Totally on point. But
They are totally not anything close to defensive civ. Why so many people want defensive bonus for them? Is this because of historical accuracy?
I really wanted the new Malay bonus. But that’s beyond scope now.
I am trying to work around two main factors.
1: I think they already have the power to win, they just lack the opportunity to use that power. Giving them a defensive bonus would buy them time to get better access to that power, without making them too potent.
2: They are already good on water maps, so I don’t really want to give them a bonus that makes them harder to deal with on water. That somewhat rules out wood, gold, and to some extent even food, since food bonuses can be eco-swapped with wood.
Hence, stone bonuses. My ideal bonus would be purely to stone walls, since that would be almost exclusively beneficial on land maps, hence my earlier idea of +100% stone wall building speed; it only kicks in during feudal+, so it doesn’t make their initial strength too strong.
But just stone mining bonuses could have a similar impact, albeit with perhaps some unnecessary overlap on water maps where their defenses could become a bit too potent.
You can replace one of their naval bonus. And even nerf the free wood bonus if that’s your concern.
For example, I proposed no food for archer attack upgrades for Bengalis. If Dravidians get that, you need to remove their TB or Fishing Ship bonus. And maybe even nerf free wood to 150.
That’s true, but I’d rather avoid that if it’s at all possible. Those are some of their most distinctive aspects, so I view weakening them as somewhat similar to taking away a villager from the Chinese. Possible, but only if there are no other options.
Personally, I especially like the fishing bonuses just because they’re fairly distinctive and not something other civs have. Honestly, if we really want to buff them, my number 1 change would just be to make the fish ponds on arabia consistent. As-is, you only seem to get them about 40% of the time, and about half of them are located in a spot much too far away to actually be used.
The first change I’d make is to make fish ponds as consistent as deer. Honestly, that’s probably not a bad idea in any case, since so many people seem to dislike chasing deer, whereas fish cannot be chased.
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New patch and literally NOTHING for dravs. Feelsbadman.
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Hey, at least armored elephants got a buff! Cheaper armored elephants is an indirect buff, if a small one. Still, that DOES hit them in the castle age where they need it - though specifically against castle drops, so in a fairly limited use case.
Will be interesting to see if it has any significant impact on indian civ win rates.
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Yep! They could have done away with “Medical Corps”.
The civ will continue to be an abomination for the foreseeable future.
At the outset in april patch, they could have just made bonus like “Elephants and Siege have +20% HP”. Making it look like it was an elephant bonus. This would have countered Siege problem as well as fixed “Medical corps”. There would not have been a need to buff it to 30 hp/min.
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Yes, a combo UT that’s basically Franks but for Elephants and Celts bonus HP rolled into one sounds like a great idea.
The idea is so amazing that it’s not even just +20 HP, but a +20% which as we all know, totally doesn’t matter for units that have hundreds of HP. It’s like marginally weaker Chatras for both Battle and Archer Elephants, lmao.
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Y’know, they could easily have medical corps increase elephant LOS. That could help with the scouting issue, especially combined with the increased battle elephant LOS from recent patches. It would also help against monks. And the idea of scouting with battle elephants is hilarious.
Let’s see…scout cavalry get up to 20 tiles per second in castle age, with 13 LOS. By comparison, an elephant archer with all three range upgrades will uncover about 9 tiles per second with 10 LOS. Every +1 LOS increase the amount they uncover by 1.8, so you could give them up to double their LOS without any issues at all. They would, however, be the longest LOS units in the game.
The increased LOS would also help to compensate for their lack of mobility, as they could see enemies coming long before enemies could see them. They could actually see trebuchets coming. They would be a really powerful utility addition to any force. Honestly, it’d be a really intriguing bonus.
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At the expense of sounding like a broken record, I’ll advocate this change again. This change will fix the scouting and raiding problem:
This one change to light cav and ‘woots steel’ will make Dravidian civ viable on most open maps.
