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Hindustanis

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Civilization Technology tree Strategy

“ Stake your claim to populous, diverse lands and lucrative trade routes as you parry foreign invasions – or step into the invader's shoes yourself. The Hindustani unique units are the Ghulam, a heavily armored infantry unit adept against masses of archers, and the Imperial Camel Rider, a powerful unique upgrade to the Heavy Camel Rider. ”
—Description[1]

The Hindustanis are a South Asian/Indian civilization introduced in Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition - Dynasties of India as one of the splits of the Indians, based on the Persianized sultanates located in northern India, Afghanistan, and Pakistan such as the Mughal Empire, the Delhi Sultanate, Mamluk Dynasty, Ghaznavid dynasty, and Ghurid dynasty that covered different ethnic groups including Punjabis and Pashtuns. They also have AI leader names from the Gupta and Vardhana dynasties which hail from the pre-Islamic period.

The Hindustanis appear as the Delhi Sultanate in Age of Empires IV. In Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties, they appear as the Indians who represent the Mughal Empire and the British Raj.

Characteristics[]

Unique units[]

Unique technologies[]

Civilization bonuses[]

Team bonus[]

Camel units and light cavalry units[note 1] have +2 attack against standard buildings.

Overview[]

The Hindustanis are classified as a camel and gunpowder civilization. They have excellent Camel Riders with a unique upgrade, faster attack rate, an additional attack bonus against standard buildings, and all upgrades. They also have access to the Hussar which also shares the attack bonus against standard buildings. They do not have any other cavalry, notably Knights, at their disposal. Their Archers and Cavalry Archers are usable and their Skirmishers are fully upgradeable. They have excellent Hand Cannoneers, getting all possible upgrades and getting another +2 range from Shatagni, combined with additional armor, making them one of the most prominent units in Hindustani armies. Their Barracks units are lackluster, lacking Plate Mail Armor, Gambesons, and Halberdiers. The Ghulam is an excellent infantry unit, fulfilling roles very similar to the Eagle Warrior, as it is a mobile, high pierce armor infantry unit with the added advantage that it can thrust its attacks through multiple targets. The siege weapons are good, missing Heavy Scorpion and rare Siege Onager upgrades, but having extra armor on their Bombard Cannons, and fully upgradeable Siege Elephants. Their navy is not good, since the Fast Fire Ship, Heavy Demolition Ship, Dry Dock, and Shipwright are missing. Their Monks are average.

Their defenses are weak, but their economy is great with cheaper Villagers, and faster gold income and lower-than-usual Market exchange fees due to Grand Trunk Road. In the Imperial Age, they can build Caravanserais, an economic building that they share with the Persians, which heals and speeds up nearby allied Trade Carts, improving their gold income further.

Changelog[]

Dynasties of India[]

Return of Rome[]

  • With update 87863, they lose access to Guilds.
  • With update 87863, Grand Trunk Road now also reduces the trading fee to 10%, and its cost is reduced from 400 food, 400 wood to 250 food, 200 wood.
  • With update 87863, (Elite) Ghulam attack increased from 8 (10) to 9 (11) and HP increased from 55 (65) to 60 (70).

The Mountain Royals[]

Campaign appearances[]

The Hindustanis have a campaign devoted to their civilization: Babur. They also appear in:

Battles of the Forgotten[]

Prithviraj[]

Since Dynasties of India

Tamerlane[]

  • Sultan of Hindustan
    • Delhi - Ally
    • Delhi Garrison - Enemy
    • Shah Tughlug - Enemy
    • Outlying Villages - Enemy
    • Outlying Villages - Enemy

Devapala[]

Babur[]

This campaign is played as the Hindustanis.

  • The Last Timurids
    • Kabul - Neutral → Potential Ally → Enemy
    • Civillians - Ally
  • Into India
    • Lahore - Enemy
    • Hostile Afghans - Enemy
    • Yusufzai - Ally
  • The Battle of Panipat
    • Delhi Sultanate - Enemy
    • Daulat Khan - Enemy → Potential Ally
    • Alam Khan - Enemy → Potential Ally
  • The Rajputs
    • Purbiya Mercenaries - Ally or Enemy

Ismail[]

Tamar[]

Victors and Vanquished[]

In-game dialogue language[]

Units in-game speak Hindustani. It was the lingua franca during the period of the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal Empire. Because of the Muslim rulers, Persian culture and language had a strong influence in India, which contributed the considerable number of loanwords to Hindi language. In-game Hindustanis represent the Muslims ruling North India. The following dialogues are not only presented in Hindi, but also their corresponding Urdu formats.

