You would have more base damage, so overall, the damage dealed to the enemy cav is the same. A paladin have 5 total MA, a HC (heavy camel not hand cannoneer) have 7+4 atk +18 bonus damage, meaning that they deal 29-5=24 damage.
Now if for IC you reduce the bonus damage from 18 to 16 you would still have an overall damage output vs the paladin of 9+4+16=29, so you would still deal the same 24 damage as the HC (22 in both cases vs teutons’ paladins).
So the IC would deal the same amount of damage vs paladin than the HC, but you would still be worth to pick up the IC upgrade for:
More base atk, so more effectiveness overall vs non-cav units
20 more HP, so they would still be improved vs cav (by taking a couple more hits) but they would melt paladins less faster. They also againg would be better vs other units, which is what indians need.
Then remove the -2 seconds on the TT for the IC, it’s simply a buff that the indians don’t need.
The EA are simply bad in desing for 3 reasons:
They are too expensive and slow to mass.
They are too slow and have the range of a CA (who is faster).
They simply don’t give the indians what they need, which is something that covers the lack of the knight line.
If you want to buff the the EA you should:
Substitute the food cost with wood.
Reduce the TT from 25s to at leat 19s.
Give the EA +1 range (as much as an arb) and another +1 for the Elite EA (so +1 over the arb and +2 over the CA) for a maximum of 9 range to compensate their low speed.
Not if the base damage increase is greater than the bonus damage decrease.
I agree with @VioletTexas3273 that it would be better to replace the EA than to buff it. (If indians are to be left mostly in their current state.)
Perhaps if Indians had something like Boyars or Kesheks it would go better for them. Though even then Boyars and Kesheks probably aren’t strong enough in Castle age.
Oh no sorry, that’s not what I meant. I wasn’t clear, my bad.
I too agree that the EA should be replaced, and also the camel’s should be redesigned. I just suggest some changes in the case the EA wouldn’t be replaced completely.
Yeah I was thinking that but now I realised that I forgot to write it. 11
They would need either a unit that take the place of the knight or of the arb, since a civ in my opinion can’t lack both.
The idea is that the fight IC vs paladin has a similar output to buffed HC (Saracen/malian) vs paladin.
In practice, the indian camel, even FU, does not perform better than other buffed camels vs paladins. Your idea of reducing the bonus damage vs knights to increase the base attack is also fine, since it does not change the fight camel vs paladin.
Imo this is better than just removing armor from IC, since the armor is very important vs eagles and archers…
I don’t increase the base damage, that +2 is already present into the IC upgrade. An IC now deals 31 damage to cav instead of the 29 of a normal HC (just for comparison, a malian HC deals 32 damage to cav).
Now the IC is basically a middle of the road between saracens and malians HC. If you reduce the bonus damage, they would be a weaker version of the saracens HC vs cav, but a bit better overall with more PA and more base atk.
The problem is, that in my opinion the IC per se was fine, it was the +1 PA and the +5 damage vs buildings that was broken, since it makes the IC fill too many roles.
They are alrady at that level, they have 10HP less than the aracens HC, and deals 31 instead of 32 damage to cav (saracens deals 29). The IC already give indians the most balanced camels vs cav.
The motive of the OP is that Indian are supposedly a bottom trash tier 1v1 civ, now, but are they? They technically are buffed from castle age to the point you would usually get plate barding armour, and stuff that comes earlier is better in a setting where the game might not be taken to late imp.
And even if Indians truely are the worse, then all I can say is the criterias for what is bad have been raised a lot because I would take Indians over unbuffed Viet/Khmer/Port all day.
i’d actually like if they change the EA to shoot multiple proj at full damage or at a high rate - at higher cost.
This would give Indians an Identity with a stylish UU which actually would be viable.
Nice would be if you could garrison Vills in EAs which also shoot arrows like mobile turrets. This would be fun, and would enable some stylish castle drops.
Their DPS is just terrible - their beefy stats can’t compensate for this.
Prob of The ndians in 1v1 is they are just perfect in countering - in 1v1 you want to play active. That’s why they are bottom tier there. The Imp camel is the only unit they can actually be proactive with in 1v1… this is bad.
Edit: Actually it’s not “nice” to play Indians, they perform actually quite good in 1v1 usually. It’s just they have a very defensive playstile and destinct matchups where they either excel or suck. That’s what people usually don’t like.
They are surely bad, and in general nerfing an already bad civ is not that good. Basically none has positively accepted the nerf… even pro players (at least I watched viper/hera) were pretty skeptical.
I think it is good if all the civs get to a similar level. All the civs you mention were very far from average civs like Japanese and Ethiopians for instance. Currently Indians are behind. Italians are even worse. These civs are clearly bad outside a specific zone, which is TGs for Indians.
There is also a further issue with Indians, which is that people complain for the lack of historical accuracy, but I am not a big fan of this.
I propose instead to give the Imperial Camel upgrade also +1 Pierce armor.
That way Saracen and Malian camels are better in melee combat, but the Indian Camel is better against archers. It has its unique point.
Despite that, I think Indians are actually quite strong right now in 1v1. Honestly, I seriously underestimated the impact of the +1 armor on Castle Age scouts. I dont really know what to play against Indians, going Knights, they get countered by camels, going Archers, they get countered but Scouts. This also works pretty well for me the other way round when playing Indians myself in 1v1.
I think so too, I think many underestimate the power of EAs against archer civs. I wonder how long it takes until the EA will actually be seen as this: The perfect Archer counter. So there’s still potential for the indians to climb the ladder even in 1v1.