Usac’s Civ Crafting Brainstorms Part 5 - Tai

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
21

On top of anything above from months ago, I feel like the Royal Elephant isnt playing into its take role well enough so here’s the rub that makes you want to kill it first.

Elephant has an aura that will cause half of non contact damage to redirect to them. This damage will account for bonus damage even if the target wasnt weak to it. Only the absolute closest within 8 range of the target will redirect. It doesnt effect buildings!

Let me explain: lets say yout neighboring swordsman gets hit by a Kamayuk. For sake of argument we’ll pretend this unit counts as ranged even though it doesnt.

The elite kamayuk FU does 12 damage and vs a champion it would do 8. In this scenario the damage is halved to 6 THEN the FU champions armor reduces this to 2. As for the Royal Elephant… hes going to take 6 + 10 elephant bonus and 6 cavalry bonus damage even though he has none of those armor types. And those are applied BEFORE armor so with 3/2 some cav armor and elephant bonus armor you will … not be taking a lot of damage in this scenario. Meanwhile if the Kamayuk directly attacked the elephant it would be taking way more damage per hit.

You will reduce bonus damages but not TAKE them if the unit is vulnerable but the elephant isnt. So lets say your ram takes a direct SO shot which does 75 +12 siege weapon damage +3 from negative melee armor. This means… normally a direct hit SO should do 90 damage to a ram. However… cutting the damage in half means the ram will take 47 damage (38 from the halved base 6 from the halved siege bonus and +3 because armor is applied last regardless even when negative) while in turn the Royal Elephant will take 38 damage before armor. And if the SO does splash you can bet there will be no dead Arbalests and all the splash will still go to the elephant or elephants if multiple nearby.

It satill slow and very conversion vulnerable

No idea if this unit is fair however it does encourage direct attacks upon the elephants as the way to go to avoid armor based reduction shenanigans. And a few monks which you dont have Faith OR heresy to prevent will go a long way

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22

Why they can keep steppe lancer, demo ship while miss town patrol?

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Town Patrol is more a flavor. The truth is Read that Tai people travelled far to migrate into their current lands from the North. Perhaps not north enough to be Steppes or even camel users so that could change.

I know you l your almost crazy obsession is Asian history though so it will he changed

In any case this civ needs to go all in on its elephant mode.

24

But all civs have Town Patrol.

Only north to the north bank of Yangtze River. There has been no Steppe or camel.What’s further , the people lived in that area BC might be a branch of ancestors of Ka-Tai languages ethnic groups, but not sure exactly be the direct ancestors of Tai people.And at least ,there were no Tai people living at both banks of Yangtze Riber during AOE2 timeline.

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Once upon a time all civs had castle age infantry and archer armor techs…. Point?

I guess if it makes you like this Ill remake without Lanxsr but Im not too big on the super intricacies you can go way too deep on over Asian civs. I just want fun elephant civ wothout being told Im butchering history in a game where Burmese and Spanish archers are worse than in reality how they were

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27

Nothing suggests that the Tai peoples originated from the far north of Asia. On the contrary linguistics and genetics suggest that they were likely of South China origin, more specifically around the Pearl River valley in Guangdong and Guangxi. Hence there’s absolutely no reason to give them steppe lancers.

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28

Even the Yangtse origin of Tai-Kradai is somewhat exaggerated in my opinion. According to linguists like Roger Blench, they likely originated from the Pearl River valley in Far South China.

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Camels? They are of chinese origin which is a camel using civ mostly because funny army comp with camels and full elephant

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At that time South China hadn’t been sinicized yet so you shouldn’t call them Chinese

And nothing indicates that the Tai-Kradai tribes in South China ever used camels in warfare, camels don’t even live there, even an ox or buffalo rider would probably be more realistic for them to have than the camel rider

31

Maybe.
I just mean the common ancestors of Baiyue, including Tai-Kradai who originated from the Pearl River valley and some braches of south sinic languages speaking people which might directly originated from the banks of Yangtze River as their were sinicized later on their homeland.

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Baiyue was just a general term used by the ancient Sinitic people to refer to the natives of South China, and nothing suggests that those natives all spoke the same language or shared a common origin. The Tai-Kradai people from the Pearl River valley likely had a different origin from the people who lived at the Yangtse river delta.

