Lets keep it civil here. I would like to know if @Pulikesi25 has an opinion on infantry play by Viper.
Lets try to get 10 civs as an exercise who have poor eco than Dravidians on land.
Let me get you started on the countdown to 10:
Scicilians
Bulgarians
Magyars
Sicilians have a few strong eco bonuses. Their farms gain a lot more food with each eco upgrade. By end game, their farms give the most amount of food per wood, by far.
Their TCs are built 100% faster, meaning, you have time to make 2 extra vils per tc. That is 6 extra vils on a full boom.
They also start with extra stone, which they can then sell on the market to a faster uptime to castle age.
You are correct about the other two though. They do have minor bonuses, but those are somewhat comparable on land.
Let me see if Iâve got this straight. You make a completely and obviously wrong statement. You then attempt to Gaslight me into it being my fault that you made this completely wrong statement. You then expect me to comments on a completely different statement, to obfuscate the fact that you made up something that was complete BS.
Sound about right?
Hereâs a tip; if you donât want people tearing up your BS claims, donât make BS claims in the first place.
My views on this matter have been quite clear and consistent. I want them to make sure fish more consistently available on Arabia, instead of only spawning on about 40% of map Generations.
Now, if you want to discuss that, Iâd be happy to do so. But if all you are going to do is keep shifting goal posts and gas lighting, then no one has any particular reason to engage with you.
Okay 11
I asked you 2 straightforward questions. You couldnât engage with either. You are also seriously claiming that I donât believe 200 wood on age up is an eco bonus.
I donât think Iâm losing out on much by you not engaging with me.
Also, weâve had Dravidian wood bonus conversation multiple times in the past. I can even link those. So, Iâm not shifting the goalpost, or gaslighting you on anything.
Also, I have endorsed your good ideas multiples ideas in the past, and have generally behaved in a good faith way when I can. Again, I can link those. So, this is pretty disappointing behaviour from you.
To repeat; you claimed that they had literally no land economic bonus. Our team of experts have proven that this claim is false!
Youâd have a lot easier time if you would stop making up such obvious lies and also stop putting words in other peopleâs mouths! Itâs quite rude!
The willingness to accept you are wrong is the beginnings of wisdom, and all that.
Itâs really funny how you are hanging onto that one sentence as a lifeline to ignore the questions. Sure, I was wrong, but the wrongness was in the phrasing. Not the concept. I didnât think youâd interpret it like a robot.
Sure, that specific sentence is technically incorrect. You happy now?
Can you answer the two questions?
Oh, the irony of this coming from you is palpable.
Why did you claim that quite a few civs have worse eco than dravidians, if you think they canât be compared in the first place?
Also, that entire thesis is total garbage. Drav skirms are more population efficient, their faster firing is not an eco bonus. Eco bonuses mean that you more resources, regardless of military context (or in most situations) as long as the bonuses come into effect.
Nevermind, this weasling is too much. I donât think I respect you enough to value anything you say any more.
The real challenge you are going to run into with this sort of comparison is, what counts as an economic bonus? For example, the faster rate of fire on dravidian skirmishers could very reasonably be considered an economic bonus, since you need less of them to achieve the same results. Byzantines, by contrast, approach the same problem from the opposite end.
There is also the challenge of considering only the 200 wood savings, rather than the wood discount as well. By the time you get done adding apples and oranges, it becomes very difficult to create any sort of meaningful comparison.
Ultimately, making a comparison only of economies is really not a practical move in any case; the question itself is fairly pointless, and seems to me to largely be meant to reinforce certain viewpoints, rather than to make any sort of objective comparison.
This being the case, to even engage would be a foolish move that gives credit where none is due.
I will say that 10 is a bit too much for a statement of âquite a few civs having worse eco than Dravidiansâ.
I would say, after those mentioned, Byzantines, Japanese, Huns, Italians, Koreans, and Spanish also have worse eco, or are at the very least on par with Dravidians.
