I think there is a misunderstanding here. I’m talking about defensive play. As long as Dravidians have 200 free resource on age up, they will supposed to be the aggressor. Be it MAA or Archer or Scout, they will rush. They won’t try FC into boom or full wall and turtle. I’m saying 200 wood and then defensive bonus doesn’t go well with their design imho.
Not possible due to faster firing EA. I’m fine with both AE and BE though. And can be -50% gold instead.
Though I dont like defensive bonus for Drav, I think it is not necessarily related. Mayans have 50% discount on walling while having good early eco and good at aggressive.
Well then, the bonus below should be ideal for them.
Dravidians can go aggressive a bit earlier with this bonus. It will improve their rush potential.
Looking at the bulgarians design and your focus on wood, I have another idea. Bulgarians get stone discount off TCs which enables them to do towers in feudal age or Krepost rush in castle age. Similarly if Dravidians get 150 wood + 50 Stone on age up, they get a nominal tower rush potential. They could drop a castle earlier to prevent Knight raids. Their defense potential can be improved without necessarily curbing their offensive capability. The Dravidians unbalanced early game on water can also be muted. But that would require fixing their team bonus as well.
That’s basically just the georgians bonus. Too similar imo.
Besides, not gonna solve the knight problem.
Yeah they are pretty strong for that reason.
I referred that as well when I cam up with the bonus. It has been been implemented before. Yet Georgians are not a top tier civ. So it should be relatively easy to implement without breaking balance. And Dravidians have no equivalent of a monaspa to abuse any eco bonus.
In the context of Georgians, they get a civ bonus which enables their cavalry to regenerate HP and yet have ‘bloodlines’. Yet People here point to design balance when suggestions are made to include ‘Bloodlines’ in Dravidian tech tree. Dravidians light cav with bloodlines will still not be able to catch up to Hussar due to lacking ‘husbandry’. So balance is already there.
Fortified church is available from Castle Age. TC is available from Dark Age. This one better replace 200 wood on age up or they will OP in 10 minute to 20 minute game time.
Yup! This bonus can replace the 200 wood on age up and the Siege discount if need be. But ‘Bloodlines’ will still need to be added to enable late game counterraiding.
OR
The unique tech ‘Spice trade’ can replace medical corps. Dravidians don’t get any of the late game upgrades except 2-man saw. It would be perfectly okay to remove 2-man saw and implement ‘spice trade’ instead. The primary wood bonus is a pittance in castle and imperial ages. This would make a economy contribution similar to ‘Sultans’ tech and caraversari keeping with the theme of these sister civs. Faster vills can also survive raids better.
Doesn’t solve the knight problem, doesn’t fit the theme.
A 10% workrate bonus from dark age is completely OP, but that’s pretty irrelevant compared to the above.
I’d rather their carry bonus be expanded to forage bushes too. It’d be a minor buff, but would be more universally applicable.
But his point is that 200 wood and a walling related bonus can come together, extra wood or food doesn’t always mean raw aggression. Mayans are pretty strong because they also have mobility with eagles, huge discount on aggressive archer line, extra hp on their eagles in imp.
Exactly they can easily get a couple of cavalry techs or shawarma riders as a regional unit and still remain balanced. People always argue as if they are almost a top tier civ and giving a buff will make them broken. They are a terrible civ, one of the worst on open, below average on closed and average at best on nomadic and hybrid maps. A buff to their currently non-existent cavalry will just make them less terrible.
yes if they get this bonus it’ll be quite ok to remove the extra wood per age or they can just get 200 wood in feudal and this bonus can start from castle age, be applicable only on newly constructed town centers etc. That’s quite possible to balance.
Malay, Vikings, old Aztecs didn’t have a knight problem. Theme is civs with tech tree handicap get superior economy.
Its not because its 10% workrate within TC LOS (which is 8 in dark age). So only on shepherds and hunters in dark age. Extra vill working time available from that 10% doesn’t even fetch you 200 wood, so its a nerf for the dark age and early feudal but a buff for later part of feudal age and castle age. Strictly inferior net resource benefits till castle age compared to more than 20 other civs. Too far from OP.
That is a useless negligible bonus and wouldn’t matter if its universally applicable. Unlike farms, there’s usually not much walk time or time spent on rotation while collecting food from berries. +15 carry capacity reduces the number of drop-offs from 75 to 30 for saving 45*drop-off delay seconds overall. Even if we assume a bit inefficient mill placement, each drop-off is at best 2 seconds, which is 1.5 mins worth of extra villager time gained which is either 40 extra wood or 35 gold. No benefits after castle age. A perfect example of a terrible non-bonus.
