these flags give too much benefits to be that uncounterable. If we nerfed tepees and missionaries keeping this doesnt make any sense. Or have we got 2 different rulers here??
Since India is in the picture, what about Victory tower, its clearly inferior by a lot. Just a nosense.
It can be clearly seen that there are still US units close to the flag, on is even right on top of that, to remove a flag you have to have units closer to the flag than the US have… Your complain is simply wrong and faulty as you seems to lack knowledge of how the flag work
Flags don’t give too much benefits, it is a 10% damage bonus, it is static, unlike missionaires, and it cannot stack… It can also be easily neutered by taking the flag unlike the tepee that require to be destroyed
In general you seem quite biased toward India, which is by statistics doing very well, so it isn’t the civ the problem here from what i can see
Its not about india, and Im not the only one complaining about the flag. It boost buildings HP and train times if im not mistaken. On treaty is hard as hell to counter an american forward base for example
I haven’t noticed flags from either USA or Mexico making and breaking battles. They are nice perks but not game changing. As stated above you can only have one flag and once the unit are eliminated around it they lose it. Also from the picture there you mostly have howda which are good Unit but from what I could see your opponent didn’t have anything howda are good against, so that could be part of your problem as well.
Goons/skirms is the most common combo on treaty. In my case Howdas are versatike enough to kill gatlings and possible coming hussars.
Umm. . . flags are flags . . . their bonus on Buildings is somewhat enviable, and the bonus on units is a hard truth, but not game changing.
But yea the mechanics should ALWAYS ALWAYS work, which doesn’t seem to be the case in the image above 
As for Howdahs, they are easily the one of/best goons by pop, and also performs great against others, at least carbines. Also I dont see anything howdahs and gurkhas are not great against.
Flags are terrible, but I don’t think highlighting a specific instance is necessarily the best way to argue against it. People are just going to point out faults for that specific scenario and say that’s the only issue.
But it does show how unintuitive and frustrating the mechanic is when you have a vastly superior army in the area and the flag just keeps on working as long a single unit is close by. And it’s not like the post-colonials have weak units, Chinacos and Gatling Guns are very oppressive.
Flags just need to be linked to something tangible and counterable instead of being something you can’t interact with or destroy. Personally I’d link it to Forts and have the aura emanate from there. It would work well in game, and fit with the anthem:
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming
