Not sure if Gurjaras needs a nerf, haven’t played with them enough, but to me Gurjaras is the way devs have to nerf Franks-like playstyles
For me Gurjaras are in a good place, they may need a bit of a nerf but nothing really big
Fix the Dravidians and Bengalis first, then nerf the Mayan/Frank playstyle, then we can look at the Gurjaras
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I honestly think their Winrate is only this high because they are perfect counters to the most popular Arabia civs, but if you can force them out of using Stable units, they are a lot easier to deal with.
You can make that argument if you’re talking about Dravidians or Bengalias, but Gurjaras and reworked Hindustanis lead more to the opposite conclusion. I see it more as a lesson learned from The Last Khans, where the Steppe Lancer civs were so OP on release that choosing any other civ against them led to a huge disadvantage. Better to have new DLC civs slightly underperform and strengthen them as needed overtime, then to make the preexisting 40+ civs comparative garbage in favor of a couple shiny new civs.
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Tbh Gurjaras arent really strong enough to make Britons, Mayans, Byzantines and Aztecs look like garbage
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I agree, my point was that devs may have been wary of designing any civ like that since TLK, but the Gurjaras are a good counterexample to the claim that new civs are usually underpowered.
there got to have a weakest link
My point of view as a ~2k player:
I had made a post about how to deal with Gurjaras before, and I have experimented a bit further into it.
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Gurjaras have pretty tight dark age eco, so drush is surprisingly effective, this helps a bit vs their strong early eco (still very annoying)
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Still, Gurjaras can always go Camels. I think the 50% damage really needs to be reduced, as cav civs literally cannot go any knights and it really hurts.
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Gurjaras late game is actually pretty insane, massed UU basically destructs everything, I still don’t find a solution to Gurjaras defensive style gameplay. I think the UU needs to be tweaked a bit too.
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I like the Shrivamsha rider, it’s actually less of an issue if you can defend well, put archers and pikes into good positions.
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Someone has mentioned to swap Shrivamsha rider with the current UU, I actualyl kinda like the idea too.
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(Btw, I think Gurjaras are definitely too strong, as least the pros are picking it really often right now too)
Viper seems to just really enjoy the civ. He called Hindustanis OP but he thought this was okay
You’re forgetting that the other civs collect around 700 food from those sheep and Gurjaras get only 250 food as a replacement instead. So to do 19-20 pop up, you have to push deer and have a tight build. Suppose if you get drushed and pushed off berries, you might be forced to ungarrison the deer to sustain villager production.
20 mins is the time where u match the net food collected from Gaia compared to generic civs. Franks, Mayans, Chinese, Britons, Tatars all get bonuses of this magnitude. IMO, this bonus isn’t the problem.
So there are civs like Magyars, Tatars on hills, Franks, Cumans which also get some advantage in early 1v1 scout war. You have to understand that the Camel scout is slower compared to Scout cav in feudal age and also has 0 p.armor and has lower generic attack and costs more resources compared to scouts. So opponent isn’t going to add more of these. All you have to do is not try to lure enemy scout to bottom of some hill and micro nerd it 1v1. If you play regular feudal this should be fine.
This is quite strong in early imp. This tech could be changed to -20% or the cost of this tech could be increased.
Plenty of games in showmatches, top-10 players’ ladder games show this isn’t true. Once you reach 1 hr of the game, you can only make hussar. Skirms lack armor and you don’t even get pikes. Arb-halb canons seem to be a good option against this civ. Also castle age eagle push.
No its not. You’re thinking everything about late imp, all techs done perspective. Its harder to get a castle up, do UT and then spam long swords with supplies. Early castle age eagles are much easier to produce and cause so much more eco damage.
This is probably the only too strong factor. I think it was given to compensate for lack of blast furnace and pikes and archer armor. This combined with both of their UTs makes their camels super strong and impossible to fight and their elephants take down buildings so fast. This could be down to like 35 or 40%
Always watching a few games might give that feeling but it doesn’t reflect in the overall stats. At 2k+ elo, Gurjaras aren’t even in the top-5 win rates for Arabia. They’re like 53% wr and 7th or 8th. You can check it yourself at aoepulse.com. Mayans, Aztecs, Franks, Hindustanis (the actual busted civs), Byzantines, Vikings are well ahead since the DLC release. (AoE Pulse)
In case if you’re not a stats person, they were also beaten several times in tournaments and showmatches. Hera as Vietnamese won against Daut as Gurjaras in their BO21, Mbl as Chinese beat ACCM as Gurjaras in Vululu invitational, Jordan as Mayans beat Hera as Gurjaras in their showmatch, Villese as Vietnamese beat Vinchester as Gurjaras in JMB-5 finals in megarandom.Civ has different units and bonuses so requires a different play style from the commonly played civs.
aoedash.net shows that they win most of their games against Mongols, Burgundians, Huns, Berbers, Magyars while lose quite often to Mayans, Ethiopians, Poles, Hindustanis. They’re obviously strong and have won in many matchups but words like “busted” or “OP” are just an exaggeration. They’re only OP on maps like Dimsum and other maps with 20+ herdables per player.
