Hera made EAs in the tournament against Viper. Even got Medical Corps.
Most people misuse EAs. That doesn’t make them bad.
Also, Infantry is also quite decent in dark+Feudal. It’s only really bad in castle age, but even there, the way Dravidians can get LS+Gambesons+Squires for a pittance makes them far more viable than for most civs.
Not even pikes and Eagle?
Bengalis and Dravidians make them. Especially Dravidians make them more than 50% of the time.
Now we have came to the point. BL knights or LC don’t automatically mean usable option i.e Goths or Saracens. Similarly Aztecs or Khmer xbow without TR is often more usuable than Gurjaras xbow with TR.
The fact that there are questions around the community which army combo Dravidians should go for archer or EA or Infantry+ Siege proves that Dravidians have a diverse army compared to a lot of civs, mostly knight spammer civs. And honestly Dravidians don’t even that bad compared to a particular knight spammer civ, Sicilians who according to you have a diverse option. While in reality only knight is their usable option.
Going back to Dravidians, infantry, archer, skirmisher, siege all are usable for Dravidians. EA is also very close to be usable imho.
Okay. I guess so. To me “Fast paced” mean only Dark to Early Castle Age. Not all ages.
Yeah, it can be.
Better boom and villagers lead for Vikings. Not sure if 400 wood can beat arguably the best land eco.
Which tournament?
Come on dude, you know that talking about eagles in the context of infantry is disingenous. Eagles are functionally cavalry. When people are talking about infantry, they generally mean the militia line and unique units.
And no, infantry is not viable in feudal. I don’t count making 3 militia and then upgrading them on hitting feudal, and then adding 2 more to be “viable in feudal”. You could say that they are viable in early feudal age, and sure, there’s some truth in that. But men at arms are garbage even against skirmisher masses, which makes them absolutely useless by mid feudal. No to mention that they don’t scale well to castle age.
I might be changing my opinion about militia in late castle age though. If you wall up and boom in castle age, the militia line+pikes seems like a decent option in early imperial age, specifically against certain camel and cavalry civs.
The most recent one, I can’t remember what they called it though. Just look through his twitch vods, it’s right there.
Viper is a pretty big fan of early longsword play. A few weeks back he posted a dravidians game where he basically ran a running retreat with them, buying him a lot of time to establish his eco and push back. And I know of another player who’s ~2000 Elo who uses a MAA+Skirms strategy that has worked very well for him. He claims to have won 80% of his games with them in a reddit thread he posted.
Infantry definitely don’t work on their own, but paired with other options they can offer some very nice utility if you use them right, and Dravidians especially have bonuses that make that more practical.
I’m still leaning towards some sort of stone or defensive bonus, myself. I’ve played a good handful of dravidians games this week, and you can win an awful lot of games right away with that rush potential; the problem is what happens if you can’t seal the deal there. If you get denied, you tend to lose all map control, and you can’t regain it effectively. You need to take preemptive measures to keep the enemy from regaining it, and some sort of bonus to towers would pair very nicely with the siege discount to help keep afloat for long enough for their other options to kick in.
Of course, that feels like it overlaps a bit too much with the Koreans, so that might be a no-go. The challenge is, any bonuses need to apply exclusively to Arabia, without making them inordinately powerful on hybrid and water maps.
Romans - Allow us to introduce ourselves.
BTW, Feudal LS is almost as good as Romans MAA if not better. They are just slightly worse against archer (23 shots for Romans MAA and 20 shots for Feudal LS). But way better rest. Although it will be slightly more expensive for Dravidians even without researching “Supplies”. (Romans 200 food, 40 gold. Dravidians 225 food, 52 gold).
Excellent. It’s final then.
Villagers and Fishing Ship carry +15 → LS is available in Feudal Age, THS is available in Castle Age.
