Why are we still trying to give them as a tech what Khmer get for free?
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Because from the Game Design prospective it is a non-issue. Let me give you 2 well-accepted examples, and 1 to be fixed:
- The Huns have âStables 20% faster as a team bonusâ. Franks have to pay for âStables work 40% faster (Chivalry)â.
- The Magyars have âMounted archers are trained 25% fasterâ as a team bonus. Cumans have to pay for âScout Cavalry line, Steppe Lancers, and Cavalry Archers are trained 100% faster (Steppe Husbandry)â.
- And finally the case of the Georgians versus the Berbers who have to pay for âCamel units regenerate 15 HP/min (Maghrebi Camels).â And if the Georgians did not have the bonus in Feudal as well, almost nobody would probably complain.
So if even the Khmer have âBattle Elephants move 10% fasterâ or â20% fasterâ in the future without Husbandry, this would still be a non-issue. Just differentiate it a bit and adding Armored Elephants is the right trick.
Obviously Dravidian is never going to be a top tier civ on Arabia to compete with the likes of Mongols, Khmer. Against slower paced civs, they can get more value from maa rush due to the upcoming changes. And like I said with such changes, it could potentially move up 5-10 places but certainly wonât become a top civ all of a sudden. One strong food eco benefit can fix it, or wootz steel as a free effect (PS to others: its +3 or +4 attack against most units even in imp, so donât over react) or some strong siege bonus can fix the civ.
This isnât a change in the right direction because it makes them stronger on water, dock will go up in 3rd min itself, 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.
Iâd prefer they get wootz steel as a barrack tech in castle age or as a free effect. This bonus is good but it might suit some other civ with good cavalry units better. Something like Sicilians or Bulgarians.
While I agree Heraâs opinions might not be always accurate, in this case heâs talking from a context of switching units. If you try open maa and switch into archers or skirms, it will delay your farm addition significantly. And if you delay range addition and keep playing only maa, youâre almost guaranteed to lose as Iâve already explained several times before. The food invested will be way too high and you can never do that much damage in Arabia and similar maps. Right now even 1 or 2 archers are enough to defend, post changes it can potentially increase to 3-5 but thatâs still good enough to defend the compact feudal base.
Again a poor assumption that scout player will take unfavorable fights. He has the faster moving unit, he dictates the fight. Ideally heâd cut maa that are on the way and take a fight once he gets 3+ numbers advantage.
Its a highly valuable change but 100% sure it will still require skirm or archer+spear follow-up to fetch value and that too with a selected list of civs that have a strong early game.
Yes this is a high value change as well. With the change you can now go light cav and snipe the monks.
Honestly this is a terrible idea. Even with the barrack tech discount it takes a lot of food to make the switch. Its far better to go imp and get bracer + canons or now that they get husbandry, do light cav. Never do a slow moving infantry or more than 1 elephant to counter skirms. Karambits are fine especially since malay get free armor, eagles and ghulam are great because they donât cost much food but no militia line units in mid castle age. They donât die to skirms but that doesnât imply they are good at countering it. If knights and scorps are mixed, the outcome will be even worse.
Those are examples of paying for something better. Without husbandry, a 20% speed bonus is worse than husbandry and a 10% speed bonus. Smh my head.
Medical Corps is a very good bonus already, itâs just underrated because its effects arenât as visually obvious. Changing that for a mediocre speed bonus would only be a nerf. Thereâs no reason to change it, other than personal preference. And I prefer it stay the same.
That neglects the fact that Infantry are much less countered by the other things. That said, I do agree that making the swap is more difficult than it should be - but thatâs already less the case with Dravidians, people just arenât accustomed to their discount. Regardless, thatâll change with the new patch.
I think youâll be pretty surprised at just how much impact the extra 0.06 speed is going to have on the infantry vs skirm matchup. It seems pretty small, but it means the speed difference after Squires goes from 0.03 to 0.096 - more than tripling it.
This makes longswords a ridiculously hard counter to skirms.
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 donât 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 donât 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.
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.
Dude, donât 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 donât 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?
Bro, I donât know why they should be nerfed since they donât really get many other strong bonuses except the market. Heavy camel with 25% HP makes up for lack of any Knight line upgrades.
Remove what exactly bro?
I did not like husbaandry either. But if that is coming, then Elephants donât 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.
I donât like these bonus attack civ bonuses. These are band-aid fixes and donât 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.
Yup! âPahanâ sounds good.
I wanted to add a footnote here. This is an excerpt from the italian buff I had proposed.
