Dumb question, but if we are looking for “creative solutions” why aren’t we trying something like a new “power infantry” unit on dravidians?
If it works there it might possibly work as a common unit in general.
It would also eb an interesting twist, giving dravians a second chance to be popularized among the community.
If it doesn’t work, however, no harm caused.
It’s a possibility, and it would probably be better than giving them knights, but I see no reason to prioritize that over reworking the existing, but low-functioning units (Urumi/EA/BE). Urumis could be that power unit, if you like, and/or more of a raiding unit, given that Dravidians wouldn’t lose much by changing the current (largely redundant) role of Urumis. The viability problem of those 3 units ought to be faced sooner than later anyway. IMO a new power infantry unit would be best added to a new civ, where you have more freedom from the balance and thematic constraints of the current Dravidian civ.
I think urumi would pair quite well with a tanky power intantry unit.
Urumis with their charge attack could be the damage dealers while the other infantry holds the line…
But ofc, it’s just an idea.
I generally also don’t like the Urumi design atm too much… it’s way too snowbally. If you have like 60 urumis they bust through basically everything. But if you only have like 10-20 urumis they often just got eaten up by archers or castles before they can do anything.
This charge mechanic is just super weird in general. I can see it working nice if there was the mentioned tanky unit that can hold the line for the DPS urumis, but atm the urumis have like no real “compostion” they are useful in for the dravidians. They are probably the best you can use against siege of the opponent, but only because your cavalry is basicallly completely useless.
I think a Urumi rework could maybe help. But that’s most likely just not on the line for the devs.
What devs will do (or not) is anyone’s guess, and why I’m keen on not overinvesting into rework or even balance discussions. I just think they’ve got enough to work with using the existing units. Take American civs, for example, which all currently miss all cav and gunpowder units/techs. For the most part, they’re able to work around that with just 1 regional and 1 UU (2 for Incas). Dravidians only miss 1 main unit line (albeit the most important one), but they still get scoutline, 2 UUs, 3 regional ele units, and HCs & BBCs (only in lategame obviously). All of those units collectively should be able to more or less fill the hole left by knights, if a single unit can do it for Aztecs.
I don’t think dravidians eco is at the same level as aztecs 
And I also don’t want them to, tbh…
I also like the current Dravidian eco bonus. It’s very specific and unique, allowing for a lot of creative utilization. I don’t really want it to be changed.
But it’s also clear to me, as I calced it in my “booming potential” calc, that’s not the best midgame eco bonus. it puts Dravidains right on spot of Vietnames or Portuguese in terms of pure booming, which is still in the bottom third of all the civs in the game. Even civs like Huns, Spanish or Burmese have better booming potential.
So it’s pretty clear they have to come from their other bonusses / units and not their eco like the mentioned Aztecs.
But of course. My point being that Dravidians already have several other units (N2M a near-useless Castle UT which could be repurposed into something useful) which ought to be collectively able to bear the burden borne largely by 1 unit and a stronger eco for Aztecs. Through the magic of Teamwork, and/or Friendship™
Yup! The charge mechanic seems way too gimmicky. Currently the Urumi seems to be based on Beserkers and it does not suit any role for Dravidians. That’s why I mentioned rework similar to Obuch.
Urumi sword was a weapon of choice to fight multiple opponents. It was primarily used by skilled martial artists as a self defense weapon. It took years of training on other weapons and only the most proficient were trained on the Urumi steel blades. So AOE2 Urumi unit should be very good at defending themselves. Either they should be heavily armoured or have some kind of shrivamsha shield. One Unit that I have seen hold its own against multiple high DPS units like Knights is the teutonic Knight, I believe the Urumi should have similar stats.
I have tried to make Urumi and Elite Urumi counters to Knights and cavalier. The inspiration was a Sandy peterson interview where he said Unique Units were supposed to overcome the rule and address a particular handi-cap a civ had.
