A number of people have been complaining about the bad design of Urumi’s for so long, and Hera acknowledges Urumis’ weaknesses in his latest video.
Urumis die to anything ranged - archers, defensive buildings and siege units. They are not good at raiding and scouting, and their LOS isn’t good either.
They are only good at purely melee vs melee fights (except against Battle Elephants and a few UUs), especially when they are in the staggered formation.
Hera suggests giving Urumis an extra Pierce Armour like some of us have discussed on the forum. And there are many other buffs suggested for Urumis to help them go well with the Dravidians play style.
While the unit is bad in general, the whole Dravidian civ is flawed by design. Right now it’s the worst designed civ hands down.
First, Urumis do far too well against units like Jaguar, Samurai or Teutonics. It’s kinda funny seeing they fighting honestly… No way an unit using a weapon like that would work like that IRL. I know, i know… age2 is not exactly a realism simulator, but this is stretching it too much for my tastes. Also, the unit feels like a mish mash of random ideas (charge attack is a steal from Coustilier, plus the armor ignore feature (after Wootz steel) also feels like a steal from Leitis) because the devs were probably lacking in unique ideas for an UU (which is understandable). And then to compensate all these features together, they made it’s pierce armor trash, and as a result the unit is trash outside of melee fights. I say give it better pierce BUT ALSO rework the unit by giving it an unique abillity of some sorts that can actually maybe fill a hole in Dravidias tech tree? What exactly to change on the unit i dont know, its weapon look like something that should be doing area damage, so that on the charged attack is fine.
Talking about their tech tree, it’s clear that Wootz Steel is designed as this civ’s clutch. It’s obviously a too strong of a tech, and because of that their tech tree has to be so lacking as a compensation. I say either make it ignore only half of a unit’s melee armor, or ,if thats not possible, then just make it work like an additional blacksmith upgrade? Then Dravidians can have a more open tech tree in exchange (camels, elite elephants and maybe even knights?), and Urumis wont be a silly unit anymore since it wont be winning fights that they shouldnt.
I had the same idea. But I disagree Woots steel is not that powerful. It gives +2 or +3 in most circumstances. Against units like teutonic knights and cataphract. its OP. But thats once in blue moon situation. So no need to bother about it.
I have a solution. Woots steel will be a team bonus of Dravidians. Woots steel was sold everywhere from south india and had different local names like Damascus steel. Like Gamersons, it can be added as an imperial age upgrade in Barracks and stable. So it makes the tech available across all civs of aoe2. But Dravidians get it at 50% discount.
Urumi did not get any changes in the recent patch after gambersons was introduced. A lot of Unique units got their status buffed like Woad raiders or cost decreased like Samurai. So its overdue for a re-work. I’m sure this re-work post would make Urumi viable. But there needs to be some band-aid fix now. I wouls start with another technology panned by Hera - Medical corps. I would replace it with ‘Strike Corps’ giving a speed boost of 20% to castle units and Elephants.
The imperil age tech can be something else like Khmer that Skims and Elephant archers can fire a second bolt that does half damage or a defensive tech like Tigui or Hill forts to overcome the raiding problem.
Another Vital design problem of Dravidians is that they don’t have Fevor, neither they get Bloodlines for light cav. So no chance of fighting for relics. Maybe gold shaft mining will help.
It already does ranged damage as splash damage and that is more gimmicky. Before imperial age, such battles where spash damage helps don’t happen. Dravidians don’t have any defensie bonuses to keep them in the fight till late imperial. But a range of 2 for the charge attack might be a very unique thing though.
People have this perception that Urumi will take out palladins. But Woots steel is costly and Urumi spam requires few castles. So Urumi is never used. Urumi use is food intensive and happens against opponent hussar with +3 melee armour.
What Urumi needs is speed and an equivalent of +1 pierce armour.
I think the Urumi should not be affected by Wootz Steel. It is highly illogical for such a strong steel to be so flimsy and flexible like the Urumi is. Plus, no one actually used the urumi in real life IIRC. It was just like ceremonial combat and stuff like that. Because it took years to learn, was highly impractical, and could easily backfire.
Random idea (didnt put much thought into this, so maybe its bad lol): what if they had a walk speed boost ONLY while theyre fully charged? So they can get closer easily, do the charged attack, but then they have to stay close and win the fight (or die), since their speed will be back to normal until they have charge again. This should make it more effective against ranged units… and, of course, the unit should be nerfed in melee fights as well or this would make Urumis OP af.