Now, coming back to the civ bonues.
Agreed, I think both the bonuses of getting +200 wood and carrying +15 need to be reworked into something workable on land and water maps. I would retain my earlier suggestion of Houses and economy buildings getting built faster and propose a new one as well: "Economy technologies give 50% more benefit except market "
The first bonus is a early game bonus. Houses, Mills, lumber camps, mining camps, docks, market, farms and fish-traps are built 50% faster. This goes well with the south Indian architectural heritage theme as well as sea-based economy theme.
The second bonus is based on the amazing economy south India had in medieval times. Every economy upgrade gives 150% of the intended effect instead of 100%. For farming, horse collar and heavy plow give 75/2 and 125/2 extra food respectively. Gold mining and stone mining speed will increase by 22.5% instead of 15% boost. Double-bit axe and bow-saw will increase by 30% almost reaching 170% which need to be balanced by removing two-man saw. Most importantly wheel borrow and hand-cart will increase speed by 15% each and carry capacity by +1 and +4 giving an important boost in castle age when they need it most. As an added bonus, Gillnets will make fishing faster by 30% subsuming their carry capacity effect. In late castle age, gillnets can be used in conjunction with the 50% faster built fish-traps to have the naval bonus effect required of the civ. I’m sure this is the bonus they need to get over their tech tree gaps which become too glaring as the game goes on.
With this change, Dravidians will be the only civ to miss out on all late-game eco upgrades. But that will not be a disaster like it is currently. This bonus gives a niche flavor to the economy of Dravidian civ. Being a meso-civ without eagle, They need an all around eco bonus like Aztecs and mayans. The bonus is not bat-shit crazy like khmer not needing any buildings or garrisoning in houses. So it should be an acceptable long term bonus.
My initial idea was to propose a 50% discount on all TC techs except age up. But this eco-bonus is more appropriate to help the civ produce expensive elephants. Heck, they might not even need the Siege discount due to faster wood collection.
Dravidians will still lack Siege Engineers and treadmill crane. So militarily, they will fall off when the game goes longer. Hence they won’t be an OP closed map civ.
In order to make this civ viable on open maps without adding eagles, we don’t need to do a Khmer like treatment. A sensible change like this will go a long way.
To emphasize the trade and fishing importance, I’ll change the team bonus to:
The trade is just a straight 5 gold bonus per trip.
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This is actually a top tier idea which helps with 3 main weaknesses. One, they will see monks sooner and can be prepared. Although that doesn’t help with the monks themselves. Two, it addresses the lack of mobility a little bit, specifically in the scouting area. Three, it gives them a reason to make ele archers in castle age.
The scouting thing is especially important because now, you can include a single ele archer with your crossbows and avoid your opponent’s knights much more easily.
It is also flavourful and appropriate. Good job, my dude.
I have to say though, it still doesn’t address the monk issue. Watch the vinch vs yo migration game on the champions. Redemption monks + siege will completely crush dravs. You only need like 2 pikes to handle drav’s garbage light cav.
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To be fair to @benithisrael 20% doesn’t really make a whiff of a difference to their mounted unit counters since they are missing so many armor upgrades. For anything else they do help I guess.
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This is a pretty poor suggestion. You can add a monk instead and save 80 food. It will help against Knights too. A 0.9 tps elephant is not that faster than a 0.7 tps monk. So this option gives no appreciable mobility either.
Monk with atonement can match other civ monks in conversion if dravidians have fervor. If we have to bring any technology to replace effect of medical corps, it should give more mobility. If we take the infantry civ identity a bit further to include all foot units, the tech should give 10% speed boost to all units on foot.
This should include archers, skirms, pikemen, militia-line and monks. Then monks with fervour will have an additionl speed of 10% reaching 0.93 tps helping with your LOS problem while being faster than elephant archers.
