Ele archers are a unit flawed by design. They’re slow and not feasible for raiding before monks come out, very very expensive to mass which goes against the theme of ranged units and can’t run away from larger armies or counter units. To sum it up, its a waste of resources in an equally poised game and buffing that unit would change nothing about these civs. They’ll continue to be bottom 5.
is just an inferior bonus of Malay and while it adds an option for the mid imp, its not that useful. 3. is the old stats of Battle elephants where they still were just a TG unit and that too mainly for Khmer.
Addresses the weakness of lacking a tanky meat shield unit in imp. If this is available as a civ bonus and not locked behind some tech, it should be usable. Its an interesting idea.
That’s good for Gurjaras and somewhat decent for Bengalis. For Dravidians its just a food based teutons capped ram.
That’s never viable. If pike-siege is a good strategy Goths would have been a top-10 or atleast top-15 civ.
Exactly. Extremely redundant and pointless in most situations where either wootz steel champs or halbs could be used cost effectively.
Both still die to feudal archers faster than malian man at arms. Also, Malians get pierce armor for free while Dravidians would have to pay a food for the advantage which delays age up time. I don’t think the bonus is OP.
But that more than offset the fact Pikemen kill cavalry faster than spearmen, and having such unit in feudal means you can’t go Knights vs Dravidians.
And Longswords have way too high attack to be available in feudal age.
As for buff to dravidians, another one is just giving Bombard Cannon (Viyanagar empire, a Dravidian state, used gunpowder late 14th century) so they can counter onagers.
I mean no one makes long swords, and beyond 12th min no one makes man-at-arms either. So its not like a superior version of an already strong army. If range upgrades were available an age earlier that would surely be OP and broken but are pikes and longswords in feudal really a concern…Several civs have strong bonuses like extra hp, attack, speed, rof or p.armor for infantry from feudal and yet no one makes more than a few of those in feudal or castle age…
No knights, terrible cavalry…any changes suggested to fix that is strongly opposed from a standpoint that the civ is designed to be immobile. So then what is the fix? Just leave them as an unusable civ on land forever?
You still can go in castle age. Dravidians can just defend themselves from market abuse castle age into knights. Are you forgetting that the civ has a terrible stable, no canons, below average monks and simply dies to siege pushes?
Japanese, Burmese get high dps militia line as well but don’t think its going to make the civ OP. The whole point is to give an advantage early on so that they won’t die soon in castle age to knights+xbows siege push
As already said, pikes in feudal = you have to go xbows against them even if you reach castle age first, and the longsword upgrade is actually quite a big one, as it grants 15 HP, 3 attack and 1 melee armour: it’s way better than any other of the bonuses you mentioned.
All the while it doesn’t even help against the whole siege issue.
Ultimately it doesn’t get any extra p.armor. Civs with hp, armor and rof bonuses are almost never go all-in man-at-arms or long-swords and the units are almost never made as primary army. And opening xbows is something that players do all the time anyways. Suppose if Dravidians were an eagle civ, the eagle warrior upgrade in feudal would be broken but I don’t think long swords in feudal is broken for a civ that has no cavalry.
It might be possible to do more damage early in feudal age or in mid-feudal age and delay the siege push and 2 handed swordsman + skirms or urumis + skirm might be feasible after that to stop siege pushes.
The way I see it dravidians problems are no answer to siege, bad castle UT and generally elephant archers aren’t the greatest unit.
Just a thought but against that background what if medical corps would be reworked into elephant units get bonus vs siege (like mangudai)? The effect on battle and siege elephants might not be significant but for elephant archers would be huge. Basically this might address several problems with the civ in one change.
I’m still a bit hesitant as giving such a pop efficient unit bonus dmg vs one of it’s counters but right now there is absolutely no reason to produce ea with the them atm and also dravidians even with that bonus don’t strike me as the civ people will use heavily in closed maps tgs (maybe they would then 11).
yes that’s true…which is why I recommended Shrivamshas as regional unit and bloodlines for Dravidians. But response was no historical basis…then I recommended husbandry and plate barding armor, so that light cav will be quite good in imp, but response was that the civ apparently is designed to have no mobility. And since infantry aren’t anyways strong till imp, I thought this might be a good bonus. Not too powerful not too useless.
