What I like about the new Indian civ designs and what I would overthink

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

Hindustanis

  • The Ghulam is an interesting UU concept and a good replacement for the EA, fitting the Civ way better. The dangerous combination of possible Imp Camel or EA in Team Games is gone, making the civ less flexible

  • The faster attacking Camels is better for the same reason as above than the free pierce armor, though the amount of attack speed increase could be too much and probably needs to be tuned down

  • The extra Armor and more range on Shatagni for HC is also a nice Improvement to current Indians

  • The Caravanserai is interesting but in conjectiure with the faster attacking Imp Camels probably too powerful in TGs. If the goal was to make the civ less dominating in TGs this is actually a really bad change.

  • The removal of Parthian Tactics makes no sense at all.

Bengalis

  • Seem to have quite good spread of different Bonusses, besides being specialised to Elephants.

  • The Ratha is probably a new Iconic unit, a challenger to the Mangudai

  • The civ can probably be a bit too strong in the very lategame on closed maps. I would probably take away some of the university or monastery techs, so they would have at least some weaknesses to compensate for the sheer eco + elephant power.

  • The Ship heal bonus could be OP or at least really annoying.

Dravidians

  • I like the combo of good skirms + Infantry. I think this is a new concept that is interesting to see working.

  • Medical Corps is interesting, but I think it needs to be tuned up a bit actually

  • The civ lacks a mobile option in the midgame. Be it knight, camels or Steppe lancers. Sorry to tell that, but a civ with basically no mobility in the midgame is kinda doomed on open maps. Doesn’t need to be much, but at least one thing.

Gurjaras

  • I like the civ has a unique answer to everything. Also the techs make a good scaling for the gold units towards the lategame without overpowering them.

  • The eco bonus has the potential to make awesome unique builds with the civ.

  • The camel scout start is most likely a terrible idea, leading to potentially extreme frustration in the early phase after releasing the civ. I would heavily recommend to start with a normal scout.

  • The EA lacking 2* 2 PA is just a bad Idea. EAs are arrow sponges and havig basically no armor on them makes them just terrible. Adding 4 melee armor doesn’t misteriously change their utility.

  • The civ lacks a midgame raiding tool. I would give them either Parthian Tactics + HCA (instead of EAs) or Steppe Lancers. Having answers to everything the opponent can maks is nice, but a cavalry civ with no raiding tool in the midgame is just… weird. Especially as the civ is so reliant on Gold. It would be just an invitation for the opponent to go full boom mode and asking the Gurjaras what they wanna do against it. Look at civs like Byzantines, Malians or Incas. They all have some midgame raiding tools available which is crucial for this kind of “versatile” civ imo.

3 Likes
2

Agree with these two the most.

2 Likes
3

What do you think about that Bengali UT that makes villagers take 10% less population?
Unless affects trade carts and fishing ships as well seems quite weak to me, for an imperial tech.
I mean, for team games in the imperial age carts take the place of miners, then you are left with 50ish farmers and 30-40ish lumberjacks, even if you have still some miners, it means 8-10 extra pop space, not bad but not something revolutionary either.
For 1v1, I’m unsure, it might be a little more, but again not something that can make a big difference imho.
I hope it will affect carts and fishing ships, or that it would be cheap if it won’t.
About anything else, I’d rather wait, test and see before proposing changes.

1 Like
4

I think it’s only too good if the opponent doesn’t attack frequently enough.

What about the UU? Its description screams “sit under TC and feel nothing”. Even if it’s not that good it can’t be worse than no BL kts at the job anyway.

Then it’s as good as Goths, except that instead of 10 more huskarls that will need to be replaced in 10 seconds anyway it’s 10 more eles. So it’s better.

1 Like
5

Well Goths bonus was good when the pop cap was 75.
But with 200, I don’t think it makes such a great difference.
But we’ll see, still a lot of days to wait :pensive:.

6

I think it’s too strong with that civ. Bengalis have a really strong lategame already and the tech very well synergizes with it and makes it even stronger.

I think they will be pushed back with only a few pikes quite easily. While knights can deal with low amounts of pikes, I doubt the shrivamsha can.

I also got another Idea for Gurjaras, which is a bit odd but could work. If their EAs cost 50 % less gold they could make a strong late castle/early imp EA/Siege push that would be devastating against too boomed opponents with no protection. Then the EAs in their roster would make sense.
It would also help them to at least have some strats in more closed Maps available.

7

It doesn’t say anything about they start with a camel scout
They can train camel scouts in Feudal, that’s it
They don’t have spearman

8

Yeah honestly it would have been better suited for Dradivians or Gurjaras. Tbh at least Bengalis have a bad tech tree but the good units they have (Rathas, and the three types of eles) are probably scary enough

9

They’re possibly too powerful in TGs but they should get PT as well…??

I don’t think they should get PT until we see how their new bonuses workout, and especially their UU.

I reckon shatagni is going to be very hard to deal with by civs that don’t have SE or good archers(which might not even work due to ghulams). Because you can defend your Uber range HC with your boss level camels.

You mean like Bohemia? Isn’t there another civ with an equally inept stable to Bohemia? At least drav have a good flexible eco, and their LC while fragile have very high dps

This is just parroting, and isn’t true. If anything it’s exactly like the way people said Sicilians were OP on launch. And continued to parrot it for months.

How does everyone forget about shivs? We don’t even know what they do . Nevermind that they will be an alternative.

1 Like
11

We still have too many topics with parts of the information.

2 Likes
12

Bohemians have at least knights. It’s not much, but they can make them.

Who said that? And btw the sicilian first crusade actually was OP on closed maps in the beginning. That’s why it got nerfed.

It’s possible but unliekely. With their arrow dodging they will most likely have quite low attack and die like flies to pikes, possible even spears. If they would be comparbly good raiding units like knighst aswell they would be OP. And this doesn’t makes sense for Gurjaras… cause why do they have that versatility if they would make almost only shrivamshas?
The whole unit design looks like it is very specialised to deal with archery likewise their camels are designed to be exceptionally good against cavalry.

For me it looks like they miss a good midgame raiding unit and that’s problematic for the civ design cause they don’t have the best setup for a grinding lategame. With their terrible spear line they will have really hard time against a lot of civs.
It would be different if they had usable EA but they don’t.