You mean Elephant Archers? Because they almost 4 years of knowledge that BE sucks. And they didn’t even give Dravidians Elite BE. Now, as for EA, you’re right. They gave them -7 archer armor which was way too weak to the pint that even Bengalis couldn’t work. I honestly think even current -4 is too much. Although at the same time their HP is also ridiculously huge as a ranged unit. Either way, I think devs wanted Dravidians to use EA against siege as they can at least win 1v1.
I agree. But I’d prefer to keep this bonus for a future civ. Dravidians is not bad for not having a Dark Age eco bonus (Pure land maps). 200 wood per age is good enough to work with. It is their tech tree. If anything, I find their siege discount bonus was random. They should have been enforced on the “Infantry” identity.
Japanese have 2, Galley line extra LOS as Team Bonus and Fishing Ship work rate bonus. Portuguese and Malay have an UT after the Civ Bonus. Even if we exclude UT, Japanese, Italians, Vikings have 2 bonuses.
Well, that’s not low elo players friendly at all.
Never need to build a house is not low elo friendly for the pop cap it provides, but for the continuous attention it takes away from you.
Yup! They are an honorary meso civ in all but name. Elephant archer with the fire boost and thumb ring has pretty low DPS compared to a knight and does not justify its creation cost. Its skirm armour shoud be zero then atleast it will become a counter to skirms+knight push. Knights should be used as counter to Elephant archers and not the other way around. Maybe Dravidian Elephant archers kill knights 1vs1 without bloodlines. But those fights will never take place in actual games. Since Devs are never going to add ‘husbandry’ or bloodlines. Elephants don’t need 20 HP to be viable.But they need time and speed to run away from hard counters like monks to make them a viable unit. Devotion has helped with this to an extent. But it has helped knight civs more than Elephant civs. The elephants without knights weakness has to be fixed using an unique tech for Dravidians.
CHANGE 3:
REMOVE - Medical corps
REPLACMENT - "Mahouts or Strike corps" Elephants and Urumi move 30% faster
This will make the civ even more unpopular among players facing them and make it into the priority civ for nerfs. Then their barrack discount will further be trimmed to 33% instead of just removing the last change. I’ll repeat it. Castle age halberdier would have fixed Dravidians cavalry problem and champions with gambersons would have fixed mangonel problem. Your strategy could also have been performed with ‘feudal age longswords’ to a limited extent. But those gimmicks belong to Armenians. Even this bonus which was given to Armenians came from “Dravidians are terrible thread”. The bonus is wasted on Armenians. This one change could have made Dravidians a true infantry civ with no need for knights. But devs seem to have lost the ability to think creatively and are just stealing ideas to make lazy civ designs.
The fact remains ‘nomads’ is not even in the 1vs1 map pool. In team games, nomad is in the map pool and +5 dock bonus is a problem there.
Dravidians get +150 wood after building their first TC. Which means only after atlleast 100 seconds or roughly 2 mins of game time. Persians will have queued 4+1 vills and 1 fishing ship by then. Dravidians will have queued 4 vills and 2 fishing ships. Persians will have faster working TCs. Dravidian player will be force dropping food to keep TC working. If Persians are not a problem civ on 1vs1 nomad, then giving Dravidians +150 wood at the start will not be a problem. I am ignoring house build time since both Persians and Dravidians will have to do that after the change to dock pop space bonus.
They will take 4 more years and still not realise Elephant archers as well as Battle elephants are both useless while continuously nerfing ‘Armoured elephants’
The only other bonus which I found in a forum post which does not alter their civ identify is:
This keeps the feudal play the same. It helps Dravidians castle age by making sure they have options to turtle if they fall behind or sell stone to go up without any gold miners and boom before opponent. They can castle drop opponent or they can protect some vital area of map on home base. Urumi can be produced to act as a deterant against cavalry raids into other areas of base. If Dravidian player still keeps falling behind to economy civs like bohemians, Armenians or vikings. Then 'Mahouts or Strike corps'can be researched to make Elephants which are faster to disrupt them like a surprise offensive strategy. Regardless, with the unique tech, Dravidian player can do all in castle play since their imp still sucks compared to most civs.
