posted 11-06-09 04:39 PM EDT (US)
Well let's get down to business. India is a cool and unique civ, and even if they're downright OP on RE, they're still fun to play. In fact I don't have any problems laming India hardcore on RE, if people want to play a balanced game:
Keep your damn flames and tears for yourself, since India isn't OP on the FP. Note that I'm kind of writing this strat so more people will lame India and make RE lame and get more people on the FP. ^^"
The strat I'm going to teach here is a pretty good strat imo. Though let me warn you, my India experience is pretty limited, so this may or may not be the best strat they have, I have more strats and tricks to pull out of this fun & unique civ. So forget Agra, forget 12 Sepoys in your opponent's base before 5 minutes, forget the greedy map control you had (I'm saying this because i got beat by a total nub with agra
), I've got better stuff.Aging with India is a strange thing by itself. If you're going to do a 10/10 it's not hard, it can be a little trickier to macro if you're doing a "better" age up. You have 6 starting vills, so 2 go straight to the wood, 3 gather wood crates (yes Indian Villehs cost wood), and 1 dude goes to the first hunt. Something that I noticed with India is that they don't need a lot of food or coin... I'll get back to that later.
Anyway, you put the 3 crate vills on wood once they've gathered all the wood/food crates, and your TC way point is the hunts. The first vill you make however goes to wood, or you won't get constant vill production. Then again the game I just played, I put only 5 vills on wood (it worked fine). It's up to you. Make one house. So with 6 vills on wood, rest on food, 1 house, you continue gathering food till you can age. If you're doing 6 vills on wood and you get a wood treasure, you can take one off wood and put him on food, you'll age faster. Note, there isn't really an "amount of vills" you age with, you just age when you have the food available.
You'll get a shipment here, your first shipment
You'll notice the strange title. Yea, fruit Agra!! You're aging with the Tower. It's a very good wonder. You'll use the 400w it gives, and the inspiration being used in the middle of a key fight in the game... is cool.
Anyway since you're not 10/10, you're going to age a lot later than if you did 10/10, so put 4 vills on the wonder. I'm still wondering if I should put less, feel free to experiment with what you feel is cool. After that I put a handful of food vills on wood, something like... 9? Yea 9 vills on wood should be nice. This will let you get some nice vill production and a house. All vills go to food. Maybe some on coin if you don't have a lot of coin from treasures. You should age at around 4.40, which is "late" but still pretty reasonable.
Ok so now you've aged. During your age up you should have..idk. A number of vills, probably around 19. I put 8 vills on wood, 4 vills on coin, and the rest on food. Use the 4
Note: you can put less than 8 vills on wood if you have the trickle card, I forgot that I don't have that card yet, so you should be able to put more vills on other resources besides wood.
When your shipment comes, send 600w. Gather that and then make a Carv...thingy (stables for camels), a consulate, and some houses. Oh and one market, and get the upgrades. Asian upgrades aren't expensive and aren't hard to get, I also think that you should research the 4th tech (more expensive, but boost all gathering for all resources) in priority to the others, so as to boost your wood gathering.
You should be making Sepoys, you can halt the production a bit and make Sowar instead as of now, from your stable. With your consulate, I recommend you ally with the Brits. Their consulate musks go quite well with your Sepoys later (they won't be avaible immediately), and the early 10% HP boost is pretty good. If you can I guess you can try to queue some Sepoy with your Sowar, as your eco will be better than the one I'm using atm. Watch housing.
Your third shipment... ahh what a choice. India has a trump load of great colonial cards. Here is a screen of the deck I'm using:
At this point I would go either 5 sepoy or 4 Sowar. Depends on what your opponent has (SCOUT!). If he has an HI or Cav heavy army, go for Sepoy, if you see lot of RI, definitely Sowar. Balance your army as you see fit. 4 sowar have the bonus of being able to raid well, so don't hesitate if he has some crappy hunts or hasn't herded well. I wouldn't recommend the Camel Cards (attack and upgrade) just yet. Maybe you could send the wood trickle, I don't have it yet, so idk.
At this point in the game, go out and try to do some damage. If you're unsure how to approach, go raid and try to get a look at what he has and what his combo is. Be aggressive but be careful. It might even be best to delay a full out fight until after you get the Camel Cards or the consulate Musks. But if you have the possibility, ofc you push.
Another very effective thing you can do is use your monks in combat. Preferably you put them in a 4th control group and have them attack RI. They will soak up a lot of damage, damage RI (not a lot though, but anything goes), and they might even trample. Your enemies units not fighting for even a second is great for you, and it can give you a slight edge. Use the monks! They're also good for preventing armies from retreating. And hey, if they die, it's no problem.
Try to send the Camel Cards asap, they are
I also want to make sure that people who read this guide understand I have still a lot to learn with this civ, so make sure you play around with vill allocation and your macro to what you're good with, there may be some errors.
There might also be better strats out there, but hey! Have a good time laming, I'm quite open to suggestions and other things to try (being in the experimental stage with India). Good luck, have fun, hope you enjoyed reading this.
Here are links to two recorded games using this strat. More to come if I get any recs.
TITD vs Otto:
TITD vs Indian Mirror:
[This message has been edited by A414A_Incog (edited 11-08-2009 @ 04:19 PM).]
