I liked @LinedJoker18896 suggestion for MC honestly. Maybe I can give it my own spin. Instead of these long long list of changes on researching MC you get a 10 percent or thereabouts increase to mounted units HP and when aging up to Imperial you get another 10 percent or thereabouts this would be in addition to it’s regular regen effect.
Same with the food drop-off change that to all food sources not just fishing ships. A nice concise way to give an all around bonus to Dravs.
Your arguments still don’t have foundations. I think you have very binary thinking. I usually don’t say this, but I’ve seen far too many examples to ignore it at this point. You have too many even in this comment.
No, because their castle age is still weak. I’ve only given them some walls and boom. No military. I even removed the siege bonus.
The urumi example earlier also comes into mind. 1 base pierce armour for urumis means they need 3 extra shots to take down. You were saying that it would make them broken, for some reason. I’m not going to list a lot because I am not trying to come after you, but this is something I’ve noticed.
Literally addressed the late game. You fully ignored my response. So…
Wood isn’t a water bonus, it’s a general bonus. It’s predictable, and you can counter it. What this actually does is let you get 2 ships earlier than everybody else. That is pretty good, but you can still counter it. And after those 2 ships, they have nothing.
Use your skirms. You have better ones.
Siege is slow, that’s the issue. If you pressure Dravidians in one spot, they will handle it. Multiple spots is the issue. That’s because they lack mobility.
No, he did it on a tournament. Yes, he quickwalled in a vil, while also fighting in multiple places, in tournament games.
Dramatically? What are you talking about? No, it’s just a bit more, not dramatically more.
Look, I think there’s a large gulf in the way we perceive the game to work. I don’t mean that in an insulting way, I’m cool with you. But, I don’t see a point in continuing this because we aren’t going to agree.
Just 30 more HP won’t reverse the counter.
It’s broken in some situation and underpowered in most situation. Making it totally unbalanced unit imho. Balancing their melee vs ranged performance is necessary. Although I’ll keep their good vs melee, bad vs ranged design.
Also works. And have been proposed earlier by a couple of people.
Edit: Unpopular opinion - Dravidians shouldn’t have the last archer armor or TR for their 25% faster firing skirmisher. (Just like Aztecs). They have both the techs because their tech tree sucks anyway.
#################################################### CENSORSHIP ON THIS FORUM IS FUCKING CANCER
Look up “age of noob elephant archer” on youtube. Dravidian elephant archers already trade (almost) equal to skirms when FU, and when you weigh resources equally. If you give them 30 extra HP, that bonus is broken.
I’ll be honest, bad vs ranged is generally not good, unless the unit itself is ranged. You need to be really strong in melee to be worth it.
Mongols get all that. What’s the issue here? Also, skirms aren’t affected by TR except for accuracy.
Are you talking about this video?
Hence I balanced it. 1PA is worth to remove blast damage.
Mongols don’t have last armor.
Nothing tbh. If Dravidians had meta mobile unit, they wouldn’t have last archer armor.
Yep. They trade far too well for a counter unit.
Not worth it. There isn’t a single situation where I would use that unit.
There are at least some scenarios where current urumis are useful. After your nerfs, they’ll be totally useless.
They do get parthian tactics which make up for that. Dravs don’t.
Not true. Mongols cav archers are equal to Dravidian elephant archers in terms of armour. It’s fine.
Dravidians have FU skirmishers with bonus. Mongols make up but not FU. Have some trade off.
Not true. Mongols CA are less than FU. It’s fine only bcz Dravidians tech tree is bad. Either way it is irrelevant. Dravidians is not getting any meta mobile unit.
I find the same about you…so at least we have that in common!
Honestly, I don’t think you’re thinking through most of your ideas. They’re generic and not tailored to what the civ really needs, instead focused on accentuating normal play without needing any changes. But that’s now how you make a good civ, it leads to boring and bland play.
I want changes that accentuate their differences and help them where they need it most, not changes which make them more ordinary and average.
That’s exactly what I’m saying. If their castle age is still weak, then they’ll never make it to their lategame in the first place, and the change makes no difference. You need a change that lets them get to their decent lategame, not one that makes them more powerful there.
