You know what, after thinking about, I’m sure that this bonus is useless.
Why? Look at mayan team bonus. They have a team bonus that walls are 50% cheaper, and that’s way stronger than what you’ve proposed. I don’t see people walling even with mayans as teammates.
Also, mayan team bonus will not bite into your boom as much, and in the later game, will not stop you from getting that one extra castle.
I would just give them an eco bonus and no defensive bonus whatsoever. The idea is simple, best defence is strong offence. I would be even in favour of giving them another offensive bonus. Just go full aggro on open maps.
That’s debatable; 50% cheaper walls is actually roughly on par with this purely in terms of resources. They still spend roughly 7.5 resources per stone wall, since their bonus doesn’t effect the build and travel times. So the two bonuses in terms of resources would be approximately equal, but this neglects the functional utility of being able to get your walls up much faster.
For example, I spent a little time messing around with it, and a strange thing you’ll quickly see is that 60 walls isn’t just enough to encircle your base, it’s enough to completely cross the map on a 1v1 size. With the proper bonuses, you can use the same number of walls to achieve much greater results. Mixed with the powerful dravidians rush, you could take a far larger chunk of the map and hold it for much longer than normal.
So I don’t think the two bonuses are directly comparable, since the one neglects a significant part of the other.
I just don’t think an eco bonus is going to cut it. It won’t fix their basic weakness in castle age, that’s down to their unit options, which can’t change without breaking the identity of the civ.
Without changes there, you’re going to be dancing a VERY fine line that I’m not sure can be adequately balanced. If you give them an eco bonus strong enough for pros to have a positive win rate, their already decent performance at lower ELOs is going to become overwhelming, not to mention balancing between arabia and water maps.
Just about the only thing you COULD give them without breaking things is…a stone bonus. Which doesn’t really achieve what you hope to achieve.
I don’t think so at all. We are dancing around this point.
Stone is important for TCs, and therefore, booming. That’s the actual argument I’m making. When you are delaying your TC by 3 minutes, you are not losing a few hundred resources, you are losing several thousands. The snowball effect is all that matters.
Also, even the best stone wall is only worth like 150 resources after mid-castle age. That’s the cost of like 3 petards. With that, your wall across the map has a hole, and now is worth very little. Also, your walling vil could be snisped by opponent’s scouts, or by wolves. Im sorry, this is just impractical beyond belief. theres a reason that literally nobody does this on open maaps.
I don’t think there’s a lot of point in arguing this further. You need to show me games where this actually works. Just use mayans, they are perfect for this. I don’t think any amount of words are going to convince me.
I don’t understand why not, so perhaps I’m not being perfectly clear. Let me try again.
Mayans save 50% on the cost of the stone walls, but the other factors remain the same. In practice this actually rounds down to a 40% bonus, so they end up spending 3 stone, plus 5 resources worth of villager time, for a total of 8 resources. However, it takes them significantly longer to get the walls up, which limits their utility. If you don’t get the walls up fast enough, the villager dies and the walls are useless.
Dravidians would build 100% faster. This means they would still spend the full 5 stone, but they would end up needing only 5 seconds per wall segment rather than 10 seconds, which is approximately 2 resources worth of collecting resources, equal to the mayan bonus - BUT, they also get the bonus of getting the walls up in half the time. This means they can take more risks with how they place their walls, place them further out, place them later, etc.
So the dravidians have the full benefit of the Mayan bonus, AND another benefit that is just as powerful, if not moreso.
If there’s anything wrong with this logic let me know, but otherwise I’ll move on.
I highlighted it in the last comment my dude. The boom, the boom. Those extra villagers are far more important. Why are Mayans, Chinese and bengalis good? Why are britons feared at top levels? The boom. You should never delay it for some walls.
If you wall, I’ll boom faster and attack you 5 minutes before you have an army. Then, I’ll raid you eco and you are dead.
Just watch survivalist’s video on walling for better perspective.
I’ll get to that, I’m just highlighting the fact that this bonus would not be directly comparable to the Mayans bonus, for the reasons highlighted.
There are other factors in play as well. Mayans play completely differently to Dravidians, for example; they are a very agile civ, which makes walls much less useful for them. Team games involve larger maps which are typically harder to wall. And so on.
