EP9: INDIA

[princeofcarthage]

Give it 185 or 195 then

[sebnan12]

if these changes go through what mu is there left considered a bad one for india? i feel like they will again be good against every civ

[Mitoe]

These changes are pretty small. I don't expect them to be able to break the civ that easily.

[fei123456]

But is India really a bottom civ in EP 8.2? We need enough statistic data to ensure this, instead of just saying "a few top players don't like to use it, so it should be underpowered".

Also notice that with an extra food and wood start, India can always age up 10/10 now. The TC idle time should be less than 30 secs; you age up super fast, but still have decent eco. Rush, colonial timing, and eco semiFF are all easy to handle now. So if you determine to give India 4 wood 2 food start, 190 HP sepoy is not proper here.

200 + (6 + 7 + 8 + 9) * 0.84 * 25 = 830; it means that India can start to build Agra even before the 10th vill pop out (in theory). Ofc you have to open crates, your vills have to walk, but you can gather a few food treasures too.

[aligator92]

- Treasure guardian "Jaguar" hitpoints decreased to 180 (from 190)

poor @dansil92

[Qosashvili93]

6 sepoy is interesting, always wood start and posible 13 sepoy rush is really good buff for india

190 hp sepoy ia really bad, sucks to win games with only one unit which producing is not big deal

Finally indias back in scene, suckss that interesting civ was in shadow such a long time

[Astaroth]

India right now doesn't seem weak. It's just that some of their playstyles have been nerfed, but that applies for any civ. Are we requesting a boost to iro because their OP yolo all-in rush from RE is part of their "identity" yet is basically unviable on EP (=/= age2 play, note)?

I wouldn't change too many things at once.

[Kaiserklein]

It does seem a bit weak.

[Hazza54321]

With the ceasefire nerf and consulate nerfs it has been weakened significantly and ofc the baseline 180 hp sepoy

[Peachrocks]

Personally I think India's age 2 shipments being weak as mentioned earlier is very intentional. In addition to Agra Fort being able to put those shipments (and trained units) directly in the middle of the map right off the bat on hitting age 2, this is something no other civ can do and why a fair amount of their balance revolves around this. You also get a villager with each shipment albeit with an exp penalty and granted it's not as 'immediate return' like the German Uhlan bonus but it still shouldn't be overlooked. I think boosting them in an area that they still have a really big strength in is questionable.

The real question is should Sepoy die in 2 hits to Town Centers or not because this is massively significant and dictates the strength of one strategy. I mean why give them 6 Sepoy to make their early attack more viable when the original nerf seemed intended to make the strategy less viable? It's like taking with one hand then giving with the other. Wouldn't it be better to boost them elsewhere? Or to revert the HP change and increase the cost of the unit accordingly, which also increases the value of Sepoy shipments.

[[Armag] diarouga]

The idea of the sepoy nerf was indeed to nerf the sepoy rush (which was too dominant) as well as the 100% sepoy play style.

[Peachrocks]

The idea of the sepoy nerf was indeed to nerf the sepoy rush (which was too dominant) as well as the 100% sepoy play style.

Okay that's what I thought. I just gather intel based on what other people are saying and try to articulate. Which then raises the question. Why is 6 Sepoy being considered then? Sounds counterproductive to me and sounds like a direction for India's design away from Sepoy rush needs to be looked at.

[[Armag] diarouga]

Because now some people want the sepoy rush to be more viable, without buffing the 100% sepoy playstyle.

[Peachrocks]

Hmmm I guess? I still wonder how much impact it'll have considering they still die in two shots to town centers.

[dansil92]

So does every other musk unit except jans. You want 3 shot sepoy you get brit consulate. Not really fair to be able to boom so freely while idling vills so cost effectively. British cons+ 6 sepoy should be plenty scary now

[[Armag] diarouga]

Hmmm I guess? I still wonder how much impact it'll have considering they still die in two shots to town centers.

12 RE sepoys have 2280 HP, while 13 EP sepoys have 2340. Of course, it's harder to play against RE sepoys because you need to micro your TC fire to avoid overkill, but if you can do that then the 13 EP sepoy rush is actually better than the 12 RE sepoy rush.

And I think that the consulate rush is currently viable, and it will be stronger with the 6 sepoy rush.

[Peachrocks]

Hmmm I guess? I still wonder how much impact it'll have considering they still die in two shots to town centers.

12 RE sepoys have 2280 HP, while 13 EP sepoys have 2340. Of course, it's harder to play against RE sepoys because you need to micro your TC fire to avoid overkill, but if you can do that then the 13 EP sepoy rush is actually better than the 12 RE sepoy rush.

