I think swap wootz steel with castle UT is somewhat equivalent to Chieftain in Castle age.
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When within a few tiles radius of a Dravidian tc (or some other building that costs stone, like some new building) ** ONLY ONE** of the following happening:
- Dravidian units and buildings taking less damage
- Dravidian units doing more damage to enemy units.
- Enemy units slowing down (like move at -20% speed)
- Dravidian units speed up (like move 20% faster)
- Enemy units lose hp at some rate.
Barrack techs cost -50% and do ONE of the following:
- Reduce cost of stone structures (could be a fixed amount or a percentage with a max limit)
- Reduce the damage taken by towers from enemy units.
- Increase the hp of towers and castles.
- Increases attack of towers against cavalry and siege.
Medical corps available as a tech in monastery and impacts all infantry and cavalry units. Wootz steel becomes the castle age UT, cost reduced to 2/3 of its current cost (like 500 food, 400 gold) and some new UT in imp.
Does this solve their early castle age weakness to knights? Youâd need to have a pretty massive effect to repel knights, especially since this is kinda forcing them into a big, multi-tc boom to stay alive(or else their wood lines and gold would be vulnerable anyway), meaning theyâd have little in the way of resources to devote towards defensive units.
Wouldnât this have a pretty big impact on water maps? They are already fairly dominant on those maps, so by buffing their castles and towers, Iâm concerned their water play could become almost unstoppable.
A buff for their towers specifically against cavalry and siege is interesting, I have to admit. That said, thatâs essentially what Svan Towers is, and thatâs rarely used just because towers are too expensive to really commit to in early castle age. Plus, lacking ballistics, it would have a hard time being very effective against cavalry even with a big damage bonus.
You could give them free ballistics, I suppose.
I know this is about the Georgians and not the Dravidians, but if Svan Towers halved the cost of towers like in my version, that problem would be solved. Devs, take notes.
Of course yes. Obviously shouldnât be something like 5% nor something too high like 40%. But lets say enemy units move 20% slower, thatâs less than 1.2 speed for knights with husbandry. It improves the chances of conversion since reaching monks to kill or running out of range becomes harder. Pikes with squires will be 1.1 speed which is only 8% slower, so it will be easier for them to catch up. Dravidian crossbows at base will be easier to kite and harder for the knights to surround them since the speed difference is much smaller (like plumed vs knights in general). Value from raids will go down significantly.
A tower bonus doesnât imply auto win on water maps. You have tower bonuses for Koreans, Japanese, Byzantines already apart from other water related bonuses and they werenât spamming towers every game in S tier events. Japanese were barely even picked outside Migration and even when they did get picked towers werenât used often. So tower bonuses donât make a civ broken on water. I donât think Dravidians with tower benefits from barrack techs will just become unwinnable for Vikings, Italians, Armenians and Koreans. Towers are a late castle age or imperial age thing and by then there are so many other factors that come into play. It will definitely make them better than now but probably not broken.
Lastly you can balance it well by making it percentage or as small fixed values which would be substantial only when all barrack techs are done. That way getting a couple of upgrades wonât add too much value but doing all of them will.
Svan towers is rarely used because Georgians have Monaspa. Their castles will be busy producing that unit most of the time and when you have a big mass of Monaspa, you donât need such a tower bonus. Its niche in situations where opponent is spamming a lot of halbs and there is some choke point where all Monaspa cant fight.
And they usually lack ballistics because Georgians donât play ranged units often while Dravidians must play them.
Thats broken for open map team games, empire wars hybrid maps, some archer play based maps like acclivity and galley war based water maps. Its a great bonus but it does the opposite of balance, making the civ stronger in settings where its reasonably okish while not much value in settings where its very weak. I wouldnât mind if they get this bonus but Iâd prefer others instead of this.
