No, Wootz steel was also produced in Karnataka. It was produced in parts of Kerala as well. Considering that the actual tamil parts, the idea of medical corps and the ship are rooted in fake historical texts, the civ is fairly neutral.
Focus on water is tamil? Telugus and Malayalis had huge water presence as well, mate.
And I am saying that your idea of their “identity” is exclusive to you. You, one person, thinks that. That’s fine, but I don’t really care. Most people here are fine with the change.
This “it doesn’t fit” is completely subjective. So, I’m not going to argue with you about that any further.
My problem is the lack of a raiding unit. It might be worse than hussars, but that’s fine. Similar to persian crossbows, I’m not looking for the strongest unit, I’m looking for a unit that fits a purpose.
To repeat, I’m not pinned on this particular idea. Husbandry with bloodlines would be equally good. Or changing urumis to raiding units. Or anything, really.
If you give them a light cav bonus with which the civ still has bad light cav it just feels like you are doing nothing that couldnt be done with giving them more techs, and with giving them more techs it would at least like you arent pulling the civ in the oposite direction
And either way the civ has bigger problems than their bad raiding units in late game imo.
Of course, they had to correct for zero pierce armour. For a unit with zero pierce armour 20 gold is too high. Devs did not even bother correcting it even in this release.
Yup! Sombody in reddit mentioned that Dravidians were discount Ethiopians and the fishing bonus was weaker version of old Indian bonus.
Ethiopians have far better Military dude. For an infantry civ, the food bonus should not be confined to fishing. It should be like Vikings, Aztecs or old Hindustanis vill discount. 200 wood is currently OP for early water aggression, But mediocre for other maps and strategies.
For a poor offensive civ like Dravidians to be viable on Arabia/Arena, the resource collected has to be in top 5. Just for reference a old Spirit video on booming civs. 400 resources does not even make it to top 10.
I will be playing this weekend with friends. Lets see what they say about official patch. The initial impressions were that the weaknesses have not been meaningfully addressed.
I’m just talking about the parallel in civ bonuses. Never said they are similar civ.
Interesting. Not even Bengalis with +4 villagers? That doesn’t seem accurate to me. If you reach Feudal at 10 mins, you have 2 extra villagers for 15 mins. That should be 600 resources even if you don’t research a single eco tech. Not to mention you also have 2 more from Castle Age, maybe at 22-23 mins mark.
All infantry has +2 LOS from Feudal Age since DE as “Tracking” is free. 3 LOS is only in Dark Age if you have some via scenario editor.
This was before Dynasties of India. So Bengalis are not there. Bengalis are probably top booming civ now.
In castle age, LOS is not an issue normally for infantry. I doubt devs will re-work the Urumi. The unit has been around for so long without change. Nobody uses them and nobody complains.
stop trying to convince you that its just my opinion lol, when people think of Dravidians one of the first things they think about is their absolutely awful stable. Its pretty clear the devs did it on purpose as part of their identity
Tamils are the only Dradivian nation that had a really powerful navy during the AoE2 period from what I know. The Kalingans had a powerful navy but they were mostly the Odia people. I meam yeah they are based on fake stuff but they are still meant to represent the Cholas. And Wootz steel is mostly famous for the Tamils too.
But Persians xbows cab actually fulfill a role better than normal archers as a gold less support unit lol. They are situationally better, Dravidian light cav isnt like that.
I much much prefer that
And the Urumia as a raiding unit would be fine but it would require a complete rework of the unit
Dude, You are clearly contradicting yourself here. With medical corps affecting Scout line, the below image will aka civ identity will stay the same. With husbandry and bloodlines, it will change. Please elucidate what is a Dravidian civ identity?
It will change in eother case since their cavalry will be better but if its more techs at least the civ wont get a bonus for a terrible unit that feels out of place.
Im not a fan of either of these things but I just prefer more yechs
Your terms are acceptable.
I’ve never liked the design, but who knows if they’ll actually change it. The organ gun rework is the most promising precedent, but it seems they’re determined to max out the other aspects of the Dravidians while maintaining the “slow units” schtick.
In his self-admitted “Tierlist without…knowledge.” Everyone else is putting a lot of effort into predictions, so why not Viper. My call is ~low B tier, but even once they’re “figured out,” that’s still a fairly subjective ranking. The siege buff is strong where you can use it and synergizes nicely with more accessible pikes/archers. I think we’ll see more “Dravidians eat TC,” but it’s not the kind of strong general buff that should shoot them too high on open maps.
