It’s pointless arguing with that guy, in my opinion. He wants to sacrifice viability of a civ for flavour. He was saying that Dravs can just work around their Knight-Mangonel-Skirm/Pike weakness, till I listed like 5 pro matches where that push (or a related variant) just ended the game. But that evidence doesn’t seem to have done anything either. He needs to play Dravs a bunch of times before he realizes the issue, we can’t explain something to someone who lacks a fundamental understanding.
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Another alternative would be moving wootz steel to castle age, and replacing medical corps with something better for imperial age.
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Yup! Good suggestion. But for castle age the tech needs to be cheaper too. Dravidians won’t even need to go imperial for a long time. They would only need to manage one or two early castle age pushes by opponents. Medical corps is useless either way. No player is going to make elephants without food eco bonus. It can stay as it is.
Now a bunch of morons will jump claiming it will be OP.
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Lets see what he says about this suggestion since the flavour will not change. It is a good suggestion too to hope to survive castle age. The player can boom without being cornered completely since he knows what to do to push back against cavalry. It makes sense to put down a stable with woots for light cav. The reckless aggression by Jordan to put monastry and siege workshop forward with crappy monks cost him all the bonus wood and gold collected. Such reckless play can be avoided.
I like the suggestion of exchanging kshatriyas with Dravidians. But lot of your arguments seem to indicate a player should be perfect in game play. AOE2 is best for flexible players who play with options for when they are aggressive and when they are defensive despite what civ they have. But Dravidians don’t have that and that is the core problem. They have a very fixed play style with power spike in feudal start reaching its zenith in mid-feudal then tapering down. As soon as castle age hits, it just nose-dives since there is no stone or cheap castle bonus for defensive play nor there is bonus to go on offense against heavy cavalry like goths.
You are basically saying “you have to be extremely lucky to win with Dravidians”. It is impossible to anticipate what goes wrong. Jordan wanted to surprise with a push and then tower off the gold. Did you watch the following match Jordan vs MBL? If the opponent massed Knights, Dravidians are dead.
Skirm + Knights = Dravidians + Dead
lmao, yeah. People keep saying “Wootz steel, Wootz steel” like it’s something will instantly will the game, we don’t see that reflected even in late game team games.
If you have glass cannon units, you really need more dps to balance it out. All dravidian units are glass cannon units. Yes, even their Elephants. But they don’t have sufficient dps to exploit the snowballing advantage of glass cannon units. A Dravidian EA will barely survive a single knight (with like 10 HP out of its over 200 HP left). If they have knights and skirms, your EAs are dead. Also, you just can’t have an entire civ be glass cannon units. It just doesn’t work.
I was about to write about the rigid play style, but you have explained it well. You have one castle age option. That’s the archers. Your enemies know that you have only one option. A single battle elephant costs almost as much as two knights, you can’t upgrade them, and all the investment you put into them is a waste. If you make those, your opponent can just add in more knights. Or a single monk.
Okay, I’m going to write a whole post about how elephants are treated in this game. Elephants and militia line have the shortest end of the stick, and it really upsets me.
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Except for ballista elephants, all other Elephant units including the persian war elephants are designed as vegetables to hack and slash for trash units. There is no point in spending gold on them. Their speed itself makes them unviable units due to monks converting them and turning them against you. So its not a viable offensive unit. Nobody makes them. Siege elephants are better since monks don’t convert them so easily.
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That’s fine. When you have knights as an option, you can use them as and when needed. Even if its knights without bloodlines.
Since they don’t get skirms with +2 p.armor. Having knights doesn’t mean a civ will be good even if it lacks important upgrades on other units in castle age. And Burmese is a terrible example as its a bad civ, probably a bottom 10 and many people have discussed several possible buffs and workarounds to get past the skirm armor weakness. And still its much much much better than Dravidians.