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.
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.
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.
They are a water civ. So I donât 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.
The +25% in Castle Age is a bit too much, in the Gurjaras vs Saracens clash the former are very much in trouble. If it was progressive 15% in Castles / 25% in Imperial it would be better.
Skirmishers and attack 25% faster. When you try to play the Aztecs against the Dravidians you feel like giving gg after 3 min of feudal.
It was just not to copy the Khmers. But if you want, you can give the bonus to all the Elephants, since in the end the Dravidians have to pay for it.
If devs are going to make scouts part of dravidian play, then the better design would be to have a bonus on them starting in feudal. If needed, the barracks discount can be tuned down to 33% and extended to siege upgrades as well just like italians. The tech tree weakness of slow monks + slow light cav have existed since the civ was released. As a result, Dravidians are the worst civ wrt to gathering relics which becomes an acute problem in closed maps. Now it feels like Dravidians should go for a stable in early castle age instead of siege workshop. I donât understand what prompted devs to plug this design hole in particular especially since the community was of the opionion medical corps needs to be replaced by âmahoutsâ. I acknowledge the community is also of the opionion that dravidians have lot of tech tree holes contributing to their poor playrate. But half-fixes like adding husbandry will not suffice.
A difference of 0.01 tps for even elephants is not a big deal.
Portugese get carrack as a tech for all 8 ships. Romans get +1/+1 armour as free bonus for galley line and Dromons.
Dravidians with mahouts tech will benefit 3 elephant types. Khmer with 20% faster battle elephants wil be for one type of unit.
These two designs feel balanced and appropriate.
Georgians have 4 types of cavalry getting free regenration bonus while Dravidians paying with a tech locked behind castle to have regeneration on 3 units that are as viable as infantry is not proper design. When âMountain royalsâ DLC was introduced and âmahoutsâ was removed, Devs should have given it to Dravidians. Georgians could have taken the free regeneration since it was regarded as a useless tech for Dravidians. I remember T90, Hera, mbl and various other players calling it useless as well. If pros donât find any use, I doubt the average joe will find any use for the tech.
Yup! That should be fine.
Thats wierd. I think its more of the skirm meta than Dravidians. Against meso civs, I normally try to do FC into siege spam as Dravidians. With Eagles getting a training time buff and aztec 15% faster training. It should be fine I feel. M@A buff might throw a spanner into that. Devs have always made fixes to Aztecs whenever their winrate dipped. Maybe the new meta for Aztecs will revolve around Jaguars backed by skirms.
I think battle elephants should be included since its a paid tech and not free bonus. It should be balanced as they lack all upgrades.
To make a summary, I believe âhusbandryâ addition is not going to make dravidian light cav or elephants any more useful than now. The gameplay will still revolve around M@A â archers â siege mainly because of their 200 wood bonus and then 33% siege discount. I wish to rework that meta. The least I expected for this patch was âmahoutsâ replacing âMedical corpsâ fpr Dravidians.
The basic changes Dravidians need in terms of bonus and unique tech changes are:
This will given room to add any civ bonus later based on how light cav with husbandry plays out.
And
Medical corps â Mahouts with 20% faster elephants
To make elephants useful in 1vs1.
That used to be the case - I suspect it may not be anymore. The big thing that has changed is the viability of the militia line in late feudal age. They can now hit Castle with a significant numbers advantage, which means knight+skirm will lose, not win.
Good thing theyâre making them way more accessible early on, then?
I still like my repairs/healing bonus for siege better. That makes them better for duels while retaining the approximate effect of the discount.
It is when youâre sacrificing a good UT for it, and youâre paying for it while they get it much more cheaply. Seriously, itâs a terrible idea, sorry.
Yeah, well, theyâre wrong. Not really any other way to say it. The problem is, theyâre looking at it like itâs supposed to full heal the unit, but thatâs not how elephants work. How often do you ever fully heal an elephant? Basically never. Itâs an eco bonus, and if you approach it in that light, itâs basically as strong as double-bit axe.
Itâs twice as strong as the Georgians bonus, and is extremely cheap for a UT. Itâs very good, if you just try to work it into your gameplan.
If Dravidians need anything, itâs something to encourage them to use their elephant rams, so their gameplan flows better. Hence my repairs/healing for siege bonus idea.
In Arena I have no problem with the matchup, probably the reduction from 60 to 50 seconds in the production of eagles will help to produce enough eagles not to make spamming skirms a huge problem in Arabia. Although I would honestly raise the creation time of skirms in feudal by 2 seconds.
