Dravidians are a poor/lazy designed civ

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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This is gonna be a long one:

  • Wootz steel:

costs more than garland wars (1350 vs 1200 total res)

in summary: wootz steel should have a cost reduction, from 750f/600g to 600f/600g. And/or an added alternate effect

Wootz affects less meaningful units than garland wars: GW affecting eagles, means more than anything wootz can affect, due to eagles being such a strong unit as it is, the addition of GW makes more of an impact than wootz ever could.

unless you’re fighting the knight line(2 base Melee Armour) with champs(just use halbs instead), GW is equal to or simply better than wootz in actual damage dealt, and considering champs are generally meant to be a trash/eagle counter (none of these units have any base melee armour), or building destroyer , makes GW superior in all 5 cases: skirms, halbs, hussars, eagles and buildings.

burmese with +3 on infantry has almost the same impact(or better eg vs buildings) for absolutely none of the cost as wootz

infantry that dont have high PA simply arent meta in most cases in the current environment, meaning wootz means even less on top of all these other flaws

i was one of the many people that thought wootz might be OP before it actually arrived, but i think its very high cost actually holds it back, in the same way that Druzinha is weaker than expected due to the even higher cost on otherwise generic infantry

  • Urumi

The UU overlaps too much with the champ line. Urumi could have worked on a civ that didnt specifically have a tech discount and a UT for the champ line. It also does not offer any more utility than champs. It is functionally just a faster, buffed champ. This is like giving huskarls to malians. Britons are in a similar situation, but the LB still brings slightly more utility(range) than Arbs in niche cases.

  • Economy

The civ is meant to be heavily infantry focussed, but the tech cost reduction and free wood, are still not enough to justify an infantry civ. Especially considering their support unit is meant to be either Skirms and/or EA. Both of which are food heavy, on top of an already extortionate food heavy infantry line.

While the tech cost on infantry does hold infantry back for most civs in the majority of cases, the lack of any infantry bonuses, still does not sufficiently support the usage of such an off meta unit.

This is a similar problem to the lazy/poor design of Bengalis. The devs dream up a civ that will use X, but then they dont make X functionally good enough to be a meta army comp.

The same thing happened with Sicilians. They create click bait civs, and then remould them into a generic clone of existing civs.

The same thing happened with Step Lancers. As much as I love the devs it makes me wonder if there are two separate teams that work on the balance of the game(gurjaras and hindus vs bengalis and drav), and/or a significantly different mindset between someone in management, and the actual balance teams

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I don’t call the Dravidians poor or lazy design civ
Sure they need some buffs in a lot of aspects with the current meta play
I think it’s a challenge civ for the devs, if they can make this civ work they can do any other civ
Right now I see the Dravidians as a meso civ without eagles; saying that I expect a major civ bonus that we never see before

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In short, totally useless.

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Are Japanese also a lazy design then?

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They have good knights in castle age and FU hcas in Imperial age, plus they came with the first game so definitely not lazy.
But what would happen if we added worse japanese #2 right now? I’d call that at least uninspired design.
Dravidians are also too similar to Malay now that they’ll receive Bombard Cannons.
Arb+halb+cannon civ with bad cavalry and strong on water. Malay #2 right there. At least Malay elephants are viable though.

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Wootz Steel at least activates their Light Cavalry line a little. I do think the cost could be reduced, though.

I also think their wood bonus is something you can take advantage of for Archer plays.

Those two civs play a lot differently purely because of the Malay’s age up bonus. That alone changes the civs enough.

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Wootz steel clearly S tier UT. It is literally the strongest UT for infantry and cavs to have, it doesn’t need any buff at all, and their UU (Urumi) is insane. Their eco not bad either.

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That ut ain’t that strong for their champs, they are equal to burmese champs in terms of output damage, only stronger vs heavy armored units which are 3-4 units, the ut is quite strong for their lc, despite the low armor it makes the unit really good at raiding.

The issue with dravidians is the lack of mobility, their strongest unit the EA is still too expensive, bbc is not going to help them at all, but at least they are not the gurjaras or hindustanis broken civs.

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Urumi is literally wrecked by ranged units, even skirms do more than well in post imp trash wars because deal 3 damage per shot.

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I don’t know about if it is really that hard to mass, but I literally lost a game to Dravidians player that went EA play in the castle age and I was full knights play I litrrally couldn’t do anything vs his EA mass and just resign. He even didn’t reach my base, not even once, I was full pressure at him but I couldn’t kill those elephants at all with few monks behind them. Their elephants archers are really top tier ranged unit and they attack faster.

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They still great with their role especially with the UT, they melt anything

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Very well expressed. I felt the same when people were just overhyping Urumis and Wootz steel. And its such a non-unique bonus and castle unit. Ideas copy pasted from other civs. I wonder how this civ is doing at sub 800 elos where other infantry civs are popular.

Anyway its a terrible civ and I think they’ll remain a bottom tier for a considerable amount of time, until the devs keep thinking that they can sell Elephant archers as a mainstream military option.

