India in minor detail

[pcups]

This is kind of a rant about India since I have played one game.

Lets start off with Eles!

There are many upgrades for them, making them faster, making them cost LESS POP, making them cost less and train faster, more hit points and more attack. These guys are bad asses. One mahout, 6 pop, 2032 hit points, close to 600 resources per mahout (the big dog daddy). thats only 100 resources per pop!!!

Not only do they have eles, they have 5 kinds. The siege ele which does 460 damage to buildings, in the 3rd age. The flail elephant, kinda makes a crazy sound and kills things. The ranged ele, which does 103 damage in the fortress age and has a 2.3 multiplier against calvary and only cost 500 resources. After the pop reducer card that makes it 100 resources per pop again.

The eles are compliment by MANY other types of units.
The two explorers can heal and after an upgrade give eles a speed bonus.

2 kinds of a camels. One is a lesser hussar and one is on par with a ruyter (1 pop) I think a a little less though because htey cost less. Im not sure on the stats of the ruyter.

A rajput, which is kinda like a rodelero, a little weaker i assume. A stronger than average musketeer, closer to a jannisary stats wise, and a skirmisher unit.

Eco wise, the Indians are built for the FF. With a slow moving eco early on because of their peasants costing wood, they have a huge amount of food and some what gold allowing them to ff/protect/boom all at the same time. With the extra food you can build sacred cows which generate Xp.

That is just my basic rant for right now, if anyone else wants to do one on china or japan DO IT!

To give you an example of how powerful the mahout is, when confronted with 3 swiss pikemen the mahout kills two and leaves 1 with 57 hp.

[pcups]

Hmmm, something even more interesting. There is a shrine or what ever, i cant remember building it, that allows you to build a certain SUPER unit. Ele or other wise these units "inspire" those of the same type around it. The mahout i build had 4200 hp and "inspired" other mahouts to have about 200 more HP. So in a way a kinda super hero, but they are heavy in Pop, the one i build cost 13 pop and around 1000 resources, but it might be worth it, giving every other mahout 200 hp is a big thing!

[boorules60]

Nice! At long last Patrick, you can finally give some meaning to "God damn these war elephants" once again. How cool is that?

I like the Indians super powerful units which I think could make them one of the strongest mid-late game civs in the game. Those war elephants could be hell to try to stop. Do you get any shipments of them in the third age? I would imagine 2 would probably be about the max.

As for their weakness though, I think they could have a lot of trouble with raiding since they don't have a cheap, fast building ranged cav unit, and the stats on their heavy infantry unit was not really impressive. You might also be in trouble if you get cleaned out in the second age because their recovery time would be even worse than the Turks with all the wood they need, not to mention the high cost military.

I'd like to see how they fair in treaty as well. They certainly don't have the numbers or speed of the Russians, or the economy of the French or Ports, but their initial attack could be killer and set your enemy on the defensive for a long time. That would give you a chance to FB, unless they have a special way of doing so. I see them as being like the Sioux, hard to clean out their armies, but very hard to use since you can't afford to spam anything. And we all know how much you love the Sioux P_Cups!

I hope to do something like this for the Chinese once I get the game this Friday!

[pcups]

Yea dude, the game is awesome. The cheap unit you are referring to is the Mounted camel, its kinda like a ruyter but a little worse. its only 80 gold 70 food or something like that