Let’s continue suggesting some cool elephant bonuses so that we can get more elephant civs in the future while Dravidians remains the same.
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11 I’ll be even more sad that we are getting more unusable civs. And I think all good elephant bonuses are covered. HP, speed, rof, attack, armor/p.armor, cost, conversion resistance, bonus damage resistance, regenerate. Everything covered. Anything new has to be a rephrased version or a subset of an existing bonus.
Free elite upgrades arent used yet. Higher splash radius. Bonus damage resistance.vExtra bonus damage vs buildings
Its not zero sum.
We could also just have civs who happen to have good elephants without a bonus to compensate for snything beyond FU status. A lot of paladins are like this
Dravidians would be good if MAA and LS were good.
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Infantry are very usable in imperial age. The spear-line is generally a good option when facing cavalry, and Wootz steel makes halberdiers decent against other (non-cavalry) melee units too. The champion-line is also sometimes used in imperial age, as they are relatively low-cost (20 gold is fairly low, and 45 food is not particularly high either) and have bonus damage against buildings (An infantry swarm can demolish a base even without siege - archers and cavalry tend not to do that very well). And champions have good stats (though the amount of techs they need to be good is a bit much). Urumi Swordsman are good against other melee units, but are generally meh (but not every civ needs a great UU). In the general case, Wootz steel is a pretty good attack boost (ignoring armor upgrades is basically +2 or +3 damage, and it does more depending on the unit - I’d expect it to be generally somewhere in the range of 3-5 extra damage, easily putting it on par with Garland Wars).
Really, imo, the issue is that militia line isn’t particularly viable in late Feudal through castle age. They’re fine in early Feudal because they can hit before other unit types, but the lack of mobility and the cost of techs kills them (especially since ranged units can outspeed them). In castle age, squires gives an option to increase their speed, but you’re still paying for the techs and you start competing with knights which require less investment. In imperial age, champions are spammable enough to be viable again, but you still have a sizable number of techs to research for them (many of which were available in castle age but likely skipped because they wouldn’t have provided value then). So basically, if LS were a bit better, Dravidians would do well.
Dravidians are intended as a naval civ. In that niche, they are pretty good. +200 wood with each age helps with contesting water. Extra fishing carry capacity is nice (means less travel time, which means better gather rate) - though it can be a bit situational due to the fact that fishing ships tend to be somewhat vulnerable. And their team bonus provides additional wood savings (and makes it easier to avoid being housed). And Dravidians have a UU ship in imperial age (it’s main pros being pop efficiency and not requiring an imperial age upgrade). As an infantry civ, cheaper barracks techs addresses one of the weaknesses of infantry (the combined cost of the many techs that they need to be viable). And Dravidians also have decent ranged options. The lack of mobility I think is an intentional hole in their tech tree - one which will leave them a poor choice for open maps (but can be compensated for easily enough on closed maps and naval maps).
About medical corps: It makes up for missing bloodlines on the elephant units. Dravidian battle elephants might not be great, but their elephant archers are superb (and are a fair bit more likely to survive taking damage than most other units - they may benefit more from medical corps than they would from bloodlines). And their siege elephants are fine (though perhaps their siege discount could include food as well?). And light cav missing bloodlines is probably intended to keep their mobility options poor.
The first one I think is intentional (some civs are balanced by giving them a hole in their tech tree that can be exploited). The second one was partially addressed with BBCs. Third one is an ok gap if you can get an advantage going into castle or have a good way to survive castle. Fourth one is true for the stable units (again intentional, like point 1), but isn’t true for their elephant archers. The fifth one is a good bonus in feudal and castle age (not much impact in imperial age, but by that point Dravidian elephant archers are more usable as a powerhouse). Sixth one I addressed above.
Personally, the main changes that I’d consider for Dravidians at this point (if I had that option) are giving them early access to barracks techs (namely supplies/gambesons/squires/arson - improves infantry play in Feudal with minimal impact to closed/naval maps) or giving them redemption (which closes the siege weakness, but may need to be followed with a compensatory monk nerf) or a general buff to Longswords.