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Yup.
There is nothing strategic about this civ, poor design all the way.
I dont see them changing it, same with Hindu just worse.
when they prioritize conviniency over strategy you end up with these mediocre designs.
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Who cares if about your whole argument if the civ is actually fun to play? The devs don’t care about you. It’s that simple. They don’t need to really care about the minor outliers who act like they are saying the hard truths that aren’t actually true, and acting like every civ needs to be drastically changed. What they need is to keep making money, which means they need to make new and enjoyable civs, that appeal to the majority for DLCs, and ensure that the game remains manageable to learn for new players, to ensure future income. If you hate everything they do, either leave the community, make your own game (which I would honestly expect to fail, because it wouldn’t be accessible or fun for the majority), or just go play Voobly or something. You seem to find faults with everything about DE, and consider Voobly better, why aren’t you using that instead?
Also, can someone just copy paste that, reply with it to @AllergicTable49, and tell them that A) I wrote it, and B) unmute everyone if they want to see what a lot of the community actually thinks about them?
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I understand that. But the op is acting as if 30/20 ths is super amazing
If that was the case, Goths would probably be OP, considering they can counter everything, and have a discount that applies to gold as well, although they admittedly lack supplies.
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I also think @AllergicTable49 loost most credability do to repetitive comments and a narrow view
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I have interesting news for you.
I watched some pro games and can tell you that a lot of pros don’t play gurjaras to their full strengt.
And still win.
They get faster uptimes but often have not enough on wood cause they use the normal buildorders. But wIth Gurjaras you usually want to have 1 more on wood than usual.
So yes they are faster up but their rushes often arent faster.
They don’t use the sheep to boost their castle age timings as you currently should. The timing advantage is more valueable.
They often don’t use the shrivamsha to it’s full potential. They usually use it basically like a knight replacement what you sure can do, but rarely as pure raiding option. But they should know cause when pros raid with them they usually get insane kill counts on them.
They often also don’t stack them on walls or houses as you can with them, they seemingly don’t know it’s possible.
Imo that’s actually the real danger of Gurjaras. They can win in every state of the game basically just by raiding you to death. Yes they have good units. But that’s less of a problem than the permanent threat of shrivamsha raids.
Yes you can wall against it but then you can’t expand anymore. And you need to be very careful with overchops etc.
And no, just placing pikes/halbs strategically doesn’t works. First you would need insane amounts of it which then the gurjaras can easily counter with chakrams because you don’t have pop space for anything else. Second even if you do, a player with very good unit control often finds ways to slip through your pikes and still cause a lot of damage.
IDK why this happens but also sometimes I see pikes not attacking shrivamshas that are imo in range. Maybe it’s the same thing as with the collision size? Are hit boxes and collision size connected? I thought they were different.
Eegardless, the problem with the current shrivamsha design is that you need to invest way more in defending against it than to make them. 6-10 shrivamshas are enough to raid an opponent to death. You don’t really need more. But the opponent needs to either fully wall or spam pikes like crazy to protect all the vulnerable spots.
And that’s ofc such a strong strategical advantage. You only make a few shrivamshas when hitting castle age and then you can just boom behind and add counters. Depending on the situation. Siege vs archers, camels vs knights, shakrams vs pikes.
From that I deviate the optimal Gameplan for Gurjaras:
A) Open Archers or MAA Archers. It’s the best way to use your eco bonus and synergizes with the transition to shrivamsha
B) Use your sheep to get better castle age timings. Doesn’t seems like much but you can get up 1 minute earlier by doing this.
C) Add some farms on the way up
D) Make a few shrivamsha when hitting castle age, depending on your food count. Then add TCs behind your agression.
Ofc don’t forget to make whatever is necessary against your opponent. If he outspams your archers you need to add towers, if he makes scrushes you can add some spears and later camels in feudal already. If you kept your archers alive you can upgrade them to xbows and so on.