I don’t understand what you mean by “universally applicable”. A 10% faster work rate within TC LOS is also applicable for every map and that actually applies to even Nomadic maps where Dravidians might not use berries at all.
Those civs all have knights.
Obviously, removing the 200 wood bonus is a ridiculous suggestion that’s never going to happen.
The real suggestion is 10% workrate on top of the 200 wood, which is insanely OP, especially in the lategame.
Pretty much all maps have berries. The biggest issue with Dravidians is when they can’t use their fishing bonus. They pretty much dominate on maps where they can use it, and do terribly on maps they can’t use it. A weakness to knights can’t overcome that early resource advantage, it seems.
Giving them a bonus to berries would allow them to significantly shift their early eco balance, by making their foragers substantially more efficient, especially as they get further from the mill. This would allow them to redirect their wood bonus more towards aggression, and delay putting down farms by a few minutes.
Honestly, people need to get a grip, here; Dravidians are not going to see anything close to the complete rework people seem to think they need.
If the 200 wood isn’t removed the workrate can start from castle age or be applicable only to the newly constructed town centers from castle age. Could be diminishing returns with number of town centers. Plenty of ways to balance in case it feels too high which I doubt it will. Free wheelbarrow and handcart is still a bigger bonus.
You don’t get further from mill. Its 2 layers. At max you can get 2 tiles away which is 2 second dropoff for every 33 second collection. You won’t get any intended benefit from it. If you intend to give a berry bonus that lets them get food faster it should be something like foragers drop-off 15% more food. That way they can either choose to get food as fast as Franks get or put one villager lesser on berries and go on wood.
They pretty much do well but not dominate only on Migration which is a map where deep fish is quite a few tiles away from coast and there’s a need to build atleast 3 docks and 10 fishing ships before hitting feudal. Otherwise its just on par with other “naval” civs or inferior to some of them depending on the map.
There’s no knight play on water maps. Migration alone has some light cav + monk play. Rest of the water maps are mostly monk-mangonel or archer landing. If you’re thinking about land maps with shore fish they’re not good on those maps. The fishing bonus is great for fishing ships but practically negligible for fishermen. They’d have to walk 6 tiles back and forth to get a meaningful advantage but by then its a lot slower and better to add another mill.
Unfortunately yes. Imo they’re two buffs away from becoming balanced. One obviously is either a big eco lead or some other defense mechanism to compensate for severe tech tree handicap. Two better balance for unique units and techs.
The first part can be done in several ways which is what we’re discussing.
Honestly I don’t think the civ is going to get buffed anytime soon. Some random patch in 2025 or 2026 might give this major buff like how it happened with Portuguese and Khmer. But nevertheless its a good discussion of ideas. Who knows we might see some of these suggestions go into a new infantry and naval civilization.
Not bigger, faster. Look at the vikings winrate curve vs slavs or georgians.
Dravidians don’t need lategame help.
It’s about bumping, not distance.
Give them more time to develop and their uu issues could resolve themselves. Gotta test it a bit.
Bigger or faster, what difference does it make? Economic lead or in other words extra resources collected per minute for a civ with free wheelbarrow and handcart will be higher than a civ getting 10% within town center los
What does those 2 matchups have anything to do with the discussion? Slavs and Georgians are not the most played civs both having subpar play rates. Vikings have close to 60% winrate overall in 30-45 min games in Arabia both 1200+ and 1900+ despite not having good cavalry and monks. This is the intention behind OP’s 10% faster within tc los.
If they get a strong castle age economy they might not but as of now Vikings do better at all stages of the game past 20 mins. Stop trying to hype up Dravidians, several months of statistics don’t back your false claims. They are abysmal, and for the current tech tree and units they have, giving a new economic benefit or a strong anti-raid bonus is a necessity. There’s no way the civ is playable otherwise.
Time it in a scenario and check for yourself how much faster 4 vills with wheelbarrow finish off a 6 pack of berries compared to regular. Even with all the bumping they’d barely finish 30 seconds sooner. Bumping or getting stuck are just a side effect of bad villager pathing in this patch, you can’t make balance changes based off that. Looks like most of those are fixed in pup. A carry capacity bonus is meaningless for gold, stone, berries and all the resources which are generally close to dropsite.
