Has anyone made a thread about suggestions to the devs about unique Indian navy in AoE3DE?
If not, I wanted to open this thread so people who thought about it can post ideas here. If yes, post ideas nonetheless.
Also, the Thirisadai in AoE2 is not real. It’s nonsense.
Personally, I suggest that the Mughal navy be made of weak but numerous ships, kinda like the chincha raft. Mughals as far as I know, did not maintain large warships, and did not engage in any maritime battle, so small fast ships would be good. We can have something like the African navy.
Another idea is that Indian fishing boats be upgradeable to military ships. This now exists in the AoE franchise in AoE4. The Rus in AoE4 have one kind of ship -the Lodya, which can be transformed into different types. That could work well for India.
Japanese and Chinese nations both ended up using European-style warships by the end of the era of the game, some of them even manufactured in their own native countries rather than built abroad like they started out doing.
BHG did plan Indian unique ships, look into those language files you will find Grab and Galliwat. They are planned as warships and nothing more we can learn from the files. At last, we get European ships in Indian dock, maybe it reflects British Raj.
To be honest, aside from the missing Dhows, the Indian naval representation isn’t as bad as you think - they often used Mediterranean-style Galleys and veered towards European style Galleons and warships heavily. The aforementioned Ganji-i-Sawai was an Indian treasure ship ( a Ghanjah - large trading Dhow). They often prefered Euro-style ships (along with False Flags) to deter pirates.
Although it looks like the Indian naval units have been swept in the silly British East India company-area like the Gurkas and Sepoys, it’s actually fairly accurate - they did not have a note-worthy ocean-going navy.
If you wanted to improve it, maybe replace the Caravel with a Galley and give them a Ghanjah Dhow as a Galleon replacement - make it weaker but give it an early ‘bombard’ ability with Rockets alongside its normal cannon attack.
The bottom line is that the Mughals had immense land army, a good ‘brown’ (river) navy, and a weak blue-water navy.
From what I’ve seen, the Mughals made a few really large ships for trading and going on the Haj and they were sometimes heavily armed if the cargo was very valuable. Other than that they didn’t have much for blue water navy. I think it would be fine for them to keep big ships like Frigates and Monitors, but replace Caravels and Galleons with some ships of local construction. And of course replace the fishing boat model that has rubber tires hanging off it.
Forgot they added the 2 Dhow merc card to India after African civs launched, but those puppies appear to be based off of the massive Barbary-made ships at the height of their power rather than historical Indian Ocean-faring war vessels.
Another reason why “Indians” as a civ should be renamed to Mughals and they should create a Maratha one that has a proper history of naval prowess. It’s a crime that Marathas and Sikhs don’t exist despite their empire sized federations whereas the Maltese are in the Age of ‘Empires’ game.
Of course, that’s true…both the Japanese and the Chinese have 3 unique ships each…on the other hand, the Indians don’t have it that strange, do they??..
The Gallivat would have to be the Indian version of the Galley, the Grab the Indian version of the galleon/Atakabune and the Ganj-i-Sawai the Indian version of the Frigate/Tekkousen…
