Granted, but the game is still won or lost by that mango duel.
Hence my suggestion
In the above video, Vincheter says Dravidians are a meme and unusable on land. Civs like Italians were progressively given more land buffs with more unique techs for land play. I think ‘Equestrian archers‘ for Dravidians is a good idea in place of medical corps.
Equestrian Archery - Archery range units move 10% faster, Cav archers available in archery range
Syed Khazi Tajudeen, a direct descendant from the bloodline of Prophet Mohammed who was sent to south India by the Arabian caliphates to sell pure breeds of racing Arabian horses for Equestrian Archery to the Pandya king Soundrarapandyan took over as the chief instructor of Equestrian Archery for the Pandya king.
Just like Xolotol warriors, ‘Equestrian archers‘ could be a ode to historical reference of south Indian import of horses from Arabia which specialised in mounted archery. To balance the UI, handcannons can be removed. Handcannons are unnecessary in tech tree for Dravidians anyway.
and the hole according to you is? I think the obvious hole is lack of knights and their weakness to knight+Eskirms, I dont think changing urumi will help fix that unless you borderline make them eagles
so you need a castle and research a UT to make subpar frail cav archers?
2 Likes
There are more than one ways to skin a cat. Urumi just needs to be good against skirms. Eagles are excellent againt archers and skirms due to respectably high pierce armour of 3. Urumi with 2 pierce armour is as vulnerable to archers as knights without upgrades. So Urumi is clearly countered by archers, gun powder, cav archers especially due to its speed being retained at 1.1 tps.
Urumi being good against skirms will fill that gap. You can combine the new version of Urumi with pikes and fight against E.skirms + knight combo. Here is the final version, I see as fit for a rework:
Thats obviously what Dravidians seemed to have done in reality when you see their history. They imported the best cav archer horsers from arabia which was resource intensive and yet they lost to delhi sultanate who are the in-game hindustanis who used better cav archer tactics. The boost given by the tech lies in the 10% more speed which coupled with husbandry will make them a little faster than cuman cav archers. Its helps stack a speed effect on Elephat archers, skrims and cross-bows which is a good effect appreciated by at least one user.
1 Like
But I fail to see how its useful or better for Dravidians over Medical Corps, at least Medical Corps is useful for Elephant archers.
1 Like
The problem seems to be that everyone has predetermined that medical corps is useless, so they don’t use(or try it) it, so they ignore most of the strongest parts of the civilization, and end up playing it like a really bad Mesoamerican civ.
I will admit, a big part of the problem is the wood discount on Siege. That really directs people down the wrong path as far as I can tell.
1 Like
Speed is most definitely not the identity of Dravidians, at least not for archer.
You gave the example of the Italians. None of their buff was out of Italians design. Discount on uni techs, +1/+1 armor for archer line is for their archer identity. And new UT strengthen their gunpowder.
If you want to give them speed boost, it should be either Infantry or melee elephants. EA with extra speed and firing rate will be OP in a lot of cases.
@SMUM15236 I want to bring to ur notice that you suggested replacing medical corps with ‘mahouts‘ in the other thread. I also wanted to remove husbandry and give 25% speed boost to elephants. Below is just for reference.
I shall explain why a further 10% speed boost on elephat archers will not be OP. Elephant archers are hard countered by skirmishers and pikeman. The speed boost only allows you to outrun one of the units not both. The tech only helps elephant archers from being overwhelmed by a small number of skirms. It allows EAs to retreat and regroup. If you try to go forward again, you are likely to run into that wall of skirms and pikes. The differnce in mobility is not high enough to run around and attack a completely undefended part of the base. So its not offensively oppressive. You can elaborate which actual use cases are OP. But I doubt you will find any.
First, Dravidians civ does not have any identity. Its just a meme civ based on a hotchpotch of bad ideas and futher fixes. People don’t even play them on pure water maps. Vikings, Japanese, italians and Koreans are far more tuned for those maps. They are prefered to be played on water nomad type maps which is a niche within a niche called nomad start. But the best civ for such maps is persians and their identity is a cavalry civ with a versatile economy bonus and even lacking bracer. Yet they are playable on Arabia and Arena with a decent chance of success on both. Dravidians need such an economy bonus to be playable.
Dravidians have had an archer identity from the start with their faster firing skirms and elepahant archers. Their best unit upon release was the fully upgradeabe arbeslast not the elephant archer which didn’t have husbandry and parthian tactics. It is the siege discount that skewed the design. So a tech further boosting their archery range units viability is not a design violation once the siege wood discount is removed.
Medical corps is useful only after you get a death ball of elephants. Its better as a civ bonus or an imperial age unique tech where elephants are viable resouce wise. In castle age, Dravidians have zero high dps mobile units like knights. Instead they get battle elephants and elephant archers both of which cannot be played in a similar way as knights. So the civ was played as a meso civ without eagles.The siege discout made siege which is a tier above elephants easily affordable for them. However that is a far serious design violation since you get siege cheaper than elephants now.
