I think the best auxiliary unit would be maybe Halberdier or Hussar. Bengalis, I feel, have the best Elephant Archers, because they can enable them best, sure they don’t have Hussar upgrade, but FU Light Cav is basically the same and better than what many Hussar civs got, for example better than Korean or Ethiopian Hussar. Not using enough Light Cav (particularly in Castle age) could be one of the reasons people think Bengalis suck, I think.
Dravidians lack anything so their Elephant Archers just suck I think.
Gurjaras are weird, their Elephant Archers are probably good, lacking a lot of armor but having Thumb Ring and good Cavalry support. But also… that’s just not how you wanna play as Gurjaras, you wanna do UU or mass Hussars/Shrivamsha, as Gurjaras you are encouraged heavily into Stable play.
Of these 3, I think only Dravidians need help, the other 2 civs can make good Elephant Archer compositions, in principle.
Maybe buff Dravidian Elephant Archers to something sick like +40% firerate idk, after all they got that, infantry and not much else tbh.
They need to use their own skirmishers which is quite good.
The cost is almost irrelevant in closed maps team games, expecially when you go for endgame power units.
The old Indians’ EA was super strong in that setting as well, and it did less dps, costed more and came from castles only.
But as I said, that’s all. A super niche circumstance, absolutely not enough to think “well then they’re fine”.
here’s my problem with this argument - it only factors in the DPS of the unit as your argument, not for example, the fact that they have huge amounts of health.
DO ea need buffs? absolutely - but let’s not pretend the reason you pay so much for them is due to their dps. you pay for a unit that in theory outlasts everything around it due to sheer tankiness.
I’d knock the negative armor class down to -2. I also think we should just make all of them have 100% accuracy. If that is too much accuracy to ask - give every EA civ PT and let it be +4 bonus damage.
for some math - at negative 7 they require 22 hits from skirms to die (assume +4 attack and +4 armor, no PT).
at -2 they require 34 a pretty significant increase.
oh i agree its a good unit, i actually think the recent buff was the wrong way to buff the unit also.
imo the buff was too much, but they wanted to remove the UT for something stats related.
removing thee archer armor was enough.