The optimum solution would be: “Light cav with bloodlines”. They are better for mobility even if they lack last armour and hussar upgrade. This is the exact definition of a glass cannon. But to be able to spam light cav in numbers needed. You need a tech like this below.
Without a good economy bonus, it’ll be impossible to play cavalry especially elephants. If you need any civ to be able play elephants in castle age, either they need viking eco bonus or a bonus like 50% more effect on eco upgrades.
20% is a standard number to give HP civ bonus. Look at vikings, Vietnamese and your favorite spam civ franks. It’s because elephant is not meta, adding Siege in there will help in the problematic castle age. With 20% more HP, mangonels will have 60 HP and the damage from opponent mangonel will be 52. You can pullback and repair or you can shoot back to get a 1-1 kill. You can compute numbers for mangonel line. It works out in all ages. Thus, this strategy will help to neutralize siege push in castle age and hold against siege engineers equipped siege in imperial age. In imperial age, more HP gives tanky elephants. The elephants line such as BE, EA and SA will be helpful to take out wood intensive siege even if they are under castles or protected by other means. Elephants can’t do the job of cavalry due to their low speed. They are better suited for anti-siege and anti-building role like rams. This 20% HP would have been the more appropriate bonus rather than 33% wood discount.
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A monk only has 11 LOS in castle age. This suggestion would be for quite a bit more than that: somewhere between 15 and 20 LOS.
And 0.9 is 28% faster than 0.7, btw. That’s faster than any monk in the game.
The entire premise of the civ is being slow, lol. No cavalry, no husbandry, no fervor. Not a chance they’re gonna give a unique tech that goes directly against that identity.
The best chance you have for better mobility might be slight bonuses to the urumi swordsman.
They already have a borderline op bonus in their fishing bonuses. They’re not going to get another, and they’re not going to lose their fishing bonus, it’s too integral to their identity.
I think you are really underestimating that speed difference. Just try grouping crossbows/ele archers with monks in a real game. You’ll see.
Except they have mangonels. And your monks can’t do anything against that.
Holy shit, I’ve had enough of this argument. This identity is ####### ######## on a civ like Dravidians. We’ve talked about this. To be clear, I’m not mad at you, I’m mad at the designers. This has no historical basis, some ####### decided “oh, I decided that this civilization is slow”.
Fishing bonus is not even close to OP, unless you have a lot of deep sea fish, those fish are far from the shore, and you have almost total water control. You can watch any pro games, those conditions almost never happen. Usually, it counts for a 5-10% faster fishing which is nice, but not even close to OP.
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Still better than an umbrella called Indians based on mughals.
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I mean, fair enough, but I doubt you’ll convince the devs of that. I like to make suggestions I think could realistically happen.
And(to any devs reading) I also like the core design, so don’t feel like you have to change it just because ‘everyone hates it’.
It’s quite a bit more than that. I just tested it; on a map with just a 6 tile distance, it increased my fishing rate by 10%. With a perfectly reasonable 11 tile distance, it increased my fishing rate by a whalloping 25%. It’s really no wonder they do so dang well on water maps, their fishing ships are really on a whole different level.
You know Japanese literally have better bonus than this, right?
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I’ve talked about this before, it’s fine to have “slow civs”. Examples, Teutons, Incas, Britons, Malay, and even Koreans. A lot of siege civs don’t have great cavalry. It’s not the slowness that’s bad. It’s the design.
I did a test before, don’t remember the exact numbers though. The point, however, is that fishing eco is extremely volatile and unstable compared to land eco. It requires huge investment to begin, and is easily destroyed even by a small fleet of enemy ships.
Not to mention that the bonus actually has a specific weakness in the early game, as it forces you to micro your ships to drop off. If you don’t, you’ll delay age up timings.
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How did the Mughal Empire enter the picture here? The time period doesn’t quite support it. The Indians were more likely to be a weird mishmash of the Delhi Sultanate and gunpowder. Which again is beyond odd.