But overall, this bonus would not be comparable to mayans, it would be dramatically superior. It would give the same resource savings while also allowing a far more effective defense.
I’ll move onto your other points if we can settle this one first. It’s fine if you still don’t think that it would be good, I’ll get to that in a moment.
Stone is absolutely very valuable for booming, nobody is going to deny that. But at the same time, defensive towers come out quite regularly, even at the highest tiers of play. Needing to take stone early is commonplace, and an unfortunate necessity of an unpredictable game.
My view is this: Dravidians’ win condition is going for a full boom. They must make it past the castle age, after which point they become much more difficult to stop. This means the enemy is going to do everything they can do to shut them down before that point, and there’s very little the Dravidians can do about it.
So the Dravidian player will never be able to go for that ideal full boom; it’s simply not possible. They will get pushed back in the castle age, they will have to build defenses, and they will end up facing significant costs along the way. The only question is whether or not they can survive for long enough to actually make it through. Currently, they typically cannot.
But an eco bonus simply isn’t going to fix that problem. Even with a god-tier eco bonus, I just can’t see them being able to do much in the early to middle castle age. Certainly not without making them mind-bendingly overpowered in the lategame and at low elos.
That’s why I think a defensive bonus like this is so important. If they’re already going to have to be spending these resources, then they should be able to do so better!
Now, you’re right that these defenses won’t last forever. The enemy WILL break through them. But it will take time. The enemy will need a castle or siege, and they’ll need to neutralize your own siege. And THAT is where the game would take place. They WILL break through, but it’s whether they can break through fast enough, whether you can make your boom strong enough, to make up the lost defensive resources and reach that snowball point, to finally be able to push back.
Yeah, my opinion is mostly based on Nations Cup. And they are #1 in Nomad TG in all elo ever since. Obviously W/R is not as ridiculous as Spanish. It is in between 53%-57% across different elo. But they are clearly #1 and almost an auto choice. The only TG water map is Northern Isle but play rate is too low to make any conclusion.
And most importantly, a naval TB means the civ will suffer in land due to having less number of bonuses. Malay suffered a lot until recently.
Only if you are tower rushing/defending from towers. I’d say that I’ve seen it in maybe 1/4-1/5th of games. It’s not unheard of, but I wouldn’t say it’s regular either. Scout rush/archer skirm opening make up over 60%, if not higher, in my estimate.
We can kinda agree on this. Gold and raiding are still huge issues, but dravidians have 2 trash units which are better than FU.
However, dravidians still don’t have any mobility, and I’ve seen them being pushed to make their garbage scout cavalry in more than a few games. I remember a mirror match between daut and someone else where the victory actually came through scout battle.
I don’t agree that they will be broken on late game, but low Elos might become a problem. Low elo players can’t punish them effectively, and that might be a problem.
However, the stone wall will just contribute to that. Low elo players will just wall up, and it will just be more annoying for their opponents.
You need to remember that dravidian open map game is actually alright at lower Elos. They struggle at high Elos, and high elo folks are not going to stone wall.
This civ needs something for high elo players, and such a meager stone wall bonus just isn’t it. I also disagree with it thematically, and even historically. This would be another siege discount bonus, something that doesn’t really fit in with the civ anywhere.
I generally agree. But being #1 doesn’t warrant a nerf by itself imo. Also, I am not even against changing that bonus. I believe I’ve agreed with you on changing that since the first time.
My disagreement is only on the priority order. I would first change the fishing bonus, and then Medical corps and siege. Then, if necessary, change team bonus. But we can just agree to disagree over this, it seems like a fairly trivial disagreement.
I’d say it’s more than that, but I think it’s civ-dependent, not based specifically on the method of enemy attack. Yes, towers are commonly used to defend against tower rushes, but that’s by no means the only time or reason.
But that’s beside the point a bit. My point is, it’s possible to build towers for defense AND still boom at the end of it, so you can’t make a unilateral statement that this is going to break their boom potential.
The traditional counter to superior mobility is fortification, which is really what I’m trying to achieve here.
I don’t think that this bonus would actually make all that much difference at lower elos. Yes, they would get their walls up faster and be more protected initially, but low-elo players are typically slow to rush anyway, and walls can already easily be up long before they arrive, and full turtling doesn’t work well at any elo.
Basically, beginners lack the skill and game knowledge to effectively use such a bonus to be particularly better than they are already.
