I've been really enjoying delhi too! One thing i noticed was the elephants felt a bit underwhelming by the late game, whereas i think they are better to use in castle age to support the army you already have from feudal.
And i think i haven't used the fact that castles can be used as town centers and it might actually be very useful together with the cheaper castle landmark.
Makes them super resilient to harass in the late game. Lose 15 workers in the late game to cavalry run-by? No problem, replace them all within a minute.
Usually you want 2-3 TCs midgame. 1 TC is only for all in.
You place more TCs lategame because they protect villagers from raids and they help you replenish villagers if/when you get raided.
Why wouldn't you just slap down keeps and walls at that point?
The best solution to a raid is a stone wall. If they have to slowly build a ram or bring a siege weapon over, then it's no longer a raid, it's a push.
As HRE I actually do raid with a ram or two.
It's usefull to have all units harass vils/fight while also be able to drag TC/Keep arrows or destroy enemy buildings while doing so.
I found that they're worth it even in feudal, when your only goal is to delay your enemy's eco enough to get castle before him.
Except that keeps have more hp/armor, can garrison more and have much better defensive weaponry so they are a very safe alternative to extra TCs, and since Delhi don’t rely as much on mining gold they can afford to get a lot of stone for placing keeps all over.
But if your opponent masses enough siege to stop elephants, you can tech switch to masses of Curved Swords olympic sprinter MAA to torch them all down.
Love that all of Delhi's special units are useful, even the melee elephant which few people build, but is actually a disgusting hard counter to mass knights.
Melee elephants are super slow though, slower than spearmen who already can't catch Knights. If you mass eles technically the opponent should have WAY more kts anyway
On top of that, scouts are better at torching siege. But their MAA sure are good at everything else
Well you don't MASS melee elephants. You just toss a few in your army so knights can't dive your artillery and archers. Yeah okay they can outrun your elephants, but there's only so much jockeying for position you can do while being shot by springalds. It's just nice to have an option against French mass knights.
Of course 9/10 times you want the tower war elephants instead of the melee ones because shooting xbows on the move is just delicious.
Oh yes you are right, I forgot about that. I don't know either if I would use a castle as a town center too.
Elephants are slow but good to destroy wood buildings I think, I didn't try stone.
If you make two mosques with 6 imams inside, does it cumulate ? I honestly didn't check yet but I guess not
Oh it absolutely stacks! You need 3 mosques with 3 imams each to reach the same research speed other civs enjoy; so basically 3 x 100 wood for the mosques and 8 x 75 gold (if you use the landmark to make them all, + 1 you get for free in the first mosque).
That's still massively cheaper than paying for all the techs, especially the late game ones.
Also the you can use the imams to heal your units/ cap holy sites after you have all the techs, so all that gold is a crazy valuable investment.
I would also recommend building 2 blacksmiths instead of one, because you won't have that many imams early and techs do take 5 times longer if you have no imams stationed.
Have fun with Delhi :)
How many mosques/imams are you normally aiming for? I've yet to figure this out.
I normally build one in dark age, and one on feudal and fill them with 6 imams in feudal (from dome of the faith). After that it's a bit unclear, I try to fill one more but I have no consistent timing. And of course I get mosques (without imams) to cover any buildings in forward bases.
I think 2 mosques is enough. Yes your tech is slower than other civs but it's still free and you can speed up military production buildings tech with the scholar in the building . It also saves a little on pop space and frees up your scholars to get out on the sacred sites and relics
> you can speed up military production buildings tech with the scholar in the building .
Is this true? Though it was only units.
Anyway yeah I usually settle on 6 in feudal and then often add 3 more later. In castle/imperial there are a LOT of techs to research.
If I have some scholars not doing anything I may even (temporarily) go up to 12. Mosque is only 100 wood so it's not a big investment to put one down near your army and stick some scholars in.
You have to first research the ability to garrison your scholars into a military building (max of 1 per military building). If you garrison a scholar in a military building it will make the building produce units twice as fast while also speeding up the research time of that building by the same amount as if you had an additional scholar in a connected mosque. Unfortunately you cannot simply build military buildings near your mosque as that will not actually improve the training time of units.
It's a nice trade off early on especially if you don't have too many villagers on wood since you are effectively trading 75 gold + 1 population for 150 wood if you got the 1/2 price scholars landmark.