Linguistically, as an Indic language, Hindi is closely related to Bengali (spoken by Bengalis) and Gujarati (spoken by Gurjaras).

Villager
Military
Monk
King

AI player names[]

When playing a random map game against the computer, the player may encounter any of the following Hindustanis AI characters:

  • Akbar the Great (اکبر اعظم): Popularly known as Akbar I and later Akbar the Great, was the third Mughal emperor, who reigned from 1556 to 1605. He is the AI personality of the Indians in Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties.
  • Ala-ud-Din Khalji (علاء الدین خلجی): The second and the most powerful ruler of the Khalji dynasty of Delhi Sultanate in the Indian subcontinent.
  • Babur (بابر): Born Ẓahīr-ud-Dīn Muhammad (ظہیر الدین محمد), was an invader from Central Asia who, following a series of setbacks, finally succeeded in laying the base for the Mughal dynasty in the Indian subcontinent and became the first Mughal emperor. He is a descendant of Tamerlane and Genghis Khan.
  • Bappa Rawal (बप्पा रावल): A semi-legendary ruler of the Mewar region in Rajasthan, India. The bardic chronicles describe him as a member of the Guhila clan of Rajputs, and some of these describe as the founder of his dynasty. Several historians have identified him with Kalabhoja, a ruler of the Mewar branch of the Guhilas.
  • Chandragupta II: Also known by his title Vikramaditya, was one of the most powerful emperors of the Gupta Empire in northern India.
  • Ghiyath al-Din (غیاث الدین محمد بن سام): During his early reign, known more as Ghiyath al-Din Muhammad, defeated the Ghurid claimants to the throne and fought with the Khwarazmian Empire over the lordship of Khorasan. He occupied Herat in 1176 and went on to establish control over most of what is now Afghanistan and the surrounding areas by 1200, and as far west as Bastam and Gurgan. His brother, Mu'izz al-Din, helped manage and expand the eastern part of the empire (as far as Bengal) and served Ghiyath with utmost loyalty and deference. Ghiyath died in 1202 and was succeeded by his brother Mu'izz al-Din.
  • Harsha Vardhana (हर्षवर्धन) (c. 590–647 CE) was an Indian emperor who ruled northern India from 606 to 647 CE. At the height of Harsha's power, his Empire covered much of North and Northwestern India. The peace and prosperity that prevailed made his court a centre of cosmopolitanism, attracting scholars, artists and religious visitors from far and wide. The Chinese traveller Xuanzang visited the court of Harsha and wrote a very favourable account of him, praising his justice and generosity. The Sanskrit poet Banabhatta wrote his biography Harshacharita ("Deeds of Harsha").
  • Humayun (همایون): The second emperor of the Mughal Empire, who ruled over territory in what is now Afghanistan, Pakistan, and parts of northern India from 1531–1540 and again from 1555–1556. He is the father of Akbar.
  • Iltutmish (ایلتتمش): The third ruler of the Delhi Sultanate, belonging to the Mamluk dynasty. Iltutmish consolidated the position of the sultanate in the Indian subcontinent.
  • Mahmud Ghaznavi (محمود غزنوی): The first independent ruler of the Ghaznavid dynasty, ruling from 999 to 1030. At the time of his death, his kingdom had been transformed into an extensive military empire, which extended from northwestern Iran proper to the Punjab in the Indian subcontinent, Khwarazm in Transoxiana, and Makran.
  • Man Singh I (राजा मान सिंह): The Rajput Raja of Amber, a state later known as Jaipur in Rajputana. He was a trusted general of the Mughal emperor Akbar, who included him among the Navaratnas, or the nine gems of the royal court.
  • Muhammad Ghori (محمد غوری): Also known as Mu'izz ad-Din Muhammad, was the Sultan of the Ghurid Empire along with his brother Ghiyath ad-Din Muhammad from 1173 to 1202 and as the sole ruler from 1202 to 1206.
  • Qutb-ud-Din Aibak (قطب الدین ایبک), (1150 – 14 November 1210) was a general of the Ghurid king Muhammad Ghori. He was in charge of the Ghurid territories in northern India, and after Muhammad Ghori's death, he became the ruler of an independent kingdom that evolved into the Delhi Sultanate ruled by the Mamluk dynasty.
  • Sabuktigin: Also known as Abu Mansur Nasir al-Din Sabuktigin (ابو منصور سبکتگین) (942 – August 997), also spelled as Sabuktagin, Sabuktakin, Sebüktegin and Sebük Tigin, was the founder of the Ghaznavid dynasty, ruling from 977 A.D to 997 A.D.

