Honestly I said LOS because it’s one of the weakest bonuses available. If Indian BE get introduced, I’d see how dominant they are and the extend to which other Indian units get overshadowed by vanilla BE before deciding how to buff them.
The wiki said something about commanders riding elephants to get a good view, but honestly balance takes precedence over accuracy.
Extending the current camel armor and building bonuses the BE seems to be the least intrusive way to me.
Also just non elite battle Elefants (as stated before) would make a much more interesting addition for novelty than just another civ with FU +bonus.
In AOK the general units and civs were super divee by techs available. Nowawaxs everything newly introduced (step lancer, BE, eagles) has to be FU + a bonus (except malay) .
Were is the Saracen of Elefants.
India has also Elefant archers, its their destiny to sacrifice elite BE for the greater good.
Then they are just a copy-paste of Burmese ones, with slightly less good stats but for free and instantly. Doesn’t sound too good.
Only a select few civs have access to these units, so you can’t afford to waste a slot by plaguing one of the civs with a bad version of the unit.
Speaking of which, Saracen knights are one of the only units of this kind to be used on a regular basis, as knights are so strong. Same for Turk/Hun mangonels. Then you have the “I was forced to” stuff, like Cuman camels or the crappy, 0 upgrades scorpions of so many civs that no one cares about (seriously, I bet most people don’t know which civs have FU scorps, miss either heavy or SE, or miss both). Next step are the super niche non FU (the kind of stuff that would make some yell for a buff cuz they aren’t seen enough). Once in a while, someone will feel brave enough to archer rush as Spanish/Bulgarian, and there this gem (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imQ3pKpulYk) where Tatoh wins with Italian CA (while 99% of the playerbase wouldn’t dare to touch them at all if their civ don’t have a bonus). And then there is the “no future” realm, with stuff like Persian longswords, and BE without elite would fit right in there, as a late-game unit without late-game upgrade nor any kind of bonus would be like an archer without range or something like that.
Remove “elite” and this sentence is 100% legit, accurate and true. Seriously, how is the ele archer not enough of an ele unit? Why would you want a Siamese-kinda unit when you’ve alread got an Indian looking unit? This guy makes more sense than like half of the game’s UU but is somehow not good enough?
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free elite upgrade might work
Do you have any idea of how op this would be?
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The civ already has an insane economy. Nothing makes sense like them saving 1200 food 900 gold and them getting a massive power spike the moment they hit imp!
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4+4 pierce armour is really strong.
Only way giving Indian BE +1 PA could be OK would be if EBE base armour was reduced to 1/2. To be fair I have proposed as much in another thread, because it seems a bit silly that EBE are as arrow resistant as Paladins. (and after that the Burmese tech needs to be buffed to 2/2, and the Vietnamese would need more hp, and perhaps even Malay would need a buff.)
I’m still not saying Indian BE would need extra PA.
sorry, that was just a suggestion, not intended for the indians
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Elite upgrade without bonuses
I hope the developers don’t ignore these posts about elephants and give Indians BEs, finally.
Imagine Magyars/Huns without the knight-line just because they have cavalry archers.
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And btw, can someone explain me why indians should get battle elephants? any actual balance reason i mean, since "historical accurarcy is not exactly a thing in aoe2 + they already have an ele unit
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I really do think that the Indians we have preferably shouldn’t get BE and if they’d get it, it would be probably without Elite upgrade which I suppose would be considered more an insult than a fix by the Indian community.
A new South Asian civ like Tamils having even EBE would be better. I’m really hoping for great civ modding support at least.
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Currently Indians don’t really have anything against Infantry, Archers, or Siege in Castle age.
camels come to mind, cav archers that get fully upgraded as well, and let’s not pretend like crossbows aren’t very good units in the current game.
either way his point is that one of the main reasons that Indians fans call for BE is because “historical accuracy” all while ignoring they have an elephant unit to cover that front.
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I wasn’t clear enough, I actually meant it wasn’t so good because with such bonuses Indian would have almost the effect of Howdah+Maniput cav applied to their eles right from the beginning, which would be of course outrageous.
Hmmm why tho?
If I were a dev I would be wondering what I did wrong for people to snob the Indian UU so hard.
So of course they need to be able to make big packs of gold and food an then send them commit suicide on pikes. Sure thing.
Seriously, Indian mangonel work as well as those from other civs as far as I know, plus I didn’t suffer through Parthan threads on longswords to be told that Indian 100% need an infantry counter that isn’t xbows or CA (since u know they have both of these).
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i don’t get it either. they have an elephant unit to cover the historical accuracy perspective, they are a great team game civilization, they are a solid 1v1 civilization, have an amazing economy, and frankly, they are hardly the only civilization in the game that isn’t 100% accurate to history, and in fact, their are many of them who aren’t accurate, but for some reason Indians are the one who literally get so upset over it.
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It’s true, you have Xbow, but you don’t want to make too many of them because you can’t upgrade them in Imp. You have CA but Castle-age CA without a bonus aren’t generally considered very good.
If you could make some BE you could force your opponent to make (and upgrade) pikes, and then your Xbows/CA can use those pikes for target practice.
I forgot to mention skirms. In my most recent Indians game skirms gave me a lot of trouble. Most civs could use knights or eagles to clear those out, but the skirms traded really effectively against my camels.
Now I know I could have used magonels or light-cav, but the longswordsmen which were out on the map would have traded well against those, and investing food into light-cav would have gotten me stuck in Castle even longer.
There is a reason all civs except Indians have a fast unit with decent PA and decent attack against siege and other general-purpose units.
xbow in castle, HCA and HC in imp. if against halbs FU skirms
skirms, mangonels in castle, onager, bombard cannon FU skirms in imp
mangonel of their own, redemption monks in castle, hussars and bombard cannon in imp
they have the answers to all these threats. let’s also completely ignore the fact that going for elephant in castle in 1v1 is a suicide because of something called monks
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let me break this down to make it even more apparent.
according to various comments I’ve seen about Indians
they used Elephants in warfare - Elephant Archers
they have a lot of people - cheaper villagers
they have insane economic power/GDP - they have one of the best economies in the game and Sultans UT
they traded heavily for gunpowder - they have gunpowder units, with a UT that affects HC.
seems like a pretty reasonable accounting of the Indian People to me.
true but you can start with Xbows and then transition out of them into Cavalry Archers/HCA who are insanely good due to having full upgrades.
so you’re saying you can afford to make an insane gold heavy composition like that, in early castle no less, and all yoru opponent can field is pikes? be realistic.
elite skirms in castle age do a whopping 2 damage an attack to an Indian camel, who has 120 health.
mangonels wreck slow infantry.
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or to drop a monastery and thanking you a lot for his new eles
they do two damage per shot, they don’t trade effectively against camels. Two cases:
- you missed +2 and bloodline
- you had not enough camels and he had a lot of skirm
either way, going skirms against indian camels is not a good move and you could have just added a mangonel or some skirms of your own if it was such a big problem (and once again, it shouldn’t be that way since it take 60 skirms’ shot to kill one camel)
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Crossbowmen, Light Cavalry, Elephant Archers, Elite Skirmishers and Mangonels.
For all your anti-Infantry, anti-Archers and anti-Siege needs in the Castle Age.
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