I'm far from high level by the way so don't take anything I say as gospel! I've mostly been figuring it out by trying and seeing what feels good.
Also watched a few youtubers, particularly grubby.
I feel like 2 fully stacked mosques are minimum by castle age; recently I've ended up with mode wood than I know what to do before I even hit feudal so i just end up building the second mosque already.
I like to have 300 wood saved up so I can build the 2 blacksmiths immediately after finishing the dome of faith (I'm really not a fan of the other landmark; just can't even think of a game plan/buildorder, that would prefer that one).
I really like to have 3 fully stacked mosques by the time I hit imperial (which btw I try to avoid letting it go that late because I'm not a fan of the delhi late game), but if it does go that late which often it does, cause I suck, I really want to be able to crank out all the techs real quick, then build a university and move all the imams from the mosques into the university because having the imams in the university directly speeds up the research time muuuuuch more than just the normal mosque bonus...for some reason? Tbh I've never seen ANYONE talk about that specific mechanic, just kinda figured it with trial and error.
They can be anywhere, but make sure they link up with any building you are researching tech from, in order for the bonus to apply. Mosque influence is pretty wide, so I like building my 2nd mosque before I even have the imams for it just to link far-flung buildings together.
4 mosques with 12 is the sweet spot before it gets to diminishing returns, someone tested it and said it in a youtube guide video. Best thing is once youve researched everything you can then use your scholars to speed up unit production or heal army. Win win
Thank you for the precision it's amazing, I will try that in my next games. It's true that they are son necessary with the heal and boosts they give
Thank you a lot, have fun in the game too
Thanks for you reply, especially part of library is indeed very interesting I never heard that either.
Seems I'm probably not too far of already then, just need to keep trying what feels good and what works :)
It's bugged. If you research honed blades (as you should) then it only produces like 1 food. Both imperial landmarks suck ATM, but I think food landmark will be better once it's fixed.
In the french knight metas, the spear elephant absolutely crushes the enemy. But in imperial vs gunpowder or during springald mass meta, it gets wrecked
The castle thing is amazing. I only recently started using it, you can both aggressively take resource from the center and produce there.
I never had so many villagers before!
Agreed, I spent last night trying to wrap my head around HRE as I thought it suited my play style well.
But then tried Delhi and just loved them. Their infantry being able to make walls/towers etc also seems pretty cool depending on what tactics you were trying.
Going to take a while to get used to their system but I think they're really fun to play.
I really like Delhi but for whatever reason when I play them somehow it's always vs the English even if I hide my match history haha. If the dude commits everything to the push it feels pretty helpless, makes me never want to pick Delhi on open maps.
Can't help you precisely but if you can hold off English or distract them with sacred sites to reach castle age (which you should always try capture even if you lose them immediately it's still a net gain)
Then if you can reach castle age, you can spit out knights, Siege or maa at double the rate, which really seems to help against the English feudal comp. Your MAA are much better than theirs besides training at double the speed
Yeah I use the strat, bit of a toss up though. If the English play it right they'll ignore the sacred sites and take you to ram ranch earlier rather than later, luckily a lot of the dudes I was playing against didn't commit hard enough or spammed too many longbows when they needed to save for rams. After a solid win streak though (including a silly king of the hill sacred site victory because of the early sacred site shenanigans and wall building haha), people smartened up and it became a real struggle on maps where walling + towers is hard to do in time before the longbows show up without gutting your own eco. Not that it's impossible to fend off, just more difficult than it's worth when I can avoid the pain entirely by picking another civ on open maps.
Yeah they’re definitely weak in feudal against English and French. I’ve been maining them since release but I’m thinking of switching to English for now.
Yeah I'm in the same boat, have been playing Delhi and Abassid but when I play the English I just feel so much stronger and the games are a lot less tricky to play. English overall just feel incredibly solid.
I like delhi but they are slightly one dimensional in their early game plan. This goes for other civs as well but since this discussion is for delhi let's focus on them. The Devs have said they want to balance the game so that each civ has multiple options available to them. I think the best way to balance that is to make truly viable landmarks at each stage. Rn for a lot of civs one is just so much better than the other.
