Devs are working towards standard start. That is the reason lithuanians lost 150+ food. Malians, Incas and other TC bonus don’t work for starting TC. Devs don’t want any civ to be able to make extra eco, fishing ships or docks before other civs. The only reason Persians might have kept the +50 food and +50 wood is due to legacy and the state of the civ. The bonus should be a straight wood discount on building or some other variant of the bonus.
Blockquote
Military unit production buildings 20% cheaper except docks
Or a crazy version of this bonus
Blockquote
Military unit production buildings return 30% cost once completed except docks.
If we were are going crazy with the resource return, then we can have this:
Blockquote
Wooden military buildings and units return 16% wood cost once built including docks
The above bonus will cover ships as well as asked by @vigunsta. For docks, the 16% number computes to 24 wood which means it won’t alter the start and docks can be included. Inclusion of docks in this bonus means, you can change team bonus to +5 carry capacity. To balance, Maybe remove “Shipwright”. But even that is not warranted with such a minor discount. this bonus covers the siege discount too and does not make it look like an ODD bonus for an infantry and naval civ. The Siege bonus then can make way for the new bonus.
The new bonus will make sense for elephants a well and make it possible to do these elephant based strategies @DemiserofD is proposing.
True, but also, devs can’t do it now. Do you think that the devs will just add and remove a bonus in such a short time frame?
I think they need a good long term eco bonus tbh. Dravidians right now have 3 eco bonus. Their team bonus, the +15 fishing carry, and +200 wood on age up. Two of these are instant, and the third is only good under limited circumstances. Water is also incredibly fragile, so investing in water is a problem to begin with. They need a better eco bonus, especially considering that they don’t have any of the late game eco upgrades.
To be fair any cavalry civ rofl-stomps Dravs so hard it ain’t even funny. Gujaras with the Shivamsha Rider is such a broken matchup that I just quit if I get matched. No way can I deal with such mobility and projectile resistance.
This especially sucks for me personally because I happen to love everything in this game except horse cavalry and monks.
If somebody makes a game which is AoE2, except nerf the hell out of horse cavalry (or just remove them, idc), add a few more infantry units, and maybe even some other stuff they liked, I’d buy it in a heartbeat. Just don’t add hero mechanics, or unit abilities, or stuff like that. I’ve been searching for something like that for a long time now, and can’t find anything even close to it.
I want to create a medieval game that focuses on Europe (so everyone involved is of roughly equal strength historically) which is very historically accurate, but it focuses mainly on castle sieges and less on open-field combat, just like in real life.
Something like most other civs have - full upgrades in castle age on knights, light cav, additional option of lancers or camels, monks with sanctity, fervor and redemption, xbows or ca with full upgrades, pikes with +2 armor. At most one of these missing and compensated by an equivalent replacement or strong bonus on one of the other. That’s options.
Its fastest paced on some selective maps like fish n fish or some of the NAC 4’s hippo hybrid maps. Otherwise their bonus is relatively not that fast. Or to put it in better words, there are multiple civs that can do the exact same thing but are better like Japanese, Bulgarians, Romans, Malians etc.
Its a hard job to switch when you’re switching in mid castle age which is just a useful strat against meso civs. Otherwise infantry is imperial age army. Saving 100-150 food at that stage is decent but not that great. Its much better if the units produced are stronger or more value for cost in some way.
You mentioned xbow-pikes, the primary option for Dravidians is the same combo for Ethiopians. But not necessarily. Ethiopians have these other options. You can just totally bait your opponent into 2 ranged skirms and then go knights yourself. Or to put it in other words, opponents can’t do just skirms against Ethiopians while they can against Dravidians.
That’s not the reason. +150 food is very strong on hybrid while fades out fast in land maps. Instead the bonus was distributed as +100 per tc, so that they are matchable on hybrid maps while have some benefit in castle age on land maps.
There’s also Japanese, vikings, Malians which can get an early dock. And several “legacy” civs have been modified over the years both on land and water. And Dravidians are in a much worse state compared to Persians. Persians are quite solid on hybrid and Nomad and they can follow up on their lead with fully upgradable cavalry as the game goes on.
That’s a fair bonus as well. Like if barracks cost -100w. But earlier the bonus the better considering the handicapped tech tree.
Not all civ need consistent eco bonus. Ethiopians also have similar eco bonus. And even Vietnamese eco bonus is instant bonus that their bonus is over after researching eco upgrade.
Their eco is already too good in nomad/ hybrid map. 200 instant wood is huge in water battle.
Celts has only marginal bonus for just infantry move 5% faster after squires. Japanese infantry are great but they aren’t have any bonus regarding cheaper tech while Dravidians do.
