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Today we are continuing to reveal various Indian units and buildings as they roll off the conveyor belt.
So far, we have mostly revealed Age 1 and Age 2 military units and buildings. Today, we are jumping around the Tech Tree a bit. Even though it’s a little disorganized, this since we don’t create things in a particular order, this format allows us to keep our blogs on a regular schedule.

Market and Caravan
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Max began working on the Market way back in March right after the Romans were released. It’s worth noting that he took a fair amount of time with the various goods available on its tables. A close inspection will reveal that the Indian market is vegetarian, which doesn’t impact the building in any way other than its visuals, which is a nice touch. You may recall that the Indians can hunt, but they cannot harvest meat from herdables like cows and sheep.

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We fussed a bit with the animal for the Caravan and ultimately decided to use a Water Buffalo, which should be a nice detail unique for the Indians. Since water buffalo often host bird companions on their backs, we made sure to ours did the same, though she is perched on top of the bundle. It is worth noting that in designing this unit, we noted that other than the Norse caravan (a bear), every other caravan uses a lure dangling in front of the animal. To keep things tidier, we opted to have the Indians join the Norse in this detail. Finally, for fun we want to reveal an early version of the Norse caravan that featured a walrus.

Palintonon
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In designing the Indians, siege units were a complicated topic. The histories vary pretty significantly regarding to what extent they used siege weapons. On one hand, many historians maintain that India was the birthplace of catapults (or, depending on your interpretation, some other kind of stone throwing weapon) and all sorts of other complex war machines. On the other hand, some sources maintain that the Indians used absolutely no siege weapons -- not even have battering rams -- opting instead to use elephants to knock down walls. Meanwhile, modern Indian portrayals of their own history (such as in Bollywood) often portray some absolutely wild siege units, some very similar to Palintonons.

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Our job is, of course, to piece together a coherent roster of units that expresses the essence of the Indians while also creating gameplay that is compatible with the rest of the game. Along these lines, you likely have noticed that every civ has had an Age 4 ranged anti-building siege unit that needs to be set up and taken down (or packed/unpacked), usually a Palintonon but possibly a Stone Thrower (Celts) or Log Thrower (Norse)

We chose to simply give the Indians a Palintonon. We certainly could have justified going in some other direction, though we are going to have plenty of elephants and prefer to give some nod to proper Indian mechanical siege, which is a perfectly reasonable blend of gameplay and history. Log-throwing elephants feels a bit too rustic for our taste and some other kind of contraption like a catapult would be difficult to reconcile with the Egyptian catapult, which is much lower range, deals damage in wide area, and doesn’t need to be set up and taken down.

If you look at the existing civilizations' tech trees carefully, you will notice that Palintonons usually appear on the Utility tab of the tech tree, where they are trained in the Fortress, which is also in the Utility tab. However, the Egyptians have their Palintonon in the Military tab of their tech tree, trained in the Siege Workshop. The Celts and Norse, on the other hand, train their unpacking Age 4 siege unit (Stone/Log Throwers) from their Fortress which is in the Military tab, but they also train their Ram and Farbjodr units from there.

The Indians will train both their Palintonons and Ram units from their Fortress. This makes them fairly unique in their own right, being the only civilization that trains both a Palintonon and a Ram unit from their fortress.

However, for those elephant lovers out there, please take a close look at the Rare, Epic and Legendary versions of the Indian Palintonon. Eamon incorporated a number of Indian details, including the lotus flower. This unit is beautiful.

Guard Tower and Wall
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We started on both of these buildings way back in March, as well. We went through a number of iterations of both of them while we were working out the general architectural scheme of the Indians. From a gameplay perspective, the Indians will not be particularly defensive, since they will have a very strong in-base resource generation (with Plantations, for example) and presently we expect their Guard Towers to have the same upgrades as the Celts and the Persians, which is the Fortified Tower upgrade in Age 3, and their walls to have both the Stone Wall and the Reinforced Wall upgrades, in Age 3 and Age 4, much like the Greeks, the Persians, the Romans and the Norse.

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All other civs have a model for their Guard Tower in Age 4. We will still make those versions for the Indians, but you will likely need to wait to see them when you battle the Indians in PvE quests.
It’s always a little sad not to use the Age 4 models, especially given how amazing they look. However, it is very important that the Indians feel balanced and unique (and, again, don’t feel much like the Egyptians, who are a powerful late game defender).

Capital City Decorations
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To wrap up this blog, we would like to show you a few of the Indian Capital City Decoration assets that are already made and polished.

As you might recall, every civilization other than the original two (Greeks and Egyptians) have the following Capital City Decoration items in Vanity Island: Pillar, Large Bush Tub, Small Bush Tub, Fountain, and a Statue.

Most of these items have already been made for the Indians, as you can see in the picture above.

Thanks for reading, and we look forward to revealing more of the Indians again in the upcoming blogs. Please let us know your thoughts and questions below!

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Project Celeste Development Team

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