Dude, like you’re talking about 55+ mins. 90% of the games end before that. The meso civs which you claim to have a problem in late late game will be enormously ahead until then even in the rare cases where game hits 50+ min. Gurjaras don’t even have pikes, lack last armor on skirms and lack last attack on hussar and are yet considered as a broken civ because of how strong their CASTLE AGE is.
If you don’t have important generic unit lines like knights or CA, the only alternative will be to give a HUGE food eco boost so that they’re able to race ahead to imp. Like lumberjacks generate food at 4:1 or gold-miners generate food at 2:1 or something like that. Or military bonuses like ranged units produced faster or crossbow upgrade free or fletching and bodkin arrow free. Bonuses of huge significance and value.
Dravidians are bottom-4. You are implying like they are not bad and totally in a fine state. There were 3 types of comments, one suggesting buffs to make EA usable, one suggesting knight or a knight alternative (like Shrivamsha riders as a regional unit or melee rathas as a regional unit and so on) OR rework of unique unit so that they’re cheap, resistant to archers while being fast. In either case, very strong eco boost is ALSO needed.
If you’re opposing buffs to EA, and changes to their stable, do suggest some redesign (however that is) to the civ as to how you feel will make them usable. Making points like you can do monk-pike-mangonel or meso civs struggle after gold runs out as an argument to justify the weakness of Dravidians feels like you’re recommending to leave the civ as they are which is a TERRIBLE idea.
Jordan couldnt get enough archers to dive under tower in that much amount of time after doing man-at-arms and thats BECAUSE dravidians dark age is generic and cheap man-at-arm upgrade is one of their few bonuses related to “early aggression” . Lets say they start with 200 wood as well, then you can modify the build such that they can hit feudal in about 8 mins and get 5-6 archers with fletching very soon and do damage. With the bonuses they have currently you CANT do any damage from their early aggression. Its a very little bump insufficient to get value and compensate enough for the awful castle age that follows.
That’s what happens if you try to play aggressively from early feudal with a civ that barely gets any bonus and lacks important unit lines. Bugum eco was better BECAUSE Jordan couldn’t do damage with all his military investment and that’s because DRAVIDIANS ARE AWFUL. If Jordan had a civ like Britons, Ethiopians Bugum would have been down by 5-6 vills. A civ like Vikings, Mayans and Jordan would be economically much ahead just because of forcing the tower.
Dude, the other player is not going to try to convert your light cav. They’re going to target your Elephant archers or any other unit you have on field. The light cav has to be fast enough to run, snipe the monks and run away from Camels or pikes or other enemy units.
The weak cav and thereby the strong archer civ. The knights are a meat-shield and a siege sniping unit. With strong crossbows firing from behind, the weak knights might die but would take out the opponent’s knights while preserving your archer numbers.
Worst possible understanding of the game. Skirms will just run away from elephants, even siege can fall behind till the next monk comes forward to convert the husbandry-less elephants. 120f, 70g will go down the drain as those get converted in no time. Knight >>> Light cav. Till 45 mins of the game, gold isn’t an issue. You need strong military that adds a lot of value for its cost. And Knights simply are one of the best in castle age.
Take any top player series with open maps (from any tournament) and find if there’s a set without any knights.
No its not. It just makes their late game stronger with 30 food champs, 60 food Elite Elephant archer etc. but the early-mid castle age would still remain vulnerable. Eco bonus means something generic that helps them hit next age faster. Like Aztecs carry capacity or Vikings free wheelbarrow and handcart, Poles generating gold out of stone mining and getting instant food from Folwark farms to name a few.
Kshatriyas works great for Gurjaras because they’ve a good long lasting eco bonus and very strong military units like their Camels and Shrivamsha riders even before Kshatriyas.
Agreed. Just gave it one last try.
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This may also be interesting and makes really powerfull light cav in castle age. The problem is only that the difference probably wont be that big in tpurnaments levels since pros often do not invest into a castle.