I generally agree with most of your points. I also saw that viper game, and the Reddit thread. The evidence for militia line in castle age is mounting quickly. I’ll be honest, I’m still unconvinced, especially with a generic civ. However, I’m open to changing my mind, and I’ll test it out a bit more over the coming week (in actual games).
Yep, Draviidians feel like an all-in or die civ. Just give them a little chance of recovery if things go wrong, and they should be fine.
Tower bonuses are nice, but they are also pretty strong on water. Any sort of strong defences might push them over on water maps. That’s why I prefer replacing their +15 fish carry with a land based eco-bonus. Farmers drop off 10% more food might be alright. Reduce it to 8% if that’s too much.
Fair enough 11
Although they are a special case, of course
I don’t like this because it will amp up their early aggression potential too much. They already have over 60% win rate on short games. With this bonus, feudal LS+towers would be the best strategy. Civs without strong early eco bonuses, and those with terrible archers would just die to this push.
I would personally just give them a land based eco bonus, after removing their fishing bonus, as explained above.
A bit too similar to the slavs bonus. I like how they’re more focused on getting more value from their units, personally, rather than having a traditionally strong eco.
Y’know, now that I think about it, that’s part of what bugs me about their siege bonus. They have all these techs and bonuses directed towards better and more long-lasting units, and then this random siege discount? It doesn’t seem to match their theme at all. If I were to remove anything, it would be that.
If towers are out of the question, what about some sort of walls bonus? There aren’t really any civs with major walls bonuses. Something like, ‘Stone Walls built 100% faster.’ Honestly, given that a large part of the time spent building walls is travel time, it could even be more than that and still be fine.
Eh, it’s turks vs malians. It’s exactly that, except with food. Dravidians don’t get more value from their units, except for elephant archers and skirms imo. I might be inclined to agree with you in post-imperial age, but it’s not true till that point.
Welcome to the church of “Change Dravidian Siege Bonus”, new recruit. Only @SMUM15236 and I are part of it right now (that I know of). But I’m sure you’ll like it here.
The problem is that it will delay castle age boom, because you can’t drop that extra TC asap. This might work, if you also change the price of one wall segment to 2 stone and 3 wood. An average player makes roughly 45 wall segments, so this price change would leave them with enough stone for 1 extra TC.
I had a simpler solution. Its based on a previous solution u had proposed.
Trade cog and Gold units on foot move +10/15/20 percent faster each age starting feudal
Its Militia line, Archer, Monks move faster each age. It makes M@A rush similar to Romans. It will make archers their raiding unit and overcome the problem with slow monks. The trade thing is based thematically on the fact that south India relied on trade to generate wealth and this is to compensate for losing fishing bonus.
The problem with this approach is that in 1v1 it takes away an eco bonus and gives back a military one. Already the Siege bonus was designed as a military ### eco bonus. But it does not seem to be working to propel Dravidian economy. THe monk one was taken by slavs as well.
I will stand by my suggestion as the best fix:
In place of the +15 carry capacity:
In place of medical corps, it should be fine to introduce a new bonus based on trade which Rajendra chola fought for:
Blockquote “Spice Trade”: Trade units and fishing ships drop-off +50% more per trip
or a similar military bonus
Blockquote “Strike corps”: Mounted units and Galley line +50% HP.
Feudal archers will still be faster than LS. So you can kill them by doing hit and run. Bad archers does not matter for this once you get flaching which all civ get. Only after squires they counter them on speed.
This bonus below will give Dravidians a single tower at the cost of an early TC. If you nerf it from 30% to 20%, the easy tower is gone. It can also make up for the siege bonus problem.
There is historical evidence of cholas buying their Siege and ship technology from the chinese using trade profit, so a technology based on that can help as well.
Spice Trade: “Ships and Siege cost -40% gold”
Keeping their identity of early game rushing civ. Although now I realized, it can be broken, even more broken than Romans because of faster firing skirmisher.
Doesn’t fit their agrressive design.
11
Changing this bonus is not my 1st priority though. TB or the Fishing ship bonus is. Then Medical Corps and then siege discount at third.
