I am largely talking about dravidians. The game can be balanced for bengalis by removing Husbandry. But nerfing those poor bastards is not something I would be willing to do. So let them at least shine in the late imperial age. They die so quickly on open maps. If they survive to a stage where they have a death ball of EA with a economy supporting them. It is like Viper with a death ball of long bowmen. You can’t stop it. Let it wittle away to halbs/skirms then opponent will not be able to always replace them.
This is the scenario I mentioned. A mobile unit strong against archers has got itself into dravidian economy. Only EAs were able to counter them, they have nothing else. If skirmishers were in the mix, the EA are dead and game over. Dravidian better skirms would also not have done anything to the eagles. Please watch the below video at 2h 32 min.
The economy set up of dravidians also does not support them for a castle age push. So a strong defence is needed. The same video before castle age can show you how poor dravidian economy is set up without a food bonus. He sold stone to go castle age yet other than wood to put down siege workshop immediately. He did not have resources to make any of the new castle age units available to dravidians. He had 38 villagers which is enough to get out knights for Vikings and many cavalry civs. So Dravidians need an economy buff too to defend against a castle age swarm of mobile units. please watch same video at 02h 27m 30s. I expected food to shoot up when we idle TC going to the next age since he only queued only 3 archers. But the food collected was roughly 350 which is not enough to for for a pikeman upgrade and elephant push despite the infantry upgrade discount. Most cavalry civs can do a knight spam now with 350 food. So I proposed they get 5% faster food collection from all resources and 5% faster mining to give them an option of getting in and out of castle age fairly quickly. The dip in castle age performance should not turn into a rout. There must be options to defend with good strategy. It could be Dravidians collect all resources at +15 carry capacity. But they do need a better food eco bonus. Their castle age unique tech is the most useless in game now. The devs made elephant line of dravidians the worst in the game and unaffordable. So Medical corps in castle age does not help with anything practical. If battle elepants and elephant archers are not viable, medical corps should be given to all archers units if not all military units.
A sword made of ‘Wootz’, the Indian military grade steel. It never rusted, never lost its ability to cut through the toughest of materials. Wootz was exported from India, converted into weapons in Arabia and Africa and thence reached world markets. In the markets of Europe it was known as ‘Damask Steel’. The sword in the picture is from the 17th century. It was used by a Mughal emperor of great repute. Wootz was a kind of steel made only in India by small artisans. The British banned its production in the 1860s. In just one generation the entire knowledge about making wootz was lost. Therein resides a fantastic story of bad/good strategies of knowledge transmission. India before the British conquest, did not have a robust ability to transmit knowledge. That was an entirely European invention…
edit note: book reference: Rajivlochan, Making India Great Again: Learning from Our History. (Manohar, 1920)
I don’t think so. They still don’t have final armor and Husbandry. I don’t think bloodlines is necessary for them but husbandry is a must.
Thats why Gurjaras have Shrivamsha riders, extra melee armor camels and Hindustanis have imperial camels, cav archers and both civs have Hussars.
That doesn’t mean civ gets unique cavalry unit, knights, very powerful camels all at once. No where he mentioned that Hindustani or Gurjara kingdom’s Knights fiercely fought and won battles or something to the effect that they needed knights. Suppose if a civ history reads the civ had a great cavalry, they can have a good stable but it still needs to be balanced. Can’t give 4 really good and powerful unit options that are very effective in different situations.
Transferring the discount bonus from Malay to Dravidians while keeping them weak neither correlates to “extensive use of war elephants” . Also doesn’t address the balance issue. Obviously Khmer’s or Malay’s history must have something about their use of elephants too but they still get Knights.
Suppose if you proposed a new kind of elephant unit that costs less food or a new bonus to make their elephants usable as a counter to siege and skirms, that will be an appropriate balance suggestion.
My apologies, this is probably the only suggestion relevant to his research but that too doesn’t address the shortcomings of Bengalis.
I’m not saying kts either but something they can use as a primary mobile melee unit in their castle age aside crossbows.
Yes that and a strong early eco bonus could be an option to help them get to Rathas with upgrades.
