How about you start by admitting how you were wrong about defensive options and incas before?
I am tired of me having to explain shit to you and you not even having the common courtesy to respond. You do that first, and I’ll put in the effort to explain why you are wrong.
Also, stop saying “LeT’S stop PretendiNg thAT THey don’t hAvE this TerriBLe And ExpeNsivE optIoN”. Every civ should have decent options to counter common strategies.
Those seem way too drastic changes for a civ. You are more likely to get a few nip and tucks not something which is closer to a redesign. For the record poor monks is actually something I would agree with for the Dravs as historically accurate. Your LC is quite suitable enough to counter mangos. Not so much SOs . Hence why we need better cav options in Imp.
EDIT: I usually don’t play Dravs in open maps because I know CA will be brutal for me. In closed maps they do ok if you understand that your best bet is to wall of and play defensively until you survive CA.
Sure I guess we can qualify Dravs as an Infantry civ with some good/some middling archery options. I don’t consider Dravs to be an Elephant civ either(though they should be). Bengalis in my opinion get superior eles with their BD resistance. Khmer also with their superior attack eles(and ballista eles) I would consider as an elephant civ.
I consider MC as a creative way the devs made Drav eles more survivable while still making them highly vulnerable to their counters ie glass canons. The exact opposite of Bengali eles which are highly tanky.
Just for the record, this is not true. All of south-east asian elements of hinduism came from dravidians.
The largest religious structure in the world came through Dravidian religious propagation LINK
Examples of the Hindu cultural influence found today throughout the Southeast Asia owe much to the legacy of the Chola dynasty. For example, the great temple complex at Prambanan in Indonesia exhibit a number of similarities with the South Indian architecture.[18]
This is not even getting people like Adi shankara or (the arguably contentious) Bodhidarma, who was from the pallavas, who are dravidians.
Bengalis introduced hinduism to the west, while Dravidians did it throughout south-east asia.
I always thought that proliferation of ideas had more to do with trade than an actual religious propagation. Drav kingdoms were known for selling spices and metals and finished textiles.
What I consider religious propagation is what happened in central Asia and Europe.
But that’s not the situation when your enemy is doing a monk siege push. If your enemy can field redemption monks, mangonels, you absolutely can do the same with your own Crossbows/Skirmishers to support the few Light Cav and your own Siege. You’re more likely to find spears/pikemen accompanying the monk siege push than Crossbows.
Spending 400 food on a suicide squad is great value when you’re killing 400+ gold worth of units. And regarding micro, your composition requires much less micro than the enemy who needs to micro monks, the mangonels, and crossbows vs you tasking Light Cav to hit the monks and whatever else you have on crossbows/mangonels.
Because I wasn’t? Dravidians have defensive options, and Incas are a defensive civ - your point was them being slow push civs, which they definitely aren’t. That’s just insane to me, you have the best eagle play in the game right now and you decide to slow push, when your options are much better suited for aggressive play. Especially when you want to finish the game early as late game you’ll just die to Hussar raids.
You’re not explaining anything. Yes, they don’t have those. No, it doesn’t matter as much as you think. I’d rather have Bombard Tower than Treadmill Crane, and Incas don’t have Architecture either.
Teutons don’t have Treadmill Crane and Architecture. You’re just moving the goalposts now when you see it fit. Your requirements for a slow pushing civ was ‘strong defensive options, range, or monks’. They need to ‘hold the ground they’ve pushed, excellent siege and monks for pushing, and defensive options’.
Incas do not fall into this category, as Incas don’t have Architecture, they don’t get gunpowder (they in fact die to gunpowder + Hussar), their monks fall to any civ with Atonement (and Dravidians do have Atonement, alongside cheaply teched Infantry to kill any Eagles). If you want to do it, fine - but you’re just picking a worse strategy.
Why would I bother responding to repeated bad faith arguments where you don’t even bother thinking for a minute, calling anyone who responds to your aggressive tone in slightly more aggressive tone as personal insults when you’re the hypocrite who’s been doing that in all the Dravidians are Terrible threads nonstop.
