
Originally Posted by
MadDjinn
Actually, I took the info from your and SVPM's posts, which indicated aggression.
Ok, so you turtle and aim for industrial for mass expansion while having legions/religion going. uhm... Time is not on india's side in that case. you have to be in republic for the expansion, or are doing really poor expansion. meaning - either you're defending against the english and not expanding, or are expanding and not getting the fundy bonus.
In H2H, assuming we both horse rush and cap a few AIs, (ignoring tech related AIs for simplicity) England can still pull off knights in ancient. so 'expensive' they are not. My usual timing with them is pre-0 AD having 3-4 vet knight armies in fundy (yes I get the barracks and grab religion as my 5th tech before attacking) and more on the way. I also expand with them. granted, timing is 100% determined by the number of dye around. 1 dye = longer, but still doable. But the above is with no horse rush and no extra caps. if there are extra caps, then expansion is faster meaning the time for the horse rush can be made back.
personally, I take as many tech cities as possible (as the english) and caps are extra. the knights move fast (galleys work well) so if I see plenty of legions (or really high flags) in one area, I can switch to another. After I cross the medieval line, I go full tech as fast as possible to COL, push out a few more settlers while still teching, then straight to Dem (if things calmed down) or to Invention/Steam.
yeah, legions are nice, but they don't always kill knights. knights always kill legions. if you picked up Math for the cats and had a few around, then I'd be more careful.
I'm not saying that england will always win in that situation, but chances of you getting to industrial before the english deliver knights and start taking cities is slim.
I think that the English vs. Indians is a decent match, which highly depends on player skills, who can get AI caps (or more AI caps), artifacts (the great wall exists, so if the english get it, the indians need engineering to do anything to them and if the indians get it, the indians will get expansion running free with a much slower time for the english to start the press).
Though, I would assume that indians being aggressive with cats/legions is more likely to work than hoping for medieval. Even just teching to math and building counter legions/cats, kill knights, go press with what's left - is a more effective plan.