Yeah protecting your sea assets is infinitely harder especially if you are going further from land. So as a bonus it isn’t quite useful. Hell even for maps like BF the value of this bonus is really really questionable as you will have built the docks and fish traps in such a way that they will be right next to the docks completely negating the benefit of the bonus.
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No? Japanese fishing ships work 5-20% faster. Dravidians work 10-25+% faster, and it’s not limited by age.
The design seems to work just fine on hybrid and water maps.
Spirit of the Law analyzed it in his overview, so that’s probably worth a look.
I will agree that fishing eco is unpredictable. But that’s largely down to map inconsistency. If they could just make little fishing ponds as consistent on arabia as deer and boar, dravidians would be much better without any changes to the civ at all.
1%-25% faster because deep fish won’t be minimum 6 tiles away from Dock all the time.
Limited by distance from Dock. And there will be a point where a fish trap is faster than Dravidians deep fish.
The bonus is very strong because it is combined with 2 others - 200 free wood and 5 pop space per Dock.
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Oh come now, let’s not go down that road and start quibbling. The bonus is impactful, nobody can deny that.
In practice, the real effect of the bonus is a significant increase in the range at which deep sea fish can be harvested. Normal civs cap out at a certain distance where deep sea fish become slower to harvest than just chopping wood and building farms/fish traps. Dravidians can go essentially twice as far, so while a normal civ might be able to harvest a 100 tile area, a dravidian player can harvest more like a 400 tile area. In my scenario editor testing, it’s something like having 4x the fish available.
I won’t deny the other bonuses are decent, but without the fishing bonus, they’d be nowhere near as potent on water maps, and I don’t hesitate to call it a very strong bonus.
The big issue is that on some maps it just isn’t available.
I don’t think anybody is denying that.
You never addressed the actual argument, which has been brought up like 3 times by this point.
No, it is not map inconsistency. It is the lack of defence on water. The problem is that your fishing ship has to move into deep water to find those fish, but they are extremely vulnerable to enemy ships there. A fast fire ship will take out a fishing ship in a few seconds. There is no “safe space” on water like you have on land with TC. Even towers aren’t really that good, till you get heated shot and guard tower. ### ##### ######## #### in too late for early rushes and by then, you cannot fish in range of towers anyway.
I don’t think anybody is contesting this, either. However, I think they have a huge weak point in migration maps, but that’s a different topic.
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I was thinking more about the tiny little oases like on arabia; not big enough for a dock, but with 1-2 turtles or shore fish.
The biggest issue atm is, these little oases just aren’t well designed right now. Look at this one:
What do you do with this? This isn’t worth putting a TC on, OR a lumber camp, OR a mill. Unless this happens to spawn near some other resource, this will go completely ignored, and thanks to the current arabia settings, they never spawn close enough to harvest even with the dravidians bonus.
Now, if they spawned a little differently, then dravidians could suddenly be a lot better on arabia. Consider this alternative:
See how it’s far enough away to require milling for a normal civ, but close enough so a dravidian player might be able to harvest it? Or at least to use it for walling and snag 25 food while they’re out there?
But at the same time it doesn’t replace a forest so it’s not actively frustrating. THAT is my ideal.
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If I haven’t responded to it, perhaps I’ve missed it. Could you rephrase it unambiguously, please?
I don’t see them as having any issues on water maps. Their winrates are good there, so that’s not a primary concern, imo.
My focus is on Arabia.
Sure, but i’d argue that different civs are supposed to do better or worse in different maps; it’s just not supposed to be quite as pronounced as Dravidians experience. In the current Arabia map, Dravidians usually won’t get to use their fishing bonus at all. I’d just like it tweaked slightly to make it a viable option; I don’t expect this to singlehandedly make dravidians all better, but it would accomplish the food bonus you want without changing the civ at all.
I mean, imagine if there were a map without ANY huntables? Mongols and Goths would do terrible there. But that’s why all maps have deer and boar, consistently enough that build orders can be written around them. I just want the same for shore fish.
I think the above fishing changes to arabia largely handle the food front, but I don’t agree on the military front. They have an assortment of very powerful options, they just lack the means to get there. Urumis are powerful, but take a castle and only really excel in superior numbers. Elephant archers are powerful, but again, rely a lot on a critical mass. And their trash is very potent as well, with the exception of their mediocre scout line.
What that tells me is they don’t need a more powerful military per say, they need the breathing room to get that military out on the field. To me, that indicates a defensive bonus is needed.
And one of the reasons I’m in favor of a wall building speed bonus is, it would allow a player to take advantage of the shore fish at the same time. Imagine you want to wall up the map I posted above: you could do this:
Send your villagers over, wall the map, collect 32 food each, and come come back, having collected almost as many resources as the villagers who stayed put and harvested sheep!
And then they can build a siege workshop behind those walls, repel attacks until imperial age, and head out with a more powerful composition!
I certainly don’t think it’s fundamentally broken. A few laser-focused tweaks should make it perfectly decent. I don’t think it will ever be S-tier on arabia, but then, it really shouldn’t be. Just decent is more than good enough.
So, I tried to dig into water maps for 1v1s and see the exact data. Aoestats numbers are pretty bad. The best I could find was from aoepulse.
