Did u understand what @UpmostRook9474 wrote and what I added to it?
You can refer the balance here.
Yeah, youâre saying you can use the charge bar to dodge projectiles. But that functionally removes the charge attack and trades it for a dodge mechanic against any ranged enemies.
Iâm pretty sure the intended purpose of the urumi is to protect elephants against pikemen. I did a test against 20 pikemen with three different compositions: 6 elephant archers and 10 urumis, 11 elephant archers, and 6 elephant archers and 11 longswords.
The 11 elephant archers all died. In the longswords group, none of the longswords died, but 5/6 elephant archers died. In the Urumis group, none of the elephant archers died and none of the urumis died.
So to me, Urumis arenât meant to be raiding unit so much as a defensive unit. They basically do pikeman damage against pikemen.
There are a 100 reasons why this combination of EAs and Urumis is not a practical use case.
- Both work in very high mass. So not possible in castle age. Their weakest as per your opinion.
- Both are gold and food units. For Urumis you need castles too. Lack of economy bonus and free wood means that more likely crossbow will be preferred,
- Both Urumi and Elephant archers die to skirms. Skirms have +1 range over EAs.
- Pikes backed by skirms will clean this line up with insant GG.
So no, its not a practical use case.
Urumi will still maintain this characteristic against pikemen in absence of ranged units. So your concern is unwarranted.
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My point was more that I donât think being a raiding unit was ever the intent. Itâs 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, Iâm 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.
But I kind of think thatâs the point. Without that weakness, they are almost Unstoppable, once you get that critical mass going.
Edit: whoops, didnât mean to post that yet, stuck my phone back in my pocket and it must have posted itself.
Anyway, the point I was eventually going to get to was, I think perhaps the most balanced way to more strongly counter skirmishers without becoming overbalanced in other ways would be to expand the utility of medical core to Infantry somehow. Perhaps an area of effect at reduced Effectiveness around elephants.
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 wonât kill a unit anymore. I just honestly donât 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 couldnât win with current stats, and with +1 armor I just got annihilated, even microing as hard as I could.
If you go castle age sooner the lead can multiply several times. You can get crossbow, siege, pick up relics, have more monks to drive knights away, add town centers much sooner. No one would sit in feudal age to accumulate more resources.
Like Vikings and Mayans donât wait with 1200 food in the stockpile to click castle age.
And as Iâve said before what if this given without removing the wood bonus or giving some other wood bonus along with this. Then its not a wood vs food but rather both, removes the dilemma of which is better.
Civ design and balance of economy wrt tech tree are very different things. The relative benefit a civ gets in comparison with others and the strength of their units is important. Thatâs what balance is all about. Lets say Cumans get a dark age bonus or their tc build time in feudal age is similar to castle age. The design stays the same but theyâd become extremely powerful because of the eco difference.
As far as Dravidians is concerned their bonuses donât support their design of being a slow civ that has to use infantry or elephant units. Every civ in the game that doesnât have good cavalry gets replacement units in the form of eagles or something like that, AND two of these three - a massive long lasting economic lead directly, a significant military discount, very strong monks. Dravidians donât get any of these. So they need to get one of these to fit their current design.
OPâs suggestion is to give them such a long lasting economic bonus, which absolutely fits their design and can be a good way to give them the timing advantage.
But you could also give other benefits like units taking lesser damage from cavalry and siege or units/defensive structures dealing more damage to knights and siege. That will satisfy the purpose of this thread, make them playable against cavalry raids even though they might still remain weak overall.
Yes you canât judge anything based on small data without additional information like drop percentage, elo gaps, opponent civ distribution. These data have meaning at scale (like 10+ games per matchup per player position or in other words after potentially 800 games for Dravidians) Otherwise factors outside balance like Drops, elo differences between the two players, one favorable matchup repeating more than once, even monk and treb rng will produce heavily misleading interpretations.
Yes dude Dravidians are stronger than Bohemians, Burgundians and Turks on Arena 
Unfortunately game isnât a scenario where units just spawn at the same rate. Archers donât need expensive castles, wood and gold have 50% higher gather rate and fights involving ranged units donât happen in even terrain and open land.
Look at Chinese and Spanish bonuses. Technologies mean both techs and unit upgrades.
So it is good⊠in ideal.
Being rarely used explains something.
I donât 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 isnât even the last one of armor there.
It is precisely because there is no last armor there that there is a chance that it can be used as trash in the late game.
Husbandry is important for an elephant unit to become useful. The 20 HP provided by Bloodlines is not as important as the speed provided by Husbandry for a high health but slow unit like an elephant unit. Additionally Iâve read an opinion that since elephant units donât die as quickly, regeneration somewhat makes up for the lack of Bloodlines, and I make regeneration a free bonus.
Elite Elephants are a homage to history to a certain extent. Chola empire had a large number of heavily armored war elephants.