They have been around for close to 2 years which is a long time. Nothing more to develop, good unique units are always used. But that unit is useless as it always has been. Its not going to somehow magically resolve itself. Hussite wagons were terrible a year ago and now they’re quite good because they got a rework. Without any buff or rework, urumi swordsmen will remain as one of the worst castle units in the game.
A big one. Eco bonuses are not interchangeable, they cause different effects based on when they come in and how they apply.
Vikings:
Georgians:
Slavs:
Dravidians:
Note the similarities between the dravidians, slavs, and georgians, and contrast with the differences with the Vikings. Giving the Dravidians a bonus like the slavs or georgians will do absolutely nothing at the 20-30 minute mark, where dravidians are actually weak, and simultaneously make them OP in the lategame, where they already have a climbing winrate.
They don’t need a better game at 30-45 minutes, they just need to survive past 20-30.
Consider the possibilities of using more than 4 villagers on berries. With 250% carrying capacity, you could put something like 2.5x as many villagers on the same berries without a corresponding loss in efficiency, thereby allowing for the delay of farming and greater long-term efficiency, exactly when they need it the most.
To clarify; give them more time ingame to develop, and their issues could resolve themselves. IE, by giving them some sort of defensive bonus, giving them more time to build up before being forced to engage.
I don’t know if @DemiserofD actually plays with Dravidians. This stat is for the patch which Dravidians got the Siege wood discount bonus. Here is the link. It describes Dravidians as having a good winrate of 60% before 20 mins and its bad below 47% till 50 mins. Based on this, @DemiserofD is just saying hold-off till 50 mins and win after that. But the percentage of matches that stretch beyond 50 mins is in total less than 5%. So the fact is Dravidians don’t have the staying power to leverage their trash units to win the game late unlike lets say Byzantines. So I think the civ is in a very bad place and it needs ‘bloodlines’ for light cav as a start so that they help the trash power of Dravidians and shorten the losing period to 20-40 mins from 20-50 mins mark.
The basic design looked like it was built for timing based water play and no land army to speak of. 3 of their 5 bonuses were geared towards water play and too situational. The wood bonus for any other civ would have been ideally used for farms or walls for booming. But Dravidians blow it off on a forward building to finish off opponent within the 20 min mark. Devs gave a new bonus for Siege which meant Dravidians can blow-off the castle age free wood on a Siege workshop without a second thought and no improvement to their chances of winning. Its not like they have other stellar bonuses either. I don’t understand why they had to give the docks provide pop space bonus. It is an extremely situational bonus and the situation seems to happen only when you build the first dock when you may not have wood yet for other buildings like houses. The +15 carry capacity is also pretty much half-a-bonus which is again situational. Fishing can happen only till 4 or 5 fire-ships are out. Then its just a turkey shoot with the ships taking their sweet time fishing till the fires finish them off. They don’t have any long lasting eco advantage for a considerable amount of time till they finish off any opponent in resource wars. Devs could have easily given some standard old-civ style team bonus like:
For military production:
“Elephants are trained 20% faster”
“Docks work 10 or 20% faster”
For wood bonus:
“Houses are 25% Cheaper”
“Towers are 15% cheaper”
“Towers cost no wood”
For building bonus
“Walls and gates have +1/+1 armour”
“Towers have +1/+1 armour”
Any bonus damage:
“Infantry +2 bonus damage to building”
“Towers +2 bonus damage against cavalry” etc
Then you combine it with a main bonus like this:
Receive +150 wood and +50 stone on age up
Barrack technologies are 50% cheaper and available an age earlier except Men-at-arms
Nothing big. Any bonus that was ########## as well as scaleable and not situational would have done a great deal to uplift the winrate for the civ by a notch. Dravidian playstyle at the high level already seems scripted for landmaps and the script was written by Hera not even 6 months since their release. It took him that long because he was also playing AOE4.
The unique units are just uniquely dysfunctional and there is no intention to fix them compared to lets say the Ghulum, chakram or Ratha. The Thirisadai for its size could easily provide +5 pop space if not +10. But its just a galleon killer and thats about it, another one trick pony. Band-aid fixes like the Siege discount won’t fix the civ in any meaningful way.
For open maps, in castle age, for its full price, to be worth it, Dravidian EAs need to fire at 50% faster. They cost 150 resources. 2 cross-bowmen cost only 140 resources. They have a range advantage which the elephant compensates by HP. But in castle age high DPS units rule the roost. In Imp, there is no way you can waste 70 gold on a meat shield. Arbs + trebs are your best bet. If there is one technology I dearly want gone, that would be medical corps. Make it into a civ bonus to make the Elephants worth the cost and remove the Siege wood discount.
