That’s well said. Don’t think they’ll ever get knights but they do need husbandry, bloodlines and a redesign of their unique unit. Either that or they should get redemption, block printing and siege engineers so that they’re a good civ on closed maps.
Would become a very decent B tier civ.
Bingo Bango Bongo.
Hopefully this is/becomes as obvious to devs as to a lot of people on this forum.
BBC without SE is fine vs Onagers and scorpions, #### ## BBC civs to have fair match ups vs Dravidians.
With the text getting censored, I don’t really understand what you imply by BBC civs to have fair matchups. Usually this type of civs with weaker cavalry are balanced to play good on closed maps like Ethiopians, Malay, Bohemians. And apart from an eco bonus they get very good bonuses on siege, archers or have most monk techs.
Definitely not all. Castle age THS is probably fine.
I actually don’t think so. Their EA is still not on the mark to be useful. Arbalester+Halb+BBC is their best combo. But don’t have that good eco to support this. Wootz Steel LC and Infantry are good but die so fast that I don’t think it is worthy.
Cough Cough
Vikings enter the chat who is better in open maps than closed maps.
I don’t get how people think this. Their EAs have the highest damage output. They’re glass cannons, sure, but they’re still a lot tankier than your generic Arbalester. Halb + EA + BBC will do very well too.
If you can afford it, then yes. Only 200 free wood per age is not enough to support this expensive combo.
It is certainly less expensive than Arbalester+Halb+SO. You’re essentially swapping out the SO for EA in terms of food + gold cost, EA probably in total less expensive as well. With the wood surplus you can add more farms later. The only thing would be that you’d open first with Arbalesters, but the total cost of Arbalester and Elite EA is still less than SO.
I said Arb+Halb+BBC. This one will be cheaper than most of the EA + other composition since you are not switching from archer line to EA line.
Either way, none of the composition works for Dravidians in practice. They either can’t survive, or can’t afford.
You’re talking about best combos, so EA would always take Arbalester’s place. EA + Halb + BBC is much more affordable than going for SO.
They’re a slow push civ, that’s not anything new. Plenty of civs do that, and plenty of them are Arbalester + BBC/SO.
Okay. SO was a mistake. Fixed it.
In a realistic situation? I guess not. Maybe possible in TG. But even in closed maps, Dravidians struggle to go for EA tbh. EA is definitely a better choice in the long run. Problem is they just can’t do it in real game. I wish them and Bengalis are designed around EA more.
Yeah like Koreans, Britons (No SO/BBC. Trebs as replacement), Malay, Bohemians. Even Ethiopians to some degree.
A big difference between Dravidians and them is - Dravidians eco is weaker and not enough strong military unit to provide a shield to their range units. Their EA without BL and PT just can’t so well compared to WW, Hussite and BE. And their archer is generic unlike Britons and Ethiopians.
I will take EA’s over Hussite Wagons any day. I really do think EAs right now are underrated in power, and having 230 hp in Castle Age will be a good meatshield. Bloodlines does not matter as much for Elephant civs, and Dravidian EAs are literally the best in Castle Age.
Their EAs are situationally very strong units - great DPS, and a decent deathball unit. Just hard to mass (and suffer from lack of mobility) in open 1v1s. The game one of the mods linked with Survivalist using them vs Mongols was pretty interesting, and to some degree shows that they are being underestimated. However his opponent went for very suboptimal counters (a few mangos and the few leftover Feudal Age archers). In my experience they’re countered quite easily by monks, knights, or trash until you can get a large mass (usually with support units) built up.
On closed maps, probably. I still think Bengali EAs are better overall and easier to mass in open maps due to their counter resistance.
Dravidians are in an almost okay place IMO, but they don’t feel quite strong enough even on closed maps or TGs to compete with the top closed map/TG civs, and are a little awkward and predictable (archers - although IMO their M@A and towers is slightly underrated). A civ bonus and/or tech/unit availability buff is still in order to not make them feel somewhat handicapped in general play IMO.
Wish we had the statistics up. Is AoE Pulse working?
Dravidian Elephant Archers are the worst in Castle Age. They die to Skirms like flies and can’t even escape. Bengali Elephant Archers trade well vs Skirms, on the other hand.
Twitch
This match is the perfect proof.
The devs are trying to make elephants a viable form of cavalry and have been failing repeatedly with Bengalis and Dravidians. But elephants still remain as memes. The best way to do that would be to make elephants as fast as foot archers. Elephants run faster than humans in real life.
For specifically the Dravidians, “Medical corps” is a pretty useless tech. Nobody researches them in any games unless its a points win. the fishing bonus of carrying +15 is not getting them any benefit either. I used to prefer +15 percent faster fishermen of Indians on Bedouins map. But Dravidians did not do any better than any normal civ. With 2 unique tech being so bad, they really don’t have a chance.
I agree with the second one. If you want Dravidians to be a rush civ, then this is a great idea. The devs can remove medical corps and just say sorry that they were being funny.
Only Battle elephant (and war elephant). Armored elephants are fine. And EA is almost fine as well.
I even think that War Elephant are fine
The main problem is Battle Elephants, totally useless
War Elephants by design come in much later in the game though, so you’re sort of expected to be fully boomed. You’re not going to go for an immediate castle drop like you’d do with Spanish, Portuguese, Turks etc. You’re expected to get a castle later on in the game.