Since the beginning, my suggestion to Elephants is not so that they can become main in the Castle age. On the contrary, I wish that the Militia line can be strong enough to be the main in the Castle Age, so I suggested double Supplies and Gambesons.
The Urumi rework will make a difference so Urumi still have a reason to be used. For example, after they can dodge projectiles and move faster, their status will be more like knights, and they can better raid and fight archers. The cheaper cost makes it easier for Longswordsmen to produce more, but otherwise they only have +1 pierce armor, which only slightly helps survive from arrows.
Gurjaras already have decent Camels, Shrivamsha Riders and Chakrams to fight against cavalry, archers and infantry respectively. They donât need a better Militia line as main. But Dravidians lack effective units as mains, so Two-handed Swords with at least double Supplies and Gambesons may be able to fill this role.
You could also say that Turk hussars make Silk armor less unique, or that the Burmese bonus makes Garland Wars less unique.
Itâs a trade-off, you canât make them easier to get close while still allowing them to quickly kill those dense archers.
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 arenât 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 wouldnât really address their weakness in castle age, but may leave them in a better position before getting to castle age. It wouldnât even overlap with the Armenian bonus Armenians donât get those techs an age early (just unit line techs)
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)
I also donât see a good reason for Dravidians to be missing Siege Engineers. They have enough holes in their tech tree already.
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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.
So, I would have to pay for EBE and UT and then make trash elephants? That wonât happen in 1v1. Also, note Malay miss champ and Persians miss Arb in exchange for their trash upgrades.
I also disagree with the devs decision to make Dravidian elephants so weak, but this is the theme they have chosen for them. Hopefully, they will add another civ with your suggested traits like maybe Tibetans. But I donât see how they do such a big U turn on Dravidian design as you have suggested.
Your changes make BE more tanky than what I have suggested. I think it would be a missed opportunity to make fast elephants. Khmer BE used to be faster, but that was found to be OP for TGs so they nerfed the speed bonus instead of taking away techs. Now, they are slower than spears. Dravidian elephants gaining a 30% speed boost with Mahouts in exchange for having the least tanky elephants would make a lot of military sense. They would be faster than halbs but survive 1 less halb hit than Khmer BE. Another advantage is that BE would only need 2 upgrades at the Castle to be viable (blacksmith attack upgrades are anyway lower priority and may have been previously acquired for infantry), allowing for potential surprise attacks.
I did not fully understand this aspect of your suggestions before, but now that you point it out Dravidians already have one of the cheapest LS rushes in the game for early Castle age. The upgrade costs are very significant and Dravidians currently get a massive discount towards it. Removing it for double supplies and gambesons is not going to help in early castle age.
You completely misunderstood my point, so I will break it down:
- Gurjaras LS are not meant to be strong or integral to their gameplan, they are meant to be unique and situational. If your enemy is making more halbs than you can keep up with using your castles, then you make LS.
- There are 40+ civs in the game and each civâs units that have bonuses that donât completely overlap with others. Turks Hussar has free upgrades and +1 pierce armor while Tatars get extra melee armor. Burmese get less attack than Aztecs but it is free and available earlier. Your suggestions power creep completely on Gurjaras LS leaving nothing unique left.
- Food cost reduction bonuses on militia line is an already crowded space. Gurjaras, Goths and Incas get it to varying levels. You want to add Dravidians to that list.
- Sorry, I was mistaken Gurjaras do seem to get 2HS. That being said, your suggestions may be balanced in Castle Age but they are certainly OP in Imp. Not only would you give them +1 PA you would also give them armor piercing. At that point, why make Urumis when you can flood AP 2HS with extra PA and wreck everything? It wouldnât matter how good Urumis are since they still require a Castle.
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I also wanted them parallel to Burgundians. But I think they could get better quality infantry over early access.
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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 itâs at least +3 damage (at least as good as the Burmese bonus). If 1+3=4 melee armor, then itâs 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 theyâll 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 doesnât 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).
Another way I could see to buff Dravidian infantry is to increase their barracks tech discount to -66% (would make barracks techs dirt cheap, but other infantry techs like blacksmith techs and wootz steel would still be somewhat pricey).
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Something earlier will be better. Preferably mid or late Castle Age. Even the tech can be free for Infantry and then they can get a new UT that gives their infantry/elephants mobility or more toughness.
Even you give Bulgarians bonus (free militia-line upgrade), it may not be a big problem but militia will be still subpar
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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:
- If skirmisher countered Eagles, it would have just killed Meso civ design completely.
- If skirmishers countered Karambits, the unit would not work at all to raid anything
- 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.
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 canât do is raid like Hussars which Dravidians donât 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 âBloodlinesâ 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.
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 wonât have any chance especially due to less armour on buildings. There will be no reason whatsoever to play any other way for Dravidian players.
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.
Agreed completely.
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.
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:
- Remove âWood discount on Siegeâ
- Remove âMedical Corpsâ
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Add 'Bloodlines' to tech-tree
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The above bonus can also make sure a bonus called receive +200 stone on ageup is not implemented in future.
