Bengalis are underperforming in open land maps since the release of Dynasties of India. They are relatively good on closed maps though. I’m guessing not having any FU meta units is really hurting them on open maps as all of their army is expensive and a need a safe eco boom to get into that point.
Some questions that I may face why I think this is needed :
Why Bengalis need a new civilization bonus?
Their existing bonuses are at balanced state and buffing them can be OP. For example 3 free villagers on age up or more resistant on Elephants unit will result in very OP situation in closed maps and/or TG.
They have very low number of civilization bonus for 1v1 land map, only 2. The closest one is Portuguese who also have 2 or maybe 3 if you can justify building Feitoria. And Portuguese is also another terrible civ on open land maps. Worth to mention they have the least amount of bonuses as well as UU among all the new civs.
They have very open tech tree. They lack some key units and techs though like gunpowder and TR. But just giving them these techs will ruin their design and make them very similar to Malay and Dravidians.
Why this bonus?
A bonus that will work in 1v1 land maps nicely. Another elephant bonus will not work since justifying elephant in 1v1 is a very hard.
A bonus that is not good in TG settings. I think Bengalis are fine in TG. And Spearman and skirmishers are the least priority in TG.
Not an early aggressive bonus. They are designed to be a overboom (not just regular/normal boom) into very population efficient military units, Ratha or Elephants. They are not designed to win before Imperial age. And Spearman and Skirmisher buff is perfect for that as they will allow you to buy time but not winning the game for you.
Not anther eco or late game buff. I don’t see any problem in their late game power units or not having enough eco to support that. The problem is not having enough defensive tools against early feudal to mid castle age aggression.
Won’t this make them similar to Vietnamese and Vikings?
I don’t think so. Vietnamese have Imperial skirmisher on top of the extra HP. And Vikings despite lacking Halb, have Chieftain and last armor on top of the extra HP. In the end Vietnamese will have better skirmisher and Vikings will have better spearman.
Elephant and skirmishers aspect are similar to Vietnamese. But their extra villagers based eco, bad cavalry and not having TR are very opposite. But these are very similar to Vikings design. I think they will work like a bridge in between Vietnamese and Vikings.
I like the overall reasoning but I prefer to look for more original bonuses so the overlapping with vietnamese and viking is avoided.
one option with similar implications (at least in feudal age) would be to extend the regenerating ship bonus to spears and skirms.
Another option would be “skirms and spears are trained 20% faster”. This is different to giving extra HP or regeneration, but allows to outnumber thr enemy a bit easier
For Bengalis, I would first try to give them Thumb Ring so they could have at least the full upgrading archer line. That will help them in the open map a lot. I don’t think this has anything to do with the Dravidians.
Thumb ring would mean their ele archers are better than dravidians. And if you change paiks to only affect battle eles then you’re nerfing their ability to switch around between ratha/ele archers and battle eles.
Honestly I don’t like overlap either. And I’m all for avoiding that.
Very interesting. But their HP is so low that 15HP/min is actually very big. Maybe 5/10/15 HP/min in Feudal/Castle/Imperial?
This one is also helpful but their eco needs time to outproduce more units.
At least we have agreed that a spear+skirm bonus will be really good.
That will totally ruin the civ imho. The whole idea for Bengalis was not giving them the accuracy of ranged units. Archer, EA, Ratha all will be inaccurate - that was the intention of devs. Now giving them TR will totally go against that design.
Their EA will be same as Dravidians and on top of that they both will have FU arbs. 4 out of 6 BE civs will have FU arbs and that will be a bad thing imo.
They have 2 extra villagers in feudal age. That is enough eco to produce 20% more units from only one building if they need to defense theirselves.
Indeed. It seems that most regenerating units regenerate 20 HP per minute from castle age onwards
So the bonus could be tweaked for both ships and counter units and make them regenerate the same as polish villagers. This could seem a nerf on water maps but the regenartion still make their ships better in not massed combats.
It is true that skirms and spears have low HP and so the impact of regeneration is greater for surviving units. But the lower HP makes this bonus useless in some cases. For instance, a skirm cannot regenerate after being attackes by siege onagers, nor a halberdier can regenerate the enemy focused firing. In late game, where focused attacks are a thing, renegeration would be only noticed for unintentional attacks like splash damage
How about discounted monasteries instead?
Like the old Bohemian bonus for instance: -100w for monasteries, or maybe -75w.
Monks are a great tool to deal with knights plus they can be used offensively with a siege-monk push, which would give another angle from where Bengalis can pressure enemies in castle age.
Since Bengalis lack knights, but have nice monastery techs, why not leverage that instead? Giving 20% more hp to pikes I don’t think it would help that much against knights, a speed bonus would have been better, but that’s already taken by Lithuanians, 20% more hp for skirms definitely helps against archers, but Bengalis shouldn’t have problems countering archers imho, between their own archers, light cav and elephant archers (you can just train a couple to soak some damage, not a full squad).
Another one would be discounting monks, like -30/40% discount only for monks, but that overlaps with 20% discount of Portuguese so I’m not that sure, plus it might be too good.
How about giving this civ some time and letting people figure it out before calling for buffs?
I know this is probably the wrong place to ask for such a thing, because people here seem to be asking for buffs/nerfs after they lost a single game (to be fair: not in this thread), but the point still stands.
I’m not sure if Bengalis are actually that weak on open land maps.
They’re different because they dont have knights and I think a lot of people are still rushing their UU, which is bad, because it seems to be more of a lategame unit, which is heavily reliant on getting a lot of upgrades. Basically Cavalry Archers on steroids in that regard.
I would wait at least 2-3 more months before making a judgement here.
Indeed, their UU requires too much to be viable in castle age, plus obviously Castles, battle elephant/elephant archer is super slow and expensive (you can train a couple, but not an army), and that leaves them with what?
Regular Crossbows, militia line and trash units…not something I’d call strong honestly. It might work, but you’re very limited.
The only other civ with such limited choices are Dravidians, but their archery range is imho much better, plus their bonus while not long-lasting, gives you 400w combined as soon as you hit castle age (200+200), perfect for archers.
That is the reason why bohemians bonus are completely gone. No Thanks for appearing again.
Monk masses in early castle age are easily broken, while monk become underpower when game goes long and army size bigger.
It may not fix but it could help and provide another useful strategy. This has a more positive and interesting effect than giving trash units bonuses. On the other hand, Bengalis late economy with more powerful trash units is probably not a good thing.
Anyway if the devs are willing to try this I would support.