The challenge is the open base. For balance, the range would need to be quite short, which means unless they multi-tc boom, they wonât have all their economy protected(And the knights are largely unhindered), and if they DO multi-tc boom, they wonât have the resources to drive off enemy knights anyway, so slowness will be relatively irrelevant. If they can drive off knights in their economy WHILE multi-tc booming, theyâd be quite overpowered.
Look at Bulgarians, for example; they get a fairly significant TC discount, and the best defensive building in the game(which in practice serves a similar role, allowing for better eco protection), but they still have a massive weakness at the 20-30 minute mark, dropping to around a 30% WR. To me, it seems like TC bonuses of this sort are mostly helpful later in the game, or for aggressive TC-drop style tactics, not specifically in the early castle age. At that point, having central point of strength is less important than having map control or agility.
For that reason, I donât see TC-centric bonuses as being a great way to solve a weakness to knights.
It would increase their winrates where theyâre already quite strong. And it would do so moreso on water maps than it would on Arabia. Other civs like the Japanese and Byzantines are well-balanced with their tech tree to include their tower bonuses, while the Dravidians are not.
Combined with their frontloaded eco bonus on water maps, Dravidians really could become quite unfairly powerful. Thatâs why I wanted to specifically focus on bonuses that will help the most on open land maps, which is why I donât think bonuses to castles or towers are a good choice.
Although, now that I think about it, some sort of healing bonus would be kind of interesting. Like if towers and town centers healed at twice the rate. That would mostly help on land, without unduly affecting water content.
Itâll make raids ineffective for quite some time and as you said if they did multi-tc and no military, knights will still do damage, so thereâs some value without being broken. And thereâs multiple version of the bonus, Iâve just mentioned the concept. The numbers can always be adjusted accordingly for balance. Like 15% less damage, 20% slower etc. And another thing is Iâve also given the alternative of depending on some other building. Could be some unique building costing some stone. Its just a way of giving a defense from counter raids for a civ without cavalry. If other civâs cavalry canât function to their full power, the weak Dravidian units will trade better.
How do you even make such an illogical comparison with Bulgarians? First of all Bulgarian bonus is a discount, not an ability to protect from raids (no range or damage or anything like that). Second the reason for abysmal winrate is the lack of an economic bonus in early game till castle age, due to which theyâre slower to the next age in most games. That discount helps them get a tower for defense and go castle age or sell 100 stone and still have 3 tc or they can use the additional stone to get to the first forward Krepost sooner.
Each and every tc bonus has a different purpose as per the context of each civ. Some are for boom, some are to enable the player to get a castle or some alternative sooner (Bulgarians), some to give the ability to add tc while making wood costing units (Malians and Britons). The only civ with a free tc bonus to protect from raids is Teutons with 25 garrison capacity and only civs that has a tc bonus that protects from siege pushes are Britons and Persians. These are the only bonuses that are similar to the topic of discussion - making it harder for enemy units with mobility to raid or push Dravidians with monks, knights and siege.
For Dravidians this makes sense since their units are slower like Teutons and theyâre dependent heavily on ranged units like Britons.
Canât believe its this hard to understand a simple and direct bonus. Lets take some extreme cases to show the effectiveness -
Town centers reduce the damage of cavalry and siege units by 80% within a 10 tile radius. Knights will do 2 damage to units in a 10 tile radius. They canât kill villagers or monks or crossbows or pikes. They can only run around but any point they take a fight theyâll have to outnumber 3:1 to even get a reasonable trade.
Lets consider another version - Dravidian units deal 5x more damage. 6 elephant archers in the base will just take down a whole bunch of knights.
A third version - Enemy units move at 1/3rd of their speed. Knights will move at 0.5 speed (slower than old battering ram) and even a mid elo Dravidian player can wall, run vills with knight not being able to chase down anything. The expensive cavalry units will die or become stale with no value obtained from them, thereby rendering the decision to raid awful. Of course these are extreme versions, which means if the numbers are lower thereâll be some sweet spot where raids will be less effective than now but not of negligible value. Dravidian player loses 4 vills instead of 10 or kills 5 knights instead of 2 and so on. And that is the whole purpose of such a bonus.