Finally fix the civ,
Receive +150 wood and +50 stone on age up
New unique tech : Spice trade - Vills, fishing ships and trade cog\carts within LOS of drop points move and work 10% fasterEither way you can’t have cheaper and fire faster bonus together in civ bonus.
Same. I have no problem this tech make all Elephant units stronger/cheaper btw. An UT is fine with a civ bonus.
Yes, I am playing on the correct patch. Anyway, this is exactly why I’m saying they need a defensive bonus. They lose a huge amount of strength in the 20-30 minute range. If they could minimize that loss, then the rest of the game would be just fine.
A tech like that would only kick in after they’ve already lost 95% of games. They’re definitely not getting a game-changing massive eco bonus that will only help them in the lategame and not where they actually need it.
I’m not averse to improving Medical Corps further, but bear in mind that this is definitely intended to be an elephant civ. Any new tech they get will also be elephant themed. Personally, I’d rather keep Medical Corps and just make it better. Something like making garrisoned units also heal units 30 hp/min faster.
First try to understand the basis of comparison before posting such winrate vs game length curves for no reason. Vikings and Dravidians have a similar tech tree. Vikings don’t get husbandry, bloodlines or plate barding armor. They have to rely on ranged units and infantry. But despite not having cavalry as a usable option they have good mid game winrates and don’t die to cavalry raids. This is because of free wheelbarrow and handcart, the resource lead they get which gets converted into faster imp and better position.
That’s the rationale behind arguing for a powerful economic bonus for Dravidians. Something which is bigger than most civs and helps them get to halbs + arbalesters + trebs faster. I understand as of now winrate curve for Vikings is different and that’s the argument. See how despite being similar in terms of tech tree, they are significantly better due to economy.
There’s no similarity in winrate distribution of Dravidians, Slavs and Georgians. Open your eyes and look carefully yourself at <20 min winrates, 30-45 min winrates and >45 min game winrates. All the 3 points are way different. Your comparison is illogical both numerically and through tech tree.
Georgians, Poles are civs with weaker early game where they need to survive the early aggression to get to their strong place which is spamming cavalry units in the mid game once farming economy is setup and they have decent options in imp as well with bracer. Slavs are slightly weaker till farming is setup but after that they have a great mid game, fall behind once again in imp due to lack of both bracer as well as gunpowder. They are more similar to Franks in the mid and late game except Franks are slightly better in late game with gunpowder.
Dravidians get no long term farming bonus. They have a strong start but once they fail to do damage they remain abysmal throughout the game. There’s no point where they bounce back to favorable winrates. They have no cavalry no momentum. And that’s the reason for suggesting a strong food eco. To give the timing and momentum. Its ok to have subpar winrates at 20-30 min if it climbs back later.
You can also organically increase the winrates of 20-30 min by giving a stronger bonus for the early game like 15% more dropoff on all food except farms. But OP’s suggestion was to keep it balanced for mid game instead of making it a super rush civ.
I believe you are able to read graphs. Notice the horizontal lines through 50% and 45% winrates, notice how 30-45 min and 45+ min winrates are flat at 41-42%. Both are abysmal, climbing winrate is for civs like Georgians, Poles, Sicilians. As the game goes longer the bonus and units get stronger and they push past 50% winrates which is called being good. If a civ with 42% winrate is made to climb, it doesn’t make it OP.
Any civ without good cavalry, monks and a terrible uu can never be considered OP in mid and late game. If it has a very good economy, it can be considered usable at best. Please look at the plot values instead of hyping up based on your misassumptions.
Again let me explain the math: Resource collection rate per minute = 60 seconds per minute* (Number of vills * Resources dropped by each vill) ÷ (collection time + walking time in seconds)
Lets say you use 2.5x which is 10 vills
For a carry capacity of 10, and a gather rate of 0.31 food/s for berries, gather time = 10/0.31 = 32 seconds. Walking time at max is 2 seconds.
Resources collection rate = 60*(10 * 10 )/(32+2)= 6000/34 = 176 food per minute.
Now lets say carry capacity is 250% which is 25. Gather time is 25/0.31= 80 seconds. Walk time is still 2 seconds.
Resource collection rate = 60*(10*25)/(80+2)= 15000/82 = 182 food per minute
As you can see you get 6 food/min extra (3.4%) in the best case scenario of a mill placed one tile away. Your berries will exhaust in 4 mins 7 seconds instead of 4 mins 15 seconds. You mere y