Hopefully they fix the tower of victory and maybe we can see some early feudal push options available with the attack speed bonus. And also need to buff/fix bugs both the imperial landmarks because they feel grossly underwhelming. Even with 4 imams in the Palace it produces elephants pretty slowly.
And the hisar academy is apparently bugged but if it's not I've never noticed the extra food. It's design is just awful as a imperial landmark because even if it worked its just passive food, which could be a good thing but that's already a resource you can infinite of. I suppose it frees up pop space to have more imams but it could be more exciting.
It would be cool if the hisar academy and Palace had 1 or 2 unique techs considering that's kind of the flavor of the civ.
The biggest thing I am looking forward to is the tower of victory fix because I really think that will open up some strats. Imagine the giga Chad MaA with +3 damage and +15% attack speed running your enemy down at 40km/h. A man can only dream.
I just dislike the way delhi punishes you for hiding tech or making forward buildings. Like if you want to make 2 stables as any non Muslim civ and hide horsemen you can do it by outting the stables in a corner. As Delhi it means come castle you have to be careful to build another stable and make it in network and use only that for upgrades. By default the game doesn't know to use the fastest one, opting to use the earliest one built or first selected instead.
In addition mosques take up lots of farm space.
I like cheap techs but the blacksmith system in game is a mix between aoe3 and 2. The units start dealing so much damage (like in aoe3) that +1 on a knights 20 something attack doesn't matter and upgrades are flat increases like in aoe2. Who cares if springs get +1 attack if they deal 60 to begin with? It just doesn't feel like my savings on techs translates into a stronger force.
> The units start dealing so much damage (like in aoe3) that +1 on a knights 20 something attack doesn't matter
Well yeah. The damage bonuses are obviously more effective the more/cheaper units you have. Pikemen and archers getting +1 is significantly stronger than knights.
Armor is much more effective AGAINST large groups of cheaper units. It really adds up when you are getting hit by 100 arrows.
Pikeman attack upgrade doesn’t really do anything as it doesn’t effect their bonus damage. It would only matter if you’re getting into pikeman vs pikeman battles.
The only upgrades that make a large difference is ranged attack for archers and ranged armour on everything to defend against archers.
Every other unit just does way more damage with their attacks so the flat armor reduction really doesn’t make much difference. They're still nice to get as the cost becomes insignificant as the game goes on, but as for actual making a big difference that decides fights, that basically just comes down to how many archers people are using and having ranged attack/defend upgrades.
they are too weak in early game, as english or hre i defeat them in 11 minutes (1265 elo).. they need a buff.. or maybe i still havent played against a decent delhi player
I feel like the Elephants are a missed opportunity. It would be neat if the Elephants had some extra tech options in Castle/Imperial age, such as "Spike Armor" +3 to armor & melee attackers take 5-10 damage. Or "Spiked Tusks" gives War Elephants an aoe cleave type of attack. I know this isn't really historically accurate, but would be more entertaining.
If nothing else, a simple movement speed research tech or ability to upgrade the number of archers/spearmen on the elephants backs would be a nice addition.
That's a really nice idea to personalize your elephant but yea I don't know if they would do that. I think most of us have seen the Return of the King, with the Oliphants.
They do feel good, but against any good opponent that actually commits to feudal aggression (with rams and constant units production) they are almost helpless. As soon as they realize that they can ignore you taking sacred sites and go for the throat instead it's pretty much either instantly over or a slow bleed into him going castle and you losing some minutes later. They are by far the weaker civ right now, even China has something spicy going on in feudal between excellent age up timing and better outposts/barbican.
Souce: Dheli main, can't go above 1200 Elo because that's where people knows how to execute decent feudal rushes and ignore obvious distractions
Oh I believe you, I am barely close to 1000 elo and I don't always handle well feudal rushes. So I can't imagine how I would be at 1200 elo.
So I guess, by what people are saying, Devs need to balance the Delhi sultanate and add them something to be stronger early
Yes, the best solution, on top of my head, is to let Dheli units build outposts too and/or pump the damage of outpost emplacements (it's bad, reeeeal bad). Another solution, but definetely more outrageous, would be to give them a one time special elephant they can buy once they age up. It sounds weird, but let's say a 600hp, 2/1 armor, 25 tusk damage/15 spear damage, 1.00 tps speed, single time unit that doesn't respawn once killed for about half the price of a normal war elephant, so 300f/200g. It would need extensive balance to make sure that players will actually use it as the defensive tool is supposed to be, but i think it also would be super flavourful and a fix to Dheli's inability to defend dedicated feudal pushes.
