Yeah right. I think devs intentionally removed BL from one of three EA civs. And Dravidians is the chosen one. Historically it should be Bengalis instead.
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Devs just copied Vikings tech tree for Dravidians. They removed Knights and put Battle elephants in their place. The Tirisadai is a fat elephant long boat. This disappoints me since they only released 4 civs and could not take the effort to design them before development.
And removed CA and put EA in their place. And removed Ram line and put Armored elephant line. And removed Imperial Age Cavalier upgrade and put Imperial Age SO upgrade. And removed Heresy and put Theocracy. And removed Sapper and put Herbal Medicine. And removed Fervor and put Sanctity. And removed SE and put BBT. And removed Architecture and put Keep. And removed Gold Shaft Mining and put Guilds. And removed Crop Rotation and put Shipwright. And removed Treadmill Crane and put Halberdier. And last but not least, removed nothing and put Fire Ship line. (Didnât add BBC as they were added later).
Can anyone explain the âDevs just copy pasted Vikings tech tree for Dravidiansâ statement with evidence?
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Things to fix with Dravidians according to Hera:
Medical Corps: Top 5 Most Useless Technologies | AoE2 - YouTube Due to Medical corps, Dravidians donât get bloodlines. He suggests making 5 monks to achieve a better effect.
Hera suggests giving Urumis an extra Pierce Armour like some of us have discussed on the forum. And there are many other buffs suggested for Urumis to help them go well with the Dravidians play style.
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This was an idea to fix the problem of Woots steel being OP since it affected both cavalry and infantry.
This way the civ enriches the overall aoe2 experience as well.
Frank Paladins with Wootz Steel?
Japanese Infantry with Woots Steel?
Roman Legionaries with Woots Steel?
Sorry, no.
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One of the bigger problem I have with them is their Tech tree though. They donât have any of the late upgrades like stone shaft mining, gold shaft mining, and crop rotation.
If Dravidians donât win within like 15 mins, they need to push the game to imperial. They have nothing to end the game in castle age. Now they those upgrades have been made cheaper, itâs a big nerf to dravidians.
Why? Whatâs the logic behind this?
Iâve been watching Masters of the arena recently and Dravs have like 10% win rate. I donât consider tournament win rates as valid evidence for win rates, but this does leave a bad taste in my mouth.
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If wootzstel worked just like a 4th blacksmith upgrade (just like +2 attack instead of ignoring armor) then this would make more sense (though im still not sure would be good, didnt put much thought into this), but as @UpmostRook9474 said above, allowing other civs to have access to the ignoring armor abillity on all their melee units would be really really crazy.
Aztecs have +4 and it isnât broken. Wootz steel is fine, it is not substancially better than something like the slavâs Druzena or Aztec garland wars, or even japanese 33% bonus. You also need to remember that it is an expensive end-game tech. It is actually getting on my nerves a little bit when people keep claiming that the tech is completely broken, without any sort of evidence for that claim.
But yes, sharing that tech is actually bonkers. Thatâs an absolute no no. On top of being completely broken, it is also completely unnecessary. The dravidian team bonus right now is too strong imo.
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Make the tech costly. Infantry woots upgrade should be like 800 food and 800 gold. The cavalry woots upgrade should be 800 food and 1200 gold.
Dravidians will get it 50% cheaper for their infantry at 400 food and 400 gold.
If you happen to play as Dravidians and fall behind, the enemyâs advantage snowballs so quickly. Woots steel is very costly and Dravidians need to make investment in a castle for tech. But Dravidans donât get any useful castle units in castle age nor is building castles cheap for them. I make castles as Dravidians only for the discounted trebs when Iâm aging up to imperial. The choice is to queue trebs as soon as possible with the 200 wood or try to spam infantry then upgrade them to woots tech. So currenty woots steel is not a easy transition for Dravidians. With this tech tree change, Infantry will be a more viable option. Currenty, the play is mostly skirmishers and trebs. Then BBC to counter siege including opponent trebs.
If woots is split as for infantry and cavalry and made a team bonus, Dravidian infantry can be upgraded cheaply. Dravidian cavalry can be improved with bloodlines. Elite batte elephant can be added to tech tree without becoming OP. Other civs too will have options against civs like Romans and teutons with a Dravidian ally. Team games which are palladin focussed will become more diverse. I see this as a good way to boost infantry play as well.
Iâm sure a lot of players will love the USP of Dravidians being a civ that can share an armour ignoring tech with other civs.
All of this is true. Wootz steel is not particularly good for 1v1, although it is fantastic in team games. These are the problems, we agree on them.
What we donât agree on is the solution. There are like 50 reasons why wootz steel canât be shared.
42 of those is the interaction with other civs, which will quickly multiply. When you now make civ changes for Aztecs, Burmese or whatever, you need to think about Dravidians. Then you need to think about the precedent you are setting. Eventually, the value of Melee armour will be so low that they will have to completely rebalance the game around just Wootz steel.
