Thoughts on the Dravidian and Ethiopian "receive resources" bonus

Ethiopians get 100 Food and 100 Gold upon advancing, while Dravidians get 200 Wood. When you advance to Feudal and Castle Age, those bonuses can be pretty solid, but when you advance to Imperial Age, they feel like a drop in a water bucket.

I had a thought about updating those bonuses to the following:

Ethiopians: Receive 50 Food and 50 Gold, plus an additional 50 Food and 50 Gold per Town Center, when advancing to the next age.

Dravidians: Receive 100 Wood, plus an additional 100 Wood per Town Center, when advancing to the next age.

To put forth an example of how this would work, this would still give you 100 Food and 100 Gold per advance as Ethiopians when you get to Feudal and Castle Age with your starting TC. However, if you have 4 TCs when you advance to Imperial, you’ll receive 250 Food and 250 Gold once you finish advancing. In a similar vein, 3 TCs as Dravidians when you advance to Imperial would give you 400 Wood, but your advances to Feudal and Castle would still only give you 200 Wood apiece.

This would make their bonuses stronger if you build a strong economy in Castle Age before advancing to Imperial. The only issue is it could make Ethiopians and Dravidians stronger on Budapest, though there are already other civs that are stronger, such as Persians, Hindustanis, etc.

What are your thoughts on this? Would this be a nice change, or would it make their Imperial Age advance too strong?

Thia is a huge nerf and a bad idea. Even compared to other castle age eco bonises likw the Briton cheapwr town centers the imperial bonus bonus would be meh abd the nerf to feudal and castle age are completely unnecessary. Now, I am fine with the extra res per town centers each age but rhese civs arent good enough to be nerfed like that

1 Like

It’s not a nerf though? It’s a buff. You get a base of X resources, and then +X for every TC when you reach the next age, where X is half of the current res amount. So when you hit Feudal, you get 2X res, the same as now. That continues for Castle Age. But then if you reach Imp with 3TCs you now get 4X, so twice as much as now. I don’t understand how you think it’s a nerf?

6 Likes

Some ideas.

Ethiopians:
They shouldn’t get extra 50 food and 50 gold at the start of the game, otherwise they would be better than the Aztecs and similar to the Persians.

  1. When hitting a new Age, receive 100 food and 100 gold for each TC.
  2. When hitting a new Age, receive 100 food and 100 gold, and + 300 food and 300 gold for each Castle.

Dravidians:
As long as more wood can be obtained over time, it will be a better improvement than the current one. Otherwise, it will be a failed change.

  1. When hitting a new Age, receive 10 wood for each Villager. (I prefer this one.)
  2. Start the game with +150 wood, and each Villager provide a trickle of 0.05 wood per second.
1 Like

You must be misinterpreting it. The way I’ve set it up is that when you advance to Feudal with 1 TC as Ethiopians, you get 100 Food and 100 Gold. You then get another 100 Food and 100 Gold when advancing to Castle Age. In Castle Age, you build 3 additional TCs, and reach Imperial Age with 4 TCs. As a result, you get 250 Food and 250 Gold upon reaching Imperial.

That isn’t a nerf. That’s a buff.

2 Likes

I find the underlying premise really weird.

Not every bonus has to have an impact all game long. Some are early game focused and less important later on and vice versa.

If we want to change the dravidian/ethiopian bonus to give a harder powerspike in early imp, the question really should not be “is the bonus noticable in early imp?” but rather “does the civ struggle early imp?”

For ethiopians, the answer is a pretty clear nope. As an Arb civ, early imp is where they shine. Giving them the res to get bracer, arb and chemistry (and possible conscription) all at once seems like a needless buff.

For dravidians, its a bit more complicated. After a strong feudal age, they struggle in both castle and imp (castle more so than imp). So a wood injection when hitting imp would certainly help, but im not sure its necessairly the best fix because it once again is a buff most noticable on the maps where they are strong already - water maps.

4 Likes

200 res is not that weak in Imperial, for example in Ethiopians case, it allows them to offset the nerf that Arbalest upgrade received time ago. Furthermore, even if it was a weak bonus, it’s perfectly fine for civs to have stronger and weaker moments in the game (called power spikes). Ethiopians are a civ that is meant to get a lead until early Imp. These +200 res they gain in Imp aren’t meant to turn a perfectly even game into an advantage for them, but rather give them a small boost in an already advantageous situattion.

Likewise, Dravidians shine in early Feudal and possibly in Castle Age where they add TCs/Siege Workshop/University a bit faster. Here the +200w can mean dropping both a TC and a Siege Workshop 1 min earlier than the opponent and I wouldn’t call that a small boost.

In Imperial Age, Dravidians tend to become weaker yes, but it’s intended, they were designed to be a civ that gains an advantage in early ages and possibly is played on water/hybrid maps.

1 Like

Ah okay, thought it was only 50f and 50g in feudal and castle age. Im dumb

This bonus is enough to have a very good start on most maps. Dravidian player can prioritize food collection over wood. This bonus can replace the 200 wood per age bonus.

The problem there is that Dravidians kinda suck in Castle Age on land maps, having generic Xbows, no Knights, and no Redemption on their Monks. Elephant Archers aren’t really viable in 1v1’s since they need to be massed to be effective. Dravidians have a severe weakness to enemy Mangonels in Castle Age due to their terrible cavalry and lack of Redemption, and going for a Mangonel trade isn’t something you want to resort to as the Dravidians.

1 Like

Agree, Dravidians have no tools for a comeback.
They need to snowball with using their eco boosts. Which is ofc possible, but it’s a weird way to play. Especially as the bonus is just so slightly more than other civs have… On the other hand it makes them also super strong on very agressive maps. But these maps already have a very slim set of viable civs, no need to put dravidians on top there to make it even harder for the others.
I think reducing the Feudal bonus but giving the civs more to work with later on would help a lot.

IDK, maybe if they would get increasing boosts with the ages it could help, but then it needs to be more than just Wood. Maybe 150 W +150 Food in Castle age and another +150 G in Imp for a total of 450 res? This could give them at least some very powerful spikes with the ages.

I think its quite good buff for Ethiopians on Empire wars and semi-closed map RM. For Dravidians I feel its still only buffs their water play which is already quite good. I’d rather change their bonus to start from dark age with a smaller value like +100w in dark, +200 in feudal and +300 in castle age, rather than give any extra resources in imp. There’s nothing to do on land with those extra wood that can give a big lead with that awful tech tree.

I agree that this change makes Dravidians stronger on the maps where they are fine without addressing their weak points but Omg man, Dravidians are not strong in castle age and definitely not in majority of hybrid maps. They’re fine only on maps where you have to build 10 docks and spam fire ships or galleons or those giant ships. Maps like Northern Isles, Islands, Team Islands, Bog Islands, Greenland, Golden swamp.
On small pond hybrid maps like Kawasan, Golden lakes, Four lakes, scandinavia etc where water isn’t important after the first 15-20 mins, Dravidians are awful. They might be better than civs like Goths or Sicilians which get negligible bonuses on those maps but they’re not even a top-15 on such hybrid maps. Huns, Lithuanians, Persians, Malians, Japanese, Italians and nowadays Portugese - these are the “strong” civs on those maps, as they can add knights after winning water.