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The discussion was about late castle age and those units die to almost everything at that stage. Knights with proper numbers or a hill, scorpions, CA. Its not a good unit for that stage at all. You try to kill opponentâs skirms with longswords and opponent just pulls skirms back to their base and add CA or crossbows or some scorps. Upgrades on tc, ballistics will just make the longswords a complete waste of resources.
No it wonât. People donât switch to longswords because the unit is unusable and not because theyâre not used to the barrack tech discount. When you have 70+ vills spending even whole resources on upgrades isnât too difficult but you wont get much value from it. When opponent has scorps, ranged units or cavalry units with upgrades, longswords arenât going to fetch much value. You can pop up from the fog of war and kill a few houses, chase some skirms away thatâs about it.
In some game try to surround a bunch of War wagons or plumed archers with Teuton knights. The marginal speed difference is not good enough to surround and kill ranged units. Its just good enough to run away or push back units like skirms.
The main change thatâs going to happen post patch for miltia line is the feudal usage. With increased speed plus berries and gold potentially moving further away from tc, better chance to kill 1 or 2 villagers. Once the opponent gets 2-3 archers, theyâd not die and run to regroup with skirms. Going longswords in early castle age is still going to be situational and not a mainstream option. Of course, itâll be very impactful but youâll probably be seeing them 1 in every 15 or 20 games instead of the current 1 in 100 games.
No it doesnât. It just makes them not vulnerable to skirms.
Exactly. Any civ that misses cavalry upgrades gets an additional bonus on their ranged unit or an insanely good long lasting economic bonus. Given that they donât even have an alternative for knight or CA, the civâs land eco bonus should be insanely powerful to stay ahead and be competent.
Exactly even if maa somehow becomes meta, these civs have much better bonuses to play maa compared to Dravidians.
I hate that unit too and agree its flawed by design and stats. However this patch might see a few more games where 5-10 elephant archers are mixed with crossbows. Obviously not to take out mangonels but to tank and now that they get husbandry they can run away from skirms.
Yes this would be a very good and useful change to that civ. I proposed something similar to this but in a different way - Military units take -20% damage. Now that they donât have knights, all other fragile units will become harder to kill, so more value from such weak army.
The thing is water fights snowball hard. Once lost its extremely difficult to comeback and 400+ wood in an instant could be too much on water. The goal here is to specifically improve them on land maps where theyâre abysmal without impacting water gameplay where theyâre good. Its quite common to have very little farms in water maps, so something related to farming should be the way imo. Either farmers and fishermen dropping off more food or farmers generating a trickle of wood or gold miners generating a trickle of food. Given they have units like Elephant archers and urumi swordsman such a bonus will be more fitting.
Their strength on water is not the dock pop space bonus but the amount of wood they get in an instant and the possibilities it opens up in a water map. Queue galleys/fire ships, add tcs, land with a siege workshop. Too many possibilities if you get like 450 wood in an instant. I do believe they need to get more eco benefits but something continuous and long term rather than such a high instant bonus.
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Donât forget, you add your own counter units, too. Thatâs my whole point; yes, they will absolutely counter you, but the counters they make to counter longswords are much better for you than the counters they will make to counter mass skirms.
If you go mass skirms, theyâll go knights, and youâll go pikes, and now youâre going for a double-trash comp into gold units, and they get ONE good engagement and youâre done. You pull your pikes a little too far back, you get distracted, and bam; you lose your skirms, you then lose your pikes to their second unit type, and now youâve got nothing and theyâve got an extremely powerful composition, and you lose the game. Iâve seen it a hundred times.
By contrast, if you go for archers and they go for skirms and you go for longswords and they go for xbows, THEN you can go for skirms(and counter everything they have) or if you managed to take out their skirms first you can go for elephant archers, or you can go for siegeâŠall sorts of options.
See what I mean? Itâs counter-intuitive because itâs not AS strong a counter as knights, but that doesnât mean it doesnât play into the dravidian tech tree. And thatâll be even more the case post-patch. Seriously, just go into the scenario editor, give the AI a handful of longswords, use a trigger to buff their speed to 1.056, and try to out-micro that with skirms. Youâll be amazed.
