What is more tough to do?
To learn how a civ works, or to learn how to be good at micro because the “easy” civ requires good micro?
Edit: Oh, what you are saying is that Delhi are tough to play AGAINST? Yeah. They are in A tier on their own now. Time to start bug fixing and buffing other civs, definitely don’t do that “one civ at a time”.
English are lower than Chinese and way lower than Delhi
Not only are they currently a one trick pony, but according to stats, it’s not even a good trick.
You said that English were fine, except that shattering projectiles has been bugged since the stress test, Abbey of Kings is pure garbage and everyone has been saying that all along, the Ribauld has been the worst unit in the game this entire time. Trebs also suck, and English are the Treb civ with their upgrade and their Wynguard.
Half the stuff they get might as well not be in the game because it’s currently useless, which is a real problem for a civ that has been given a lot less stuff than other civs in order to make it “uncomplicated”.
Delhi suffered from a great variety of negatives until just recently, so unless you were simply enthralled by elephants and scholars, you’d often avoid playing them.
English got indirectly nerfed with the +1 armour on horsemen.
English are really predictable and have a restricted eco bonus they have to invest in to get payoff.
Compare that to rus free gold and + foodgatheringspeed across the board or french +10% more eco with vil production.
The goal with English (or even with French) against Delhi’s Elephants is to destroy you before you amass Elephants. I practiced against Hardest AI on any maps and I seem to be consistently winning. Just pray the map has no seas. English and French navy ships are among the best out there. And even when we get to Endgame, I should have amassed Mangonels/Bombards with Cheap Spears on front while I have my Knights raid you the whole game. The main issue with Delhi to me is that their Elephants are so SLOW.
A good idea you have there. It is in your best interest to do great harm to the Delhi player early on and allowing the domino effect kick in until you’ve won.
As for the AI Delhi, he will not be countering your siege with his own and will not be trying to lock down sacred sites with walls and such, making things significantly more streamlined.
AI is dumb on that respect. But what I always do to toy it is I destroy its base at the start without ending the game but leave it with enough villagers then I retreat back to my side and wall it and continue my upgrades. I just give him enough resources: Gold and Stone and wait for it to come back with full Imperial Age Massive Elephants to knock at my Gates. There I test my combo to annihilate it. I have some failures on my early AI games but I learned from it. Delhi Hardest AI is really good on doing its economy sending me enormous troops that looks impossible to destroy. On one game, it didnt attack back but it made its own Wonder. I was surprised on the Massive Elephants it made to guard its Wonder. I love it. It surely taught me its counters either with English or French.
But against Human player Delhi, I am pretty sure he wont be as fast and efficient to run an economy like the Hardest AI Delhi unless he is among the top 100 players.