Except for the biggest difference here. Conqs are a ranged unit with a huge amount of mobility. Conqs will remain alive even after they kill the vils.
Urumis not only cost so much food as to be totally useless in early castle age, they also die extremely quickly to TC and Castle fire.
Make that conq urumi comparison to any pro, and see what they say. You also won’t find any high level games where this works. This is an absurd comparison.
I don’t know if there is anything that will change your mind, but I don’t think there is. If there was, you should’ve changed your mind already.
At the cost of delaying your extra TCs and a castle. There is a reason nobody stone walls in early game. Even when you play mayans, who get walls at half the cost, nobody stone walls.
This is just another useless bonus that will just bog down the civ further.
Not really. You can target fire the 8 xbow till only the EA is left then go after vills. The EA will do some damage while being ignored (can be reduced with good micro), but it won’t be enough to offset the loss of vills. The reason EAs are not made in Castle Age is because you need a lot of DPS to protect your eco (from knights for example) and threaten the enemy’s eco and EAs slow you down from doing that. By comparison, CAs have mobility so they can threaten the enemy and protect you at the same time. EAs are only good at protecting themselves and slower to train than xbows, so they are better off being delayed till late castle age in most situations.
Scouts don’t push anyone to make pikes. Knights, xbow counter scouts just fine. Enemy can even use box formation if they need to. Also, EAs have less conversion times than scouts so monks might die from scouts while still getting the conversion.
BE are way too food heavy and slow for castle age. You could get some important upgrades at the price of BE. I think you underestimate the value of map control. Here is a game where Viper thought he was being smart by going for slow units in Castle Age, but ended up losing due to surrendering map control. By your theoretical analysis, Viper should have won the game because he had the counter units.
Doesn’t work that way. EAs have less range than archers and are slower and Urumis are melee so they have to stay in front of the EAs. Archers can kill Urumis while staying out of range of the EAs.
Except +1 damage won’t help against monks. Urumis need more speed to kill monks before EAs get converted, but at that point they become a Knight replacement like eagles. Might as well give Dravidians free Heresy.
Walling is not really correlated with up times. Walling uses resources that are not required for aging up and is done in parallel to or even after clicking up. Dravidians don’t have eco bonuses to help them age up faster.
Conqs also have more HP and armor than urumis. Even after getting hit, they still last longer than urumis in most situations.
You are completely ignoring Urumis’ lack of durability. They are kamikaze units, like petards in castle age.
Castles are expensive, even when going for all in type strats. If there was some secret Dravidian UU rush strat, it is highly likely to get nerfed just like the organ gun rush strat.
The entire thread length is an unfortunate consequence of a very few people disagreeing with the fact that Dravidians are terrible but still consider them bad. Even they have been suggesting buffs but just not the right kind of buffs. Its more of a debate because of difference in playstyle and map preferences.
I’ve never seen a high-level game where it’s been tried. But that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t work; just look at the youpudding strategy! Nobody tried that for ages, and now it’s suddenly being used to beat pros at the highest level, and the sicilians win rate has jumped up multiple percentage points.
But personally, I’ve had some significant success with it. Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter that Urumis are slower; all that matters is whether or not they can run away, and they can.
Mayans don’t use stone walls for more reasons than that. They also get cheaper palisades, so there’s equal incentive still to do either, favoring the palisades, and of course, palisades build much faster.
This bonus I’m proposing would make the two approximately equal in cost, while making stone walls build significantly faster. It’s not particularly useful to compare current strategies to what would happen after this bonus is added, because there is nothing like this in the game at the moment. But personally, being able to get my walls up 40% faster would be a tempting proposition.
That’s not true. If your enemy doesn’t target the elephant archer, you just run the other archers away. They then have to choose between soaking up elephant fire or running away themselves.
Elephant archers require specialized use in the early game, but let’s not pretend they aren’t a hard counter to archers.
Just to clarify here; I am speaking of getting your WALLS up.