Dravidian player opens xbows, opponent opens skirms, Dravidian player mixes skirms because thereâs only 1 upgrade to do, the elite skirmisher upgrade and its food cost is low. When the other player goes knights, initially its fine, because Dravidian player can add monks and use some xbows behind the skirms. Knights become a problem after 80+ vills when they can be produced in numbers. If you respond by making longswords instead of pikemen, you have to spam A LOT of them and the knight player wont take a fight, will just stop production and go imp. You wonât get much value in late castle age with longswords raids. They got 0.06 speed boost not 0.6.
Yes I see and always its been a theoretical situation like the infamous Teutonic knights counter Paladin hypothesis. Longswords and slow melee units are good when you managed to block the opponentâs gold and fight has to happen in one spot. Like its Golden lakes or golden swamp you have taken over the middle, walled off your base.
I can see what youâre trying to convey but this is a poor option for illustration. AI is worse than human players as it doesnât know to surround and kill ranged units.
Of course, making it harder for skirms to kite and kill is one of the major value additions but its like better value in a situation where longswords is already an optimal choice. Like playing against meso civs or playing in a map with very limited safe gold but ample shore fish. Its more or less a cornered option for Dravidians and not something that fits. Longswords are a good fit for Knight civs up against camel civ like Gurjaras. Or powerful CA civs. Some kind of a tech tree which automatically forces opponent to stay on skirms.
Would the Urumi Swordsmen be overpowered if they had 1 pierce armor?
Doesnât quite work that way. If you open archers and they respond with skirms, theyâll have pure skirms while you have skirms and xbows - so youâll lose to a pure skirm composition, even with your rate of fire advantage. They have no need to go for knights at all, youâll just lose.
So youâre forced to go pure skirms - and THEN they make the knights, and you lose, because you donât have the mass to take knights out effectively so youâre hard countered. So youâre basically forced to make pikes too, but that eats even more of your res! So you make exactly one mistake, lose your skirms, and itâs GG.
Look, we can work our way through each series.
If we open with skirms, they go knights, and we go pikes, and then we make one mistake and we die.
If we open with skirms, they go knights, and we go monks, we make one mistake and we die.
If we open with archers and they go skirms and we go skirms+archers, we just get out-countered, and die.
If we open with archers, they go skirms, and we go siege, they go for redemption monks and we die. Or they go siege too and we make one mistake and we die. Or they go for knights and snipe the mangonel and we die. Monks are the hardest counter, but we die regardless. Itâs at least a better than fair fight if they donât have redemption, but one on a clock; without a long-term eco bonus, Dravidians need to seal the deal in a few minutes at most - and they usually canât do that, because the enemy knows theyâre on a clock.
But what if we go archers, they go skirms, and we go longswords? They goâŠarchers? Into an existing archer mass? When we can just make a few elephant archers? What aboutâŠknights? Into mass xbows? Monks? To convert what? Siege? Siege(possibly scorps) is probably the best counter here - but our siege is cheaper, not just to build but also to repair, and knights arenât on the table to snipe them anymore due to the existing archer mass.
Itâs not about raiding with longswords or anything like that - itâs about forcing them into a situation where they canât win the game by taking one good engagement.
After this patch open MAA â Archer, they go skirms and you go skirms+EA. Hopefully the cost reduction from 80f to 60f will really make them affordable. Now if they add monk+knight, you go pike. Now I think pike+skirm+EA is the best combo for Dravidians. And there will always be 1-2 mangonel.
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You have to mix siege if its only skirms. And since thereâll be addition of tcs and eco, thereâs not going to be a situation where youâre forced to fight immediately in early castle age. If you did 20 xbows and 15 skirms, opponent did 30 skirms, you can just pull back and add scorps. Cavalry switch isnât going to be instantaneous after doing that many skirms and ranged unit upgrades. A few knights can be handled by monks. Until that stage Dravidians are fine.
This is the issue in mid game for Dravidians. Lack of options against knight monk siege push. Things will improve a bit now due to the availability of husbandry for light cav but this problem might still persist. If you think about a civ like Vikings, Malay or Mayans, they use the superior eco advantage and go imp fast. This is why sometimes Iâve advocated for a stronger economy. Once you pull far ahead and hit imp, all these scenarios can be handled with bracer+chemistry ranged units. Or the other option is Tower related bonuses. Lets say heated shot impacts against cavalry, guard tower defense can be perfect against a flood of knights. Last option would be to make Dravidian units harder to kill, -20% damage taken by military units. Or siege +20% hp as suggested by @benithisrael
Theyâll laugh, be very happy because they know theyâve won. Theyâd just distract you a few times with cavalry units, build a defensive castle at home, keep the skirms at home and build up to imp. Its already mid castle age, both players have 70+ vills. You can do this only if opponent is overly greedy and trying to go imp with very little military.
