The Dravidian have the worst stable in the game. Even the Meso CIV have better stable because they don’t have one, but get there the eagle warriors as a compensation.
Back to the Dravidian. My goal is to make the stable more interesting without changing how the tech tree looks. So they can build the stable as an extra option in there gameplay.
Changes:
List item Battle Elephants don’t cost gold (trash BE)
They dont have Bloodline, the Plate Barding Armor, or elite BE so their wouldn’t be too strong,
They get effected by Wootz Steel, but this should not make them OP also, 120 food is still very high for Dravidians without a food bonus
secondly
List item Medical Corps increase health per minute (25 or so) + is affect the scout line too.
The scout line miss the same tech as BE and the hussar update. So there aren’t that good
The regeneration can make them as an option for raiding.
What do you think? Would this change make the stable more interesting?
It may, but honestly I don’t think their stable should be more interesting than being the worst stable in the game with armor ignoring light cav.
Dravidians have so much potential with Skirms + Ele Archer in the next patch, I think we should wait and see how their intended design is going to play out!
Trash battle elephants would be ridiculous. They beat a paladin in a 1 vs 1 fight as far as I am concerned. With a few archers and militia to cover their weakness to pikes/halbs, you essentially have battering rams that can fight.
Siege elephants can fight villages much better than rams. And the fact of their base damage is higher gives them a slight edge.
Still battle elephant with no upgrades at all would still be better fighters. Siege elephants just take too slow to kill something, even if they tanky.
Same. And I don’t want to see full trash BE either. That being said, their BE and Armored Ele can get a discount, a general one, or less gold similar to Poles UT.
These are my ideas for buffs for elephants which relate to this thread.
General Changes:
Battle Elephant cost adjusted to 100 food, 80 gold
Bonus damage dealt by pikes/Halberdiers reduced by 20%
Dravidian Specific Changes:
(New bonus) Battle Elephants are affected by Barracks technologies
Medical Corps regeneration rate increased to 50 hitpoints per second
Gain Husbandry
Urumi Swordsman could be changed but I’m not sure how. Maybe always deals blast damage but unaffected by Wootz Steel? Change its role to be faster, and good at killing siege?
Also, ideally, if it wasn’t for game balance/civ uniqueness, Dravidians really should have Knights. This whole “Indian civs don’t get heavy cavalry” thing is completely ahistorical.
Edit: Except with regards to the Bengalis where it makes perfect sense as they had terrible cavalry.
This seems unnecessary, giving BEs the squires effect makes them the same speed as Khmer BEs, and the Arson effect seems fine, but also not particularly needed.
Or something in that ball park, yes.
TBH I think this is the most important single change to Dravidians’ stable that would make it at least situationally viable. Husbandry is such a crucial tech for the viability of cavalry and elephants that lacking it becomes the most limiting factor of their viability. The only civ that lacks Husbandry but still has strong cav is Teutons, who are compensated by the extra armor, but it’s still a significant limitation for them. And none of the other civs that get BE miss husbandry. I would give husbandry, and possibly even the final armor upgrade, but remove the Wootz steel effect from cav.
Something along these lines would be good. It doesn’t need to become a raiding unit per se, but more differentiation from the Champ would be good.
Remove woodz steel effect on cav, give them elite battle elephant and last armor. Problem solved. Now they have a late game cav option even if it’s not the most common unit. If people don’t want to give them light cav with last armor they could lose light cav upgrade (pretty useless for the civ anyways in castle age). Also I think they should get husbandry. Elephant units (including archers) without it feels so bad.
They’re unique in not having Elite Battle Elephant though, and I think it’s important to keep that uniqueness. I’d like to see a civ with Battle Elephants which are strong despite lacking the upgrade, much as Bulgarian Cavalier are strong despite lacking Paladin.
Edit: as for my previous comment, yes 50 HP per second would perhaps be too strong for medical corps, I’d agree that 40 HP per second would be the appropriate change to make.
very little value and doesn’t solve the problem of having a bad stable. Elephants are primarily an imp unit and that too mainly for TG. In 1v1, this will be useless against most civs until 45-50 mins in the game. Hypothetically if game gets to a stage where both players are out of gold while the map position being even then this might even be broken. So while it does address some niche issues of not having a tanky melee unit, it still doesn’t address the bad stable problem where it matters.
This certainly would make their light cavalry stronger but they’ll probably only be like Korean or Celt hussar at best.
Amazing changes imo. I’d keep the gold cost of Elephants to 70 though. Especially considering how much they’ve been nerfed as a generic unit over the past 2 years.
I was thinking how about they get +5 vs siege, have 2 base p.armor, don’t have charge attack but instead have a charge speed where if you press some button, they’ll move 30% faster for 6 seconds (8 for elite). This would make their speed 1.5 (slightly faster than a knight with husbandry) and they can snipe siege, they’ll also become one of their kind instead of being a Coustillier duplicate and won’t have ridiculous melee dps without their first hit having charge + splash attack.
If historically that were true, they simply shouldn’t make such a civilization. Just give their ship regeneration bonus to medical corps, Mahayana being a default civ bonus for the combined civ of Dravidians+Bengalis and town centers spawning villagers to newly built TCs.
If historically that were true, they simply shouldn’t make such a civilization. Just give their ship regeneration bonus to medical corps, Mahayana being a default civ bonus for the combined civ of Dravidians+Bengalis and town centers spawning villagers to newly built TCs.
Sorry, what? Are you saying that Dravidians and Bengalis should be one combined civilisation?!!! Do you know nothing about South Asian history?!
Medieval Bengalis did have poor indigenous horses (and had to import horses from elsewhere), but that didn’t stop the Pala Empire and Bengali Sultanate from being among the most powerful medieval empires, because they used elephants!! Tons of elephants. And infantry, archers and gunpowder.
The medieval French had bad horse archers. Should they not be a civilisation? No, of course they should, because they supplemented their lack of one thing with skill in something else (heavy cavalry).
There are plenty of medieval peoples who used elephants but had not as good horses, elephants need to be adjusted to be useable as a core unit in 1v1s.
Just as an additional comment, the Pala Empire at its height contained 11% of the world’s population, it definitely should be represented in the game.