This is where the balance for majority of the maps and settings gets compromised. With a long 20-25 min feudal aggression no longer a feasible option on most of the open maps, castle age gameplay is extremely important. Every civ MUST get knights OR a replacement that’s good to raid and deal with ranged units (eagles for meso, Shrivamsha riders for Gurjaras) OR very strong eco and military bonuses to strengthen other melee units by default (not like Wootz steel), like Hindustanis.
With no decent fighting power in castle age, other civs will simply make use of their knight or eagle or shrivamsha along with crossbows and cause a lot of damage to the eco before it becomes strong enough for making Elephant armies.
Yes but that’s like suggesting Knights have +50 hp to some civ. Its just too strong and a revisit of OG Cumans, OG Indians story.
In castle age. Their primary strength is skirmisher but opponent can do their own skirmisher and add mangonels. If the Dravidian does mangonels too, the other player can take those out with knights or eagles but Dravidians can’t. This is what even Hera mentioned in one of his videos and was pointed out by someone else in this thread.
And there’s actually a reddit which correctly points out how this civ is a budget Ethiopians - fire rate bonus on archers transferred to skirms which is worse, same extra resources per age being the only eco bonus for land, free pikes but full cost on halbs vs 50% discount on both, full siege but no siege engineers or extra bonus, extremely fragile but high dps uu but with lesser speed, no kts/camels. All of these worse trades just for Elephant archers instead of CA.
Just Fyi, people still don’t open elephants with Malay most of the times despite that discount. Maybe a few odd games, there could be a sneaky stable, fast-castle sudden elephant push but its not a regular feasible strategy. Only civ with which it used to be feasible to some extent was Khmer and that’s before both of their farming rate nerfs and the BE speed nerf. BE as such are not in a usable state for early-mid castle age and discount on BE for Dravidians isn’t going to be useful in most situations where they struggle.
In a thread that’s intended to be about balance suggestions to Dravidians, I was specifically looking for balance changes. Initially before reading the history research message, I thought the message some extensive details from the history of those civilizations which correlated with your balance suggestions. Like he mentioned that historically it was actually Dravidians which paid very little to train Elephant troops and not Malay, Hindustani heavily armored cavalry marched and defeated so and so kingdoms. Nothing of that sort. It was very loosely correlated, very little relevance and a bunch of changes extremely harmful for game balance.
If you play Megarandom, you sometimes start with a stable. And suppose if you’re Aztecs or Incas and convert the Dravidian stable, it can produce a unit called Xolotl warriors. Historically I think Aztecs never knew about horses but still its available as an option to them. This is why I asked if historically Dravidians never knew about anything other than light cavalry and why their campaign heroes were strong cavalry units if so.
Maybe a rework of unique units, unique techs (which has been happening every year), bonuses and some really solid eco bonuses to compensate for the lack of mobility for Dravidians and Bengalis. For Hindustanis, I think a cost increase to Ghulam, moving Grand Trunk Road as a tech inside Caravanserai and Camel attacking 25% faster their castle age unique tech could be a nice nerf.
That’s not anywhere close to an analogy. Someone asked you for a healthy diet plan, someone posted vegetarian is healthy because it includes greens and you just made a plan by recommending raw greens for all meals and called it as suggestions “based” on research AND THEN someone questioned about BALANCE of macronutrients.
The Aztec monks are like 2x better than these and still people only mix them with eagles. And that’s inspite of Aztec faster economy and military production. If monk-siege were such an easy to pull strategy on most maps, people will just keep picking the monk civs ONLY.
That’s fine but should be compensated by an additional strong eco bonus (like wood from food or vice-versa or gold from wood) which gives them the ability to stay on track to get to their expensive late game composition while also taking some losses as they defend with monks and siege or pikes.
You don’t have to give an imperial age tech in castle age but instead make some of their unit lines usable. Free elite skirmisher upgrade or free crossbow upgrade or free fletching/bodkin. Or cost reduction on the clunky weak unusable Rathas.
Quite quite bad. Of course better than infantry uu but no where close to any of the mobile ranged unit uus (wagons, conqs, janissaries, mangudais, camel archers). Expensive yet fragile and not worth the investment for that point of the game and can’t get much value out of them before imp.
