Dravidians - Patches are making the civ design worse off

[benithisrael]

@DemiserofD

The more I think about it, the less I understand the purpose of the siege discount.

The bonus is an eco bonus. Dravidians don’t have any eco bonus past reaching castle age. Wood is the most important resource in the early game till late castle age. Since devs decided ‘wood’ bonus as Dravidian theme, they came up with this weird bonus. It is an eco bonus. Even if Dravidian player is making Siege, they won’t run out of wood for farms and buildings. When a typical civ reaches imp, you will find yourself lacking wood to make siege. Mostly you need to buy wood from market to make trebs. Dravidians have this risk mitigated with discounted SIege. But they will need to eventually transition to a ‘food’ economy to make elephants as well as trash units ideally.

@DemiserofD

What I would do is swap Medical Corps over to being a civ bonus, ditch the siege wood discount, and give them something to specifically help against monks and knights.

Medical corps as a civ bonus will not help any elephant civ and definitely not Dravidians. Making elephants in castle age will doom Dravidians to play forever castle age. You are never going up and its easily countered by monks. Unless you can do a surprise strategy, making elephants like knights in current meta is shooting yourself in the foot.

@DemiserofD

Free Atonement.

Dravidians don’t get any gold bonuses. They don’t get monks with a full tech tree. Dravidians don’t have illumination. When you don’t get better monks than 30 other civs, ‘Free Atonement’ will not fix the civ.

@Zelley00

free balistics

If we are talking about giving any free techs to Dravidians, then @Zelley00’s idea of free ‘Ballistics’ is better than any monastry techs. It’ll help with a early caste age powerspike with cross-bow push. It saves a lot of wood which is Dravidians theme. Small crossbow groups can do raids and even snipe monks. Buildings like TCs and castles will become better at protecting economy from raiding units. You don’t need university in castle age which is a big boost to Dravidian gameplay.

@JasuniSmith

Not really, They can survive a mangonel shot, but multiple mangonel (or SO) shots will still wipe them out. Scorpions actually get bonus damage against elephants. And elephant archers tend to be used in a mass, which makes them vulnerable to splash damage (though Medical Corps does mitigate the impact of splash damage quite effectively, so long as the elephants survive). You’d likely need a somewhat heavy investment into siege (as in multiple onagers or a scorpion mass) to actually counter elephants with them, but I’d think that the counter would turn quite drastic once you have a critical mass of siege. Therefore, the relationship is “siege counter elephants” rather than “elephants counter siege”. Rams, of course are resilient to anything ranged and weak to anything melee (so weak to battle/siege elephants, resilient against elephant archers).

Yes, your assessment is correct. Siege does counter elephants. But Devs have not made that change definitive. Elephant archers are still countered by skirms. Currently, a castle age EA with higher gold cost than cross-bow and similar speed is countered by a few left over un-upgraded skirms from feudal age. Unlike cav archers, Elephant archers can’t run away from skirms which makes the the unit useless. Skirms should be transition unit against elephant archers for gameplay to make sense. EAs archer armour should be zero or one not -4. Due to their high gold cost, elephant archers should counter skirms. Elephant archers should be countered by scorpions and scorpion bonus damage to ‘war elephant’ class armour should be increased by 10.Then Scorpions and elephants will have a definitive role against one another. Elephants are too easily countered by monks. So all elephants by default should have 12 LOS which is one tile more than a monk. It also increases the utility of elephant units in a scouting role and may even lead to elephant scouts for new civs.

@JasuniSmith

The siege discount does mean that if a Dravidians player is trading mangonel for mangonel that they’ll be trading favorably (reason: they’re spending less on the siege, therefore they are losing less unit value)

Agreed. But is that an elegant solution since its completely determined by micro and getting lucky with attack ground?
If Dravidian Siege had 20% more HP, then they can easily counter enemy siege 1vs 1 even if its celts. A low elo player could counter enemy Siege with Dravidian siege.

@DemiserofD

Elephant archers can actually win vs mangonels 1v1, let alone cost effectively. Without dodging, even. They do have some issues against big masses of mangonels, but then, so does everything; pragmatically, you should dramatically outnumber them by that point though.

And your armored elephants can beat their rams, especially with medical corps. Honestly, the Dravidian weakness to monks is so profound, it’s one of the biggest arguments for using their armored elephants. After all, they can only be converted at point blank range, like rams, so a mix of armored elephants and something to defend them has actually been pretty effective sometimes. Unfortunately, people are directly discouraged from building them, again due to the siege discount.

Unless Elephant archers get bonus damage against siege or reduction in damage from siege, they can’t counter siege. But Elephants are just not feasible in castle age unless Dravidians get a huge discount on elephants or economy bonus like Georgian 10% workrate around fortified church or Armenians 40% extra economy bonus. Dravidians are better-off with cross-bow upgrade.

@DemiserofD

The siege discount is just not good. In castle age it discourages using armored elephants, which exacerbates their monk weakness and discourages elephant play. In Imperial, you don’t even get Siege Engineers, so you end up worse or at best equal to normal FU onagers, anyway.

It quite honestly makes them worse. It really should be changed to something that synergizes with their actual civ design

Yes, I agree. It has made them worse. But Armoured elephant is not going to fix the the problem. The unit is neither durable nor resource efficient. Their small numbers are not good enough to make a difference. Rams are probably more useful since they can garrison infantry as well which helps it against cavalry archers.