New civs early impressions

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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Hindustanis: their tech tree was already awkward, the big spot I found is that they took away Parthian Tactics. Now their CA is very average, and basically not worth teching into as a long-term unit.

I guess the rationale was that they got an allegedly strong new UU? And also the 7+2 range HC with extra armor?

HC is still a gimmicky unit, we will have to see what damage they can do at 9 range. Potentially they can be very strong as range is what holds HC back the most, but accuracy I reckon at 9 range will be abysmal.

The civ still spectacularly lacks the last infantry armor (relevant mostly for Ghulam who get only 2 melee armor in their final form), lacks Knight-line and lack Arbalest.

Gurjaras: this to me seems the big loser of the DLC, their tech tree is very awful, they lack most key technologies, including Siege Engineers, Parthian Tactics, last Archer armor, Arbalest. They don’t even get Champion to counter full Halb play. It seems to me that this civ dies to full Halb, the ONLY answer they have to full halb is their UU, which is locked behind a Castle and overall doesn’t seem a true power unit, basically it’s an infantry version of Scorpion, which is a strong but also very niche unit.

The civ doesn’t even get Champion (though they get Supplies, good troll by the devs :slight_smile: ) and they don’t get the last melee attack upgrade. Their allegedly good cavalry, thus, in spite of having +4 armor from the UT, are 7+2 Hussars (which don’t 4 shot Villagers) and 7+2 Heavy Camel Riders.

Their other UU, the Shrivamsha Rider, doesn’t seem like it does significantly better vs Archer-line than Light Cav, it might be (in theory) more tanky if the Crossbows all shoot different targets, however in an Archer-line counter I’m mostly looking for bonus DMG (or high base DMG like in case of Knight-line). Maybe if Gold cost was reduced to 10g, I could maybe consider dropping 5+ Stables and making this unit, but at current price it doesn’t seem a good deal also considering how badly the civ is gasping for an Archer-line counter (they don’t get last archer armor on Skirms, either, remember).

I see the civ being maybe good in TGs where they can counter very well Paladin flood but that’s the ONLY thing they are good at.

Bengalis: I’ll be brief, it seems they are the best civ of the DLC. Strong Elephants with bonuses for what Elephants struggle the most against, and they have (from memory) the best Elephant Archer also. This will be a strong TG civ I think. Their UU, the Ratha, also complements their army composition well and I think the most common army composition will be 5-10 Ratha to snipe Monks/go in melee vs Skirms and a line of Elephants behind. Needless to say, Ratha seems also like it’s a good Castle Age power unit (I don’t think it’s that good in Imperial though where its low attack holds it back).

Dravidians: these guys are basically very similar to Malay both in terms of tier and in terms of army composition they can go for. I think Dravidians are slightly stronger because Malay rely on flood of low quality unit whereas these guys have some of the best Champions in the game and also FU Arbalest. No BBC and a VERY bad Stable really suck though so I could see these guys getting outflanked/raided hard by high mobility civs which seems their intended weakness.

Overall: if there are 4 tiers, S, A, B, C

Gurjaras: C tier
Hindustanis: A-- tier
Dravidians: A- tier
Bengalis: A+ tier

This is my take on new DLC civs after examining their tech tree ingame and some tests vs AI.

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Nice reading
Funny but the opinions are everywhere
Some put the Bengalis as the looser civ because the Elephants and the Gurjaras as the winner because the stables units
Only time will tell

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I actually found Indians(Hindustanis) a lot more fun to play now. Not having last cav armor really irritated me.
Now in each military department there’s something going for them. Although it does feel a little bit random I admit.
Verdict: Fun, but a bit all over the place.

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It is rare to see a post where so many things are said yet I still fully agree. :slight_smile:
I think the Gurjaras are also held back by their bad eco bonuses. A civ without eco bonuses can be good if they have strong military options - see Magyars - but like you said, this is not the case for Gurjaras, either.

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yeah true, their “eco bonus” of 2 Forage Bushes start is not a true eco bonus… I think I saw SoTL make a video of how it takes ~25 min for a garrisoned sheep to fully pay for the ~90 food you’d otherwise gather by slaughtering it. You could make a case for slaughtering sheep in early Feudal, but in that case the total amount of food you get “for free” is like ~100f or so, at that point why not go something like Lithuanians (who also have a far nicer tech tree with some of the best Skirms in the game and BBC).

