By popular demand I have now tried India out once again and I'm now going to report my what I realized from the half game I actually played as them.
Starting off I realized that no one would take this seriously if I didn't reroll the map until I got a spawn with floodplains
, so that is what I did. It took me 5 restarts to actually get a map where I could see a few desert and floodplain tiles from my starting-area. I used my first two turns to move closer to the floodplains and settled in a coastal forest to make up for the lost production. I used the free production to get an instant scout and used my free pantheon to pick up ancestor worship hoping to get an early cultural edge. On the turn following that turn a city-state settled a city 3 tiles from my capital eating most of the floodplain tiles
.
The combination of tradition, floodplains, 2 hills and a forest helped me secure both the Stonehenge and the Pyramids at the cost of not optimal growth and expansion. However my main neighbor (William) refused to expand at all so I actually managed to get a few cities down, three of them in fact(and considering this was a standard size oval map, that is just fine). As this went on William built both the Temple of Artemis and the Statue of Zeus, so I figured I'd show the world just how awesome the Naga-Malla are by using them to steal his only city.
However just as I reached Mathematics, and was about to start training my Elephant army, William along with 2 other civs decided to declare war on me, and unlike most times they actually brought troops, a lot of troops. Sadly enough, as I went tradition instead of my normal liberty, my non-capital cities were terrible at building buildings, and most of them were nowhere near close to actually finishing walls.
My proud frontier city (Varanasi), was not only lacking walls, but was also strategically placed on the wrong side of the river, meaning my extremely potent army of one archer and one warrior had a very hard time stopping the city from getting completely surrounded by spearmen and swordsmen. At this point I got the brilliant idea to use my stored up gold to rushbuy a Naga-Malla, only to realize that I didn't have barracks in any city. I was thinking about investing in walls for Varanasi, but at that point I was pretty convinced it was actually going to fall, so I didn't bother.
However, as luck would have it, it turns out that spearmen aren't really that fantastic at capturing cities, and I managed to weaken a few of them enough that they backed up, delaying the fall of the city, and buying me time to get my first Naga-Malla finishing in my Capital and down to Varanasi, bodyblocking and picking off spearmen.
It turns out Naga-Malla are actually really strong versus spearmen, they have about the same combatstrength and the feared elephant promotion.
With my 4th Elephant I finally managed to stabilize the situation well enough that I could actually heal my units. At this point I'm pretty convinced that the enemies have ran out of steam and figured it's about time to make my dream of an Indian Amsterdam reality. This dream ended up on hold however when Williams ally brought a whole pile of Longswordsmen with matching trebuchets (no I have no idea where he got all that iron from, I had exactly 2 sources with 2 iron each myself).
However it turns out that fortified spearmen along with a small army of Naga-Malla can easily hold Longswords away, especially when the marshed terrain made it impossible for him to get a flankingbonus. Once it was clear exactly how many units it took to hold the legion of longswords I took the rest of my army to Amsterdam, capturing it after a short siege.
I eventually got both the other players to agree to white peace (the guy with the infinite legion of longswords kept asking for all my luxuries for maybe 20 turns after Amsterdam fell, but he was never in a position to get anything done, and stopped actually sending units)
I realize that this was a pretty lengthy story to explain what most people already know, that the Naga-Malla are really good at what they do.
However for as awesome that they actually are, nothing of their power is actually kept when upgraded. Yes I understand that unique units are supposed to be unique units, not unique unitlines, but since some units keep all their power when upgraded I think it is only fair that most units should at least keep some of their power.
As it currently works when you upgrade a Naga-Malla to a Mounted Bowman the following things change:
- It loses 3 CS.
- It gains 3 RCS.
- It gains 1 extra movementpoint.
- It gains the ability to attack and run away.
- It loses the ability to move over terrain without losing all movement.
- It loses the feared elephant ability.
- It costs one extra horse.
Sure when you're fighting in flatlands it is a net gain, the ability to attack and run away is powerful and makes up for the loss of CS, but add terrain to it and you'd probably rather have the extra CS and the ability to actually move.
I'll let you decide what it is worth to you.
Anyways this wasn't supposed to be the whole point, the Naga-Malla is good, everyone already knows this, onward to the things that are actually iffy.
The Unique building is pretty damn close to being garbage-tier. With my 5 personally settled cities and my 4 conquered cities I ended up with exactly 5 tiles of floodplains, all of them strangely enough being located next to my capital (One might think I actually put some effort into getting any floodplains at all). So outside of my capital the building was worth +2 food and an extra 5% aqueduct effect(which is pretty hard to actually classify, but in my experience it didn't make all that much of a difference).
I did eventually end up with extremely big cities, but that probably had more to do with the tradition pick, the rationalism pick and the playstyle I adopted to try and make tradition work.
I pretty much tried to exploit the tradition growthbonus as much as possible by building only farms everywhere and keeping all cities on foodfocus with locked specialists. Most of my cities actually outgrew the tiles available to them and started working unemployed citizens, but that is partially because most of those cities are so far behind on infrastructure that they actually lack essential specialist-slots.
I would like to imagine that the Harappan Reservoir actually helped in this regard, but truth be told I really don't think it did.
The Harappan Reservoir just feels like a worse version of the Aztec Floating garden, only working on floodplains, being available later on, and being more expensive.
On to the Unique Ability, first off it is really hard to judge it, mostly because religious spread is pretty much random from game to game. In my current game there are 52 cities in total, 46 of them are following my religion, that may seem a lot, but there are actually not one religious AI in the game, making their spread in general very weak. A stronger religious AI could push the Indian religion back and essentially isolate it to a corner quite easily (I have had no problem doing that myself versus Indian AI).
The Indian UA is unique, and it forces you into a more unique playstyle, but it is still rather boring, and I don't really know if it is that strong. Sure a free pantheon is great, and getting your spread all over the world is awesome, but the spread bonus is limited to things in range of your cities, meaning that while your neighbors really doesn't stand a chance, anyone further away isn't going to feel pressured, and if your neighbor is a fanatic, or Isabella(or both
) your UA is pretty much wasted. Same goes with over-sized maps and especially watermaps, where your bonusspread really doesn't accomplish much.
All in all I don't really know what to do about the Indian UA, but I would love for it to actually do something to your cities, rather than being completely reliant of you getting a religion and picking the beliefs that gives bonuses for spreading.
