I started doing some tests in order to see how overpowered (or not) the unit is by making many comparisons with already existing units and within the context of the Dravidian civilization throughout Castle Age and Imperial Age. What kind of tests should I try? Type suggestions about interesting tests/methodologies below if you want.
Maybe I will publish my conclusions on Reddit or something.
Play 1000 games with it, and then tell us how well it worked out. 
Outside of the obvious competitive aspect ofc. Ideal tests are not a replacement, are complementary.
Also the sotl video on them share good light on how they function
The thing is in the context of the Dravidian’s tech tree it could very well be balanced.
But that’s separate from whether you should be designing a civ which is effectively able to straight up nuke 95% of units in melee and create pyrrhic victories for the other 5%. The unit even leaves cataphracts with pyrrhic victories.
I mean you can balance any civ around a bonkers OP unit, just make the tech tree extremely bad at countering whatever counters the OP unit. In the dravidian’s case scorpions are clearly something they aren’t great at countering when compared to pretty much every other civ.
All these players so myopically focused on balance are missing the forest for the trees. There are tons of ways you can balance a game but not all of them make for interesting playstyles. So the question is what kind of dynamic for the Urumi makes for interesting playstyles.
For the length and quick response it is good, but I think he didn’t touch on many important points.
I agree with you, I have the impression that the Urumi is a really strong melee unit (not the even the best, there are at least other 3 that are better and more rounded imo) but that is really necessary because the tech tree sucks hard in land maps, and they aren’t that great before post imp. It has a clear role as the closest thing the Dravidians have that resembles a power unit, with a clear strength, but also a clear weakness and trade off (worse against ranged units and at raiding). Whether or not they should be that good in melee is debatable (personally I think it’s ok) but experience will tell. I’ve found that Leiciae are way better in melee combat compared to the Urumi once fully upgraded, similar in melee prowess without relics, while being much faster. I think the Urumi might be ok.
65 food is too much for what Urumi Sword gives actually, Urumi would be useful in Post Imperial Age only but it still die to archers easily besides it is totally useless in raiding. Dravidians also doesn’t have any raiding unit in the late game.
The unit will be like release coustillier. I don’t like nuking urea. It’s extremely snowballs which makes losing against these super frustrating and unfun. I rather lose in a slow fun fight than a Blick of an unfair second
I don’t think this unit is OP.
The civ has basically no stable, and the archery range is average. The only thing they offer on land maps, is this unit, champs and halbs.
For the unit itself, you need a castle, for which you need to mine stone.
For the armor negation, you also need the castle.
So if you prevent this civ from having stone, they get no UU, regular champs and halbs.
Long story short, without stone, the civ is arguably the weakest one, from a military point of view.
FU arbs - am I joke to you? (Nevermind the best skirms)
Along with a faster/better eco than a few civs
Either way it’s still an issue, does this weird tech tree and situationally OP UU make for a fun game? OR is it maybe better to tweak them? Too early to tell.
So they aren’t so oppressive in some situations but also aren’t so pigeonholed in others (forced into arbs, screwed without stone)
Still very early to tell though.
Im still doing the math on how viable full MAA into LS might be due to savings and throwing the free wood into rax and/or BS
FU Arbs have also, japs, turks, magyars, byz and many others. None of those civs are OP.
Without a castle (to have access to the UU and UT), the dravidian military is generic, except for the skirm unit, which to be honest, is not the unit which win most of the games. I don’t think skirmisher rush is popular strategy.
Urumi speed seems to be 1.05 like Huskarls and Berserks, if it was 1.3 like Eagles it would have been another story.
Totally not OP, imho.
You do you.
I’m not going to argue with someone that thinks arbs that are better than Aztec or Vikings coupled to a good eco, are somehow “the weakest civ”
Especially when you are putting words in my mouth
But Aztecs and Vikings has much better eco than this Dravidians besides thumb ring is late Castle/ Imperial Age tech. Missing thumb ring doesn’t hurt Aztecs/Vikings until Imperial Age due to high cost.
I can’t also see that what usage of Urumi in Castle Age with this 65 food cost, this unit is only useful in late Imperial Age.
Vikings/Aztecs die in late game due to lacking cavalry in late game. Dravidians would die in late game as well but it hasn’t early game power like Aztecs and Vikings.
Als i recall urumi in castle are like a mix of longswordsman still weak to archers and the main insentive should be to counter them with archer but then again there are locked behind 650 stone and with enough scouting you could see if they make urumi and go for archers
So no They are not op imo
By this logic, no infantry UU except the Huskarl could ever be OP because they require a castle and are still weak to archers. Yes, it has the standard weakness that 90% of infantry share to archers and siege, but when they’re good (i.e. they can reach a unit to attack), they’re stupidly good, and even put supposedly specialist infantry of other civs (Teutonic Knights, Jaguar, Samurai) to shame, and do so more cheaply. This is the definition of being overpowered. Another way of looking at it is that the previously mentioned other unique units have the same weaknesses, are more expensive, and perform worse across a range of contexts. There’s no two ways about it - either the Urumi is overpowered, or the other unique infantry just suck (which is a possibility, and I think some of them kinda do). So yes, relative to the baseline of other infantry and infantry UUs, the Urumi is currently overpowered. Not quite to the level of pre-nerf TLK Steppe Lancers, but in some situations it performs almost like an infantry version of the SL.
I think that if anyone, pre-expansion, had argued for the existence of such a unit (cheap, charge and splash attack, beats almost everything it can reach), that suggestion would have been universally panned. Sure, it’s within the context of one of the weaker civs (although the eco is not bad - pretty similar to Japanese early-midgame eco), but they definitely have options to cover the Urumi’s weaknesses. Urumi/Skirms will be a hard comp to deal with for civs without strong cav/siege
I agree that the faster firing skirms will probably be more of use for the dravidians than the urumi.
Try to create a multiplayer scenario of 1v1 or 2v2. Put enough military buildings and common imperial age units for that civ composition and set to high resources. For example, if you’re creating a 1v1 scenario Dravidians vs Franks, give yourself 80 elite urumi swordsmen, give the frank player 60 paladin. Start from post-imp and test (don’t know if its possible to test multiplayer scenario but if you can test it with a friend of same elo as you)
This should be a good test.
So far I’ve seen some 1700+ games both 1v1 and tg. In games where Dravidians were in the lead, went for urumi and opponents went for only melee units, they clapped the opponent army. One of the tgs I was surprised to see them do quite decent against organ guns too in a 40 elite urumi vs 30 organ guns fight. It was a non-meta game style however from the Dravidian team, the Dravidian player was pocket and boomed while flanks walled and did castle units in Runestones (one of the flank was Rubenstock so that obviously bought the Dravidian player a lot of time to free boom)
But in all games with some archer unit like Arbalests or Cav archers or Elephant archers, urumi just got wiped off. Villese vs ACCM game, ACCM as Vietnamese won by just making a few arbs, imperial skirms and completely countered Villese’s Dravidian army.
So they are definitely good in some niche situations and terrible in most others, much like most of the infantry uu. We need to see and play more games to get a feel of how viable they are.
Obviously infantry are countered by archers. I don’t see how being good in every matchup besides vs. ranged units (and even then, decent when they can close in) qualifies them as “niche” and “terrible in most situations.” Quite the opposite, they are a candidate for the best infantry unit in terms the number of other units that they perform well against. And of course they will do terribly against their counter if not paired with Skirms or Siege. By all means, wait for more games/information, but I think, relative to the baseline established by other infantry, Urumis are in a class of their own.