This search includes all the full water maps, from the time of April balance overhaul. However, only 770 games have been played. Here it is:
Here it is: AoE Pulse
Dravidians have almost 60% winrate, which sounds great. Except, they are not even in the top 10. They actually have the 12th highest win rate, with 43 matches. AoE Pulse does not show variance, or further information. So, I think that this data is pretty inconclusive.
To be clear, I think that Dravs are really strong on water. They should be in the top 5. But that only applies to pure water maps, which very few people ever play. So that’s kinda irrelevant. A better stat would be semi-water or hybrid maps. I’ll check those in a while and post stats as well.
Sure, maybe I wasn’t being clear. I am only expressing my disagreement with one statement of yours. That statement is:
When you say borderline OP, it makes me think of something like the malian 15% dropoff bonus, the original hindustani or persian bonus, or the original farming bonus.
I would say that the Dravidian bonus is pretty nice, but it is only a mid-tier bonus. I would take the malay bonus, or the Japanese bonus over the drav bonus any day.
That’s because those bonuses are far more stable, and can be used on pretty much any map (as long as you have water). Dravidians have an extremely volatile bonus, and it will become completely useless by late game. This is because of two reasons. First, fish will start to run out. The bonus is only useful if there is deep sea fish at a reasonable distance. Once you switch to fishing traps, the bonus is nearly useless. Second, water becomes even more unstable by late-game. Once you have a fleet of like 25 ships, you can raid with small groups of fast fire ships. Groups of 3-4 fast fires will do the job. Fishing ships are far too weak against them and will go down easily.
In comparison, japanese and malay bonus will work just as well (or better, in malay’s case) with fish traps.
Dravidians have no late game eco bonuses. In fact, they lack all late game eco techs. This leaves them with one of the weakest ecos by imperial age. Why? I am not asking for a strong late game eco bonus. But why is it this bad?
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Do bear in mind, those stats are often based on a bare handful of games, so may not be a very accurate measurement. For example, on aoestats you can look at winrates by map; African Clearing has an average win rate of 50.00%±44.69, so they are sure it’s somewhere between a 5% and 95% win rate. Not exactly terribly useful, lol.
I suppose I should clarify that I mean it’s powerful when it’s available.
That said, a bonus doesn’t need to last the entire game to be very potent. Vikings are a perfect example, with getting handcart and wheelbarrow for free, which is broadly considered one of the best eco bonuses in the game. The fact Vikings fade off in the lategame doesn’t downplay their strength in the short term. And Dravidians do have at least one functional lategame eco tech: Medical Corps. Each regenerating elephant is roughly equal to having an additional villager working.
That said, I do agree that their bonus is much too variable based on map, which is why I’m advocating for more variety of pond types and greater consistency in how they appear, including some of the stuff I posted here: New Terrain Features - Shore Fish . By standardizing that with greater consistency of turtles and shore fish, Dravidians could become much better across all map types.
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What is the current hindustani campaign again?
The Hindustanis are a South Asian/Indian civilization introduced in Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition - Dynasties of India as one of the splits of the Indians, based on the Persianized sultanates located in northern India, Afghanistan, and Pakistan such as the Mughal Empire, the Delhi Sultanate, Mamluk Dynasty, Ghaznavid dynasty, and Ghurid dynasty that covered different ethnic groups including Punjabis and Pashtuns.
The Hindustani campaign is literally centered around the man who founded the Mughal Empire.
I am sure it’s quite apparent that AOE2 does tend to bend history a bit to show popular historical battles, figures and timelines. That’s creative freedom and artistic liberties(excesses) which is quite normal for any medium be it books, films, games etcetc.
Since the Mughal Empire is one of the most recognizable political powers of the subcontinent showing them is quite natural to garner attention I guess.
You tell me? What is AOE2’s timeline again? How again does the Mughal Empire enter the picture.
400AD to 1600AD and you answered your own question two posts above.
Yeah no. Why don’t you look into this website a bit more then come back to me.
Edit: Also if you think AOE2 represents proto-modern empires also then we have a problem.
You will have to explain more on this.
Yeah, the numbers are pretty bad. AoePulse has better stats if you go way back, though. In the tens of thousands. Still not good enough to be conclusive, especially since it spans a lot of patches.
Fair. In some situations, it can be extremely good. If, for some reason, you have convenient deep sea fish at around 10-20 tiles from shore, and you can hold water, it can be a good bonus, as long as the fish lasts.
In fact, it might be S-tier on giant and ludicrous sized water map team games.
It’s difficult to weigh it this way. It is also worth nothing, as monks can heal for free. Well, it is worth 500 gold. I’m not disagreeing that it adds eco value, but the value is too low and too situational to be quantified like this.
Yes, but it only gives a winning window. People also agree that viking late game is pretty weak. Let me put it this way. Let’s say that a hypothetical civ has a bonus that farmers drop of 100% extra food in castle age, and only castle age. You could say that it doesn’t help at all in late game, but it would be utterly broken as a bonus.
On water, though, Vikings do have a military discount. In imperial age, their ships are produced 20% cheaper. Meaning, you need 4 instead of 5 vils (or a multiple thereof).
Hey, those are some beautiful drawings. Are you a graphics designer/artist?
Yeah, I think it would be a good idea to have a few more terrain features. But I don’t support adding more shore fish on arabia. That’s mostly because of tradition, though. Arabia is supposed to an open map with little to no water. I would support a new map which is basically arabia, except with a lot more shorefish.
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Why? Are you incapable of understanding English by any chance?
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