Poll - Dravidian civ wood bonuses merged

[benithisrael]

@JasuniSmith

Melee attack upgrades would be easily balanced. Burmese infantry attack bonuses are pretty comparable (and frankly stronger). Ranged attack upgrades would be a bit trickier (extra range is powerful, and +1 damage is a lot more meaningful with ranged attacks). The fact the bonus needs investment will weaken it, but the civ would probably need rebalancing in a few aspects. That said, the bonus itself would be a fine bonus.

Yes, the bonus would be fairly balanced. Ranged units will be more powerful. But the cost will make it a pretty defensive play. It would also make their towers and castles more capable which @Pulikesi25 was refering to. The civ could play to boom with defensive structures as well instead of being too aggressive as they currently do. It gives balanced options to the civ.

@JasuniSmith

It would make them a lot stronger on any map with dark age fishing (especially nomad style maps) - maps that they’re already strong at due to their team bonus. The extra wood would help with making fishing ships in dark age. So I think they’d become OP on nomad, which would make them more popular there. I’d expect little impact on their Arabia playrate though.

I undestand that which is why I had suggested the team bonus of giving +1 pop space for every building except walls and gates.

@benithisrael

Modify - Docks provide +5 pop space → Buildings except walls and gates provide +1 pop space

The bonus in itself is not OP. Its benefits are less than Wu’s “Houses built 2x faster”. But it allows Dravidians and allies to train an unit immediately after making a building then make a house if more production is needed. It is useful on both land and water. Current Dravidian bonuses are too focussed on water play which is ruining the civ design making it unpopular since water maps are not popular. Dravidians should be capable of playing arabia like Malay or Vikings because of their amazing eco bonus despite their bad tech tree.

@JasuniSmith

The upcoming infantry buffs will also benefit Dravidians, which might help their competitive play rate some. The Dravidian play rate probably got hurt a fair bit by the debate between the Viper and Hera about how good/bad the civ is. And Dravidian play rate would likely go up if cavalry became less popular (as their poor cavalry options would then matter less and their strong skirms/infantry would matter more). Especially if knight gameplay were to lose popularity

Maybe it will boost their winrate. But it will be temperory. Remember celts could do this all this time and still opened archers → siege. Romans probably had the most viable militia-line in castle age with +2/+2. yet used cavalry.

@JasuniSmith

If the goal is to make Dravidians popular among casual players though, I don’t think tweaking their overall balance is the way to go. Making another Dravidian campaign would probably have more impact there. And casual players are more likely to be the sort of players who do what they want with little regard to whether its practical gameplay and more regard to how powerful it feels. Things like making 300 automata in AoM (powerful, but completely impractical)

Dravidian campaigns are a grind as it draws to the end. A campaign featuring the cholaa-chalukya wars would be good.

@JasuniSmith

They have top-tier infantry (Wootz steel - a blacksmith based UT - is roughly equivalent to +4 atk, making Dravidian infantry comparable to Aztec infantry) and strong ranged units.

Aztecs get eagles which are exponentially better than light cav without armour for finishing the game by taking dowm defensive buildings. Woot steel does not work on buildings. they need siege engineers.

@JasuniSmith

And a power unit in top-tier elephant archers (which admittedly don’t have much of a role outside of being a power unit).

massing elephants in 1vs1 is only possible on closed maps. Dravidians don’t get any bonuses to do that. So Siege is their current best option.