Tc bonuses come in the context of a civ, thereâs no such general thing as âtc-centric bonusesâ
Water has no balance. Less than 20% of the total number of civs are playable on water. And even then as Iâve mentioned you can balance it by making the bonus grow with age to prevent early game abuse.
I donât think so. Best case, it will only make them ineffective near TCs, but wonât actually do anything about siege and the like, which will become a major concern once you surrender map control completely.
But practically speaking, any effect powerful enough to stop knight raiding during their period of greatest strength is gonna be completely OP in the later parts of the game.
All TC bonuses have one of two purposes; to protect the local eco, or to help with booming. Thatâs exactly what the bulgarian bonuses do. Ultimately, the precise details of the bonus matter less than the effectiveness at achieving that goal.
The problem of Dravidians is that they end up in a skirm/spear composition, which is hard countered by a skirm/knight composition, and these bonuses would not particularly help there. If the dravidian skirms are forced to retreat to the TC, then the enemy can keep your economy on standby indefinitely, and win the game by pure attrition. If they donât retreat to the TC, then theyâll eventually die, and so will the pikes, and then no TC bonus in the world will save you.
To properly survive the knight power spike, they need a larger protected space than what is afforded merely by balanced TC bonuses.
Generally speaking, any balance suggestion that starts with the premise of ignoring something because itâs a problem, is not a good balance suggestion.
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This specific idea is just not good. Iâll explain below.
Have you ever done monk rush as Dravidians?
Have you ever achieved relic victory as Dravidians?
If any of this was in the realm of possibility against an equal opponent, then they have reasonable monks. Dravidians always fall behind in Relic collection regardless of map type. If you are playing closed map like Arena, itâll sting particularly hard. The main problem with Dravidian monks is not just their lack of fervor. Its also their lack of bloodliness for light cav and absense of knights line in castle age. I am sorry. But for relic collection, Pikeman accompanying a monk is not at all effective unlike light cav + monk which is ideal. This makes them ineligible to complete at all in any competition for Relics. Right now, people use âDravidian monksâ like âScarecrowâ against Knights and thatâs all they are good for. Given the mobility problems the civ has, fervor will not fix the problem. However âbloodlinesâ will fix this design flaw of the civ.
Yup! I think this is what needs to be fixed in terms of civ design. I still believe a TC based bonus makes the most sense in order to shield vills against Knight.
I suppose this will be like a variation of Byzantine HP bonus in reverse.
I suppose these would be âarea effectsâ around a TC. Based on @DemiserofD feedback about lack of early game eco of Dravidians, I would propose something based on TCs again.
Vills within TC LOS work 10% faster
This bonus can replace 33% Siege wood discount. This will incentivize Dravidian player to make TCs instead of blowing their wood bonus on a Siege workshop. If Georgians fortified church having 10% faster rate along with mulecart at start of game is not a balance issue, then it should not be a problem for Dravidians either.
If Devs are too egotistical to change their most recent bonus of Siege wood discount, then they can replace âmedical corpsâ with a technology called 'Spice tradeâ
Spice trade - Vills, fishing ships and trade cog\carts within LOS of drop points work 10% faster and heal at rate of 10 hp per min
or a variation
Spice trade - Vills, fishing ships and trade cog\carts within LOS of drop points move and work 10% faster
This tech enable Dravidians to play the game by getting ahead of opponent economically by giving them clear win conditions. They will still struggle in castle age. But they get a clear comeback mechanism. Dravidians can focus on dropping TC and castle on stone or the most vital resource on the map asap. Then research the tech to enable all around eco boost. This is vitally needed especially due to the fact that 200 wood which is their only economy benefit is a pittance in castle as well as imperial age. They canât even spam trash units as fast as needed. I added the healing to keep the characteristic of medical corps alive despite the tech change and 10 hp per min is a solid defensive attribute. Another benefit would be workrate of fishtrap which will be boosted by being closer to docks where the +15 carry capacity is useless. The workrate and healing only close to buildings gives clear win conditions to opponent that you need to destroy Dravidians buildings to end the game and not just spam hussars into their economy.
