Dravidians New Bonus for Preventing Raiding

[benithisrael]

@DemiserofD

My point was more that I don’t think being a raiding unit was ever the intent. It’s an anti-infantry specialist, designed to take out large numbers of weak enemies, defending units like armored elephants. It was never intended to counter skirmishers; in fact, the more I play with it, the more I feel like they were intentionally designed to be countered by skirmishers. The way skirmishers back up when you get too close basically perfectly nullifies the splash damage, and after a bit of scenario editor testing, I’m relatively confident that unless you gave them the same Pierce armor as The Swordsman line, or give them so much of in Arrow barrier that they are basically indestructible, they will always be countered by skirmishers.

Skirmishers counter trash and gold ranged units. They being able to counter a gold infantry unique unit like Urumi is just a side effect of trying to make them vulnerable to archers. Consider these scenarios:

1. If skirmisher countered Eagles, it would have just killed Meso civ design completely.
2. If skirmishers countered Karambits, the unit would not work at all to raid anything
3. Skirmishers do counter shotels and we have seen how shit the unit is. But atleast it has speed, training time and high damage output to act as a defensive unit.

Urumi is a terrible version of shotels with their higher cost, lower speed and less damage output in prolonged fights. Another one trick pony from the Dravidian staple.

@DemiserofD

Edit 2: I keep going back and forth in my head over whether plus one pierce armor would make them overpowered or not. It would be very nice defensively, allowing them to absorb 28 Spears instead of 18, but it would take the number of crossbow shots up from 13 to 17, which is pretty dang major. In an awful lot of cases, that will basically double the effective health of a group, since one Focus fire won’t kill a unit anymore. I just honestly don’t know, but it feels really dangerous in my head.

Edit 3: I tested it in the editor. I basically just took 20 urumis vs 20 crossbows; with current stats, I could win regularly. With +1 armor, I lost with about 3 urumis surviving. In Imp, things were just plain brutal. I couldn’t win with current stats, and with +1 armor I just got annihilated, even microing as hard as I could.

You need to turn charge and splash damage off. Every Skirms will have 14 more HP to spare, every E.Skirms will have 19 more HP to spare, Skirms will survive for 33% longer and E.Skirms 66% longer. Urumi will survive 55% longer, as per your data(28/18). Crossbow will survive 66% longer. But Urumi will survive 30% longer as per your data(17/13). You did not give any data from imp Arbs. So Urumi becomes stronger against Skirms. But remain weak against cross-bows. You have good balance here.

Militia line has more damage, resistant to skirms and is easier to spam from Barracks. Spears are cheap, have bonus against cavalry and spammable. Urumi is costlier than Miitia and poor against range. Urumi has no attack bonus against cavalry except charge and splash. But spear line has ample bonus damage against cavalry. One thing Miitia and Spears can’t do is raid like Hussars which Dravidians don’t have. So there is this one role Urumi can fill. Otherwise it has no place in Dravidian gameplay. To fill the raiding requirment, Urumi needs speed and survivability. Hence the rework was perfect.

If the Urumi re-work was impossible, the easiest thing to do would be to add ‘Bloodlines’ to the tech tree. 20 HP on elephants is nothing to be freaking about balance. But light cav will become usable raiding units even if they are the slowest light cav in the game.

@JasuniSmith

I think Dravidians, if they get buffed, could get a buff doubling down on their infantry identity. For example, I could see barracks techs (excluding unit-line upgrades) being available one age earlier. This would help feudal MAA play. Supplies would be available in dark age, so you could research it earlier and have it mostly pay itself off after 3 MAA without sacrificing timing (people may have to figure out new builds, but that is easy enough to do). Gambesons, arson, and squires would all be available earlier, but are techs that aren’t really needed for the initial MAA rush (though I could see them being researched in response to certain defenses - Gambesons/squires would help once archers come out, for example, and arson would help with punishing walls). This would hopefully leave them in a better position come castle age. This wouldn’t really address their weakness in castle age, but may leave them in a better position before getting to castle age. It wouldn’t even overlap with the Armenian bonus Armenians don’t get those techs an age early (just unit line techs)

Dravidian infantry do benefit from Wootz steel. How much value that provides varies, but if we assume that an opponent has 3 armor upgrades on their units, then it’s at least +3 damage (at least as good as the Burmese bonus). If 1+3=4 melee armor, then it’s equivalent to Garland wars (making Dravidian infantry competitive against Aztec infantry). If more, then Dravidian infantry will deal more damage than any other equivalent infantry unit. And if less than 3, then the opponent is missing an armor upgrade, which means that they’ll be vulnerable to ranged attacks. And Dravidians have a perfectly respectable archery range, including solid elephant archers, faster firing skirms, and fully upgraded arbalests/hand cannons (excluding Heresy, but people tend not to consider monastery techs when deciding if a unit is fully upgradable). That doesn’t kick in until later in imperial age. All this to say that Dravidians do have very strong infantry if they can survive long enough. Until then, their infantry is pretty generic even if it does cost less to upgrade. So I think that early access to the Barracks techs would help their infantry out in the early game (mainly in Feudal Age).

