Double the effect of Medical Corps and add Redemption, done civ is fixed.
You guys are complaining that a NAVAL INFANTRY CIV is weak on open maps… This idea of pushing every civ to be viable on Arabia (which is understandable since is the most played map by a very large margin) is breaking civs in other maps… Just look at Portuguese/Malay, they were mediocre on Arabia but very strong on Water Maps… now they are both very good on Arabia but utterly broken on any Water Map.
I know Water Maps are not popular, I don’t enjoy them too much either, but they exist and the game is balanced considering their existence. If anything I want a DLC that completely reworks Naval Battle in AoE2, adding 1 or 2 more base ships and at least 1 water bonus per civ.
Please explain yourself how Portuguese and Malay and utterly broken on water maps now??, Portuguese are still same as strong on water maps because the berry bonus only helps them on open maps (on water maps people often delay the berries) and if they are still too strong on certain cases is because of the freaking feitoria, that has to be reworked, as for Malay, how are they OP on water when they lit didn’t get any buff there (If anything they got a nerf long time ago when the fish traps bonus was changed) and the free infantry armor upgrades only helps them on land maps ( Also lost Gambesons one patch ago to balance that).
I will let someone much more knowledgeable than me explain it:
Malay timestamp:
Portuguese timestamp:
Basically, civs that were already good on Water Maps receive buffs that made them balanced for land maps whilst making them even stronger on Water. Sure, you will delay Berries with Portuguese, but you will take them eventually and gain extra wood from doing so, which helps snowball an already strong water civ out of control. Its not very hard to understand the arguments for it, imo.
Hold on. The argument is that they are broken, and it is a bad thing. If their win rate on water did not change with their buffs on land, your entire point is invalid. A civ being in S tier is not evidence of them being broken.
Your claim was that the land buffs made portuege and malay broken. So, support that. This tier list does not do that for you.
The last time Hera picked Malay before their buff in a 1v1 tournament was Hidden cup 4 and I think he never picked Portugese before their buff. As you might know several tournaments before 2023 had water and hybrid maps where his choice of civs were Persians, Italians, Vikings, Bengalis and Koreans. If they were that great already on maps with water why not pick them at least once. There’s plenty of cases like Vietnamese, Khmer, Portugese, Malay which are now good civs but were abysmal before their main buffs but pros like Hera, Viper kept saying they are “fine” and yet never picked them in tournaments ever. When you draft 20 civs for a tournament and never even consider some civs in any tournament, how on earth are those civs “fine”?
And lets just say they are indeed very strong on water now. That’s fine. 0.2% of the games are on water maps and there are less than 10 naval civs. So there’s no good balance on water either way and some random civ can’t compete with Italians, Vikings. Neither Portugese or Malay are broken wrt other common water picks. They are 9 wins to 11 losses in TTL this season and were 8 wins to 15 losses in prior seasons.
For Portugese, you get 25 extra wood per minute with 4 on berries for 10 mins so 250 wood in 10 mins, Vikings save 13 wood per galley which is at least 26 wood per minute, Dravidians get 200 + 25 per dock built extra which is usually more than 250 wood, Italians would have saved about 100 from fishing ships and faster uptimes, Japanese about 200 from all the camps and mill built. The change made them competitive. If at all they feel broken its because of Feitoria and the right thing to do is nerf those, not the berry bonus.
Yeah, I’m unironically starting to lose respect for the designers at this point. This weakness was pointed out one year ago. It’s fine to give a little time for testing civs. But then they go ahead and add such a bizarre siege bonus. I still think that they should get rid of that bonus altogether.
Then give redemption to Dravidians. This is such an obvious and useful solution. Why are they complicating this?
If a siege bonus is absolutely necessary, buff the unit, don’t make them cheaper. My suggestion would be to give them 15% extra movement speed. This will help the mangonels run away from knights and dodge opponent’s shots just a bit easier.
It has been over a year since this has been pointed out, the weakness still exists, and it is still just as bad. To be fair, I am not saying that Viper couldn’t have handled that. I can’t predict what the GOAT can do. However, this is still an issue for everybody else.
The reason that the weakness hasn’t been fixed is because the Dravidians are fine. They’re actually quite strong; giving them strong Stable units is over-the-top and affects their identity.