I actually disagree with you here; Dravidians were well known for having some of the greatest architecture of the region, so a bonus directed more towards greater cities and fortifications would be historically in keeping with their character.
As far as theme is concerned, walls match their slow and steady theme quite nicely, plus their very decent archers.
I do agree that the pros need something, but the thing to bear in mind is, experts are the most capable of leveraging a tiny bonus into far more than what a lower-elo player can use. I think you might be surprised at how little it might take to make them quite decent. That said, I’m not saying this is the only change I’d give them.
Honestly, I’d probably focus on their urumis after this, though. In all my experimentation, in my games, I simply haven’t been able to make them effective thus far.
Yeah, but I’m saying that you are going about it in the wrong way.
I already said that a stone discount would be great.
Another bonus I’d be okay with is giving their walls (and/or buildings) +2,+3,+4 melee armour in feudal/castle/imperial age. That would make scout cavalry raids and Knight raids more difficult while not stopping mangonel pushes.
Architecture, yes. Walls, no.
But I guess we fundamentally disagree here. I want to see substantial chamges which could be modified after for balance. Building walls faster just isn’t it.
Its 3 or 4 maa opening. Being decent means you’re able to produce in decent numbers and get value from them. Lot of Scouts, lot of archers are very good, lot of spears/skirms are good when paired with archer/scout or if the civ has a bonus for trash. MAA is situational beyond the first 3.
Lol, you can make anything work when you’re a significantly stronger player than your opponent. He has won against 2.3-2.5k players with 1 unit imp armies like Persian elephants, Ballistas, Elite battle elephant + elite elephant archers as Bengalis, only Karambit warriors and no siege in various games. Doesn’t mean these are good strategies and can effectively work at even matchups. While he did in that game he won’t be able to do those against his level of opponents like Liereyy, Hera, Yo or Tatoh on land maps.
To wall the amount of map that’s sufficient to support your development till mid imp, you’d probably have to spend around 300 stone. That’s either going to delay tc or slow down boom because of buying/collecting stone and the villager idle time, even if its relatively smaller. And Dravidian eco or lead isn’t that significant compared to most other civs.
Its not a free upgrade. You’ll be spending on a castle and 1400 resources on it. That’s the equivalent of early imp with halb upgrade. So its not something practically useful to fight against castle age pushes, you’ll get stomped before you do that. There are a lot of practical bonuses that are much better than something like this. Extra attack for ranged units, town centers or just extra attack against cavalry, units taking lesser damage from cavalry, faster monk faith regeneration, more range and attack on towers, more speed and hp for urumis or greater economy to naturally give them position advantage.
You know, Just my 2 cents: since we rarely see civ bonus that give both buff and nerf at the same time like Huns or China, maybe Dravidian might get one like:
Tower is cheaper and/or faster to build but weaker in attack/range. (number would be quantify latter)
With this, it might help answer 2 issues of monk and siege:
Monk cannot convert tower so need to beware to go close to it (still able to detour and try to convert unit from other directions)
Slow siege down, give time to detour unit to the back and try to snipe siege
In case of ram, garrison infantry in tower should hold ram as if it close, infantry can get out and surround ram and destroy it.
Also garrison heal units, make units sustain damage longer and hold a bit better, which match Dravidian’s theme.
That’s for normal civs; Dravidians are quite a bit different, especially due to the cheapness of supplies. That said, I do agree that they’re a support unit, but that doesn’t really change anything. Siege can’t really go naked either, but that doesn’t make it bad.
To be clear, this wasn’t a pro player, it was just a normal 2000elo guy on reddit.
According to aoestats, maa opening is among their best.
You may be surprised. It actually takes no more to wall the entire half of the map compared to walling just your base, it just is harder to do because of the build time and distance. But my proposed build speed buff would alleviate that issue.
I’ve thought about having medical corps further increase healing speed across the board. Like, if it increased garrison healing speed by 50% or so, which would multiply with herbal medicine, that could let them garrison and meaningfully heal up elephants quickly. Wouldn’t be a bad change and would keep their identity.
