Yeah, Dravidians EAs get 14 damage from skirms with each hit, this assuming both units are FU.
Bengalis’ get 11.5 instead, again both being FU.
So I know this might be completely off but it’s a rough draft to convey the idea:
Sword whip:
2 base damage (+2 Vs Vils. +3vs siege)
ROF 1.0
Range 1
Speed 1.2
Cost: 35/35?(just guessing, not sure at the moment how to value something so specific)
In castle age vs vils. will do 6dmg -1 arm = 5dps. Kills a vil in almost the same time as a knight.
Kills Vils through walls (helping their other infantry and eles) but has terrible dps against anything with armour that isn’t siege. Preventing mono blobbing. Unaffected by wootz steel. This gives the whip a purpose and makes it more realistic (the whip was for naked targets, wootz wouldn’t have affected it etc) even though the game is basically fantasy most of the time.
It gives them a unit to snipe siege(explained as killing the unarmoured crew with the whip). It maintains the civ identity. The issue is tweaking the numbers. The same that went for eagles. The same that goes for ghulams.
Of course I could be wrong and or this is too much of a change
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Having to build a castle for a gold infantry unit that struggle to get past a pikeman meatshield sounds underwhelming. And low damage but high rate of fire sounds like it’s going to struggle to kill vills that run away.
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That’s why the range.(same applies to Vils). In the same way eagles (and knights and later hussars) kill siege as well. I know it’s not the perfect answer. But the urumi wouldn’t get shredded as fast as cav, and would need much fewer units to reach the target to get the job done.
For example it could be increasing the bonus damage.
In the same way Hindus build a castle to get better units to counter archers, drav still have their current options before that stage, this is to augment them as the game goes on.
As it currently stands you would need one urumi with 8 sec to kill a mangonel and will do it further away. A FU knight needs 9 sec(eagle 10). And costs more (something else that can be tweaked obviously)
Edit: I was running the numbers between matches and wondering if it gets +1 Vs archers as well? It doesn’t make them good. Just makes them less pigeonholed.
As it stands they kill an unarmoured xbow 1 sec slower than an LS does, but it has the reach and speed advantage which we know can snowball in the right situations, considering the cost. So it’s marginally better in forcing the opponent to take armour upgrades.
Bengalis and Dravidians are the best Elephant Archer civs. That unit should be buffed regardless, and the added effect would be that Dravidians and Bengalis become more viable.
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Or UU. I really wished this one were an-anti siege infantry.
Malians…
I guess that’s the easiest way at this moment. Maybe give up some HP to get less bonus damage from skirmisher and less cost.
yes absolutely. If they get redemption, siege engineers and canons, they’ll be an A tier hybrid, mid-tier closed land map civ and probably a C tier open map civ which is fine. Or they should get some cavalry or a different set of bonuses to be a decent civ for open maps.
Yes -7 is just way too much for the heavy cost for those units. Utlimately I still don’t think it’s a usable generic unit even after that. They’re simply not worth 90f, 70g at any stage of the game for the stats they have.
For land maps the ones with worse castle UT are Portugese, Malay, Mongols, Byzantines, to some extent Ethiopians. And all these civs are significantly better on either closed or open maps than Dravidians.
Faster generic infantry is just a celt duplicate with vastly inferior siege and lack of knights substituted with better archer line. So either a rework of urumis and some stone related bonus is needed. Faster foot archers could be an option.
This is exactly why I thought of having Shrivamsha riders as a regional unit for these civs. The other civs that don’t have knights, have eagles. Maybe if the history OCD people are uncomfortable with that, those units could be renamed as something else but conceptually being the same and with each civ getting different bonuses on them similar to the eagles from Aztec, Mayan, Incas.
Exactly. So many civs with tons of units and terrific bonuses get SE and this one which lacks 2 very important unit lines and a terrible tech tree is missing it.
Its not bad, it’s terrible for any setting other than fully closed map 4v4 TG. At least if they had their old stats for the current cost, they would be somewhat usable in certain semi-closed maps when game reaches later stages of imperial age.
Be like extra 3 attack on cavalry with bloodlines, plate barding armor, knight-line and camel-line, extra 3 p.armor on infantry, bombard canons, redemption and a better long term eco bonus.