The ideal thing is if you can force the opponent into skirms early cause skirms are pretty useless against gurjaras. And you have a good feudal timing and early eco, if your build is good there are only a few civs that should be able to compete with your early archer numbers.
Imo Gurjaras is the best showcase what’s the problem with raiding currently. Players have become way too good in unit control and the counters don’t work anymore as intended. You need more investment into the counters than into the shrivamsha and still the shrivamsha oftne just slip through somewhere.
And people like hera complain about “people always wall”. Yeah, what choice to you have? What can you do instead?
(and btw vs shrivamsha walling often isn’t even working cause of that stacking thing… at least not with houses or palisades. And what do you do if you cornered yourself in feudal cause gurjaras have the better timing and the gurjara player is already booming up behind? Boom up behind walls? Then gurjaras just boom aswell and transition into chakram/siege/camel which is a comp that destroys every trash and as you have cornered yourself you can’t make gold units for long.)
TL:DR: It’s a combination of several things that make Gurjaras so dangerous:
A) Faster Timings
B) Strong Feudal Eco
C) Shrivamsha Raids
D) A unique comp behind that can’t be countered by trash
If it wasn’t all of this it wouldn’t be a problem. The combination is what makes it so powerful.
Maybe the best way to “counter” gurjaras currently tbh. But you need to be successfull with it cause if you don’t gurjaras eco will punish you heavily for it. What hinders gurjaras player from just eating the sheep after defending and going straigh up to castle? What do you do against that?
Laming is even better imo, but I don’t have seen examples how gurjaras do when lamed yet. And ofc if you fail it’s even more an uphill battle. But maybe taking the risk is worth it against that civ, tbh.
Cause I tell you we haven’t seen the Gurjaras played by the best players to their full potential yet.
And we probably also never will see cause why should a pro invest that much time in learning a single civ when it will be nerfed shortly? And most likely if he showed his gurjara skills just once just banned from him?
(BTW has anybody recordings of straydog? I can’t find matches of him “abusing” gurjaras on the dashboard. T90 constantly complains about it, but I can’t find any there. I would really like to see how the current top gurjara players use the civ and if it fits my analysis.)
I ve checked aoe2insights and the official site for a recorded game, but all are deleted.
At least the OP should have the decency to show us some recorded games of Stray at his peak with Gurjaras.
Never heard this? What is this?
true.
I’m not sure on this one, they are classified as a CAMEL civ. Doesn’t it make sense for them to have the best Camels? Let’s imagine for a moment their Camel is perfectly average, like a Persians one. Do they have any go-to composition for Castle age? Do they have any way of stopping all-in Knights + a few Monks then?
In the end, the way I see it, cavalry civs can go Crossbow or Pikeman vs Gurjaras. You shouldn’t be allowed to play full Knights every game regardless of matchup, right now you sort of can vs Camel civs by mixing in a few Monks/Pikes but I’m glad Franks must come up with alternative strategies vs Gurjaras and I think overall Franks late game and boom potential should still be superior long-term.
UU is a bit strong yes. Locked behind Castles but I would nerf it cost-wise. I was watching Viper vs Tatoh mentioning how mass Shrivamsha + Chakram is a very affordable, strong 2x gold comp. Mass Shviramsha apparently still counters mass archers contrary to SotL’s video claims (because extra speed allows you to close distance faster and when it’s like 40 v 40 you can’t micro “enough shots to kill but not overkill” anymore, and the Chakrams counter basically everything else (including for example mass Eagles, in Viper’s game even the Mayan Eagles got destroyed by the Chakrams). Overall I’m happy with the Shrivamsha, mostly cuz I’m sick of Crossbow/Knight meta so if we have a nice alternative unit, who cares. They seem balanced too, even with the extra speed. The UU though could use a nerf, it doesn’t seem that good unless massed and it also lacks Squires, so I would target its Gold cost and/or creation time for nerfs.
yep in early Castle, Shrivamshas play exactly like Eagles imo, in the sense that they lose melee vs most actual melee units, but have strong raiding potential. Like with Eagles, the key to beating Shrivamshas is not letting your opponent break your walls and have solid quickwall/walling skills. I would be very sad if this unit got nerfed.
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I am not so good at this, but I got only 1* 4 shrivamshas stacked upon another. You can get more or even multiple stacks
The idea is to spam patrol into the wall and then stop move when they stack up there. Then attack it.
It’s not so easy to execute cause to make it optimally you need the perfect angle which is basically impossible to get.
Edit: I actually also got it with knights… Seemingly I was just too inconsistent with it…
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