I think Romans/ Dravidians and Bulgarians are top3 infantry these days that they have strong infantry combined with cheaper tech/ or free tech to getting decent upgrade with fast timing.
Except, ethiopians have a great winrate. Their bonuses are enough to create a synergy, and create a snowball effect.
As for Vietnamese, you are missing one of their bonuses. Go and look it up.
This argument in of itself is meaningless. You need to put it in context of a civ, which is where you are missing the big picture. For a civ like Dravidians, where mid-game is insanely weak, an eco bonus is the only thing that will keep you in game.
That’s a problem with water, which everyone has been complaining about. I am asking for the fishing bonus to be changed, so that eco bonus won’t hold up.
And yet, Dravidians have 43% win rate on Arabia at pro level, and 45% at high level. Says something, doesn’t it?
@SMUM15236 I agree with @Pulikesi25 . You need these troika of techs for monks to be able to counter Siege effectively in castle age. I think my previous suggestions could have fixed the Dravidian problem with Siege rather than a new civ bonus.
However this transition to woots steel light cav needs active guidance from the civ bonuses. It needs a castle bonus as well as economy which enable food production.
I would change the first 2 bonuses from +200 wood and +15 carry capacity to.
Blockquote
Economy buildings are built 100% faster except TCs
This will guide their early economy to gather rescources during initial stage similar to Britons sheep bonus or mongol hunt bonus. But it tapers off.
Blockquote
Unit production Buildings return 30% cost when arriving in next age
This will mean Town center and barracks will give 135 wood and 30 stone respectively. This makes sure that Dravidian player does not get a free dock or archery range. However, This will give the option of defending with towers or going aggressive with a tower and archery range forward without endangering you second TC in castle age which is better than current 200 wood bonus capability and will not be OP on water either.
Reaching castle age, Town center, barracks, archery range and stables will give 240 wood and 30 stone. It does not make the civ OP in castle age. But maintains existing playstyle. You can also have a 50 stone advantage to make a castle or 4 TC boom in castle age.
The primary objective of this change is to give incentive to Dravidian player to construct more unit buildings and not turtle up like a defensive civ. This is also thematically correct since Tamil architecture is renowned and some important buildings have stood for close to a thousand years even without regular upkeep.
In castle age, Dravidian player is supposed to hold and build buildings to expand base. Once Dravidian player reaches imperial age, you have plenty of resources to move out and put production buildings forward in multiple areas. Any production capacity the oppoent has, Dravidian player can outbuild the opponent for a brief window of time in imperial start. This could be a good power spike in imperial age which Dravidians need to finish off opponent.
Not every civ needs consistent eco bonus if they have a solid tech tree with a lot of solid options like Ethiopians does. Camels that take less damage from cavalry, fully upgradable infantry, faster firing arbalesters which is an aggressive unit that’s easy to mass and fully upgradable siege with added bonus from UT.
Vietnamese eco isn’t an instant bonus gone after the upgrade if you consider wheelbarrow tech time which gives a 1.5 vill lead apart from the wood saved. And on top of that they have fully upgradable cavalry in castle age, extra hp on ranged units and a very useful unique unit. None of those are the case with Dravidians. Vikings and Malay have knights but miss 2 important upgrades and get a huge compensation in long term eco in return. That’s the kind of bonus Dravidians need. Something that would make them hit the next age much faster than their opponents.
Its too good in Nomad TG and 1v1 Islands or Bog Islands. For 1v1 Nomad and hybrid, several other civs have mathematically equal or better bonuses like Malians, Japanese without a crippled tech tree.
You get woad raiders which move almost at the speed of cavalry units removing one of the limitations of being an infantry.
The ROF is orders of magnitude more valuable. It means you can do more damage with fewer units. Whatever little is saved gets compensated by just a few more units.
Romans yes, Dravidians definitely not. There’s Malay that get timing advantage and infantry armor upgrades for free, Slavs with faster farming and get supplies and gambesons for free, Teutons that get cheaper farms and extra melee armor, Vikings with extra hp and free wb/hand cart which is 20% faster farming eco, Aztecs and Incas with a whole bunch of bonuses and support. Dravidian bonuses are much smaller in comparison to all these civs.
And having how many of these 8 will make it diverse?
You literally skipped my next sentence where I mentioned the “Diverse” military option of Dravidians.
Just because some of their units are not meta, doesn’t mean their army is diverse. Romans army of Cavalry+Militia line+Scorpion are not meta either. But this combo is probably one of the strongest while Dravidians Xbow+Pike+Siege is one of the weakest.
2
As well as Arabia and open maps. However the condition is you need a successful MAA rush. They are #3 civ in below 20 mins game in 1v1 Arabia 1900+ elo. (Mongols #1 and Japanese #2).
