Why Indians is the worst civilization in AoE2?

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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I am an Indian-American interested in history and aoe2. But I am very very disappointed by the biased way this game represents my native place.

  • First of all what is this Indian? Why don’t you make Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sindhi, Sinhala, Tamil, Telugu? why then do you have so many latin civilizations? (spanish + portuguese + franks + burgundians + sicilians + italians)? Or do you think all of the indians are the same thing? was there any one empire in age of empires 2 era that comprised all of them as one?

  • Why do you give only this civilization unique building? and with unique building, why they don’t have a raja instead of shah? why they have khmer face in interface? why they have muslim crossed sword symbol in navy instead of surya or chakra?

  • Why do they have camels? Where is indian war elephants? elephant archer is the weakest of all elephants in the game. Indians were the innovators of using elephants at war and they have the weakest elephant? need i say more look at this post: Indians Unique Units - #195 by Athhar1

  • Why do they speak hindi? why not sanskrit which is like latin. no all of indians don’t speak hindi language. it feels even weirder when your monastery is oriya (konark) and wonder is tamil (brihadeswara) and unique unit is from desert (imperial camel). what kind of random combination is this?

  • Unique tech shatagni is just useless. It makes the hand cannonears more inaccurate, totally useless to invest in. One range is nothing. Its like an overpriced blacksmith upgrade.

  • Who is Chand Bardai? when did he convert and kill other kingdoms to spread the legacy of prithviraj? i don’t understand the logic of the indian campaign.

  • Why is Akbar a ruler in both AoE2 and AoE3? Are the two games based on same age?

  • Why does the indian king says non-sense when selected? “Yaha tum jao” (you go there), why should i go there? “Mujhe kyon chhedh rahe ho?” (why are you molesting me? wtf?) “Soochna dena” (to inform , to inform what??)

  • the wiki of aoe2 indians says: “The northern part of Medieval India also introduced camels as a vital part of their military force” camels a vital part of military force??? since when? why don’t indians have heavy cavalry horses? why are they having no knight, cavaliers?

  • Zamorin of Calicut ran on a camel in portuguese campaign? kerala is a tropical heavily raining place how did he found camel in rainforest? Cholas (Indians) using camels in khmer campaign against malay? wtf?? how do indian traders send war elephants in malay campaign if they themselves cannot train them?

  • Every unique tech has a historical background/trivia. But there is non for Sultans research, atleast not in the wiki.

the devs seem to be interested in explaining History Behind the Sicilian Civ Bonuses (The History Behind the Sicilian Civ Bonuses)

please explain me the curious case of this civ here?
or can i conclude indians have the worst design in the game?

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It’s a game bro… :roll_eyes::roll_eyes::roll_eyes::roll_eyes::roll_eyes:

Why do mamelukes ride camels and throw swords?

Why do Muslims eat pork?

Why do mesos have siege engines?

Why do huns and porto organ guns exist in the same game?

Eagles for mayans?

Gunpowder for china?

You don’t care about those things because they aren’t personal, then why should we care about your issues?

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chinese, saracens, and other civs exist as umbrella civs, but frankly, aoe2 was made with primarily western audiences in mind.

because every other civ is so historically accurate aren’t they. the mamelukes totally rode camels and threw swords.
the goths were totally known for their flooding with infantry.
throwing a double headed axe is totally realistic.
etc

the campaigns are historically influenced and not accurate. the very fact that william wallace wins at the end of the training campaign is a huge nod to this.

seriously, if you’re looking for 100% historical accuracy, the aoe franchise is not the place to go for it.

i got to agree with phoenix on this one - it’s hilarious watching all the Indian people get upset about Indians being innacurate when they ignore literally all the other inaccuracies through this game.

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They actually say that they fix this with the last patch.

As for the rest, dude, until the last week the Italians were (and to some extent are still) one civ, when in reality at the time it was a patchwork of several small states, much like the Indians represent a big collection of smaller states.

Then we have teutons who basically represent all the germans tribes and states. Or slavs, that again represents several different states, the game is simply full of umbrella civs.