No castle age elephant tech is going to be great as long as they’re utterly hard-countered by monks.
How about this. First, change Herbal Medicine so that it not only boosts garrisoned healing, it also multiplies conversion time on units being healed.
Then you don’t need to do ANYTHING to herbal medicine. All elephant units that have taken any damage will innately have a resistance to being converted.
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Monks counter Elephants super hard because the maximum speed difference was 16% when Batttle Elephant speed was 0.85. They could not run away once in range of monks. With Mahouts, Dravidian Battle elephants and Elephant archers will be 45% faster than monks. They can run away from monks just like Knights currently do. Once Mahuts is in, Dravidians can do a Skirm + Battle elephant or raid with a Elephant Archer group which can run away from monks and skirms.
Thats a good idea. You can also make ''redemption" necessary to convert elephants. Buff ‘scorpions’ with +10 more bonus damage against ‘war elephant’ class armour and make scorpions the default counter of elephants.
For this to work intuitively though, Elephants need to have some innate resistance to conversion. Then scout line and elephant will benefit from this change. But with the speed difference after Mahouts, Dravidian Elephants won’t need to garrison after Mahouts which will be easier to implement for Dravidians as a specific civilization.
Even with BBC in late imperial, Dravidian infantry with halbs and champion line can be made into mince meat with Siege onagers. Squishy light cav and Urumi is not gonna save the day like for other civs against Siege. Only Battle elphants or Elephant archers have the tankiness to go against Siege at that stage. If they can move slightly faster than infantry they will naturally go in front and soak up damage. So Mahuts is vitally needed as a tech to make infantry useful for Dravidians. This was also how real battle strategies were formulated in ancient India using Elephants. They charged first to break formation and then infantry followed.
This guy already said it in one line below.
If Militia-line had the speed of Eagles, they would counter knights and siege as well cost effectively. But they are not. So Lets fix Dravidians as a civ with the existing units and Bonuses.
The civ gets 3 bonuses for water and then a unique on water. then obviously it’ll be good in that niche. But maps with any dock potential make up 10% of games played which means you ripping off the players playing the remaining 90% of the games with an unplayable civ. Their bonus in team games in unbearable. If water maps were not rare, the team bonus would have been nerfed. So being good on water does not count as a balanced civ.
Your logic is putting cart before horse. 20 HP on light cav and knights improves survivability by 33% and 20% percentage respectively. But for Battle elephants, it improves its stats by a paltry 8.5%. Medical corps was given to Dravidians because all the other elephant unique techs like extra attack, extra HP, extra armour and extra speed were already taken by Rise of Rajas civs and persians already. Most of similar civ bonuses were also taken and the afore mentioned water bonuses also meant there were no room for Elephant bonuses for Dravidians. Now that ‘medical corps’ has been revealed to be a useless tech for Dravidians. It makes sense to use the discarded ‘Mahouts’ as unique tech in castle age.
No its poor design. Why did Meso civs need Eagles then? Historically only Aztecs had them, it should have been their unique unit only and not a regional unit.
Someone has to be the worst civ at raiding. And a lot of players think it is Dravidians.
Don’t just say late game. Look at mid game too and see yourself. No one else is as horrible at raiding as them.
Maybe the dravidians can be split and all of them can have a knight like unit shared amongst them?
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They are just as bad as Vikings or Koreans
In mid game you can raid with archers. The only problem with the mid game of dradivians is dealing with siege
medical corp is awesome, what is not awesome is counter to elephant. make monk cost more to convert elephant either via additional tech or just give elephant a bit more wololo bonus resistance in general (+1 or +2) then it’ll be much more viable
Such a unit should go to the Kannadigas. I think 2 main tech tree units for South Asia is enough.
Make Devotion/Faith cheaper. Simple answer.
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Dravidians with mobile units would be a nightmare. I’ve played Dravidians many times before, and wootz steel is just too strong to allow Dravidians to get good cav.