I see a reason to introduce a naval bonus to all 3 Indian civs as a regional bonus. Making the elephant archer available to south east asian civs as well if need be.
Dravidians are definitely top on the early castle age in this regard. Japanese can save 200-250 wood until early castle age with 2 lumber camp, 1 mill, 1-2 mining camps while Dravidians getting 400 extra wood total on early castle age.
Vikings tech tree in imp is absolute worst among 43 civs. They have no power unit and literally zero answer aganist Seige Onager or Strong HCA. While Dravidians lack knight in Castle age but have some good options in imp such as BBC and Elephant archer as power unit in late game. Also not the best but decent trash units.
Also Malay’s eco is decent but not some of strongest. They have faster uptime that is more of timing advantage. They are likely getting villager lead but still need to pay the price for extra villager that doesn’t something given for free.
Yes. Malay is good for having infantry armor upgrade free but they just end up with 2HS without Gambeson and pop-efficiency is more important before all gold of map is running out.
In late game, most unit would have more than 3armor so it would be Burmese bonus at least. It is sure that Burmese getting that bonus for free but Dravidian also saving upgrade cost in barrack. Aztecs have similar bonus of +4 attack but they need to upgrade in full price and need to get Garland war on top of that. Maybe Romans/Bulgarians or Malians have better infantry play but there aren’t more civs have better infantry play than Dravidians.
Not sure if you were being sarcastic about “Diverse” but in case you were yes Dravidians have diverse options Kappa
ofcourse they do. They have knights, light cav with bloodlines, husbandry and +2 armor, ca without any significant uncompensated handicap. And in some cases, civs even have additional options in camels, lancers.
yes but in Arabia the lead fades away into castle age quite soon.
yes all of those bonuses don’t fit a shitty civ. The civ needs a 2nd long lasting food eco bonus, a raiding unit and either monk techs or bonus that makes aggressive military units stronger by default.
Japanese get wood savings earlier which translates into fishing ships being added sooner. Always earlier the bonus, the stronger it is because it can be converted into a permanent resource lead sooner in hybrid maps. And this is also why Lithuanians used to be so powerful in hybrid maps. Even if we assume somehow the eco is matched by Dravidian player, Japanese can follow it up with knights with bloodlines and husbandry which Dravidians can’t. They have to turtle with crossbow mangonel.
If its a map like Arena then yes Dravidians are better than Vikings and that’s why I included Malay. On open maps knights are important. You can’t free boom into elephant archer + bbc. Vikings are solid because they can play knight-xbow and hit imp much sooner with free wheelbarrow, handcart eco.
On closed maps its one of the best. 5 vill lead is 125 extra wood per minute or 100 extra resources at the very minimum. So even if the Malay player just matches the Dravidian build, in 4 mins Malay will get the lead. In general faster uptime means, faster tc addition. Assume Malay are a minute sooner to castle age with 3 vill lead, they will have tcs a min sooner and that will translate into 7+ villager lead.
On open maps, faster uptime by itself is a much bigger bonus and there’s also free infantry armor for militias, spears. If you’re up faster, you can take better military trade, kill vills, force more defense, delay tc addition for your opponent and convert it into a huge eco lead. This is why even though they have worse tech tree civs like Malay, Vikings do better than a lot of other mid tier civs.
That’s totally fine, each villager pays back its cost in less than 3 mins. That’s why at high level Chinese are one of the best.
Most of your points are about a hypothetical post imp situation where all upgrades are done, sufficient map has been secured and there’s just constant military spam. This is very rare with Dravidians. Extremely difficult when you neither have the momentum nor the military.
However Japanese can save at least 100 wood in Dark Age and go up early and hit MAA earlier than Dravidians. MAA is all about timing. Dravidians having a generic Dark Age made them slightly weaker than Japanese in MAA and I believe that is what reflected on the W/R below 20 mins.
I was not. Anyway I got your definition of “Diverse” in your next passage.
So “Diverse” = Good stable in Castle Age. And CA. Nothing else counts. Okay I understand you now.
Let’s see your minimum condition and how many civs fit. You didn’t specify what will be significant handicap for CA but you mentioned Bloodlines and husbandry. That leave only TR and 2nd archer armor. So 22 civs fit your definition of “Diverse”. You’ve beaten me just by the lowest possible margin. Congrats.
You realized this made your initial claim of “Its fastest paced on some selective maps like fish n fish or some of the NAC 4’s hippo hybrid maps.” wrong, right? You’re now agreeing even in Arabia they are fast paced. The fades away soon is a different issue and doesn’t change the fact that their early game is very fast. And honestly that is what the whole thread with 750+ replies is trying to address.
Surely we agree.