You mentioned maa are feasible in feudal and I disagreed to it. Where did siege come from in feudal age? Hypothetically if Supplies costed a ton of resources but made militia line cost 35 food or something, then probably Dravidians can spam maa. But 45 food for slow units is still too much in feudal age/early castle age. Slavs have it for free but still no one ever does a lot of maa with Slavs. Only way maa can work is if the map somehow is favorable for towers and makes it impossible for opponents to wall and stay safe inside their base. Or if its a hybrid map where the Dravidian water bonuses comes into play.
2000 elo is a pro player, and at his level players are very good at handling maa with just a few archers.
aoestats shows that maa is a lot worse than Scouts and archers both in terms of winrate and playrate in the past month.
AoE pulse shows in detail that many other openings are significantly better than maa. Only strategies worse are forward ranges, old school drush, tower rush.
No one stone walls even close to their base in castle age. They finish the walls with their military buildings, some palisades and houses. No one even stone walls with Mayans. You can stone wall if your civ is going to get some ridiculously big advantage in castle age like OG poles did. There’s many other problems wrt walling half the map, like the need for army to protect walling vills, need to have siege between each pair of forests. Otherwise you’d have spent 300 stone and then 2 mangonels would just break-in from somewhere and all the efforts and resources spent on walling would be waste. This is something very situational and limited to maps like golden pit or hideout, not Arabia. The most practical application in Arabia is laming, moving a couple of vills with pre-mill drush and walling off most of the resources fast. It doesn’t address the mid and late game weakness.
I completely agree dude. Stone walling looks like discount Koreans. That is the reason I went for a building based eco bonus which you can see below.
These 2 bonuses cover all buidings except towers and walls. The first bonus covers dark age economy. I added houses for walling potential as suggested by @DemiserofD. The second one covers feudal and castle age economy and military production capability. You can check building list from this link: Buildings (Age of Empires II) | Age of Empires Series Wiki | Fandom
Portuguese get stronger ships for cheaper price and Dravidians don’t get any discount on ships. I don’t see the relation between the civs except classification as naval civs.
@DemiserofD Yeah I too remember their M@A being their most successful strat. But now its fast castle or straight archers. And side note they were the second worst arabia civ 1900+ elo above. They tend to do much better on Arena almost 21-25 ranked. So stone walls are helping. However stone defense is not a meta strat. It’s not interesting either. The ‘interesting’ part is the biggest issue with dravidians in my opinion. They bring nothing new as a civ and have less options than old civs. On land, its options are like an unfinished pilot civ that got released years later as an easter egg. Even the dock is just fully upgraded with a ship that gives pop space efficiency for lesser range.
You get castles that are 20% cheaper. You get 20% cheaper TCs. When you are falling behind in feudal, you need to go to stone to tower defend your eco. If not, you are surely going to get stomped regardless of the civ. The below 2 things are the changes I suggested:
Light cav with bloodlines are the best miitary option any civ can get in feudal age. Even if you are behind militarily and economically, you can stop all feudal armies by mining stone for towers and selling some stone for gold to get bloodlines upgrade. If “woots” is moved to castle age, it won’t be costlier than ‘chieftans’ at around 1000 resources. Once in castle age, you get 520 stone cheaper castle. So the strat starts paying back at this stage and not after 1400 resources as you quoted. You can protect your gold or get it back with a castle drop on main gold. Buy food if needed and get “woots steel”. You can push back heavy cav, siege and monks using light cav and archers. Hence ‘woots steel’ is your comeback strategy. This strategy is exponentially better than early imp with halb upgrade. Once its safe to move out to other resources, use the cheaper TCs to balance your eco. This change will also give Dravidians a decent late game raiding unit.
For a defensive bonus, I had already proposed that the 25% faster firing skirms and EAs bonus be extended to TCs.
Devs seem to have made decision to keep Drvidian cavalry and monks very weak. So a straight civ bonus will not be in line with that decision. So a tech tree change like adding bloodlines is better.
As far as Urumi is considered, I would remove the splash damage from charge attack which is the cause of most damage during mikeempire videos. In its place, I’ll add one range to the charge attack. This will make their charge attack work like Kamayuks. This will help their counter heavy infantry role as well better than now. You can see the Urumi charge attack animation also supports this change.
Change the base speed to 1.15 tps which will help to reach target before getting killed by skirms. Now 3 Urumi can stack up their charge attack and one-shot a mangonel before dying to skirms or getting converted. With this change, they can work as anti-siege substitute for Dravidians.