Some are a bit more arguable, f.e. Spanish might be slightly better due to the new gold bonus, or Japanese ends up saving more wood overall over the course of the game, or Koreans save more wood through discount⊠but the immediate chunk of wood you get also gives you a timing advantage.
One thing when arguing about eco bonuses on land maps, is that Dravidians also have discounted Barracks techs and at least for Halbs, which youâll make almost always, the savings add up quite a bit. You could even add Ethiopians into the list of civs with worse eco in that case, really.
I would agree with your statement but I think Huns have better eco than Dravidians. They can save ~ 1000 wood by not need to build house. Maybe Dravidians have more extra wood until early castle age but Huns easily catch up after that. But other than that I agree with your statement.
Also we can easily add more civ have worse eco than Dravidians. Such as Berbers, Tatars, Persians, arguably Saracens, Goths, Incas also have worse or similar eco with Dravidians at best.
Sure, but Dravidians get the timing advantage. A slow trickle that gives you more res overall is not really that significant as immediate wood. Rather, as the other posters would love to argue, Huns might save more through making Cav Archers⊠if theyâre making it.
But also, Dravidians save on Infantry upgrades! So I think theyâre very close and I prefer Dravidian wood bonus over Hunsâ because of the timings.
I debated whether to add those civs, but again - Iâm fairly sure other posters are counting discounts as eco bonuses, so Berbers, Goths, and Incas would definitely have a better eco in their eyes. Tatars have sheep bonuses, Goths have hunt bonuses, Incas have free llama, but I might agree with you on Saracens, as I may have overvalued the market bonus as itâs more of a military bonus than eco bonus. Persians however definitely have a better eco, faster working town centers should not be underestimated.
Actually, literally just now I remembered Dravidians also have a Siege discount. So Iâm actually fairly confident in saying Koreans and several other civs with Discounts are far more closer if not Dravidians being better in eco. Oops 11
So, to be clear, I have 3 criteria for making sense of how strong a civâs eco is.
So, Italians, Koreans, tartars, Persians, incas, Byzantines, Spanish all have better eco bonuses. Incas and Koreans, and berbers get some of the best military discounts in the game. You dont make more than 2-3 mangonels, and you save like 3 houses worth of wood through the siege discount for Dravidians. By late game, youâd have saved thousands of resources in making barracks and archery range units as Koreans and stable units as berbers. Tartars get 300 food for free with each TC, and Persian faster working TC was so broken, they had to nerf it and is still superb.
Byzantine have cheaper counter units, which means that you need fewer vils on food, wood and gold. Oh, and their imperial age is cheaper.
Spanish faster building means 1 extra villager per tc, and their blacksmith savings and return gold on research gives them over 1500 gold over the entire game. Sure, spanish arenât that ahead of Dravs, but they are definitely better in terms of eco.
I can show just by crunching numbers that all these civs save more than dravidians in pure resources over the course of an average 1v1 arabia game.
The ones I agree with are ethiopians, huns, and saracens. Goths, Spanish and Berbers are close, but they still have a better eco than Dravidians by pure numbers.
which one particularly? From what I saw, he did supplies+maa as Malians and lost to Daut in COE, he did maa with armor as Romans a few times in TCI and lost. A few games with Japanese on shore fish maps which is quite normal on those maps. Other than that I donât remember any game where he went heavy militia-line in feudal or castle ages.
Depends on your definition of eco - Does unit discounts count? Does non-eco tech discounts count? Does military value count (like speed, extra hp, bonus damage, rof)? Until which point are we considering eco - first 15 mins, 25 mins, 50 mins?
If none of the military bonuses are considered, and its just pure economy on Arabia until early castle age with a 0 military, fast feudal, wall and <20 min castle age approach then apart from the 3 youâve mentioned, Byzantines, Berbers, Saracens, Koreans, Incas, Lithuanians, Persians, Hindustanis, Tatars, Turks, Slavs, Spanish, Burgundians and Poles will all have clearly worse eco than Dravidians. Obviously a lot of these civs will become significantly better when compared over a longer period of time or when the military bonuses of those civs are considered.
