That’s only talking historically. It’s still locked behind Castle Age, and a literal Castle, both of which are absolutely essential for balance. There is very much a problem.
Edit: I think I misconstructed that, so I think my comment above is irrelevant.
Yes, a terribly balanced game. The Ages aren’t meant to be perfectly representative of any fixed time period, and you cannot make a fundamentally unbalanced change like this. It should very much be a castle age unit that is locked behind a castle, because if that isn’t the case, the game is no longer balanced. Stuff exists for a reason, and it’s not just history.
Not necessarily, but I guess I didn’t look into technical side before suggesting such change. I’m looking at everything from historical perspective. Maybe too much?
It’s not technical, it’s balance, but close enough. I would say too much, as it’s not following the game design conventions the game is using.
I don’t know anything about “game design conventions” that you all are obliged to follow, but perhaps you misunderstood the whole point. I wasn’t proposing to remove Ratha from Castle and leaving Castle without UU. Perhaps, putting a different UU in Castle while moving this one to a historically appropriate place in time? Just like the other user stated “And 2nd UU should obviously be an elephant”. Sound balanced if done correctly.
No, the issue is that you’re putting a UU before Castle Age. There are very very few situations where this is a good idea, that’s basically just the Camel Scout, which is a direct precursor to the next camel line, and is fairly similar to the scout. The Ratha should stay as a Castle UU, bringing it earlier is too hard to balance. It’s a knight/cav archer hybrid. Neither unit is unlocked before Castle Age, and the Ratha shouldn’t be either.
If you that for the Bengalis, you would have to do it for every other civ, and that would be a nightmare. And of course extremely unbalanced as well.
Besides, I don’t even think the ages are meant to represent literally time periods, it’s also an abstraction for the technological progress of the civ.
Beware the huskarl, throwing axemen, tarkan and woad raiders rush in dark age, when you have nothing to oppose them.
I think I do.
But “Dark Age” is defined by the history of Europe. So designing non-European civs with the lens of Europe will be wrong. Also as mentioned by other people, UUs of this game never designed with keeping historical period in mind. We have gunpowder units in Castle Age as UU.
With newer expansions, there is no such hard conventions to follow. We already have 2 Feudal UU. One is Camel scout which is barely an UU, rather an early access like Cumans ram. Another one is Serjeant, despite being a proper UU, is rarely seen. So we can clearly see having access to UU before Castle, is not a good thing for game balance.
Yeah, I guess. Can be possible but also seems like a hard task tbh. As pointed out
This right here.
Legion want to join the chat. (At least I hope).
That’'s why I suggested Daqrk or Feudal.
There. So, if one unit can have a pre Castle Age access, why can’t one more. I understand that maybe Serjeant is a pointless unit because all it does is creating and repairing Donjons. Other then that, it’s similar to Militia line than to Woad Raider/Huskarl type. Ratha, however (in my opinion at least) will be viewed differently and will be liked by a lot of gamers.
Yes we do, but through patches and DLCs we can address that too. I’m not demanding Conquistadors and Janissaries to be moved to the Imperial Age and strip them of the Elite status (although, that might actually work, we done that with Thirisadai).
And besides, we also done that to the Indians UU, the Elephant Archer. We gave it to all Indian civs and gave Hindustanis Ghulam instead. No complains there. Neither there were any for Thirisadai and Serjeant (that is until they got balanced, but this is a common strategy of every patch and DLC: Add new civs and campaigns, disbalance the game a bit, hear some ideas from us, issue a patch, rinse and repeat).
It was possible with Serjeant, so I can’t see how hard it will be, besides devs know how to program, we just toss in and discuss ideas here (some of which, I agree, aren’t successful).
As a side note, as somebody already pointed out in a separate discussion, proposing Bombard Cannon Elephant. However, unlike the previously proposed version, this one will replace Ratha as a Castle Age UU. Furthermore, I didn’t thought of that earlier since balance is something that I tend to ignore as you all see, but maybe putting Ratha as a Dark Age/Feudal Age UU will be beneficial with a chance to upgrade it to a similar Stable or Archery Range unit in the Castle Age? Like maybe a sword/bow and arrow dual wielding unit? Will be blanced if done correctly, again. 
Thoughts?
There definitely can. But the one we have right now is just awful. Should we still take that path?
No, thank you. Keep the game simple as much as possible. At least for old civs.
You want to move Conqs and Janissaries to Imperial but give Bengalis, a civ who probably didn’t have gunpowder, a canon elephant in Castle Age?
If the Bengalis used gunpowder earlier then other civs, yes.
Why not. Creating this game in 1999 was a risk worth taking. Same here, I guess.