When you have small data from ranked, even a few matchups like Persians vs prebuff Tatars or Vietnamese or overnerfed Cumans could tilt the stats a lot. They were definitely strong but not to the extent of considering them broken on land maps. I think that balance change was for Nomad and hybrid which can be fixed removing the dock working faster bonus.
because they are fast. They can outrun a big mass of skirms , run away from monks when they’re in low numbers, chase down foot archers, stray villagers and even most of the infantry. If you invest into war wagons, there’s a very high chance of getting value out of it. None of this is true for elephant archers. And yet they cost an awful lot of resources.
Yeah, but they don’t do the “tanky archer” thing very well. They melt against halbs, and they trade evenly against skirms. Except in closed maps team games, or death matches, there is literally no reason, ever, to make this thing. Even with their slightly higher damage output (roughly the same as cav archers), they only do a fraction of the damage output of crossbows with the same amount of resources.
So, the Grand Melee happened recently and Dravidians got some time on the spotlight. How did they do?
Thanks to u/vroger11 on reddit, we have the following graph.
Out of 6 matches they were selected on, they only won a single game. Additionally, there wasn’t a single time when dravidians were banned or sniped. This makes them the worst civ along with tartars in this event.
Also, hindustanis are a funny case in this event. They don’t have a single win, but that’s because they only played a single match. They were sniped or banned in all the other cases. It’s a similar case with poles as well.
Portugese seems to be the new powerhouse civ, after their recent buff.
Big guns like Tatoh, Viper, Liereyy lost because of this shit civ and a few equally shit civs like Incas and Goths. Anyways its a very small data because there were only 8 sets overall, so can’t make much out of this. Is there any chance you can include the last 2 rounds of qualifier and replacement qualifier data in this?
As far as Hindustanis is concerned they were played just once and faced an equally powerful Poles and that too it was the only whitewash set. The thing to be noted is that they were either banned or sniped almost in all the sets.
Wish there was a visualization tool like this for all the tournaments. The actually broken Mayans will stand tall in all of those tournaments across many years while the others fluctuate.
yup, quite versatile. Top civ on water and closed, above average on hybrid and semi-aggressive maps too.
The only win came from Daut doing a pre-cooked GL strategy by the book. Once the surprise element was gone, Viper wasn’t sure of even trying and screwed up. I wish there was a restart availed by Viper. Lierry also mentioned he expected the same strategy.
I didn’t make the graph. As I said in that comment, all the credits go to that person I linked. But I don’t think incas are anywhere close to being bad as dravidians are. They are so solid that when Hera made a video on how to counter all the civs, his only tip against incas was “play a solid game”. They have the kamayuks which, in my opinion, is the strongest infantry anti-cav unit. Their eagles are solid against archers and if you make the militia line against eagles, they have slingers which are hand cannoneers which you have from castle age. And lastly, their villagers are a lot harder to kill than every civ out there in castle age.
Yeah, people -justifiably- like to hate on Poles a lot. But they aren’t that great on open maps, where the folwark is a huge liability and leaves your vils exposed. Hindustanis are crazy good on pretty much every map out there and was arguably stronger than Gurjaras even before the nerf.
Honestly, I wouldn’t have minded a buff to Portugese. This might’ve been a bit over the top, but we’ll see in a while, I guess.
I think that the strategy was good enough that it’s difficult to prevent even if you know it is coming. That is, if you played with a generic civ. Viper screwed that up which was honestly a bit disappointing. He’s my favourite player, so I wanted to see him in the finals.
I actually feel this is a good change and prefer this bonus stays for a while. We have a new top tier civ and I’d rather nerf Feitoria build time or organ gun training time/cost to balance them on closed maps. Before this change Portugese were sub-meta on almost everything which is worse.
For standard land maps, I agree that Incas are much better than Dravidians. In general, they’re just not a strong civ on any map. Like Dravidians are probably top-5 or at least top-10 on water maps like Islands, Northern Isles. Incas are not even a top-15 on any map. They’re one of the least drafted civs in all tournaments.
Military is fine. Good mobility, good counter units and good monk tech tree. But horrible eco. They have almost negligible eco bonus, probably a bottom 5 overall. One small bonus change or addition and they’ll actually be a solid civ because of this military.
Yes and some of the legacy civs as well.
Its not. You of course get the middle by doing that strategy and if it was some regular civ that has knights you can take advantage of the fishing eco to carry over the faster castle age timings and get even further ahead. But with this civ, you can’t do anything like that. Eventually the lack of cavalry and mobility will show up and you’ll lose. You’d still win against very average or below average eco civs like Koreans or Sicilians but not against most of the common tournament picks.
This is a castle age bonus that I had proposed in another thread. To make infantry a viable alternative to cavalry and archers, Dravidians should have infantry that outdoes heavy cavalry in castle age and not in late imperial age after ‘Woots’. I had proposed a replacement for medical corps for the same price.
“Researched Barrack techs effect is doubled”
will be a very good replacement for medical corps. It means supplies, squires and arson will have double the effect when researched by Dravidian player. Halbs will have speed of 1.2 tiles per sec. Militia line will be really cheap at 30 food 20 gold similar to Gujjaras. They get an additional +2 against buildings making up for woots not affecting buildings. Urumis will have speed of 1.26 which will be good enough to have the power spike Dravidians need against cavalry.
Good for late castle age. They’ll still be awful in early castle age but on maps like fish n fish or morass if they take the fish control and hit castle age fast, they can do some castle drop into unique tech infantry play.
I hope this change comes through, 30 food 20 wood 1.09 speed long swords seem promising.
