Urumi have no armour and too slow to deal that first blow with charge and splash damage. The fact that they are created in a castle makes them start from a distance against archers which makes their charge towards any ranged unit a slow march to death. A discount of -15 food to bring down cost to 50 food is nothing if you don’t have multiple castles spamming them. For all I care, they can increase urumi cost and improve its armour and/or speed.
Having good food bonus as a civ bonus and having woots steel in castle age will go a long way in balancing Dravidians civ. Urumi is currently a glass cannon. It needs to be faster when it has no armour to archers. Or probably it was designed as a defensive unit. I’m not sure.
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I think urumis were supposed to be the counter to siege. That explains their splash damage and alpha strike. You keep a few of them, and they’ll run towards Mangonels/Onagers/whatever and quickly take them out. Even though they are vulnerable to archers, they would get a kill if they can close the distance. Of course, this doesn’t work because they are far too slow, and your opponents know better than to have siege without any protection.
I think they need to speed up urumis, and give them something like the shrivamsha shield. In return, make them more vulnerable to heavy cavalry and more powerful against low melee armor units. Also give them a small bonus against siege. Oh, and change their attack abilities for that. Now you have a unit which can be used to raid, and snipe siege. However, you still need to go champions or halbs against cavalry.
Of course, this doesn’t solve the population efficiency problem with infantry. But oh well.
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@Akoskaaa10 Is it
- Give Dravidians Knights + Husbandry + Double Medical Corps Effect + Remove Cavalry from Wootz Steel?
or
- Give Dravidians either
- Knights (Scout Cavalry, Light Cavalry, Knights and, Battle Elephant at Stables) or
- Husbandry (Scout Cavalry, Light Cavalry, Elephant Archer, Elite Elephant Archer, Battle Elephant, Armored Elephant and, Siege Elephant move 10% faster - Thank you very much @JokerPenguin593 for pointing my mistake) or
- Double Medical Corps Effect (40 HP per min for Elephant Archer, Elite Elephant Archer, Battle Elephant, Armored Elephant and, Siege Elephant)
- While removing Cavalry from Wootz Steel after any 1 or 2 of the above has been added?
Because the statement is confusing. Sorry.
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I think is the first case. Anyway, husbandry also affects the 3 elephants
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Medical Corps should be a civ bonus
The new effect of Medical Corps could apply to all military units
I’m still for the opinion of not giving them Knights and Husbandry but I’m open to the possibility of the Elite Battle Elephant
I would like something else for them to be better in water maps, but not sure what. Maybe add a new building in the Imperial age to restore the HP of the ships, like a lighthouse similar to the Hindustanis Caravanserai
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All the points are very valid. But in practice without knights, dravidian castle age does not have any serious power spike. Though the idea of buffing medical corps is nice, Dravidians don’t really have any food bonus to make elephants. In the problematic castle age, Whatever food they have is needed to do an immediate cross-bow upgrade. That is the only unit of Dravidians which can do both offensive and defensive roles in castle age. Largely Dravidian players never put down stables. Their power unit ‘elephant archers’ come out from archery ranges. So they are not going to invest in a castle and then do Medical corps when their needs are basically met by archeries and barracks.
The only marquee bonus of Dravidians that attracts players is ‘woots steel’. It should be available in castle age. Then Dravidian players could choose to build a castle instead of spamming archers in castle age. I’m sure devs have been keeping track of how underwhelming medical corps is. They could switch both techs and their prices. Woots steel in castle age will legit be an awesome switch which medical corps can never be. It will make castle age defense viable for Dravidians and woots steel could be the power spike they need to push back knights and other heavy cavalry. It will also make their late castle age light cavs a good match against Hussar from opponent’s imperial age. Only when Dravidian light cavs are viable, there is any chance for battle elephant. Only when you have both armoured elephants and battle elephants pushing, ‘medical corps’ makes sense.