Yes maybe giving them charge mechainic that is already in game. which when they are in charge state, they can really charge to the enemy within 5 tiles
I’m one of the minority that is okay with Urumi being bad against ranged units, defensive buildings and siege. That is because if they had extra PA, Militia line and inclusion of Gambeson would be wasted. I really prefer UU and generic unit having different role.
Urumi is broken level good against any melee units while militia line have +2 PA over them but lower attack make them better against ranged units.
I’d rework Dravidians by redesigning BE which I hope will be the case with upcoming Persians rework, and by Medical Corps UT.
Make the Urumi’s basic attack have the splash damage by default, and change its charge ability to provide projectile dodging instead of extra damage. In a way, this amounts to making it an infantry version of the Shrivamsha Rider, but would be a good position and benefit the civ.
I sincerely hope they can have useful BE, including getting the EBE upgrade.
It doesn’t make sense that Malays can have practical EBE and Dravidians don’t.
Nobody actually cares about logic in the game. What people care about is appearances. You are also making an appearance based argument here.
Here are a few examples: A single cataphract can take on like 30 dark age milita. 2 Camel riders can kill a single elephant archer. One Teutonic knight can take like 10 halberds. Does any of that make sense to you? I can give a LOT more examples nobody has any problem with. But Urumis? Everybody is going nuts over them.
Let us be clear, this is just about western power fantasies. Nothing else. Now, that is fine. If you just want to see a western knight take on 30 peasants, that is okay. But be clear about that. Be honest.
I agree that it is too strong, but making it half would make it totally worthless. Aztecs, Japanese, Burmese and slavs have stronger upgrades again targets with 3 melee armour already.
The solution is simple though, exclude stable units from wootz steel. Do that, and you can give them a decent stable without hurting anything.
Yes, it’s an appearance argument. My stance on that is a very subjective one, just like yours. What one can get from my point is: where should we draw the line in the sand? It’s hard to pin point exactly, and not everyone will agree, but what is clear to me is that in this case it was over the line. My opinion, it is what it is.
Is it unrealistic? Yes, but it’s for a different reason: this is more about how the game is designed to have Post imperial units just be so absurd against dark age units. Complain to the aoe2 designers, not me. The appearance part is true, but it’s secondary to that.
On the other RTS game that i care about (Starcraft 1 - Broodwar) the very basic, initial offensive units are seen throught the entire game (you do get some upgrades for them though, but still), and workers also feel not as weak against military units, in general. In that regard broodwar is superior design wise to AOE2. It is what it is.
Geez dude, just chill.
To be honest i think you’re projecting. I’m Brazillian, i’m not american or european. I will not make this political, because political posts in gaming forums are just cancer and cringe. I’ll just limit myself to say that you’re wrong, eventhough you’re very sure you’re so right. Feel free to double down on this, but any further responses regarding this matter i will just ignore.
Everyone having a western looking knight is more about the lazyness of devs. I’m totally in favor of them giving appropriate unit skins for other civs. Specially if this was optional, there would be no reason to be agaisnt it. This should be tied to architeture set though(just imagine the total file size if they did it for every civ) but i digress.
If they did that, we could have, say, an asian cavalry dude from the castle age just massacring villagers easily. It would still be just as silly. But it’s how the game was made balance-wise. There’s no fix for that, its too late.
Okay, maybe I didn’t write it properly. I wasn’t being disparaging in any way when I said “western knights”. I am not from the west, and I love teutonic knights. There is literally nothing wrong with enjoying things of whatever culture you are from, or other cultures. Similary, I love boyars, kamayuks, Genoese crossbows, and Longbowmen.
The point I’m making is, urumis are an eastern fantasy. There is a story of a warrior being able to be so precise with urumis that he left paint on opponent’s necks without wounding them. These things are supposed to be able to exploit the slightest weaknesses with artistic accuracy. Now, of course that’s unrealistic. But that’s the point, most things in this game are, this is just another one on the list.
You ignored 2 of the other examples. Teutonic knights and camel riders. Those are for FU imperial units. Please don’t do that, and take my full arguments.