One on one, Knight and Urumi should take each other out in 7 hits and whoever engages first should win. Thus be a soft counter. Cavalier will be better than Urumi But Elite Urumi should equalise it.
Light cav without bloodlines are not good counters to Siege push when siege is protected by archers. Urumi should be able to snipe siege even when Siege is protected by archers like Knights do conventionally. I have worked the charge mechanism to take out mangonels and onagers in 1 hit.
Urumi 2.0 is based on the teutonic Knight. Urumi should be similar to teutonic Knight in the sense that when 1vs1 it should be able to counter Knights. The costs have been adjusted to be equal. Urumi however sacrifises hit points for speed and a charge atttack. Here is my Urumi 2.0 based on feedback from @Pulikesi25 on cost, melee attack and raiding potential :
Training
Cost : 85 Food 40 Gold [**CHANGE**] Cost equal to teutonic Knight
Training time : 12 seconds [**CHANGE**] +3 seconds. Same as teutonic Knight.
Statistics
Hit points : 55, 65 (Elite)
Melee Attack : 14, 16 (Elite) [**CHANGE**] +6 attack. Same as teutonic Knight for base Urumi.
Attack bonus : +2, +3 (Elite) vs Cavalry [**CHANGE**] (Changed from Eagle)
+3, +4 (Elite) vs Siege [**CHANGE**] (Changed from Building and +2 added)
Rate of Fire : 2
Melee armor : 7 [**CHANGE**] Armour equal to teutonic Knight
Pierce armor : 2 [**CHANGE**] Armour equal to teutonic Knight
Armor class : Infantry, Unique unit
Speed : 1.15 [**CHANGE**] 0.1 Buff
Line of Sight : 3
Ability : Charges its attack by 3 times over 24 (20 Elite) seconds and
dealing a blast attack of 50% strength in 0.75 tiles radius.
[**NEW**] The charge attack recharges only when Urumi is not attacking.
[**NEW**] Once charge attack is made on enemy unit, Urumi armour both melee
and pierce will stop working. Armour again starts working when the charge is full.
Unit evolution : Elite Urumi Swordsman
Upgrade cost : 900 food, 450 gold
Upgrade time : 45 seconds
Urumi 2.0 will have the same cost, damage output and armour as a teutonic knight. But less hit points and more speed. This shows how valuable Urumi unit is and its self-defence capabilities.
Urumi gets bonus damage against cavalry and Siege. This guides the players to decide on exactly what to use the Urumi against given its very high costs.
The charged first strike has been bumped to 3 times the normal melee damage. The 3 times amount is to assist stack black-smith upgrades into the attack. The charge attack does not recharge if the Urumi unit is attacking an opponent. It only recharges when moving about, patrolling or standing still in no attack mode. When attack animation starts, recharging pauses.
Compared to current stats, Urumi 2.0 doubles the damage it currently does. This is vital for the use of Urumi as a shock troop unit. The very high charge damage during first attack can make Urumi act like a slightly faster petard against Siege and very fast raiders like light cav, steppe lancer and Shrivamsha riders.
The armour is for self-defense only and switches off when Urumi starts attacking an opponent. Once Urumi unleashes first strike on an opponent, the high melee and pierce armours stop working. Urumi heath reduces for every damage received like a unit with zero melee and pierce armour. Thus making Urumi armourless and completely vulnerable and open after the first strike. This will be the most unique feature of the Urumi and its ultimate weakess when used as an offensive unit.
The armour does not start working again till the charge attack is full. Intermediate periods of rest does help recharge, but will pause if interrupted by attacking opponent. So micro helps a lot if Urumi’s charge attack and self-defense shield need to be maximized. With proper micro, against high DPS units like palladin and cataphract, Urumi can run away in no attack stance, recharge to full and turn back to deliver a devastating charge attack . Urumi swordsmen armour is a proxy for their high self-defense skill.
