Lol, yeah…oh well. Anyways, this more or less addressed their core weakness already imo. The speed boost for militia in general, plus feudal arson, is gonna make dravidians pretty scary. Not to mention the increased prevalence of infantry UUs making Urumis even better.
Curious to see how this all plays out…but it’ll definitely take a few months for everything to settle.
Also don’t forget EA. They are now just 5 gold expensive over Knight.
Well, it seems they added husbandry because people were asking for mahuts to be added. I think its a boost to their elephant play. Personally ‘Mahuts’ would have signalled a clear buff to elephants. I’m not sure why they persist with medical corps. At least the effect could have been changed to heal units within LOS of TC and docks.
Its a minor buff and Urumi will not play any role. I see more fixes needed.
True, Now you can set your build order like a Knight rush to push out elephant archers. However I still feel a civ bonus to reduce gold cost by 50% will be needed to make Elephant play possible. With the current siege discount, scorpions are cheaper to build than elephant archers and they are quite upgradeable due to ballistics.
It’s a two-pronged boost to their elephants, really, since it lets their scout cavalry be faster and better able to counter monks. It’s not optimal, I’ll admit, but oh well. I’d still rather see this than see Medical Corps removed.
Thats the problem. When they improved ‘medical corps’, it seemed like they were going to make elephants playable for Dravidians. Peoople expected husbandry or some speed boost otherwise cost discount on gold or even trash elephant. But they got a siege discount which made trying out elephants miss out on the wood discount bonus. Now its again back to elephants play. Hope they their make elephants make up for Knights as well as Siege vulnerabilities or make siege their go to option in castle age. You can’t do both. No civ can, even Khmer.
Yes get Husbandaryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!
for light cavalry and battle elephant.
Thats a good change and more needed for elephants than light cav. They could have added “Plate barding armour”, “Parthian tactics” and removed “Ring archer armour”. Dravidians would have gotten better versions of Siege elephants, elephant archers and battle elephants. I don’t see bloodlines as necessary for Dravidians. Currently, Dravidians rely too much on skirms for late game. If elephants were viable for them, then a clear win condition is possible.
@KHANATTILA I think husbandry is more consequential than any buff to Urumi since the unit is locked behind a castle and too squishy to carry the civ.
I wonder why they kept medical corps. Elephants definitely don’t need HP support unless they are fighting other more tanky elephants. Regeneration is useful for infantry and vills especially for Dravidians. I wonder if the effect is modified, it may be useful.
Medical corps → “Units within LOS of TCs heal @ 30 HP per min”
Remove → “Herbal Medicine”
Add → “Fervor”
With the husbandry upgrade, Dravidians can play closed map better for relic control
OR
Medical Corps → Vills heal @ 30 HP per minute & work 10% faster
We have reached the point where all civilisations have Husbandry, with the exception of the Teutons and Vikings. Cumans have a better free version, and of course Aztecs, Incas and Mayans have not. So reducing the discourse, the only civilisation that does not have it are the Vikings, without compensation.
I don’t like it. I would have preferred no Husbandry and another compensation for Dravidians. At this point for consistency I would also give Husbandry to the Vikings.
I think people underrate medical corps. It’s one of the more powerful healing effects out there, and it’s on the tankiest units out there - which gives more time for it to work. People seem to think an elephant needs to regenerate all its health to have the tech be useful.
But in reality, every elephant regenerating is generating the equivalent of around 18 resources per minute. With 10 elephants the tech is paying for itself in 2.8 minutes. And you don’t have to do a single thing for it to work.
By contrast, getting Gold Mining with 10 gold miners has a payback time of 5.11 minutes.
The problem seems to me to be that people can’t SEE the direct benefits, because it’s a lot harder to see what DOESN’T happen versus what does. If a Georgian mass of CA doesn’t get wiped out by a mangonel shot you feel this big surge of dopamine because you think that happened because of your regen. But an elephant archer can tank like 6 mangonel shots. So if you tank 7 instead, or 8, it’s not anywhere near as noticeable.
This is the reason for Dravidians having husbandry.
