All are hypothetical changes mostly based on civ design and history, not a real balance proposal.
For real balance suggestion -
Medical corps replaced by Szlachta Privileged Elephant - BE gold cost is halved or maybe -60% like Poles.
Never heard about that? How?
I never asked to remove Squires from Dravidians.
Yeah Ethiopians is more aggressive. And have better mobile options as well, especially after new Royal Heir.
Ahhhh. So theyâd become 10% faster than modern celts? Donât you think thatâs a pretty dramatic change in theme for one of the slowest civs in the game? I like the idea of giving them their speed SOONER, but not really of making them suddenly and predominately speed racer.
I donât think Medical Corps is gonna get replaced, not when theyâve already made a few balance tweaks to it and itâs held steady for a few patches now. It really is quite good in some cases; saw a hilarious game yesterday from Survivalist where he was playing Dravidians vs Gurjaras and he got Wootz Steel and Medical Corps and basically spammed Siege Elephants into the enemy base. They donât have pikemen so that option wasnât really there, and monks canât convert Siege Elephants from a distance so that wasnât an option either, so he was stuck using Skirms and Hussars and basically could hardly kill them because they all were regenerating xD
That said, I feel like the proposed change is too close to the Malay bonus.
Looking at their 1900+ winrate curve, I feel like what they really need help with is just surviving past their weak point to their slow growth at the lategame.
It is dramatic. I said they are change based on better design than balance.
Which is exactly the intention. But more saving on gold side and be more viable in low gold situation.
Ahh. So that explains Bengalis is surprisingly high W/R against Gurjaras. 11
Yes but they donât have the same collection rate and its not a civ where uu play is a natural part of the civâs play (like Spanish, Burmese or Bohemians).
30-45 minutes being the biggest failure shows that they donât die to initial knight push but rather in the mid game when youâd get raided with knights and light cav. Thatâs where the bonus suggested by OP will be a good defense. Itâll make the cav raids a lot less valuable with extra range and dps from town centers.
Powerful infantry bonuses is not as a defensive mechanic. Ultimately theyâre a civ that still lack knights and CA. Civs with weak knights like Vikings and Malay get insanely good infantry bonuses for the early and mid game while that of Dravidians is mediocre. They should get stronger military bonus or eco compared to those two civs given how they cant even play knights.
Early on its not necessary. In early game (like upto 25 mins) your base is compact. If knights try to break your house walls or palisades and enter, you have enough time to move your monks/pikes for defense. Thereâs not going to be much exposed villagers nor will your opponent be able to spam cavalry units at that phase. Such things happen in the 30-45 min window, which is their worst failure as indicated by the stats.
This play could work on center-control based maps, like gold rush, the hidden cup qualifier map Quarry etc, if Elephant archers and the elite upgrade were cheaper. Not for Arabia or maps where resources are scattered. Its the same reason. Initial base is compact and stone walling is unnecessary, mid game youâd have to move out and itâd cost too much stone to wall through the middle of the map.
Malay compensate for the lack of mobility with eco benefit and being a civ that can hit the next age quite soon. The infantry armor makes their drush strong enough to buy time for completing walls and taking advantage of the 2 villager lead in feudal age. They donât need tower defense. Plus they have good monks as well.
For Dravidians Iâd either give barrack techs an age earlier plus at 50% discount or 2x benefits and either this tc bonus from OP or discounted EA or redemption.
Iâd just give the speed bonus back in dark age again for Celts, give them extra rof for towers for free and make their UT give the siege rof.
Well, thatâs across all elos; if you look at just 1900+, it moves up to 20-30 minutes, so to me, it looks like better players just play faster and get to the initial knights more rapidly.
Iâve seen a LOT of games that basically go like this:
What the dravidian player really needs is a way to take advantage of that mid to late feudal strength to fortify their position and survive the initial pressure. With their powerful skirms and wood bonus, they can temporarily take map control, they just canât actually do anything with it.
The problem is, a compact base also means completely surrendering map control when you retreat to it. Inevitably your enemy will show up with siege or something to punch through and then youâre just done. Best case, even if you survive, they have all the relics and all the neutral res.
You might be surprised! Most people wall their base in as a square, because it exposes your villagers to danger to go too far away, and because palisades need to be able to be housewalled if they get attacked, because they donât last very long.
