The Dravidians seem like the most interesting of the new civs to me personally, but one thing I noticed is how hilariously few option they have in dealing with siege. Where to begin?
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No knights, like at all
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Scouts are bottom of the barrel, close to useless before Wootz Steel and not much better after.
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No Bombard Cannon
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And, most stunningly of all, no redemption.
How are they supposed to respond to onagers? They lack every single counter measure to them that I can see. There’s precedent for the developers caring about this, like when they swapped Block Printing and BBC for Chinese so that the civ could still have an answer in their tech tree for onagers.
I sincerely hope that Dravidians get a buff in this regard in the upcoming patch so they don’t fold to this unit (coming any day now, right?). My preferred solution would be simply giving them bombard cannon, but maybe there’s a more clever solution out there.
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What about the Elephant Archer option?
Yeah Dravidians have basically one plan and that is archers.
The cheaper inf upgrade help there but it’s not that strong outside of the maa rush actually.
They basically have no plan B cause Ele archers in their current state are really not a thing imo. Maybe if they buff that UT to a usable state but not currently.
It’s just a really poor design of a civ currently. Especially as they have no bonus to their archers, only the extra wood helps them to get them rolling early.
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Just like Vikings:
They aren’t!
Glad I could be of help 
, it’s how civ design works.
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vikings have at least berserks. it’s not optimal but it’s viable
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Except vikings have a super eco to stay ahead of it. Dravidians do not.
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And an insane economy to take advantage of
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I’m fairly certain Urumi are faster than Zerks.
Literally who cares, early game eco bonuses mean nothing in situations in which siege onagers are involved, unless you are playing BF 3k tgs.
In FFA and similar the strongest civs usually are the ones without eco bonuses because they are strong in the military department instead.
And guess what, Vikings were one of the last picks in RF3.
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The main difference is that while both are weak to mass SO in late-game, the Vikings aren’t super weak to mangonels in castle age, while for Dravidians the thing is going to be a pita all game long.
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I have nothing to say, it is very clear that the civs at this point are too shallow and their weaknesses are way too directly defined.
If we were to halve the amount of civs, but double the amount of bonuses, UUs and UTs, the game would make more sense.
ofc you would say that But seriously, Vikings have kts AND siege engineers so they can actually hold for a good while, first with kts in castle age, then they can trade using their own SE onagers before the enemy gets FU siege onagers. There is no such curve with Dravidians, if you screw up the first mango fight in castle age there is nothing to save you beside the opponent screwing up.
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They both have the same speed (1.05 base).
Also Vikings at least have Cavalier and the 2nd armor upgrade, as well as Siege Engineers for their SO. Far from ideal, yet far better than any answer Dravidians have to siege. Dravidians need BBC and/or SE and I’ll be content with their ability to deal with mangonel line.
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oh didn’t know zerks are so slow actually… really?
weird, why do we make them then? 11
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Extra Attack, Armor, and Regen. Also, given that champs base speed is 0.9, Berserks being 15+% faster is pretty good.
Surprised no one else said this immediately…
Makes a huge difference
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I gave a unique solution previously
Make the urumi an anti siege / base raider. It fills two massive holes in the drav tech tree and actually makes the unit unique
Tbf it does marginally help with squires, pike and halb upgrades, they save more than eth save on the required tech if facing cav, and especially if the game drags on long enough this definitely helps(Eg v hussars)
If it wasn’t for the massive glaring weaknesses against siege and conducting their own raids
actually… what if they get the archery range upgrades also reduced?
can this be enough to make them competitive?
Ig it would if it allowed fast TR ele archer to be a thing, otherwise meh.
It helps but not where they’re weak though? Just leans more into what they’re kind of good at already?
i think someone has suggested it, but what if EA had a minor bonus vs siege (eg EA +1, EEA +2)? i know they do better than xbows, but with their shorter range than xbows, maybe they could still be more useful to some extent without being too oppressive in the right scenario?
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I think just making the urumi faster could work actually cause with that charge attack they should then be really viable to snipe siege.
As so far the big hysteria about the urumi has not been approved I don’t think it should cause big issues.
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