You can say that Viper can’t handle this, its fair. He makes videos with urumis and other post imp Dravidian military while playing against weaker players than him but loses with them much sooner against players that are at his skill level.
And he dies to the exact unit combination mentioned in this thread. Agree with everything else you’ve mentioned. Redemption, Fervor plus a bonus on siege after its produced is one way of balancing. It would make them an above average closed map civ and not the absolute worst on open.
No they are not. There’s nothing even remotely close to consider them strong. Every civ, bonus in the game has to be considered relative to others. Dravidian bonuses are by no means sufficient to compensate the lack of several important techs and unit lines. They have been one of the worst performing civs in all stats tournament, ladder, play rate, win rate everything. Unless the map requires players to build multiple docks and open navy units, they are a terrible civ.
And btw @filtercoffee488 didn’t mention a single word about giving stable units.
Most people even in the thread have only discussed it as one of the options. Its totally fine to have an abysmal stable as long as you have some alternatives, very powerful ranged units (better than Ethiopians) or great monks (like Aztecs) or a very strong economic lead (like Vikings, Malay) and better than usual siege. Amongst these very strong ranged units or monks could end up making them OP on team games. Imo a raiding unit and strong eco with better siege is the best way to make them usable.
Watching this game, it’s interesting how little the dravidians faster firing skirms come into play. The issue is, good players tend to take VERY brief engagements, one or two volleys, then withdraw. This makes their faster firing almost useless, because at that point, they haven’t fired enough shots to give either side an advantage.
If you watch the game, Viper had more units, more skirms, and yet he wasn’t able to take advantage of that fact, because of the way focus fire benefits the fleeing unit.
A simple buff that could be added without listing anything would be to reduce the frame delay on skirms and elephant archers. That would make them actually better in the earlier parts of the game, where micro plays a much larger role than simply fire rate.
I don’t think Viper had enough time to get redemption in this game even if he could go for it.
Exactly! The reason it worked is because Hera had superior eco behind his army and Dravidians need to do damage in Feudal to compensate for their weak Castle age but going skirm + pike is a defensive army that costs too much for what it does. Only Byzantines can get away with that consistently.
Dravidian skirms could not engage the way you wanted because of the presence of scouts. Scouts counter skirms harder than Dravidian skirms counter generic skirms and spears can be caught out of position. Both players were constantly repositioning their units, so taking an engagement was risky for both.
Focus fire does not benefit the fleeing unit. If the fleeing unit stops to take a shot, it also gives an opportunity to be shot at. Fleeing does neutralize the fire rate bonus.
Frame delay is tied to the animation. For example, Mangudais used to fire arrows before drawing the bow until devs nerfed the frame delay. So, buffing frame delay could make them look really weird as well as having unwanted side effects. Generic skirms are fine for everyone else, only Dravidians have a problem with it. Maybe buff Dravidians instead of ruining global balance?
The decisive moment in that game was when Hera could add a mangonel before Viper. Viper’s resources looked like he was going for a castle but did not have time for it.
My final Dravidians buff suggestion, incorporating other suggestions in this thread:
Skirm and EA fire rate bonus replaced by +1 range in Castle, +1 in Imp for +2 total.
Wootz steel moved to Castle age
New Imp UT: BE gold cost replaced by wood
Urumi charge attack replaced by dodge shield (Like Shrivamsha).
Urumi (elite) normal attack has 50% area damage and damage increased from 8 (10) to 16 (20).
Urumi attack rate reduced from once in 2s to once in 3s (same as spears)
Get access to Redemption, lose access to Block printing
Lose siege discount
Extra range on skirms would help zone out mangonels (like Britons) in situations such as the one Viper faced in the video. The new Imp UT helps Dravidians with their historical identity of having a large elephant army.
The Urumi changes are intended to give them more survivability against ranged units without increasing Pierce Armor (which I find boring) while keeping their blast attack (have not done the math to keep their DPS balanced relative to current, but my changes suggest how it can be done). The dodge shield seems like an appropriate way to do it for the DoI dlc. The dodge shield can be tuned to give Urumis enough survivability to approach siege and other ranged units and get 1 attack off but die soon after that. Thus, their glass cannon identity can be preserved.