Here, let me explain with pictures. Imagine these are their winrates, with red being current, and orange being if they have a food bonus post-feudal:
Adding a food bonus will slowly pay off and increase their win rates, but only after the point where they’re already dramatically negative. This means by the time their food bonus has a chance to make a meaningful difference, they’ve already lost most of their games, and meanwhile, they become significantly more powerful in the lategame, where they were already above average.
Now, imagine you make the food bonus strong enough to compensate for their weak early game:
Now the enemy has such a tiny window to actually stop them, the game feels unfair.
Now, what I want to do is this:
By introducing an early midgame bonus, it allows them to make it to the lategame, but does not significantly strengthen them once they get there. The enemy has a nice window to beat them, but they have a chance to hold on. It creates a tense, enjoyable game, rather than a frantic rush, a frantic push back, and then an unstoppable civ.
That’s my ideal case.
If so, I apologize. Feel free to post it again, as our responses have been quite long and it’s totally possible I missed something.
Two extra ships means early water control, which means the enemy has a much harder time placing docks, which means dominance for much of the game. Wood is a generic bonus, but it does specifically help with water.
That doesn’t work, or their winrates would be better.
What I’m saying is, they need a bonus that encourages them to build their defenses differently, not just a bonus that makes their normal defenses stronger. If they build the same defenses, the game will go the same way, regardless of building armor, because buildings are rarely torn down in the first place.
Sure, I won’t deny that. But extra building armor won’t help with that.
He still absolutely has fun, even in tournament situations. By serious I mean, if his siege is being pressed or his castles are being trebbed, that sort of thing.
Anything more than zero is a dramatic difference. Even players like Hera have limits. Practically speaking, I imagine something like a third increase, which is more than enough to cause critical losses of valuable units elsewhere.
And all this for what is, at best, a mediocre bonus at best. Like I said, I’m ambivalent about it, but overall, I’d much rather they get something better.
I don’t see why not. We’ve both made slight changes in our viewpoints as the discussion has gone one. I doubt we’ll ever think perfectly alike, because we’re very different individuals, but that doesn’t mean we have nothing to learn from each other.
However, you also have to consider that mil is often delayed until Feudal age in hybrid/water map build order. It means you only have to build 1-2 lumber camp and 1 mining camp in dark age. Therefore Dravidian also have more extra wood in the start of Feudal age. Maybe Japanses can keep up in mid-late feudal but Dravidian have bigger bonus of wood saving overall.
Well. Not all unit line with bonus cannot be FU. Mongols and Goths cases are rather unique. Such as Ethiopians have all upgrade on Archers on top of faster firing. Lithuanians skirms are all FU and they have Tower shield on top of that.
Most of the modern arabia builds also skip mill until feudal age anyways. Mill is not the main advantage, its the ability to get 1 fishing ship 30-45 seconds sooner. The whole reason why Lithuanians were very strong on hybrid before their change. This will translate into approx 15-20 extra food per minute starting from 5th minute onwards. Dravidians are also good in this regard because they can skip a house but will still be slower than Japanese. Other than that there are many advantages like fishing ship hp making it harder for opponent to snipe fishing ships, faster work rate of fishing ships and the ability to follow up with knights with bloodlines after winning water. So even though Dravidians could get ahead by about 50 wood in feudal age, its still hard to compete.
You’re certainly proposing to make it more practically useful and viable but the unit still won’t have a purpose. In any scenario it will be much easier and practical to upgrade to halbs or champs, particularly with the Dravidian barrack tech discounts instead of going for a lot of castles and urumis.
Yes they shouldn’t because they’re a very strong civ with full stable/elite eagles, fully upgradable siege, fully upgradable and extra strong monks. Kappa
Except none of their units are actually strong. Their navy is generic till imp, only usable land unit till imp that’s strong is skirmisher which is a defensive unit. In imp they have to pay 1300+ resources for a tech that gives something that Burmese get for free. Faster food eco fits the narrative of a civ with no mobility and forced to use infantry. Similar to civs like Vikings, Malay.
Not true at all, this is exactly how Malay, Vikings work, to some extent Aztecs as well but they also have monks and eagles.
Its nice that you’ve shown some plots but that’s under the false assumption that the castle age timing will still remain similar to the current timing despite getting a food bonus from feudal age. They’ll actually take a better lead in feudal age with f letching coming in faster, age up significantly faster, do more damage with early xbow upgrade and get economically pull much farther ahead. Then they can keep up with the mid-game cavalry raids with the extra eco.