20% faster archer is broken. There is a reason it is not added yet. Faster Monks is just Slavs bonus. So maybe keep the Trade Cog militia only which is also Berbers and Celts bonus but keep the identity of “Infantry and Naval civ”.
Not entirely averse to that, but it does feel a bit too much. It’s alright to sacrifice a bit of boom potential for a much greater strength at walling up. And giving them the ability to quickly adapt if their LS rush fails would allow them far more time to eco up, anyway.
I’d say, start with just the walling bonus and work from there?
I think it does fit a more aggressive playstyle, really. Quicker walls allows for more aggression, without making dedicated turtling much stronger once it’s established.
In any case, they’re nowhere near a hyper-aggressive civ like the Goths. They have stone walls and basically full defensive upgrades, at least the common ones.
Waaaay too OP. They’re already top-tier on water maps. Besides, the bonus is clearly meant to give a bonus to early, not late, siege, hence wood instead of gold. I see what they were trying to do and agree with the goal, just think it doesn’t quite match their overall theme.
A bit wonky for my taste, sorry.
That was a water map. He first did Galleon, then did Arbalesters, trebbed down all of Viper’s base and the EA was more of a flex. It wouldn’t have mattered whether he made EA, Elite Urumi swordsman or anything because the game was over when he destroyed Viper’s castle and a few vills with demo and trapped Viper’s shrivamsha riders. It’s the only niche setting where Dravidians are good.
Most people don’t misuse EA, EA themselves have no use outside post imp TG on maps with limited mobility. For a standard 1v1 its way too expensive to afford till later stages of the game and its not necessary either.
Infantry is not decent in feudal unless its a map suitable for it like Fish n fish. Otherwise its just 3 or at max 4 maa. If someone made a lot of maa in feudal age on land maps against an equal opponent, they’re more likely to lose.
You can do longswords, EA or even castle drop and do urumi swordsmen, light cav + pike + siege push or something like that. But those are just terrible strategies in almost all matchups and settings.
Eagles are a cavalry alternative. By infantry I mean the units that cost a ton of food don’t have much p.armor. So eagles, ghulam are feasible mid game units because they’re functionally more similar to cavalry than an infantry. Pikes are just a unit in the mix. It can never be your main army. It has to be something like strong redemption monks+siege+pikes, knight+ pikes or crossbow+pikes. It counts as a support unit but its not like Hey my gameplan is to open archers in feudal age and switch into 2 barrack pikes in castle age.
All of these are usable options. Several tournament and competitive games where Saracen switched from archers into 2 stable knights or just did 1 stable knights to support their archers. Goths are usually the slower civ but you can totally open knights if you did pick Goths for some reason.
Such questions are around in the community because Dravidians have very limited options. No one ever asks when Gurjaras should go for EA or when Tatars should go for Flaming camels.
Longswords are not and all the remaining units are countered by enemy skirms/siege. Which means you’re forced to do your own skirms and siege. Thereby no diversity.
Hypothetically if that unit moved a bit faster, took lesser damage from skirms, was less prone to conversion and either had at least 1 more base attack or costed 20 food lesser. Or if Dravidians had a crazy food bonus for the whole game.
That’s true for open maps but low army value in Arena. You need to spend the extra resources on castle techs or get worse trades.
Championship invitational (not sure if this will appear or get converted into #####. In case it doesn’t google for Hera bo21 tournament)
Viper was playing dogao who is not his level and he won’t do those gimmick stuff and win in tournaments if he’s playing against an equal opponent with a competent civ for the map. If that 2k player is winning 80% of his games with that strategy it means his true elo is 2.2 or 2.3k and the only reason why its working that often for him is because he’s up against weaker opponents.
Yes, like cheaper, tankier or higher dps tower is a good bonus that will fit.
And that’s ok, Japanese have that, Bulgarians have it as well.