The charge damage and armour mechanism makes sure Urumi is a better defensive unit than an offensive unit. The costs too justify such a capability. With this change, the Urumi will be tied with Teutonic Knight as the costliest infantry unit.
The idea is to defend against skirm/archer+knight push or monk+siege push with a combination of Skirm + Urumi defense. Urumi is made into this unique shock troop unit which takes out points of pressure like siege as well as defend against Knight raids.
With these changes, Urumi is not a very snow-balling unit to be used only in mass battles because of high cost. They can be used individually in defensive and offensive roles. They can be massed if cost is not a concern. Massing Urumis might become a win condition as well for a Dravidian player like palladin is for frank players.
Updated the main post too.
However I still feel the civ bonuses are a far higher priority to fix.
This justifies a gold bonus more than a farm bonus. Maybe “farms generate gold” is appropriate, but Burgundians already have that.
This enables some pre-mill drush strategies on open maps which is fine. The problem is that on hybrid/water maps, this stacks with their dock bonus to give them an extra free house. I worry this will lead to OP fish booms that win the game.
This is a stronger version of the Chinese bonus.
Not really. You won’t have that many farms in early game to give savings relative to current wood bonus. The current wood bonus is more flexible. It allows to make whatever buildings I want, no strings attached. Whereas your farm bonus only gives me wood after a while if I build a lot of farms. It actually does not even give me free wood as the bill eventually comes due and I have to reseed those farms. I prefer the flexibility and simplicity of the current Dravidian wood bonus.
This changes Urumi into weaker Slav Champion. Remember their base attack is quite low and they have less HP and pierce armor.
I prefer to change their charge attack into a dodge shield like Shrivamsha Rider and maybe increasing their base speed. That way, it gives Dravidians an anti-siege, anti-archer raiding melee unit that is weaker than champion, knight.
This bonus is a stronger version of other civs’ bonuses and make civs like Celts (speed), Goths (building damage), Lithuanians (halb speed) feel less unique. Also, the design of this is clunky. I have to research a tech in 1 building and then research another tech in another building to get a bonus. Nothing else in AoE2 works like that.
Overall, I think your changes just power creep on other existing civs and make everyone feel less unique. Goths are already weak in high level and don’t need yet another reason to not play Goths.
So far, I don’t think trash non-elite BE will be unusable.
Making Dravidians lose the armor in exchange for the buffs is because I’m not sure it’s balanced to get those without losing armor. If people think they don’t need to lose, they can of course directly get those as a net gain.
In my opinion, the problem is mainly at the BE itself instead of the Malay or Dravidians.
BE itself needs to get new changes sooner or later if it is going to be a more useful unit to most of the games.
In my opinion, with mobility as an advantage, EA in the open map is also a solid choice in the imperial age even without the rate of fire bonus, when we also introduce other changes to help them survive more easily until then.
If with mobility bonus we’re still keen to have their EA fire faster than the Bengalis, we can simply make the Thumb Rings give EA a faster rate of fire than +18%.
he says Malay will lose elite upgrade and the discount. After UT, you have to spend 180 food on 250 hp, 2 melee armor and 3 p.armor unit., will just melt to halbs and ranged units. Its not a fast unit either so you can’t run and raid or kill a bunch of siege and run away. You’ll be much better off doing 20 barracks and flooding full 2HS instead of spending 3x on useless elephants.
The TG frank pickers destroyed the unit and nerfed it to the ground by complaining about it several times. Instead of doing what they did to Lithuanian paladin/leitis, devs just unnecessarily overnerfed it. All they had to do was add the Khmer speed bonus as an added effect of their UT and make that tech more expensive. Instead attack reduced, blast damage reduced, bonus against building reduced. Devs totally forgot that its a dead slow unit vulnerable to conversion that has the same damage output as Paladin but costs 2x food.
Maybe if base attack is increased to 9 or base attack increased to 8 and base p.armor increased to 3. Otherwise dps and longevity is quite low for imperial age battle. You’ll be trading mobility for a lot of dps.