History[]

“ As the medieval period dawned, the northern regions of modern-day India were ruled primarily by the Gupta Empire. At its zenith under Chandragupta II Vikramaditya, this short-lived state stretched from the Indus River to the Ganges Delta. While exceptionally advanced for its time in economic, political, military, intellectual, and social terms, the Gupta Empire was overextended and vulnerable to external invasions. Nomadic incursions from the northwest posed a constant problem, as did the extremes of the local climates; flooding in particular was a major issue. This state would not outlive the 6th century AD, but it left a significant imprint on the polities that succeeded it.
After the Gupta Empire fell, its possessions passed to the control of countless major and minor entities. These never matched the power of the Guptas, but they inherited its strengths and advancements: a sophisticated division of labor system, significant scientific achievements, bustling trade networks, and powerful military technology, to name a few. Sanskrit epics tell of a powerful and magnanimous 7th century ruler, Harsha Vardhana, who forged some of these polities into a pseudo-empire, but his state, too, had relatively little longevity.

The next couple of centuries saw the emergence of a new threat as waves of Muslim invasions cascaded into the Indian subcontinent. While Indian magnates such as Bappa Rawal (8th century) initially succeeded in stemming the onrushing tide, this threat gradually grew too much for the often fragmented Indian states to muster sustained resistances. Beyond the Hindu Kush, powerful Turco-Persian Muslim dynasties were rising: the Ghaznavids had formed a formidable state in modern Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran. One particularly infamous ruler, Mahmud Ghaznavi (10th-11th century), launched seventeen separate campaigns to pillage much of North and West India. Following the Ghaznavids were the Ghorids, another powerful dynasty that toppled the Ghaznavids and thrust further into India during the 12th and 13th centuries. Both factions were notable for their heavy use of Ghulams, former slaves who had been trained as professional soldiers, creating a warrior elite that dominated both battlefields and palaces.

The Ghorid invasions were a watershed moment due to their permanent impact. Whereas their predecessors had merely lead campaigns of pillaging and destruction, the Ghorids, under the brothers Ghiyath and Muhammad, defeated Prithviraj Chauhan of Ajmer and established permanent control over much of northern India. Their successor, Qutb al-Din Aibak, created a new superpower: the Delhi Sultanate (13th-16th century), which essentially consisted of a Muslim warrior-elite ruling over a culturally and socially majority Indian population. Like many of history's conquerors, the Delhi sultans deemed it infinitely more prudent to perpetuate the existing systems in their new empire than to attempt to tear them down and impose their own.

The following centuries were tumultuous ones. The Delhi Sultanate and its neighbors were rattled by successive Mongol invasions which, while achieving no significant lasting gains, gutted the region's infrastructure. Particularly brutal was Timur/Tamerlane's invasion of 1398, which tore through northern India and reduced the glorious city of Delhi to a charnel house. Over a century later, the Mughal conqueror Babur - yet another Persified warlord from Central Asia - would remark in his autobiographical Baburnama that he observed a land not yet healed from the ravages of the past centuries. Nevertheless, Babur was able to mold the weakened northern Indian polities that he conquered into a powerful state, the Mughal Empire, which would rule the region from 1526 well into the early-modern period. 		”
—In-game section

Trivia[]