Time and again your talking from the perspective of how to mass some EA. But its not just the elite upgrade but the unit itself is quite expensive. And you can never force fights with them to gain value unless you push with siege. When you do push with siege, it doesnât take out opponent siege fast nor resists conversion nor kills cavalry soon enough before they take out your siege. If you choose to play defensive at your base, its not fast enough like CA to kill small groups of raiding cavalry units nor can you counter raid with a few of them. Youâll be stuck in castle age for long if you go for them.
Elephant archers are just a fundamentally bad unit by design. Several people have mentioned this since the OG Indian times from a decade ago. Elephants are high damage front line units but slow and food intense while cav archers are food-free, fast units meant for hit and run but ineffective in small numbers. Elephant archers just have the drawbacks of both.
I will say, having played Dravidians several times in BF teamgames - which yes, is a very niche field of play and should not be used as a benchmark for deciding on civ balance - I have found that if youâre a pocket and get to boom (perhaps just support your flank with Siege since itâs very cheap for you), going Elephant Archers can be very hard to stop.
Even though Dravidians lack Stable techs and Parthian Tactics, the unit is still very tanky, and the Elite upgrade discount actually is very noticeable compared to before. If youâre going to meet a ton of Skirmishers (which on BF is already a sign youâre losing) you have your own cheap Onagers or very easily teched Infantry to support you.
Granted Iâm not playing on the highest level either, but thus far Iâve been very comfortably taking on most civs. I donât think the unit itself is bad (and in the hands of Bengalis, itâs even stronger), but rather very hard to use in 1v1s or teamgames where you donât get to comfortably boom. But also, because they are Elephant units and are tanky regardless of missing upgrades, itâs also low-key expected of you that youâre not simply throwing them into the meatgrinder as they spawn. So while they are expensive, you also arenât losing that many in return.
Iâve even found them dealing with supposed counters very well. Camels canât really reach them before theyâre machinegunned down thanks to faster firing speed and Camels lacking Pierce Armor, Skirmishers get flattened by your supporting Siege or Infantry, and you have really easy tech-switch into Halberdiers if you meet tons of Cavalry anyway. Honestly, once you have a mass of them, you can even snipe Siege Onagers (though theyâll still be a good counter once the enemy gets several of them out. Ideally youâll have your own Bombard Cannons to deal with it, but itâll be tough).
Personally, if the civ had to get another buff, Iâd simply give them Redemption. Iâm still strongly against âfixingâ their Stable situation, since thatâs their civ identity now. Iâm not against giving them a new identity (which the devs have already tried with Siege discount). Giving them options in Stable is just going to turn the civ from unique to bland copy of other existing civs.
May sound weird but Dravidians (to me atleast) are becoming very bloated in terms of bonuses? Just one more and they have the same amount as Teutons, except the main meat of Teutons is the Melee Armour and Farm bonus and the other 4 are mainly more weird healing and garrison bonuses, not âmassiveâ gameplay changers like each Dravidian one both current and suggested seem to be aimed for, if that makes sense.
Whereas something like Celts are everything that Dravidians seem to want to be and more with just 3 main bonuses and one funny meme sheep stealing one. Cumans and Khmer are some of the MOST weird civs in the game with what they can do, and achieve this with but 4. This whole situation with Dravidians seems like putting an endless amount of band-aids onto a gaping wound, without solving the fundamental problems.
Most people would agree with you. I personally donât want to give them more bonuses, I just want to repace/modify existing ones. Or, give them techs.
Celts and dravs have very little in common tbh. Dravidians donât want to be celts, nobody wants to be celts 11
But more seriously, the play styles are nothing alike between the two. Dravs are more archery range focused. They have FU arbs, skirms, and excellent ele archers. Celt infantry is faster, but not stronger. Drav infantry is on the same tier as aztec, Japanese, and slav. These civs have pretty much nothing in common.
