Nerf idea 1: Remove blast furnace. Remove plate mail armor. Urumi swordsman only do 5 splash damage, instead of 15. Wootz Steel Costs 1600 food 1200 gold, same as an Elite War Elephant upgrade. Buff: get Elite Battle Elephant, Plate Boarding Armor and bloodlines.
Nerf idea 2: Wootz Steel Costs 1600 food 1200 gold. Urumi swordsman only do 5 splash damage, instead of 15. Remove plate mail armor, weakness to archers, but do more damage, but at the cost of lacking armour. Buff: Elite Battle Elephant and Plate Boarding Armor and bloodlines.
Nerf Idea 3: simply make Wootz Steel Costs 1600 food 1200 gold or replace it with something else.
If costs the same as a elite war elephant. You have an open window to stop them getting this broken OP tech. Urumi swordsman only do 5 splash damage, instead of 15.
Remove Blast Furnace or Plate Mail Armour?
No thanks. They’re an infantry civ first and foremost. Their Halberdiers & Champions shouldn’t be weakened for the sake of balancing Wootz Steel or Urumi Swordsmen. Otherwise, their Barracks discount wouldn’t have as much of an impact.
Wootz Steel actually isn’t broken. Good, yes. Broken? No. It’s the Urumi Swordsman dealing all the attack with the charge and armor pierce and splash damage that is a problem. Just fix the splash at like 5 damage or something, not affected by the charge.
Did I miss something or you basically repeated yourself with varying degree of impact?
Exactly. Their champs with wootz steel are incredibly good at dealing with high armour targets, I would rather the urumi filled a different role to them
So if you nuke the charge damage instead of the aoe, and remove wootz applying to urumi, the unit becomes better at killing low armour units instead of high armour ones, like their champ.
Meaning there is some choice between what unit you use to achieve something.
But Im assuming we’ll instead just end up with another Viking champ/berserk or Jap champ /samurai situation. Where they both share the same role so it becomes a matter of logistics instead of which unit is better. And I don’t like that
Dravidians are below average on open maps (and on closed maps also), why would you want to nerf them?
Ethiopians can do everything Dravidians can do, but better, for example.
Shotel > Urumi
Barracks of Ethiopians is inferior but not by much (basically only Wootz Steel keeps Dravidians afloat and it generally matters but not massively when you use Halberdiers)
Arbalester from Ethiopians is massively superior to Dravidians one
Ethiopians also get Heavy Camel, can play Castle Age Knights, get Bombard Cannon. Dravidians get none of those (they don’t even get Husbandry).
Ethiopians are considered an upper mid tier civ at best, they are picked in 2v2 but rarely in 1v1.
Suggesting that Wootz Steel should cost so many resources is just insanity, the tech is mostly a luxury tech in 1v1 and it doesn’t really do much in terms of turning a losing game into a winning one.
How would someone like the Teutons beat the Dravidians? They don’t seem to have anything. Basically, any civ that has bad archers is doomed it seems. Unless an opponent has infinite resources in non ranked game, I don’t see how they could beat them. So the Teutons can spam scorpions and siege onagers to counter their unstoppable infantry that melt everything in close combat.
Or another game is set to infinite resources, so someone like the Persians can brainlessly spam elephants to win. Urumi swordsman beat Paladin and Teutonic Knights cost-effectively from what I’ve seen. That’s simply ridiculous.
What would you make then? Your archers suck. Scorpions and onagers are your good range weapons. All of which are much more costly when compared to the archer line.
Their infantry, champions and Urumi Swords will melt all your own infantry since their ignore armour. You might have a brief window before they get the unstoppable Wootz Steel upgrade.
Might be even worse for Celts. Since they don’t have hand cannoneers.
Handcannon counters most Dravidian units, Paladins also do well. You can do your own Halbs also and there will be a disadvantage but not a big one. 1v1 games don’t come down to this sort of efficiently but typically who controls better the map/raids IF the game goes on that long. Also Teutons definitely have an advantage in late Castle/early Imp.
Teutons also get Bombard Cannon with SE and Heavy Scorp and Onager all of which Dravidians struggle vs with their foot soldier-based comp (Onager especially).
lies, Urumi beats Teutonic Knight after Wootz Steel but they definitely don’t beat Paladins.
literally anything, Teutons have one of the widest tech trees for Imperial, only missing Bracer basically and Scout line, you can do anything else, even Skirms without Bracer but last armor are very effective.
So no blast furnace, no plate mail armor, no husbandry, no knights, no CA. Instead recommend removing this civ altogether. Who is going to make dead slow Battle elephants in 1v1 or open map TG?
A better idea is - stop picking Teutons or Goths every game. Or just understand that attacking Dravidians after 50 mins with Teutonic knights or Huskarls is not a good idea.
Its nearly the same effect as Burmese free +3 extra attack against half of the units; same effect as Garland wars or chieftains against another half. Only units against which its stronger is melee units from Teutons, Boyars, Serjeants.
35% cheaper barrack units and 50% cheaper tech are not similar by any means. You’ll make hundreds of infantry units and save 25-30 resources on each of them with the goth discount. The tech discount is just a one-time thing, you’ll end up saving less than 2000 resources after doing all the barrack techs.
Yes and instead increase their hp or add 1 p.armor to elites, so that they don’t die to skirms.
Don’t understand why people are suggesting nerfs to a civ that’s already quite weak with no cavalry. The civ is similar to Malay or Vikings but with no knights and much weaker eco benefits.
So…give them bad infantry to go with their (now slightly less) bad cavalry? Nah. IMO you’re solving the wrong problem. Wootz Steel is not OP - for the purposes of most matchups, it puts their infantry roughly on par with Burmese/Aztec infantry after researching their tech. IMO the only thing that needs a (small-ish) nerf is the Urumi’s blast damage or charge damage/time.
Exactly.
At destroying buildings/raiding sure, in every other way it’s far, far worse. Shotels are easily stopped by strong infantry, cavalry, or archers. Urumi are only countered (well) by archers.
Nah. IMO a strong siege civ counters Dravidians as well or better than a strong archer civ. Once they reach a critical mass, there’s not much Dravidians can do vs. Celt Siege.
Bruh, I already covered this in another Urumi thread. You even quote-responded the post, but apparently didn’t actually read it (spoiler: Urumi do cost-effectively counter the knight line at every comparable stage, including paladin). Again, please get your basic information right before you accuse others of making the “lies.” Obviously pikemen are a better option if you’re exclusively fighting cav, but Urumis are great against a range of melee units.
Sure, but Malay and Viking knights are so bad, they’re almost not effective at what knights are supposed to do anyway, except for a very limited window in early Castle (where they’re still below average). I favor the infantry/archer civ playstyle of those types of civs, but I’ll take the superior performance of Dravidian infantry (especially Urumi)/range units over the “flexibility” of having garbage cav.
So no blast furnace, no plate mail armor, no husbandry, no knights, no CA. Instead recommend removing this civ altogether. Who is going to make dead slow Battle elephants in 1v1 or open map TG?