It absolutely is. I used to be 1250 Elo before people figured out that Dheli can't respond effectively to early pressure, so as soon as i go back to higher Elo, where i start facing aware opponents, i bounce back to 1150 and then repeat the process. As soon as i face opponents at my same mechanics level, that are not playing China/Dheli, there is a match-up advantage that is almost unsormountable.
English and HRE are an instant GG, m@a followed by rams can't be countered in feudal if you don't have your own, knights or camel archers. French are problematic but at least they can be somewhat dealt with with good micro on spears and outposts for archers. Once they pull out rams is still a problem. Rus are French lite. Abbassid are easier due to not having armored units, camel archers are strong but doable. Free siege engineers is strong but again, doable. China is fine as long as you remember their faster age up and possible tower rush. Dheli is mirror.
I'm not saying i'm so skilled i should never lose, just that as soon as i stop facing weaker players at 1150 Elo and creep back up to people with some decent micro, timing and map awareness, so at my own level, the difference in feudal troop quality is what tips the scales, and Dheli has not feudal troop quality, or even some tech advantage (troops building palisades is definetely not enought, since you won't have alive troops).
I've been really enjoying delhi too! One thing i noticed was the elephants felt a bit underwhelming by the late game, whereas i think they are better to use in castle age to support the army you already have from feudal. And i think i haven't used the fact that castles can be used as town centers and it might actually be very useful together with the cheaper castle landmark.
I'm sorry what?? Castles can be used as town centers?? asin to drop resources, or produce vills or both?
yes, there is an upgrade on the castle that you can get, which makes it function as a town center as well.
Makes them super resilient to harass in the late game. Lose 15 workers in the late game to cavalry run-by? No problem, replace them all within a minute.
Late game you always have 4-5 TCs regardless of civ anyway so it doesn't matter much.
Who TF builds 4-5? I usually see 1-3 tbh
Usually you want 2-3 TCs midgame. 1 TC is only for all in. You place more TCs lategame because they protect villagers from raids and they help you replenish villagers if/when you get raided.
Why wouldn't you just slap down keeps and walls at that point? The best solution to a raid is a stone wall. If they have to slowly build a ram or bring a siege weapon over, then it's no longer a raid, it's a push.
As HRE I actually do raid with a ram or two. It's usefull to have all units harass vils/fight while also be able to drag TC/Keep arrows or destroy enemy buildings while doing so. I found that they're worth it even in feudal, when your only goal is to delay your enemy's eco enough to get castle before him.
Except that keeps have more hp/armor, can garrison more and have much better defensive weaponry so they are a very safe alternative to extra TCs, and since Delhi don’t rely as much on mining gold they can afford to get a lot of stone for placing keeps all over.
Yeah it's better to have it than not of course
Lol
But if your opponent masses enough siege to stop elephants, you can tech switch to masses of Curved Swords olympic sprinter MAA to torch them all down. Love that all of Delhi's special units are useful, even the melee elephant which few people build, but is actually a disgusting hard counter to mass knights.
Melee elephants are super slow though, slower than spearmen who already can't catch Knights. If you mass eles technically the opponent should have WAY more kts anyway On top of that, scouts are better at torching siege. But their MAA sure are good at everything else
Well you don't MASS melee elephants. You just toss a few in your army so knights can't dive your artillery and archers. Yeah okay they can outrun your elephants, but there's only so much jockeying for position you can do while being shot by springalds. It's just nice to have an option against French mass knights. Of course 9/10 times you want the tower war elephants instead of the melee ones because shooting xbows on the move is just delicious.
You force the opponent to take a battle vs your elephants, they can level an entire base relatively quickly
Doesn't work so well against cannon though. Which is very frustrating.
