Poll - Dravidian civ wood bonuses merged

[benithisrael]

@SMUM15236

Without Knight, they won’t be played as much as other civs unfortunately.

I understand the absense of knights makes the civ not attractive for low elo players. But we still have meso civs which are doing fine on Arabia and Arena wrt pick rate as well as winrate. Britons who don’t really have the best knights are also played often at this level. It is quite simple, if a player believes a civ has chances of winning against any random civ. They would give it a go. The pickrate clearly says Dravidian design does not inspire confidence in players of winning or even putting up a competetive game.
The only dravidian unit imho which has any similar traits to knights is light cavalry. I don’t believe battle elephants or elephant archers can perform that role without bonuses or unique techs to improve mobiity. The civ design should have made room for light cav to make up for absense of heavy cav. Then The difference in gameplay would not feel so unbearable.

@DemiserofD

Pair that with the fact that MAA will now be able to effectively evade or engage archers, and they could well see a pretty massive resurgence at the cost of scout builds.

Well, when the last patch came out, there was archer buff as well as scorpion buff with ballistics. I thought dravidians could do a death ball comp transitioning from crossbow to siege with scorpions then balistics. It turns out mangonels can swat them both with one attack ground. Dravidian winrate has only dropped 4 places.

I can see Dravidians getting a bigger powerspike with this patch. Its a buff for M@A of all civs. Importantly Infantry civs like Japanese, malay, romans, malians would porbably open M@A into skirms same as Dravidians. But these civs as well as mongol, frank pickers will still have cavalry to switch to once M@A fissles out. They can make knights especially against Dravidians because these is not much Dravidians can do against knight + skirm comp. That is the reason they need better light cav. If they had better light cav, they could probably do a light cav + monk comp. Monks counter knights, knights counter light cav, light cav counter skirms and skirms counter monks in decent numbers. This combo is cost wise far more logical than siege or elephants.

@DemiserofD

Dravidians can always go for elephant archers, which can effectively 1v1 or 2v1 mangonels without any micro at all. Monks can counter that, of course, but that’s where husbandry will really help them, allowing EAs to disengage and allowing scout cavalry to effectively engage.

Dude, don’t make me laugh by mentioning elephant archers. The devs are still trying to make them work with the meta becasue currently nobody trains them. They are switching the cost similar to knights hoping the same meta builds can be used. But the fact remains that castle age tempo is far higher than feudal and elephant archers don’t really fit the mould. The damn thing needs 25 hits with both range upgrades researched to take out a mangonel. That is 40 in-game seconds. Let us compare that to a knight who can finish the job in 5 hits 10 game secs and not to mention the unnecessary micro. If I let EA to deal with the mangonel on its own, mangonel will be out repaired by a vill at this rate. EAs can only be made when food and gold are coming at a rate which is easier to make any unit pop efficient unit. That is the reason team game trainsition to EAs in imperial age is possible due to trade. The numbers ensure high dps every volley and justify the investment. One or two of them are pretty useless. Devs are trying to nerf them in team games and make them viable in 1vs1. But one solution will probably not fit all circumstances.
Dude, tell me which combination would you choose to train 1 elephant archer + a scout or one scout + one monk?

@KHANATTILA

Which should be nerfed in fact.

Bro, I don’t know why they should be nerfed since they don’t really get many other strong bonuses except the market. Heavy camel with 25% HP makes up for lack of any Knight line upgrades.

@KHANATTILA

I would remove it, it is so frustrating to play one Meso-civ against the Dravidians in the Faudal Age.

Remove what exactly bro?

@KHANATTILA

The fact that you no longer have to search for Supply + militia speed is perhaps the best possible buff for dravidians. And by the way, I don’t like the addition of Husbandry at all.

So, putting it all together they would look something like this:

• Unique technologies
  • Cool name: Elephant Archer and Armored Elephant move 20% faster.

I did not like husbaandry either. But if that is coming, then Elephants don’t need full 30% speed boost as Mahouts. It can be 20%. May I ask why Battle elephants are left out? Battle elephants are the units most likely to make use of such a bonus.
I doubt just militia speed and arson will make Dravidians unstoppable in feudal.