Here
Italians didn’t get a knight bonus despite having a good stable. Neither should Dravidians get bonus for archer line. They should be emphasized on infantry, skirms and elephants. And I also hate the siege discount that they got.
I think that’s a misconception. Indeed, at that stage, you are probably only going to get taken out by Siege onagers, so you won’t have time to regenerate in the first place. Regeneration offers its greatest value in the mid game, when you can focus on using it, and when resources are more scarce.
I think it’s better to view it as something akin to an economic bonus. Because elephants have so much more Health than any other unit, regeneration on them plays a completely different role compared to how it operates on units like infantry or archers. You aren’t looking at getting essentially a whole new unit, like you do with low HP units. But then, you don’t really need that with elephants.
Most economic bonuses that are particularly good pay themselves off and around 5 minutes, and with even a small handful of elephants, this one pays itself off in less than that. And that’s not even mentioning the combat utility
The key problem is, the effect only really shows itself across multiple engagements. It’s not like getting Bodkin and suddenly obliterating your enemy until they get it too. But probably the most profound impact is combined with elephant Rams, where the Regeneration very nearly makes them impervious to early Archer fire, and which, due to their High cost, recoups the investment faster than anything else.
And, crucially, at a time when resources are at a premium. Later on in the game, Regeneration on a ram doesn’t matter all that much because you don’t expect the ram to survive, it becomes a fire and forget option.
Of course, it also doesn’t make sense to get medical Corps if your Rams aren’t successful in the first place, but that’s the nice thing about regeneration technologies, you can wait and see if your attack actually works before getting them. That is the optimum window.
They are indeed forced to keep the pressure on and that’s why castle drop into urumi makes no sense. By design the game favors ranged units in early stages when base is walled, cavalry in mid stages when base expansion begins and regular infantry after securing enough map. Unless you have an infantry with high p.armor like Jian swordsmen, eagles or ghulam, never make infantry in early castle age since you’ll get zero value from it. Plus, If you put vills on stone in feudal you’ll lose the timing advantage from the small lead you potentially gain in feudal age. You’ll drain out all your food and lose units since urumi neither have range nor p.armor which makes it very easy for opponents to kite and kill your urumis. Just 20 elite skirms with bodkin would be enough.
Its much better to use the market sell your stone and go for early ballistics plus mangonels to do a ton of damage.
Mangonel has range. It lets you take out opponent’s mangonel, scorps and skirms. Without that your opponent will simply repair behind and take out your Elephant rams. Those are a good choice only when opponent has no siege workshop and being greedy with zero military.
There’s a small remote possibility of this working out in maps with multiple ponds if Dravidian player wins the ponds gets a huge lead due to fishing. Otherwise with 15-18 farms you won’t have the resources to do all of this - castle, infantry armor upgrades, squires, siege workshop, armored elephants.
That strategy you highlight basically relies on winning within about 5 minutes. But if you lose the mango 1v1, you also lose the advantage of your free resources, and all of a sudden you are behind, playing into a strategy you aren’t very good at, against an enemy whose ecobonus is probably just coming into its own.
Which isn’t to say it’s always a bad strategy either, I just think people dramatically overvalue it.
What are you talking about? A basic aggressive Siege Workshop is, like, one of the simplest aggressive options there is. You already have the barracks by default, and your upgrades there are half price. Moreover, of all the units in the game, urumis probably need armor the least, because all they really need to do is get off that first attack.
Not to mention the bonus 200 wood you got when you aged up. If you aren’t ahead as a result of that, you are doing something very seriously wrong.
And where does the castle come from? Aggressive siege workshop is usually followed by mangonels which have range and cost wood. Rams are a niche, useful only when you’re significantly ahead and want to end the game.
yes and that’s why Dravidians are one of the worst civs in the game.
Yes because they have 6 p.armor, so no need for any armor upgrades….oh no wait that’s huskarl. Dude like common… Urumis have ZERO p.armor…. literally ZERO. a couple of scorps, tc fire or even skirms split into 2 groups will just melt them. You must get armor upgrades for fragile infantry, otherwise all the resources you invested will be flushed out in a second.
Are you aware that 45 of the remaining 49 civs gets an eco bonus equivalent to that one way or the other? You are ahead only for the first 3-4 mins of feudal age and that too only against half the civs. You need insane early game eco and deadly ranged unique units like Conqs to pull phosphorus builds. This is why I said there’s a small chance of executing your proposed build in maps with good amount of deep fish.
I think he is playing against easy AI.
Well, you need pierce armour to get close and get off that first arrack. Its not a 12 ranged melee attack like a bombard cannon.