Literally everybody knows what the weakness is. Itâs either siege and monk with redemption (with a few pikes added in later) in castle age, or skirms and knights with mangonels. If you get the timings right, Dravs cannot do anything against you. If the drav player chooses 3 tc boom, you will have time and resources to get one of these comps and then itâs gg.
Devs, instead of fixing this, gave them slightly cheaper siege. Thatâs something I guess. But as you said, it feels like bloat.
Thanks man. I knew I can rely on you to follow the Pro scene. So this was a one-off win by Viper and its not a strat that wins all the time. I remember him playing Dravidians vs Jordan. He did the same 3 farms into castle placing stables. But being a better player than Vivi, Jordan knowing how poor Dravidian stables are took him to the cleaners. Dravidians vs Mongols | vs JorDan | Arabia | Dravidians vs Mongols | vs JorDan | Arabia | By TheViper | Facebook
The same Viper won against Dravidians as Mayans against Jordan because he went primarily as skirms against Dravidians. Jordan did not even do stables which is archer counter for other civs and especially against meso civs have which huge weakness to cavalry. When you have such an ineffective tech-tree for playing a meta unit like scout, you are forced to play an one-trick pony game with your limited options.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZS6FnUZ4wM
The one-trick pong observation becomes more jaring in castle age due to NO KNIGHTS or CAMELS. But also just DEFENSIVE MONKS. In Arena and less prominently Arabia, Dravidians can never collect more Relics than opponent when equal players play a non-mirror match. You canât have SLOW AND SHIT LIGHT CAV as well as SLOW MONKS. These combinations make a civ unviable. To make such the civ viable, it would need far more than standard number of civ bonuses.
This is why people criticise Dravidian civ like this below:
As a solution, I would like to remove their +200 wood bonus and 33% wood siege discount, then replace it with these 2 bonuses below.
These 2 bonuses give the theme of an economy civ which plays towards infantry. It enables the same early militia or M@A play as now using the extra resource at start. Overtime, due to extra resource collection bonus, you can overcome your tech-tree disadvantages like Vikings do. You can overwhelm with more units like the current Siege discount is meant to do. When other civs catch up with you using their economy and better units, you are lost. Dravidian win-condition is same as now on a larger scale instead of less than 20 mins. No jaring Siege bonuses are needed. You also donât need to give meme bonuses like this below.
When Armoured elephants have had their stats reduced and rams have equal speed, its just another useless bonus which does not help to win.
If this intent of an all-rounder civ was true, then devs will implement this change foremost to fix the civ.
I hope the changes i suggested are not op/also historical/and helping dravidians in castle and imperial as well.
All these bonuses will make dravidians a slow and tanky civ. with no fervor and no husbundry.
Another game where dravs just die to knight skirms. How many times should this happen before devs fix this?
And thatâs exactly what a lot of us have mentioned in the threads as well. Dravidians themselves will get countered by only skirms because of their abysmal cavalry. And building a stable is a waste of wood for them because it doesnât scale well into the castle age.
Nah, I think just replace the fishing carry capacity gimmick with the 2nd bonus youâve mentioned - eco technologies giving 50% more benefit and theyâll be in a good spot. Nerfed fishing vs 10% faster wood collection rate would be a trade-off on water. On open land maps they wonât be forced to do early game infantry, they can simply choose to re-invest the extra wood into eco and get far ahead. On closed they can ignore relics and go for greedy boom against civs which canât monk push or do castle drop gunpowder uu. They could also go for tower rush to prolong the benefit from faster eco.
Unfortunately they created a civ that can do NOTHING instead.
Once again Elephant archers are useless. Too expensive, too slow, mediocre dps, no special property, quite vulnerable to trash units.
Bengali ones are sometimes made when up against a civ that either doesnât have halbs or monks with block printing obviously due to the reduced bonus damage and conversion resistance. But even thatâs not a good option. Theyâre only made because Bengalis donât have that many decent late game options - archer line misses thumb ring, no hussar or knight line, infantry lacks armor, no gunpowder.
