If they go Skirms, you go Longswords, since longswords pretty well wreck skirms, and aren’t AS vulnerable(as in, getting oneshot) to mangonels, and are WAY better vs Knights.
If they go for Mangonels, then you should go for Elephant Archers, since they can 1v1 mangonels. No gold discount is really necessary there. Of course, then they can go for Monk/Siege.
If they go for monks and siege, that’s when you start to run into trouble - but at least with this progression, they’re going for monks later in castle age, so it’s no longer going to be a handful of conversions losing you the game instantly. Plus, with the recent speed buff, Urumis should actually be pretty dang potent against this strategy. Only need a handful getting through to kill everything they have, even if you lose a few on the way on. That’s the great strength of Urumis, they just need one attack to do most of their damage.
Plus, that opens the door for YOU to go straight into Armored Elephants! Urumis hard counter pikes, which are the main weakness of armored elephants, after all.
Not…really? Archers benefit heavily from having a few elephant archers mixed in. You don’t really want your archers moving any faster, honestly, and certainly not at the cost of giving up the regen on your tanks.
U need double barracks production to take on knights DPS wise. Even then the mobility factor is there. Ur brracks have to be closer to enemy base to force engagement on ur terms.
No castle, no urumi and urumi die to skirms. Armoured elephants at that stage are worse than other civs.
EAs need to be cost efficient against monks too to risk them mid-castle age
regen locked behind castle tech. A archer speed boost though locked behind a castle is exponentially better.
If you start with archers and then go for longswords, you’ll be later in castle age when they get to monk/siege, so a castle will be a lot easier to get. Not to mention, of course, a castle alone already counters monk/siege in a localized area. Kind of a win/win, really.
And with Husbandry, their armored elephants have really lost their last major disadvantage compared to other civs. They’re objectively better than Hindustanis now, for instance.
Eh…you’re not going for pure EAs at that stage of the game. They’re a tank, you kill their monks with something else.
Doesn’t really matter, the regen is there, and it’s quite nice, and the players who like Dravidians like it as it is. I’d rather it not be removed, and that people learn how to play the civ as it is rather than wish it were something it isn’t.
Let say keep the wood bonus. But then change elephant archers to cost wood+gold instead of food+gold. And then swap Wootz Steel and Medical Corps to make long swordsman stronger in mid game. Will Long swordsman +elephant archers be good comp?
they will work like ‘war wagons’ moving at the speed of foot archer. You can try some phosphoru builds.
Woots steel is the crutch the civ leans on to make its units viable. I don’t see why if its priced fairly it cannot be a castle age tech. Scorpions can melt your sowrdsman + EA comp. Dravidians have weakness against both siege units in castle age. Probably the husbandry change was also meant to fix that.
they don’t have bonus towards early castles. Even Dravidian light cav can do this job and they are better at it than long swords while being able to counter monks too. If ‘woots steel’ is available in castle age as @AbuzzJam4677680 recomends, then no infantry play will be required till imp. If militia don’t get speed, their usability is poor for dravidians.
Are you serious, Hindustanis have mobile cavalry that have a bonus against buildings. They don’t even need Armoured elephants. Dravidians are better off having Battering Ram line which can garrison infantry to get a death ball comp.
If you want to make elephants playable for dravidians, then a straight discount is needed. you can consolidate the wood discount and introduce a discount on elephants.
When regeneration for all cavalry is a civ bonus for Georgians, a civ like Dravidians paying for the effect is a backhanded slap. Once georgians got that bonus, it shoud have been removed for dravidians when the bonus was implemented for Georgians or the least all cavalry including light cav should have been included.
Cholas and tamil peninsular country were never a navy reliant power. So the arguement for keeping them lackluster on land does not hold. Their threats were from north. They dealt with them in a more defensive manner. the gameplay should reflect that.
I think you are forgetting some important things. For example, you are right that light Cavalry would be better against skirmishers, but not better against heavier cavalry or spearmen. And you would only need a discount on your elephants if you were planning on spanning them, but early in the game you wouldn’t want to do that anyway. The only ones who can really pull that off are the Malay.
Try thinking of them like they’re… i dunno, Saracens, maybe.
Saracens, are you kidding me?
They have camels with +25% HP. Their heavy camel can take down an elite battle elephant by itself. Dravidians don’t have any similar capabilty. Yet Saracens get knights.
“Receive 10 wood per villager trained till arriving in imperial age”
Guys, the pools seem to indicate maybe Dravidians need technolgies such as fervor, siege engineers or the civ needs no changes at all. But there were no convincing argument as to how their playrate can be improved in land maps. So despite what the poll says I still belive the above bonus of getting 10 wood per villager trained is better than getting 200 wood for every age advanced as well as some wood discount on siege. After discussing with @DemiserofD for extended time, I think I may have a replacement bonus for 33% siege wood discount which helps Dravidian weakness against siege, monks and skirms. The solution is to have light cav carry the civ till mid castle age against siege, skirm and monk weakness. Then have battle elephants take over as high DPS melee cavalry.
These are the order of changes needed by the civ
With this above bonus, Dravidians can have the timing advantage while arriving in a new age like malay to offset their squishy unit weaknesses.
Along with this change we need to introduce a new bonus which looks like a precursor of ‘woots steel’ "Infantry and cavalry +1 attack starting in feudal age"
With this change, Dravidians can make a scout + archer/skirm opening work better.
Scouts can trade better vs skirms + scouts combos since they can kill skirms in 5 hits instead of 6 which other scouts take.
Scouts can evenly trade with man-at-arms instead of dying due to lack of Bloodlines upgrade.
