Dravidians - Patches are making the civ design worse off

21 xbow kill units a lot faster than 9 EA. Instead of targeting the EAs, the 10 knights can chase and kill vills and shut down farms while under constant fire, ensuring that Dravidians can’t make more EAs while their enemy constantly produces knights. EAs are far less effective at doing this - even just breaking into the enemy eco takes longer. In castle age, units that can survive are just not worth as much as units that can threaten the enemy eco, especially if they can just be converted.

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Yeah. But I don’t see free Atonement is helping either. Opponent can just add some LC and you just wasted some monk.

They double up on wood only. And maybe you can say elephant units regeneration + high DPS. But regeneration is very niche.

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Well, I suggested free cav armor + Mahouts to replace siege discount + Medical Corps in another thread. Free cav armor would make LC a realistic option for Dravidians to tech into in a pinch. It would make them tanky enough to maybe survive diving to kill enemy monks and siege without costing the Dravidians much, while also acting as a raiding unit in early Castle age. Mahouts would help elephants against their counters, encouraging more elephant-play in late Castle age.

I mean more like how they have both urumi and ls to counter pikes, and ea and skirm to counter archers, but nothing special to counter knights or monks.

Sure, they could add lc; but then they’re playing on your terms, not theirs. You could add cheaply upgraded pikes, urumis, or archers to deal with them fine.

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Dravidian barracks technologies could have been modelled on burgundians with ‘halbs’ and ‘two-handed’ swordsmen available in castle age. Armenians got a useless bonus in the end. They got a lot of Dravidian bonus suggestions making them a monk, infantry, navy and economy civ. The got a unique building, a monk who is as fast as an elephant and a mobile drop off site as well to boot.

Difficult to implement given the amount of high priority bugs which are still not properly addressed year after year.

The changes could make the civ completely differently. With DOI, Devs were making 3 new civs which could use elephants on land and play as a well-rounded water civ. But Gujjaras never got the memo about a navy and Dravidians became a meso civ without eagles. I doubt devs will devote time and effort when the DLC is not gonna sell much anymore. Dravidians are not going to get early game bonus other than wood on land maps. The best Devs will do is tweak the bonuses of Dravidians without affecting their gameplay too much and try to make Dravidian elephants viable. If at somepoint in the game in castle age, Elephants had mobility Dravidians will definitely get a powerspike enough to reverse their losses in castle age. The siege wood discount is also not going away as much as everyone detests it.

Agree! Wootz should be cheaper than Farimba.

Yup! Dravidians could have had a malian version of that bonus along with farms and we would have never needed the +200 wood bonus. But we are now stuck with +15 carry capacity.

Can’t this role be done by upgraded militia-line and spearline? Without speed, the unit has no role in Dravidian gameplay.

The only other bonus which could work while maintaining their existing gameplay is the other one I had proposed.
Receive 200 wood, 200 stone and 200 gold when reaching feudal, castle and imperial ages respectively
Dravidian gameplay will work the same till early castle. If Dravidians are ahead they could use the 200 stone to wall up and play the game like arena with a 2 TC boom or do a castle drop on opponent face. If they are behind in late feudal, they could sell stone to catch up with opponent castle timing. They could drop a defensive castle and protect economy from both knight, monks and siege. This feature will make the civ more attractive to normal players due to its flexibility.
The 200 gold in imperial age will give Dravidians the power spike they need in early imp like Italians due to their lack of imperial age techs like siege engineers etc.

All the problems you had quoted against Dravidians can be countered with an early castle to protect economy. Knights, monks, siege can do jackshit against a castle in castle age. Hence my bonus suggestion to modify the 200 wood per age to 200 wood on reaching feudal, 200 stone for castle and 200 gold for imp respectively.

Mahouts or strike corps’ can be the tech that turns Elephants into high HP slower Eagles for Dravidians. ‘Battle elepahants’ and ‘armoured elephants’ will definitely become better units with improved mobility. Elephant arhers will benefit too. ButMahouts will not make ‘Elephant archers’ overbearing since they will not change their DPS. So they can’t kill off units faster than they do now. Their weakness to monks and skirms will remain. They can’t outrun heavy cavalry either. So camels and other cavlary counters will still be effective. To nerf them in imp, the last archer armour can be removed. It will make them easier to kill and counter the death ball of high HP elephants. It will also force Dravidians to play elephants as their main army with ‘mahouts’ mitigating their biggest weakness.

If battle elephants can take the role of heavy cavalry in late castle age, then light cav play not be always needed. I admit I wish ‘bloodlines’ was added to Dravidians tech tree or ‘medical corps’ included light cav as well. I even suggested a buff to replace the siege discount which doubles blacksmith attack upgrades. It would have given Dravidian scout +1 against other civs in feudal and +2 in castle age. But I doubt a standard solution will be implemented.
Here is probably my final list of changes:

CHANGE 1:
Primary Bonus - Receive 200 wood, 200 stone and 200 gold when reaching feudal, castle and imperial ages respectively

CHANGE 2:
Modify - Team Bonus - Buildings except walls and gates provide +1 pop space

CHANGE 3:
REMOVE - Medical corps
REPLACMENT - "Mahouts or Strike corps" Elephants move 30% faster

And fix the bug reported - Dravidian Cannon Galleon not affected by siege discount

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Again, I disagree. LC player’s main army is very likely Knight which destroys Dravidians.

Yeah, but monks counter that.

Monks counter knights, but LC counter monks, but pikes counter lc, but siege counters monks and pikes, but EA counters siege, but monks counter EA.

That’s where the chain stops, because monks just flat out hard counter EA, and there’s nothing you can really do about it.

Free Atonement closes the loop, and lets your monks counter their monks, and shifts the burden to player skill.

Early castle only makes sense if you have something to do with it. In rare cases you could go Armored Elephants, Medical Corps, and Urumi, but that’s not going to work in a lot of cases, and then they’ve got a useless early castle and nothing to use it for.

Protecting one small area is useless without a win condition.

One castle can make all the difference when dropped on your face.