India Sepoy -> Urumi Elephants as China (or any other civ)

[Inst]

Curious, what is the standard counter to India going Sepoys, then switching to Urumi Elephants? It seems extremely difficult to beat this combo, especially as China, since I don't have access to dedicated dragoon spam. Do I need to throw Manchus out to counter it?

[tedere12]

Z move your cav on urumi and focus howdahs with arquabushiers. If it doesn't work, oos

[Kaiserklein]

Curious, what is the standard counter to India going Sepoys, then switching to Urumi Elephants? It seems extremely difficult to beat this combo, especially as China, since I don't have access to dedicated dragoon spam. Do I need to throw Manchus out to counter it?

If they go sepoy in colonial, it means they will get to fortress pretty late. So as China, you can probably just push india before they get enough mass out. Just don't stay under tc because of a potential urumi pop.
If he's aggressive in colonial, ship 8 chu ko nus while aging and hold, you will need to micro well. And you need to take a TP in age 1 if you want to be able to ship those chu ko nus.

[Mitoe]

There's not really any "standard counter." As Kaiser pointed out, if they're starting sepoy in age 2 they should reach Fortress significantly later than you, and you should have some time to punish this, by pushing their forward base (they most likely went Agra if they started sepoy?) before they age and then teching up or aging to Industrial.

If they don't rush you and they're just aging for Sepoy/Urumi and then adding elephants... you should be just fine doing relatively standard stuff. Musketeer type units are not very effective vs China in my experience, as Meteor Hammers have a bit of range on their melee attack. Urumi and Mahouts shouldn't be very effective vs the standard Chinese unit composition, either. Howdah can be a bit of a problem, as they'll hard counter the typical Chinese cav/sword/musk mass, but are still easily counterable if scouted early enough; simply change your composition to mostly skirm/sword and maybe even go age 4 and you should be just fine.

Repelling volley is pretty good vs Sepoy and Howdah as well. Once you send this card sepoy will just melt to your skirms. Card also works on Chu Ko Nu.

I would also include 13 Chu Ko Nu in your deck if you don't have it already. Veteran CKN only costs 100w and 50c, and they can help you adapt your composition to sepoy heavy unit compositions.