I think there are many more alternatives:
- 300w per age
- free balistics
- barracks tech half price replaced with no food cost
- barracks tech half prince replaced with barracks+range techs half price
- Add redemption and fervor
- Skirms and EA are also produced faster
- …
It mostly depends on what fits how devs and players want the civ to be played, what part of the ge they need buffs, and numbers adjusting…
I am not convinced that you absolutely need camels or knights to survive a skirm + knight push…
An xbows based composition should be fine. If you can micro, monks+skirms or pikes+mangonels too.
True, Dravidians early game in land open random maps is argubly:
- worse than 13 civs: mon, jpanese, lit, fra, azt, may, chi, vik,cel, pol, hin, boh, eth …
- similar to 8 civs: burm, vie, malay, khm, ben, burg, cmans bri
- better than 20 civs: ita, por, inc, per, mali, kor, mag, sla, bulg, got, hun, teu, byz, spa, gur, ber, tur, tat, sic, sar
So they are just above average. Not enough to make early damage against most civs. And they are even behind compared to many civs.
They need better dark, feudal, and/or castle age to compete in land open RM.
This is wrong and twisted. Weak knights + regular xbows lose to strong knights + regular xbows. Civs without BL do not necessarily have better xbows and most civs with BL have good xbows already…
This makes little sense. Sets do not always use the same civs on both. Pro play civs with good eco. If the civ is mainly archer civs, they usually make xbows, if the civ is mainly cav civ, they usually go knight. We need a tournanent with single pick fir the whole set on maps where eth/brits are strong enough (eg arabia) to prove your point this way.
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I mean, personally I’ve not seen Wootz Steel as OP, it’s a more expensive tech for roughly same effect as Garland Wars. Could be a fun powerspike in Castle Age too, sure. Would make your Light Cav actually act as a glass cannon Knight replacement. 11
I’m simply saying at that level small mistakes are punished. Even Memb was calling out mistakes constantly. If your civ is more unconventional and less forgiving (say, like Vikings and Mayans are, as an example), those mistakes add up much faster.
I skimmed it, so can’t say for sure. It felt like in the end Jordan gave up instead since he was throwing away so many units. Teutons are going to be trickier anyway if you’re more reliant on monks.
No, I’m saying there are more factors at play than pure simply civ vs civ matchups. How is that so hard to understand? It’s not a black and white situation, you cannot show games where Dravidians lose and definitively say that the civ sucks for that reason. I can link that Viper vs Jordan game again where Dravidians boomed into Urumis against (Chinese) Cavalier and won - by your logic I should now be able to say that Urumis are OP and Dravidians are fine. That’s not how it works.
And I said as much too, my point was that you counter Archers unconventionally, with Siege (and Monks, as you’ll be able to afford Redemption and convert any enemy early Mangonels too). You have to play around weak Archery Range/Skirmishers. Lategame, your counter is a Hussar spam, which while already doing fine vs Archers, is still unconventional since you’d often want to default to Skirmishers.
My point was your sentence, that every civ needs an answer to generic units. Don’t move your goalposts.
Not what I said and not what I’ve been saying. You can listen to other posters on the thread hysterically putting words into my mouth and get that impression, sure. I’ve already given my opinions on possible suggestions. Kshatriyas would be your eco boost (though locked behind a Castle), no?
I’m against making changes that remove their identity, which is how they’ve been designed. I also said that they could get a larger wood bonus. Maybe they can get wood and gold, like wood version of Ethiopians. Maybe their team bonus can be changed to something else - while Docks giving 5 pop space is nice in niche uses - that benefits them on land maps as well. I don’t know why they have a weak Monastery, I can see lacking Fervor for the ‘slow’ identity, but why can’t they get Redemption? (Is that a historical reasoning?)
Maybe Medical Corps can become a Team bonus, and Gurjaras get something less useful as a replacement, while Kshatriyas becomes Dravidians’s UT. 11
Sure, I don’t mind that. Probably allows for some cheeky immediate Barracks - Drush strategies too. Dunno if that would be OP or not, but values can be adjusted.
