I have to ask, what is this aiming to achieve? This won’t be enough range to counter mangonels, and I really can’t see plus one range making much difference against knights. The big place where this could come into play is against archers, but dravidians are already well situated to counter them.
What’s the goal?
Why not? 200 wood is not much of an economy bonus. Rather than wasting time walling and falling behind this will give a clear win condition to forge ahead economically instead of struggling in castle age trying to get ballistics ASAP or building , siege video .
Towncenter has 6 range and with the dravidian bonus of +1 its 7 range in castle age. Mangonels have 7 range. So Dravidian weakness to Siege+monk push can be mitigated by having TCs focusing on mangonels and Arhers/Skirms focusing on monks. Using crossbow against a skirm bonus civ is absurd and I’m curious why you bring up such irrelevant tactics.
Currently ceding of map control is a big problem in Dravidian gameplay. Your stone walling bonus is also trying to fix this in a convoluted way. Longer ranged TCs will definitely fix the issue in earnest.
In late imp there is a real problem of hussar raids for Dravidian economy whose death ball is not good enough to sweep through enemy base in one go like a frankish palladin army. The enemy regains the initiative by simply spamming hussars into Dravidian economy and killing vills. The longer the game goes the lesser the chances of winning for Dravidian player. With longer ranged TCs, that weakness can largely be overcome. Dravidian TCs can also act as forward buildings on the flanks with the advantage of range.
Without Knights of their own, Dravidian gameplay will suffer in castle age definitely. But if ‘bloodlines is added to tech tree’. Then Dravidians can engage Knights cost effectively with ‘woots steel’. Medical Corps applying to all mounted units or giving a flat 40% HP increase for all mounted units could also fix the Knights problem. If the Knight weakness needs to be maintained as an identity, then gold discounted elephants and Siege should be the way to go. Dravidians need a reliable deathball which is hard to kill even on open terrain. Elephants cut it. But they need higher DPS than they do now and they should be easy to mass.
Because short of Castle dropping the Dravidians player I don’t see much of a counter play to this free booming strat (which is why I used the word “free”), given how your 7 range TC would counter everything from Xbow to Mangonels while a few Pikemen under the TC (which Dravidians got for a discount) would counter basically any amount of +2 Knights in conjunction with the TC fire.
Dravidians is designed to be aggressive game play civ. They are not supposed to be boom civ.
That’s just it though; even the Lithuanian +3 range bonus doesn’t really stop Mangonels from destroying everything BUT the TC. +1 would not be effective enough to even prevent damage to the TC, since you could just target ground on the edge while remaining out of range.
But that aside, the Dravidian problem isn’t really weakness to siege in the first place. It’s weakness to knights. +1 range won’t do a thing to stop knights from running free through your economy. As Hera says, in early castle age, knights counter pikes. As long as the enemy has free reign to run through their eco, they’re done for. A TC bonus isn’t really enough; they need to keep them out entirely.
Not for long; just long enough for pikes to counter knights again.
I’d say it knight+range combo the main weakness. Knight+skirms or knight+siege or if double gold combo knight+xbow.
Fair, but I think that all boils down to their own lack of knights. If they have knights and you don’t, they can take advantage of your weaknesses while you can’t return the favor, allowing your enemy to play hyper-aggressively without anywhere near the same risks.
And even if you gave them husbandry AND bloodlines, you’re still not gonna have light cav good enough to reverse that dynamic, while at the same time investing a lot of resources into a dead-end strategy.
Dravidians have none of the usual tactics to counter knights; no camels, no redemption or fervor, no knights of their own, no real bonus towards their crossbows.
All that really leaves is walls.
They have pikes that cost 50% less to upgrade. How on earth is this “no counter to knights”?
Hurr hurr hurr silly meme as answer.
Anyway. You can afford more pikes when you can buy several more with the savings on the upgrade.
Not to mention, if you are using a civ that is known for being weak to knights…compensate and prepare.
It’s not just a meme, it’s the outspoken opinion of the best player in the game.
Anyway, the cost savings saves you approximately enough for 1.5 extra pikemen. 2, if you include Squires.
It’s not numbers that makes knights counter pikes in early castle age, it’s everything; the shape of your economy, the exploration of the map, your defenses, your upgrades, etc. You could have a mountain of free pikemen and it still wouldn’t matter.
If they are to counter knights, they need a bonus that kicks in earlier and allows them to ‘compensate and prepare’; to properly defend themselves.
