Dravidians as a civ has had design flaws from the start and lacked good options like well-rounded civs. The civ is still fairly new and views about the civ when it was introduced were extremely divergent among players and pros. But players agree the civ had a peculiar design and a lack of meta units. The below summary were their main design gaps:
- lack of mobile units,
- weakness to siege,
- no powerful units or bonus in castle age,
- elephants as only cavalry with high DPS yet close to being the worst in the game
- a primary bonus of 200 wood which does not scale after feudal age. and Finally
- ‘woots steel’ which comes in too late after infantry becomes unviable offensively to win the game.
This has resulted in the civ being countered by pretty simple strategies like:
- skirm + knight
- Monk + Siege
to which Dravidian players simply fold in castle age.
In addition to these obvious weakness, successive patches to fix armoured elephants, archers negatively imapacted the civ without any corresponding buffs. Any balance change patch to improve meta civs almost always impacts Dravidians negatively. The glaring weakness of the civ started showing and got called out by pros like Hera and casters like T90 publicly. To overcome these weakness, devs implemented patchwork of incoherent fixes which a lot of us don’t really agree with:
ADDED - Bombard cannon - To address the weakness to Siege. It did not fix mangonel problem in castle age. The fix gave an option against siege which is available only after chemistry is researched in imperial age. The problem could have ideally been fixed with just adding ‘redemption’ to tech tree.
MODIFIED - ‘Medical corps’ - Made cheaper and effect increased to 30 HP/min, yet it was ranked as the 3rd worst castle age tech in the game in a recent poll
ADDED - ‘33% Siege wood discount’ - this is an economy bonus masquerading as a military bonus. This bonus was meant to address weakness to siege as well as act as a bonus which kicks in at castle age. Despite being a good bonus, it has been applied to the wrong civ which already gets 400 wood extra. This bonus was needed because 400 wood is easily wasted by the the time Dravidians weakness shows in castle age. The saved wood is just useful to make more buildings or farms. But just more wood cannot fix the problem since unsuitability of dravidian castle age high DPS units or lack of them is the problem.
A bug reported on this bonus was not even attended. The bonus was haphazardly introduced to prop up the flagging civ as part of overhaul of all infantry civs in april 2023. The bonus also fundamentally changed the civ design and gameplay. It made the go from a infantry + navy civ with a blacksmith heritage towards being played as a siege discount civ. It was also not thematically correct since the cholas the civ is based on operated a mass elephant army without much siege or gunpowder support. Ideally a blacksmith based bonus should have been added to improve infantry, cavlary and archers to fix the civ’s castle age weakness to siege, monks and knights.
MODIFIED - ‘Woots steel’ has been made cheaper by 150 resources to help Dravidian players with a timing advantage. If ‘woots steel’ is supposed to win the game for Dravidians, then by the time it comes in, it is too little too late for immobile infantry. Light cav with 60 HP is too squishy and with just +1 against vilagers after woots steel they are not great raiding units either.
I propose to add 3 changes to make the civ design well-rounded infantry+navy civ.
Primary Bonus - Receive 150 wood and 50 stone when arriving in next age.
It is a modest change which builds on the existing 200 wood bonus like the last eco bonus Vietnamese got. The bonus help Dravidians with some walling potential as well as being able to drop TCs faster than opponent in castle age. This bonus is kind of like a mix and match of Britons and Bulgarians bonuses. It works to get he first additional TC faster. But not as good as Britons and Bulgarians towards more additional TCs. There will be no need for the 33% siege discount as an economy bonus since you can drop more TCs on wood lines with this bonus.
OR
Primary Bonus - Start the game with 150 or 200 wood.
This bonus will make the civ beginner friendly and make plans/build orders before the game starts. It will boost Dravidians playrate among low elo players. You can skip lumber camp for a while and put more vills on food. The bonus will help Dravidians overcome lack of dark age bonuses. It will also make Empire wars and normal other game type starts the same.
OR
"Receive 200 wood, 200 stone and 200 gold when reaching feudal, castle and imperial ages respectively"
This bonus will make sure that Dravidian civ gets useful powerspikes when arriving in the next age. The feudal age will be the same gameplay. However getting 200 stone in the next age will help Dravidians to stone wall up and play the game like a closed map or sell stone to reach castle age faster than opponent. They can still drop 2 TCs with the extra 200 stone even after selling stone to advance. They could drop a defensive castle or an aggressive castle having 400 stone in the bank faster than opponent. 200 gold in imp will be a good powerspike to add an extra treb or research chemistry as soon as imperial age is reached.
Remove - "33% siege wood bonus"
Add - "Blacksmith attack upgrades double the damage output"
This new bonus is no doubt inspired by the Roman bonus on armour upgrades. But being a tropical civilization with a blacksmith unique tech in imperial age, attack upgrade bonus would be more apt for the civ. The effect is infantry, cavalry and ships can have +1/+2/+3 attack compared to normal civs in feudal, castle and imperial ages respectively. The bonus would double the effect damage effect of forging, iron casting and Blast furnace benefiting infantry elephants and more importantly light cav. In castle age, the bonus makes their light cav DPS high enough to act as a good option to snipe siege and as well as monks fairly quickly. Discounted Siege does not offer a clear solution against monks as well as siege like light cav. The doubling of damage from fletching, bodkin arrow and bracer gives archers and ships +1/+2/+3 in feudal, castle and imperial age respectively. Castle age cross-bow and EAs will effectively get +2 against knights negating their armour. Elephant archers could justify their high cost in castle age and act as a power unit. Light cav will gain raiding potential in late games since they will get +3 against villagers and +4 with woots steel.
Dravidian galley gets an advantage militarily which suits the civ and its not free like Armenians and Romans. Since range is not increased, its will not exactly make galleys super powerful. The civ would truly be unique with this bonus and thematically be correct as well.
Modify - Docks provide +5 pop space ->
Team Bonus - Buildings except walls and gates provide +1 pop space
The previous bonus on blacksmith for ships makes Dravidian navy more powerful which necessities a nerf to their other water bonus. The team bonus modification is meant to curb high winrate by Dravidian teams on water very early in the game. The modified bonus is more general and applicable on most maps. It’ll be kinda cool to see Dravidians start with +1 pop space on most maps due to TCs already being built.
I know the community thinks Dravidians are in a good place bottom 5 on arabia and somewhat 50% winrate on closed maps. But the civ is inherently becoming a patchwork of poor changes which are not fixing the civ’s design flaws. Please let me know your thoughts on these changes to get the civ right.
Edit:
A consensus on adjustments needed for Dravidians:
CHANGE 1:
Primary Bonus -Start the game with 150 more woodCHANGE 2:
Modify - Team Bonus -Buildings except walls and gates provide +1 pop spaceCHANGE 3:
REMOVE - Medical corps
REPLACMENT -"Mahouts or strike corps" Elephants and Urumi move 30% fasterCHANGE 4:
CHANGE -Urumi does not benefit from 'woots steel'And fix the bug reported - Dravidian Cannon Galleon not affected by siege discount
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