Kannadigas telengus deccani sinhaleese any of these are potential split civis so something like an eagle warrior common to these would be ok.
Perhaps indianised civis in the SEA set can also loose the knight line and get the new unit as well.
devotion was cheaper and just had a cost increase most recent patch. even prior to the most recent increase with the elephant speed buff we saw no usage.
its not enough theres gotta be more
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By the time an opponent has siege onagers, you can afford to spam halbediers. If it’s a 1v1, then the techs for SO took a lot of investment, so losing some in exchange for trash units is not great - if we assume 100f = 100w == 20g, then an onager is roughly equivalent to 14 halberdiers. I don’t think it’s wise to rely on each onager getting that kind of value (particularly since we haven’t accounted for friendly fire, which is harder to avoid when targeting melee units). And frankly, most 1v1s don’t go long enough for a player to invest into siege onager, even when the civ has it.
If it’s a team game, then gold is more abundant and champions are also a very spammable unit - so losing some of them isn’t going to lose you the game. Trading 10 champions for 2 siege onagers would still be a decent trade. I think BBCs are enough to prevent enemy onagers from reliably getting that kind of value.
A more serious concern would be a few Siege onagers taking out a mass of arbs (which is true for every civ) or elephant archers. For the latter, that would take multiple shots (and a single shot would not be particularly effective due to medical corps). So a competent player would either retreat their elephant archers or snipe the onagers before that many siege onagers are close enough to do that sort of damage.
Exactly, that should be reversed.
The Devotion increase came when Battle Elephants got a buff, basically neutering it. If something is intended to be buffed…then it should be buffed.
the buff wasn’t remotely enough was the point im trying to make
cant recall his name but somebody mentioned of having a tech required to convert ele similar to that of redemption for siege, which may work rather than just a cheaper devotion
i’d prefer a half heresy type of tech and a full heresy thing similar how they broke faith into faith + devotion
Imagine Dravdians had access to Kinght and cavalier. Will they still try to play like a meso civ without building a stable. Let us imagine that Vikings were given battle elephant instead of knight line. Will they play out the same? I don’t think so. Just E skims will kill everything vikings make except Siege. Knight line missing can be a tech tree hole. But there should be comparable options to overcome it. Ideally Elephants should move faster as a civ bonus and make up lack of heavy cavalry. But since Khmer already have that bonus, We need a unique tech to make up.
Medical corps could be good if you can run away like “maghrebi camels”. Even if you have vision, Elephant archers can’t escape E skirms and monks. Battle elephants can’t escape onager shots or monks due to their 0.90 max speed. Besides Elephants already tank a lot of damage, 30 hp per min does not make them any more resilient. The tech is not useful for Dravidians who need a viable gameplay due to missing Knights and cavalry archer at that stage.
Changing the whole game balance with techs like Devotion will have huge impact on other unintended civs as well. These are all big changes which don’t exactly benefit the target civ. It will take a long time to implement such a big patch that covers all elephant civs.
“Woots steel” in practice benefits less units than garland wars since Dravidians neither have Eagles nor do they make stables. It is also not winning games the time it comes in. Hence the cost reduction. Regarding the concern about mobile cavalry, the worst Elephants in the game moving at max 1.17 tps is not exactly mobile good cavalry. It simply allows elephants to move faster than infantry and act as a damage spunge. And if the opponent sees elephants, there will be monks. So you need to push with E skirms/arbs and Battle elephants in the front. And that is not exactly an unstoppable combination especially once Siege is upgraded with Siege engineers +1 range. You will need to mix halbs in there as well. So its not a cake walk even with ‘woots steel’ benefiting elephants. ‘Mahouts’ only gives the option of running away from unwinnable fights.
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it is more useful than what people thinks. say you get a hit in from spear or several shots from archer. fights dont always happen and what people dont truely realize is that there are a lot more non-engaged time and elephants can heal during that time which does give quite a substantial boost, as monk can be used for other tasks rather than healing.
the running away argument would work against monk a super hard counter due to it’s range. it’ll take skirm so many shots to kill e archer.