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 donât 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 âSiege Engineersâ.
The big problem with LS is they just canât really defend anything. The best you can hope for is to mix them in and soak up some damage. I donât see full longswords as ever being viable outside fringe cases, even if you discounted them even more. The big bulgarian advantage isnât just it being free, after all, but also being instant. And even that barely works.
Imo, they need some encouragement to go for more mixed unit comps. You know, longswords and spears, that sort of thing.
Edit: what about something like, spawn a free militia line for every Barracks Tech researched?
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Free upgrade doesnât improve quality. I want something that improves their quality. With 50% cheaper upgrade, a +5% speed boost per upgrade would be really nice. But I think Dravidians will never get mobility.
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Actually, Bengalis would be OP with it. Stacking free cav armor with monk armor makes them oppressive in relic wars.
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Great bonuses. Both have their merits. Iâd add squires to the first version. Iâd remove champion if Urumis are reworked to be a stronger alternative. Otherwise Iâd just replace Wootz steel with something else.
Husbandry is great, elite battle elephant could impact TG options in a positive way.
I think this fine after husbandry and elite upgrade but doesnât fit as a castle age UT. Maybe this could become the new imp UT and castle age UT could be something else useful for late castle/imp. Either way Iâd prefer something else instead of an elephant based UT.
Thatâs a cool rework, will also make them âuniqueâ finally and maybe they wonât end up being worse than champion after that.
Also a good idea. Could help a lot when theyâre up against fires.
Ya absolutely fine to remove 50% discount if they get double benefit from barrack techs. Terribly overpriced wootz steel could be replaced with something that benefits their siege, ranged units or something else new. That bonus is a gimmick with very little value.
Theyâre top tier if they donât go for those ships. Those ships themselves are the worst amongst their counterpart unique ships. For the cost of those ships this would be a very decent bonus but not OP by any means.
I think heâs mentioning from a post facto perspective where barrack techs give double the benefit.
yes. Iâd also change food cost to 45 or 50 food.
Yes against Galleons thereâs no contest. Galleons cost half the wood, better speed, relatively much easier to maneuver when opponent tries to use demo or fires. Once again an example where a Mikeempires video editor testing is useless and irrelevant to practical situations.
Urumis should be reworked together with this. Cost changed to 40 food 30 gold and the same abilities as mentioned by @UpmostRook9474
Actually it makes no sense to give supplies to Gurjaras and Malian infantry are already less unique since Romans came in. These factors could be ignored when you see those civs have great mobility with cavalry units, redemption monks and good long term economy while Dravidians have none of these.
No one is suggesting charge, dodge ability, high speed or p.armor, low cost all together. Its more like any two. As of now theyâre complete garbage and one of the worst units in the game. With a rework like this some units in the front of the group will lose the charge but tank the ranged unit projectiles and the units behind will be able to deliver charge damage and clear out the melee units fast.
The charge converting partially into dodge reduces this too much dps problem.
Several ways to do it, this charge/dodge being one. Changing the splash effect to something else. Changing the charge attack to do something else instead of being an attack like lets say reducing the attack of enemy units.
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Nah, thatâs pretty objectively terrible. Urumis get between 20-100% of their damage from their charge attack. In many cases, just getting off their main attack is all you can count on, but also all you need.
An Urumi without its charge attack is a completely different unit, and weâre right back into the âcomplete reworkâ territory - which, again, is not really an option on the table.
I suggest finding options that fix the unit (and civ) without completely reworking their most important aspects.
Yup! Thatâs pretty powerful. If this bonus is a big deal, they should give it to Bengalis after removing bloodlines and add âBloodlinesâ to Dravidians instead. Its not like the swamps of Bengal were amazing grounds to rear horses for their feudal lords. The deccan and south of India were probably better in that sense. They did breed hroses at least for policing and internal security even if south India imported âwar Horsesâ from the Mongols and Arabs for the most part of their history.
Dude, would you stop pulling out numbers and scenarios from your behind?
20-100%? what kind of range is that? Just say 0-100% thatâs not far off from 20-100% and its technically 100% true.
The use case you are describing for Urumi as a one time blast damage unit is BS. A Petard can do that better with 100% blast damage over 50% radius against 75% damage of Urumi. You might as well use a Petard with a civ bonus like moves 30% faster and created 100% faster. The unit has +2 pierce amour un-upgraded and needs the same amount of resources as well as a castle. The rework is a far better alternative that what Urumi currently is especially as a unit with a specific usefulness for castle age weakness.
The below bonus will fix their problem of having a crappy bonus in castle and imperial age as well as subsume your walling gimmick.
The next bonus rework will make them decent to reach castle age in a stronger position than they do currently.
You can rework âmedical corpsâ to give them a win condition after enduring castle age.
To fix castle age, âLight cav with bloodlinesâ is an easy fix.