You also have to push deer if you wanna garrison anything more than 4 sheep (along with building the mill asap which is somewhat awkward and messes your build order a little).

Overall, I found a BO which allows you to garrison 8 sheep right away, but it seems you have to always push 2-3 deer and overall you can do some 20-21 pop up with the same amount of resources as another civ.

Also in my OP I forgot to mention that Gurjaras lack SQUIRES also, so their Barracks is extra bad (or maybe it isn’t because since they don’t even have access to Pikeman, you don’t wanna build the Barracks at all :slight_smile: )

Their Camels are strong, yes, but I wonder how they are supposed to counter Hussar Raids, it seems a civ like Turks in the sense that it starts performing very badly when Gold runs out (you have less than FU Hussar, basic Spearman and Skirms without last armor), unlike Turks however I see ZERO power spikes to win the game early (Turks have several like FC Janissary play, their 200 pop mid-Imp army comp is fairly scary etc.).

I guess I omitted the CA UT, -25% food discount on every military unit, but honestly I don’t know when it’s even relevant:

I thought that with that + Supplies, you could do some “Eagle all-in” Castle Age play, only the “Eagle” unit is a Long Swordsman who costs 35f 20g, but Longswordsmen are not really an “all-in” unit like Eagles are, the tech is still locked behind a Castle (Eagle all-in isn’t), and ultimately Long Swordsmen die to the Crossbow meta or even to mass Knights.

Other units you could invest into are: Elephant Archer (but they have maybe THE worst Elephant Archer in the game and remember that now EA take extra dmg from Skirms because of negative armor class), and EA doesn’t seem to me like this stellar unit that can carry new civs, or Hussars (but something like Berbers also gets discounts on Hussar with far better tech tree), Camels (but Camels are already cheap enough that a Food discount isn’t really that relevant). In short, their UT lacks a “go-to” unit to make OP.

Also, when a civ like Malay get -40% discount in Imperial (-30% in Castle Age iirc) on their Battle Elephants to account for their trash tech tree, lacking several armor upgrades and Bloodlines, you wonder why a civ like Gurjaras must build a Castle + research a UT to get access to a comparable bonus. Building Castles is uncommon on Arabia-like maps even in Imperial if you don’t play like MbL, for example.

I think the civ needs either a better tech tree, or their Shrivamsha Rider needs significant buffs and then it becomes a civ carried by UUs (a bit like Mongols, Spanish etc.)

One thing I’m happy with, though, is that the devs are trying to create archetypes of civs that are not a UU civ, not a Cav Archer civ, not a Knight-line, or Archer-line civ. To win with something like Hindustanis or Gurjaras, you will have to constantly adapt as their tech trees are awkward. Still, in case of Hindustanis, you clearly see powerful (in principle) units, like Handcannoneer. With Gurjaras, I really don’t think that Camels (mounted Halberdiers) can carry the civ so hard, even with extra bonus dmg and all that, since vs non-cavalry units, they still have 7+2 attack (less than FU Halberdier albeit with a faster attack rate).

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I just threw it in my Booming Calculator. Surprisingly the bonus isn’t that bad, actually quite strong even in a full boom scenario and not eating the sheep but let them in the mill forever.
Note it would give way better results if we would eat the sheep in the beginning of castle age to support he boom but as this build would lose the long-term benefits and a boom is intended to have long-term benefits I decided to calc it with leaving them in for the constant basically +1.5 free vills it provides in the lategame.

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If we would give Gurjaras 5 Food/Min per Sheep they would have the best boom in the game. Outside Cumans ofc…

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getting a bonus in the late game isn’t as valuable as early game. In my opinion at least. If you garrison all 8 sheep, my intuition tells me the bonus is equivalent to roughly 2 food Relics.

I don’t think their eco needs a buff. Their eco isn’t the greatest, but not the worst, either. I am assuming here a map like Arabia, where you are forced to do boom + army mix, not boom to 200 pop behind Stone Walls.

