I usually don’t agree with most changelists here because they seem too random, but yours I do agree immensely with, even your more “personal points”. If the devs fully integrated your list I’d have no problem.
If I had to be extremely nitpicky (once again, I loved the list) I’d be hesitant on your following points:
“Mongols: The extra HP bonus for Scout Cavalry and Steppe Lancers is from the Imperial Age.”
“Dravidians: ‘Kaikola Corps’: Battle Elephants and siege weapons cost -40% gold.” - seems too strong, or am I exagerating?
“Burgundians: After the Imperial Age is researched, a “REVOLT!” button is available” - I dunno, seems very AoE3.
Also, some observations:
“Huns: I’d even be willing to let them lose Stone wall in exchange for it.” - for sure, I don’t think they should have it.
“Kataparuto is a complete fake that should have been removed long ago.” - TRUE, like the Thirisadai and the current Korean War Wagon.
“Mongols: Nomad tech” - I’d even propose making this a passive bonus and giving it to the Huns too.
“Celts: being a big Siege civ” - I’ll never agree with this. It doesn’t make sense.
Thanks! Thats the primary objective of this balance.
Well, I though you meant they would need a nerf on nomad. I agree the fact that they have such poor options compared to other civs is castle age means that they should have amazing defense bonuses or early game bonuses that allow its main line units like pikeman, arbs to be upgraded and massed to face knights and other unique units in castle age. As an honarary meso civ, Dravidians should preferably get the economy boost to stand out. An extra working lumberjack type of bonus in dark age should be enough in my opinion. But it should be a dark age bonus. They don’t have scaleable scout-line. So a feudal age bonus of 200 wood to make archers is easily countered by skirms. The agresive potential is quite diminished. However earlier M@A is quite a powerspike which can benefit their theme instead of playing as an archer civ.
The siege bonus is never applicable on water and the only reason Dravidian bonus of 200 wood seem to work is because pure water meta is generally too snowballing. Its prudent to just go FC to get 400 wood and finish the game asap. This bonus can also temper that effect.
Nowadays, I don’t play till map runs out of wood. But Good catch though. I recon the bonus can be stopped in imp. "Receive 10 wood per villager till arriving in imperial age"
Then a tech like 'Kaikola Corps' in place of medical corps can make up for it. It kinda makes historical sense since better ships and technology made port calls at tamil country redundant leading to war with Sri Vijaya empire.
Its a unique tech for useless elephant unit without an elite upgrade. So cost reduction can make it playable as a surprise strategy post castle age boom. Dravidians lack Siege Egnineers. So its better if they try to play post boom, long castle age with Siege. A cost reduction with a tech will help enable such a play. It is balanced considering the fact that protugese get 20% off on all gold units. It can also be balanced later with cost of tech based on gameplay.
Originally it was for scout line in castle age. Now its a mess. Its better if it was locked behind an unique tech and still available in castle age.
Maybe it was an exagerration. AOE2 is not historical most of the time. yet it draws history buffs with its historical aesthetics and shenanagins.
I want only a couple of changes for Dravidians at this point the 200 wood bonus and medical corps. Everthing else is just a different perspective I am giving to someone else. I agree Dravidian tech tree needs vital additions like husbandry, plate barding armour, Siege engineers, EBE and one of the mining upgrades. But absent such changes these last 3 years probably bonuses are needed to address the limited options available. The “10 wood per vill” bonus subsumes 2 wood bonuses into one which will allow a new bonus to be added to address gaps in their tech tree. I see a lot of bonuses floating around and I’d be glad if one of them makes it. I don’t have qualms with all of the forum suggestions like:
Militia-line buff bonus
@SMUM15236 idea of make tech tree decolative elephants cheaper
While the Huns still have the bonus of reaching the max pop cap directly, only granting the Mongols the bonus that losing buildings won’t cause the pop cap to drop still gives me a sense of relative deprivation. This is what I don’t like.
Also, I don’t understand the point of giving it to the Huns as well. They have the max pop cap directly, so it doesn’t work on them unless you’re going to remove this bonus from them meanwhile.
I still recommend the approach in a form of bundle. While keeping the current effect of Nomads, make it work for all buildings (especially Castles), and add more additional effects, such as allowing Castles to train TC Wagons, or giving Scouts and Steppe Lancer extra HP (when it’s no longer a civ bonus).