Next time, at least present it normally.
Ok then. How do other civs with “just” fully upgraded crossbows do it? They still have perfectly “reasonable” monks (lack of fervor is annoying. But they still have sanctity).
I’m not against giving the extra range, just not for free. You could tie it with relics, 1 range and attack for 2 relics subject to a max of 4 relics overall.
I hope you’re familiar with Hoang, youpudding type rushes. Since those civs have huge weaknesses, players use these types of bonuses to do some gimmicky plays. No one does tc drop in castle age as of now because it can get destroyed by mangonels. But if you increase the range, that won’t be the case anymore. It’ll be same range as mangonels, scorps, crossbows everything. Quite sure someone would come up with something cheesy to use that for some crazy rush. But if you either make it a UT or achievable through some other mechanic, abuse potential will be lower.
Their rush isn’t good due to a generic dark age true, but they’re forced to rush. Because if you just do what other civ does, they’ll have knight/eagle in castle age and you’ll have nothing. So its mandatory to get a big advantage. The feudal play itself needs to be strengthened A LOT somehow. Either through towers or bonus on melee units as well for free or a 2nd eco bonus. Something like start with a shore fish under tc.
It will give a strong timing advantage. That’s how Vikings get ahead. It will help Dravidians hit castle age a min or more sooner than now, better early castle age momentum. TC can run with fewer vills on food, so they can add more army while adding eco. This will change the dynamics of how much they can afford while defending against cavalry pushes, how fast they can reach imp, get bracer and cheap halb upgrade etc. Malay and Vikings don’t do knights often and yet they do well because of economic advantage. Every civ with military weaknesses must get a substantial economic advantage or usable discounts.
And? There’s no follow up to it. Its not Spanish or Burgundians. You hit castle age with stone walls and then do conqs or coustillier and you can comeback in the game. Its not Georgians or Lithuanians either, you mass Monaspa or Leitis and you can win by playing full castle age.
Nice work with the image editing and this will be true for some civ that has good units. Dravidians don’t. They have to play Arbalest or hand canoneer with halbs or champion. So its just basically walls, safe for now but naturally behind in economy because opponent isn’t going to stone wall. The other civ won’t have a plan to stone wall like that against Dravidians since its unnecessary. And then generic mediocre units at whatever point you plan to expand. Its wall and boom into gg for yourself strategy. All this does is make them not die to 1 tc knight monk pushes. Game will go into late castle age or early imp when you’re forced to move out of the walls and they’ll die at that point. Players who attempt to wall will lose more often in the 30-45 min range and that winrate will go down even if 20-30 min goes up.
Nah its just the poor ranged unit pathing for now. Not saying they’re a top quality rush civ but that’s the only good thing going for them.
Agreed.
I’d say Skirmishers 50% and Elephant archers 33% faster. And base food cost of elephant archers lower. In general there should be a tech similar to supplies to reduce food cost of elephant units by 20 food. Malay, Persians shouldn’t get it. Maybe Khmer as well.
Tc have 6 range. Mangonels have 7. If Tc gets +1 range, it can kill the mangonel. That eliminates knight-mangonel-monk pushes. OP also recommends +1 attack. That reduces the time needed to kill a knight or light cav. So those units will die sooner and the resources destroyed vs resources lost won’t be a very favorable trade for the cavalry players.
But what else can Dravidians do?
How many civs really have a truly generic crossbow line and still go for them regularly? Most of them have some sort of archer bonus, like britons extra range or vietnamese extra HP. And of course, they’ve got knights to keep enemy skirms in check.
If they do have generic crossbows, they typically have bonuses for something else, like byzantine cheaper camels.
It just so happens that Dravidians have bonuses specifically for things that are extremely weak in the early castle age.
Their climbing winrate curve indicates they do have something there. It’s basically a matter of surviving long enough to make a big enough mass of elephant archers to win the game. Go into them too early and you don’t have enough damage and you lose. Wait too long and your enemy has too much damage and you lose. Though they do have pretty dang good trash, too.
That’s a big part of why I think Medical Corps is underrated. So much of their long-term gameplan is focused around getting a critical mass of elephants, and sometimes just one or two units one way or another can be the difference between winning and losing. Medical Corps is perfect for that strategy, especially in the early game where units aren’t just getting oneshot.