If you want to see some historically accurate Indian civ just suggest a design for a new civ, like many people do (including me), without the demand that the devs hear just you, and maybe someday you’ll get your new Civ.

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The Mughal empire did, and i think aoe2 introduced Mughals as Indians here.

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Mughal Empire during Age Of Empires 2 timeframe. Indians have the most inaccuracy in the game for sure. India had many independent empires with different ethnicities such as the Chola Empire of Tamil people or the Pala Empire of Bengali people, but devs decided to put a courtyard and an island to the game.
Indians should’ve been:
Rajputs
Dehlavi
Bengalis
Marathas
Oriyas
Kannadigas
Sinhalese
Tamils
etc.

aren’t an umbrella civilization.
You can’t even mention a civ that Saracens cover but is not in the game.

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I agree. The Indians are a badly designed civilization. Let me answer a few of your questions.

The Indians were introduced in the Forgotten Empires expansion.The Forgotten was originally a community made mod that added 5 extra civilizations when there were only 18 civilizations in the game at the time. The people who made this mod did not think Microsoft would add so much more civilizations and they wanted the civ to incorporate as many people as possible.

Now that a new Italian civilization has been added in the latest expansion (the Sicilians), I hope that in a future expansion the Indian subcontinent will be divided into more civilizations.

The reason that Indians lack Battle Elephants is because this unit was first introduced into the Rise of the Rajas expanisian, after the Indians had already been added as a civilization.

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If they broke down everything into all the possible civs, there would be way to many to keep up with. As a lot of people mention, there’s a lot of inaccuracies in the game. Most of us want a game that plays and functions well, not something that’s so historically accurate the game sucks and is imbalanced.

Making 150 new civs just to keep everyone happy would result in nothing being added to the game. Elephants and knights being left out is purely a balance thing, same as many civs not having things they historically had, or having things they didn’t. It’s a game, not a lesson in history and dev choices for why certain units exist has more to do with balance than accuracy.

As to the title of your post… they are not the worst civ, not even by a little. Sure, if you watch Hera or Viper’s vids on the “best 1v1 Arabia civs”, they are in the bottom, so are goths and a few others. Indians are one of the best civs on many other maps though and shred in team games.

It’s purely a balance thing. If they had Elite war elephants, with Imperial camels (which were used in parts of medieval India), it would not work for balance reasons. A lot of civs have things taken away or added for the same reason. Elephant archers are, in fact, one of the best archers in the game, they are just expensive and have to be created from a castle, and typically as Indians the play is to go Heavy Camel because it’s faster and stronger. If you can mass them though, they are archers with tons of HP and you can wreck a lot with them.

I think it would be neat to see them created from an archery range rather than a castle, as that would make them more viable, then give them a war elephants similar to the Persian’s as their unique unit. But then they would have 2 non castle unique units and the next person who wants to be offended would start complaining why their culture doesn’t get two unique non castle units because historically etc., etc., so…

Yes, there is some overlap. The dark ages were around 500 AD. The Imperial Age goes through till 19th century. Campaigns have historic battles from 1598 at the latest I believe. So you have ~1300 +/- years of history to try and decide how to make people happy based on accuracies that changed every 100 or less years in some cases, based on different provinces and rulers, etc. Which time period to you pick to represent cultures? AOE3 just better represents the Imperial ages, and they both end around the same time.

No they don’t. Research blanket statements if you’re going to make them. A lot of the forgotten civs don’t have historical background/trivia on their castle tech, or imp techs on the wiki. This is just looking for any slight reason to be offended. There’s probably others as well.

So if they pick one or two of those civs, assuming they don’t have the resources to make them all (hint: they don’t), who do you think is going to be offended next? “Why not MY culture? why them?” You see the problem? So they represented all the Indian civs into one, maybe they could have gotten two, but there’s a LOT of Indian civ possibilities as you mentioned. You may not agree with that, sure it’s a little bit of a melting pot civ, but they were damned if the do, damned if they don’t regardless. People have already complained of this from the African tribes. Where’s this civ? Why them? It’s pointless to assume they are targeting one culture over another. It comes down to resources. They have to start somewhere so why not be offended it’s not your culture first?