Well, their Elite Battle Elephants won’t have the plate armor, and the regeneration as a free civ bonus is just some sort of compensation for the lack of Bloodlines. The only thing that might be a concern is that they also benefit from Wootz Steel but you can compare it with Khmer. Against Halberdiers, Wootz Steel provides as much damage as Tusk Swords, while the Khmer elephants have the plate armor and faster speed, and Khmer have better economy to afford the elephants. Having Battle Elephants have a gold discount for Dravidians should be acceptable.
With the removal of the current wood discount by the more extra wood, it should be fine for siege weapons to get a gold discount at a cost.
It does resemble AoE3 Revolution in UI, but that’s because the effects of Flemish Revolution were meant to be like that. Moving it out of the UT slot and making it bannable could help the effect fit better into the AoE2 environment and allow it to be retained in casual games rather than eventually replaced and removed because it’s not popular and welcome in more professional games.
Long-standing legacy. I don’t think we can reverse it, but if renaming would make it feel easier, I would like to do it. Like, using Great Warpipes or something else to provide siege weapon HP abstractly represents the positive effect of Irish and Scottish warriors inspiring each other during sieges, rather than the inexplicable Furor Celtica.
This one feels too much like (a worse version of) Farimba to me, though. Not that I have other suggestions. Also I don’t think Huns need a buff.
It’ll be difficult to find a name that’s appropriate for all three civs, but then Paladin is not an appropriate name for many civs so I don’t think that matters.
If we were just talking about Huns I’d suggest calling them Sarmatian Cavalry (or even just Sarmatian, similar to how the Cuman UU is called Kipchak). For something that sort of covers all three civs, I suppose there is probably a Hungarian word for heavy cavalry.
This really should have been called Cataphract – I guess they avoided that because it’s already taken and crossplay with normal AoE2 civs would allow both units at once.
The problem with dravidians is the lack of plans in the middle game.
Even if you manage to have a successful ealry feudal, which is not that difficult actually, from the second half the problems begin becaues they have no real solution.
Since your stable sucks, the normal response to your opponent’s skirms is to move from archers (which you do 90% of the time in feudal) to skrims in turn. Then the opponent adds Knights once he gets to Castle Age and ends up with a combo of Knights + Skirms and you are simply dead.
So in really, Dravidians are poor against any civilisation with Knights, OK against camels, almost civ win against Eagles’ civs (Arabia 1900+):
For those who don’t want to watch the video, according to TaToH, and TheViper too, they are OP in some situations:
those of the Khmer once they are fully upgraded
the triple stack (Celts, Romans, Khmer) caused by the fact that the Khmer bonus is a Team Bonus (which unfortunately I happened to face).
One change that could be made is to make the Khmer’s scorpions lose 1 of Range (no Siege Engineers as already proposed @UpmostRook9474) and move the Team Bonus as a Civ Bonus.
Very good analysis. This civ really doesn’t need more until it reaches the Castle Age, but it does need more after that. Given that they have no other land economy bonuses, in my opinion, the extra wood upon reaching the Castle Age should be at least around 400, enough to afford 1 Siege Workshop + 1 Monastery or Mangonel. The extra wood upon reaching the Imperial Age should be at least around 600, enough to afford 3 Trebuchets. That’s how aggressive they should be.
However, a design like recieving 10 wood each time a villager is trained doesn’t fit that need. It will make their Feudal even stronger by receiving more wood and recieving earlier, but the total amount of wood received in Castle Age and Imperial Age may be lower than 400 and 600, and the use of wood will be scattered rather than creating an explosive power for aggresive pushes.
Having better monks would be a reasonable buff, such as recieving Redemption and Fervor. With Block Printing, they may even have the margin to remove Bombard Cannons.
I really wish they had better, more aggressive infantry. This is the identity they deserve most, and this is the most important thing I propose for this civ. Although their aggressiveness is still not well represented at the moment, they should ficus it, strengthen it instead of half-heartedly getting other defensive bonuses.
The Militia line should be stronger, making them powerful enough in mid games paired with cheap upgrades. Making Longswords/Two-hand Swords accessible in the Feudal/Castle Age would definitely be helpful. Or, having Forging-line provide double the effects without Blast Furnace can also help Men-at-arm/Longswords, Spears/Pikes and Scouts/Light Cavalry fight the knights + mangonels/skirmishers more effectively at that time. Also, as common changes, allow infantry access to +10% speed in Feudal, and make Squires provide +10% speed specifically to Militia-line units, infantry (especially Longswords) should be able to provide better push capabilities in early-mid games.