But in practice, a straight line wall across the map is almost always about the same length. If you could build faster, be safe due to temporary map control, and not need to house wall behind your wall because itâs made of stone, then claiming half the map or more could be a viable tactic.
The idea was replacing Infantry armor with Tower bonus to make them slow pushing civ instead of hitting next age earlier with both eco lead and better military. Anyway none of this bonus swap will happen anyway.
What about Armenians?
Yeah I proposed that like an year ago.
Dravidians are supposed to have that weakness, but i agree that their lack of mobility can be problematic. This also applies for other civs tough, like Vikings, who have bad cav, and iâd argue dravidians have better tools then Vikings against raids
Also dravidians are supposed to be aggressive and win the game before raiding becomes a problem.
That said, iâm no dravidian expert, but i think this is not a problem exclusive to dravidians. Hussars/strong light cav raids in general is too strong and every civ that has that in late game is at a huge advantage.
Maybe there could be a case to add a new generic tech in the TC in Imperial age as an upgrade to town patrol (âTown guardâ or something) that adds +1/2 bonus damage vs cavalry from TCs arrow fire and maybe increased range by 1, so that would be equal for everyone and would also be an advocate to research Town Patrol, one of the worst upgrades atm
Well, NO. First of all I elaborated on that stat because it was your quote and I was explaining why your suggestion of faster walls isnât going to help them perform well in mid game. And secondly both 1200+ and 1900+ âArabia onlyâ 1v1, they have an abysmal winrate in both 20-30 and 30-45 mins.
Even if we assume they die to early castle age knight raids, stone wall being built faster will have zero or maybe even negative impact on the Dravidian playerâs winning chances. Wall bonus is useful for civs that have a strong comeback in the mid game. Slavs, Poles, Burgundians, Georgians, Cumans. Those civs can use the wall bonus, setup their eco and take the lead in mid game with a strong castle age gameplay. Dravidians have a terrible castle age and even early imp they have no momentum bonus like cheaper imp, Faster imp, faster chemistry or anything like that. Theyâre not Turks or Bohemians. Youâd wall fast and die.
Exactly. And thatâs an aggressive military or eco bonus. Either melee units getting extra attack or wootz steel given as a civ bonus effect or free bloodlines, f,letching costing no food, tower related bonus. NOT WALL
You know why they still NEVER wall the middle of the map, to minimize the risk of losing villagers and wasting resources on an incomplete wall and to be able to reach the break-in point. You need to have âaegisâ and the old ârock onâ cheat codes to justify stone walling through the middle of the map.
This bonus the way you recommend can help Dravidians on Golden lakes and African reed beds where Dravidian can fish boom, give up the gold and fight for it with a faster imp. Otherwise its quite useless.
I believe they get the unit upgrades and I meant the other techs - supplies in dark age, squires, gambesons and arsons in feudal.
I think that represents the players who retreat to their bases and manage to hold out, but lose because they surrendered map control. Generally speaking, the cause of a loss happen before a loss, after all.
Dravidians are really a counter-civ; their bonuses apply largely to their counter units, not to their aggressive military strength. Even their infantry bonus is really primarily a bonus in tech swapping into their swordsman or pikeman line if they need it, since it hardly saves you anything on a MAA rush; far less than civs like the Bulgarians, for example.
An eco bonus would be a pretty odd change in direction, and aggressive military bonuses would likewise be a pretty major change in direction.
All they need is a final bonus that counters raiding, kinda similar to how the Byzantines get extra building HP.
Honestly, thatâs kinda what +100% stone wall building speed does. It means stone walls complete 40% faster than palisades, and take 25% less total resources(accounting for villager seconds).
Iâm not saying theyâd do it EVERY time, but it would allow them to establish a base large enough to allow them to build up towards their lategame strength.
Right. Armenians only have early units.
But I donât see early barrack techs are quite useful even for Dravidians. No one can afford supplies in Dark Age even at 50% reduced cost. And Gambeson is too big of a investment. Only early Squires is useful. And maybe in long Feudal with Squires+Gambeson, you may do some damage. But Dravidians is already good at that period of the game. And over investing in Feudal only means being behind in Castle where they are weakest.
