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Hello there Celeste players! After many long months of development fraught with delays (both foreseen and unforeseen), we are pleased to be closer than ever to finally throwing open the gates of Pataliputra and welcoming you all to the Indians. It's been a while since we've had an Indians developer blog, but we are back now with one of the most packed blogs yet!

Though we have shown you every Indian Building, we have held back three of our favorite Indian units until we got closer to the finish line. We are very excited to finally reveal them today.

See below for more details:

Fire Monkey and Club Monkey
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First, we return to the Shrine, which is one of the most important Buildings in our design of the Indians

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As we revealed many months ago, one unique aspect of the Indians will be their inability to kill and gather from Herdable animals (Cows, Sheep, etc.) Instead, players will task Herdables to the Shrine, where they will generate a resource, which is going to be either Gold or Wood, subject to playtesting and evaluation.

To summarize, here are the differences between the Indians and other civilizations when it comes to Herdables, and how the Indian Shrine affects them:

• The Indians cannot kill or gather from Herdables
• They can convert Herdables and move them around, just like other civilizations.
• As soon as a Herdable is under the control of the Indians, it will immediately start generating Gold (or Wood, TBD) very slowly on its own.
• If this Herdable is tasked to the Shrine (right-click on the Shrine, just like how you would task a Villager to gather from a tree, for example.) it will generate Gold at a faster rate.
• The Shrine has a build limit and a gatherer limit, meaning that you can only build a certain number of them, and you can only task a certain number of Herdables to it.
  • You can use any Herdables you may find on the map, but you can also train Sacred Cows from the Shrine itself.
  • Sacred Cows generate Gold (or Wood) at a slightly faster rate compared to all other Herdable animals.
• Huntable animals are excluded from these rules, meaning that Indian Villagers and Gatherer Elephants can hunt and gather from them just like any other civilization.

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The Shrine will generate this resource very slowly on its own over time, but it really starts to shine when Herdables are tasked to it.

Though we have revealed the existence and general design of the monkeys long ago, today we want to update you on their details and finally provide you with their visuals.

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We have not yet finalized every detail about the monkeys, but we intend for the monkeys to have low build limits that increase with later age Techs. The Club Monkey will have a bonus vs. Villagers (and wield a Heavy Club) and the Fire Monkey will have a bonus vs. Buildings (and be equipped with a Fire Pot).

It is important to note that much like other trainable animals in Age of Empires Online, the Indian Fire and Club Monkeys are only intended to play a supporting role in the Indian army, and will not be able to engage larger armies all on their own.

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The Monkeys are going to have the ability to heal other Monkeys, (both Fire Monkeys and Club Monkeys can heal each other, as in, Fire Monkeys can also heal Club Monkeys and vice versa.) but not other units. They will still be able to be healed from any other healing source that can heal regular units, too.

We intentionally gave the Indians far and away the most animal-based units in the game. Historically, the Indian people have shared very close relationships to animals and have incorporated them into all aspects of their lives.

This concept comes through to AoEO through the Gatherer Elephant (which is essentially a specialized Villager), the Sacred Cow (a unit grounded in religion with Resource gameplay mechanics), and now the Fire Monkey and Club Monkey (both of whom are military units, and again obviously grounded in religion).

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The Club Monkey will provide an additional outlet for the Club, which is a brand new gear class coming with the Indians (for players, that is. The AI already utilizes this gear class in limited capacity - e.g. Greek Clubmen) Meanwhile, the Fire Monkey is grounded in history. The Arthashastra, a 600 page treatise on military strategy and statecraft dating as far back as the Mauryan Empire provides details of how the Indians equipped monkeys with burning embers to start fires atop enemy buildings.​

Juggernaut
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We now turn to our final Indian Unit, which serves as the absolute apex of the Indian Tech Tree. Rightfully so, this brings us back to the largest and best known gameplay feature of the Indians, their elephants and the Mahout Camp.

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The Mahout Camp becomes available in Age 3 and immediately trains two elephant units, the War Elephant and the Elephant Archer. Players will, of course, already be somewhat familiar with them as similar versions have been with the us since the Egyptians and the original launch of AoEO.

However, setting the Indians apart will be the Mahout Camp’s third unit, which is available in Age 4 and completely changes the game whenever it thunders onto the field, the Juggernaut.

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A fearsome, heavily armored mounted warrior, the Juggernaut lays waste to all Buildings with ease, while resisting enemy Pierce and Melee-Infantry damages. Expensive and powerful and possessing one of the largest area-of-effect attacks in the game, the Juggernaut will be one of the toughest units to ever step into the battlefield in Age of Empires Online. However, it is not completely invincible and can still be dealt with using the correct answers;

While it has extremely high Pierce, Melee-Infantry and Crush Armor, it lacks any Melee-Cavalry Armor, and is slower than other elephant units, meaning that units such as Horsemen or Prodromos will be able to deal with them very well. Additionally, the Juggernaut has a small negative Conversion Resistance, meaning that it can be converted faster than most other units (though this is subject to change and depends heavily on the feedback we get during our playtesting later.)

And it being one of the most expensive units in the game (both resource and population-wise) means that losing even a single Juggernaut will be a heavy loss for the Indians. However the Indians do have access to the Guru, which is (in Age IV) the best single-target healer in the game, synergizing very well with high-health units such as the Juggernaut.

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A word on the name: Some of you will recall that this is not the first time there was a unit called the Juggernaut in Age of Empires. Both the original Age of Empires and Age of Mythology assign this name to a large anti-Building ship, mostly for Greek and other Mediterranean-based civs.

However, the word “Juggernaut” has little to do with any of those civs. Rather, the English word “Juggernaut”, which means something giant and powerful, is taken from a Sanskrit and Hindi word “Jagannatha” and imbues “a steamroller or battering ram" to mean "something overwhelming.”

As we’ve said many times before, we consider the use of language in Age of Empires Online civ design is an extremely powerful, if subtle, tool to provide civ-specific flavor and immersion. Accordingly, we quickly connected the dots and are proud to finally introduce you all to the Juggernaut.

Elephant Units Lineup
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Now that we have finally revealed every elephant unit available to the Indians, let's have a look at the gear progression for all of them together in one place, as well as a small comparison lineup with how they compare to Egyptian elephant units:

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As you can see, the Indian Gatherer Elephant is the smallest of the group, while the Indian Elephant Archer and War Elephants are slightly smaller than their Egyptian counterparts. The Juggernaut, on the other hand, is slightly larger than Egyptian War Elephants and Elephant Archers, and is the largest Elephant unit in the game.

Guru and Ram Gear Levels
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We have revealed both of these units to you already in previous blogs, however we had not shown you their gear progression lineups, so here you go!

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Indian Military Tech Tree Overview
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The Juggernaut marks the final piece of the Indian Military Tech Tree that we had not revealed to you yet, but with that out of the way, here's a full look at the full Military Tech Tree of the Indians:

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And here's a quick look at their main Military Production Buildings:

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We are so close to finishing the Indians' development, and can't wait to share them with you!

Thanks for reading, and we look forward to revealing the final remaining details of the Indians, which are very close to release. Please let us know your thoughts and questions below!

All current and future content will stay 100% free and accessible to everyone.

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Project Celeste Development Team

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