OG Japanese were quite similar to Dravidians and they sucked. Japanese have had their stable techs added to make sure they don’t suck as bad now. They play as a cav archer civ now.
Vikings have an X-tier eco bonus. Yet they have got recent buffs and an new unique tech.
Italians - How to fix Italians?
So Dravidians need fixing just like Japanese, Vikings and Italians.
Its not A+ siege. They don’t get siege engineers, siege elephants don’t get husbandry which is a major advantage over rams, nor do those benefit from the wood discount. So siege is B+ as well. And to add to this unique unit is bottom of D and like you mentioned eco is probably B-
Should have been something like migration which is the only map where all their bonuses are significantly better than most other civs.
Elephant Archers can counter siege already. Siege mostly counters archers, but elephant archers also handily counter them, as do skirmishers. The main weaknesses of siege is monks, knights, and other siege. But those are the big weaknesses of Dravidians!
Dravidians have great Infantry, Archers, and Elephants. That allows them to counter archers and infantry and even siege like three times over, while leaving them no defense against monks and knights. Siege mostly FURTHER counter archers and infantry and siege, three things they’re already perfectly decent at doing!
The more I think about it, the siege wood bonus makes zero sense. It doesn’t even synergize with their elephants, for goodness sake! Why on earth would they have a bonus that doesn’t even work together with their siege elephants!?
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.
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).
The relationship between monks and siege is also more complicated. Monks with redemption can convert siege units, but not all civs have that tech (unfortunately, Dravidians do not). Monks also need sanctity to survive a mangonel shot (otherwise the monks are one-shot - not exactly a monk counter siege situation). Rams and trebs need to be in melee to be converted (makes them difficult to convert). Without both of these techs, mangonels easily counter monks. And BBCs outrange (so monks really need to get block printing first, or the monks are again countered by BBC). But if monks have the techs they need, then they do counter siege.
I’ll also note that infantry do well against cavalry (but cavalry, due to their mobility, can often avoid taking the fight, removing the effectiveness of the counter). Walls are also pretty effective at limiting cavalry (they can’t deal damage if they’re walled out)
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)
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I’m not in favor of completely changing Urumi’s role. If you want a mobile infantry for Dravidians, better rework them like Indians and give them a new UU.
Without a strong stable, flexibility is never achievable.
That’s why my suggestion for an accompanying buff is a countermeasure to monks. Free Atonement makes your enemy going for monks early on a very risky move, and that’s exactly when monks counter elephants the hardest.
If you go elephants and they go monks, you can convert their monks and basically win the game then and there.
It’s an early bonus; the point is to fix their castle age weakness to knights and monks. Get them past that point in good form, and they’ll be just dandy.
They definitely do. Siege is best against large numbers of weak units. Elephants are the opposite of that. You don’t need(or want) to go for pure elephant archers early on, you only need one or two to counter their siege effectively and protect any other units you have.
The only problem is they can just go monks and hard counter you. But that’s where Atonement comes in. Free Atonement allows you to convert their monks, and what was a crippling weakness becomes an incredible strength.
I tested it in scenario editor, and It requires dodging (or a tech advantage, which I didn’t test). Without dodging, a mangonel beats an elephant archer in castle age, and Siege Onagers beat FU elite elephant archers in post-imp. the mangonels also outrange (even without siege engineers, though mangonels also move slower). An elite elephant archer deals 3 damage/hit and therefore requires 24 hits to kill a 70-hp siege onager. A siege onager deals somewhere around 80 damage (75 + 1*9 - 3 melee armor) against the 280 of the elite elephant archer and therefore requires 4 direct hits to kill. Elephant archers do fire faster, but not quite 6 times as fast. Siege onagers have 8 range (9 with siege engineers) and a fire rate of 6. Dravidian elite elephant archers have 4+3 range and a final firing rate of 1.36.
If you’re not paying attention, a few siege onagers will cause a game-ending shot against elephant archers. But if you’re paying attention and micro well, the elephant archers can trade favorably (but the same is true with archers). But as elephant archers are usually used en masse, there is a lot of potential damage from a single siege onager.
Did you do this test with medical corps? That’s what took it over the top, in my testing. That’s part of why I’m proposing making that a Civ bonus.