Wait what, don’t they already do that?
Maybe return the elite upgrade? Or/And reduce the cost to 150 food?
Trash Elephant is a fresh concept so I don’t want to abandon so quickly.
According to the website, now the Thumb Ring give EA +18% rate of fire.
So make it more than +18%，perhaps +30%, +35%, or +40%。
Then Dravidian EA could fire faster than the Bengalis by 10%, 15%, or 20%, and move faster by 0.9.
(Currently the former fire faster than the latter by 23%，but move slower by 0.9.)
Dravidians are fairly good on maps like Fish n’ Fish or Northern Isles, just those aren’t present in ranked. Yes on Arabia they aren’t the best and in RM they aren’t the best but as a full Feudal civ they are actually fairly solid, having THREE bonuses for Feudal play (cheaper MAA AND Supplies, faster firing Skirms and +200w allowing something like early Blacksmith or 2 Lumber Camps). Arabia in general isn’t a full Feudal map because it’s easier to get walls down. But Dravidians on a map like Valley (which hasn’t been in RM in forever) would probably be pretty solid as I think it would be pretty easy to defend the middle as them. People need to L2P.
the game isn’t balanced around historical considerations. History serves as a starting point (e.g. Teutons have good infantry and cavalry as that was what composed their army but for example there is no deep historical reason why they don’t have Arbalester)
the counters to Knights in Castle age don’t end at: Knights, Camels. There are many more counters including Monks, Pikes, Cavalry Archers, and some UUs. Dravidians get a very generous bonus to get their Pikeman play going and also have the best EA which, while it cannot kite Knights like CA can, also has like 4x the HP so you can sort of just let them do their thing once you have a good mass.
Redemption is not like the “default play” of someone wanting to boom on 3+ TC vs an aggressive player. It’s a VERY expensive tech that slows your Imp time significantly, and after the opponent sees the Redemption, they just stop their push or don’t make more Siege. It’s a very niche tech and arguably the guy forced to do Redemption is the one who falls behind, and not the guy who loses 1-2 Mangonels to it. The default play vs Mangonels is normally to make 1-2 Knights and try to outmicro the enemy Knights and get the 5 hits on the Mangonel.
I think Dravidians are overall fine and we shouldn’t judge by Arabia only. Funnily they are good in Imp in TGs too where they have 4 power units available: Bombard Cannon, Elephant Archer, Urumi Swordsman and Siege Onager.
A playable civ in the current context should be good on either Arabia, Arena or Migration. Team games can be played with any civ. Yet Dravidians can never play pocket there too. That’s a gaping hole in their design. So the Civ re-work focusses on getting them to a place where they can do a good water build as well as decent land aggression with minimal changes.
Well, if historical accuracy does not have any weight in design decisions, Dravidians should have gotten Knight line till Paladin and heavy CAs with some steppe lancer unique units. Since Devs do intend to design civs around their historical traits, the new civs don’t have the necessary units to be fully fleshed out.
Both Dravidians bonuses are unimaginative. The 200 wood bonus is just lazy design. It works only till feudal age. Most games don’t end in feudal if its not on niche hybrid maps. In castle age, it gives you one new building either a monastry or siege workshop. The bonus doesn’t help when its needed most for Dravidians.
The fishing bonus is a nerfed version of Indian civ bonus of fishing 15% faster. This hand me down bonus is too situational. It works only on water with deep fish. For shore fish vills, you need to force drop a lot. The new farm bonus will help create more ships to enable the same fishing eco bonus in a flexible manner.