This is not just about things becoming OP, it is about making the game almost impossible to balance. This is a dead end, my friend. Devs wonât even take a second look at this. Nobody with a good sense for game balance will. I recommend you try a different approach.
Elite Urumi Swordsman, as one of the best melee UU in the game, can only tier buffed Legionary which is not even a UU.Dravidians are really terrible
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There is always a cost. Thats is why I had quoted such very high differential gold cost 800 and 1200 for infantry and cavalry respectively. Booming civs like Bengalis with Elite Ratha can overcome aggressive civs like frank paladins in late game using woots steel. Look at the image above, Woots steel will have delivered 60 damage extra for 12 hits from Elite Ratha thus killing the paladin 1 vs 1.
Yup! Agree. Even with woots steel, a legionary beats Elite Urumi. I think the splash damage is skewing âMike - Zero empiresâ videos. But the range of 0.75 is too less to be able to have any effect in ranked games.
The castle age Urumi loses terribly against Roman long swordsmen. They are tied with Generic long swordsmen in 1Vs1 which means all that castle investment is a waste to produce Urumis.
I think this range attack of 1 tile like Kamyuk might be a good solution for the problem. Atleast Urumis will be able to deliver a stacked attack to an enemy with high HP and armour. To balance the unit, we can reduce the splash damage to 0.5 tiles.
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Wootz steel is not actually that powerful, it increases the damage of your melee units against generic military units by 3-5 damage(very nice against knight line), a handful of civilizations have some units with more than 5 armor, It has no effect against building(itâd way stronger if it did). Overall Iâd say Garland War is better since it also help vs building.
There was no need to nerf their cavalry âcompensateâ for Wootz steel.
Their Light Cav is still useful since you donât have any other units that fulfill the critical role of raiding and sniping siege and monk.
But their Battle Elephants are absolutely awful. BE are supposed to be balanced to be more than just FU to start with, and specifically so by having additional damage. Every BE except Vietnamese(the worst BE after Dravidian) did more damage than simply being FU when released.
Khmer: +3 attack and moves faster.
Burmese: +6 attack vs building(sure it was only vs building, but thatâs the most important target to BEâs)
Malay: Their cheaper price is compensated by reduced tankiness, but is not any worst then FU.
Bengali: 20% attack speed.
What Iâd change:
-Added Elite BE upgrade, the lack of it is not at all justified, the last armor upgrade alone is more then enough to compensate for the strength of wootz steel.
-Added Husbandry, their BE need it, these arenât the Burmese ram BE or the Vietnamese âmeat shieldâ BE, Wootz Steel only does anything when they can reach enemy units.
-Medical corps also affect light cav. Makes their light cav into decent raiding units, but not much better into direct combat.
-Maybe also make the Thirisadai garisonable by military units, just not siege/villagers/monk I think itâs important to be able to snipe transports that carry those.
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The point of Urumi is not that one unit beats another unit, but much like the Kamayuk, 40 Urumis will shred anything. Viper made a video about Heraâs tier list of worst unique units. Canât post the link apparently, but itâs on his Youtube channel. Kamayuk dies to most units one-on-one as well, because thatâs not how youâre meant to use the unit.
Spoilers for Masters of Arena:
One could argue that Vinchester âthrewâ by trying for some Castle Age aggression, but Iâd say Elephant Archers showed very well there how even just a few can be enough to push mangonels back, as you can just tank the hits forever.
Sure, Magyars arenât the best Arena civ, but the pros donât think Dravidians are terrible, so this narrative just starts falling flat. At this point people are reworking the entire civ into this weird 'oh yeah the civ has all the strengths it currently has, but then also letâs buff their Stable so they have EBE, Husbandry, Wootz Steel, and no doubt someone will argue for last armor and Bloodlines too. Because this is clearly just a bad way of buffing the civ.
I see your point but I cannot consider tie with a Militia line unit in group fight is shredding anything. Donât forget this is an UU which need to produced in Castle and it spend more resource to produce. Imagine how easy you mass 40 UU against opponent 40 Militia unit in Barracks and you baraly win this fight while losing resource. imho Dravidians is just terrible
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I just want to be clear, this didnât happen. The Ele archers only tanked like 2 shots. Most of the work was done by Tatohâs mangonel.
Watch from 3:31:10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bsfBndaRGE
Their performance has been terrible though. Now, I donât place a LOT of weight on tournament performance of a civ, but it being less than like 30% says a story.
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Exactly long swordsmen can do the job of Urumi cost effectively. Dravidian civ needs a powerful unit like conqs in castle age and not a unit that dies to skirms. This scenario of 40 Urumi spam in late imperial means you have already won the game or you are doing some crazy all-in push against a very passive player. So Urumi is not helping you in any situation.
You can replace Urumi with elephant archers and they will trade better against both archers and Skirms as well as all melee units. They are easier to mass as well once the Dravidian player is fully boomed.
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Sure it did. It was more like 5 elephant archers, but I agree with the point that elephant archers counter siege.
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I literally linked the video. Are you denying reality now? Like, what is happening?
Go watch it. If you know how to count, you should be able to count 3 there.
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