In the castle age, Light cav can kill all siege and skirms one strike earlier.
Mangonels die in 5 hits instead of 6
scorpions die to 4 hits instead of 5.
skirms die to 4 hits instead of 5
E skirms die to same 5 hits, so its balanced for the resource spent
Does not change archers or vill kill balance. So only adresses current weakness of Dravidians
Battle elephants kill monks without sanctity in 2 hits and with sanctity in 3 hits. Making Battle elephants with devotion a possible tool in their stable.
All these dynamics work only when all attack upgrades available for the age are researched and at least one armour is researched for light cav. At least one amour is needed because otherwise a light cav chasing a mangonel can be killed by a knight in 5 hits. It is the same number of hits light cav need to kill siege after the +1 attack buff. So the cat and mouse game of who kills who first maintains the balance of the game before armour/attack upgrades. So blacksmith upgrades become vital technologies for Dravidians to keep their edge as the game progresses which was historically something south India and Dravidians excelled in. The beauty of this gameplay is that armour was less prevalent in a tropical country like India. So Armour being prioritised less than attack upgrades is a good historical nod for the game in contradiction to playstyle of other civs.
Just a wierd coincidence. Dravidians can counter teuton ironclad siege in imperial age better than now with the +1 attack and ignoring armour. Some civs like Koreans counter Dravidians hard due to lack of Siege engineers and good cavalry. With this change, Dravidians can employ light cav against such civs.
I have seen Age of KIng civs designs like this where a gimmick given as civ bonus is enhanced by the imp tech. So this design suits that mould as well and would be loved by the community.
Urumi is hardly useful in castle age with skirms killing them from range. So a 0.05 speed boost and +1 attack is not going to make them helpful for Dravidian gameplay. Give the +1 attack to all infantry and cavalry. It suits the civ which gave the armour cleaving ‘damascus steel’ blades to the world. Husbandry is good for light cav. But some bold changes are needed to make their stables a vital part of their gameplay.
I would like to hear your thoughts @Pulikesi25 , @Zelley00 , @DemiserofD , @UpmostRook9474 , @Juggernaut8704@VenialFoil55155 and @SMUM15236
Given the set of changes about to happen, Dravidians might become a bit more usable. They now have husbandry, militia line are cheaper, arson is in feudal age and will be something like 38 food 12 gold for Dravidians and elephant archers with husbandry are cheaper in terms of food. I believe they might move up from being a bottom 5 to a bottom 15 civ
FC strategies may become less common. Feudal may go on longer. But every civ with bloodlines will have the upper hand by late feudal age. Dravidians need better fixes. Mahouts was always propositioned as a good fix against medical corps. A 30% speed boost will only reach 1.17 tps for battle elephant and elephant archers. But it would have mae them usable. Husbandry alone will make neither light cav nor elephants any more useful.
With the militia changes, Dravidians may be better off playing long feudal. But they will still struggle hard with no answers to kight+skirms → siege push. If you do one TC knight spam against Dravidians in castle age 90% of the time they fold and I doubt that dynamic will change.
That presumes that scout openings are as common as before, but I’ve seen a great deal of speculation that scout openings in particular will be much less popular in the new patch, since MAA will be so much more viable now. After all, there used to be a parity between bloodlines and supplies, but now supplies is free and infantry are much faster.
I play casually too bro and got to try out more stuff only due to covid. But now less so since I moved overseas.I agree Knights for Dravidians would have been pretty cool and it would not have been the end of the world.
The meta will not turn up side down while scouts have both mobility and melee advantage. You can also see from the video by Hera above that MAA went out of meta because of how intensive resource wise they are as time goes on. They exhaust both food and gold which are needed to go to next age. Resource wise, its easier to do archer builds for Dravidians rather than attempt scouts because of lack of long term potential. This change however will enable Dravidians to do a MAA → scout build better. This much needed flexibility will greatly help the civ gameplay.
@Pulikesi25 If you play Dravidians against civs like mongols, khmer and any civs with eco which enables them to arrive in the next age earlier than Dravidians. They can easily do 1 TC push in castle age till Dravidian player fold and it holds true even if they played longer feudal. They can even yolo push with mangonels without any support since there is no threat of knights trained by Dravidians and no redemption. The civ needs better light cav otherwise these glaring weaknesses will never be address. That is why I believe these 2 changes should go together as a patch fix.
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”
I’ll say we should wait for the new DLC patch. So far I’m positive and repeat @Pulikesi25. They will improve from bottom 5 to bottom 15. I’ll also add this stat will be about W/R and not play rate. Without Knight, they won’t be played as much as other civs unfortunately.
Hera’s not always right. In this case, he’s neglecting the fact that scouts or archers both require TWO buildings, while MAA require just one. Even after the MAA upgrade and mining camp, you’re still much closer than people might initially assume. Especially since that allows you to take advantage of your starting gold and be much more aggressive as a consequence.
And, of course, MAA win vs scouts until they have bloodlines, which is another fairly expensive tech.
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.
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.
Like when he suggested putting the deer further away from the TC.
Which should be nerfed in fact.
I would remove it, it is so frustrating to play one Meso-civ against the Dravidians in the Faudal Age.
If I can give my input, this changes would make them even more aggressive and all-in feudal, which is already something they are strong in and do not need any additional buffers.
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.
Wootz Steel: Infantry and cavalry attacks ignore armor.
Civilization bonuses
Receive 200 wood when advancing to the next Age.
Fishermen, Oyster gatherers, and Fishing Ships carry +15.
Barracks technologies cost -50%.
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.