It not just about fighting Knights one on one. Dravidians need a fast, tanky, survivable, raiding unit. Knights run away from elephants and Halbs. Knights snipe vills who go to neutral gold or stone. They snipe monks bringing home relics. Dravidians do get Battle elephants as cavalry. But Elephant speed can’t be buffed due to Team game balance. Elephants can’t raid. They can stomp an economy. But only in large numbers. Lets take another castle age power unit Dravidians get, the monks. Dravidian monks can convert knights. But Dravidian monks don’t have any civ bonus against Knights. So they are just ordinary. But wait look at their monk tech tree. Heck Dravidian monks don’t have fervor or redemption against Siege. They don’t get multiple options to tech switch. They are only for knight defense and collecting relics. There is no point in massing them. With no wood/gold bonus to create Siege units in mid-castle age, siege+monk push is not worth the effort. So there is no chance of any offensive play in castle age when Knights are roaming all over the map.
Elephants could be an obvious counter to siege like Knights. But Food is more valuable than gold in castle age. So making elephants against Siege will be setting back the player from aging up just like redemption. The worse part is if you can’t mass elephants, you are sure to lose them to opponent due to lack of Heresy and its game over. Dravidians getting stuck in castle age is a death trap. Yet Dravidian units like elepehant archers and rams are too heavy on food. Dravidians need a better new gold unit to counter Siege and Knights. Elephants can’t substitute for Knights.
Redemption is an option. Dravidians don’t have a siege sniping unit like Knights. There is no answer to a Mangonel push except putting down a siege workshop and training one. Dravidians having redemption itself has a deterrence effect and necessary since Knights are absent in stable. Dravidian players normally never even put down a stable. They will have one scout from dark age if the player was lucky. With one 60 HP slow Light cav, you can’t push back siege.
Lets have a Dravidian civ bonus around that
“Starting TC will automatically spawn 2 Knights when enemy player has Mangonel created.”
Once this civ bonus is implemented, we can do default play with Dravidians like other civs. Otherwise we need to acknowledge there are gaps in the design which need to be closed. We cannot take it for granted that the civ has been designed completely with proper options. Devs need to buff existing units to be multi-purpose to compensate for lack of Knights and camels.
Dravidians, Gujjaras and Bengalis are very unbalanced due to new design that has been tried by excluding Heavy cavalry for sub-continent conditions. That is why Gujjaras came out overpowered and are getting nerfed successively to make Arabia and Arena viable for other civs playing against them. Bengalis and Dravidians have the opposite problem. Bengalis have Ratha which is a Knight with an additional bow and arrow yet fail so spectacularly beyond anyone’s expectations. Dravidians don’t have that option at all which leaves a grand canyon size hole to be addressed. They need to be re-designed and buffed till they find their niche in Arabia or Arena.
Northern Isles yes, fish n fish NO. If you think its eco, the +15 carry capacity is 3% faster food on the first 4 or 5 ponds. If you think supplies man-at-arms and skirms are going to take over, yes it might but opponent can simply fallback, be defensive and eventually win. Some of the zero eco bonus, poor ranged unit civs will lose, but most of them will win eventually.
Huns, Magyars, Bulgarians, Khmer all these civs have good bonuses for maps with prolonged feudal age like Atacama or Land Madness, Lithuanians, Mongols, Japanese have bonuses to go feudal fast and start early aggression – ALL of them have knights to follow up and siege push once a good advantage is gained from that feudal age. If somehow the opponent who fell behind made dozens of pikes and a few knights themselves, these civs have the option of transitioning into CA. NOTHING for Dravidians.
NO again. You’re probably thinking about imperial age again where you can control the middle with navy and slowly push and win. Civ will die much before that.
No Cavalry archers, No monk techs, No bonus on pikes till late imperial age.
which will get converted and take out the few pikemen you made or soak up the arrows from other EA while knights kill your siege, villagers etc.
All very true for civs with Knights/eagles. But when you don’t have knights , you either need redemption or a very strong eco lead and a fast moving yet cheap castle unit to defend. None of this is true for Dravidians. The eco bonus is average on land and urumis are ridiculously food intensive. In that case, the only way to defend against 1 or 2 tc monk-knight-mangonel pushes is redemption.