Not generic and needs a map with extra standard resources or that’s tower friendly.
Beyond a certain point most bonuses are just a mix of different existing ones. Like Malian gold drop-off is a part blend of mayan longer lasting resources and Turk faster gold mining. That’s ok if that’s what the civ needs to make their unusable options feasible.
When you have a civ whose problem is expanding and acquiring more map, how is a walling bonus beneficial.
That’s solid. I’d change it to food if it seems too much. 20% movement speed on archers could be a lot.
Even at 1900+, MAA is one of their best strategies. The only thing that beats it is Trash, and that is at least partially propped up by Hera, who almost always opens Skirms and tends to outperform by pure skill.
At lower ELOs, their MAA opening is by far their dominant strategy, and you can absolutely work in more MAA and LS if you keep inertia going.
So what? He’s still using the strategy at a very high level, proving that it does work. If a strategy can work effectively at 2000ELO, that means it functions for 99%+ of players.
Broadly speaking, Dravidians are really good in the very early game, then fall off hard through castle age, and start to rebound in imperial. If they could wall up more of the map while they still have that feudal inertia, without needing to sacrifice too many villagers to do it, it would allow them far more leeway to get to their lategame powerhouse state, without making them inordinately powerful on water maps.
That’s why build speed is more important than stronger walls. Their walls don’t need to last forever, they just need to last long enough to stem the tide and get them over the ##### Combined with their cheaper siege for practical defense, they could reach Imperial and have a chance of finishing strong, rather than dying halfway there to a massive all-in push.
There are only so much variety of bonuses that can be introduced. Dravidian architecture is renowned all over India. It was head and shoulders above the rest of the region. Eco bonuses based on buildings will be correct thematically. If we go for some traditional bonuses based on building, then I’d replace both +200 wood and +15 fishing capacity with these 2 building bonuses.
Blockquote
1 House and Economy buildings excluding TCs built 100% faster [Docks included]
2 Military Research, Military unit production buildings and TCs 20% cheaper [Docks excluded]
The first bonus will help with the economy as well as house walling potential. There will be little incentive to expend stone when you can wall with houses faster. It also makes the civ wall as a last resort rather than preemtively.
The second bonus gives incentive to make military buildings and units. Thus keeping the agressive identity. However compared to +200 wood. This will make the civ less menacing in feudal age. Instead, it makes castles cheaper. It helps guide Dravidian castle age play towards building a castle and research woots steel. For that this change needs to be implemented:
Then you have woots light cav which can compete with heavy cav cost effectively. Thus, preventing the stomping in castle age.
You can keep or remove medical corps as imperial age tech. Because by that time Elephant production will not have a penal effect on the economy.
With these changes, Dravidians get clear win conditions:
First condition
- Make houses and economy buildings to arrive faster to feudal age.
- use cheap military buildings to spam military units to win in feudal.
Second Condition
If opponent also is on even footing economically or has better military units,
→ Gather stone to build a castle and research woots steel.
This will hurt your economy, but you can match opponent military strength and boom behind with new slightly cheaper TCs.
Third Condition
If opponent has booming civ and has walling bonus civ like Mayans,
→ Go fast imp, build cheap castles and train cheaper trebs.
This will nullify his economy lead and you can build cheaper TCs to regain initiative.
Third condition
If the docks team bonus stacking up with 100% build speed is OP, we can change the team bonus to:
Blockquote TB: Fishing ships +5 carry capacity
I’m fine with some sort of building bonus, just that particular idea was needlessly convoluted.
Personally I’d really like better walls for them, they could really use it well in combo with their siege and initial rush to take and hold map control effectively during their weak period. If you doubled their wall building speed it would basically function as a discount too, since you’d save the lost villager time.
According to SOTL, it takes about 10 resources per stone wall total, accounting for time, so doubled wall build speed would give them a total closer to 8 resources per tile, or roughly a 20% discount, which seems very reasonable to me.