No that happens because there are more fraction of players who handle their 1-tc knight-monk-siege push better at higher elos while lower elos boom a bit before they start the cavalry raids. And the before is not something that happens 10-15 mins earlier every time. Thereâs nothing specifically problematic with Dravidians that makes them die sooner than other civs to early castle age raids. Sure there are a few civs which are definitely faster than them to castle age but theyâre not a zero eco benefit civ till castle age to be that far behind and die to the first 5-6 knights.
Just the rof on skirms doesnât make them a âcounterâ civ. Thatâs like calling Lithuanians a counter civ because they have spear skirm bonus. Even Gurjaras fit the description of a counter civ better. Dravidians are an aggressive civ with a power spike eco bonus, cheaper infantry upgrade, cheaper on wood mangonels. Something that has to work with timing advantage. Except they dont have a superior eco for timing advantage nor are infantry easy to use.
Its perfectly aligned in that direction.
Byzantines also have cheap Camels. Camels can outrun knights and kill them. Byzantines also have monk healing bonus, town watch and patrol free for extra vision. Building HP alone wouldnât make them defensive.
No it doesnât.
Scenario A: You just wall your starting base with stone. Useless because after some boom you still need to expand outside somewhere between 25-30 mins and youâd lose map control by then.
Scenario B: Play regular but stone wall through the middle of the map. Useless because youâd spend 300-400 stone, villager idle time in moving that far away from your base and still the purpose wonât be achieved. Opponent will drop a castle on a hill from the other side and break-in.
One in ten games where youâve began pushing with slow units and donât want to get counter raided by cavalry from a mid-game civ like Poles this can work. But its not a generically useful bonus against raids against all civs.
First of all late game isnât âstrongâ, its just not terrible like castle age and early imperial age. Its not like their unique unit is something like Mangudai or Leitis. They stone wall get to elite unique units and can swing the game. Most of their units are mediocre or terrible.
Second thereâs no strong eco benefit either to compensate for the loss of villager idle time. Three or four of your vills are not going to be working for 4-5 mins which is a loss of atleast 300 resources and spend 300-400 stone. So youâre behind by 600+ resources just like that. Its not like you can build folwark farms or get a trickle of one resource from another and compensate for it soon. Nor do you get a huge military discount on all of your aggressive units.
This bonus would have fit the Portugese that had stronger feitoria but no berry bonus. Stone wall, do organ guns, hit imp and do feitoria. Not Dravidians. No eco, no strong uu for late castle age, no strong gunpowder or momentum bonus for early imp. Its just going to be stone wall into some mediocre units.
True, its not something that would fit universally on all maps. Maybe Dravidians should get a tower bonus to pair with stronger maa play.
I see the problem with Dravidians almost every time; they end up in a skirm/pike comp going into castle age, and that comp simply dies hard to knight/skirm. Other civs have camels, knights, or monk bonuses to make countering them that way more viable, but Dravidians uniquely have no camels or knights, and they lack redemption on their monks. They have siege bonuses, but siege isnât exactly great against knights, and has the same exact weaknesses as skirms.
Without a fast power unit they simply cannot press their advantage for a climactic fight that wins the game. A handful of knights can wipe out all an enemyâs skirms and give a HUGE advantage, but if your only viable anti-skirm option is your own skirms, youâre forced into a slow, painful war of attrition, where even a single mistake can mean losing.
And to be clear, Iâm fine with this; it works fine, as long as they can survive for long enough that losing a mass of skirms isnât the end of the game for you. They just need a way to survive that long.
Itâs not just that; itâs their tech tree and other bonuses.
At the same time, they have no real âpowerâ units. Battle Elephants are too poor and costly to get into to qualify. They have no real bonuses towards their archer line. They donât have knights. Their infantry are just cheap, not strong. Their Unique Unit is not particularly effective in that role unless massed far more than is reasonable. Same goes for the Elephant Archers.
What I see is a host of counter options and no real power options to speak of.
How? I just donât see it. They have no powerful aggressive options. Itâs a complete change in character for them.
Sure, but Dravidians have powerful bonuses of their own. Balance those out, and the main things Dravidians are missing is a defensive bonus.
Practically speaking, it usually takes about 40 wall tiles to cross the entire map, or about 200 stone. Try it out in the editor. You do have to use natural obstacles and terrain, but it IS possible.
Since youâre building faster, due to the build speed bonus, you actually end up losing less than a normal civ would lose via building ordinary walls in most cases.