Additionally, there should be useful Elite Battle Elephants available as another option than Elite Elephant Archers in late games. Husbandry (which can help Light Cavalry too) and the Elite upgrade are a must, and with the lack of plate armor, let their UT provide a gold discount on Battle Elephants and change regeneration to a civ bonus. If this new UT also offers gold discounts for siege weapons (including Siege Elephants), then they can also get a better Infantry + Onagers combination in late games.
And it’s overall a small nerf, as it would be a separate tech to pay for to research.
It can be put under the Scorpion in the Siege Workshop, just like Parthian Tactics is for the Cavalry Archer.
Nice idea. I didn’t think about moving the team bonus.
Just feel ironic that exactly those siege civs cannot have it but a civ with suck siege can have it.
I think it can be the next upgrade to the Ballistics. Now they need Ballistics for Scorpions, and we can move the part for Scorpion to become the next.
Scorpions were not oppressive with Khmer until this change happened. And frankly, I see tons of civs going mass scorps, even if they have no real bonus for it. It’s too strong.
You’d be surprised how many players do not mind the long list of historical inaccuracies of this game.
Giving an historical flavor to the civs bonuses and tech tree is very welcomed, but requesting historical accuracy is like asking to remake the whole game. Which I guess is something they tried to do with aoe4.
Oh, you meant the current Dravidians civ bonuses do not apply anymore in imperial. Now I got it. True.
Yeah, something like this would work, or limiting tje bonus to the first 200 villagers only. Sounds a little gimicky, but is fine.
And as someone else said, it is not that big of a deal as long as Portuguese Feitoria exist in their current form.
Agree, the wood bonus on vills is better and balanced with a pop limit.
This problem has been known for ages and lot of people like @SMUM15236 have advocated that Militia-line be given a bonus to act like a Eagle warrior like replacment. However there was always a problem. Dravidians had already been given the maximum number of civ bonuses. So a new bonus addition was not possible. Then came ‘the april patch’ in 2023 which added a new civ bonus for all civs with infantry with Gambersons added to buff long swordsmen against skirms. However the problem quoted above still persisted for Dravidians because the 33% wood discount was a patch up fix for not having a scaleable wood bonus. It lead to a early Siege workshop to make use of the discount. It made Dravidians OP against meso civs and did not solve the knight + skirm problem.
In order to introduce a new bonus, one of Dravidian bonuses has to be removed and a new one has to take it place. Since the 200 wood per age does not provide the early spike needed for average players and the 33% siege wood discount makes Dravidians use siege when what they need is a melee counter to knights. Its better to merge both wood discounts and make room for a new one. The current meta has people clicking to imp with roughly 60 to 80 or 100 vills. The new bonus will guarentee Dravidians get atleast 600 to 1000 wood while they cick to imp. The bonus thus successfully combines 200 wood per age and 33% siege wood discount sucessfully.
After consolidating 2 wood bonuses into 1, there is a space for new bonus which can give some mobilty to Dravidian midgame. Militia-line and Elephant archers move +10/15/20 percent faster in feudal, castle and imp respectively
@Pulikesi25 and several others advocated Dravidians should get knights or a Eagle warrior like unit in castle age. The exact need of Dravidians is an Eagle warrior like unit which moves faster and takes the least amount of damage 1 or 2 from skirms. Long swords is a cheap upgrade for Dravidians. It takes 1 damage from skirms and 2 damage from E.skirms. Long swordsmen fit the damage bill and what they need is speed. The new bonus will give them a movement speed of 10/15/20 resulting in 1.14 tps in castle age with squires. It is comparable to huskarl speed of 1.15 with squires. The speed is adequate to tackle generic skirms and E.skirms as well as lithuanian ones. The combination of cross-bow and long swordsman can cost effectilvely push against a skirm + knight push. If opponent switches to scorpion or mangonel siege, then Elephant archers can be a handy counter with its high HP and firing rate. It will be a relatively easy switch as well.
If these 2 changes are implemented, even ‘medical corps’ need not be changed. If ‘husbandry’ is added, it would make up slightly for elephants being such useless units.