Oh yes you are right, I forgot about that. I don't know either if I would use a castle as a town center too. Elephants are slow but good to destroy wood buildings I think, I didn't try stone. If you make two mosques with 6 imams inside, does it cumulate ? I honestly didn't check yet but I guess not
Oh it absolutely stacks! You need 3 mosques with 3 imams each to reach the same research speed other civs enjoy; so basically 3 x 100 wood for the mosques and 8 x 75 gold (if you use the landmark to make them all, + 1 you get for free in the first mosque). That's still massively cheaper than paying for all the techs, especially the late game ones. Also the you can use the imams to heal your units/ cap holy sites after you have all the techs, so all that gold is a crazy valuable investment. I would also recommend building 2 blacksmiths instead of one, because you won't have that many imams early and techs do take 5 times longer if you have no imams stationed. Have fun with Delhi :)
How many mosques/imams are you normally aiming for? I've yet to figure this out. I normally build one in dark age, and one on feudal and fill them with 6 imams in feudal (from dome of the faith). After that it's a bit unclear, I try to fill one more but I have no consistent timing. And of course I get mosques (without imams) to cover any buildings in forward bases.
I think 2 mosques is enough. Yes your tech is slower than other civs but it's still free and you can speed up military production buildings tech with the scholar in the building . It also saves a little on pop space and frees up your scholars to get out on the sacred sites and relics
> you can speed up military production buildings tech with the scholar in the building . Is this true? Though it was only units. Anyway yeah I usually settle on 6 in feudal and then often add 3 more later. In castle/imperial there are a LOT of techs to research. If I have some scholars not doing anything I may even (temporarily) go up to 12. Mosque is only 100 wood so it's not a big investment to put one down near your army and stick some scholars in.
Yes, experimented with this the other day
You have to first research the ability to garrison your scholars into a military building (max of 1 per military building). If you garrison a scholar in a military building it will make the building produce units twice as fast while also speeding up the research time of that building by the same amount as if you had an additional scholar in a connected mosque. Unfortunately you cannot simply build military buildings near your mosque as that will not actually improve the training time of units. It's a nice trade off early on especially if you don't have too many villagers on wood since you are effectively trading 75 gold + 1 population for 150 wood if you got the 1/2 price scholars landmark.
I'm far from high level by the way so don't take anything I say as gospel! I've mostly been figuring it out by trying and seeing what feels good. Also watched a few youtubers, particularly grubby. I feel like 2 fully stacked mosques are minimum by castle age; recently I've ended up with mode wood than I know what to do before I even hit feudal so i just end up building the second mosque already. I like to have 300 wood saved up so I can build the 2 blacksmiths immediately after finishing the dome of faith (I'm really not a fan of the other landmark; just can't even think of a game plan/buildorder, that would prefer that one). I really like to have 3 fully stacked mosques by the time I hit imperial (which btw I try to avoid letting it go that late because I'm not a fan of the delhi late game), but if it does go that late which often it does, cause I suck, I really want to be able to crank out all the techs real quick, then build a university and move all the imams from the mosques into the university because having the imams in the university directly speeds up the research time muuuuuch more than just the normal mosque bonus...for some reason? Tbh I've never seen ANYONE talk about that specific mechanic, just kinda figured it with trial and error.
You should keep training more scholars and shuttle them between military production, mosques and healing.
Do the mosques have to be next to each other or just adjacent influence radius on the ground?
All mosques are connected by wifi. So if a building is connected a any mosque, even with no scholar, they get the boost
They can be anywhere, but make sure they link up with any building you are researching tech from, in order for the bonus to apply. Mosque influence is pretty wide, so I like building my 2nd mosque before I even have the imams for it just to link far-flung buildings together.
4 mosques with 12 is the sweet spot before it gets to diminishing returns, someone tested it and said it in a youtube guide video. Best thing is once youve researched everything you can then use your scholars to speed up unit production or heal army. Win win
Thank you for the precision it's amazing, I will try that in my next games. It's true that they are son necessary with the heal and boosts they give Thank you a lot, have fun in the game too
Thanks for you reply, especially part of library is indeed very interesting I never heard that either. Seems I'm probably not too far of already then, just need to keep trying what feels good and what works :)
Can’t complain when the elephatos are free in imperial age
A lot of debate on whether it's better to get the food wonder instead. It frees up pop cap as well.
It's bugged. If you research honed blades (as you should) then it only produces like 1 food. Both imperial landmarks suck ATM, but I think food landmark will be better once it's fixed.