On tgs, they’re good because of…wait for it…ARBALESTERS and the 200 wood per age. It simply means you can get more number of archers compared to any civ other than Britons, Mayans, get ballistics early, go imp faster and still get siege out.
The only maps where they are GOOD in 1v1 are water-major maps like Islands, Bog Islands, Water Nomad, Pacific Islands, Team Islands, Northern Isles etc which constitute less than 1% of the games played collectively.
On hybrid maps with an important role for water like Golden swamp, HC4_cup, RBW4_Greenland, Pilgrims they’re FINE or slightly above average. On other hybrid maps where water isn’t that important like El Dorado, HC4_bay, Frigid lake they are AVERAGE at best.
All land map 1v1, they’re just a TERRIBLE civ with the current state of units. There’s about 8 months of stats to show that.
That’s where we currently see them picked a lot in the pros settings.
And this ofc makes sense, as a lot of the other hybrid specialists are either Archer or CA Civs and Dravidians have great skirms. Plus also that strong eco in this kind of settings, as both eco bonusses apply and are very useful there.
This ofc can’t or better shouldn’t whitewash their terrible stats on open or even semi-open land maps. The lack of mobilty definitely hurts a lot in these settings.
And I don’t want to call that “identity”. It’s just bad design.
Ofc if devs don’t want to give Knights to a civ, yeah… Not my choice but it’s their thing. But if you do something like this you have to give something else as at least some kind of alternative then. “Civ without mobility” is not Identity, it’s defiance of the basic game design.
I mean even if I play my beloved Koreans I have at least basic Knights and War Wagons to my disposal. It’s not like I need them in every game, but sometimes I make Knights if I see that my opponent doesn’t expect them. It’s at least there in case there’s the option to use them even if they are really badly upgraded.
And that’s Identity to me. It’s not prohibitory. But it leads you usually in a specific direction. It doesn’t shuts all doors, it at least allows you to use stuff.
Yup! Completely agree man!
Welcome to AOE2’s Dynamic island feature - “The Dravidians”.
Even by early castle age. Example Mayans opening archers on arabia:
You get the save from Bengalis, Teutons, and Vikings if you exclude their early feudal weakness.
I think you underestimate +175f/farm. Dravidians then have the option skip farm upgrades and they save 200f+200w upon reaching castle age. So in total 200f+600w makes 800 resources with the +200w/ageup. With your +100w/150w/200w/250w, you would get 850 resources, with 100 of then right from the start. This is way above any other civ, even top eco civs like poles/vikings/mayans/chinese dont get anything for a super early rush like persians/lituanians.
Agreed. They would then be an average civ with average eco.
extra hp is 75f/50g upon feudal and 75f/50g upon castle age. Berries is like +50f upon feudal and -50f+100w upon castle age. So in total you get 750 resources upon castle age, which is one of the very best at this point in the game assuming a scout opening.
I agree that Dravidians need to be ahead, but disagree with your analysis of the numbers.
Back to the Franks comparison:
there are only so many bonuses you can give, and the “200 gold” was already taken (by Ethiopians).
I don’t know why it’s hard to accept that different civs can be good on different maps. YES DRAVIDIANS ARE GOOD ON HYBRID MAPS. I don’t see a problem with that, not every civ needs to be top tier on Arabia. In any case, Feudal is the most important age which is why on most non-closed maps civs like Khmer, Mongols, Poles are top tier (strong in Feudal) while most civs with Imp bonuses (Persians, Goths, Bohemians etc.) are bottom tier on open maps.
this is just like your opinion…
no they don’t because raiding opponent to death is only 1 of many possible strats, there are other strats such as fast Imp Arbalest, Halb Siege etc. If every civ NEEDS a fast, tanky raiding unit, then according to you, Ethiopians, Malay, Bohemians etc. are bad (no Bloodlines, and bad armor upgrades on cavalry). Dravidians still can raid with Light Cav, it’s not ideal but it’s not unusable in the late game you see it fairly often by Dravidians on Arabia.