The way I see it, their tech tree makes sense to a degree, you have HC and UU vs Halberdiers, you have Camels vs mounted units and you should have (in theory) Shrivamsha Rider vs Archers. But the Shrivamsha Rider is where they fall short, even if we ignore all the other bad things like lack of Parthian Tactics, Squires etc.

Easiest buff I can see for them without ruining the civ identity is buff Shrivamsha Rider. Boring buff I could see for them would be give them last Archer armor, Parthian Tactics and perhaps even something like Siege Engineers (this last one would maybe be too strong let’s remember that their Siege Elephants already do extra bonus dmg vs buildings).

Really the civ dies VERY hard vs pike + Crossbow play, I’m very sure of this even tho I haven’t played 1 ladder game yet, and the easiest fix for that is buff their go-to anti-archer unit.

7+2 attack Hussar in a “cavalry and camel” civilization also seems like a total troll, at least give them extra melee armor, maybe not +4 like to Camels but +2 I could see being reasonable.

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Just wanted to state:

Was a wrong assessment. Because of the way higher wood collection rates with castle age upgrades it is from a booming perspective better to leave the sheep in the mills. It’s ever so slightly, but an interesting sidenote.

True. My whole calc is based on full boom mode. I am pretty sure that for a lot of feudal builds with gurjaras it will be better to eat the sheep in feudal. Especially if you want to go heavily into archers it’s most likely a very important bonus to have.

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You know you cant trust someone’s review when they don’t realise gurjaras get 30food 2handed swordsmen

And when they compare an eco bonus to one of the top contenders for best eco bonus in the early game.

Just because it isnt better than Lithuanians( who get nothing else because of that bonus) doesn’t mean it is remotely bad.

This is on top of their massive camel advantage and their massive eco bonus from their castle UT.

30f 2hs, 60f hussars, cheaper siege elephants which are stronger (so you don’t need siege engineers)

Well you do you. Doesn’t mean that is the right approach.

Anti archer melee units almost always are anti archer units because they can actually close with the opponent. Not because of bonus damage. Proof of this is things like Turks (and previously Indian) light cav

What?

Anyway… From using them in ranked I think gujara are great. And add some huge flavour to the game with their incredibly unique start, and unique approach to dealing with various units. Relying on very specific units to get the job done instead of the meta “more knights m’lord”

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Tbh those arent very good since they are missing blast furnace. If they had blast furnace they would be pretty good tho

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The way I understand them is they’re meant to
a. Counter mass halbs,
b. Body block for chakrams.

You need bunched units (usually caused by being engaged) to maximise chakram vectors

If they were champs they would be insane. They’re nearly the price of karambits

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I mean, yeah, if they were champions they would be in the same level as Goths

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Gurjaras 2HS only have 1 attack over Persian longswords and require more upgrades so it’s still a pretty pathetic unit. And without the production speed of Goths infantry or karambit all the barracks required to sustain the spam probably won’t be worth it compared to the civ’s other options.

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Which is exactly my point

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I mean, remove perfusion, champion and squires and Gothic champions too would be kind of meh. Basically, I wouldnt prefer them over average champions

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Imo so far Dravidians and Bengalis don’t look too strong.
Hindustanis look very strong.
Gurjaras seem better than I thought, but also I think the Shrivamsha is better than it was in the tests we seen from early access. Idk if this was intended but they look like much better against buildings and generally deal more damage than they should. Also it looks they move faster, even the non-elite variant.
In this version they actually look like a really strong unit, but idk if it’s probably bugged.

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Afaik in the preview they were already very fast, it’s just that all the big channels overlooked it so no big name tested it. Also it seems like they benefit from the hindustani TB so that might explain why you had it do better against buildings.

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Unless you are Malay or Bulgarians. But overall, this is true.

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Well yeah Malay are their own case. Bulgarians in trash wars, when Halberdiers do 1 dmg to you… they are great, even so, even for Bulgarians they are an ultra late game unit because any gold unit murderizes them.

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haven’t tested it out but was thinking about it too. so it’s not possible to start with early mill and hit straggle trees until u can build a lumberjack? is the food generation that slow with sheeps that u still need deers?

If yes this is indeed only good on maps like arena…and i think it’s pretty underwhelming as well if you think about foodrelics for example.