Honestly, I feel the same way lol.
I am all for the dravidians getting some gentle buffs, but way too many people want to come in and completely overhaul them, giving them entirely new eco bonuses, tearing out the old ones, and so on. It’s way too much for a civ that’s perfectly decent on any map where they can actually use all their eco bonuses.
I will always prefer a gentler approach, that allows the desired results to be achieved with a minimum amount of changes. So it’s important for me to make it clear I enjoy them as they are.
Firstly, military units are supposed to protect vills by killing enemy units. If your xbows are going to run away, then you have squandered resources on them because your vills are left exposed.
Secondly, EAs are slower than archers so the enemy would only have to soak damage for a short while before the EA becomes irrelevant.
EAs do counter archers, but they can be ignored when in low numbers. Skirms train way faster and move faster and are about as cheap as xbows so xbows cannot ignore them. The expensive cost and production time cost of EAs can also be treated as a form of ‘damage’ as it stops you from going for anything else at that building. As long as xbows stay alive, EAs are a penalty to your eco. If the xbows can kill vills because your EAs are too slow, you will feel an even bigger penalty to your eco.
I think there’s a bit too much emphasisi on the 0 PA. Maybe 1 PA would help them.
But the main issue for me is the speed. Dravidians are already a super slow civ like celts. But celts are saved by having that fast infantry unit. Urumis, whilst being just a little bit faster than the Speermen, just can’t cut it. It’s still not enough to make the dives you need, especially against opponent siege.
That’s why we see dravidians making light cav all the time, as it really is their only tool they can really use against opponent siege. BUt against opponent ranged units dravidians have imo enough answers, so i don’t see why the urumi needs to have more PA tbh.
Most of the things you’ve mentioned are just pure theoretical. Like as if it’s a CBA hero scenario with infinite resources and constant unit spawn and you just want to optimize pop space. Battle elephants + urumi swordsmen or battle elephants + longswords are not a producible combo. Food collection rates are like 19/min per villager until mid castle age when wheelbarrow is researched. Unless its a unit with very strong stats like knights or Mongol lancers, its not worth producing units that cost a lot of food…
Nor do people fight the way you think when there’s some slow expensive units mixed with cheaper units in early game. Units are either kited to separate the slower units or target fire is used. And this is much easier to do against Elephant archers in the mix. The theoretical figures you share are for hypothetical Mikeempires videos.
Not just urumi, none of the high food costing, moderate speed and low p.armor units are a raiding unit… You’re just thinking that dps is the most important thing for raids but its one of the least. A good raiding unit should be very fast and either have range to kill outside tc range like conqs, arambai and other ca unique units or have high p.armor/hp like knights, cavalry uu. Apart from these low food costing units like eagles, ghulam are good for raids in early game since they don’t slowdown your economy.
Infantry become powerful at a stage of the game where gold becomes limited and more important while food is abundant. At this stage the base is wide enough and its not feasible to control monks all the time. Monks aren’t produced in big numbers. So +1 attack to a typical infantry unique unit is of very minimal value. Function of pikemen is to reduce the impact of mid castle age cavalry raids. They die but can be spammed from multiple barracks and you can replace barracks as much as you want. Food based non-ranged infantry donot serve the function of pikemen. Urumis just cost so much more than halbs that its an awful decision to produce them for defense against cavalry or for protecting siege.
And there’s going to be no melee elephants with Dravidians. Those are just awful even with civs that have all upgrades and extra bonuses like Khmer, Burmese and Bengalis…They are too food intense for early game, vulnerable to conversion in mid game, expensive to replace and vulnerable to halbs in late game. And to add to all of that they’re SLOW. That makes them awful RM 1v1 units.
Its nearly a useless unit, almost exclusively used by some players when they face significantly weaker players or in niche matchups. Like vs Goths. Serjeant thing is an exploit, a #### g 2.0 which will get countered soon. And its working to some extent partly because their food cost was reduced the additional ability of Serjeants to build Donjons to force melee engagements. Urumis have nothing like that. If their food cost is reduced to 40 food, they might be a decent unit worth their cost. If Dravidians get a significant food eco, they’ll still remain unnecessary but could be a flex winning move.