If that civ is getting upto a huge mass of EA, either the Bengali player has already won and is just having fun, OR you have a great late imp civ and can do units like hussar/halb-SO, Maghrabi camel Elite Camel archers, Elite shrivamsha riders + Gurjara Camels/chakrams, Paladin-elite skirm-ram OR you had a great early finish civ like Poles, Vikings and you just unnecessarily overboomed.
Getting to a huge mass of EA is extremely difficult and that’s why you can barely see EA as main army in RM. Very niche, might work against Turks or maybe Burmese on open or hybrid.
Eh, I’d much rather have half of the infantry UUs than Rathas as well. Obuch, Kamayuk at the very least.
Rathas are unusuable outside of very very niche cases (you want to break through Palisade walls and prevent walling behind it, you want to have ranged option but also kill Rams). You’d think they’d even do fine into Huskarls because of their melee stance, but they take bonus damage from Huskarls, so they die hard there too…
Very good observation man. The problem with Dravidians especially is a lack of options. They are a one-trick pony. Hindustanis can easily counter feudal archers and meso eagles pretty much using only ghulam in castle age. But before a castle is built, they still have faster attacking camels as well to deal with any knights civ and leftover archers. Same goes for Gujjaras with 40% more damaging camels and Shrivamsha riders. Dravidians/Bengalis don’t have such multiple options. Atleast Bengalis get Ratha and husbandry, which helps them with speed. Dravidan options are non-existent. So I expected base elephant stats to be buffed to put up viable defence. But even for that a good eco bonus is paramount. Either all food collection needs to be 5% faster or the 15+ carry capacity has to be for all food resources. Eco bonuses cannot be map specific. It will kill interest in the civ fairly quickly.
I played Dravidians only for the urumi and woots. However they are not of any use when I keep dying before reaching imp. I like aztecs for rushing since they can create military units faster and have an economy to support it. When heavy cavalry comes in, they have civ military and economy bonuses which can mass eagles and research armour for them. Not to mention amazing monks to convert cavalry. Dravidians don’t have any options comparable. Dravidians might as well not have ‘stables’. It is just waste of wood. Just allow them to make horse mounted villagers from TC as a civ bonus and be done with it. The elephants have been made purposefully bad and yet dravidian castle age unique tech is meant for elephants. Nobody in their right mind will make such a strategy which can’t be used. No player is going to put down stables to make elephants without the eco supporting it. The elephant buff is vital if Dravidians having stables can be justified. Medical corps cannot be of any use if only elephants use them. it should be for all military units or else at least all archers. Historically too the medical corps was meant for soldiers not elephants.
Well, Ratha has archer and cavalry archer armour. The game mechanics work that way. Maybe Ratha can be made a stable unit for both Dravidians and Bengalis. The Bengalis then can get a different faster unique unit. Dravidians also get a heavy cavalry unit in castle age. This solution is also historically accurate. Acoording to wiki, in the medieval period chola military referred their military as RathaGajaTuraPadai which means Ratha is the chariot, Gaja the elephant and Tura the horses.
No, it will be OP. Japanese Light Cavalry is same and it is useful in the late game. 80f, 80 hp 11 attack ignoring armor Light Cavalry is OP in late game (considering Dravidians one of the best Halberdier+Skirmisher as well) against all melee units except Halberdier and Poles Winged Hussar.
It is stronger than Malians Light Cav in melee (against ranged units Malians is better of course) and Malians has garbage Pikeman and Skirmisher. I proposed Husbandry for Dravidians 1 month ago. Husbandry and Knight is okay for Dravidians (I suggested, too) but bloodlines is OP.
Exactly, and that is why Ratha is incredibly bad. It dies hard to both Halberdiers and Skirmishers. It needs to lose an armour class to have an interesting niche without downsides, either Cavalry or Archer/Cav Archer. Then it’d be an actual unique unit that has an improvement over alternatives.
And I’ve never seen any civ with such absurd stables before ‘Dynasties of India’. So Devs will fix it. Ratha is a good candidate for it. 4 is just a number not a universal constant.