Wow, it’s almost as if you’ve now pushed the Skirms away so your Archers can advance (and snipe Monks). And if they want to fight, an Elephant will clear the Skirms.
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Japanese is similar. Chinese, Vikings, and Bohemians have worse early game than Dravidians.
I don’t see how Bengalis, Vietnamese and Malay have similar strengths. Dravidians is better than these 3.
Magyars, Huns, Bulgarians are equal imo.
They need better Castle Age and maybe better late Imperial too. Not better Dark age or Feudal.
fair.
Chinese is +2vils (starting feudal) and 10% tech discount, Vikings is free WB (around 1 or 2 vils?), bohemians is free gold mining and +100w from blacksmith.
Weaker than dravs.
Japanese is at least +200w in dark age (2 wcamps, 1gcamp, 2 mill). Often times not more
fair
Viet is 125w + archers hp. Bengalis is +2vils (starting feudal),Malays is +2vils(starting feudal) - 100f + 3 vil.minute.
Weaker than Dravs.
I think the Hun -100w put them behind until late feudal. Magyars and Bulgarians depend how much you invest in feudal (scouts).
But fine, why not.
Depends.
- if they get better early game they will inflict damage early, and castle age will be better with thus advantage.
- if wouldnt mind a better imoerial age, but people here asking for buffs seemed to believe that Dravidians late game was fine already, I didnt think whether it is correct or not.
- Better castle age is for sure an easy way to go
But where you buff them depends on how you want to design their playstlye. We could turn them into a early game powerhouse if it is important for players/devs to give them a mid game power hole.
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There are a couple of problems. First, early advantages aren’t utilized well be beginners and are used extremely well by the pros. We would end with another Chinese, which I don’t think is good. Also, people usually just don’t like early game civs. It always feels like getting wacked in the head when you are preparing to fight.
Kshatriyas won’t help. To get to that, you need to make a castle, invest 600 resources and wait. This is the early castle age. You need resources for: 1) 3tc boom+vil production from those tcs 2) blacksmith upgrades for your archers 3) University, ballistics, and chemistry 4) Eco upgrades 5) the actual army you are making
Kshatriyas is a technology that will only pay off in late caste/early imp. You have lost by that point. You will stand a way better chance if you invest those, 1250 resources into your army.
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Very reasonable response.
I think this thread is going on a circle now. We all know and agree Dravidians need something. And yet everyone is going on repeating same things.
Let’s see what we all or at least most of us agreed. And maybe I can propose something from there.
We agree Medical Crops needs to be buffed regardless of what other buffs Dravidians get. A lot also said they are just too focused on water while not enough option in land.
My suggestions are -
- Medical Crops effect change to “All elephant units +30 HP”.
- Team Bonus changed to Archery Range works 20% faster. Britons TB changed to Militia line +2 LOS. (proposed in a different thread).
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Not a problem for me. Koreans, Celts, Turcs, Malays, Dravidians, Bengalis, Chinese, Incas, Aztecs, Ethiopians, Burmese: these civs are not beginner friendly.
If we decide to make all civs beginner friendly, all those civs need rework.
Which is weird given how many people favor arabia instead of arena or hideout.
This one is most likely not for me, because I agree with most of it:
I only disagree on 2 things:
- chemestry is irrelenvant because only in imperisl age
- 3 tc boom is not what you should do in open land maps unless you (1) already have a confortable & ugpraded army or (2) turtle behind walls with monks & mango defense.
So both castle and 3TC boom are bad idea on eg arabia if you are going for an army, which is most of the time for civs without strong boom bonus.
Giving Kshatriyas as imperial tech to Dravidians is a only good idea if they need a better late game, I agree on that part too.
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I also have an unorthodox idea for those who really want to keep dravs as a slow civ. Make their elephant rams have like +1 melee armour, are slightly faster, have slightly more hp, and do slightly less damage to buildings. Oh, and slightly buff medical corps to 30 hp per min or so.