That’s exactly the same for Burgundians. And they have it on much powerful knight line. And they have great gunpowder, great monks, full infantry techs, superb eco etc. Dravidians are no where close to any of that.
Once again, this never will be a viable 1v1 unit. Its just a terrible unit by design. Elephants in general are not a suitable 1v1 unit. These EA specifically have so many weaknesses that its a total throw or memeing strategy to use them. Severe buffs to this unit will just make it super broken in closed map 4v4 TGs which is the only place where these units can be used while still not being usable as main army in 1v1.
Its not useful at all. Mangudai are super fast, so u can snipe siege and run away. With this bonus, players will pull back their siege and let halbs/skirms shred the slow useless Dravidian elephants and then pull siege forward again.
Not that it will make that unit powerful or anything but yes, no one is going to pick Dravidians for any land maps. They’re just a pure water map civ.
They need cannons is pretty simple imho.
Bohemians have a similar lack of mobility, but they have way better meatshields (wagons), redemption monks and even more than FU cannons.
Even Vikings to some extent have similar problems (low mobility, no redemption), but they still have knights, terribad ones, but still knights.
Cannons are the bare minimum imho. Also, it would fit their tech tree since they already have hand cannoneers, elite cannon galleons and bombard towers, and their siege elephants are the worst of the pack, plus they lack Siege Engineers so their cannons would be really mediocre, not increasing their siege department by too much.
On the other hand a counter argument is that adding cannons would make them straight worse Ethiopians/Malay.
Then at least give them redemption!
Well you can make your own siege then. If you get to elephant archers they even do good vs halbs (although I really think the civ should get parthian tactics). It needs to be a longer game ofc but at least you have something to build up to. Right now it basically gets worse for the civ but the longer game goes and late game you just die.
Irrespective of that elephant archers need to get the bonus dmg from skirms reduced but that has nothing to do with civ itself.
Well you can give them cannon and siege engineers but then as you said it’s similar to other archer bbc civs. Imo they need a bit more fundamental change than just adding bbc.
In effect I’m not pleased by that solution, too boring and repetitive.
But man it’s hard to address Bengalis and Dravidians weakness and at the same time preserve their lack of knights, lack of mobility in general for Dravidians and Elephant focus for Bengalis.
There are some civs with even terrible UTs. My personal observation on problems of Dravidians are (other than answer to siege) -
Lack of a knight substitute/ Not having a single usable mobile unit.
Lack of a raiding unit.
I proposed that in a different thread. But problem is chonkers are super slow and scorpions have a massive bonus damage against them.
I don’t think so. I think their mobility should come from non-cav units. In short, eaglize infantry or Plumedize foot archer.
I’m not saying they will be OP or anywhere close to Burgundians. I just won’t like the design.
This why I want redemption and maybe block printing as well.
Making at least one elephant unit viable in 1v1. Since BE is risky mostly bcz of Khmer and sometimes Burmese, EA is the better choice. We should try to come up with a solution to not make them OP in BF/closed maps while completely okay in 1v1 open maps.
True but as the civ is new I’d change the UT before it stays with us til the end of time.
Oh okay didn’t notice that but I like your idea then 11 Well tbf heavy scorpion you see super rarely and at least you can tech onager here. I’d rather see onager from opponent as the problem. Btw irrespective of getting bbc or not the civ really should get SE. I still don’t get why you design a civ with SO but no SE. That’s like giving a civ arb but no bracer.
No one is gonna make skirms in tg closed maps so reducing the bonus dmg from skirms a bit should be good as a first step. I mean the unit isn’t even bad and they need a high price but the amount of dmg skirms do is just ridiculous imo.
What I find interesting is that drav are also arguably very similar to the already existing Aztecs :fast early eco, infantry focus, buffed skirms(granted one needs a UT the other is built in), great arbs, bad stables, UTs have extremely similar end result. the difference being Aztecs have massive advantages to make up for their “weakness”
So it’s 100% doable while keeping the identity. The question is how
Spanner in the works: rework urumi to be the fast raiding unit to compensate for hot garbage stable?
Shotels are high damage fragile fast infantry. Maybe the sword whip could be a very fast attacking low damage unit.? Like the whip is actually supposed to be? So there’s an actual choice between 17 true damage champs or whips
Hindus rely on their UU to delete archers, why not force drav to rely on their UU to plug a hole?