Please Buff Indians Late Game Performance!

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
1

Indians are basically unplayable in treaty mode, and they also get weak in supremacy when it comes to a very very prolonged game. Following reasons contribute to this fact:

  1. slow military unit training speed, especially for infantry. They do have fencing school and cavalry school cards, but they lack church techs compared to Europeans, which makes sepoys and gorkhas very slow to train. Cavalry training speed is buffed by temple techs, which is just OK.
  2. inefficient units in late game. The stats of sepoys and gorkhas are not bad, but still not on the top tier (e.g. compared with ashigarus or casadors). Mahouts may have good stats but they are too cumbersome in some way and not so difficult to deal with. Howdahs tend to waste a great portion of damage when several howdahs shoot one unit. Sowars are completely useless in late game which i simply dont want to waste a word to further comment them. Zamburaks are the units having a slightly higher cost than ruyters and a slightly lower stats, but you have to use them in some circumstances. Siege elephants are basically pretty good for siege and anti-canon in supremacy, but in treaty they are no match for culverins. And anti-infantry canons are not so viable for Indians.
  3. NOT very good eco in late game. The productivity of Indians in late game or treaty is slightly lower than a standard European civ, such as Spanish. Note that Indians lack refrigeration card and 2 factories, and karni mata just buff the gather rate in accordance with BASE STAT. They do have fur trade which make them not so poor in the beginning of the treaty fight, but this is not as good as French or Iroquis since they dont have refrigeration.

My advice:

  1. New options for consulate ottoman allies. A mosque will be decent, and the relevant temple tech may be redesigned. It can be expensive like the livestock pen for Japanese, to make supremacy games are not affected.
  2. Buff the karni mata to make it work in accordance with CURRENT STAT (the change means little in supremacy since the current gather rate is not so far from the base level in supremacy). the sacred field may unlock new ability in late game to generate a considerable flow of resources in late game.
  3. Buff the performance of some units in late game, which i temporarily dont have a very nice idea…
4 Likes
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Are you sure that Karni Mata works on base stat?

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yes. u can either test in game or look at the code

4

It does on base stats in a little area by just a 10%. Most civs have a economic theory that works the same way in the whole map while its not needed to be in 2nd age or waste an age up option.

Lakota in the last patch get a cheaper, and stronger (12.5) version that can be placed around the map too. Just not fair

I have said this tons of times, it can replace the sentinels shipment, this way its a nerf for supremacy (cause people want a nerf to them) while is a buff to treaty.

1 Like
5

They just need like a +15% training speed boost for all units (infantry and cavalry, since artillery is cavalry too). I get that to balance strong units, something has to be taken away. India has good mobility like the Ottomans. Yet Janissaries still train at a decent speed, and even that is certainly not overwhelming in treaty. India has the mobility with Sepoys, but it is much worse than Otto.

Even if an India player aggressively builds multiple forward bases and attacks from multiple fronts, it’s not hard to counter because Indian units train so, so slow. For India, it’s near impossible to re-mass in the face of an enemy standing army. And even if India tries to do flanking/sieging tactics, India can’t siege fast enough with slow-training flail elephants or siege elephants that get countered with everything due to its tags. India’s counters its own mobility due to its slow, training speeds. People can call it “balance” but honestly, it’s a self-defeating handicap. You can count on Japan’s Shogun and daimyos to mass up faster than India can.

India probably doesn’t need +35% like Europeans do with the church techs, but at least 15% or 20% would make India viable. Sadly, not many play India enough in treaty to see this is as a big issue.

In treaty, India also struggles to counter artillery. The siege elephant is alright. But if the enemy has culverins, nothing you do matters because nothing in your arsenal effectively beat culverins, especially if the enemy micros and protects them well.

You don’t have the option of flanking hussars - you try to make low-HP sowars that take like 15-20 seconds to create. You try to use siege elephants to snipe with their mobility. But good players with culverins target them like a sore thumb, and you can’t even destroy their horse artilleries or falconets without losing an elephant. If you do lose them, they take forever to train back, too - no Engineering School or decent cav training speeds).
While you wait for sowars, 1/3 of your gurkha/sepoy mass gets obliterated by cannons with supporting enemy skirm/musk. It’s gonna take you ages to re-mass, so that leaves you vulnerable into getting snowballed. By the time your sowars get there, your army is at half-pop and the enemy skirms/musks pluck off your low-HP Sowars as a joke anyways. India has “answers” to artillery, but those answers simply suck.

India does has strong infantry (a good skirm, powerful musk), but it can’t win battles alone without good artillery or cav support. It’s not like Japan where you snowball others by exploiting the pop-efficiency of 400+ HP Ashigaru and 25 extra military space. Sprinkle some Nagi and some flaming arrows/mortarus here and there, and Japan functions still strongly without much artillery. India can’t do that - its infantry mass is good, but even that alone can’t win battles alone because the slow-training, weak cavalry can’t help it, nor the 30-range siege elephants that get negated by culverins.

With India, you feel like you have options, but you’re drudging and drudging to get your army to work. It just ends up being inefficient and ineffective overall.

The best you can do is do timing pushes, but really, India just can’t stay in a heads-up fight without good artillery/anti-artillery. Nor can it run and siege with super, super slow training times.

2 Likes
6

esse deve ser o 6Âş ou 7Âş tĂłpico sobre a Ă­ndia em tratado ja passou 2 anos e nada deles fazerem alguma coisa.
https://forums.ageofempires.com/t/solution-to-make-india-more-played-in-treaty/122470/357

1 Like
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eu parei de jogar com índia em tratado faz tempo a civilização e tão ruim em tratado que astecas são mais fortes que eles.

8

ok forgive my ignorance here because i cant always keep track of changes like this:
does terror charge still affect siege elephants? it used to, but if they changed it from “abstractElephant” to “abstractCavalry” then thats a huge issue that was missed