Other examples, 8 huskarls will absolutely eat like 30 arbs. Meanwhile, those 30 arbs will have no problem with 8 cavaliers. 5 Paladins will completely destroy like 40-60 skirmishers. How does that make any sense even remotely?
This is why you go beyond that and make balance arguments. That way, we have reasonable conversations without going off the deep end.
Paladins? Sure. HCs? I seriously doubt it. HCs eat urumis as urumis have 0 base pierce armour and pretty low HP. But then, even Halbs will eat Paladins.
Skirms and HCs would have countered both urumis and halbs though. Just throw in some meat shield like halbs or hussars in front.
And my point is that this goes a little too far on the unrealism aspect. It just doesn’t look believable. Think of science fiction movies, if they’re done well enough, they can make you “believe” in aliens while yorue watchng it. But then go see one of these trash assasin shark movies or one of these giant killing spider movies… it will be way less believable than a well done alien movie. it’s all about the “believability”… a Teutonic Knight atleast is slow af which at least works as a justification for it to have so much armor. But this is just an isolated case, you can come up with justification for more units (just like you did with urumi), but i wonder why most people just dont buy it on the Urumi case… To me a naked dude with a funny looking weapon (which was never used in real warfare btw) just destroying everything in melee is like a movie about flying sharks massacring people, while a camel rider destroying lot of scouts is closer to a believable science fiction than the former.
EDIT: i will concede that on some cases its hard to come up with justifications (e.g. Huskarls), but my (subjective) stance is that Urumi is at a whole another level. Sorry but i will die on this hill.
I agree that that should be done. Unfortunately, it would mean that Armored Elephants are no longer a decent combat unit, but that’s an okay sacrifice.
You can’t ever convince me than 1 teutonic knights can take on 10 halbs, sorry. Or even that skirmishers, who throw actual javelins, can’t take on paladins.
Have you seen a javalin and what it actually does?
These things are devastating, in ways more than one.
Yes, and that is totally subjective. Oh, and urumis were used for warfare, just in certain limited areas.
Look, I don’t care about anyone’s subjective preference (as an argument), and I don’t expect you to care about mine. If we agree on a subjective preference, we can vibe over that, but we can’t argue over it. You find it unrealistic, fine, but I don’t mind it. Now what? What makes your opinion better than mine, or anyone else’s?
I would actually like to just exclude stable units, retaining Siege elephant and vils with wootz. One, it’ll be cool just for the meme factor. Dravidians are a bit of meme civ any way. And two, Dravidian Armoured elephants will be far too weak otherwise. They are by far the weakest already, and without any bonus, they’ll be completely worthless. Hindustanis, Gurjaras, and Bengalis get a decent buff to them, on top of siege engineers for two of them. Me##### corps is an absolute joke already.
Filtered words so far: ##########(the first archer attack upgrade), Medical (in medical corps)
Bringing trash units to the argument is not fair, it’s clear that there are strong balance and design decisions for them to work like they do. It’s like comparing Units from different Ages. It is how it is due to a core game design decision (i.e. the existence of counter units that dont cost gold).
The Urumi case is different. This is my whole point, if you cant see that then there’s nothing else to be said. Maybe i’m just crazy, but if there are enough people agreeing with me then i guess i have a point. Let’s just agree to disagree, or this this will never gonna end.
No, no. Wait. This is my issue. You can excuse everything in the name of game design or balance. But you can’t excuse Urumis. Militia? that’s different ages. Trash? that’s game design. If you can excuse these, you aren’t working based on reality to begin with. You are working on your subjective biases.
That’s your issue, my friend. Use the same standards for everything.
You want gold vs gold examples? Sure. Husarks is one I gave already. You can also consider how many karambits a few druzena champions can beat. Boyar vs champions, Tarkans vs archer-line, and chakrams vs infantry are all unrealistic.
How many people do you think a spinning, thin, metallic, disk can go through? The correct answer is less than one. But they destroy teutonic knights with micro anyway. I haven’t heard many people complaining about how that’s unrealistic.
Monk vs elephants, this one makes literally no sense. How do you even preach religion to an animal? Explain that one, please.
This is why I brought culture in to it earlier. From the west, a lot of people would agree with you. The people from where Urumis comes from would agree with urumis. Now you and I both have a point, and the conversation is dead.
But yes, let’s just agree to disagree. Have a good one!