Your wish is for Dravidians to become the #1 civ in the game, and is just awfully uninspired by turning the unique civ into yet another generic civ. Give them Bloodlines, give them Husbandry, then give them Siege Engineers! Give them Knights and Hussar, and then you’ll want Cavalier because why else would you get Knights! Give them Architecture and change Medical Corps to be the best tech ever too! Waah, they’re the only civ without Elite Battle Elephants, give them that too! Oh, Urumis still have 0 PA, give them 2 PA because just 1 PA means they only survive 4 more arrows so that’s pointless!
Like come on. This is what your arguments have boiled down to, you’re just throwing around every single suggestion so that Dravidians have an answer to everything and can do everything. How’s that good design? Perhaps, as Viper put it, you should just https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdoMYy0sAE0 .
Except, Incas have an explicit bonus to counter hussar raids. Well, 2, actually. Cheaper towers and walls, on top of villagers being affected by blacksmith upgrades.
I did not move a single goalpost. Guess what teutons have, strong defensive options, extra range on castles, and great monks. You are the one nitpicking.
“OH, thEY hAVE EveRyThing elSE, BUt They DON’t have ThESe 2 tHingS”
Why do you keep bringing up points I already addressed? Atonmenet is worthless in late game, and incas have eagles to snipe monks. Are you unable to read?
wtf are you talking about? This combo is garbage against Incas. All 3 of their main units, eagles, kamayuks and slingers will eat hussars. Once the hussar mass dies, your gunpower is dead.
What you need is siege. Incas are weak to siege, without monks.
I don’t even bother thinking for a minute? Brother, I can write a thesis on like 80% of my arguments. I put more thought into a single sentence of mine than you do with an entire post. I have done so many tests and evaluated so many scenarios to qualify for a masters on this.
Don’t put words in my mouth. I have said this months before, I want them to have around 50% win rate on open maps. Even 49% for each Elo categories will do.
You are literally braindead.
Here is me, saying you cannot give urumis 2 pierce armour under any circumstance
You know nothing about me, and you are calling me bad-faith. I’m done with you dude. Blocking you and moving on.
I thought you were debating an xbow siege push with minimal (or none) monks, not a monk siege push. My mistake.
Losing gold is not a problem in Castle age, only in Imp. When accounting for gather rates and the fact that setting up farms requires spending wood, I would rather lose 400 gold than 400 food. If you lose 400 gold, you can make it up and still get to Imp. If you lose 400 food, you basically give up on reaching Imp before your opponent in most situations.
Good luck walling the entire map.
Yeah, and Dravidians have strong defensive options too. They’re not literally the same as Teutons, but you’re just ignorant if you think Dravidians cannot slow push or be defensive. There are several recent videos of Dravidians where the pro players are just defensively stalling out enemy pushes as an example for you. Even in games where things go bad, so you don’t really have a strong advantage either. Hera won against Yo on African Clearing with just defensive Skirmishers, which Dravidians have a bonus for.
Are you? I said you have cheaply teched Infantry to counter the eagles, it’s literally the next sentence. You’re quoting out of context. And now you wonder why I don’t bother responding to you all the time. Another example of your bad faith arguments.
Incas are weak to Siege and Gunpowder, with Hussar as meatshield. Slingers won’t eat Hussars, gunpowder eats your Eagles and Kamayuks. I think you’re just viewing at these compositions from like, a very beginner point of view who just patrols units together. But even if you did that, the gunpowder composition wins. So maybe you’re just blowing hot air.
You don’t get Masters with vacuous posts.
Indeed, you also say that Urumis are the worst unit in the game. So you’re just being contradictory to boot. 
Indeed, but as Dravidians you can drop more farms to get a food eco lead too, as chances are the enemy isn’t going to have a strong food eco when they go for smushes. Your goal is to stop the smush and that will hurt the enemy far more than you slightly falling behind with food, while you put up a much better eco behind it.
Having eagles available also softcounters hussar raids and you can raid with them before gold runs out. I wont count kamayuk because of castle requirement although their castles are cheap. So incas are well prepares against raids.
I agree with dravidian vulnerabity to raids but besides giving a bonus damage against cav to their buildings or even their villagers, I dont know what else devs can do. At least their halb upgrade is cheap.
However, there is no point about discussing raids when dravidians neesnto survive until imperial age. Most winning raids happen in the late game.
