Remove the cheaper siege bonus. Make Armored Elephants/Siege Elephants move 50% faster. They not worn down by their armor; allowing them to move faster. They still very squishy due to lacking armor upgrades.
So, the Dravidians basically get free Drill for their Armored Elephants. Their Armored Elephants can now avoid pike men and close the distance to break down walls and other defenses, allowing them to do an armored elephant rush in the castle age if they can afford it.
It would give them some sort of power unit to catch the enemy off guard. The unit composition of the Dravidians would be spears, skirmishers, and infantry in general to support their fast Armored Elephants. And if they can afford it Elephant Archers, and Urumi Swordsman.
It could be interesting and have a great impact in team games and water maps. But imo it will only lead to a Dravidian equivalent of hoang rush on open land maps and artificially create a false improvement. Something fast and hard to stop but not a well-rounded civ.
Very interesting suggestion for armored/seige elephant move 50% faster. I want another civ of fast moving seige.
Then castle age Dravidian Long sword +armored elephant push would be interesting. Maybe also give squire free to Dravidian if needed.
However, it feels civ very unique in design and different playstyle. I don’t get why everyone think every civ need to be played in similar way. Celts is interesting civ that have many terrible matchup in imp but can have potential to end game early. I hope more civ have some strong potential in mid game to play aggressive.
Also what I like this suggestion is that it gives Dravidians unique identity. I don’t like some arbitrary bonus just to mean to buff civ, but lacks some characteristics. Such as Bengalis bonus damage against skirms. or Manipur Cavarly changed to archer bonus damage. I like change to make civ feels more unique.
Every civ isn’t and doesn’t need to be played in the same way. The reason why it usually does is because of minimal risk approach adopted by most players. Celts is terrible because it has to be played the hoang-rush way, otherwise you’re winning chances are low. Forcing such a single trick high risk high reward option to win is bad. With most other options whether you can open knights or crossbows or both, go aggressive with siege or stay safe, drop a forward castle is all upto the player.
Going to be more like monks, pike, armored elephant and mangonel. Long swords will still continue to be awful, even less affordable when you make armored elephants.
There’s plenty of ways to do that. Start with 2 shore fish under tc, towers built faster/repair cheaper, relic boosts longswords speed, barrack upgrades available an age earlier except champion and halb, unique building to slow down enemy military units within the range, some unique ability for urumi swordsmen instead of copy-pasting 3 different civ’s uu abilities. Plenty of other options is discussed in the other thread.
This bonus itself isn’t bad if its included along with some more changes that make the civ practically usable on land.