Also useless. Siege onagers are a blackforest unit. Siege engineers is definitely mandatory.
Absolutely. But shouldnât be garbage in everything either. Thatâs not balanced.
These are quite solid options as well. The game will simply get balanced if they gave Shrivamsha riders to these 3 civs. Generic riders having ability to dodge 4 arrows in castle age and 5 in imperial age (instead of 5 and 7). Gurjara riders getting benefit from their civ bonus and thereby dodging 5 and 7. Bengali ones resisting conversion and taking lesser bonus damage. And dravidian ones affected by this reformed medical corps and wootz steel. That will be another way of causing good balance.
In the past several people proposed buffs to Malay, Koreans, Portugese for a long time. Several months later in a random patch out of the blue these civs got several changes. Its going to take at least a year or more before Dravidians get to a usable point.
Redemption will help in castle age. But cavalry are better suited against Siege.
Will definitely fix the unavailability of redemption too as well as work as a counter against skirm->Knight->Siege push.
Dude, I understand the intent. But the effect is worthless and as food is the resource which is important in castle age. Dravidians donât get any food bonuses. So this bonus will be less capable than the fish carry capacity bonus.
Not a fan of extra drop off. I understand where you are coming from. But the malian bonus is a violation of the game mechanism. Malians gold mechanism combines THREE BONUSES into ONE: 10% faster, 10% longer, +10% carry capacity. Hindustanis have to pay for something similar along with placing a castle. Dravidians will get +15% faster, +15% carry capacity and +15% longer lasting fish for both fishermen and fishing ships. OG Indians had just +15% faster and +15% carry capacity for Vills. That itself proved OP and was nerfed to +15% faster and Dravidians got a further nerf to +15 carry capacity. Besides, Dravidians donât need more help on water. Getting the full dock tech-tree can carry you through.
This problem comes from the harebrained bonus that was given to Malians. I would rather just revert the malians bonus back to gold lasting 30% longer and make sure these ideas are never entertained. Devs introducing such gimmicks is plain bad for the game. It opens a pandoraâs box of ideas for new development of bonuses that will lead to very snowballing gameplay. If you use a resource faster, it gets over. It should be as simple as that when itâs a civ bonus. If they really needed to show the wealth of mansa musa, they should remove âtiguiâ and replace it with.
Towncenters and Markets work 33% faster.
This will serve as the eco bonus they need.
The 33% siege wood discount itself comes across as weird for an elephant civ. This band-aid bonus was made to address the fact that 200 wood is just a pittace in castle age and Devs donât want to put their heads together for doing a meaningful fix. Wood is the most plentiful and most important resource. But the way you manage its collection reveals the true caliber of the player. But unfortunately, this civ was not designed to help players learn AOE2. Its just a case of âI have run out of civ bonus ideasâ, â200 wood should be enough to play like Japanese, Celtsâ âHere is a wood bonus civâ, ##### ### ### ####### âI donât have time or money to fix their bonus or gameplayâ, âHere, more wood for you to fix it up yourselfâ.
That is not good design. They inherited the food bonus from OG Indians. As much as I hate the watered-down fishing bonus, it should be part of their identity. The AMAZING economy bonus will easily makeup for the 200 wood and siege discount. Besides, when you give an amazing bonus, you should take back a good bonus to keep the civ balanced. When you want to give the civ the identity of an all-rounder economy civ, you should not have bonuses making it look like you are playing âforest nothingâ. That is why if the civ needs to be re-worked as a well-rounded economy civ. Both the +200 wood and 33% wood discount need to be removed and replaced with:
Vietnamese economy bonus was given the very next patch that it was proposed in the forum. If the Dev team is not too stubborn, they do make changes based on feedback. After at least observing that people donât make elephants in castle age, they could have switched âWoots steelâ and âMedical corpsâ. Unfortunately, with Dravidians, they may need to swallow their pride and fix the civ properly.