I sense I’m talking to a 900 elo player here, there are basically 2 “main ways of playing the game”: Archer civ and Cavalry civ. Cavalry civs rely on raiding in late Feudal/early Castle, yes. Archer civs, in contrast, rely on building a critical mass of Xbow, and defending raids with Monks, DEFENSIVE Pikes, and TCs. This means that as an Archer civ especially you should protect those “neutral golds” with army or TCs (better if both). Which you should do with Cavalry civs also incidentally.
Ordinary is quite good in this case because Monks are a very hard Knight counter until you get to Pikes.
the more important one is Sanctity which allows you to survive Mangonel shots and makes Knights 5 shot you. In any case yes, missing Redemption sucks, I guess make your own Mangonels, Dravidians have a slight weakness to Mangonels which is why they aren’t top tier on Arabia, other civs have similar weaknesses, Teutons have a weakness to CA, Goths to HC etc.
if opponent goes all in Knights there is a lot of reason to mass Monks, 2x Monastery in general shuts down any Knight pressure if you micro well and garrison into TC.
I sense this is lack of understanding how to beat Knights. Yes Knights are hard to beat, I struggle myself as a 1700 elo player to beat Knights, I think they are very easy to play, but it’s NOT impossible to shut them down, if you macro well and do the correct units, you can shut them down effectively.
this is just one of those “I heard it somewhere” statements that while partially true, is not universally true. If food was so valuable, people wouldn’t make Knights and would make Crossbow instead. In truth, it depends on how you set your eco, at start of Castle age you generally have an eco for Knights (16-18 on food, 10 ish on gold) or for Crossbow (16-18 on food who won’t reseed farms and will go to wood after and 11+ on gold). Food is valuable, gold is valuable, wood is valuable. If you spend your resources well you can make many units work. Also I wasn’t talking about Battle Elephants and Elephant Archer is about as expensive as a Knight (iirc 80f 70g) and once you build a bit of mass they trade very well vs Knights.
Many civs have moments when their answer to a certain strategy is 1 single unit as everything else is unusable. Dravidians aren’t special here. I admit though in Castle Age they are weak to Mangonels. Other civs like Hindustanis, lacking Knights, are, too yet they are top tier on Arabia so what matters is the combination of your bonuses and not missing 1 specific unit.
sure then let’s close Teutons gap by giving them Husbandry, let’s close Goths gap by giving them Plate Barding Armor, Hindustanis should get Cavaliers, Turks should get Halberdiers and Elite Skirms. Or better yet force everyone to play Byzantines vs Byzantines so that there are no upsets of “I am missing this unit and I lost cuz of that REE”.
It’s funny that in AoE2 you can even civ pick, if Dravidians style is not for you, you can not play them and play a beginner-friendly civ like Lithuanians.
just like Poles came out overpowered, Cumans came out overpowered, Sicilians came out too weak and Bohemians came out overpowered. It’s almost like, when the devs design a civ, it’s hard to gauge how powerful the civ is without data…
sure I guess we conveniently omit here that they are built from Castles only, which forces you to do a totally different build order if you want to make them at start of Castle Age, but that doesn’t suit the narrative…
Let’s make Franks make Knights from Castles only, BAM instantly they are bottom-tier.
they already have a niche on maps like Islands, Northern Isles, and Fish n Fish.
on Fish n Fish nobody docks the ponds early because it’s shallow waters so for example starting Scout can snipe the fishing ships.