Some civs didn’t exist to the Imperial Age, so they sometimes need to add things in that weren’t even part of a culture that was no longer around. Take the Burgundians, who didn’t even barely make it out of the Dark ages before they stopped being a civ, if my history brain serves me correctly, but somehow they get bombard cannons which became a thing around the 12th/13th century I believe. Maybe we should make it so they can’t advance out of the dark age since historically they never made it that far. Might help balance out their civ anyways :rofl: . Pick a civ, more are going to have a lot that doesn’t make sense then does.

Don’t play AOE2 in the hopes to play something that’s historically accurate, play because it’s an amazing RTS, albeit with some flaws. The point of the civs is to represent the fact that they existed. Outside of that, you should be getting your history elsewhere. I imagine if the game community continues to exist and grow like it is, we’ll continue to see more civs represented and with patience, the ones each of us are hoping to see.

Chinese invented gunpowder, but I agree with you, lots of inaccuracies.

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Yes they are. You have over 50 different “Chinese” cultures, many that were waring against each other at one point and spoke various languages or dialects of their language. You could argue they are more historically misrepresented than the Indian civ, but it’s irrelevant to the point of the game.

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Chinese cover Han Chinese. Uyghurs, Tibetans, Khitans, Jurchen, Bais and Tanguts were different ethnicities and empires/important kingdoms.

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Then you could just call them Han. They may be the largest, but not the only one. Point is you could argue for them the same way you argue for Indian.

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This would be the most hilarious civ ever existed lol :rofl:
Yes, I’m Picturing 4/4 MAA and 5/7 scouts tearing apart imperial age castle and trebs. :joy:

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The Mughal Empire in 1605 stretched past bengal and covered all of central and northern India, which is approximately the end date of aoe2.

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A lot of your points are valid to many other civs. Whether you are ignoring them as you are ignorant or do not care I cannot say. However, you are ignoring them. This game is not historically accurate for many reasons already stated.

They did not do these things out of spite or deliberately. Many of them are balance/gameplay reasons. Sure some might be naive on the creators part but then there are lots of mistakes in AOE.

Maybe condense your suggestions to those that are actually applicable/achievable and you will have a better chance of a positive response.

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This topic comes up semi constantly, and honestly I hope they change the name of “Indians” and add a few more Indian civs. Maybe 2 in the next expansion.

But let’s not pretend like this is the only historically inaccurate civ in the game, ultimately it is just a game, where balance and fun matter more then historical accuracy.

That said though, I do agree with many of your points, and join you in hoping for a fix :slight_smile:

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No man look here, the Mughals covered all India

Screenshot_20210129-100220_Google
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So as i said i think the devs introduced Mughals as Indians

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In 1650, which is not aoe2 timeframe.

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Well it will not be the first mistake they did about time line. They introduced the Huns and Huns actually is aoe1 civ not aoe2 civ at all, they were not even empire/kingdom they were just tribes making troubles here and there

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Chinese in medieval ages and modern ages are two different things. Medieval Tibet and Manchuria weren’t Chinese territory.
Uyghurs, Khitans, Jurchens etc. weren’t Chinese Empires because their origin wasn’t Chinese.

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Indians are a bad civilization after the last set of changes.

My suggestion would be:

Indians

  • Rename the current civ of Indians to Mughals/Gurjara/Hindi.
  • Rebalance them (give plate barding armor, revert to +1pierce armor, keep +4 attack vs buildings)
  • New Unique Unit: Cannon Elephant (siege weapon elephant = beefy bombard cannon).

New civs: Palas and Dravidians.

Palas: Infantry and Elephant Civ.
Dravidians: Infantry and Naval civ

General:

  • Turn the Elephant Archer into a regional unit for all three, trainable at either the castle or Archery ranges. Make them shoot two arrows in Castle Age. Three in Imperial.
  • Give all three civs access to Battle Elephants.

Campaign: The Indian Tripartite.

AOE2 devs feel free to adopt the above suggestions. no copyrights.