But either way, we are talking about an Archer unit beating a Siege unit with only the slightest amount of micro. Given this is nominally an elephant civilization, giving them atonement would really help them in the direction they’re supposed to be going.
I don’t disagree, but the Dravidians already have an excess of civ bonuses, so one of them should be replaced or made into a UT. I suggest the siege discount be replaced and made into a UT, or just plain replaced.
Original tests were post-imp Aztec vs Post-imp Dravidians and castle age Aztecs vs castle age Dravidians (which in practice means all feudal techs, no castle age techs. I added in imperial age Aztecs vs Imperial age Dravidians (which means all castle-age techs, including elephant corps). With both mangonel and (all-castle age upgrades) elephant archer on a single-square shallow (completely preventing movement), the mangonel generally wins with 4 hp (I think there is still some rng). On small islands, the AI’s micro can easily flip the result (I saw some mangonel wins, some mutual destruction, and some elephant archer wins - with <regenerated amount of hp remaining or large amount of hp remaining).
This doesn’t factor in range difference, and the elephant’s upgrades are several (ranged attack, ranged armor, elephant corp + castle, thumb ring) while the mangonel doesn’t have any in castle age. Admittedly, the ranged armor doesn’t do much in this matchup, but I think that there were times when the elephant archer’s remaining hp was low enough that it would have died if it had been missing an armor upgrade (or medical corp)
But generally, elephant archers are used en masse, so the 1v1 matchup is pretty rare. And mangonels can get huge value against massed units.
A bit unusual that Dravidians was on the winning side of an upset on Northern Isles but not that much of a stretch considering its still a water map.
Actually a nice diagram. Just the “countered by” text needs to be a bit more visible. And a great summary. This is exactly why that siege discount bonus was useless and would have made more sense to a civ like Magyars, Berbers or Huns.
That’s a bit tricky. You convert enemy monk, enemy monk converts your elephant unit. But if that monk successfully converts your elephant, you now have 2 monks without faith and opponent has more military. Sometimes its fine but not when you are getting pushed. So it might not be the best defense.
I’d either give them a bonus like towers +2 vs military units and +4 vs siege.
Or something like units except siege take -25% damage from cavalry and siege. Will make it very difficult to kill vills, archers, pikes. Advantage would start from feudal where enemy scouts will do -1 damage to Dravidian units.
This should join the list of unfitting bonuses that got retracted due to poor thinking before introducing them. Siege vs siege is still a bit random and civs with cavalry are more likely to get the better trade. If at all they wanted to give a longer lasting wood bonus it should have been something from stone or gold trickling wood. Something like 6 unupgraded gold miners or 4 unupgraded stone miners equating to 1 extra vill on wood or something like that.
But overpowered for water. I don’t mind this change but I feel there’s a better way to do this. Something like elite skirm upgrade free.
The ghulam design equivalent for Dravidian tech tree would be a cavalry unit with low cost, low base attack but good hp, low melee armor, some cavalry class armor, slower than knights but has the power of reducing speed of units by 2% per hit.
Most ranged units are used en masse, and most of them aren’t weak to monks. So I’d have to ask why you think arbalests are used en masse, and why that same reasoning doesn’t apply to elephant archers.
I think it’s due to a combination of Lancaster’s square law (with ranged units being better at using it than melee units) and the fact that ranged units (including elephant archers) are weaker on an individual basis than their melee counterparts. Basically, doubling the number of units results in more than twice as much power (in theory, it should be quadruple, but in practice it’s a bit less than that for reasons). And melee units tend to lose some units with every encounter, while ranged units can often avoid taking damage by staying out of melee. So it is easier to keep a mass of ranged units alive than it is to keep a mass of melee units alive. Ranged units are also capable of applying the square law even in choke points, while melee units would be limited to the linear law in that case.
Elephant archers have that same survivability due to range that other ranged units have, but also have extra hp that allows them to trade effectively against other ranged units.
There are a few units that can get around Lancasters law (Mangonels, scorpions, demos, etc), and monks are too micro-intensive for Lancasters law to work for them. But generally, units are much more powerful when massed, and ranged units are better at taking advantage of that fact.
