How do the Kushites compare to the other civs?

[tigerionblack]

The Kushites are my favorite civ in 0 AD. I like their diverse unit choices: champion macemen, champion swordsmen, champion archers, elephants, and mercenaries. I have only played in singleplayer (against 1 medium and 1 hard AI together), and I can win most of my matches now. What do you guys think of the Kushites, especially when compared against other civs? I got the impression that they're not very popular based on Youtube videos. The only other civ I play is the Romans, which seem to have a much safer early game (Kushite archers don't do a lot of damage). Also, is it just me or are elephants not very good? They are very slow and if a battle goes wrong you typically lose most of them during the retreat. To heal them back up you can't just garrison them in a temple (like with other champion melee and cavalry), so you'd need to spend a lot of resources on healers as well.

Edited yesterday at 02:09 by tigerionblack

[Determina]

Popular opinion: Ptolemies is the best civ for booming(getting a lot of resources and units) because of the team bonus for +1 food per second.
Another opinion: I think Kushites is the best civ for booming because of the pyramid aura boosting 15% gather rate. I can get even more food per second with a pyramid compared to the +1 food per second of Ptolemies, lets see how: If we put a pyramid adjacent to the civic centre and put farms around the civic centre close to the pyramid, we can get the pyramid aura boost of 15% gather rate on minimum 20 farmers. I assume 1 farmer gathers 4 food every 10 seconds without the pyramid boost. So 1 farmer gathers 0.4 food per second. 20 farmers gather 8 food per second. 15% of 8 is 1.2 so we get +1.2 food per second with the pyramid boost which is better than the team bonus of +1 food per second of Ptolemies.
Keep in mind I took conservative values, the food per second could reach upto 3 if we use the pyramid aura on 50 farmers. Bonus: if you keep the pyramid near the stone and metal mine near civ center you can boost that as well. + you can keep 1 pyramid on ur woodline. A problem is that kushites is an archer civ, so you will have to snipe to survive an endgame fight with javs or slingers. Sniping means selecting your archers to attack the enemy's ranged units instead of the default attacking the closer melee soldiers.

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are elephants not very good? They are very slow and if a battle goes wrong you typically lose most of them during the retreat. To heal them back up you can't just garrison them in a temple (like with other champion melee and cavalry), so you'd need to spend a lot of resources on healers as well.

Elephants have better stats than melee soldiers (except speed) + they can break buildings faster so they're better. What you said is right, that's a risk if you're willing to take it, you can use the temple healing aura to heal elephants. You can garrison elephants in elephant stables. Elephants will die so you will have to replace them.
edit: If you're the moral type of player who wants to save all your units: We should be thankful we don't brutalize and torture elephants for war anymore, unfortunately its still done in most tourist spaces but on a lesser scale at least. Also any war back in ancient history would result in a lot of deaths, thats why people say war is bad. You can't escape from that in 0ad, in multiplayer people don't use healers and only focus on units who can do damage or eco cause thats what helps them win. Unless you maybe get like 8 healers to heal 1 elephant hero and make it invincible but non ai people would start killing the healers and then the hero

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I got the impression that they're not very popular based on Youtube videos.

Yeah they weren't popular but Valhirant just made a video using kushites yesterday, I've also seen a lot more people play kushites in the multiplayer lobby recently.

Edited 20 hours ago by Determina
added more info

[Seleucids]

In theory, Kushites are one of the most OP civs:

Early game: Free healer for exploration and healing your cavs / archers after rushing

Booming and eco: The size of storehouse is very small, so that they can be squeezed into clearings inside forests for ultra efficient woodlines. The pyramid might help as well but it's a bit expensive. However, archers walk slowly and have low angular frequency, which does slow down resource gathering. In phase 2 you can make mercenary skirmisher inf, which is useful. Booming with cav is also an option. 

Early pushing: you will rely on archers and a mix of melee infantry. They are a bit weak unless you have significant numbers of cav and skirmisher infantry (40+ jav units in total). However, the pikeman wall + archer sniping is op if you can micro well. You can also do Blemmye merc raiders. 

Late game: elephants + pikes at the front. Champion archers + jav cav at the back. Sniping with champion archers is OP. If you are dishonourable, you can spam champion cavs with Nastasen hero. The only imperfection is that champion swordsman can only be trained from temples - you can't spam them. 

 

However, in practice:

Every time I play Kushites, something goes wrong. Either I get rushed hard or my teammates fail or somebody disconnects. I've had very few successful games with them, but when they are not cursed, they outshine every other civ: https://youtu.be/FpMxIPT42Qw

 

[Determina]

1 Pyramid costs 100 stone and metal. 1 well placed pyramid can boost metal & stone workers and 20-40 farmers as shown in the picture below. This boost of metal and stone gathering repays the cost of building the initial pyramid and more

 

 

[Deicide4u]

40 minutes ago, Determina said:

1 well placed pyramid

Yeah, just move the stone miners a bit closer to the pyramid.

I like the sound they make when you select them. Eerie.

EDIT: On-topic, they are a bit too complex for me. I like to play more standard civs, like Romans and Spartans.

Edited 9 hours ago by Deicide4u

[Determina]

1 hour ago, Deicide4u said:

Yeah, just move the stone miners a bit closer to the pyramid.

I like the sound they make when you select them. Eerie.

EDIT: On-topic, they are a bit too complex for me. I like to play more standard civs, like Romans and Spartans.

Yeah stone miners need to be moved. Why are kushites complex

[Deicide4u]

13 minutes ago, Determina said:

Why are kushites complex

Well, you need to plan the pyramid placement. Mercenaries mace men replace much of siege, cost metal, are fragile and useless against anything else but buildings. They start out weak in the village phase, with only spearmen and archers. One building trains only mercenary cavalry, pretty useless. Good champions are trained at the temple.

Pretty complex unit roster is what I'm getting at.

[Determina]

8 minutes ago, Deicide4u said:

Well, you need to plan the pyramid placement. Mercenaries mace men replace much of siege, cost metal, are fragile and useless against anything else but buildings. They start out weak in the village phase, with only spearmen and archers. One building trains only mercenary cavalry, pretty useless. Good champions are trained at the temple.

Pretty complex unit roster is what I'm getting at.

Only 1 pyramid needs to be placed when you get farms, the pyramid near the civ. We can keep another pyramid near the wood line as well.
I think you can play the standard way you play with any civ (like romans and spartans) with kushites as well. Kushites get the ability to train swordsmen in barracks in p2, so swordsmen + spearmen + archers will be a good army with sniping.
You can still use siege rams or elephants instead of mace men. Yeah archers do less dps but their strength is range, which is good for sniping and harassing economy, the only way to counter jav cav rush though is to make jav cav ourself. I agree merc cav building is useless and making merc buildings take a lot of time.