New Civ Concept: the Chola

Hey everyone, Anatarion here for AOE2 Civ Concepts LLC and today u/ChuKoNoob and I are back with a new civ idea: the Chola. We hope that we have continued to improve our clarity of formatting, civ synergy, rationale and of course our ideas; and that this idea promotes healthy discussion of the current game balance.

Chola (elephant and naval civ, specialises in hybrid land-water maps)

Located on the southern tip of the Indian subcontinent, the Chola empire dominated the Indian ocean and beyond for hundreds of years. Use your navy to conquer new lands and discover new trading routes to bring vast wealth back to your empire. If an enemy is foolish enough to attack you on land, repel them with your high grade steel and battle elephants!

Spoken Language: Tamil

Architecture/Ship design: Indian

Civ Bonuses:

• Infantry +1 armour from feudal age

• Guilds free

• Battle elephant blast radius +0.2

• Careening and dry-dock are free

Unique Unit (Ship):

Katarkollai, created at the dock in the castle age

Cost: 25W + 25G

Combat stats: 60 hp (120 elite), 5 attack (6 elite) 0/4 armor (0/6 elite), 3 RoF, 100% accuracy

Attack bonuses: +4 vs ships (+5 elite), +6 (+8 elite) vs buildings

Hidden Armor: none

Classification: ship, unique unit

Other stats: Creates in 12 seconds (before Shipwright and Conscription), speed: 1.5

Team bonus: Rams and siege towers garrison twice as many units (max speed still the same)

Missing techs

• Barracks: Eagle scout

• Range: Thumb ring, Parthian tactics

• Stable: Paladin, Camel

• Blacksmith: Plate barding armour, Ring archer armour

• Siege: Siege onager, Heavy scorpion, Bombard cannon

• Monastery: Faith, heresy, block printing, redemption

• Economy: Crop rotation

• University: Treadmill crane

• Dock: None

• Castle: None

Unique techs:

Castle age: Pyromaniacs - Demolition ships +0.5 blast radius

250 gold + 200 food

Imperial age: Wootz steel - Militia line +20 hp

500 gold + 700 food

Unique unit:

Bombard elephant, heavy mounted siege weapon

Costs: 200 food + 250 gold, Elite - 700 food + 600 gold

Combat stats: 200(300) hp, 30(40) melee, 9(10) range, 1/3 armour, 6.5 rof, 100% accuracy

Attack bonuses: +150 vs buildings, +30 vs ships, +30 vs stone defence, +15 vs siege weapons

Hidden armour: none

Classification: cavalry, war elephant, siege weapon, unique unit, gunpowder unit

Other statistics: 0.8 movement speed, creates in 40(30) seconds, affected by cavalry blacksmith and stable techs and siege engineers

Wonder: Brihadishvara Temple, considered the best example of Chola architecture, More info/image

Synergy/civ design rationale:

With this civ we tried to draw heavily from the history of the Chola empire to inform the civ bonuses and strengths. Guilds played an important part in the working class/merchants of the Chola empire, and that tech is free to reflect that. As the dominant medieval south-east asian naval power, the Chola have a wide open tech tree and 2 free techs. To reflect their diverse Link navy, there are two unique aspects to their navy: greater blast radius to their demo ships, and the cheap raiding ship the Katarkollai.

For their elephants they gain +0.2 (0.6) blast radius, which for comparison is slightly greater than prior to patch 5.7 (0.5) and 50% more than for other civs (0.4). To compensate, they lack the final armour upgrade, but should still do okay against range units with 320 hp and 3+2 pierce armour.

The forging of high quality steel was also a strength of the Chola empire, named Wootz steel, the Imperial age UT grants an additional 20 hp to the militia line, which works nicely with their additional +1 melee armour from the feudal age to really beef up their infantry. Now this does over-lap with the Viking bonus, but does not apply to the spear line; and a viking player is more likely to use Zerks over Champions, so we feel the over-lap is not necessarily a bad thing, especially as the additional hp is only available in the Imperial age.

Finally, their team bonus allows for easier garrisoning of units into rams and siege towers. This might seem like a useless bonus, but it sharpens the focus of this civ: hybrid land/water maps, helping to transport vulnerable land units around naval armies.

As their unique unit, to strengthen their mediocre siege line, and because deep down we all want this unit: the bombard elephant! This unit combines the hp/armour of battle elephants with the long range destructive capabilities of the bombard cannon, but for a heafty price. It cannot out-range FU castles in either the castle or imperial age, but with a large hp pool is certainly a viable option to exert pressure of such fortifications, especially if healed by some monks. In terms of pure destructive potential, bombard cannons are superior to this UU, which has about 3/4 of the damage output and attack bonuses and less range, but are not available to the Chola.

Previous Civ Concepts:

Kanembu

Thai

Mississippians

Nepalese

Bantu

Nubians

Helvetians

Georgians

Dutch

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