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Look Im glad you both know so much but can you not turn every easternly Asian civ into your own personal conversations that go off topic to the concepts themselves

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Our conversation is actually not off-topic. You need to have at least some basic historical knowledge of the region when designing a civ from that particular region, and giving the Tais or Tai-Kradais steppe lancers and camel riders is just completely imaginary and unhistorical.

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35

Well from the top:

ai (450 on) - A defensive and Elephant Civ

  • Builds the Storehouse instead of 3 dropsites. Storehouses act like an all-purpose drop site and has all said research techs provided it’s available to the Tai tech tree. It costs 100w and is otherwise unremarkable but building two counts as two separate buildings for Feudal Age unlocking. Or I could make it so you need only 1 to unlock Feudal Age button.

  • Buildings +1/1 and +1 building armor per age. +3/3/3 In Imp or 4 if starting Dark.

Bonuses I feel fit well. You sadly will need a defensive foundation. Storehouses are probably less annoying than Mules too since they dont cost food at moments you might need them for a military push.

  • Farms generate food while being worked

Big change, floating rice! Basically, hungry elephants have hungry needs! It’s basically Burgundian UT but with food instead of gold. Too good? No idea.

  • Elephants +2 damage vs Standard buildings per age (+4)

Effecting any elephant tag unit.

Team Bonus: Elephant units and Scout Cav line train 10% faster. 25% starting Castle Age

Elephants are already tanky! The old cavalry armor feels too much. Train time for less than a dozen civs is BARELY a team bonus, but most civs will use scouts.

Missing Techs

  • Barracks: Eagle Scout, Arson, Gambesons
  • Archery Range: Elite Elephant Archer, Cavalry Archer
  • Stable: Hussar, Paladin, Steppe Lancer, Camel
  • Siege Workshop: Battering Ram, Bombard Cannon, Siege Elephant
  • Blacksmith: Blast Furnace
  • University: Heated Shot, Keep
  • Dock: Heavy Demo Ship, Fast Fire Ship
  • Monastery: Faith, Heresy, Theocracy
  • Economy: Stone Shaft Mining, Town Patrol

Most of the tree is unchanged. Gambesons is missing for a very specific reason. This civ begs the question: can you use non elite elephant archers and siege long term with a specific UT to compensate?

I already explained the UU above but in short it redirects half of all projectile damage from a nearby ally to the closest Royal Elephant. It’s tanky, a bit slow, and strong, and when it misses it instead hits every other unit except the main target around the target with a full damage trample that ignores armor especially with the UT, but keep in mind your Monastery is lacking important techs and you dont have Hussar so the faster training is basically a synergy to tell you to get your emergency monk slayers out and about. This elephant has no building bonus damage except for that provided by the civ bonus.

Stats are probably gonna need some workover, mind you.

Castle UT: Irregulars - Can train swordsmen, Hand Cannons and Skirmishers at the Storehouse which now requires 50% less cost and build time.

Now that the UU is the ultimate arrow soak, this civ probably could have lost some smithing armor but I’m more afraid of +1 range with +2 trample damage. Keep in mind units trained here are slow not benefitting from any training bonuses, no Conscription, no workrate TBs, and so on!

Imperial UT: Ngao – Elephant units +1 range and trample and splash radius.

This bonus is expensive. But… even elephant archers now do +4 vs standard building damage which is nothing to sneeze at even if they can’t become elite. It helps but again this is a logistica cost for a bunch of units that have big hungry demands.

This civ is a scout rusher. But if you’re really efficient with storehouse placement you can save a bunch of wood for archers and skirms as well. This goes well, perhaps too well with aggressive tower play which is why the defensive building armor might not include them.

Age 3 is… well it’s probably knights. You could try Xbows as they miss no techage. You can throw some siege in, elephants will wreck that much faster.

Age 4 is when you can try and unlock with Ngao and hopefully a surplus of food and wood. Elephants with added splash are scary especially the archers. Be wary of holymen.

Admittedly not much is changed from version one. The biggest change is that the UU is now more useful. Your armies are slow and the rare cavalier without Blast Furnace isnt going to change that fact.

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36

I just want to see elephants with cannons and to be able to play as my peoples

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