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@AlphaCreator727 Thank you for the reply. I have a few questions regarding your statements.
Currently they have 4 Civ Bonuses
- Receive 200 when advancing to the next Age.
- Fishermen and Fishing Ships carry +15.
- Barracks technologies cost -50%.
- Skirmishers and Elephant Archers attack 25% faster.
and 1 Team Bonus
- Docks provide +5 population space.
Do you want to add 1 more Civ Bonus or replace any of the current Civ or Team Bonus?
So 20 HP per min for all Barracks, Stable, Archery Range, Siege Workshop, Castle and, Dock Military Units?
So, Dravidian Elite Battle Elephant will be without
- Bloodlines (+20 HP)
- Husbandry (10% faster)
- Plate Barding Armor (1 Melee and 2 Pierce) and
- Heresy (Converted units/buildings die)?
Or, they get any 1 or 2 of the above Techs too?
So, at Imperial Age, Dravidians get
Like Caravanserai, Lighthouse that affects trade cogs (Heals and Speeds up) along with Unique Naval Unit Thirisadai?
or
Give them Lighthouse and Remove Thirisadai?
Really sorry for the long post.
Hi @Vallabesh, I’ll try to elaborate on my previous statements:
- About Medical Corps being a civilization bonus, I don’t think it should replace any other previous bonuses; giving 20 HP per minute to their EA, BE (one of the worst in the game) and Armored Elephants without Husbandry and Bloodlines is fine
- The new Medical Corps effect could apply only to barracks and stable units, but I’m all for all ground military units except siege, up to a point between 15-20 HP per minute (this would include Armored Eles). That would stack with the civ bonus to a decent amount of HP regen for a chonky unit with no Bloodlines.
- I understand Dravidians as the civ with the worst stable in the game with no imperial units, I would give them an EBE upgrade without any other upgrades, still one of the worst BE in the game but with HP regen and Wootz Steel (plus it’s " historically accurate" lol). If that’s too OP, then no EBE for them.
- In the Imperial Age they must shine in the water. The current state of the Thirisadai is not good in my opinion, either the developers need to improve them somehow (I’m not sure exactly how) or I propose a land building with an area of effect similar to the Caravanserai but only for ships; I’m more into the healing effect than the speed boost. But I suppose you can add something else in there, like increasing the rate of fire of some ships for example.
Let me know what you think and if I’ve cleared things up now
Regards
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This gave another idea…
How about extending theit barrack bonus (barrack techs are discounted 50%) to include their archery range techs as well? Thet could save a lot from crossbow upgrade, thumbring, elite skirms, arbalester and elite elephant archer…
3 Likes
Yeah! Thats a good idea. But they are an infantry and naval civ. They will not be given a civ bonus on archers, archery ranges or archery range techs. If done, Dravidian military buildings would look like a discount store.
Dravidian catchphrase “Get discount on all unit military techs at 50% off, Hurry Hurry Hurry”.
Player puts down stables ‘Bloodlines - NA’; goes to castle age ‘Husbandry - NA’, Goes to imperial age ‘Hussar - NA’
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I like Dravidians as they are. I hope the devs won’t touch them for a while.
The game needs more time to figure out the Urumi Swordsman.
Well, they do have block printing.
Vinfriss cancer post. It’s bad enough you infected and destroyed the aoe4 forum. Don’t come kill this one as well
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They’ll play literally as another generic fast ARB civ
And completely undoes the intention of the xbow/ARB nerfs
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One civ with better arb play wont change the overall effect of the xbow/arb nerf
And they already play as an archer civ but they dont have food eco for their food-based units.
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Sorry I wanted to say illumination. What exactly do you like about a civ with no mobility nor good siege nor strong enough and long lasting eco bonuses nor good monks. Simply unusable on open, any strategy you want to do with Dravidians on semi-open or closed or hybrid there are civs that have better bonuses to do them.