If there needs to be a Elephant based bonus, then this Siege based discount can be converted to medical corps.
All elephants heal @ 30 hp/min
So the topic is actually not preventing raids but should be how to fight knight better. So elephant regenerating UT is not that useful in castle age as elephants are not very affordable in mid-game
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I like this idea too. Their own version of economic power and solid like Vikings, Malay as it should be.
I wouldnât make it a UT though. Eco benefits at that stage is too late to have any significant use for this type of non-cavalry civ.
Ahhhh. I gave that as an example to show that you can give such a bonus in some other way without it being free or tied to UT, perfectly fine by me to not give it based on relics. Infantry count, tower count, infantry upgrades, elephant archer count or some other innovative way.
Why? Their eco design is fundamentally different. Malay and Vikings slowly lead in eco. Dravidians is one time power up. I donât want to change that.
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It doesnât have the tools to be a one-time powerup kind of civ. The eco design doesnât fit the civ in its current state at all. For the current tech tree, getting a long lasting and scalable eco bonus is good. Or you can keep it a power spike and add other forms of defensive bonuses like Iâve mentioned here:
And third - help get a krepost sooner - which is the Bulgarian bonus. Even if 2 civs get the exact same bonus, how it can be used will depend on the civâs early game. A civ with a powerful dark age getting some tc bonus will have a much different usage than a civ thatâs mid game based but get the same bonus.
Just for godsakes read what Iâve written. One more time - lets say in a 10 tile radius of a town center, enemy units do -80% damage. Knights wonât do any damage at all and wonât idle your economy at all. You donât have to garrison vills when opponentâs unit is doing 2 damage. You can use monks, pikes, ranged units to drive them away WITHOUT garrisoning vills.
Iâm not denying it. But Iâm not in favor of changing their design either.
That seem contradictory. Aztecs, Mongols, Ethiopians donât have any defensive bonus. Neither should Dravidians. Change the Medical Corps UT to something useful and call it a day.
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Tech tree is solid. You have bonuses on usable aggressive units. Not the case with Dravidians.
Too little too late. UT getting a change is always welcome but far from being sufficient. Iâd rather accept OPâs suggestion of extra range and dps for free but having abuse potential over just some UT change.
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Yeah. Again Iâm not saying otherwise. But Iâm not fan of changing their design for this sake.
Then 2nd option. Siege discount be the UT. New useful civ bonus for infantry/archer/elephant. Even BE cost -50% food will be better than current situation.
I understand you. But that is not exactly their design. They just rush because they are out of options. If Dravidians had âBloodlinesâ, people will definitely do scouts and not archers. Its like @Pulikesi25 said
Excluding the meso civs, compared to Malay, Mongol, khmer, magyars, Bulgarians etc, Dravidian rush with MAA is pretty lame. All these civs have atleast 2 bonuses dedicated for a rush while Dravidians and Bulgrians get 1.5 bonus due to only 50% discount which takes time to kick in. The absence of bloodlines and any food bonus ensures Dravidians canât do scout rush. A food bonus like the one below could enable such a potential.
Your concern that it may alter their playstyle might be unfounded.
If its just for B.E alone, it might not work since monks counter elephants super hard. If a 50% discount on food cost is implemented for all elephants, then Siege elephants could be a play.
The best defense is offense. I still believe that TC range help more against mangonel than against knight rush.
How about new bonus to make militia cost wood+gold instead of food+gold? Supplies -15 wood instead. And swap their castle and imp UT. So they can go longswords+xbow against knight such that they can be better against knight+skirm and play more aggressive.
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Thatâs an innovative idea too, militia line costing wood.