I prefered giving Dravidians ‘Mahuts’ to replace ‘medical corps’. But devs have again done a half-baked fix. If devs need Dravidian elephants to be useful, they need a discount for castle age and plate barding armour for imperial age.
The reason Dravidians had no bloodlines an husbandry was because they were modelled after Vikings. But that was incorrect. They don’t have bonuses like free wheel borrow and handcart to carry the civ. Against vikings, it is the opponent who is normally striving to do damage before viking economy runs ahead. Dravidians are no where near as powerful. They don’t manage to get a vill or tech lead. They are similar to japanese with this one early bonus and pretty much nothing else on land all trough the game. The need to do damage like magyars to stay on top of opponent despite their tech tree weakness… So their hudbandry and plate barding armour should have been given to push towards battle elephant and siege elephant play. The 25% faster firing already pushes them to EAs. But the unit easily dies to skirms.
They have good archers. Only Cav archer will get benefit with this change.
If Dravidian player is making 10 elephants, then he has forgotten to go imp.
Same. Especially when the tech is entirely based on a fake wikipedia page.
Now their cost is tweaked and easier to afford. So I think Dravidians will be decently good with all these changes.
My point being, it’s got a very fast payback time even with small numbers, and is more valuable than people might think - especially earlier on, when individual elephants are less likely to get oneshot by concentrated fire. For example, the payback time on it is just 5 minutes with three armored elephants, which is a perfectly reasonable amount to get in castle age.
Most people just don’t get it, and then complain it’s useless when they haven’t even played with it, which they didn’t do because they say it’s useless! That’s just a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Granted that the only civilisations that make me alter in the entire game are the Armenians and the Georgians, where it seems obvious to me that the person responsible for that dlc would rather die than admit to having messed up the design, the Dravidians seem really easy to finish.
True. Infantry and ships civilisation.
Same. They are, by design, a civilitation on foot.
They have infantry that costs half as much to improve. A UT that makes them ignore enemy amrmour. Arbalesters with all the upgrades and skirmishers that attack faster. This should be their identity.
What the heck has to do with elephants recovering life or archers on elephants attacking faster I don’t know.
360 food, 285 gold. Considering 4 food = 5 gold = 6 wood in Castle Age, you can get 3 mangonel and still some left over. I think it is better to invest into mangonel as they will be a real thread to opponents skirmishers and mangonels which a Dravidians player will face lot.
Don’t forget Mangonels can be converted, while Armored Elephants cannot. Going Mangonels opens you up to monks, against which the only real answer is Atonement monks of your own - but Dravidians don’t have particularly great monks, either.
I’ve won games with dravidian elephant archers. They are much better in late game than skirms are (though getting the gold for the elephant archers can be an issue). Dravidian skirms are top-tier, but they are still a trash unit - spammable in late game, useful as a counter unit, but otherwise lacking in power.
HP regen on elephants is useful: it means that they’re practically immune to chip damage. Some examples from my own experience - a mass of elephant archers tank a mangonel shot. With hp regen, they’ll all start regenerating (with 10 elephant archers, that’s 300 hp/minute. And it could easily be more than 10 elephants). Without it, the injury is basically permanent (unless you spend a prolonged time under monk healing, which is often a significant loss of momentum and requires fragile/gold-heavy monks). Another example: pushing underneath an enemy castle against defending skirms. The opponent could focus fire with the skirms, but as it’s post imp, they might not be able to afford the action economy. And the castle likely won’t be focusing on the same unit as the skirms, which results in additional healing. And while Skirms counter elephant archers, elephant archers still trade pop-effectively against them (even under a hostile castle), and pushing underneath the castle allows you to forcibly stop repairs or destroy enemy BBCs (making it much easier to take the castle down).
Elephant archers require 70 gold per unit (soon to be 80). Medical Corps requires 200 gold. It basically only needs to heal 3 (soon to be 2.5) elephant archers worth of hp to be worthwhile. With elite upgrade, that’s 840 (soon 700) hp - less than 3 in-game minutes if you have 10 injured elite elephant archers. And a post-imp elephant archer mass should have much more than 10 elephants.