@KHANATTILA

• • Skirmishers +1 (or +2) attack vs siege weapons.

So nothing Husbandry, but rather yes to Elite Battle Elephant.
EDIT. You could also add light cav to the above Skirmishers bonus, but it should not be necessary.

I don’t like these bonus attack civ bonuses. These are band-aid fixes and don’t make for elegent designs. I would rather if they have bonus to make their siege have 20% more HP. 20% is a good standard number as HP boost similar to vikings, vietnamese, franks etc. Koreans can have 20% wood discount on their siege as part of their new dlc bonus and Dravidians will still have a siege identity.

Siege weapons have 20% more HP
The beauty of this bonus is that Dravidian mangonels can one hit kill other civ mangonels. But not die from a single hit from opponent. Knights will take one extra hit to kill them giving that little edge to conversion by monks. Scorpions will survive an extra hit from knights unless they have +2 attack upgrade. But Dravidian scoripions will die in a single hit from other mangonels.

@Apocalypso4826

Pahan sounds like a good name.

Yup! ‘Pahan’ sounds good.

I wanted to add a footnote here. This is an excerpt from the italian buff I had proposed.

@benithisrael

Italians are very good on paper. Their tech tree is quite open. Their only problem is a lack of powerspike in transition from mid-feudal to mid-castle in land maps. Its pretty easy to fix them. The cheaper gun power bonus can be removed and pavise can be added as a civ bonus
Foot archers except skirms have +1/+1 armour
The bonus will give Italian player the capability to push out archers who are more tranky and push against infantry archers openings or do a strong archer opening themselves. They will be good against scout rush civs as well like mongols and franks enforcing italians identity as a ranged anit-cavalry civ. Opponent civ skirms can easily counter them due to bonus damage. So the counter-balance system remains in-tact. The gun-power bonus can be switched with “Silk road”. The new imperial age technology will be “Renaissance technologies”.

The buff I had suggested for italians last june and it was implemneted pretty much the way I conceived it except for the unique tech. So I believe my solution for Dravidians is not OP. Italians age up faster and now get a meta unit in archers which is better than other civs. Dravidians should be even faster to the next age. Dravidians getting better infantry and scout than other civs at the start of feudal is not game breaking in anyway. Compared to italians, they get lesser bonuses for late castle and imp. Italians get far cheaper BBCs than Dravidians yet they are not good enough. In fact, with the devs trying to curb FC meta by making immovable herables. In closed maps like areana, The ability of Dravidians to go FC to get 400 wood and boom earlier than opponent will take a hit. Going forward, the 2 bonuses can make the civ more playable on open maps and less vulnerable to FC nerfs on closed maps. Hence the pair bonus I suggested should be the right fix going forward.

@benithisrael

• 200 wood per age + 33% siege wood discount → “Receive 10 wood per villager trained till arriving in imperial age”
• “Infantry and cavalry +1 attack starting in feudal age”

If the +1 attack is too big, then the siege weapons +20% HP can be added in its place. This way armoured elephants can also benefit from it.

@Pulikesi25

while on land until mid castle age the net benefit might be about the same. The bonus has to be on food sources so that its more relevant to land maps.

When you get wood earlier, you can start farms earlier. If needed, you may put more vills on berry bushes to get the food source faster. When you arrive in the next age, the food economy will be more balanced compare to now. The gameplay will be lot easier.

@Pulikesi25

This isn’t a change in the right direction because it makes them stronger on water, dock will go up in 3rd min itself,

They are a water civ. So I don’t see a problem with this change boosting their water game. Italians get faster age up and cheaper fishing ships in dark age itself. Yet their water game does not get oppressive in feudal. If it comes to it, Dravidian dock bonus can be changed to something nominal like

Buildings except walls and gates provide +1 pop space
or
Docks have +20% HP
or
Elephants and fishing ships have +3 LOS
or
Trade units generate 15% stone in addition to gold

The last bonus comes from the fact that Tamil merchants used to import granite from tamil nadu to build temples overseas.