hey guys spirit of the law here in this video we're gonna take a look at the new dynasties
of india civilizations and how they've been performing on the ranked ladder at this point we
have not one but two different community created sites tracking the win rate data with now enough
games played to start seeing some patterns one site is age of statistics which i've talked about
many times before and has lots of nice breakdowns by elo and game length etc which can help piece
together not only how civs are performing but also why the other is a new site called
which gives an alternate presentation of the data and with things like this having multiple sites
with slightly different methodologies just helps give a little bit more confidence in any patterns
we find now while the age vampire's developers have been getting a lot better with balance at
release in the newer expansions three and a half new civs all at once is quite ambitious
and i imagine it's hard to get the balance just right so let's dig into the stats and see how
things are going so far we'll go through the new civs alphabetically starting with the bengalis
this is hands down the most elephant focused of the new civs though they're also unique for the
wrath chariot that can switch between ranged and melee mode from age of statistics though it seems
bengalis are dead last in open maps which is mostly reflective of arabia games though there
are a couple of other maps thrown in there as well alternately age stats.net has bengalis
performing a bit better on arabia specifically which is generally considered the gold standard
for land map balance discussions either way there's a pretty clear picture that bengalis
are the worst open map land civ at the moment on the bright side though they've actually been
pretty average on closed maps which reflects arena hideout and hill fort that suggests a healthy
potential to boom their economy but they're a little vulnerable to early pressure which
is a discrepancy usually associated with a weak dark age economy bohemians and portuguese have a
similar sort of dichotomy and both are known for having a slow start for bengalis they receive two
free villagers after they advance as their main civ bonus but of course that doesn't help until
futile and even then it'll take a few minutes to start to really feel the effects of that adding up
if we break things down by elo and game length and open maps it's really not that they're getting
crushed at any particular time in the game they're just underperforming overall at really any skill
level the one exception is games lasting an hour or longer where they start to improve dramatically
maybe partly thanks to their population efficiency with more villagers and powerful elephants
at the same time i think the elephants are probably a big factor in their general weakness
though they're expensive hard to get going and even with bengali's bonus damage reduction they're
still countered pretty well by spear units and skirmishers in the case of the elephant
archer outside of elephants they're not really a notable archer civ lacking thumb ring and their
stable is also quite limited the wrath chariot is probably the most interesting unit they have
though again the fact they take both anti-cavalry and anti-archer bonus damage is a serious drawback
i've seen them do some good work when raiding but the data overall suggests it's certainly not an
overpowered unit these results haven't been a huge surprise as nothing about bengali's really jumped
out initially and it was always a question of how good their free villager bonus was going to be
i'm expecting something pretty significant down the road to buff bengalis as it's such an outlier
in 1v1 open maps again though in closed maps they're instead pretty average as you'll be up
4 villagers by 15 or 16 minutes in a fast castle and their extra 2 villager bonus also applies to
each town center you have so it's still useful when hitting imperial age as it can give you 6
or even more villagers instantaneously i think the trick in balancing them is going to be helping
them out on arabia without making them too good in team game closed maps where elephants free late
game villagers with a higher population cap and a trade bonus all have a lot more synergy but now
let's move on and take a look at the dravidians they're also doing relatively poorly but not
as bad as bengali's overall on 1v1 open maps they're a fringe bottom five with 44 to 45 win
rate age stats dot net has them a little higher on arabia specifically and everyone's site is
gonna have slightly different methodology all of the stats available though agree they're a little
underpowered for closed maps it's a pretty similar story keeping in mind some very large error bars
as the open map sample size is about six times larger than for closed maps to dig a bit deeper
dravidians are pretty consistently weak across elo ratings but actually have an interesting
profile based on game length if it's not clear this is showing what percent of games they win
that end at a certain game time and notice they're significantly above average in games
ending around 20 minutes or seemingly earlier that definitely speaks to the strength of some combo of
their free 200 wood bonus when hitting feudal cheaper barracks upgrades and possibly their
faster attacking skirmishers you can imagine going men at arms into a mix of archers and
skirmishers is going to take advantage of all of those bonuses back to back after that though it
seems once every once in castle age they're unable to maintain that pressure i'd argue though they
remain a decent archer civilization with lots of options and fully upgraded r blasters and
it's really the stable that's dragging them down interestingly wood steel and their very powerful
unique unit at least in melee combat aren't really showing up in the data as a late game power spike
notably though if we looked at closed maps like arena and specifically team games their late game
is quite good with their team winning about 60 of the time in games lasting an hour and reaching
that post-imperial stage this is actually a pattern that shows up in many quote infantry civs
though i'm sure the faster attacking skirmishers and elephant archers are contributing a bit here
as well of course while they're an infantry civ on land dravidians are also primarily meant to
be a naval civilization if we look just at water maps on islands four lakes and migration they're
consistently right near the top so it seems their water game is quite strong as expected given their