Concept seems fine but 35/35 LOL. For 2 base attack no one will ever waste resources on a unit like this even if it was available from barracks. People would just fight vills till xbows arrive to clean this up. Should be something like 20/5 and available from barracks for 2 base attack. No one is going to bother investing into castles to produce a unit like this.
Lithuanians has a pretty bad ut in castle age. Yeah the others are worse on land maps but are ptetty solid on water maps (sans nomads, Ethiopians, admittedly bad). Lithuanians bad all around
Its still better than Dravidians one, you can snipe monk-mangonels when you get pushed after losing a big fight with a small number of opponent units are left over, and also forward Castle drops will get harder. The Dravidians one does nothing, its a complete waste of resources.
this is so incredibly niche because you could just instead use the 500 resources for hill forts to instead make a couple scouts and boom, that monk siege is dead.
if they have the units to defend the monk siege from scouts your tc ain’t going to do anything anyway.
just because of the value. if it was 40 hp per minute it would be pretty reasonable. Dravidians main problem is having no answer to siege. not this UT.
Fun fact: In recorded boa interviews 2 out of 3 wwp players named it when being asked about the most underrated tech in the game.
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and yet, how often do we actually see it used?
also - underrated doesn’t mean good.
Well do what you want with that statement. I just find the contrast somewhat amusing. Irrespective of tbat lithuanian UT I hold be extremely niche, yes, but it has its niche applications and then it’s really handy. The main reason we don’t see it often actually is that lithuanians usually is the aggressor and you don’t push a civ that usually goes full knights in castle age. So if anything the tech belongs to the wrong civ.
In contrast dravidian UT is just straight up bad. Nobody needs hp regen on these units because these will most likely be up vs their counters and either kill them fast or get killed fast (in current balance probably the latter I guess).
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oh i agree dravidians is bad, but the person i was quoted was talking about UT which are great at least on water, and were designed for water play, as bad because they see no land play. at least those techs have a time and a place. the Lithuanians one on the other hand is just incredibly niche all around. Do i think it needs to change? No, i don’t. Lithuanians are fine.
the only castle age UTs i would change at this point are Dravidians, Mongols (unlock pop cap), Sicilians (have it do something else, instant army effects need to be gone), and maybe a small buff to the Viking one.
I’d also swap the Vietnamese UTs and remove the gold cost on Paper money.
Just thinking if giving archer line +2/+3 attack bonus vs siege after castle age UT will be an option. They won’t be anywhere close to Mangudai. I hope it will be okay.
For unknown reason, all elephant specific UTs are in castle age.
Edit: I’m surprised that we didn’t get any balance change yet. DOTD had better balance and yet we got a small balance change right after 1 month if I remember. Now it’s been 7 weeks since DOI release and no balance change.
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I didn’t read the entire thread but what about giving 3 vills instead of 2 to the Bengalis (maybe too OP)
What about make their elephants 50% less bonus damage instead of 25%?
Not sure about the Dravidians
Yes. OP and doesn’t solve their problem.
Again OP in BF TG. Too strong in closed maps in general.
Better to give Bengalis only Melee Ratha in stable.
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That’s a terrible unit at 60w, 60g for 1 p.armor and 1.2 base speed. Could be fine at 50w, 40g
*1.3
Anyway, stats can be changed any time. This can be a completely new unit.
A melee cavalry unit is supposed to cost food, not wood.
of course it’s true that you could rather spend the resources on army and clear the monks and siege but suppose if the opponent has pikes or camels or gunpowder which is also quite common, it might not be easy to snipe monks and siege. And also sometimes if you’re booming and have a defensive castle but no other military building, this tech might be useful. So the tech is not as good as some of the other castle age UT like Yeomen or First Crusade but still much much better than the most useless medical corps.
no siege and terrible UT concept. Its not just the value. Suppose if medical corps was Burmese or Khmer imperial UT then it’s about the value. You mostly will do Elephants with those civs in imp in many team games and this tech with 40 or 50 hp per minute would be quite useful.
No one should ever make elephants as primary army with Dravidians as they lack multiple important upgrades. Giving a tech to a unit line that’s completely useless for a civ is an awful design. The UT should ideally be champions and urumis generate 20 or 30 hp/min. If at all it needs to be for elephants, something like Elephant units cost -60% gold will be the only possible good tech for this civ.
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