Honestly I see a better trash in the mid game is suitable for this exact reason. Their gold units come to play at late game once you fully boomed. With better trash you will hold your position and bring the gold units later as usual.
Or a defensive bonus to safely reach to that destination.
How though? I don’t see any similar civ with spear, skirm and elephant focus. Malay is also trash and Elephant civ but their trash is different from spear and skirm. Also that is in the late game. Meanwhile Bengalis trash will be played in mid game.
If anything that will make them boring, it will be this one to me. A straight forward Malay that doesn’t have BBC in Imperial. Or a Dravidians that doesn’t have infantry.
Unlike the Byzantines, the Bengalis are supposed to win games with powerful gold units. And then you want to start training a lot of trash against your opponents after hitting the castle age? Is this decent?
Other archer civilizations with elephants, such as the Malays and Vietnamese, have either too perfect archer or too weak elephants, so the protagonists are always archers rather than elephants. The Bengali crossbowmen are in a suitable position to not steal the limelight from the elephants. The transition from crossbowman to elephant play is fresh.
Byzantines is also supposed to win with their strong gold units in the late game.
Not lot of. That’s Byzantines. For my proposed Bengalis they will make just as much as necessary (maybe a bit more if necessary) and will get better value from them. It is quality over quantity while Byzantines is quantity over quality.
Right now, yes. After TR with FU arbs, archer line will be the main protagonist.
Actually no. Only EA shares the upgrades and still you have to switch from wood eco to food eco.
I mean they should be different from the Byzantines. Give them a trash bonus, their trash will be stronger than normal trash in the castle age, which will make them like the Byzantines to focus on trash training, and even actively use trash to kill opponents, instead of relying as much on their economic strength as possible training gold units or expensive units. You think because the quality is better you won’t train a lot, but I think maybe because the quality is better players will train more to widen the advantage.
I say the transition from crossbowman to elephant play is fresh because Malays and Vietnamese do not have this need and will be a feature of Bengalis. Most of the games of Malays and Vietnamese don’t even build stables.
They are and they still will be. Only one spear/skirm bonus won’t make them similar. IDK about you, but I’ve never heard someone calling Lithuanians and Byzantines similar despite both having monk and spear/skirm bonus.
I’m not denying that. But I don’t think spear/skirm will win you a game for you.
Even the Lithuanians have trash bonuses, their knights and Leitis are the protagonists. Many times the Lithuanians ended the game without having to use the trash at all, which is why they are not similar to the Byzantines who relied heavily on their trash bonuses.
Once the Bengalis have the trash bonus, the Bengals will tend to use these strong trashes when they need to fight in the Castle Age, making them more similar to the Byzantines than the Lithuanians.
They may not necessarily be the time point of GG, but they are definitely likely to be the key to the outcome of the game. The army that had invested heavily in gold is exhausted in the Castle age, making it impossible later to resist the Imperial age Byzantines. Many games have proven this.
Let’s keep the Castle Age as the weak point of the Bengalis, instead of making them strong enough to face any challenge.
Can’t fight knights so want to buff spearmen, can’t fight archers so want to buff skirmishers. Is this really good? They have decent long-term economic bonuses, do they really need better trash?
I don’t remember such an incident. Seems pretty rare to me. They always get to knight+spear or knight+skirm.
Bengalis main units are elephants and Ratha, pretty different from Byzantines. Just using trash in castle a bit more won’t make them similar. I’ve seen Vikings, Vietnamese, Malay and even Ethiopians player pairing spear or skirm with their archer a lot. Doesn’t mean they are similar to Byzantines.
I agree with that. My personal analysis is they need a defensive bonus more than anything to safely set up their over booming eco. I consider spear and skirmisher a good defensive tool. Since they lack meta gold units, I combined defensive and military bonus and came up with better spear/skirm idea.
For Bengalis, yes. Your cheaper monastery is a good bonus. But not only u r suggesting this for a civ that has zero meta units, but also hardly helping against archer civs. Is asking for a better traditional counter units for a civ with no traditional gold units too much?
Is not having any traditional meta unit, not even good traditional counter units a good design?
By the time long term eco bonus shines, trash units already lacks some upgrades (except for skirmishers). Khmer, Slavs, Chinese, Burgandians, Teutons have arguably better long term eco. And all of them except Teutons will still have better trash than my suggested Bengalis.