Dravidians are a poor/lazy designed civ

I understand that, but it is the design of the Indian civs
I’m not saying that is wrong or right, from all the new civs the only ones that are Cav focus are the Hindustanis and the Gurjaras

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Focuses on camel more. Cav also have a little focus for both of them but they are light cav. So more specifically, camel and light cav civ.

BTW, adding knight or a heavy cav to either Dravidians or Bengalis will be actually good imo. In that way all 4 Indian civ will have different stable.

Hindustanis - Scout+camel
Gurjaras - Scout+UU+Camel
Dravidians - Scout+knight+BE (typical ROTR civs)
Bengalis - Scout+BE

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If Dravidians gets the knight line, I think they should get it without the upgrades due to them having wootz steel and also because it would be nice to see more than one civ with the knight line but not upgrade them.

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I don’t like the idea of Dravidians getting knight line; they just need their light cav line to be usable. As it is, if you don’t go scouts in Feudal, there’s basically 0 reason to ever build stables after that. The other civs that lack knights or the Cavalier upgrade at least have other strong stable units that make stables worth building.

As for Wootz steel, it may as well not affect any of their stable units. In any case it’s not enough to make them viable, and removing its effects from cav would give the devs flexibility to buff Dravidian stables in a more conventional way.

Also, I don’t really mean to get bogged down in this, but having finally at least watched this series, just wanted to comment on 1 thing:

The samurai in that game were far more a matter of convenience than compositional optimization, and light cav or generic swordsman would have filled that role just about as well. In other words, TaToH had already invested into several castles for map control/trebs, so it was easier to make Samurai when he needed a melee unit/skirm killer than build several barracks or stables. So I’d take something like this as evidence that Samurai isn’t completely useless, but it’s far from showing that it’s anything but a highly niche and situational unit. Even looking at their performance, while I grant that TaToH trickled them at times, they really didn’t accomplish anything, even when Jordan’s army was mainly Skirms. Also both the map (high food availability) and civ matchup (being against one of the few civs with both bad cav and a melee inf UU) favor a samurai sighting far more than a straight land map/different civ match would.

Also, similar thing in the 5th game, Jordan made ~5 Jags but was teching into swordsman line as his long term answer to Ghulam.

On the whole though, I recognize that you do put decent effort into showing that even niche infantry can get a little bit of showtime. Not enough that I wouldn’t eventually want them to get a small buff, but for now, I’ll accept it as is.

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Yeah, of course. They should not have any Imperial age upgrade in stable anyway.

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BTW, adding knight or a heavy cav to either Dravidians or Bengalis will be actually good imo. In that way all 4 Indian civ will have different stable.

Hindustanis - Scout+camel
Gurjaras - Scout+UU+Camel
Dravidians - Scout+knight+BE (typical ROTR civs)
Bengalis - Scout+BE

This would be cool. As you say, it’d make them all unique from each other, and Dravidians do deserve some heavy cavalry historically speaking (Bengalis definitely shouldn’t get Knights though).

I do worry that with Knights Dravidians risk becoming even more similar to Japanese though.

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my only point was to show that infantry units are seeing more use lately, and all these claims of “infantry never ever see use” is gross exaggeration at best. are they mainstream like knights and archers? no. but short of a complete balance overhaul they never will.

the playoffs for that tournament also saw berserk and karambit use. and if i looked further i’d probably b e able to find other infantry uu usage.

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The incoming PUP changes are going to shake the meta a bit, especially the full-archer play
We’ll see how this change will impact melee units, particularly infantry units

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Honestly, infantry is in a pretty decent spot and you can justify playing LS in castle age more than ever.
At this point I wonder if xbow or knights are just TOO STRONG instead of the other options being too weak

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I wouldn’t say Dravidians are totally useless.
But yeah meso without eagle is pretty much useless. So I don’t think it’s fair to call Dravidians meso without eagle.
Unless you have insane eco like the Vikings, who still got knights for early castle.

considering that ranged units and cavalry are supposed to be stronger then infantry? i don’t think they need MUCH in the way of nerfs. I’d maybe consider increasing the cost of the cavalry armor upgrades or husbandry as a way to soft nerf cavalry.

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That could be a good nerf for Cavalry, it may come in the next update
I would also reduce the accuracy of the Archer line, and increase it with the upgrades to crossbowman and arbalester

Or Malay. They are kinda Malay tech tree with Japanese bonuses. Some can even argue with Ethiopians.

Cumans and Teutons will love it if it is husbandry. Edit: This will be an indirect nerf to CA civs as well as elephant civs . So maybe do something knight specific nerf.

Hera also wants knight for Dravidians. Just knight with no Cavalier.

Dravidians gameplay is almost same as Japanese and Vikings. Early wood bonus like Japanese, Fishing ship bonus, FU Arbalest and infantry UU which is buffed version of Champion. I am okay with similarity in gameplay but I hate total sameness. Bengalis is bad civ but it is played different from other civs. Gurjaras is also very unique civ. On the other hand, Dravidians is equal to Japanese.

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Kind of an iffy list except the last 2 IMO. Especially the inclusion of Celts, although I don’t particularly mind the buff he mentioned.

On topic, maybe giving Dravidians knight would be okay (kinda boring, but effective), but lacking both husbandry and bloodlines would make it a shaky option at best, and and their Battle Eles (and Imp stable in general) would still be unusable.

I see where you’re going with this, but unless they get Husbandry and/or BL there’s still almost no reason to go for stables, except as a surprise tactic (even then, kind of bad). (Perhaps you mentioned it in an earlier post, so my bad if I missed it). Saracens at least can go for credible knight play with FU Castle Age knights, and Saracens/Hindustanis/Gurjaras have other strong stable units. IMO giving Dravidians decent light cav is far more essential than giving them bad Castle age knights. And either give something to their BEs to make them viable, or scrap the unit altogether.

If we’re giving knight to anyone I would prefer Bengalis since they actually have the upgrades to make it worthwhile, but lacking Cavalier would at least preserve their lategame identity of having weak cavalry.

Except that Japanese is better in every single possible way till now. The only better thing will be getting BBC in the next patch.

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Dravidians early game is actually stronger than Japanese with +200w per age, cheaper Barrack upgrades, +25% faster attacking Skirmisher. Except early game, Japanese civ introduced in 2000 is basically better version of super new 2022 Dravidians civilization.

The issue is infantry civs have to “justify” themselves in a way that other unit lines don’t. The baseline for infantry is simply too weak and needs to be brought in line with the other unit types. Because as is most infantry civs give up on infantry and go do something else, usually archers. I realize this point is quite obvious but the major takeaway is that the last year of infantry buffs still have not come close to closing the gap.

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Correct. People go around suggesting bengalis get better champs or better archers or what if they got knights ect ect ect. It doesn’t matter, this civ is so poorly designed that they will remain truly awful until either overhauled or Battle Elephants get the help they sorely need. The civ is completely focused on battle elephants, without any clear BE support unit or decent other gold options. This would be like if a civ had Britons-level focus on a unit like scorpions or petards. If the unit you’ve centralized your entire civ around doesn’t work then the civ will be a broken mess.

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Compare the champ to the Obuch at the same exact cost. It’s hilarious how much you can buff a champion. And Poles aren’t even usually played as an infantry civ. That’s saying something.

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