Itâs true that a castle will punch through, but a castle is also a HUGE investment, and with your siege bonus, youâll be perfectly placed to counter their attack wherever it comes. If youâre surviving that long without damage, youâre already past your point of greatest weakness!
No different from any other civ. It takes the same number of walls and about the same amount of resources, but with far better long-term results, assuming you get the +100% build speed bonus Iâm talking about.
I thought about a tower bonus; the problem is, this could make them even stronger on water maps, where theyâre already top-tier. Ideally, any bonus they get will be specifically focused on open maps, where theyâre weakest.
The nice thing about a wall build speed bonus is, it directly scales in power to how much the player has to wall. On maps with little or no walling, like arena or black forest, it will make little difference. On maps with lots of walling, like Arabia, it will make the most difference. Perfectly tailored to their greatest weakness!
Its not cheap pikes. Its cheap upgrade. Some other civ has that for free.
OMG NOâŠNo one ever makes longswords in castle age to counter skirms. You make scorps, knights, light cav, eagle or some other unit which is fast to kill skirms not longswords. Slightly cheaper scorps is good but 3 other civs have that and itâs not a criteria for being a counter civ.
NO. Its another unit thatâs hard to kill and stands its ground once made.
yes theyâre a counter to battering rams, petards, flaming camels, siege towers and a group of villagers.
Massively weak against ranged units, -2 p.armor compared to swordsmen which already are considered weak against most of the ranged units. No one makes elephants and these units can be used to some extent against cav civs if they costed something like 35 food 25 gold. Not at their current cost. They are atleast a bottom 5 if not the worst unique unit in the game.
A counter unit needs 3 properties -
War elephants, teutonic knights, Persian elephants might trade well vs some generic units but theyâre not a counter unit. Theyâre units meant for the super late game pop efficiency. More or less a showoff military in 1v1 and primarily a tg unit.
No. All of their bonuses are aggressive and timing advantage based ones. Get more wood and cheap maa to put pressure, followup with fast shooting skirms, hit castle age and get cheaper siege, cheaper infantry and finish off. Also the reason for 52% winrate under 20 mins at 1900+. A counter civ will have to push organically with army number and timing advantage. Like Gurjaras, Byzantines.
Normal civs WONT do that. So your vills travel 40-50 tiles back and forth, spend time building the stone walls but your opponent doesnât do that. If your opponent also does that youâll have a minor advantage but its atleast a loss of 300-400 resources worth villager time plus 200 stone. You only need to do that if youâre a civ thatâs weak early on but become very powerful in late castle or early imp. Not with this civ
Frankly, a 52% winrate is not a strong indicator of a timing civ. Mongols, for example, have a 73% win rate before 20 minutes. If they are truly meant to be a timing civ, weâd be proposing buffs to make them stronger in the early game. But weâre not; even the people who arenât trying to give them an outright defensive bonus like me are still trying to make them more resistant to raiding. If theyâre meant to be a timing civ, to what end?
The problem with your proposed strategy is this; Infantry do not have the attack strength to defend anything. Say you do as you propose; you make it to early feudal, youâve countered their archers with your skirmishers(which, to be clear, doesnât work as well as people think, because early archer play is more focused around precise micro rather than fire rate, and a firing rate bonus doesnât improve skirmsâ microability at all, but weâll set that aside). Anyway, your enemy canât go archers, so he pulls them back and makes scouts. What do you make in response?
If you make more MAA, he runs around them with the scouts and attacks the Skirms. Sure, the Scouts die, but the skirms do too, because MAA donât do damage fast enough(about half as fast as spears, and bear in mind spears are frontloaded and kill off the first few units instantly). Once the skirms are dead, the archers clean up the MAA, and you die.
So MAA isnât really an option. So you go for spears instead. Except Skirms+Spears canât do damage! Theyâre a counter comp, entirely. All you can really do is delay him, and give you more time. So he gets to castle age, makes a handful of knights. You canât kill them with skirms, and he dances his knights around your pikemen, and waits. Sooner or later, you make ONE mistake, he cleans up your skirms, and then your pikes, and then, since you have no real defenses at home, you die.
Both siege and monks have the exact same vulnerability; theyâre low-hp units that die from a momentâs inattention. This problem only gets worse at higher skill levels, where players have the skill to capitalize on a single momentâs inattention.