The bonus we are replacing is the only one Dravidians get in Dark age, So the replacement has to be similar and apply in dark age. I am tempted to modify the bonus to “Houses and walls built 100% faster”. But this would be a double bonus for defending. Then players will just try to wall and boom behind after M@A and undo the current identity as a rush civ. There should be clear incentives in the tech tree to go aggressive for Dravidians.
Honestly, I’m just talking about giving them a flat bonus without taking anything away. The reason I picked walls is because they’re not particularly beneficial on water maps, or at least much less so than on other more closed maps, so it could be given to them without making them too much better on water, where they’re already quite decent.
I do agree with you though, giving them a bonus too early also would be bad, because like you say, they’ll just turtle and boom, and that’s not what we want. We want it to be conditional and not just help with flat booming.
That’s why I think it should be STONE walls only. Stone walls come in late enough that it makes turtling less practical; they will almost certainly have done the MAA rush already, so swapping into pure turtling is going to be less tempting at that stage. Also, it entails a fairly significant sacrifice with the lost stone, requiring a greater investment and a different strategy. It also has the benefit of putting the player already on stone, and therefore much closer to getting a castle, Medical Corps, and Urumis.
The vision I have is this: The player does their standard MAA rush, or possibly skirms or archers. They immediately take map control and heavily push the enemy. They might win. But if they don’t win, they begin to withdraw, and while they withdraw, they send single villagers out to make very aggressive walls. With their much faster building bonus, they can wall up far more of the map than a civ normally could.
The enemy will finish wiping out the MAA+Skirms and turn their attention to raiding, but by this point, they will be nearly or fully walled, and so they’ll need to bring in the siege, which can be repelled in the short term by cheaper siege of their own.
Now, this is not fundamentally different from what they can currently do, but at present, they wall up like a normal civ, which means when the enemy arrives, they lose access to their gold. Without their gold, and without decent scouts/cavalry, they have very little they can effectively do to survive, and they just lose.
With faster walling, they have a much better chance of being able to protect their gold, at least in the short term. With the extra gold income, they can repel the attackers for longer, allowing them to get up a defensive castle. With a defensive castle, the game will go into imperial, where Dravidians have power options that are much more viable.
A according to spirit of the law, people wall roughly 60 tiles. That’s 300 stone. ######################################################### (this forum is blocking YouTube links goddammit. You can search SOTL wall on YouTube)
So, they’d have to mine 300 stone for your proposal to begin to be useful (100 extra for wall, 200 for TC). Then, you’d have to mine another 650 for a castle.
This is never worth it. If I’m playing, I’d rather just spend that 300 towards a forward castle with the early feudal/castle power spike. That should put enough pressure on my opponent to let me boom.
Without a stone discount, that bonus would do next to nothing.
The problem is the opportunity cost. Pros don’t wall after early castle age, and its almost impossible to do that cost effectively. That 20% discount is like giving 20% discount for turk skirmishers. It’s not worth it even with the discount.
@benithisrael I think that you have some interesting ideas, but you really need to tone down those numbers. Some of your proposals would make way more sense and would be more acceptable with that. For example, 40% gold discount of ships is not acceptable. Just no. 20% on ships and siege? That we can talk about. Even 33% gold discount for siege in imperial age might be acceptable.
I’ll be honest, I don’t think that their TB is that broken. Is it really good? Sure. But it doesn’t even put them above like 54%. I used to think that it’s the first priority, but it doesn’t feel like that any more. Also, I’ve rarely seen people actually use that outside top-top tier games. People usually make houses even when they have a dravidian teammate.
I do agree with the fishing ship bonus though. That bonus is one of the worst in the game.
I don’t know that that’s entirely true. Yes, it’s very rare to see them go full stone walls, but they definitely do a go to extra effort to contain their economy. They just typically do this with buildings and houses, with only short stretches of walls between them.
And I wouldn’t expect that to change, just the convenience and aggressiveness with which it can be pursued.