Ideally speaking Dravidians and Bengalis should have been merged into one. Both the eco bonuses (maybe moderated if needed), Bloodline, husbandry, thumb ring and parthian tactics available, monk tech tree same as Bengalis, Elephants and ships regenerate 15% hp, Only skirmishers attack 25% faster by default. Unique techs - Bengali ones as they are, Unique unit - Ratha, Team bonus: Dock extra pop space.
That would have been a decent civ - good on water and closed maps, average on most other land maps.

Exactly. And inspite of giving such a terrible tech tree, the devs overnerfed the Elephant archers somehow thinking the game would become full of elephants. I think a lot of the beta insiders who tested out these civs are BF TG players or very low elo players and hence they gave feedback that the Gurjaras are ok because of having weak barracks.

As far as steppe lancer story goes, even now if they switch either their cost OR attack+speed to the original stats, the units will become usable again. Glad that they’re taking the slow incremental approach with Coustillier, Shrivamsha riders now. And I hope Bengalis and Dravidians go through the path of Tatars, Khmer and eventually become a decent civ.

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I have been playing Dravidians since it came out. I love the civ. It is difficult to play though. The wood bonus is not enough. Even with good starts i have found myself short on wood.
They don’t have the eco to go archer->crossbow it is surprising how quickly you will run out of wood. MAA rush i have tried, that is also meh. Basically if opposite civ is cav and he plays well and gets even fair number of knights in your base it’s over.
You have to have good defense have pikes and skirms in your base. But they need a mass then you cannot be aggressive.
What i have found good so far is their scout rush is ok. That way wood is not pressured so much as going archers. If scout rush goes well then they have a chance to mass EA in castle or Wootz steel inf in imp. If not then they just die in the base.
So they do not have any early eco bonus helping them. The wood bonus comes too late and not enough.
Their power spike is after they get Wootz steel but they have very little to hang on to till then. Now they get BBC but that is very late won’t help.

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Agreed. Cost reduction makes sense… or give all infantry a slight charged attack… but not one that affects nearby units.

Aztecs don’t get Halberdier. So, they’re not that good at dealing with heavy cavalry.

True

That free wood is more like a naval bonus to support a fishing economy… which can support an infantry army

Meso civ without the economy bonus but with good navy.

Correct me if I’m wrong… it has a charged attack which damages nearby units as well. I don’t think the champion has that.

A lot of unique units are just buffed versions of the Knight / Archer / Swordsman / Scout / Cavalry Archer line with extra range / attack / melee armor / pierce armor / projectiles / attack bonus (or frame delay). Longbowmen, Leitis, Mangudai, Berserkers, Teutonic Knights, Boyars, Magyar Huszars, Janissaries.

Kamayuks, Huskarls, Arambai, Kerambit Warriors, Ballista Elephants and Throwing Axemen are truly unique.

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That’s why their only strength is pure water map. Even in hybrid maps, they are bad except for Nomads.

Swordsman with high PA and attack bonus vs archer.

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unfortunatly no civ will be a infantry civ when militia line and infantry is so poorly designed and have great handicaps over other staple gold units. Dravidians with wood bonus and FU are basically an archer civ in disguise, but that’s not dravidian’s fault, it’s infantry at its core which is flawed as a strategy prior of ultra late imperial age, when light cav/hussar is still better most of the time

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infantry is only poorly designed if you think they are supposed to compete with other gold units (IE cav and archers). when you discard that notion, they are no longer poorly designed.

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which is like saying “infantry suck only if you desire them to not suck, when you stop wanting them to suck, they no longer suck”. we are not talking eagles or halberds here of course which are not generalist.

obviously making infantry compete with other gold units would require a rebalance, which is not going to happen, but denie that their unit tipe is simply not as useful as cav or archer is ignoring facts.

no “infantry” classified civ plays with infantry outside goths which are a OTP and only because of huskarl being bonkers. outside or early rushes which are not scary for anyone basically (3 archers are much more scary than 3 MAA and cost less) they start to be a factor in very late game, when the 2K resource needed to get champions upgrades make it already a bad play most of the time and even infantry civs will 9 out of 10 times go for hussar line if they have the chance in late game.

infact pros basically almost never go for militia or infantry UU outside of memeing or very specific situations (specific counters like jaguars vs goths, militia vs eagles…) which says something about them

but we had this same discussion like a million time so it’s kinda boring atm

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there is a difference between “not as useful as x or y” and being POORLY DESIGNED. which was what your claim was.

civ classifications mean little - huns are listed as a cav civ and yet are more often played with cav archers at high levels. all classifications shows is where you have advantages.

because you keep spreading misinformation as if its FACT, when the only FACT is that you don’t LIKE ITS design and want to redesign it to fit what you think it should be.

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If they didn’t have armor ignoring infantry in imperial age, I’d ask to change medical crops to more toughness (HP/PA) and speed for militia line.