I assume their ability for dodging projectiles is based on trick-riding. The Mongols did that too.
Imagine giving the mangudai, the same dodging ability…
They don’t even dodge the projectiles—they block them, despite what the unit’s description says.
Imagine 7 Skirmishers and 7 Hand Cannoneers fire at a Shrivamsha Rider at the same time, and all their projectiles hit. What happens? The Shrivamsha Rider blocks all the Hand Cannoneers’ shots and takes the javelins instead—because javelins are slower. But common sense would suggest it should be harder to dodge faster projectiles.
It’s a bit harsh. Bengalis are doing alright and are very strong on close maps. Their weakness to skirms is addressed by their +2 bonus for melee cavalry, and Bengalis light cav is probably a better complement to range units than standard knights. And against siege they have monks, it’s a bit weaker than bbc but still.
For dravidians it’s hard to pretend they are good, however with the infantry buffs they might become better. They are kinda supposed to counter skirms with their own, but you don’t win games only with good skirms.
A light rider more obviously dodges than blocks (which would be more reliable in full plate armour and barding…). But by “dodge” we could expect them to actually move out of the way of arrows (which would make some very annoying micro…)
Had the game a higher zoom level and more varied animations we may see the rider quickly hiding behind his horse and other tricks like that.
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Light cav getting +2 against skirms doesn’t change them into knights, they’re still much weaker in comparison against other units. Plus, you have civs that get extra hp, free 2nd attack and production discount on light cav. Compared to those +2 vs just skirms is quite mediocre for castle age, its primarily a good bonus for feudal age. I can agree that civs like Dravidians, Sicilians, Bulgarians are even worse but Bengalis is a bottom-15 on open maps at best. There’s still no proper compensation for the lack of both knights and CA. Rathas are great when you play phosphorus style all-in and that’s the reason why they are “doing alright” stats wise. But that’s going to be even more difficult to pull with the chicken addition and maa changes. If you don’t do an early castle age castle drop into ratha build, they’re quite weak for mid and late game since they take 5 damage from skirms even in melee mode and have lower dps than xbows in ranged mode. One of these two should be improved in exchange for 2-3 seconds of additional tt to make them a good long term unit for that civ. Then you could either play light cav + ranged Ratha or Melee ratha + skirms/halbs.
For closed category, they’re strong on maps like Fortress where its optimal to boom until imp without much army and later there’s scope for mobility and pushing from different areas. In other closed maps, they’re above average but not “strong” as they lack so many closed map units and techs. No hand canoneers, no bombard canons and monks aren’t a replacement for canons. Most of the other civs considered top-tier in closed category like Bohemians, Portugese, Burgundians have both good monks and bombard canons. I’d say they’re a top-15 but not a top-5 civ on closed maps.
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Compared to those, as bengalis you have 2 more vils in feudal and 2 more in castle age. In an ideal world civs with the strongest economies would have subpar units.
You don’t need a proper compensation, because you play crossbows with a strong economy and can reach an very good arbalest+light cav comp.
I agree with the additional tt. It has probably already been said in the thread, but hera suggested they could benefit from both cavalry and archer armors, so they are weaker in castle drop situations and stronger late.
Arena - 1v1 Random Map | ALL - aoestats.
On arena, they are top 3 at mid elo, top 15 at 1900+ elo and top 5 overall. Maybe weaker than Bohemians or Burgundians, but those two are even weaker on open maps. Monks are weaker than gunpowder in certain situations and stronger in others.
(I also think they have very good matchups against meta civs like Bohemians or Turks, with their strong deathball)
If Bengalis were to receive shrivamsha, I would expect them to lose something in return, because right now they are almost balanced, outside of the phosporu strat.
can you share the context? Overall they are at 50.56%, and 49.33% on Arabia.
Hes using the new patch stats
Which feels quite rushed
Imo the Shrivamsja just doesnt fit their current civs sesigns, specially bengalis. And as someone who likes Gurjaras, I hate the shield mechanic. Its way too annoying for a super fast unit to gank five arrows and quickly recharge its shield afterwards. It also has the problem of being more or less not affected by upvrades for its survibabiliy
Yes, but given the current state of civs, the eco bonus of atleast 20 other civs need to be nerfed for Bengali eco to be much superior to justify the subpar military.