And I think that the consulate rush is currently viable, and it will be stronger with the 6 sepoy rush.

So does every other musk unit except jans. You want 3 shot sepoy you get brit consulate. Not really fair to be able to boom so freely while idling vills so cost effectively. British cons+ 6 sepoy should be plenty scary now

Okay. Fair enough. I mean frankly, speaking personally I'm not into these sort of strats, just trying to understand the goal. While it is true that other Muskets die in two shots too other Muskets don't cost 120 resources, well aside Japan.

[Garja]

imo 6 sepoy is too much, it should remain the same as 5jans, 5ashi, 5 yumi

[Astaroth]

So does every other musk unit except jans. You want 3 shot sepoy you get brit consulate. Not really fair to be able to boom so freely while idling vills so cost effectively. British cons+ 6 sepoy should be plenty scary now

Agreed. Sepoys are still basically the best musks w/o ups.

[Mitoe]

Thanks guys. Seems most people are understandably apprehensive about the 6 sepoy card. We'll keep a close eye on it during the beta and consider something else if it turns out to be too strong.

[chronique]

How good sepoy are vs mousket? Sepoy are suppose to be an emblematic india unit, and, its weird because i played and be atomised a lot by sepoy rush in my carrier, but i miss the sepoy meta, and not the rush but the follow (with urumi and stuff). Ceasfire nerf is not enough to deal with broken pure sepoy urumi compo? (if we revert the sepoy hp)

[[Armag] diarouga]

How good sepoy are vs mousket? Sepoy are suppose to be an emblematic india unit, and, its weird because i played and be atomised a lot by sepoy rush in my carrier, but i miss the sepoy meta, and not the rush but the follow (with urumi and stuff). Ceasfire nerf is not enough to deal with broken pure sepoy urumi compo? (if we revert the sepoy hp)

Nah, cease fire wasn't the only issue. For instance, you could go 100% sepoy against brit, and there was nothing brit could do. Also the rush was way too strong (I know that you used to complain a lot about it, and believe it or not, but Spain is actually a good civ against the sepoy rush), we don't want it back to the RE state.

[chronique]

Yea but now when i play against india, i play against gurka/zam always. And yes i think spain win against india now.

[RefluxSemantic]

The idea of the sepoy nerf was indeed to nerf the sepoy rush (which was too dominant) as well as the 100% sepoy play style.

I don't think this is true. I think this is a revisionist take on what happened. I've been reading through the forums and I don't think anyone thought at the time that the slow sepoy rush was OP. Many posts that support this case but I think this specific quote confirms that the sepoy was not nerfed because of the sepoy rush:

Yeah we think the unit is the problem, not specifically the strategy. Anyway how's the cons rush not worse?
Maybe it'll involve more than just sepoy/redcoat now.

Some other good quotes that highlight some of this discussion (this was the part that triggered the quote above):

So let me get this straight:

To support a justification for the change:

It's the only thing we saw them do in tournaments.

Which was quickly amended to:

We saw them do it too much* in tournaments

After which I checked all India games used in quarter finals and up from the last 2 esoc events which included 9 games (all strategies listed specifically in previous posts) and none of them had this issue, the defense is:

Only ones I remember are the one in the finals and one where I got sepoy rushed myself. That's the only 2 times I saw India in the tournament, then again I definitely didn't watch all games. I have heard from multiple sources that sepoy play is too common in high level India games, though. And to be fair the BSOP/Raph game clearly shows there's a problem on its own.

A consulate rush which is the one aggressive option that is least hit by your specific targeted change. Not to mention I posed the question a few posts ago "are you sure it's not the consulate rush that is actually the issue?"

And the other game was ... when someone sepoy rushed you?

Ok.

At this point regardless of whether the change is even a good one or not the methodology here is seriously sketchy.

And then you have this post:

We are nerfing the unit for 2 reasons. First, it's too strong, and second, we want to make sure that styles other than rush are actually viable. Currently, as mentioned, they just don't seem to cut it in the vast majority of match ups. So we are buffing all India styles.

When you make a couple of assertions it's nice to have some things that you can point to that support those right?

For instance, to deviate a little here, consider Brits. It's very easy for me to look at the data we have from the highest level of games played and make an argument that they are too strong.

So for example I can point to h20's analytics on the recent tournaments:



He concludes a civ that has a high mirror rate shows few options against them, hence they're strength.

