Don’t get me wrong, most infantry unique units are niche. Very good and needed in some and terrible in most. Urumi might win against most other melee unique units but most of those units are quite uncommon. Like it doesn’t matter if they clap teutonic knights because in a normal 1v1 or TG game you’ll probably see knight-line, arbalests, camels, cavalry archers, hand canoneers or some other gunpowder uu, cavalry archer uu etc. So infantry unique units that perform much better than champs or halbs against some of these units are non-niche, like Huskarls, Condottiero or Obuchs. In Dravidians’ case, most of the units against which urumis are good against can be countered with champs or halbs. With their barrack techs costing quite less and their infantry having extra abilities from their UT, its probably much easier to do champs and halbs instead of urumis in many situations. This is what I meant by niche.
Solid response overall. I do think the versatility of the Urumi is being undersold + how it performs with support units (Urumi/pike + Skirm is pretty good except vs. massed siege, and even then I’ve had success sniping onagers with the urumi’s speed + frontloaded damage). While its true that the Dravidian generic infantry serves them well, there’s still an argument to go for Urumi if you have castles + are teched into infantry, since the unit performs better overall, and even can do well against soft counters (e.g. it melts hand cannoners if it gets close due to their low HP + its frontloaded splash damage). It also makes sense to pay for better performance if you’re floating lots of food in Imp, since it’s only 5 gold more than the champion. Also, the castle age Urumi is particularly strong on its own, whereas generic Dravidian infantry are normal until their Imp tech is researched.
You don’t seem to get my point. UU are an exception in meta and competitive games. Castles are coming in late. Until you get the castle, the civ is vanilla from a military point of view. And that vanilla, you add the weakest light cavs in the game, and yeah, you get some of the weakest overall land army.
Anyway, if the Dravidians go above 55% win rate on land maps, I’ll eat my words. But I estimate they will stay in the 47-49% area. (again talking about land maps).
Yeah in competitive games maybe
In casual games thought castles and UU reign supreme and are seen all the times.
we need to keep the game in a fun fair state for all players.
Agree with that, but the Urumi is the only power unit the Dravidians got. Without it, I don’t see them capable of much.
Eh, that doesn’t mean it has to be crazy OP. It’s a little odd that people are arguing that Urumi is not OP because it’s hard to get to and easy to counter (supposedly), but also implying that without this hard to get, easily-countered (“niche”) unit, Dravidians are weak.
Even without Urumi, Dravidians can play kind of like Japanese (inf/archers). Japanese BTW don’t really have a power unit at all (maybe you could argue HCA). And the Urumi is basically a Samurai that took all the steroids. While I generally give devs the benefit of the doubt, I really don’t know why they thought it was a good idea to combine Coustillier, Leitis and Druzinha infantry into one cheap unit.
In Castle Age, Urumi dies to Knight in melee fight. 0 PA prevent raiding option, even Skirmisher can kill Urumis in Castle Age. Urumi can be useful against enemy’s mass infantry. With archer protection, I don’t think Urumis can damage Cavalry as well. We will see in future performance of Urumi but Urumi seems to be meme nuker unit will be known for dieing before nuke their target.
Yes, but the too many castles and too much food thing, massed siege etc is something that happens in late imp. Its still a good option to go directly for Urumi if your opponent tried hard to siege push you in castle age and you built 3-4 defensive castles or if you’re up against Goths, Teutons or Slavs and they’re playing a lot of melee units in castle age.
Its because they’re niche but if Urumis are weaker, then Dravidians will be less effective even in those niche situations. Its like Steppe lancers are very uncommon but having them as an option for some situations adds a bit to the strength of those civs. A weaker Urumi makes the weak Dravidians even weaker.
They’re only going to be a rank above where Teutonic knights currently are, in such casual games. Why would it ruin the fair state for the casual players either?
But the Japanese get the attack speed for free. The Vikings extra HP for free. Goths discount again, for free. The Bulgarians get the militia upgrade for free, if not mistaken.
All of those civs have those bonuses for free, starting to kick in starting with feudal age.
For the Dravidians, you need to wait for imperial, and have a castle, to get that armor negation ability. Until then your infantry is generic. And as an eco bonus, the wood saving for the japs might be the same with the wood which Dravidians get for free.
Main take here, in my opinion, is that if you deny Dravidians stone, they have generic troops. Your infantry is weaker than other infantry civs, with free bonuses.
The Urumi does indeed sound strong, and seems to win lots of simulated fights, but I still see it fragile vs archers with some meat shield in front, and especially vs Siege.
Imho saving half resources for barracks techs is more helpful than Urumi and Wootz Steel.
It helps when you most need it. You can easily upgrade longswords to fend off Huskarl/Eagle flood in Castle Age (which is really called for as you most likely open with archers as dravidians), and tech into champion without any problem in early Imperial age.
Sure the longer the game the lesser the impact of the saving, but I found it nice to have.
By upgrading the militia line alone with squires and supplies you save 738f 315g, niche use, but imho still less niche than Urumi with full upgrades.
In a way, Bulgarians have it better, with the free militia line upgrade, and half the food cost for blacksmith techs.
In other worlds, nothing really new, or extreme.