Dravidians lose to cavalry civs due to hussar raiding which dravidians find difficult to handle and do raiding on their own since they dont have good raiding unit.
Also they find difficult to handle mangonels since they dont have knights and redemption.
So if they had a Bonus below
Towncenters +1 range in Castle age and +1 range in imperial age and fire 50% more Arrows when garrisoned.
This could be useful to fight against mangonels in castle age and hussars in imperial age for a little bit.
This is similar to lithuanian but still 1 less range than the tech offered to them. But given for free Age wise.
As I recall, the best way to stop cavalry raids is static defenses (with walls being especially helpful). A TC bonus would strengthen them against that, but would still be a more active bonus (so hussar raids would still be a strong option, given that they don’t require as much attention to throw out as they do to defend against, which the bonus would do nothing to help with). A wall bonus would also help with hussar raiding. Don’t know how thematically appropriate it would be.
A ridiculous (and terrible) idea I had: drop loom and gain a bonus that provides +5 hp to villagers for each barracks technology researched. Would be bad in early game, but would help out in late-game (80-hp vils would be much harder to raid, though the missing armor would hurt)
On paper, they should be able to use their own cheaper mangonels (in castle age) and BBC in imp. The first option isn’t really a counter, but would be a favorable trade (if you can pull it off)
Faster firing skirms are good against archers, but don’t do much against hussars (it’s still a very low damage output). Halbs are very good in a straight fight against cavalry units (including hussars), but aren’t fast enough to keep up with them during a raid. As tools for preventing cavalry raids, halbs aren’t really enough on their own and skirms are actually countered by hussars.
There are ways to force fights, but I don’t think you’ll see them all that often during late-game raids (when a player just spams light cavalry and throws them into the enemy eco on the hope that they’ll do something useful while taking minimal player supervision). If you really want to stop raids, the best tool is walling up, since it’s difficult to send a raiding force through solid walls. An assault force would break the walls down, but raiding forces tend not to pack that sort of punch - a combination of raiding/assault would work, but the defender still gets additional time to react and there would be limited entry points.
if you REALLY want a bonus for it you dont need that just some bonus that goes something like TC deals more damage to cavalry units and done like say +1 or +2 per arrow
but honestly dravidian should be left as is and they should have a weakness to raid. this will push their game to be more aggressive early than trying to go late. they do have cheaper siege so they should make full use of it
A great bonus. Seems like a good anti-raid option. And very effective since its free. One point I’d think is the forward tc drop abuse since this bonus comes for free. I’d give useless medical corps for free and replace this as UT. Will slightly improve usability of elephant archers as well.
This is the perfect bonus for Dravidians and something the CIV should have been designed around in the first place.
I don’t see this becoming a TC drop problem. Its kicks in early castle age. TC drop would have lost its utility by then. It however neutralizes mangonel problem. However other siege such as Bombard cannon and trebs will have no problems in imp. So the castle age Achilles heel is fixed while in imp there will be weakness. But opponent can still raid Dravidian economy to keep them from expanding. As Dravidian player, you focus on expanding economy by building TCs rather than training discount mangonels. This will be a clear win condition for Dravidian player and not the haphazard mangonel spam advocated by many now.
To make it a more effective bonus for gameplay. I would modify this bonus to +1/+2 range and attack for TC in castle/imp respectively. This should help TCs become strongholds harder to raid. This bonus will also help make Dravidians appalling castle age bearable without power spike DPS units such as Knights. It only makes sense since Dravidians play without Knights, the opponent should play without TC pushing Mangonels.
I would replace medical corps with siege discount. Lets change the wood discount bonus to siege weapons and Elephants 40% cheaper gold cost. The Siege discount named as a tech called ‘War Preparations’. It is also helps with historical accuracy since cholas were incredibly wealthy due to maritime trade. To prepare for Malay peninsula invasion, they got Siege and ship technology using maritime trade from chinese, arabs and anyone with advanced techs such as double hulled ships, chinese flamethrowers etc. The tech would be balanced for Dravidians since they lack siege engineers, redemption, heresy or any gold bonus to speak of despite south India being called ‘the gold sink of the world’.
These changes would make the CIV well-rounded despite the tech-tree gaps. The number of civ bonuses and unique techs will remain as it is. This change will breathe some life back into the civ which has grown stale with very little being done by devs to fix fundamental problems. I though Hera vs Viper things would come up with a solution like this. But nothing of the sort came out of it.
It loses its utility today because the opponent’s tc can shoot back. But with extra range, players can build it in such a way that the defender’s tc can’t shoot back. It could lead to hoang or youpudding like builds. I’d rather prefer it to be a part of a cheap UT something like 100 food 150 wood. That way monks can defend from the early castle age low number of cavalry but UT can defend from late castle age and imperial age light cavalry spam.
I think it shouldn’t hit the other extreme where the bonus makes it impossible to do a mangonel push against it. I’d just give elephant archers some bonus damage vs mangonels or something else that lets Dravidians handle mangonels without making it impossible to push them.
I’d rather do this the Malay-Viking style through a bigger eco benefit. Some long term bonus. Or better military bonus in feudal age. That should give Dravidians a big lead against most of the civs.
Give them more complete monastery tech tree to help against knight and mangonel in mid-game. (esp Redemption) I wonder whether I miss something that there is a good reason for dravidians having bad monks.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, any buffs to their anti-raiding capability needs to not make them too good on water maps. They’re currently holding a 60% WR on Migration, and 70% on Nomad.
And honestly, any changes they get should probably apply to Bengalis too. They’re just as bad AND don’t have the same strengths on water maps.
They’re really not that bad in the current patch. 49% average win rate, 47.5% on Arabia; feels like the addition of Devotion to their tech tree gave them a really big boost that they really needed.
I would be surprised to see any major changes to their bonuses or tech tree at this point.