Dynasties of India release was quite popular in Southern India. It was not due to AoE fanbase alone, it was because a big budget, multi-lingual movie based on the Cholas with a script taken from a 50 year old novel was in vogue. Their project was big with the director and actors being the who’s who of the industry. There were marketing campaigns in all mediums to fan sentiments to revive interest in the life story of the Cholas. They built up the release of the movie for a year till Sep 2022. So even my nephews started playing this Grandpa of RTS games before the movie came out. However the movie story line did not match with the campaign. The hero was only mentioned in passing and the Dravidian civ just sucked compared to civs like franks which had easy win conditions. Soon enough, they went back to playing mobile RTS and counterstrike. So AOE DE lost a huge potential fanbase.
The movie’s conclusion saga is scheduled to be released by Sep 2023. Mass marketing for the movie is already in full swing. If AOE2 team manages to re-work this civ and add a campaign on Raja Raja Chola, there is a huge pool of young fans who will flock to give it a try again. it will be like the Harry Potter franchise video games that leveraged the popularity of the books and movie. R K Rowling is still writing unnecessary scripts for prequels and squeals. I do hope the devs can get a re-worked version of this civ out before the Chola waves hit the big screen.
You are arguing that Tamils are an important part of the civ. Nobody is disagreeing with you there. You need to argue that other southern cultures aren’t. That’s what is in question.
Yeah, I have somewhat given up on the stables too. But then we go all the way back. Without mobility, you need defence. Like mayans with cheaper walls, Incas with cheaper stone buildings and teutons with more garrison space AND more range on their castle.
If he says that after two months, that’d be something I think. It’s just a prediction at the moment.
I have quite a few choice words for those who use this line without actually trying out the game and verifying.
One of the matches I played a match as Dravidians against the Malay, had pretty much the same looking result. Till castle age, I could trade blows in an equal manner and went up rather quickly. But the Malay player caught up on timing and cleared my archers patrolling around his base with Knights. I used the 200 wood to make a 3 TC turtle play. Upgraded to pikeman and tried to protect economy. However even with squires Pikeman don’t deter Knights. They just ran under my TC and reached my mill. The TCs had to be constantly garrisoned. I had done cross-bow upgrade when I reached Castle age. So tried to counter raid him by making a few. He just made a few skirms and did not even pull back his knights. I thought I could go imp and do woots steel. So Just idled my TC and went imp. Bought stone and tried to castle one of my flank. To my surprise he had already castled there. lack of scout making past starting scout has this handicap for Dravidians. I tried to put a defensive castle. But once he knew he just Knight raided me on the other flank and I had no answer. Even if I cancelled my imp, I could not make any unit instantaneously.
Floating a lot of wood or any other resource for that matter is testament to the fact that the economy and villager distribution on resources is not optimal. If we gave 10 wood per villager like @UpmostRook9474 said in another thread or 200/400/600 as @Pulikesi25 proposed a while back. We are only giving unnecessary resources which would need to be sold at whatever price the market offers. The better idea would be to replace this wood with a food eco bonus.
Here is what I propose as a good economy bonus as replacement for the wood bonus:
Town Center technologies including aging up costs -25% food.
This will save -125 food to reach feudal as well as being earlier to a M@A rush. 200 food saving for castle age which will help bide some time to face a Knight spam. U can upgrade to pikeman as well as do cross-bow upgrade combo. If you manage to stall opponents push in castle age, good discount on Wheel borrow and handcart can help boost economy to push towards a 2 TC imp quickly.
Yup! They need some better economy bonus and special infantry to comeback when things don’t go according to plan. Thats why I had this techology called “Strike Corps” in mind. But DEVs seem to love Medical corps a bit too much.
Definitely. And a lot of people just think this siege discount is OP as if Dravidians are going to be able to do 2 stable knights, redemption monks with cheap siege. The Slav discount is numerically the exact same before the patch and despite being a better civ than Dravidians in several ways, the siege discount was barely ever a problem in 1v1s.
But it has to be compensated in some meaningful way. Just saying that terrible cav is part of the civ identity without any compensation to balance it off is just like saying that this civ is meant to be a shit civ. Vikings get knights but miss husbandry and bloodlines. As a compensation they receive extremely powerful eco bonuses, extra hp on infantry, regenerating uu, better and cheaper UT for infantry against cavalry. Kind of a similar story with Malay, meso civs have eagles, very strong eco, cheap military or strong monks.
That unit should strictly only be an extra option like Genitours for Berbers or Battle elephants for ROR civs. Useful in some rare niche situations. Its not something you can use in majority of the games. Hypothetically if you combine the techs from both the civs, its a half useful unit.
Exactly.
Oh actually this is a great bonus that would fit well with their cheaper barrack techs play for land. After removing the wood bonus and siege discount, I’d suggest something like barracks and barrack techs cost -50% along with this.