Other changes similar to this could be barrack techs impact elephant units. Makes elephant archer play quite viable.
If Dravidian player is ahead, he should keep making archers and get more eco kills. Drop a castle on face.
If Dravidian player is behind, halb with skirms defense against knights+archer/skirm push. Castle stone and spam urumis.
Dravidian weakness will be Siege. The lack of redemption makes monk play a risky proposition. Dravidians infantry/archers/monks have no chance. Only Urumis look capable against siege and Knights. Their tech tree really needs “Redemption” bad for any monk play.
Whilst it’s kinda true, Dravidians can make their own siege with the extra wood bonus.
And in the lategame they have urumi and BBC they can use against siege.
Imo their biggest weakness is still the lack of mobility.
Ofc you can try to add something different in compensation. Like medical corps if it would affect more units and/or had a bigger effect on the eles could be an attempt to make slow pushes (and defence with skirms/archers) more effective.
Ofc better monks can help in defence against pushes. I just don’t think Dravidians want to be the ones to be pushed anyways. For me it looks more they want the ones to push the opponent…
They can get this far ahead only on water maps. Otherwise you’ll probably be up sooner by a minute at most when you do regular castle age build and that too only when you get value from your early feudal aggression. Can’t do a castle drop on face because u might not even be sooner to castle age when you include stone collection as part of your feudal age build. Its not a eco powerhouse like Poles, Burgundians or Hindustanis.
If as the Dravidian player you’re behind, just call it. Otherwise you’ll just try try and try, in the end you’ll die eventually. With that tech tree there’s no scope for comeback, no powerful units.
Never make urumis when you’re behind man, they’ll even die to skirms. 2 mangonel ground attacks and a bunch of them will die, half of them will be with low hp and knights will clean them up. If you made like 40-50 of them, knight player won’t fight and pull back to their base. You can’t do anything with urumis in opponent base. Even unresearched tcs will wipe them out.
Without castle age tech applying to elephants, “Medical corps” should be a civ bonus in place of +15 fish carrying capacity. Dravidian castle age can play out as a slow defense while castles are in the process of being built and Urumis are created. Ele archers have so much HP. Ele archers can stall a siege push with Knights if Monks are backing them. Monks can turbo heal elephants(with medi corps) as well as convert knights. Once a castle is up, Urumis can come out. Urumi has speed with squires to force a fight against knights and can easily handle siege(it takes 3 hits from Urumi alpha strike to kill mangonels). A siege bonus of +5 would help of course to kill it in 2 strikes making Urumi a hard counter to siege.
Once a urumi gang is out, it gives time to research the Unique technology too. The technology will double urumi speed to 1.26 and building damage to +4. Thus giving Dravidians the option of full castle age play. They can castle spam for map control till the other player reaches imp.
With the current technology set up, I don’t see a need for Dravidian player to construct castles at all, this bonus will give that incentive. Cheap 30 food 20 gold long swords are cool as well as a support unit against eagle spam. Thus LS can relieve the Urumis from task of defending against fast units and let them raid opponent eco.
Waste of resources, waste of resources, completely unnecessary and useless bonus. The problem in dealing with siege is not because of urumi taking longer to kill siege. Those units die so fast before even reaching the siege even if its only guarded by skirmishers. If you want Dravidians to be able to handle siege, they should either get redemption or knights for castle age and siege engineers for imperial age. In the event that they don’t get any of those and their uu is meant to handle siege, it should have favorable balance between speed, cost, hp and p.armor. Right now cost is too high for castle age, hp is less than long swords, 0 p.armor. Just increasing speed won’t magically make them usable. It will help them run away from fights but you can still only kill unguarded siege or villagers.
Once a urumi gang is out you have lost the game. You have invested 1000s of resources into something that’s going to die in no time.
why would you ever raid with urumis. Why do you want to spend 2x more food to produce units that would die much faster under enemy tcs, can’t even survive skirmisher fire. Hypothetically if you have the UT that gives 2x effect from Barrack techs, its much more effective to do long swords + skirms and you can take out enemy tcs without losing much army.
Here is a rework of Dravidian civ bonuses based on the strategies we discussed and games I played this Christmas weekend:
Dravidian Civilization bonuses
* [**CHANGE**] Receive 100 extra wood at the start of the game. [Open question]
* [**CHANGE**] Farms have 2 times the food as regular farms. (2 x 175 food)
* Barracks technologies cost -50%.
* Skirmishers and Elephant Archers attack 25% faster.
* Team bonus: Docks provide +5 population space
Unique units
* Urumi Swordsman: Melee infantry that can charge its attack.
(Open question? exchange splash damage for 80/90 HP like Obuch ??)
* Thirisadai: Warship that fires multiple projectiles
Unique technologies
Castle Age Unique tech : [**CHANGE**] Strike Corps - Barrack technologies effect is doubled.
Imperial Age Unique tech : Wootz Steel - Infantry and cavalry attacks ignore armor.
Tech Tree: [**CHANGE**] *Dravidian Monks have access to redemption.*
The new farm bonus is a replacement for +15 fish carry capacity bonus. The new farm bonus is essentially crop rotation baked in as a civ bonus. It saves 75 wood and 75 food by defering Horse collar to late castle age and farms will save 120 wood in feudal age. This will help Dravidians float wood and redirect villagers to food when they need to switch to elephants and later to Urumis. In water maps, it helps to create more ships without stressing out the land economy.
Strike Corps: The effect of researched barrack technologies is doubled. Supplies, Squires and arson will have double the effect on their military units. It will make Militia line cheaper and faster, Pikes and Urumis faster as well as building destroyers. The building attack bonus helps against lack of siege engineers.