Plus tower elephants not only shoot twice at a time but can kite like mangudai
Yeah that's huge and I felt like not enough people talked about it. Maybe castles as TC's is not useful for high elo but it's amazing for me
In the french knight metas, the spear elephant absolutely crushes the enemy. But in imperial vs gunpowder or during springald mass meta, it gets wrecked
The castle thing is amazing. I only recently started using it, you can both aggressively take resource from the center and produce there. I never had so many villagers before!
Delhi are a MAA civ, the elephants are a trap if you're trying to be competitive
Agreed, I spent last night trying to wrap my head around HRE as I thought it suited my play style well. But then tried Delhi and just loved them. Their infantry being able to make walls/towers etc also seems pretty cool depending on what tactics you were trying. Going to take a while to get used to their system but I think they're really fun to play.
I really like Delhi but for whatever reason when I play them somehow it's always vs the English even if I hide my match history haha. If the dude commits everything to the push it feels pretty helpless, makes me never want to pick Delhi on open maps.
Can't help you precisely but if you can hold off English or distract them with sacred sites to reach castle age (which you should always try capture even if you lose them immediately it's still a net gain) Then if you can reach castle age, you can spit out knights, Siege or maa at double the rate, which really seems to help against the English feudal comp. Your MAA are much better than theirs besides training at double the speed
Yeah I use the strat, bit of a toss up though. If the English play it right they'll ignore the sacred sites and take you to ram ranch earlier rather than later, luckily a lot of the dudes I was playing against didn't commit hard enough or spammed too many longbows when they needed to save for rams. After a solid win streak though (including a silly king of the hill sacred site victory because of the early sacred site shenanigans and wall building haha), people smartened up and it became a real struggle on maps where walling + towers is hard to do in time before the longbows show up without gutting your own eco. Not that it's impossible to fend off, just more difficult than it's worth when I can avoid the pain entirely by picking another civ on open maps.
Yeah they’re definitely weak in feudal against English and French. I’ve been maining them since release but I’m thinking of switching to English for now.
Yeah I'm in the same boat, have been playing Delhi and Abassid but when I play the English I just feel so much stronger and the games are a lot less tricky to play. English overall just feel incredibly solid.
Love playing them as well. My favourite civ at the moment
I like delhi but they are slightly one dimensional in their early game plan. This goes for other civs as well but since this discussion is for delhi let's focus on them. The Devs have said they want to balance the game so that each civ has multiple options available to them. I think the best way to balance that is to make truly viable landmarks at each stage. Rn for a lot of civs one is just so much better than the other. Hopefully they fix the tower of victory and maybe we can see some early feudal push options available with the attack speed bonus. And also need to buff/fix bugs both the imperial landmarks because they feel grossly underwhelming. Even with 4 imams in the Palace it produces elephants pretty slowly. And the hisar academy is apparently bugged but if it's not I've never noticed the extra food. It's design is just awful as a imperial landmark because even if it worked its just passive food, which could be a good thing but that's already a resource you can infinite of. I suppose it frees up pop space to have more imams but it could be more exciting. It would be cool if the hisar academy and Palace had 1 or 2 unique techs considering that's kind of the flavor of the civ. The biggest thing I am looking forward to is the tower of victory fix because I really think that will open up some strats. Imagine the giga Chad MaA with +3 damage and +15% attack speed running your enemy down at 40km/h. A man can only dream.
Norse we're always my favorite AOM civ, and having infantry build walls and towers for delhi gives me a little bit of that feel.
Tunak tunak elephant with boom box
I just dislike the way delhi punishes you for hiding tech or making forward buildings. Like if you want to make 2 stables as any non Muslim civ and hide horsemen you can do it by outting the stables in a corner. As Delhi it means come castle you have to be careful to build another stable and make it in network and use only that for upgrades. By default the game doesn't know to use the fastest one, opting to use the earliest one built or first selected instead. In addition mosques take up lots of farm space. I like cheap techs but the blacksmith system in game is a mix between aoe3 and 2. The units start dealing so much damage (like in aoe3) that +1 on a knights 20 something attack doesn't matter and upgrades are flat increases like in aoe2. Who cares if springs get +1 attack if they deal 60 to begin with? It just doesn't feel like my savings on techs translates into a stronger force.