Longswords even with 1.056 speed are not going to fetch any value right away in small numbers. Youâd have to do 30+ of them, get +2, gambesons and then move forward. By the time you reach the main base there will be a castle and the opponent will be half way to imperial age. At best you can force the opponent to stay inside the walls till imp. Thatâs about it. The patch moderately buffs Dravidian feudal maa opening and their damage potential from arson, husbandry for light cav and lower cost for elephant archers in some situations. Late castle age longswords will still be limited against a few matchups.
Doesnât quite work that way, Iâm afraid. What do you think your enemyâs doing during this? Remember, Dravidians donât have an eco bonus other than the extra wood, so the longer you wait, the further behind you fall. In practice, you might start out with a ~3 unit advantage, but by the time youâre at such large numbers, theyâll be equal or ahead - especially since theyâre going for pure skirms, which means theyâre going to absolutely clobber your archer+skirm comp. The only way youâll beat pure skirms is if you go pure skirms yourself - only they have knights and you do not.
Their skirms are more than capable of handling your monks, as well. Knight+Skirm will win vs skirm+monk like 10 times out of 10. And, of course, if you try to go skirm+monk+siege, youâll be even weaker because youâre spreading your resources across even fewer of each type. You wonât have enough monks, youâll make one mistake and lose them(especially since you donât get Fervor), and then the knights clean up the rest and itâs GG.
Youâre missing the core problem here. All of these strategies have really, really weak lynchpins. Lose that one weak aspect and you lose the whole game.
Donât you see that if youâve done this, youâre winning the game? Youâre moving past your point of greatest weakness with almost no resistance. Itâs not about trying to win the game with the longswords, itâs about not losing the game.
Dravidians have a very decent lategame, thanks to their powerful infantry, elephant archers, and trash. Wootz Steel, super-skirms, regenerating elephants, theyâre very heavily inclined towards trash+population efficiency. If you can get to imp without already being far behind, you have a decent shot.
longswords seems to be really bad against knight+siege tho, esp with nowadays pulling weak knight to heal is a thing (i.e. LS getting much worse trade with knights)
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I feel like people donât necessary view that from the right perspective. The problem is, sure youâre not going to get the sorts of really good trades youâd get with a hard counter like pikes, but youâre still going to trade decently. At least at my elo, pulling individual knights off to heal isnât something we can usually pull off consistently. Maybe that changes at higher skill levels, but even if so, thatâs basically pushing them back.
People will happily take a close fight between two equal armies of the same units, like knights vs knights or whatever, knowing that even if they lose theyâll at least diminish the other side enough to give them a chance to rebuild, but if you lose your longswords doing something similar people somehow take it to mean theyâre terrible and got no value.
I know it doesnât work, they donât have an eco bonus and thatâs the reason why they have been a bottom 5 civ ever since their release. However that is their win condition. Use the timing advantage to do damage with a mix of ranged units and if you see more skirms, just make use of the 200 wood bonus to add tc sooner and hope things will work out.
Yes, yes and yes. This is a weak defense and thatâs why theyâre a weak civ, absolute worst 40+ ranked throughout the 3 years since their release. However the 40% wins they get is also when this defense somehow works out. Maybe against other weak infantry civs or civs with 0 eco bonus that are slower to castle age. But if you propose switching to longswords in early castle age to counter the opponentâs skirms, that 40% will further shrink to 25-30% working out only against meso civs and a few others like Malay or other civ without bloodlines which wonât go for cavalry upgrades.
You wonât lose right away or in the next few mins. But now that youâve invested a ton of resources on longswords while your opponent added economy, you are on a timer to do damage. And longswords canât get enough damage done worth their cost and upgrades. None of the slow melee units can do that. So eventually your opponent will be imp, get upgraded army and kill you.
They might take a hill near your base and camp their knights and monks, maybe a few scorps behind. Even if you spam 40 longswords and push back, youâve invested a ton of more resources to just push them back. Nearly impossible to hit their base and deal enough damage in such situations.
Thatâs because if you win the knight vs knight fight due to better upgrades or conversions, the left over knights can lead to a snowball. Even otherwise youâd have spent resources killing the opponent knights. However in a longswords vs knight+scorp battle youâre only going to reduce hp of a dozen or more knights. All of them can get healed back to full hp. Losing 20 longswords to kill 4-5 knights isnât worth the resources youâve spent.