This is not even a good combo with Bengalis since they lack thumb ring, don’t have bombard canons. For the current eco, you can either give thumb ring, hand canoneers and bombard canons. Or keep the tech tree as it is but make the eco even stronger, potentially almost the same as Vikings. Third option would be to leave eco and rest of the tech tree as it is but give some replacement unit to knights or modify Rathas so that they are very good in one of the two modes. Like either -3 damage from skirms in melee mode or -2 attack for melee Rathas and +2 attack for the ranged ones.
But that would just leave them with the exact same armor in late imp. That’s a nerf with no compensatory buff. My recommendation is to improve them in one of the two modes but make it harder to mass them in big numbers to prevent Phosphorus style play.
Burgundians are also a victim of overnerf when their eco bonus was unnecessarily reduced even further to 33%. Instead the flemish should have been removed and the +25% on gunpowder should have become their Imperial age UT. There was an attempt to give them something in return last patch but it wasn’t done well, so they’re sort of an imbalanced civ as well. Both Burgundians and Bohemians are sort of overtuned to closed maps the same way Spanish are overtuned to nomadic maps. This sort of balance just makes a few civs overused in each map category. Like in Arabia, Mongols and Chinese are broken at higher elos and they are played 50% more often relatively.
As far as Bengalis in closed maps, top-15 is above average as I mentioned. And a main reason for that is poor melee pathing on light cavs and as a consequence monks being too broken at higher elos. Anyways Shrivamsha rider’s presence won’t have too much of an impact in majority of the closed maps as there’s very little potential to raid in mid game and 30 gold is still a lot for the late game. It will still be useful to snipe canons and trebs when there aren’t many halbs.
You can remove something unimportant like gambeson, arson or champion upgrade.
I think he’s using new patch stats which are a bit too early.
Every civ has a knight or an appropriate replacement unit. What’s there in the Bengali or Dravidian design that justifies the lack of it?
I think the idea behind Shrivamsha riders when compared to knights is to be less effective in smaller numbers and micro intense early castle age battles but be more effective in larger battles. Earlier when both Shrivamshas and Kshatriyas were cheaper, it was very easy to mass them in the mid game and that’s the reason why too many people complained about it but nowadays its much harder to spam them. And you can always further nerf the default base stats of Shrivamshas so that only Gurjaras get the current stats while the other 2 civs get a weaker version of it.
I don’t see any reason to make Shrivamsha Riders a regional unit (though I hate the Indian civs’ lack of the Knight line), but this wouldn’t be the first time something that should be unique isn’t. People are forgetting the Dromon and the Fire Ship I guess.
but they already have regional unit aka elephant archer. Shrivamsha also has one of the most annoying fantasy ability ever in aoe 2. One civ having this unit already makes me go mad whenever I see it, let alone 4 civs.
It’s interesting how everyone disagreeing isn’t doing so because of any actual argument against the idea, but simply because they dislike the dodge mechanics of the unit. Why are you guys even criticizing the Shrivamsha itself? This thread isn’t about that.
Also, the three people who liked the post are Indians (probably all from the South or maybe living abroad, if I had to guess — I’m Seychellois, so I can tell). Everyone else who disagreed seems to be non-Indian and mainly opposed to the Shrivamsha mechanics. They don’t really care about the topic itself.
One possible solution would be to remove the dodge mechanics from the Shrivamsha when used by other civilizations, keeping it unique to the Gurjaras. That way, it won’t feel so odd. The unit’s speed would still be a valuable addition for the Bengalis and Dravidians.
It’s badly designed.
It doesn’t even dodge the projectiles—it straight up blocks the incoming projectiles. And the projectile speed doesn’t make any difference to the Shrivamsha Rider’s ability, when common logic would tell us the opposite.
They should’ve simply given them high pierce armor or a percentage chance to dodge incoming projectiles—because that’s what actually dodging is.
Soon there will be a melee unit doing the same.
Iron Pagoda.