  • The Hindustanis have been available to all owners of Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition in skirmishes and multiplayer; owning the Dynasties of India expansion was not required to access this civilization, even before update 128442.
  • The Hindustani civilization icon is a round shield with the Najmat-al-Quds or eight-pointed star of Jerusalem, an auspicious symbol in Islam derived from the Rub-el-Hizb symbol (shown on the Saracens icon). The shield of the Hindustani unique unit, the Ghulam, resembles the civilization's icon.
  • The user interface image displays a lion in front of a sun, based on the flag of the Mughal Empire. In Ain-i-Akbari, Hindustan is the official name of the Mughal Empire.
  • The Hindustanis are the only Indian civilization with access to Armored Elephants but not any other elephant unit, and whose Armored Elephants do not benefit from unique bonuses or technologies.
  • The Hindustanis are also the only civilization who have non-unique elephant units, but no unique technology or civilization bonus which affect them.
  • The Hindustanis are the only Indian civilization with Cavalry Archers.
    • Their access to Cavalry Archers instead of the other Indian civilizations' Elephant Archer is accurate, as north-western India is not suitable for elephant breeding. Additionally, the in-game Hindustanis mostly represents Persianized Turkic peoples such as Ghorids, Delhi Sultans, and the Mughal Empire, whose ancestors were the steppe-origin raiders in northern India that heavily utilized nomadic tactics such as horse archery.
  • The following heroes available in the Scenario Editor are themed on the Hindustanis: Babur (also as Tatar) and Ibrahim Lodi. Young Babur appears only as a Tatar in the campaign.
  • The Steam Achievement for winning a game as the Indians before Dynasties of India has been accordingly renamed from Indian Victory to Hindustani Victory, but ironically still retains the image of the Elephant Archer, which the Hindustanis cannot train anymore.
    • Similarly, when in the Ranked Benchmark testing function in multiplayer games, the Hindustanis still have the original Elephant Archers in the test, even though they have now lost it, and use an AI name (Prithviraj Chauhan) which has since been transferred to the Gurjaras.
  • The Hindustanis are the first of only two gunpowder civilizations (along with the Jurchens) to not have access to the Bombard Tower.
  • The Hindustani AI player Akbar is the AI personality of the Indians in Age of Empires III.
  • Due to lacking proper units to counter ranged units and infantry as Indians, especially the Native Americans with Eagle Warriors (which erase the advantage of the Camel Riders), the Elephant Archer was replaced by the anti–archer anti-eagle unit, the Ghulam. In order to make them focus more on gunpowder units and camel units, Plate Barding Armor was restored and a faster attack speed bonus was added. Additionally, the Imperial Camel Rider has 1 less attack for balancing the attack rate, but the research cost was made cheaper. Shatagni has double the effect due to players finding the previous effect underwhelming, and their gunpowder units were given 1 more armor.
    • Due to these changes, the Hindustanis overall became one of the most effective civilizations in the game on most maps (especially on high-level games), with the former major weakness against Eagle Warriors addressed with the Ghulam, which became a universal unit that was overperforming beyond its original design. They also were the only Camel civilization with access to Halberdiers. In update 66692, Ghulam hit points were reduced by 10, and access to the Halberdier was removed. In later updates, the Camel Rider attack speed bonus was nerfed, as was the Armored and Siege Elephant hit points and upgrade cost, and the Villager discount bonus, which negatively impacted the civilization in high level tournaments. For this reason, it was re-buffed in update 87863, with the Ghulam being improved and the Grand Trunk Road technology being cheaper and giving a new effect. The Hindustanis eventually got their Villager discount increased again in update 99311. This was enough to re-increase their pick rate and win-rate overall.
      • The Hindustanis are still one of the top win-rate civilizations in both 1v1 and team games after the last update, due to their decent economy, versatile military line, and team bonus.
  • While other expansion civilizations have unique Castles based on specific structures, the Hindustani unique Castle design takes broad strokes inspiration from architectural elements of several forts in Delhi.
  • Before update 128442, the Hindustani campaign, Babur, was only available to those owning the Dynasties of India expansion. Since the update, the expansion is available to all owners of the Definitive Edition, and so is the campaign.

Gallery[]

Video overview[]

Notes[]

  1. ↑ The following units are considered light cavalry units: Scout Cavalry line, Magyar Huszar, Steppe Lancer, and Shrivamsha Rider.
  2. ↑ This has been translated literally, and as such "ask" contextually refers to a question

References[]

  1. ↑ https://www.ageofempires.com/news/dynasties_of_india_is_here/
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