So youâve got a supposed timing civ that ends up spending 95% of its time playing only counter units, and is therefore unable to capitalize on its moment of greatest strength.
Yâknow what they could really use? Some sort of defensive bonus to allow them to safely retreat and take better fights, delaying until their more powerful units come in. If they didnât lose 62% of games between 20-30 minutes, then they could actually have a chance to apply their slowly growing winrate curve in the lategame.
Says who? Iâm not saying players would grab half the map EVERY game; youâd need the right map to make it viable. But even in a perfectly normal map, you could still make use of it to grab a larger chunk of the map while you still have that early feudal map control. Thatâs simply by virtue of faster build speed+not needing support behind.
And in some cases, where the map obliges, you could grab far more.
Exactly; if youâre already hard countered, an extra -2 isnât gonna make much difference. By contrast, compared to spearmen, Urumis take 3 damage, vs 7 for spearmen, while filling a similar role.
Thatâs because Mongol bonus is broken and extremely powerful. Mongol were given that bonus at a point where they didnât have lancers so they relied on the early starting advantage. That needs to be nerfed well, which is a whole other topic. But nevertheless 200 free wood per age and some unit line upgrades being cheaper is a power spike and timing bonus. Usually if you try to go up very early by adjusting your build youâre expected to fall short on wood for a range or not be able to get some upgrade like maa. This is where a power spike bonus helps. You can do it but not your opponent. However maa themselves are mediocre. In general this is a problem for all infantry civs.
A power spike bonus isnât just for early game. Turk chemistry free is a power spike bonus for imp, Malian university 80% faster is a power spike bonus for early castle age. Anyways we donât propose buffs for early game because theyâre fine in the early game. An eco bonus can make them stay ahead like Vikings, Malay. Or if they get some bonus to protect themselves from cavalry raids like OPâs suggestion or a tower bonus, they can take lesser damage from cavalry raids. Its not something that will always make them win but the abysmal mid game performance could get better.
I donât know why youâre explaining this, I know and acknowledge maa are terrible. Iâm not recommending maa-skirms all-in as a strategy at all but just saying thatâs what 1900+ are doing with Dravidians (44% games are maa opening), only opening with a positive winrate. Because thereâs nothing else gives an advantage before the mid game weakness shows up. Either win by doing a lot of damage early on or die, kind of a situation.
Ya again the reason why as time progresses civâs winrate worsens. Its not an ideal thing to do all the time but Dravidians are forced to do that with the lack of options.
A defensive bonus on retreat is fine too. Something like units taking lesser damage closer to town centers or some other building could be a good bonus.
ya like black forest or some other niche maps. Otherwise MAJORITY of Arabia games people donât build stone walls through the middle of the map. Thereâs no stats collected to prove this but just watch a bunch of 2k+ games from the dashboard or spectate any Arabia game with a gold or silver badge. If you stone wall that much in feudal age, youâll be behind to castle age by several minutes due to the villager walking time, resources invested. Somehow even if we assume your opponent didnât attack and let you wall through the middle, theyâll be ahead to castle age by atleast 3 mins, have town centers up and get a 15-20 vill lead very soon. This is the reason why its extremely useless to do it. If you watch any pro player streams, just question them whether or not its good to stone wall through the middle of the map in feudal age.
NO. Halberdiers are spammed from barracks. You lose 10 barracks and you can rebuild them. You canât do that with castles. You can lose hundreds of halberdiers and still keep spamming them. 65 food is a LOT for mid game and 20 gold isnât a throw away in the late game. It is NOT the same role. 3 damage, 7 damage, all this is relevant when 2 units have comparable costs, produced from buildings with comparable feasibility.
Itâs not just the Mongols that are better; pretty much every other ârushingâ civ is better. Frankly, the Dravidian bonus just isnât that great at rushing, since it doesnât kick in until the Feudal Age, and even when it does kick in, the fact half the savings bonus is for Supplies, which doesnât kick in until MAA are no longer any good means theyâre just never going to be particularly good at that role.
Their real bonus in Feudal is for their Skirms, a counter unit.
Eco bonuses generally take a while to kick in. Giving them, say, better farms wonât help them because it wonât have enough time to pay off. Eco bonuses other than instant resources arenât gonna make a major difference when their big weakness is a lack of knights.
