How much better would the game be if converted units got the upgrades from their new civ. Big incentive to invest on Monks, whether they get the good upgrades or not.
Would be interesting for sure. If nothing else I think it would be a great team bonus to have the option to apply civ bonuses to converted units with a button (although there are many situations where you would not want to do this). But of course it could be a global feature as well.
For me, the Malian ratha is better than the Sicilian one. No Parthian tactics, the Sicilian lacks the last armor and thumb ring whereas the Malian lacks bracer. Firing faster and never miss can be better than +1 attack/range without the speed and precision of shot. And in mêlée, the Malian is stronger beside facing pikemen or camels. Even worse, the rathas don't benefit from hauberk so the Sicilian ratha is a weaker Sicilian cavalier who shot not that fast while in the same time, the Malian ratha is a Malian cavalier who shot quickly and with precision before the close fight.
Great question, probably between Dravidians and Saracens, so I guess 7.5/10. In ranged mode they're worse than full upgrades generic (10% lower accuracy, no Parthian Tactics), but their melee mode is pretty good with 20% faster attack and +2 vs skirms, but not as good as Bulgarians with 33% faster attack.
I just realized something about this whole thing. If you were a civilization without Bloodlines, like Dravidians, and you were to convert a Ratha at only 1 HP, would that Ratha then die if you were to switch weapons on it?
HP scales with transformations (and rounds up) rather than subtracting, so the unit would still have 1 HP. Although at one point there was a bug where what you're describing could happen with monks. IIRC it was something like if a converted monk with sanctity and 1 HP picked up a relic (assuming you didn't have sanctity), he would die.
Both forms are considered cavalry archers for purposes of HP/Armor (which is why both forms benefit from Parthian Tactics), so this applies to Sipahi as well.
That's good to know. My pronunciation here is based on SoTL's as people had told him "Rath" was correct, so it's possible that it's a medieval form, or that those people were referring to a related language.