Exactly my point. Its such an unusable civ, very niche for water and hybrid maps with a lot of deep fish but far away from the shores. This poor balance always happens with naval civs and I really hope both become a decent usable civ for land in the future.
The point about Rathas, that unit should be sooo much cheaper than its current cost. Its definitely not worth 60wood 60gold. That’s nearly the cost of units like Mangudais and Camel archers and this unit is much much worse compared to them. Either stats need to be buffed so that they are a threatening unit once made like wagons, conqs, mangudai etc or the cost need to be something like 50w, 45g with a lower training time.
Melee Ratha in stable, Armored elephants, useless Elephant archers. Whats the 4th regional unit?
No it won’t. Most important properties of light cavalry is their p.armor, hp and speed. Without two of these they won’t be OP, just average. The armor ignoring for that light cavalry is just a gimmick with little practical value. Polish winged hussar are great because they have 2 more attack, an additional +1 against archers and trample damage from unique unit. Even then the best hussars in the game are Tatars and Turks because of extra p.armor.
Japanese light cav is useful because they get full upgrades on their knights in castle age, full upgrades on heavy CA, strong infantry by default, great towers for map control and faster shooting trebs. So the additional light cav with bloodlines becomes somewhat useful in picking out monks converting kts in castle age, some stray siege or a forward villager and running away, or for raids in imperial age. Without kts, ca, nor any good military bonuses BY DEFAULT on aggressive units, just giving bloodlines or husbandry is never going to become OP. In late game, Malian light cav does the same damage as a wootz steel light cav to most of the units, has full p.armor, hp, husbandry and its not considered “OP” and this is inspite of Malians getting better unit options.
We are talking late game taking into account all type of units. Dravidians late game with wootz steel Halberdier, Urumi Swordman (destroy all other infantry units easily), 25% faster attacking Skirmisher is currently average-strong. Light Cavalry is only strong late game option Malians can use (and Gbeto but Gbeto is too expensive and fragile in late game). You can’t compare Malians late game with Dravidians. Malians is early Imperial Age civilization like Turks. Malians Late Game is very weak.
Bad comparison. Dravidians have very strong Halberdier+Skirmisher which Poles, Tatars and Turks doesn’t have. These 3 civs plays late game with their strong Hussars because they don’t Halberdier (Tatars Halberdier is trash), Turks doesn’t have even Elite Skirmisher. This is balance logic of game established by Devs. No civ have strong Hussar+Halberdier+Skirmisher simultenously in the game (most close one is Lithuanians but Lithuanians Halberdier is by far weaker than Dravidians’) because it will disrupt late game balance.
Even Japanese late game will be worse than Dravidians if Dravidians gain both Bloodlines and Husbandry (Dravidians skirmisher is stronger, Urumi is stronger than Samurai, Japanese Halberdier is slightly better and Dravidians Light Cav will be by far stronger than Japanese if they got both Bloodlines and Husbandry. Faster trebucket is good but it isn’t enough to compensate Dravidians’ advantages).
I am okay with Husbandry and Knight addition (I suggested, too) to Dravidians but I am 100% sure that extra Bloodlines will be OP.
People in this forum don’t know what “treading lightly” means. They think like one civ is weak, therefore I must buff this civ in every aspect or one civ is very strong, thus I must nerf it to ground. This way of thinking should be abandoned.
Malian late game is definitely not weak. The light cavs with extra attack are very good at taking out siege and pikes with 7 p.armor last quite sometime in the ground. Turks late game is bad because they lack elite skirms and pikes but not Malians. Also their gold lasts longer.
Btw, there’s no Urumi in late game. Its a complete waste of gold to do Urumis. Those units have 0 p.armor and are totally pointless.
That’s just a direct comparison of the light cav unit line and their purpose. A light cav with +1 p.armor is so much more valuable than a light cav with +2 or +3 attack and -2 p.armor. Anyways regarding late game, Malians have quite a good late game as their gold lasts 30% longer, pikes have 7 p.armor and won’t die soon in the presence of skirms and their light cav are great at taking down the few rams and trebs. The halb-skirm bonus is something more valuable on niche limited mobility maps like Arena. I do realize that strong hussar+halb+skirm makes the late game very powerful but my point was that light cav with Wootz steel but no plate barding armor is NOT strong.