Unless you’re an Islands player I don’t see why anyone would like Dravidians in their current version.
And there’s nothing to figure out about a 0 p.armor unique unit that also costs a lot. At least you can make that argument if they had more than 1 p.armor or 1.25 base speed or costed 40 food, 10 gold.
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The cross-bow and arb nerf itself was unwarranted since its cavalry civs that dominate most of the games. The side effect was a bigger downgrade to Dravidian castle age play. The main purpose of the thread is to discuss any bonus which could give variety to Dravidian castle age play which can give them an advantage against skirm+knight push. So the suggestion of discounted cross-bow and arb is a valid one. We should discuss the bonus with respect to Dravidian castle age and not the whole gamut of civs and scenarios.
Their castle age power unit was supposed to be the elepant archer. But they currently take too much bonus damage from skirms. The food requirements to make elephants are very high and Dravidian food bonus helps them in only niche water/hybrid maps. They are also costlier than knights and slower to create which makes them harder to mass. they don’t do significantly more damage than a cross-bowman despite being 25% faster. So Dravidan options are limited to quick cross-bow upgrade and siege defence.
Dravidians need more options to either spam infantry like Goths in castle age or need a eco bonus like vikings to be able to survive early castle age while taking minimal damage. The legacy bonus of Indians of 15% faster shore fish collection was a better bonus. It was niche for shore fish maps but useful. The Dravidian version of +15 carry capacity is not as good and not very useful especially in castle age when they need to make elephants their only heavy cavalry unit. Without a high food bonus, Dravidian trash units like halbs which could do static defense against knights cannot be spammed.
Dravidan mid and late castle age is just as poor as early castle age since they don’t get any sort of power spikes. Their unique technology ‘Medical Corps’ is a joke. When Elephants are not a viable play due to poor eco and easy counters like monks, a unique technology to heal them is of no use in castle age. Medi corps should be inter-changed with ‘woots steel’ to give Dravidans a power spike in mid and late castle age. The cost of medical corps is affordable. The same cost could be the applied to ‘woots steel’ in castle age. This also incentivizes Dravidian players to put down castles instead of spamming archers in defense. Historicaly too woots steel was available during medieval ages before gun powder.
These 2 civ bonuses of Dravidans definitely need to be changed:
- +15 fish carrying capacity has to be changed to one among many of the food bonus being suggested above
- medical corps needs to be swapped with ‘woots steel’
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I have played over a hundred games with them. So have a lot of other people. There isn’t a lot more to be figured out.
Also, a lot of people have made excellent points about why their castle age is one of the weakest in the game. The statistics support this as well.
I hope devs listen to the feedback on this forum, and make some substantial changes.
Very long winded so stopped reading
This is my point. They aren’t meant to be a pure xbow ARB civ. Giving them range discount will simply pigeonhole them and is a boring buff that leads to boring gameplay
There’s literally tons of alternatives to this
Lol. Xbow tech cost increased. Discount has no effect? 
gtfo
As usual, they sure are dragging their feet.
Maybe Sicilians should get another nerf
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I meant for civs other than dravidians. Meta wont change because one civ buff.
But i understand your point, you dont want dravidians to feel similar to other archer civs with good infantry and lacking cavalry
In that case, one possibility (besides the already suggested swapping their UTs or giving them an eco bonus like faster shorefishing) woould be to give them an infantry upgrade earlier.
For example, “THS can be researched in castle age”. Notice that THS cost 50% for them too. This would be the infantry equivalent of burgundian castle age cavalier.
Castle age THS would be useful against knight+skirm pushes even without wootz steel. THS can be countered easily by archers but dravidians have decent skirms. The problem is that they dont raid as well as knights nor can prevent quickwalling as good as archers so they cannot be the main pushing force of dravidians.
If this is too OP (i dont believe so) then we could argue about giving them longswords in feudal age.
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If you can’t read long, you should be schooled. You can’t be sitting at home playing video games.