldn’t there also some civs missing Banking? For balance reasons some eco powerhouses like Poles or Portuguese could miss it.)

All in all the Assamese are probably with a generally slower start. They have their extra garrison spaces to protect their units at home a bit better. In the lategame they would have access to FU Arbs, EA and their UU paired with the Champs and BBC to deal with Skirmishers. They would probably fit best in the “Defensive” category civ. But instead of having answers to everything they would try to build up their own very strong army to crush the opponents in the lategame.

2 Likes
9

I like the concept of these UU. However the commander unit being able to train more archers and give 2 really strong bonuses at the same time sounds too op (ofc it depends on the stats and cost of both UU). I would keep it as a heal bonus for nearby archers only.

This is quite problematic as we already have something similar with the Japanese. A good way to balance this would be to limit all researches to Mill, Lumbercamps and Mining camps but keep the common drop off site feature. But yeah, i would just remove it and give them something different.

This is ok but keep in mind that they have all attack upgrades, maybe just remove the last melee attack upgrade and give them the last armor?

This is too much. They have access to both siege enginners and siege elephant and there isn’t a down side. Remove one of those or remove trebs and make it double the food cost to make it remotely ‘‘balanced’’.

Archers already have bonus vs infantry, this is a bit of an overkill tbh.

I’m ok with this but you are giving them a good archery range rush potential. Basically free towers.

1 Like
10

Thanks for the appreciation. :sparkling_heart:

Giving it garrison space creates the problem of villagers getting auto garrisoned when directed from towncenter directly to the storage. This will unintentionally create annoyance.

All the civs are playable on Dharma Expansion.

11

What do you do agianst Assamese with goths? Archer already counter infantry but +2 vs infantry and archer with bonus damage vs huskarls. Also Hengdang swords is insanely OP and with Goth lacking SBA that is an additional +3. Also tr@sh bombards are stupid and impossible to balance.

1 Like
13

The trash bombards is much too much. But maybe it could work if they got replaced by a much weaker unique unit that starts out cheap in gold, then becomes a trash unit with that tech. Similar to the Magyar Huzsar.

Here is an idea of such unit : rocketeer. A soldier armed with a powerful, though very inaccurate (say, could land within 3 tiles of the target with a blast radius of 1), rocket thrower. Damages both friend and foe upon impact.

Rocketeer / Elite rocketeer (upgrade 950 f 1150 g)
120 wood, 30 gold
40/50 hp, reload 12/10s
25/35 dmg, + 100/140 vs building, blast radius 0.8/1
-2/3 / -2/4 armour
9/10 range, minimal range 4

Overall this unit will rain fire on the enemy, and in sufficient numbers will devastate both cities and armies. But its inaccuracy means it needs being massed to be effective, as well as being a considerable hazard for your own troops in melee.

Some rockets were developped in India, and adopted by the British during the Napoleonic Era as the Concrete Rocket, IIRC they replace the heavy cannon for the British in AOE3. I have no idea from what part of India do these rockets come though nor when exactly were them invented, but this unit could be a distant ancestor.

2 Likes
14

Rockets were developed in the Deccan Region (represented by the Deccanis in the mod) perfected further by Mysoreans in early modern age (Kannadigas). I have given them a number of gunpowder bonuses reflecting that.

The Assamese/Ahoms were pioneer inventors of Gunpowder Cannons.
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It is still going to be costly for the civ considering the Karpai Dhenus cost Food and Wood, Elephants also cost Food, and their Infantry and Spears also Food. So affording food for Bombard Cannons is not really some spare resource they can afford easily. Also there is the investment of needing a castle and researching a UT before getting access to those trash bombard cannons. It is going to be a late game unit when there are already too many strong units on the battlefield.

15

Its not like food is a valuable resource late game, even the Siege elephants have seen a lot of use despite their food cost. Trash bombard cannons are just ridiculous. Just make them cost kess fgold if you want

1 Like
16

Personally I like the idea of trash bombard cannons. People are always skeptical to any radical ideas. Like when persian kamandaran archers and malay levy infantry and bohemian hussite monks was introduced. Many people said it was broken but in the end it was proved that it was not.

No gold is not equal to broken. Even if it costs less gold, it will be the same thing, you will sell food and get that gold.

I played the mod and it feels balanced, in fact Assamese are the hardest civ to play so far. I think they need more buffs rather than nerfs.

17

People didnt think they would be OP. Kamarandan ended up being a massive Persian buff which was OP until Persians were nerfed and Forced Levy was never problematic. Not comparable at all with one of the best siege units in the game (which is also very pop efficient and is even fully upgraded) not costing gold. This is 100% broken.

Selling food for gold needs you to use a lot more resources to make these bombard cannons

1 Like
18

Trashbows only have 8 attack which is so easy to negate. Forced levy is practically impossible to deal with once you run out of gold the reason it isn’t complained about is because it is most game don’t last that long and it is expensive to tech into.

3 Likes
19

Also melee infantry lacks both the speed of cavalry and the range of archers, so even if they beat any trash unit in melee (though it’s not that one-sided vs hussars at equal resources), they still can be outmanoeuvered and lured to a chokepoint.

1 Like
20

Same logic for here.