The whole argument was “either” not both. And in case they get both, sure their late game after 50 mins becomes better than Japanese but their gameplay until then is much worse.
Urumi winning Samurai is just a thing to make youtube videos. In actual gameplay both units are quite unnecessary. And why this comparison specifically against Japanese. They can open knights with full upgrades OR knights-xbows OR open knights then switch into CA + mangonels in castle age and then go champion-arbs or something like that in imperial age. Their infantry is generically strong without the need for a castle or heavy investment into a unique tech. They also have the ability to take a lot of map control with Yasama towers. None of these are an option for Dravidians. If the game went even until 50th min, it already means that the Dravidian player has played phenomenally well to hold off with very little options.
Knight addition is much much much more powerful than bloodline with no kts. Addition of knights would actually make Dravidians almost on par with civs like Ethiopians for open maps. Usually bloodlines is for castle cavalry play and for a civ with no knights, camels nor CA, bloodlines has very little impact. In imp, its still useful but quite insufficient to compensate for missing +2 p.armor and gimmicks like Wootz steel are never going to make 80/80 2+2/2+2 light cav OP.
If your recommendation is the addition of knights and husbandry for Dravidians, I’ll definitely take that over bloodlines-husbandry but no knights.
If suppose anyone recommends that Dravidians get Knights, CA, bloodlines, Husbandry then yes, you have a point. But right now its an extremely terrible unusable civ on land and people are either recommending changes to their unit lines or addition of techs or addition of eco bonuses because thats the level of changes needed to make this civ usable.
Gold last longer bonus enables to spam gold units in early Imperial but gold drain anyway just like other civs. 7 PA no blast furnace Pikeman isn’t good you can trust me. Generic Pikeman is even better. 7 PA isn’t useful, Arbalest deals 6 damage instead of 9 (Arbalest has +3 vs Spearman) but it still die to arbalest and Hand Cannoneer very fast and it can’t kill even Skirmisher due to lacking +2 attack (it has only 6 attack, generic Skirmisher has 3 MA. 3 damage per hit). Malians Skirmisher is better than Turks but it isn’t comparable to Dravidians Skirmisher (bracer + 25% attack speed).
On the other hand, Dravidians Halberdier is insane. Some civs, for instance Byzantines has no chance against Dravidians Halberdier. Cataphract lose cost efficiently (Cataphract tanks 8 hits from generic Halberdier but Dravidians Halberdier kills Cataphract with 6 hits). Even Hand Cannoneer is melted by Dravidians Halb when Halb get close.
Urumi is best infantry unit in the late game. It has mobility and 33% splash damage which enables to kill Halberdiers and Skirmishers en masse. It cost only 20 gold as well. It is even better than Berserk.
In late game, ranged units are rare and Dravidians has one of the best Skirmisher to deal with them. Wootz steel is better than last armor upgrade almost all situations of course except raiding. 80 hp 11 armor ignoring attack Light Cav even counter Heavy Cavalry and non-Halberdier infantries in late game. It can’t be given Light Cav almost as good as generic Hussar to Dravidians because Dravidians have one of the best Halberdier+Skirmisher combo. Byzantines Halberdier+Skirmisher is worse than Dravidians’ and Byzantines Hussar is pretty bad ,and by far worse than supposed Bloodlines+Husbandry Dravidians Light Cav. Give only Husbandry and Knight to Dravidians, it will be okay.
Wootz steel 80 hp Light Cav will even counter Berserker in late game. it also counter a lot of units (Champion, Samurai, Jag Warrior, Hand Cannon, Cataphract (all other heavy cavs), all Teutons Civ). It will be more useful than generic Hussar overall.
Knight addition is good in my opinion, Ethiopians isn’t OP as well. Buff to Dravidians Castle Age is better choice than late game.
That’s why buffing Dravidians Castle Age with Knight addition is better than buffing late game with Bloodlines. Resisting 50 minutes and gaining Auto-win late game strategy is such a boring one.