Don’t forget land maps. I’ve mentioned the importance of faster Feudal age on the first passage.
I’m honestly not sure. Vikings have barely positive W/R at 45+ min game in both Arabia and all maps. Dravidians stays at 43% in Arabia, 46% in all maps. (Both 1900+ elo). I wish we had better filter to see Arena W/R by game length. A lot of players, including people in this forum, thinks that Dravidians late game is good. While that is not as bad as their Castle Age is, it is still one of the worst.
Yeah. You’re right. And honestly at late game, Dravidians EA without PT and Husbandry (I can overlook BL for them), doesn’t feel like a pop efficient unit to me. And spamming siege is not really an option as you are bound by low gold at that stage than low in wood.
archer line counts as well. Just saying Ethiopians don’t just have archers but those other options AS WELL.
Diverse doesn’t mean ALL of those things but atleast most of them. Sometimes you have civs with replacement units like eagle civs, Gurjaras. Sometimes instead of good CA, you have mobile ranged unique unit like Koreans, Spanish, Burmese. So its about 30 civs imo with “'Diverse” military.
I can start # ##### ### argument about why Dravidians aren’t the fastest paced civ on Arabia and that the stats you shared are small data (5-10% of games end in under 20 mins) but its futile for the purpose of this conversation about its overall weaknesses which is not the early game. The maps I mentioned are the ones where fish carry capacity, cheaper maa and the wood bonus all become relevant. In Arabia maa are more situational and there’s no fishing bonus in play. So its not a good pick even if you have a land map that calls for a fast paced civ.
Neither of them are good Arena civs but Dravidians is relatively better because they have gunpowder units and halbs which are relevant on closed maps. I was just trying to explain how Viking tech tree is terrible only on closed maps and its not an issue on open maps because of eco lead.
You didn’t say that earlier. Now why Infantry+siege+skirmisher+EA don’t count. (I already said EA not being a meta unit is not an argument).
Again, you didn’t say that earlier.
Again you’re saying only stable units. With your definition, Goths have more diverse army than Incas. Seems like you are under the wrong impression of strong stable means diversity since usually strong stable civs have higher W/R in Arabia.
Yeah they are not. They have #3 win rate at below 20 mins in Arabia 1v1 1900+ elo. So they are the 3rd fastest I guess. Or “One of” the fastest.
Let’s make the sample size bigger then. 1200+ elo 1v1 Arabia below 20 mins W/R
Surely they are not. Because of their terrible post-Feudal. Not because they are not being a fast paced civ. In fact if I’m not mistaken, they had the highest W/R in below 20 mins for the 1st month of DOI despite being even worse than as of now. I believe this “1st impression” contributes a lot on their pick rate in tournaments despite constantly being failed to do the job of ending the game under 20 mins which is pretty difficult job even for Mongols.
I mean stats says otherwise. Maybe just having Halb+BBC doesn’t automatically mean better late game when your mid game is garbage.
Infantry don’t count because they’re not feasible till imp. EA are just a unit flawed by design. No one except Black forest players made them when they were part of Indians, no one makes them now either. BE is not a meta unit but it still makes sense as a better late game front line when monk microing isn’t practical. Elephant archers are just impractical at any point in a 1v1 game.
Not sure if you’ve really misunderstood what I’ve said. I was talking about stable units because Dravidians don’t have them nor get a proper replacement. And diverse is simply about usable and complementing unit options for all stages of a game. A standard 1v1 between 2 evenly matched players. Incas are diverse because they have lot of usable options at all stages of the game which directly plays into their bonus. And I never said strong stable means diversity. Bulgarians are not diverse. Hypothetically speaking if we had a civ with full upgrades on paladin, heavy camels, lancers, hussar but didn’t have crossbow upgrade, gunpowder and halberdiers, that’s not a civ with diverse options.
I think based on this, I feel we might have a different definition of what “fast” is. Basically I was talking about civs that are likely to have the military lead, position and timing advantage across all ages more often. Like Khmer, Franks, former Lithuanians, OG Gurjaras, pre-nerf Hindustanis, meso civs. Except for Mongols, the other civs you’ve mentioned in that top 7 list are not what I had in mind when I was referring to “fast” but they’re rather civs with very strong maa into ranged unit openings because of some bonus to let them float extra wood. Maybe that’s what you were referring to as fast paced.
That’s a bit surprising but then again Arena in general is very small data. Pick rates of Dravidians and Vikings is even smaller. For all we know Dravidians could have faced Turks a bit more often than Vikings and that could account for the 2% lesser winrate. And as far as Arena is concerned, there isn’t much difference between Viking and Dravidian mid game. Neither civ is good for monk rush, uu rush or light cav-relic fight.