As much as this will help Dravidian winrate, it is also an open invitation to go forward and drop a second barracks then spam M@A non-stop. Sorry, it is just not workable. You will have Roman rush we say last year with the added benefit of Squires and Arson. Archers and buildings won’t have any chance especially due to less armour on buildings. There will be no reason whatsoever to play any other way for Dravidian players.

@JasuniSmith

I also think Medical Corps is an easy tech to undervalue. The wiki on it suggests that elephants could easily heal 15-20 hp in a fight before dying (in contrast to 5 hp for a Viking berserk). This would be worse than bloodlines, but if the elephant survives, you get much more value. And chip damage would be basically useless (so mangonel shots against Dravidian elephant archers might not be very effective)

Medical corps could have been useful if Dravidians had any discount bonuses on elephants or some rush type bonus like Mahoot. Elephants are too easily countered by monks. The EA range being one less than crossbow also does not help. Medical corps is not heping you against monks. Hence could be as a Dravidian civ bonus. But just skippable in the overall gameplay. With devotion, Dravidians lack of redemption has been slighly balanced. But the Siege bonus has meant that its just easier to make Mangonels than Elephants. I think the first change to make Elephants useful would be to have the requirement that 'redemption' is needed is convert Elephants or conversion range of elephants need to be like Rams. One of these changes will turn the fortunes of elephant civs around.

@JasuniSmith

I also don’t see a good reason for Dravidians to be missing Siege Engineers. They have enough holes in their tech tree already.

Agreed completely.

@UnwariestRobin3

@UpmostRook9474

I don’t agree with part of your explanation, but anyway put aside personal opinions, giving free armor to a poorly cavalry civ is a waste of huge potential for this type of bonus. There isn’t even the last one of armor there.

I agree but due to how the game is balanced, free cav armor would be OP on any good cav civ. +2 armor Knights in early castle age would have no realistic counters and is so good for raiding that they wreck any other civ. This bonus could only go to a civ without knights, like Dravidians. It also lowers the cost of entry to the elephants, so it helps a bit.

If any civ can have Cav armour upgrades for free and still not be OP, it will be Bengalis. Just remove the +2 skirms bonus. Its such an eyesore. For Dravidians, its probably more useful in feudal age where they already have a lot of options. Bengalis on the other hand can use the bonus to do a prolonged scout rush by also doing bloodlines. This will help Bengalis on Open maps.

@UpmostRook9474

Thrisadai is really rare to be used.
I don’t know any occasion that it is useful. It might be very very highly situational.

The collision box size and its speed. Due to slower speed than galleon, they keep running into one another. If a unique tech fixes the speed problem and brings it to galley speed of 1.43, it will be useful as a galleon substitute.

I will summarize most of the useful points from our discussion. These changes will keep the civ look the same in terms of design. But give Dravidians a raiding unit, a defense against raiding or a eco benefit that nullifies raiding:

1. Remove ‘Wood discount on Siege’
2. Remove ‘Medical Corps’

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Add 'Bloodlines' to tech-tree

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@benithisrael

Primary bonus that is useful in all ages:
Receive 200 wood, 200 stone and 200 gold on reaching Feudal, Castle and Imp ages respectively.

The above bonus can also make sure a bonus called receive +200 stone on ageup is not implemented in future.

@benithisrael

Make it similar to Goth bonus which did help with similar problem
Fish and berries last 20% longer with +15 gather capacity for villagers and fishing ships.

Unique tech - Kaikolar
Elephant gold cost is changed to food
OR
Unique tech - Spice trade
Vills, Trade cart and Trade cog within LOS of TCs and Docks move and work 10% faster
OR
Unique tech - Medical Corps
Vills and land units within LOS of TCs suffer 25% less damage and cause 25% more damage
OR
Unique tech - Strike Corps
Units on foot, Thirisadai and Vills move 10% faster [Militia, Spear, Archers, Skirms, Monks, Urumi and Vills]

If these don’t work, make them a high DPS ranged anti-archer archer civ,
make EAs and Skirmishers DPS worth the cost

Skirmishers and Elephant Archers fire 33% faster
Unique tech - Archery range units and Thirisadai move 15% faster

The military focus should be kept on archers and infantry. Siege should not be a prominent choice for the civ especially since it lacks ‘Siege Engineers’.