Both Dravidian heroes are heavy cavalry.
Dravidian metallurgy is world renowned.
It will make their stable more useful.
It will add a lot of synergy along with Wootz. Limiting it to knight only is enough. Cavaliers might be OP.
They will never do it. Wootz is far too powerful, and no indian civ has knights. And horses weren’t that common in south india to begin with. But hey, I think it is a good thing if they do it. A more reasonable idea might be to take away wootz from stable units, and give a better stable overall.
Not really. It is a post imperial tech.
So it won’t affect early knight play, it will only work to slightly buff knights in later ages which is fine.
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Now that I think about it, you are right. It wouldn’t be that big a deal. In post imperial situations where you have wootz steel, you’ll do better with urumis and other infantry anyway. Still, very unlikely that devs will actually do it. There is a “dravidians are terrible” thread where people were discussing potential buffs to dravidians. IIRC, it was about giving them a better food bonus and better ways to address their problem with the lack of mobility.
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This just makes them very generic. They probably need some more out of the box buff.
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All indian factions dont have knight its the theme,just like meso factions dont have cavalry.
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And it matters because?
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Just a raw idea. What about give them a UU that replace knigh-line lke Gurjaras?
Dravidians most certainly shouldn’t get the Knight-line.
They already have an OK late game (where Urumi rly shines vs Paladin and to a degree vs Arbalest also), they have probably the strongest infantry in the game overall (ignoring armor probably being the best trait an infantry unit can have), and recently they got BBC.
They even have FU Arbalest and, for some reason, Hand Cannoneer also. Early game they are good too, with a very decent MAA into Skirms (probably a top 10 opening on Arabia overall).
The one stage where they are weak is Castle age, but that’s by design, other civs also have moments when they are weak (e.g. Magyars, Castle Age and so on).
If you gave Knight-line to Dravidians, covering their Castle Age awkwardness, they would probably instantly become a top 5 Arabia civ.
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Most things you are talking about have been addressed in the “dravidians are terrible” thread, so feel free to look it up.
I’ll go over these things briefly. First, urumis are only good total-resources wise. This is fine in castle age, but consider post-imp where you are pop-capped. If your opponent has 40-60 paladins, you’ll need 80-100 urumis. This is almost impossible, considering that urumis are can only be produced from castles, and you need 120 vils or so working.
Ignoring armour is a “it depends” trait, like most bonuses in aoe2. It is the best trait only against high armour units like boyars, teutonic knights, or even paladins. Sometimes, it is better to have high armour, faster attack, or cheaper production. Most units have around 4 melee armour, so it is roughly as good as garland wars.
Now the biggest point; castle age is the age that matters the most, in most games. This is especially true in open maps. Gurjaras have a bottom tier post-imperial age, since their trash units are weak and everything costs gold. Their units doesn’t scale super well in imperial age either. But they are top 3, and the best civ before their (slight) nerf. This alone shows how strong castle age is.
To add insult to injury, castle age is not their only weakness. They are also weak in terms of mobility. They don’t have a single useful mobile unit even in imperial age.
Additionally, it is not as if Dravidians have an early imp sufficient to compensate for their weak castle age. They also lack hussar for raiding.
Lastly, you are wrong on them becoming top 5 arabia civ with knights. This is for one simple reason, they have no good land eco bonuses for cavelry. They also don’t get bloodlines, or cavelry armours. Furthermore, even if they get knights, they won’t be able to upgrade them. Meaning, they can’t mass them and can only make a few for raiding and defending. This means they won’t hold a candle to any good cavelry civ including berbers, burgundians, Gurjaras, Poles, Cumans, etc.
I think you are vastly overstating how much this would add. Now, this might get them to top 15 or so, maybe. But that is close to 50% win rate which is the ideal number we should want for all civs. It is definitely better than the bottom 5, which they are now.
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Would shrivamsha riders be fine instead ?
Knight without Bloodline and Husbandry will carry them at best to top 25 in Arabia.
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I never see people research Bloodlines or Husbandry if they are booming with defensive/offensive Xbow (say Magyars). Hell, you rarely see even then +1 armor cuz a Knight’s job in these “minimal aggression” scenarios is literally to ONLY snipe Mangonels.
It’s clear that, lacking last armor, Dravidians would never play Knights in Imp, anyway, and in Castle age ANY Knight is good enough tbh, you even see Vikings play Knights and they got the worst Knights in the game.
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American native people didn’t domesticate horses, thus they lacking cavalry is 100% historically accurate. On the other hand, native Indians had horses and they used both heavy and light cavalry very commonly, especially foreign invader Hindustanis (in history Delhi and Mughal Sultanate) were Nomadic Turkic people, thus they conquered India with their 100% cavalry armies. After conquest, they gradually decreased their cavalry but cavalry still continued as the most important unit of their armies.
In conclusion, Indians not having Knight-line is historically unaccurate.
[1] In the Eurasian steppes there are vast pastures to feed the horses, but the land is not suitable for agriculture. Therefore, the steppe population is very small, but the number of horses is very high. That’s why in the Mongolian army, there are 9 horses per soldier. Same 1 sodlier to 9 horse ratio existed in Turkic Nomads aswell.
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Mechanically yes, thematically no. Shrivamsha riders never existed in south india, and they are a group specific to the culture represented by gurjaras. It would be like giving berserks to italians.
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Don’t tell this man about Leitis
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Or perhaps, make sure the Dravidians don’t have any upgrades for the Knight line as @BidGorgon527960 mentioned. I’ve always wanted to see the Dravidians get access to the Knight because their stable is way too weak right now and not to mention, the Dravidians getting access to the Knight is also because there were Indian empires that deployed Heavy Cavalry.
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i’d like them to have knight and camel or one or the other, thats it. no cavalier, no heavy camel.
I don’t want Dravidians to get knights even if they desperately need it for balance. Every civ from other regions of the world have knights (except Americas). Making a civ balanced around elephants is more interesting. Devs should make BE more comparable to knights in their utility. Another option is to give them camels.
This is fine because it is only 2 units in the campaign. If you give Dravidians knights, they will make knights in every game.
Magyars do get bloodlines and husbandry because they want to eventually go for CA.
What you are saying only applies to the early stages of a tech switch. I see Magyars play xbow into knights into CA in tournaments often enough, I think is the meta for Magyars, is it not?
Camels are not an option because they were never a thing historically. It’s extremely out of place, like placing a polar bear in a desert. The animal has never existed in the area.
I think that more defensive/booming options are more important. Your force isn’t mobile enough to easily counter raid while protecting your economy. They are also extremely weak to a combination of knights, skirms and mangonels.
There is a super long thread about this issue here
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