True, but we can dream. Plus, I don’t think this is as big of a redesign as Hindustanis. Most of the techs and bonuses I suggested are same as current, just shuffled around. Also, devs said they were going to redesign Persians. So, it is not unprecedented.
Also, they recently added the 33% cheaper wood cost of siege bonus, so the Dravidian design seems to be more in flux than the average civ and they might be more willing to make bigger changes. Cheaper siege is Slavs’ identity, and they only get a measly 15%. Slavs were already struggling to stand out amongst the 43 civs and then the devs power-creeped on them (to be fair, the recent 20% faster monks bonus is a step in the right direction). I really hope the devs remove that bonus and replace it with something else, as I have done in my suggestion.
Fix Militia line and BE, Dravidians will be fixed automatically.
@Nerathion I would like you to stop engaging with me. I am not interested in talking to you, so don’t talk to me.
If anyone else has disagreements, I am of course open to it. I always mention what it would take to change my mind on things, and happy to be corrected if I am wrong.
And pathing
This is the crux of the problem. Most people want a fix from devs side for that. They hyped up “Woots steel” and Urumi swordsmen. But they are never made in the games. You got generic cross-bows, 200 wood and the worst castle age in the game effectively chocking you off from imping faster and finishing the game with woots steel.
This perfectly sums up Dravidian play once castle age is reached. Their tech tree makes military expansion of base grind to a halt in castle age. And unfortunately, in the current meta, full feudal is not viable especially for Dravidians without bloodlines.
Medical corps is not a useless tech. It is not a castle age tech which helps Dravidians weather the worst phase of their game. Dravidians have no bonus to make castles and the tech is not an offensive win condition either. If pursued with an elephant army in castle age, its a dead end. The oppoent will convert every elephant easily and cost effectively. If the tech existed as an imp upgrade while Woots steel was in castle age. The tech would not invite so much hate. In castle age, you can make 10 monks and 2 monasteries as Dravidians for the price of a castle and medical corps. So for Dravidians, Medical corps is an useless tech. Moving ‘woots steel’ to castle age is the most intuitive thing to do game design-wise.
Dude, the whole idea of castle age is to convert your wood economy to food production while not expending as much gold as opponent. With this bonus, you make elephants non-stop. you are draining your gold as well as converting back food to wood which is not desirable.
From a game-play perspective, we need Dravidians to have very few changes to get them out of the one-trick pony problem and make them versatile.
Civ bonus changes:
CHANGE: Wood +200 per age to +200 for feudal, +200 for castle and +200 gold for imperial age
CHANGE: +15 fish carry to Economy Buildings are built 100% faster except starting TC
This building bonus gets the player +5 to +7 of every resource calculated for a single villager. But most importantly TC building gives +3 vills which is an awesome bonus in castle age when they need it the most. They can also do a castle drop faster and build behind. So this make Dravidians a better rush civ design than current bonus.
Team bonus:
CHANGE: Fishing ships carry +5
Nerf the early bonus of dock giving pop space. But give a direct food eco boost from fishing which is more a gameplay move than a civ move.
Unique tech change:
CHANGE: Woots steel moved to castle age
Lets stir up the rant of Light cav killing palladins.
Trech tree change:
Scout cavalry receive Bloodlines
Very minimal. But helps to make up lack of Knights, camels or EWs.
Imperial tech - MAHUTS or its tamil name
Elephant units and villagers move 20% faster.
This will help Elephant archers the most effective anti-siege units in Dravidian tech tree. Discounted Siege only gets you so far. But will be a good support artillery unit behind a wall of elephants racing forward.
Dravidians lack all the late game eco upgrades. So their Villagers can get a movement speed boost from 0.96 after hand-cart to 1.12 tps after mahuts. It will provide a significant boost to their elephant economy which is resource intensive than hussars. This techs is a reference to how Elephants were used in construction, lumber and many economic activities during medieval age. Not to mention, it’ll make the vills hard to raid as well.
OPTIONAL
CHANGE: Skirmishers, Elephant archers and TCs fire 25% faster
Defensive options suggested by so many Dravidian civ experts like @Nerathion and @DemiserofD
Love this change. But this will make them an anti-archer civ which they already do well. Maybe it won’t fly.
