Dravidians are terrible

[DemiserofD]

@filtercoffee488

To be clear, I think that Dravs are really strong on water. They should be in the top 5. But that only applies to pure water maps, which very few people ever play. So that’s kinda irrelevant. A better stat would be semi-water or hybrid maps. I’ll check those in a while and post stats as well.

Do bear in mind, those stats are often based on a bare handful of games, so may not be a very accurate measurement. For example, on aoestats you can look at winrates by map; African Clearing has an average win rate of 50.00%±44.69, so they are sure it’s somewhere between a 5% and 95% win rate. Not exactly terribly useful, lol.

@filtercoffee488

When you say borderline OP, it makes me think of something like the malian 15% dropoff bonus, the original hindustani or persian bonus, or the original farming bonus.

I would say that the Dravidian bonus is pretty nice, but it is only a mid-tier bonus. I would take the malay bonus, or the Japanese bonus over the drav bonus any day.

That’s because those bonuses are far more stable, and can be used on pretty much any map (as long as you have water). Dravidians have an extremely volatile bonus, and it will become completely useless by late game. This is because of two reasons. First, fish will start to run out. The bonus is only useful if there is deep sea fish at a reasonable distance. Once you switch to fishing traps, the bonus is nearly useless. Second, water becomes even more unstable by late-game. Once you have a fleet of like 25 ships, you can raid with small groups of fast fire ships. Groups of 3-4 fast fires will do the job. Fishing ships are far too weak against them and will go down easily.
In comparison, japanese and malay bonus will work just as well (or better, in malay’s case) with fish traps.

Dravidians have no late game eco bonuses. In fact, they lack all late game eco techs. This leaves them with one of the weakest ecos by imperial age. Why? I am not asking for a strong late game eco bonus. But why is it this bad?

I suppose I should clarify that I mean it’s powerful when it’s available.

That said, a bonus doesn’t need to last the entire game to be very potent. Vikings are a perfect example, with getting handcart and wheelbarrow for free, which is broadly considered one of the best eco bonuses in the game. The fact Vikings fade off in the lategame doesn’t downplay their strength in the short term. And Dravidians do have at least one functional lategame eco tech: Medical Corps. Each regenerating elephant is roughly equal to having an additional villager working.

That said, I do agree that their bonus is much too variable based on map, which is why I’m advocating for more variety of pond types and greater consistency in how they appear, including some of the stuff I posted here: New Terrain Features - Shore Fish . By standardizing that with greater consistency of turtles and shore fish, Dravidians could become much better across all map types.