You can say many things about me, but me not thinking through my ideas? That’s laughable. If you don’t like it, that’s fine. But my ideas aren’t just balanced, I have more than a few creative ideas well received by the community.
Dravidians have enough quirks are characteristics to make them unique. They don’t need more “unique” stuff.
Okay, wait. You keep saying that they are above average, but the numbers say otherwise. This point has already been disproved.
This is where we disagree.
Let me break down how I analyse games. You need to do this on a map-by-map basis, and I’m going to consider open maps here.
Opening for arabia are well known at this point. You have drush, m@a rush, tower rush, scout rush, and archer opening. On top of these, you have follow-ups with skirms, pikes, archers, or scouts. Scout and m@a needs to be done very early. Like 17-19 pop early. Archers are done 19-22 pop usually.
Now, what you need to do is to analyze how a civ’s bonuses affect these openings, and how they can influence the later game.
Afterwards, you hit castle age. There, you have 5 main openings. Knights, Crossbows, Forward siege, Camels, and Boom. This is the first thing you do immediately on hitting castle age. You also have castle drop UU castle openings, which aren’t common except for specific civs like the turks and spanish.
Afterwards, you have follow-ups to make the composition of 1 gold unit, 1 trash unit, and siege. OR, 2 gold unit composition, which need different upgrades. Boom game is usually wall+boom+defensive units (pikes, skirms, and crossbows with mangonel/scorpion).
You also drop one castle in mid-castle (unless you mined stone for an early castle drop), and then 1 more by late castle/early imperial. Once multiple castle come up, you move to imperial. In imperial, you stick with your main composition, and add units as you see your opponent transitioning.
Do you agree with this structure?
I’m sorry, this is just ridiculous. The notion that pros can’t micro their hussars/light cav in imperial age. Just go watch Hera’s champions tournament right now. I am not even going to fight over this.
Fair enough. Let’s stick to one topic. I’ve posted the broad layout of the game. If you agree, we can talk about where, which bonuses apply, and how they will influence the game.
Dravidian elephant archers are also less than FU. That’s the whole point. Dravidian Ele archers and Mongol cav archers are exact same in terms of armour.
But yeah, it doesn’t feel like Dravidians will get knight, camels or anything like that.
You can’t just ignore imp because it doesn’t support your point, lol. Thirisidai is awesome. Their skirms are awesome. Their champions are awesome. Their halbs are, at worst, equal to the burmese, and at best MUCH better. Their EAs are awesome.
That’s a lot of awesome units.
Neither Malay or Vikings have an early power spike. The Dravidian win rate before 15 minutes is 60%; Vikings and Malay are both 45%.
How exactly do they ‘keep up’? If they can never get their villagers working because they’re constantly raided to death, they’ll never have the chance to even use the bonus. A food bonus only works if you have a chance to establish a powerful eco in the first place - which the Dravidians don’t.
Support from the community rarely means anything, lol. Most people have no idea what constitutes good game balance, as the vast majority of actual developers will attest.
Your ideas tend to be excessive, and often fail to be properly tailored to the civ in question, instead giving generic powerups that would broadly help any civ, but tend to apply a brute-force approach that may have unintended consequences and/or dilute the concept of the civ. Which is fine if you didn’t like the concept of the civ in the first place, but in that case, why are you posting about it? Leave it to the people who actually enjoy it.
I’d rate their quirkiness at maybe a 7/10. They’re nowhere near as quirky as, say, the Bohemians.
We could make them WAY stranger!
Missing the point; you’re adding increased micro requirements for inferior results than an average civ, at best. Yes, they can micro if it’s worthwhile, but in this case, it isn’t.
But I’ll reiterate that I’m ambivalent on this change.
Sure, broadly. You missed a few things, like fast castling or trash openings, and in real games, it rarely goes quite as smoothly as you say, but sure, it’s a broad breakdown, so go on.
10% speed for all infantry, and +1PA and -15 food for militia line vs 20% speed for militia line (Arson is negligible). I guess mine is weaker because of only one unit. However mine is free bonus, not an UT. Also 30 food, 20 gold Champion with 17 pure attack and 7 PA is broken.
Well. Thanks. But
Indeed it is challenging. It works for Burgundians because Coustiler is cheaper than Knight. For Urumi it is opposite.