We can have a look at how often is a civ used in tournaments to give as an indicator:



Well they've been used the most in not just the last tournament but the one before that as-well and have even increased their share.

I can point to the community balance poll that was held after the last tournament that you posted: http://eso-community.net/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=11390 that shows Brits as a top 3 civ.

Now I look at the patch notes and Brit's are not mentioned whatsoever which is interesting considering there's things that you can point to.

But ok that's not what's being discussed here so let's look at what you've said about India.

We want to make sure that styles other than rush are actually viable

I already checked the last esoc tournament and the TWC from the Quarters and up to see what is actually viable at the highest level of play. To add to that I had a look just now at the 2nd last esoc tournament as-well but they only listed the MU's in the videos for only the semis and finals but to summarize India was used 12 times and the strategies were:

3 British Consulate rushes
4 Defensive Gurhkas into stables
1 Karni Stable start
1 GFA 600/600
1 Nookta rush
1 Howdah FF
1 12 Sepoy semi FF

So only 3 games out of 12 were rushes and they were all consulate rushes, which as I've already said is the one rush strategy your change impacts the least (though yes it does impact it a little.) So when you say this change is to make sure other styles are actually viable I have to ask, what are you talking about?

If anything, no other civ has had such a diverse use of strategies.

I don't think we saw a lot of India in recent events anyway, which is partly why we want to change them.

This is demonstrably false. There's no need to guess, look at h20's analytics. Over the past two tournaments India has averaged a 9% play rate (8% in one, 10% in the other) which is just above the average. Yet you give the reason that you don't think we saw them a lot as a reason to change them.

India could not be in a better spot with respect to this. Again what are you talking about?

I get the impression that the people making the changes are more comfortable making changes to strategies they don't use, which is only natural psychology I guess, and not making changes to strategies they do use. I don't mean to attack you too hard since I'm sure I'd unconsciously be doing something similar I guess, at least it's how it appears to me. Even seeing both Garja/Noel mention they think it's funny people are talking about a unit they use. Yea obviously the people that are the ones using the unit are going to wonder what's up.

Also last aside to raphael, you know damn well your strategy isn't a rush, it's a Karni eco slow roll that starts getting abusive about the time the Brit consulate arrives. Which is once again a strategy this change is not specifically targeting.

Wicked went through all the games, and the slow sepoy rush wasn't used much at all (the real strong rush was the consulate rush, which wasn't really affected that much by the change). In the end I think Goodspeed objectively got destroyed in this discussion (objectively given that other posts got tons of likes and basically nobody stepped in to defend him). He based his changes on the opinions of top players, but no top players ever stepped in to defend his point of view.

So let's look at the evidence we have:
- Goodspeed himself admitted that the sepoy rush was not OP
- Wicked_cossack demonstrates clearly that the India meta at the time did not even feature slow sepoy rush
- In this discussion, no other top player stepped in to claim that the sepoy rush was too strong
- In the cases where goodspeed backtracked to argue that sepoys made india's strategies too strong, it was shown that those statements were ridiculous. Goodspeed got no likes on his posts. Wicked_cossack farmed likes.

In this thread, Wicked_Cossack, Prince and Somppu directly disagreed with the notion that sepoy rush was a problem. Hazza liked many of these posts. H2O and Mitoe were claimed to not have considered sepoy rush to be too strong. No top players actually claimed sepoy rush was a problem.

After having read this entire topic (read it yourself: viewtopic.php?f=80&t=12442 ) I think I can confidently conclude that at the time people did not consider the slow sepoy rush to be overpowered. Sepoys were nerfed because they might have been too strong overall (and because honestly goodspeed was extremely biased in this specific instance, as is showcased by wicked_cossack in multiple posts in this thread), not because the sepoy rush was considered too strong by anyone (at least there is no evidence of anyone saying that). The strategies used in tournaments at the time prove this. The pick rate of india (and the mirror rate) show that there wasn't even a balance problem with india.

The polls at the time also indicate that nobody thought india was too strong. To be fair, I couldn't find the exact poll but the fourth poll is from november 2017, which is after sepoys were nerfed and the house was buffed. The results from the poll before that are contained in this google doc, and there India was ranked 8th (although it's hard to tell exactly when this poll was done, goodspeed's archiving is rather messy). No poll results before the house/sepoy changes show india to be a top civ.

After my extensive research I am forced to conclude that the sepoy rush was not considered OP. There is zero evidence of top players considering the sepoy rush OP.

[Mitoe]

Yeah sepoy rush was never OP. It is currently not even viable on EP, hence the shipment change :)