Fish n Fish is about controlling the center. Shorefish is the fastest food gathering in the game for villagers and Dravidians get THREE bonuses here: cheaper MAA (on that map MAA o###### ## meta to push opponent off of the center), instant range with the +200w (you make Archers/Skirms faster than opponent) and better Skirms than opponent so you always win equal numbers trades. Dravidians, Japanese and Bulgarians are the top 3 civs on that map. Incidentally Dravidians were played A LOT on that map, you can watch past tournaments, according to GL players they are a “free win” on that map.
on that map you can’t fall back and win because shorefish is such a strong food source that if you try to make Farms instead, you will never get to Castle age first because you are investing your wood into farms while opponent invests it into production buildings, mining camps and in short gets a better uptime.
those are Scout maps. Fish n Fish is a MAA opening map.
yes but when you are 10 vills ahead, because you took middle control, and likely killed a few vills, I will gladly take Dravidians over Mongols/Khmer and whatnot because in pro play 10 vills ahead AND first to Castle age is basically resign territory whether you have Knights or not.
No I’m thinking about Feudal where you can do MAA, Archers and Skirms and on Valley there is no water, it’s the map with the shorefish + deer in the center.
your bonus on pikes is the cheaper pikeman upgrades which actually helps quite substantially because in Knight vs Pikes the Knight player sometimes goes all in, but sometimes he tries to bait out the Pikeman upgrade and 3 TC boom behind it (Pike upgrade slows your boom). Dravidians don’t need to deal with thsi and can comfortably open Pikeman in Castle age since it’s so cheap.
sure on this I agree, Dravidians are weak to Mangonels in Castle age but not incredibly so.
Arbalest is not a very good TG unit unless we talk about super open maps, yes it can be good if you hit Imp first, and in early Imp they can be very strong but in late Imp you need to transition into something else and here Dravidians don’t fall flat on maps like Arena or BF while civs like Chinese, for example, certainly do.
I guess people need to get better at MAA → Skirms → potential towers and stop playing every civ like, 3 Scouts, full wall and rush to Castle Age. Some civs play like that yes, Dravidians are a civ that is meant to get a lead in Feudal age and they have the tools to do that.
You want a unique tech that works like nothing else already present and you complain the mechanism of using barrack techs is too new. 
Tried to play as Dravidians and see if a very aggressive play is possible with early +100 wood bonus.
Played dravidians with 300 wood start to see whether a Drush is possible. It gives a free mill. Thats should help the civ identity of being good on crazy maps like bedouins and fish n Fish. But it still needs a lumber camp and houses that prevents a very early Drush and more importantly to prevent getting housed.
In water, I left 6 on sheep under TC and I went for early dock with 7th vill. I had to go for a quick lumber camp with 8th vill using the 100 wood left. My dock was idle. My vill was shore fishing. 50+ more wood could be useful to start fishing ship production. They are a water civ after all. First to deep should be a viable play.
May be better to modify the starting wood bonus of Dravidians to +150 wood like Lithuanians food bonus. There will be no cascading bonus like 100/200/300/400. The farm bonus should take care of it.
* Start the game with +150 wood.
I agree with that.
But for me a big problem with Dravidians and Bengalis is that pretty much nobody want to play them (and they got a weak overall win rate due to people mostly playing arabia). Which shows that the civs are unattractive, and this is nit only because it is a DLC, as Gurjaras+Dravidians+Bengalis had a very decent pick rate on release (~6% of 1v1s altogether).
I don’t mind a civ being unpopular or weak overall as long as it is nit both at the sane time.
I agree so much with this one. I often feels like many players first pick their civ, and then ask for buffs if it does not fit their playstyle or is weak in theur favirite maps.
I disagree. +200w/ageup and 50% cheaper barrack techs are a subpaar bonus. And missing bloodlines make extended feudal wars unattractive.
That sounds fine to me.
I think +150w on start and +175f/farm instead of +200w/ageup will make them very decent on Arabia 1v1 (not top tier unless we severly overestimate knights and BL value, but they will hold their own).
But it should not be all 3 boni together. It has to be either top castle age eco or top dark age eco, dependings on whether Dravidians players are ready to put themself pressure to deal damage in early game.
Then Dravidians will only suck as pocket on open maps, but their is no way around it with current design.