I’ll say it as many times as I need to: Indians have to be split. Thematic cards will just make an awful umbrella even worse.
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Sorry but not gonna happen when there are so many crucial empires still missing to be added. I can make empathy that some Southern Indians want to be represented separately (they feel the same issue at aoe4 too) but look at the status of AOE3DE. We cant still get a new DLC, not even an easy to make civ. Like Poles or Danes.
Lovely though but not going to happen.
I think they should just embrace Mughal India solely and make the nonsensical (to Mughal) units as mercs (such as Gurkas) whilst giving them appropriate replacements.
Honestly, I don’t even feel like the unit roster is Mughal, it’s more like a East India Trading Company thing, Sepoys, Gurkhas, Sowars make much more sense if you think the civ is the East India Trading Company than the Mughal Empire.
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Maybe if they change management. Or we wait a decade and AOE3 is still miraculously supported. They can do what they did to AOE2 into AOE3.
The chances for me are 30% at best from 4 years to a decade. (assuming this game is still alive and WW3 hasnt happened)
Absolutely - just an an English company with its own armed forces. It was an odd direction from Big Huge Games, though I feel we are probably stuck with it (minus the odd HC card).
TAD civs were popular culture tropes + exotic looking weird weapons…African civs were much better designed in terms of realism (not necessarily accurate, but at least they do not look like they come from a 1970s movie).
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I feel like the TAD civs were built around the campaigns. It’s what makes the most sense for them. It explains why the chinese roster is a really strange mishmash of Ming units with Qing formations, or why India is basically just “Sepoy Rebellion the civ”.
Japan is probably the most fitting if only because Sengoku Jidai is what people expect out of Japan in this period anyways.
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It is because it is India between 1757 and 1857 (the same as the campaign) that is why there are many EIC units and there are almost no Maratha units…Akbar being the leader is simply to connect with the pre-modern Indian period (1526-1757)…
They studied them more I guess…
Of course, in addition to the fact that the Asian civs we use in the campaigns are the same as the multiplayer ones: Japan (Tokugawa Shogunate) (1600-1868), China (mix of the Ming and Qinq dynasties) (1368-1912) and the EIC India (1757-1857)…
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If you were to ‘re-do’ India, firmly keeping it solely as just Mughal India and without diverting too far off from the current one (as the most realistic approach), what would you change?
Just for the barracks units:
Banduqchis as Sepoy replacements? (just a texture change)
Qarawal Skirmisher units to replace Gurkas (texture change)
** Pathabaz Swordsmen** swordsmen (using shield and rapier-like swords) as Rajput replacements
Raijputs could be a shipment-only unit or something as the name just relates to the warrior caste and not even a ‘unit type’/
Sepoys and Gurkas shoudl just be available as a ‘British Raj’ consulate option or as later age Home City shipments or as or shipment-enabled units as Sepoy was mainly a term for foreign styled/trained infantrymen. Gurkas were from far away in the Kingdom or Nepal (and originally from the Gorkha Kingdom) and were Mercenary/Auxillary forces of the the British Raj, and Modern India/Singapore military, so another consulate or even mercenary option.
One question, didnt’t the Mughals also use Sepoys?
Sepoy basically just mean soldier/infantry man and is derived from ‘sipahi’ which is just the Persian word for soldier (Ottoman’s sipahi is also derived from this origin), so they did use that term too, though it was just a broad term (like me saying the British have infantrymen, rather than Musketers, Rangers, Longbowmen, etc. It later meant almost exclusively as foreign-owned or trained Indian soldiers.
Banduqchis refers to a specific unit type of the Mughal armies - musketeers.
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im not sure sepoy really need to be changed, it just was the common name for soldiers all of the European powers in india trained, and isnt specifically british, even if they obviously are most famous in the british raj.
It’s more of a ‘wishful thinking’ thing really, with the reason being what you’ve said - common name for Euro-trained India soldiers. The civ is ‘meant’ to be Mughal given the civ flag and a.i leader, rather than part of the British Empire such as the ingame civ. It would be like making the Aztec just have colonial spanish-owned native military units).
Ain’t going to happen though - just a ‘nice to have’!
And that’s the wrong approach because both of these civs are based on one specific country. Both of these civs are unable to represent the nations for which they are umbrellas.
While Germans civ is very easy to change into Austrians civ, Indians civ is a strange creation.
Civ Indians are trying to cram a bit of content from various regions of India in a clumsy way. Adding HC “immersion” cards would only make the overall Indians civ worse. In my opinion, if there was a division of the Indian Umbrella, it should look like this:
- Current Indians civ should be renamed Mughals civ. The British Consulate would offer an expensive reform turning the Mughals into a British Raj - thus Sepoy and other units associated with the British Raj would swap Mughal units, in addition, the Mughals would gain access to British artillery (including Rockets).
- Content not associated with the Mughals and British Raj would be carried over to the brand new civs. In their place, the Mughals would get brand new replacement items.
This is how Indians civ looks like in terms of content (origin of content):
Northwestern India: Delhi Sultanate, Mughal Empire, Sikh Empire
- Rajput
- Agra Fort
- Karni Mata
- Taj Mahal
- Tower of Victory
Southern India: Vijayanagara Empire, Maratha Empire, Kingdom of Mysore
- Brahmin
- Urumi Swordsman
- Flail Elephant (Sri Lanka)
- Sacred Field
- Charminar Gate
Northeastern India: Bengalis, Nepalese
- Gurkha (Nepalese)
Area of modern India and British Raj
- Sepoy
- Mahout Lancer
- Howdah
- Siege Elephant
PERSIA !!!
- Sowar
- Zamburak
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I prefer it be renamed to sipahi or Banduqchi then. Why use an european term then unless specifically referring to the British Sepoys?
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More accurately, the civ uses EIC troops for the Musketeer/Skirmisher infantry core, fanciful exotic tactics - martial artists, camels and elephants, for the melee, cavalry and artillery roles.
The concept - why would an American game developer like BHG make these decisions - is actually very easy to understand. The alliance of Indian Company soldiers and ragtag local troops even makes a modicum of sense in the context of the Sepoy Uprising story, unlike the Chinese civ’s grabbag units.
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Oh absolutely - China civ suffers from that too.
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I’d give them the following units:
Line Infantry
Banduqchis for Mughals.
Other Indian civs could have a Toradar Musketeer.
Melee Infantry
Shamsherbaz for Mughals.
Pata Swordsman for other Indian civs (renamed Rajputs).
Light Infantry
Dhanur as an archaic archer for all Indian civs.
Prangi could be the Mughal advanced light infantry and function similarly to an Abus Gun.
A reliable way to recruit Gurkha mercenaries could give them a more standard skirmisher.
Other Indian civs could have more atypical options like Urumi and Rocketeers.
Light Cavalry
If India gets split you don’t need to cram as many conflicting units in their roster. Zamburaks could be the light cav for Mughals and Persians and Howdah for the other Indians, Burmese, Thai, etc.
Heavy Cavalry
Not much change needed, Sowars, Mahouts, etc for Mughals. Sowars could have horses though. Other Indians like Maratha have tons of options for cavalry (Shiledar, Silladar, Bargir, Pindari, etc).
Artillery
Siege Elephants need to be scrapped. Mughals could have a similar Gajnal that is more dedicated to being a Culverin.
Bombards could provide sieging and anti-infamtry capabilities.
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From my understanding “sepoy” just like “askari” and the like were generic terms in their native language, but then used by another language to describe a very specific concept. Like sepoy were generic infantryman for Mughals but when we use the word in English it usually refers to East India Company local troop.
But I think the appearance is okay. It does not look very “western”.
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