Now, if they go for knight skirm push, these will soak up all the attack from skirms and even knights. They can also directly attack skirms and knights. But the opponent has counters in the form of mangonels, pikes, camels and any other anti-cav unit. They also shouldn’t have too much HP, so a few knights should easily take them down. This will be the ultimate slow push, so any enemy with decent scouting will see it coming.
Which is weird given how many people favor arabia instead of arena or hideout.
Maybe I wasn’t clear. People do like early aggro. They just don’t like civs which have a significant advantage in early aggro. Examples include incas and goths before nerf.
This one is most likely not for me, because I agree with most of it:
Then we agree on the core premise. That’s good enough for me 
Yeah, my bad. Chemistry is in imperial, so that doesn’t count. As for 3TC, I was considering team games as well. To elaborate on that, Dravs have no chance playing as the pocket. You just can’t do it, you have no mobility. But when playing as flank, you need constant military production and forward castles for map control first. Your pockets will be booming at this point. Right after, you need to boom and let your pocket cover for you a bit. Kshatriyas are terrible for this, as you won’t have it during the early stages, for that forward push and castle placement. Right after that, when you place your tcs and start pumping out vils, you’ll need a lot of food. Outside of asking your pocket to give you food at this stage, you’ll have to sacrifice military production, booming, or your army/territory.
Also, remember that Dravidians don’t get stone shaft mining and gold shaft mining. That gold and stone are a bit more expensive and time-consuming to gather in this case. I don’t know what was going on in the plan when they decided that Dravs get basically no late game eco upgrades when their units are so expensive to create.
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I think you took off on a tangent here buddy. Its funny that armoured elephants have negative armour. But armour buff won’t happen. If Armoured elephants are buffed with Armour, then all civs with Armour elephants will need to be buffed.
Let me explain taking the example of ‘battle elephants’. Dravidian batte elephants have the exact same specs as every other civ. They are the worst in the game since they lack bloodlines and husbandry. If we try to buff ‘battle elephants’ we will buff Dravidians, Bengalis, Burmese, Khmer, Malay and Vietnamese. So if we want to buff armoured elephants, we end up buffing all the Indian civs which is a bad idea and probably won’t happen since the player base is full of customers who know only knight meta. Gujjaras will kill any civ by mid castle age after Kshatriyas is researched even on arena. Gujjaras will be producing them cheaper with attack bonus. Castles won’t guarantee support in castle age. Team game balance will shift from knights to elephants. The same thing which happened to khmer elephants will happen to all armoured elephants making them useless and another vegetable elephant unit. Another aspect of buffing the Dravidian armoured elephants is Dravidians don’t have meaningful food bonus to make elephants in the first place. With their niche fishing bonus when game is played on land maps they cannot even produce their power unit the elephant archer in castle age in meaningful numbers. Elephant archers are the cheapest elephants in the game now and armoured elephants the costliest. So Dravidians will not be able to produce armoured elephants in meaningful numbers.
I love the change of Dravidians getting ‘woots steel’ in castle age. It definitely makes for a more nuanced game play and a power spike before the cavalry civ goes to imperial age. But that in itself is not enough since defending early and mid castle age aggression with one TC and multiple castles is very hard on your economy. What Dravidians need is either a modest food bonus like carry +5/+10/+15/+20 food in subsequent ages. Or 15/20/25/30 percent food discount on all military units to replace the current fishing bonus. Team bonus of docks and 200 wood is enough for early water aggression. The fishing bonus is redundant even on water/hybrid maps now. What Dravidians need is a food bonus to be able to rush things early in any age. In castle age though, they have no choice but to defend and boom. They could put up a castle early, hunker down, gather resources with single TC and castle defense then research ‘woots steel’ in mid castle age. Once they have the technological upper hand, they can push out in late castle age. Once their push gets going, they can put out additional town centers. They may enter imperial age last. Since they lack imperial age tech like mining upgrades and siege engineers, this power spike for them is better than fast imperial.