Sure, they donât have bonuses to make it viable.
Iâm explaining it to show why a defensive bonus is needed. They will gain an advantage in feudal age based on their passive skirm bonus, but canât go anywhere with it. What do you do with complete map control but no way to use it offensively? You take advantage of it defensively. Such as by building larger, more substantial walls.
That Feudal advantage could allow them to build walls 50-100% larger than another civ. The only problem is that doing so would leave those walls undefended; this is what a wall build speed bonus would solve. Stone walls in early castle age donât need to be defended, theyâre incredibly durable, and they buy time for the game to move to a later stage, where knights no longer counter pikemen and skirms arenât an insane gamble.
Allowing Dravidians to survive consistently through their weakest point will move their graph from this to this:
give them husbandry or bloodline and call it a day, preferably bloodline, or both if needed
Upon release Dravidians was #1 at below 20 min mark. Probably only in 1v1 Arabia though. Now 52% is very surprising. I think players just donât get enough confidence playing Dravidians or maybe they think early castle siege push is better than staying in long Feudal with MAA+range.
Yup! I advocated this as the most important change to make this civ playable in open maps. But People think that is their identity. No, its just bad civ design. Without bloodlines, Dravidians have no unit to finish off opponents in late game especially if opponent has cheaper units. Cheaper wood Siege is definitely not a game finishing bonus. It is also a timing bonus like 200 wood per age which is their primary and laughable bonus.
Yup! But that was primarily due to water play. All the new civs had water based bonuses. So people were trying them out and Dravidians with their wood bonus can outproduce most civs in feudal age. Water control gives far more points than land control which led to most people resigning after the initial fights. Now everybody understands Dravidian tech tree gaps on land and exploit them ruthlessly. Dravidians are still almost number 1 on water based maps. But thats expected given the free wood.
I agree with OP @LinedJoker18896 idea. The bonus that Dravidians should have had was +1/+2 range attack for TCs in castle and imp. This will not result in TC drop like @Pulikesi25 contends. Nobody in their right mind would do an FC and TC drop. The eco will be so poor especially with Dravidians. You are signing your defeat here.
If gimmicky plays using this bonus will be a problem, the wood siege discount is even more gimmicky. The gimmick works only against Meso civs and it works like this: FC â drop Siege workshop near opponent base â Build mangonel and Monastry â Use monk for defending Siege from enemy Eagles â Has a window of oppurtunity till 25 min to win the game. I suggest removing the wood discount and adding this bonus in its place.
Medical corps in any shape or form has to go. A gold discount bonus in its place is needed so that Dravidians can mass Siege and Elepehants which are costlier than Knight+Siege combo of other civs to be able to make deathballs which will help overcome their mobility handicap. If games goes very late in imp into wood running out scenarios, then Dravidians will have light cav with bloodlines which can perform decently as a raiding unit.
Iâd applaud @DemiserofD for trying to fix Dravidian problem. But Unless the stone building bonus is generic like âStone buildings are constructed 50% faster and 50% cheaperâ. You are introducing one more âone trick ponyâ solutions like MAA for Dravidians. Dravidians donât have any building based bonuses to speak of. So introducing one now will necessitate âmedical copsâ to be turned into a building based defensive bonus too. Otherwise the design will be like, FC â wall â NOTHING more. You would just have more Vills on stone and rather than food or gold which delays your imp timing which means Dravidians will be stuck in castle age for far longer than necessary.
The easiest change I would suggest for Dravidians is:
Skirmishers and Elephant Archers fire 50% faster
This will make Skirmishers fire just as fast as archers rendering them some defensive capabilities against scouts and monks. Elephant archers will be equal to 2 individial foot archers till castle age. These elephant archers can be the power units Dravidians need to push through their miserable castle age. These Elephant archers can be like camels in the sense that they beat Knights cost effectively. Knight can however still run away like they do against battle elephants. In addition, if you garrison skirms in TCs and Towers the extra arrows will also fire a little faster. So you get the faster firing bonus on a need to have basis.
So basically a pass to free boom? Why ever make anything besides Pikeman with such a civ bonus, just 5 TC boom behind walls and with few Pikemen every game.
Sorry, such drastic or innovative bonuses ainât it.