large number of bonuses though without looking broken which is nice to see good job by the
balance team to get that right on the first try so far though we have the sense the devs may have
gone a bit too conservative with the new civs but wait for it the next two tell a bit of a different
story we'll look first at the gurjars they have a very unusual start with two forged bushes
garrisoning sheep and mills for passive food more bonus damage from mounted units like the camel and
three unique units so there was a lot to consider in getting the balance just right with the civ
to start with on 1v1 open maps age of statistics has them as the number two civ at the moment at
the same time agestats dot net puts them at number four on arabia but keep in mind this site includes
all elo ratings while age of statistics only uses 1200 elo and up but either way it's clear they're
doing very well on open maps likewise they're doing great on closed maps so they really seem
able to boom as well as anyone in addition to playing for aggression their peripheral stats
show they're really crushing it in 30 minute long games which implies a lot of their wins are coming
in castle age to what degree that's reflecting their unique units or if this is their camel's
bonus damage helping them beat knight civs isn't obvious from this alone it's very tempting to
assume this is just them beating up on frank's and other cavalry ships which are especially popular
and successful at lower elo ratings but the stats really don't support that narrative if we look at
how they perform in open maps against every other civilization they only have a slight edge against
francs with around a 51 win rate so it's not a particularly good matchup for them despite the
very obvious advantage a camel civ should have against a night civ if we highlight what i'd
consider a sample of good cavalry civs i don't notice an overwhelming pattern that gurjaras are
especially good against them and in fact some of their toughest matchups are against civs
that often use a lot of stable units like slavs teutons and hindustanis that's not to say that
gurjaras are bad against cavalry civs but that they seem to be able to handle just about anyone
another interesting pattern that jumps out is that they seem to improve at higher levels of play
we've seen this before with the chinese and it may be their unusual start in action or it could
be the trickiness in making the most of their unique units but we see in both their win rate and
popularity as you go from 900 elo to 1600 players they're picked more often and win at a higher rate
as well considering the devs tend to put extra emphasis on higher elos when it comes to balanced
decisions i wouldn't be surprised to see some sort of nerf especially since when you filter to just
1600 elo and up your jars are technically number one at the moment of course you can see from all
of the overlapping error bars they could really easily settle anywhere in the top five as 1600
elo and higher data always struggles to get a good sample size that's the good jars and finally we'll
finish up with the hindustanis which as hard as this is to believe may actually be even better to
start with on 1v1 open maps with 1200 rating and up hindustanis are number one by a comfortable
margin though they're a little behind gurjara on closed maps so maybe gurjaras are still best
overall on arabia specifically opening things up to all elo's age of stats puts them at number two
overall and if we make things completely wide open to include every map elo and ranked 1v1
game played in the last month or so they're again number one the point is there's different ways to
look at the data but all of it points to another top tier civilization keep in mind indians were
already near the top of the ladder even before receiving faster attack on their camels a new
archer-resistant unique unit and their scout line gaining extra attack against buildings
i think their new ghulam really shouldn't be overlooked as it gives them a pairing that can
counter both knights and archers which is a combo we've seen working for gurjaras as well both civs
also have advantages against buildings with the hindustani's team bonus and the gurjara's battle
elephant dealing much more damage to buildings than a battering ramp thanks to a civ bonus
digging deeper into game length it seems around 45 minutes is when hindustani's peak
this suggests a strong early to mid imperial age when their good gunpowder can really
start to contribute interestingly if we compare hindustanis to how indians were doing last fall
indians didn't have that early imperial age gunpowder boost to the same degree
but we're a little better in one hour post-imperial sorts of games which i
actually find surprising as hazards with plus two against buildings sounds quite strong to me in a
trash fight similar to gurjaras they also seem to perform better if anything in higher rated games
though they don't have as dramatic of a rise in play rate and are just consistently a popular pick
also similar to gurjaras it's not that they're just beating up on franks and other popular
cavalry civilizations while hindustanis are favored in that matchup it's certainly not
one of their best of course you could flip that around to the frank's perspective in which case
yes gurjaras and hindustanis are some of their least favorite opponents the larger point is
that the new civs aren't the best because they're beating popular civs like frank's instead they're
just beating up on everybody again like jars they may warrant a nerf and especially the fact they're
strong at higher levels makes them i think a more likely candidate for that so altogether
you could argue the indian civs as a group are collectively well balanced having a combined 51
win rate across all elo ratings and maps they're even trailing cavalry and camel civs as a whole
so if you combine their stats they really don't look overpowered that said upon closer inspection
this is really the story of two civs that are too strong and two civs that are too weak at least on
open maps the balance on closed maps though is a bit better but for bengalis it really seems
like they're calling for an early game buff and gurjaras and hindustanis could probably
be weakened to some degree if the current trend persists though i wouldn't say they're outright
broken that'll do it for this one though and if you're interested in playing around with either
of those sites in more depth i'll have them linked below thanks for watching i'll see you next time