Agree with this change very much. If they have a good economy, then this change should be implemented to make their arbs and elite-skirms weaker.
The civ with these new changes will still be off-meta. But playable at all levels.
Lets make Dravidians the best Incas and Not worse Bengalis!
Urumi are a great unit to take in melee battles(especially against blobs of units). Why don’t you guys use it more often.
I think we can all agree that 200 wood bonus for Drav on age up especially for Drav and the kind of expensive units it fields is not very useful.
How about as an eco bonus on age up the cost of buildings is reduced by 3-5 percent instead.
Or maybe monasteries generate a steady gold trickle(this has some historical context I believe)
Or maybe farms generate a slight gold trickle also(a homage to the spice trade)
EDIT: Why do you want the civ to be anything else than it is. Improve what’s there. Don’t hanker for something else. Play Incas if you like them
That is interesting. But honestly I think that will be a nerf in Castle Age as EA with 25% faster firing is better than +1 range. While in late Castle and Imperial Age EA will be broken with faster firing and 2 more range.
LOL. Its one of the worst. Its just a unit that’s good in some custom scenarios like CBA where there’s no concept of economy, training time etc and people just keep fighting with 60+ unique units.
Best melee unique units which are practical and very useful for their civ in ranked games are Coustillier, kamayuks, huskarl, leitis, centurion and legionaries paired with centurion. A few like keshiks, konniks, obuchs are good too but their civs can win even without them. Urumis and a few other infantry uu are unnecessary.
6+4 is 10 damage not 11 even if you assumed they had wootz steel. But yes I agree that giving wootz steel as a blacksmith upgrade to all civs is a bad design for the game.
The 60 extra damage come from 5 armour of Paladin ignored by woots steel and 12 number of hits the Ratha returns to the frank paladin which computes as 5*12 = 60. So instead of 49 HP remianing. The frank paladin would have died in 192/16 = 12 hits which the ratha delivers faster with paiks. The Frank Paladin needs 12 hits as well. So Woots steel can be a great equalizer for civs like Bengalis who lack the punch.
The idea to balance the game was to make the upgrade costlier for cavalry at 800 food and 1200 gold available at the stables while infantry gets it cheaper at 800 food and 800 gold at barracks. You can refer the original post where I made this suggestion.
I acknowledge what the poster has said above is the biggest problem with the civ. I suggested the team bonus suggestion to make that something interesting happen. I see nobody making any interesting suggestions to fix the bland tech tree problem.
The way I see it. To fix the Dravidian problem in castle age at least this one change to cavalry is Vital:
I believe woots steel should be moved to castle age to give the spice up that Dravidians need, to match up using light cav against heavy cavalry units like Knight civs. Vikings get chieftans for a +5 attack against cavalry in castle age. But that is not considered OP. Dravidians getting Woots steel in castle age will give utmost +4 attack vs Knights and +2 vs light cav. I see it as a sensible change to move “woots steel” to castle age.
Another optional But good change would be adding Bloodlines:
I see “Bloodlines” as necessary for light cav to take half-decent engagements against Knights or prevent a monk-Siege push as meat-shields. "Since “Medical Corps” is the tech that is preventing Bloodlines being added to tech tree, I suggest the technology be removed completely and given to Persians. Bloodlines can be given to Dravidian light cav. Persians can have a new imp tech “Immortals” which makes units regenerate HP and “Mahuts” can be given to Dravidins who need their glass cannon elephants to move faster and finish the game for Dravidians.
Light cav can be the last stable upgrade Dravidian horses get. Then they get “Woots” upgrade from castle then nothing else. “Mahuts” can be given to Dravidians as Elephants and Vills move 20% faster. Dravidians need an eco advantage to make expensive elephants as well as address the hussar raiding problem. So Vills moving faster can help with the economy boost as well retreat faster to TCs and play defensive.
Why does every suggestion need to completely rework their entire idea? Some of us LIKE the idea of a limited stable, it makes them feel different and fun! And I like Medical Corps too, it’s surprisingly potent in the right circumstances.
If they get faced by monks and siege, they have their own, cheaper siege to counter it. I’m guessing that’s why they got that bonus in the first place.