That’s what I meant. If you don’t engage for long enough to fire off at least 3 default skirm shots, the fire rate bonus makes no difference. This could play a large part in explaining why Dravidians fall off so hard at higher skill levels, as they basically lose that bonus entirely.
Well, there’s frame delay, and there’s attack delay. Skirms only have a frame delay of 19, but an attack delay of ~30; IE, they wait a bit before initiating the animation. That delay could be reduced, and it would make very little difference at lower skill levels, while making them quite a bit more potent at higher skill levels.
Yeah, the higher the elo, the weaker faster firing range units become due to micro. But I don’t see Ethiopians Xbow are bad at high elo. Maybe faster firing ranged counter units are bad at high elo.
And because Hera added siege. Pike+Skirms won’t do much against siege. In fact whole Dravidians army are bad against siege. Only way to deal with siege is your own siege. TheViper knows it and rushed SW at the end. But Hera already has Knight with couple of LC to snipe them. Had TheViper added siege a bit earlier, he could have been hold. But this same paragraph can be written in every single Dravidians game. They simply can’t get enough siege before opponent comes with Knight+siege+skirms.
Funny how TheViper laughed at this when he reacted to this thread but Hera beats him with this exact strategy almost every time.
I think current Koreans is also fine. Maybe even Incas with some Eagle to snipe siege.
That’s the thing though. Who is at his skill level? Hera is possibly the only one, and Hera has only been there for maybe a year. Lierry and Yo are also pretty close, but even taking that into account, you have just 4 players. That’s not enough of a pool to say one way or the other in my opinion.
Yeah, the evidence is pretty conclusive at this point. That’s what is so frustrating about it. Also, this makes fighting dravidians totally uninteresting. It doesn’t matter what your opponent player makes as dravidians. You always go Mangonels, knights and skirms with a few monks.
True, but I don’t judge a civ by one game. I’ve seen and played hundreds of games before forming my opinion.
Only if your opponent goes scouts. Now, that’s pretty common when playing against dravidians and you would be correct there. However, the fire rate is extremely useful otherwise because you get far tighter attacks with stutter stepping. So, if usual skirms need to move, say, 1 tiles after an attack before attacking again, dravidian skirms only need to move 0.75 tiles. This means that after a single volley of attack, dravs can engage faster aftter dodging. It will also let you get an extra volley of javelins if your opponent decides to retreat, in some cases.
This is one of the reasons why pro players consider Dravidians to be so strong against meso civs. Easier militia line + faster firing skirms can be extremely hard to handle for meso civs.
I don’t disagree that it helps in theory, I’m only noticing that it doesn’t seem to actually help in practice. Part of this might be that Pro players have an instinctive grasp of the normal fire rates of units, and in stressful situations, will tend to fall back on those instincts, which will tend to disregard the bonuses that they have.
Which is why it seems to me a reduction in attack delay would be a good change, as it would force these players to play differently, and serve as a constant reminder of the bonuses they have. Plus, of course, it could be rolled into the existing bonuses with no change in the text.
I don’t think instinct has anything to do with it. Pros adjusted to Ethiopian fire rate. The difference is that with Ethiopian archers, it is worth trying to dodge skirm shots and try to shoot back in some cases, while it is not worth engaging scouts with Dravidian skirms due to minimum range. Pros sometimes even try to micro ethiopian archers into the min range of skirms. No one will engage Dravidian skirms with their own skirms, so they don’t get to do their dodge-attack micro. It is just not worth it, so pros just use scouts. Skirms cannot dodge melee attacks and have min range, so they must flee to minimize damage taken.
In other words, the best counter to ethiopian archers is skirms which can be dodged but the best counter to Dravidian skirms is scouts which cannot be dodged. Thus, Dravidian skirms don’t get to use their fire rate bonus in Feudal (on average). On the other hand Ethiopian archers do decent damage to all melee units, their only counter is skirms, so Ethiopian archers get to use their fire rate bonus.
Another reason Ethiopians get to use their bonus is because archers can kill vills even while dodging and running from enemy units including skirms. Dravidian skirms cannot be used in the same way effectively.
I wonder if part of the reason Dravidians have such a terrible win rate online is because people don’t know how to play them, similar to the Chinese. It’s interesting that many pros know how to make the civ work, whereas most casual players don’t.