As of now there’s no potential and it’s just your misconception about the use of infantry and food availability till imp. Castle drop into nonranged infantry uu opening is more meme than Hillfort or tigui town center rush.
I’d suggest you watch some pro player streams, take a look at their build, their production queue and their resource stockpile. Ask them after the game why they produced monks with crossbows or knights or skirms and not the infantry unique unit you thought were amazing or didn’t make a lot of battle elephants or elephant archers in castle age. And they’ll give you pretty much the same explanation… You’ll get a better perspective on melee elephants and such infantry unique units.
Last Patch note: Serjeant cost reduced from 60 food to 50 food. The previous patch Serjeant hp increased from 65 to 75. Before that the number of times the strategy was done successfully was ZERO…Nobody tried because it was abysmal before those 2 changes and its somewhat usable in some maps and matchups after FOOD cost reduction and increased hp.
And urumi don’t have any special unique ability that complements an infantry play like Serjeants. If something exists and has never been used in several months it simply means it’s unusable.
You’re the one who has invested more food with useless elephant archers, and you’re behind. If you just chase them away they’ll be happy to pull back.
They are not. Nothing to pretend. Slow, expensive and lower ranged. Can’t force a fight with favorable numbers.
And most importantly because Palisades are ENOUGH for feudal age…Once they hit castle age they get eagle warriors, 20% cheap xbows. They just need to make sure they are not damaged by heavy feudal age aggression.
New balance changes are out, and Dravidians get nothing.
Is this for real?
Not to mention the Knight-skirms weakness, which is now worse, Dravidians also have literally no counter for Hussite wagons. If this is the route devs want to take, I’m out.
I’m not even going to counter your points. You can figure out why your takes are dumb by yourself. Hint, with Bohemians, I was talking about castle age, and in imperial they have food monks that can convert your onagers, on top of houfnice.
I’m far too pissed at the ridiculous balance of the new civs to be polite right now.
I mean, Mangonels counter Wagons effectively? More effectively if anything, given the lack of siege engineers in imp.
Armored elephants are the obvious answer.
But also if they go for battle elephants or scouts, which is more viable now thanks to the higher base speed. People underestimate the dravidian scout opening into battle elephants imo. You don’t make a huge number of battle elephants, of course, but combined with your wood bonus and the BE native fast production speed, you can get a small number out VERY fast.
Taking out castles in castle age, perhaps? Just one thought. Personally, especially once I get Medical Corps, I get an awful lot of value out of my armored elephants since they can be healed for free. The main reason they fail is enemy pikemen, so depending on how the math works out, this should help quite a bit.
Again, this is just one example of many. You can watch that exact video from viper’s perspective, and he gets asked at one point, how do Dravidians counter it, and his reply is that they can’t.
I don’t care dude, I think are you are too stuck on your opinions if you seriously think that the goths vs bohemians game would’ve been changed if goths had a bit of discount on siege weapons. I don’t care to convince you.
Eh, the current Hussite Wagons are a nerfed version of the old Hussite Wagons, at least vs Siege weapons. If they’re uncounterable because of the new anti-meta strats like Sicilians rush (and I saw that there’s also a very all-in Bohemian strategy now?), I’d say give it time.
I am curious over the lack of balance changes for Dravidians though. Maybe it’s not all of them - and there’s also time to give feedback on these changes, so… who knows. It’s not the first time they’ve changed announced changes before, just look at how Chinese changes got reverted for example.
Regarding Hussite Wagons though, if you get a few Mangonels out, you should be able to very comfortably beat Hussite Wagons. Maybe you can’t take one for one fight (which was true for pre-change Hussite Wagons too), but in an all-in strategy you should definitely be able to fight it back with Mangonels, especially when yours get discounted.