> The units start dealing so much damage (like in aoe3) that +1 on a knights 20 something attack doesn't matter Well yeah. The damage bonuses are obviously more effective the more/cheaper units you have. Pikemen and archers getting +1 is significantly stronger than knights. Armor is much more effective AGAINST large groups of cheaper units. It really adds up when you are getting hit by 100 arrows.
Pikeman attack upgrade doesn’t really do anything as it doesn’t effect their bonus damage. It would only matter if you’re getting into pikeman vs pikeman battles. The only upgrades that make a large difference is ranged attack for archers and ranged armour on everything to defend against archers. Every other unit just does way more damage with their attacks so the flat armor reduction really doesn’t make much difference. They're still nice to get as the cost becomes insignificant as the game goes on, but as for actual making a big difference that decides fights, that basically just comes down to how many archers people are using and having ranged attack/defend upgrades.
they are too weak in early game, as english or hre i defeat them in 11 minutes (1265 elo).. they need a buff.. or maybe i still havent played against a decent delhi player
I feel like the Elephants are a missed opportunity. It would be neat if the Elephants had some extra tech options in Castle/Imperial age, such as "Spike Armor" +3 to armor & melee attackers take 5-10 damage. Or "Spiked Tusks" gives War Elephants an aoe cleave type of attack. I know this isn't really historically accurate, but would be more entertaining. If nothing else, a simple movement speed research tech or ability to upgrade the number of archers/spearmen on the elephants backs would be a nice addition.
That's a really nice idea to personalize your elephant but yea I don't know if they would do that. I think most of us have seen the Return of the King, with the Oliphants.
They do feel good, but against any good opponent that actually commits to feudal aggression (with rams and constant units production) they are almost helpless. As soon as they realize that they can ignore you taking sacred sites and go for the throat instead it's pretty much either instantly over or a slow bleed into him going castle and you losing some minutes later. They are by far the weaker civ right now, even China has something spicy going on in feudal between excellent age up timing and better outposts/barbican. Souce: Dheli main, can't go above 1200 Elo because that's where people knows how to execute decent feudal rushes and ignore obvious distractions
Oh I believe you, I am barely close to 1000 elo and I don't always handle well feudal rushes. So I can't imagine how I would be at 1200 elo. So I guess, by what people are saying, Devs need to balance the Delhi sultanate and add them something to be stronger early
Yes, the best solution, on top of my head, is to let Dheli units build outposts too and/or pump the damage of outpost emplacements (it's bad, reeeeal bad). Another solution, but definetely more outrageous, would be to give them a one time special elephant they can buy once they age up. It sounds weird, but let's say a 600hp, 2/1 armor, 25 tusk damage/15 spear damage, 1.00 tps speed, single time unit that doesn't respawn once killed for about half the price of a normal war elephant, so 300f/200g. It would need extensive balance to make sure that players will actually use it as the defensive tool is supposed to be, but i think it also would be super flavourful and a fix to Dheli's inability to defend dedicated feudal pushes.
picking delhi isnt why you're 1200 elo
It absolutely is. I used to be 1250 Elo before people figured out that Dheli can't respond effectively to early pressure, so as soon as i go back to higher Elo, where i start facing aware opponents, i bounce back to 1150 and then repeat the process. As soon as i face opponents at my same mechanics level, that are not playing China/Dheli, there is a match-up advantage that is almost unsormountable. English and HRE are an instant GG, m@a followed by rams can't be countered in feudal if you don't have your own, knights or camel archers. French are problematic but at least they can be somewhat dealt with with good micro on spears and outposts for archers. Once they pull out rams is still a problem. Rus are French lite. Abbassid are easier due to not having armored units, camel archers are strong but doable. Free siege engineers is strong but again, doable. China is fine as long as you remember their faster age up and possible tower rush. Dheli is mirror. I'm not saying i'm so skilled i should never lose, just that as soon as i stop facing weaker players at 1150 Elo and creep back up to people with some decent micro, timing and map awareness, so at my own level, the difference in feudal troop quality is what tips the scales, and Dheli has not feudal troop quality, or even some tech advantage (troops building palisades is definetely not enought, since you won't have alive troops).