Just think about this for a moment. What if the Dravidians had 50% cheaper armored elephants? This will allow them to be aggressive in castle age with an armored elephant push. Is that too cheap? 40%, 35%, or 30% better?
In terms of stats thier armoured elephants are the worst, aside from ignoring armor with wootz steal. They are missing husbandry, bloodlines, and only have one blacksmith armor upgrade.
With a castle age push you will see a mix of skirms, infantry, and armoured elephants. It depends what the player goes for.
It would make them somewhat similar to Malay. But with armored elephants instead.
Would it allow for some aggression in the castle age? And still be useful in imperial? On a personal note it might be a nice shake up from the usual knights and archers meta.
Armoured elephant is the slowest elephant type. They are highly vulnerable to cavalry as well. Dravidians already suffer from weakness to cavalry. A suprise armored elephant push will also die to cavalry. Just cheaper elephants without upgrades to fix Dravidian weakness to heavy cavalry will not help.
A great powerful bonus but still not what that civ needs. Siege discount bonuses fit civs with relatively small eco benefit but good cavalry. Civs like Bulgarians, Sicilians, Magyars. Doesn’t fit an infantry civ with no knights. A civ like Dravidians needs very strong early eco or military discount to guarantee a 2+ min timing advantage to castle age.
A bonus like this doesn’t add much value in most situations except a very few where Armoured elephants are used.
Yes but Castle age push with infantry and skirms is a gamble. Its not a good strategy for that stage of the game in most maps.
No it wont. Battle elephants can fight and trade well with all military units, armored elephants can’t.
I think that having their siege discount apply to food costs as well as wood costs would be enough of a buff (and fits nicely with current bonuses). Medical Corps does affect their siege elephants, which I think is enough to make up for missing bloodlines (basically allows them to ignore chip damage from defensive buildings). And Dravidians actually have 2 blacksmith cavalry armor upgrades. But like other people have said, it isn’t what the civ needs (though it likely wouldn’t hurt either).