The basic point is, with medical corps, I feel a lot more comfortable pushing with dravidian elephant archers. There are still things to watch out for (a mass of mangonels would be enough to justify a retreat until I can snipe them with BBCs), but I can take fights that would otherwise not be cost effective because I know the elephant archers will survive and heal afterwards. And the tech isn’t all that expensive either.
Dravidians, Bengalis, and Burmese are all elephant civs (and Dravidians and Burmese are both also infantry civs). Armenians are a DLC civ. Gurjaras are another elephant civ (one with a weird start/playstyle). Romans are a DLC civ. Koreans are the first civ here that are neither an elephant civ nor a DLC civ, and Koreans don’t have a power problem (they’re really strong in their niche). Meanwhile on the other side, the most popular civs are (in order right now) Mongols, Franks, Magyars, Persians, Khmer, Spanish, Huns. All civs that have a strong scout rush and great cavalry options (even after excluding elephants).
I’ll also note that I’m about 1000 ELO (with an eapm around 20), and that I do find the wood bonus to be quite useful. 1000 ELO is close to the point where build orders become somewhat mandatory. In my opinion, if a player has enough skill to get gold on the early eco art of war, they have enough skill to use the wood bonus effectively. It’s rather easy to use it to pay for a stables/archery range/blacksmith or even just some extra farms. And even easier on water maps.
I am not saying Dravidians is the only civ with low playrate. I am saying the difference in playrate with the next lowest playrate civ Bengalis is 16% which is so bad no pair of subsequent civs save the mongols and franks have such a dispaity against other civs. These numbers are far worse and cannot be just explained away. The civ is just not viable of being in the AOE2 roster of a potential casual player. Just win rate does not explain it. The design is plain annoying to work with. The civ has no clear win strategy conditions and EAs are definitely not dynamic enough to play a jack of all trades role. They don’t have dynamic economy bonuses like meso civs to ignore their military handicaps. I know franks, mongols, huns can keep spamming stable units all game long and is easy for casual players to play them. But casual players also play meso civs, water civs on land maps despite their uniqueness. But Dravidians are not played as much which means the design is a failure. With the civ now as part of core game, we can’t explain it away as DLC.
If I have 10 elephants pushing as Dravidians under TC fire, then probably opponent has already failed to stop me. I can use any unit of my choosing to finish him off. The tech in castle age makes ZERO sense.
At this stage of game in castle age, armoured elephants don’t have woots steel. They are ordinary. If devs had given ‘mahouts’ instead of husbandry. Then your scenario makes sense. Armoured elephants could have been used as a surprise strategy.
Yup! Fortified church and mule cart are abominations. Georgians is just a pay to win civ. Dravidians however have very different issues. But they can be fixed by bonus change to make the civ get benefits earlier like vikings.
Dravidian niche should be elephants or foot archers. Not both. But devs have given them a siege bonus and now focus is again on elephant speed.
To me, Dravidians are an archer civ, and have a variety of other units that work in tandem with their archers. If you start with archers, you have an answer for every enemy counter.
With that in mind, I actually really like that Elephant Archers now get Husbandry, because it really ends up being more about being able to mix elephant archers and archers without slowing down your archer mass.
Now you can go for almost anything in tandem with your archers. Elephant archers to help counter siege or soak up damage from cavalry, skirms to help against stronger enemy archers, infantry to counter enemy skirms and cavalry, siege to deal with buildings…
Honestly, the biggest error I think a lot of people make is trying to go straight for skirm vs skirm in the midgame.
It seems to make sense, because if you go for archers you’re basically playing with no bonuses, but that opens you straight up to their weaknesses to cavalry and siege, during a stage of the game where one mistake loses you the game. Dravidians are far better off going for Longswords, since your enemy’s only real answer is archers of their own, and you’ve got like three good answers for enemy archers.
Mangonels alone will trash your long swords + archer/skirm combo. If scorpions are added, it’ll be even worse once ballistics is researched. Unless you have a speed boost on militia-line, the civ can’t work with infantry past feudal age. A bonus on elephants like 50% discount on gold cost can make them viable for castle age.
If this has to work, Archers need a 15% movement speed boost as unique tech to replace ‘medical corps’. ‘Hand cannoneer’ can be removed to make sure there are no overlapses with bohemians.