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I like most of these bonuses. 300w per age is great but I’d rather prefer incremental increases like start with 100 extra wood and then 200 in feudal, 300 in castle age, redemption+fervor good for closed maps, no food cost on barrack techs isn’t much of a buff but rather a shuffle of discount, Range techs -50% would be great. Free ballistics could be an excellent compensation for the lack of mobility on open land maps but could probably be a bit overpowered for water and some hybrid.
Really depends on what you’re considering as early game. Is it like 9-12 min time window in RM? I wouldn’t agree they’re weaker than civs like Huns, Magyars, Gurjaras, Bulgarians, Teutons outside this time window.
Exactly and even if you do some damage, you can’t go for the kill in early castle age. The lack of knights limits possibilities of an early cav-siege push.
The person to whom I was replying had mentioned something to the effect that knights are unnecessary for non-cav civs and why do them when they would lose against the stronger knights. My point was its not a heads-on knight vs knight battle but prevents cav player from opening knight-skirms or knight-monk-siege. Even in your case, if the opponent is investing into the same units as you are that’s fine but if they get a lot of value from much fewer army as it usually happens against Dravidians, that’s a huge drawback.
A SET refers to a best of x games contest between two top players, not a single map game. What I meant is, in any tournament with open maps, in a best of 5 or a best of 7 SET between 2 players there will be at least more than 1 game with knight play. Like Tatoh vs Hera BO5 semifinals RBWL is a SET, Mr.Yo vs Villese RMS Cup 2 BO7 is also a SET, TheMax vs Dragonstar Warlords qualifier Best of 5 from earlier today also A SET. In every SET like that, you’ll definitely see cavalry civs being drafted and knights being played.
In general ALL open map tournaments that have happened thus far in the PAST have seen knights in a Best of 5 or Best of 7 set. Go through S tier tournament archives on liquipedia and see for yourself. What you’re saying is there “could” be a tournament where knights might not be necessary with a one-dimensional map pool favoring strong archer civs. And even on those maps you’re suggesting Brits/Ethiopians yourself and not Dravidians, which is the whole topic of discussion.
IN CASTLE AGE. Meso not having answers to 1 hr+ hussar spam and Dravidians not having answers to some generic units in CASTLE AGE is not the same thing. This isn’t a political debate, try to understand the gist of the conversation. The whole discussion started like - Dravidians don’t have an answer to certain generic compositions in castle age followed by “not all civs need answers to everything, meso has problem at so and so time in imp”.
Like I said before, if you dont want them to have answers in early-mid castle age propose super strong buffs so that they can get far ahead like the meso civs do.
Right. So what I was suggesting is that you propose one or more of these changes and why you feel that’s sufficient for the lack of knights and is a better balance change because it addresses the weakness while maintaining the civ design. Without your balance proposals, if you only oppose the “design” change, its not obvious as to what changes you want on this civ.
I don’t quite understand this. Are you trying to say that Elephants can kill skirms when skirms try to snipe monks? My point wasn’t that elephants can never kill skirms or elephants can never be used against skirms. I was just trying to emphasize that Elephants cant REPLACE knights as the anti-ranged unit because of the speed and cost limitations and that light cav are a lot less effective than knights for early-mid castle age because of 40 less hp. The Dravidian stable simply isn’t usable.
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This is golden.
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If Dravidians wanted to pump archers or skirms faster, they can put down 2 archer ranges as soon as they reach feudal age. That is what the wood bonus enables on land/hybrid maps. I’m sorry to say it. But I the faster archery range will not work. What Dravidians need is a food eco bonus. Any elephant civ needs a food eco bonus. Otherwise the opponent knows they can’t go elephants. The game becomes fixed. If they have a food bonus, they can spam light cavs too as a surprise play in feudal age. They could switch to archers in castle age for defence with the gold saved or mine stone and put castles around base as a solid defence against cavalry push.
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