No. Vikings and Malay don’t have early power boost. Vikings are good from late Feudal, literally from where Dravidians starts becoming weaker if not rush to Castle Age. Malay is strong at late Feudal to early Castle and then at early Imperial. All are relatively weak for Dravidians, maybe not so much for early Castle.
But I’m talking about Skirmisher. EA is irrelevant.
Yeah. That’s why it is irrelevant. So no point in discussing.
They do with stronger militia/maa. That’s enough to delay early feudal scout ambushes. And then the vill lead/wheelbarrow eco drives them ahead. That stats that you shared about the first 20 min winrate, check that for Malay and Vikings they will be right there as well.
If you’re talking about standard Arabia, late feudal is just the point where you’re about to click castle age. On maps which demand late feudal aggression, Malay are actually bad because they don’t get bloodlines, scouts aren’t a unit that scale well for them into castle age.
Very similar but weaker because of weaker eco bonus.
.
I’m ignoring it because it doesn’t come into play until 45 mins lol. Hypothetically if you’ve maintained lead till 40 mins then yes you can go for all these units. Stronger units across the game mean like Romans/Saracens galleys or Byzantine fireships, Ethiopian/Briton archers, to some extent Lithuanian cavalry. More value for less investment. That gives you the flexibility to either invest into eco or more military. None of it happens with Dravidian units. You could say EA are that way, except EA don’t have any value at all in castle age.
All of it in late imp once again under the assumption you comfortably get there. Which you won’t unless you have a very strong eco.
Champions and skirms are awesome in imp. Rest of it are not. EA are terribly slow and ridiculously expensive for a civ without any food eco bonus, for halbs you pay 1400 resources which is A LOT to get something that has the same impact as Burmese free bonus. In case you don’t understand let me simplify - its 42 net damage after Wootz steel instead of 40 from Burmese against almost all strong cavalry units, exact same 42 damage against hussars, exact same 10 damage against skirms, ranged units and other halbs, 10 vs 11 against most siege units, 10 vs 16 against rams, covering all commonly seen imperial age units.
Either way all of it is under a hypothetical scenario where Dravidians free boomed into these units which they can’t without mobility or super strong eco bonus.
More than 55% for 1900+, more value from militia/maa helping set the eco lead.
Not atm, but with the 10% food drop-off bonus. Faster to next age by atleast a minute than their current timings, better military trade, earlier tc addition/siege aggression, 20-30 vill lead and you can task the extra vills to collect stone and get defenses up or get to imp and have halb upgrade. Knight raids are deadly if you’ve similar or just slightly better eco. Not when you’ve 2 or 3 castles protecting your base, halbs, bracer, ballistics upgrades done. The reason why Malay, Vikings, any other fast civs don’t die to late castle age Knight raids.
All the “awesome” units you’ve mentioned are in imperial age after all upgrades and the only way to get there is to either give them mobility in the form of a fast moving and tanky melee unit or give them the eco to pull significantly farther ahead when their expensive units become usable.
Here is my 2nd proposal.
I’m not removing the TB this time. Their TB was my most requested team bonus in this thread.
It is very ironic that now I want to remove it.
Civ Bonus
Fisherman and Fishing Ship carry +15 → Militia line +5% speed per barracks tech. (Max +25%)
[MAA will be 5% to 10% faster. MAA with supplies can reach archer. Though just barely. LS can be upto 25% faster. They can be almost as fast as Eagle.]
I just want to utilize their 50% discount on Barracks tech bonus more. And try to solve their no raiding unit problem by mostly militia line. Champion is basically Castle Age EW with more than 2X attack and only at 20 gold. Actually it has a chance to be over powered.
Unique Techs
Medical Corps - Elephant units regenerate 30 HP/min → Battle Elephant cost -50% gold.
Now there is a reason to train BE. If you can get a good Feudal or early Castle lead and get some safe boom behind, you may take an approach similar to Poles. Also ain’t no way it is more powerful than Malay.
Yeah, you think? 11
I feel like if a unit that isn’t very expensive is that fast, it needs to be fragile in some other areas. I wouldn’t mind such a bonus and even though it overlaps with Celts a lot, I guess this could help them. Celts move 15% faster for free, I wonder if the 10 percentage points more brings them to some overwhelming threshold, though at the same time… Celt infantry play isn’t OP either and Dravidians are generic until they get Wootz Steel, so perhaps this is fine.
