Imperial Camel Rider

"Stronger than Heavy Camel. Excels at killing other mounted units."

- Age of Empires II description

The Imperial Camel is the second unique unit of the Indians in Age of Empires II: The Forgotten. It can be trained at the Stable once the Imperial Age is reached. It is an anti-cavalry camel.

Unlike most unique units, Imperial Camels do not have an Elite version.

Tactics
Imperial Camels are one of the most versatile and powerful cavalry units in the game due to their variety of uses in the battlefield, and given the number of advantages they have compared to ordinary cavalry. Besides having an attack bonus against other cavalry units, they have decent attack, high hit points, fast speed, average armor (their original armor is 0/0 but the Indians' civilization bonus gives them 0+1/0+1 armor from the very beginning) and are cheaper than Knights. Due to the Indian team bonus, they also have +6 attack against buildings, which makes them a fairly good substitute for siege weaponry. They can easily kill Paladins in one on one combat and can also defeat War Elephants in small groups.

As the Indians lack any unit from the Knight line, Camels are a vital part of their armies for a fast, yet fairly resilient unit. They can be used as a shield for weaker units, while still being able to slaughter archers and cavalry. However, they are not as effective against Cataphracts, which are partially immune to the bonus damage from Camels.

The Imperial Camel is a well-rounded unit, and is able to handle almost any unit, but while it can defeat even Halberdiers one on one, it is not cost effective enough to send them against a group of any kind of pole armed infantry because they can deal heavy damage even without defeating the Camel force.

As a side note, despite being available only to a single civilization and the Imperial Camel upgrade being unique to the Indians, the unit itself is treated as an ordinary member of the Camel line by the game. Hence, unlike the Condottiero or Slinger, the Imperial Camel takes no bonus damage from Samurai.

Further statistics
As Imperial Camels are unique to the Indians, only technologies that are available to them are shown in the following table:

Civilization bonuses

 * Indians: Imperial Camels have +1/+1 armor.

Team bonuses

 * A team containing Berbers: With Kasbah researched, Conscription is researched 25% faster.
 * A team containing Huns: Imperial Camels are created 20% faster. Researching Bloodlines and Husbandry is 20% faster.
 * A team containing Indians: Imperial Camels have +6 attack against buildings.
 * A team containing Teutons: Imperial Camels are more resistant to conversion.

The Forgotten

 * Imperial Camels are in an armor class along with ships, and take bonus damage from anti-ship/anti-camel attacks.

The African Kingdoms

 * Imperial Camels reskinned.


 * The ship armor class is removed from the Imperial Camels, and they receive their own armor class.

Trivia

 * Camels are one of two military units that do not make the usual military sound when created, the other being Trebuchets.
 * The Camel makes the same sound effects as the Camel Rider.
 * They used the same icon as the Heavy Camel until patch 3.5.
 * The original unit design for the Imperial Camel (up until patch 3.5) was based on the Beta Age of Kings design for the Heavy Camel.
 * In Age of Empires II: The Forgotten Empires and Age of Empires II HD: The Forgotten, up to patch 3.5, the Imperial Camel was a redesigned regular Heavy Camel with a longer fabric covering and an attack animation somewhat similar to a Mameluke. The design was brought up to speed with the other expansion units in patch 3.6.
 * The Imperial Camel is one of the only two unique units that is an upgrade of a regular unit (the other one being the Imperial Skirmisher).
 * The Imperial Camel is one of only two unique units not taking bonus damage from the Samurai (the other one being the Imperial Skirmisher), due to both being upgrades of common units.
 * The Imperial Camel is the only unique unit that is initially trained at the Stable. It is joined by the Tarkan when Marauders is researched.
 * The Imperial Camel is one of only three unique units only available in the Imperial Age (the other being the Condottiero and the Imperial Skirmisher).
 * The Imperial Camel is one of the few unique units that don't have any base melee armor nor pierce armor. The others are the Gbeto, Slinger, and Missionary. The Imperial Camel however always gets +1/+1 armor thanks to the Indian team bonus.