What they really need is just a few extra minutes to get some farms up and boom a little, so they can afford to mass infantry and elephants and play to their strengths. Longswords+Elephant Archers is a potent combo, it just comes in a little bit too late to be effective in most games.
Suppose they have 60+% winrate in 45+ min games you could say that but even in longer games they have 43% winrate instead of 41% in mid game. Its still not a favorable situation for them. Its just a slightly better situation. And I don’t think it has anything to do with meme elephant archers. Either imp timing advantage or cheap and relatively easier halb/champ addition.
Its not a “little boom” and a few extra minutes. You need about 50+ farms to produce 3 tc vills, longswords from 2 barracks and Elephant archers from 2 ranges. Thats like around 100 vills. Thumb ring, ballistics, supplies, gambesons, squires sooo many extra upgrades as well. Its an extremely expensive, infeasible combination and both the units are ineffective in small numbers. And neither of these units are fast to raid, chase down and kill enemy units. Its not going to give comebacks like Conqs in early castle age or Monaspa, Leitis in late castle age. Faster walling might help mass this army but this army won’t win you the game. By the time you wall, buy stone back to boom and get to this army, opponent will be imp with fully upgraded ideal composition for their civ.
You can flex with Elephant archers in imp if you’re way ahead (like lets say you killed 20 vills in 25 mins with early ballistics) but Medical corps is just a mediocre and an insufficient compensation for the lack of bloodlines, husbandry and parthian tactics. And stone wall into Elephant archers with medical corps is only feasible if you’re playing against AI or your opponent is afk for 10 minutes.
I have won all my Dravidians games by using a small number of Elephant Archers early castle age…and I have won games the same way with Bengalis and even Gurjaras. But sure, they only win in big numbers in late imp…
Seriously so much arguing here about this civ from a frankly tiny number of people. Anybody stop to think that there are people that like how Dravidians work and are enjoying using them as they are? Not every civ should be for everybody’s tastes and playstyles. There are plenty I won’t touch with a barge-pole.
You’re not wrong. That’s exactly what happens right now, after you lose all your trash units in early Castle age. But that all changes if you have a place to retreat to, and you aren’t forced to engage the enemy in the open field to try to protect your base.
With skirmishers and pikemen still on the field, you can freely compliment them with whatever unit best suits the enemy tactic, and eventually transition into your ideal composition.
By no means should you go for your full late game composition right away. That’s a guaranteed way to die. But right now, the sheer vulnerability in early Castle age forces them down that path, and towards probable defeat. By giving them a bit of breathing room, you can allow them to establish that composition in a way that is not handily wiped out with a single mistake. And, of course, defend their economy at the same time to give them the resources to progress further into it as the game progresses.
Not in the context we’re discussing. @DemiserofD suggests Dravidians to get faster stone walling as a new bonus. The reasoning being they’d wall in late feudal age, boom “a little” and then comeback into the game in late castle age with Elephant archers and longswords. In that context, a few units won’t be sufficient.
It’s the 2nd least picked civ overall, Bengalis being the least. 0.7% play rate across all elos. One of the least picked in all elo ranges. People aren’t enjoying using them, they just don’t play them at all, so don’t care. The small subsection of community that plays random gets them sometimes. Obviously there are plenty of well balanced civs that I wouldn’t want to change as well but Dravidians is definitely not one of them.
And the arguing had been there for a lot of civs as well. Vietnamese, Koreans, Persians, Magyars. All of those ended up getting buffed and are quite good now while they were terrible a couple of years ago. That’s the hope for Dravidians.
That’s fine and I’d be happy with a bonus that can be used for defense or retreat as well, but not through stone walls. A new unique building or just one of their town centers making their units do more bonus damage or take less damage within a radius or have an aura effect that makes enemy units move slower. All of those are perfectly fine as well. Just not a walling bonus.
I’d be open to alternatives, if they’d work and wouldn’t unduly impact their water play.
I don’t feel like a TC bonus would make much impact against knights, which is the source of their weakness. I feel like stone collection bonuses are already used, and would help too much on water maps with towers/castles. Direct tower or castle bonuses are also probably out for the same reasons. Speed bonuses are likely also out, due to their theme as a slow civ. Most eco bonuses will only help in the lategame, after they’ve already lost.
One of the reasons I’ve honed in on stone walls is because they’re far less useful on water maps, and because they come in in feudal age. To me, this seems to precisely target their window of weakness.
Please remind me of your ideas; I can’t recall.