I feel like this is a little worthless, as the biggest hurdle is their food cost. But if you nerf the food cost (or both) it’s just Malay bonus. In fact, I’d say the tech is less powerful than Malay’s for that reason alone.
Random idea, what if Dravidians got Forced Levy but for Battle Elephants? Gold cost removed with an additional food cost. Sure, the Elephants will cost a lot of food, but trash elephants could become… trash! This won’t solve their Castle Age problem, but hey - you got maybe a reason to make them. 11
EA do have value in the castle age, just in a more limited format. You never go pure EA, but mixing in small numbers of EAs allows for a significant advantage at minimal cost. For example, a castle age dravidian EA can 1v1 a mangonel with no micro at all.
The same applies to their Therisidai in early imp. While going purely for them is difficult, going for a few mixed in and making a gradual transition is very possible and offers some extremely decent results.
Add to that having FU archers and infantry(with discounts) in castle age, and I think a rep for powerful units is more than justified.
I don’t think eco alone is what’s going to do that for you. Giving them a strong eco isn’t going to encourage them to go lategame, it’s just going to extend their early-game power spike and increase the number of games won in the first ~20 minutes. The fact of the matter is, the simple lack of agility they have in the midgame is going to put them on the back foot there no matter their economy bonus, simply because faster units have such an advantage at that stage.
Remember how this was limited to just feudal+? That means farming only, so for a significant portion of the game it will be identical to the Slavs.
Consider the Slav win rate curve:
As you can see, they experience the same approximate winrate curve as the Dravidians. It takes time for that bonus to kick ### ### at the end of the game, it becomes extremely powerful.
Combine that with the Dravidian curve:
And you will get a civ that STILL mostly dies in the early midgame, but becomes utterly and unfairly unstoppable in the lategame, while ALSO being extremely powerful in the early game.
The new winrate curve would essentially look like the slav one, just starting at a much higher point, like this:
You cannot tweak the bonus to make this work, because no matter what, the curve will always be the same; it will be low in the midgame and high at the endgame. If you make it feel fair in the midgame, it will be skyrocketing at the endgame. If it’s even possible to make it feel fair at the endgame(doubtful), it will be completely useless in the midgame, where they currently lose most of their games anyway!
Translation: It doesn’t fix their problem, which is here:
It only makes them waaaaay too powerful here:
Yes I do think. I hope it is balanced as they are still weak against archer and defensive building. And not as cost effective as Malay THS.
Celts is 5% faster as they lack Squires. So my proposal is essentially 20% faster. I also had Celts WR in my mind. WR has a speed of 1.38 with 80 HP and 5 PA. Dravidians champion will have 1.24 speed with 70 HP and 6 PA. I think they will have almost identical performance against ranged units in terms of population. However Dravidians will be a lot better at melee thanks to Wootz Steel and over all more cost effective.
Yeah. But less food also mean they will be more powerful in TG where gold income is never an issue.
IDK what elo or map you choose. But what about Vikings? I think combining them with Dravidians will be more reasonable. Average early game, good mid game, bad late game.
Agreed. A free tech would allow a short-term bonus, while preventing long-term overpoweredness from an overall eco bonus.
Personally, I would be inclined to give them free stone mining upgrades, as that would predominately help them in terms of defense and getting to their lategame, plus help them get into using their UU.
Slav don’t get the wood bonus. And I believe @filtercoffee488’s suggestion was to remove the fishermen bonus and replace it with the food bonus.
I
Usually its very informative when people plot graphs for analysis and its a great effort. But these plots and additions is a worse form of mathematical analysis. Its not primary school math and you can’t take the average of two winrate plots like that, the game is more analogous to econometrics. The closest quantified comparison is between a civ that had 1 strong or 2 moderate eco bonuses in a few patches vs 1 moderate eco bonus in different patches. Like Khmer before and after DE, Aztecs before and after 2020, Malians in 2021 and current Malians, Poles/Hindustanis/Gurjaras 2022 vs now. Even that’s not a conclusive analysis because of massive tech tree and unit stats differences across the patches.
Eagle civs get a very strong economy/military value because they have to be ahead to compensate for the lack of stable units. This is what @filtercoffee488, myself and a few others have been recommending in this thread for Dravidians.