I mean, the answer to me is pretty obvious. It’s a little strange to me that you note that the strategy you use doesn’t work, but you don’t want to try something different. It’s a strange civilization, so you have to play them a little strangely to win. Have you tried elephant Rams recently? Especially due to their different and lower cost, they function quite differently from normal Rams. The resistance to villagers is especially important early on.
Perhaps the most important advantage over mangonels is the immunity to monks. Monks are the true weakness of the civilization, because even if you win the 1v1 mango battle, one Redemption monk undoes the majority of your advantage. As far as I can tell, mangoes are a noob trap. And a pro trap, too, apparently.
I mean, I get it, with that discount they are very tempting. But it just doesn’t play into anything else you do well at all. If you have to use one, it should be response, never the first choice.
Its totally ok to try different things which are feasible. Like phosphorus builds are hard to execute but work with civs that have wood+gold ranged unique units. 1.1 base speed melee infantry uu with 0 p.armor and 65 food are just not feasible in land maps. You can always make them for the sake of it but you won’t get value proportionate to their cost and justify building a castle.
And elephant rams aren’t lower cost since food gathering rate is significantly slower than wood. You also can’t garrison your infantry inside the elephant rams and ungarrison when vills try to fight it. Plus if I’m making elephant rams instead of mangonels I’m not using even the tiny mid game bonus I get in the form of wood savings. The elephant rams being so good lately might be from Gurjara which get 30% extra damage against buildings. Dravidian ones are generic.
The strategy I refer to, does work sometimes but fails more often. But the alternate you propose is much worse. At very low elos it might cause the opponent to panic and force mistakes but beyond a certain elo everyone will will understand their opponent has made a huge mistake by doing urumis that early.
This is somewhat of a decent advantage but mangonels have range. And I’m not particularly against elephant rams in all situations but urumi swordsmen + elephant rams doesn’t make any sense in early castle age. Eco isn’t good enough to compensate for gathering 650 stone for a castle. Lets say you do manage to build a castle, stay 1 tc, dont make vills and focus on urumis, armored elephants and attack. By the time you break in and get to opponent’s tc, monks will convert a couple of urumis, hit the rest with charge and focus fire tc or skirms to take out the remaining. In less than 10 seconds urumis will be dead. And vills will take out the rams.
But lets say its mangonels, there’s atleast a chance to micro, use the farm trick to kill opponent’s mangonels and get a small advantage.
Yes. Ideally a discount like that fits cavalry civ since cheap scorps and mangonels can compliment their cavalry and monks. But given that’s the only post castle age resource benefit for Dravidians, its necessary to go for it to build a substantial lead and delay the point at which lack of cavalry begins hurting them.
Honestly, it’s kind of hard to respond because every single thing you have said is slightly wrong. For example, if you are attacking them with rams, why do they have monks? As Dravians, you should have them on the back foot, with limited resources, and if you are going for infantry and rams, there is nothing major that they can convert, so they will never have monks in the first place. And even if they do, converting a single infantry unit is practically worthless, even presuming they actually get a conversion off, considering they are operating with nine range in Castle age and your units are more than fast enough to stay that far away.
Next there is the fact that you mentioned having to deal with skirmishers, despite the fact that the skirmishers are the one unit you would never want to build urumis into in the first place, you would want to use longswords. That’s one of the most common mistakes of people who don’t know the civilization very well.
Or the way you mention that you cannot Garrison units inside of elephant rams, but forget the fact that you can Garrison elephant Rams inside of castles. You point out that elephant Rams take food, but neglect the fact that they take less resources overall, balancing things out. You point out that using mangoes takes advantage of the wood discount, but neglect the fact that it sacrifices the ability to use medical Corps, which also prevents dravidian elephant Rams from being generic.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand the basic premise, the core logic here, but the problem is, you start out with the assumption that certain things are bad, and therefore shouldn’t be used, and extrapolate out from there, and end up with a civilization that offers precious little, when what you should do is look at what the civilization offers, and instead build your strategy around that in order to maximize it’s overall bonuses.
Similarly, you see a civilization where the fastest unit is bad against skirmishers, but because you are accustomed to having a fast and Pierce resistant option, you feel compelled to build into this incorrect situation anyway, and they end up feeling terrible. Meanwhile, the real answer, the militia line, requires playing into the civilizations strengths and simply adapting to not having such a fast raiding option in the first place.
At the root of it, you need to reassess your desires for the civ. It’s not what you want, and it never will be, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be perfectly decent within its own niche.
To pickup relics, convert a potential battle elephant or elephant archer, heal their own units for better value. Its very common to add a few monks in early castle age because there’s a high probability of getting good value from them.
You are referring to “Early castle age urumi swordsmen + elephant rams”. Early castle age, you have <20 farms, <400 food per minute. After using vill time in collecting 650 stone, you can’t spam like crazy beyond the first 5 or 6 urumi swordsmen especially when you’re also using food in making elephant rams right away. So even one conversion or unit lost is going to hurt A LOT.
Now lets say you’re not attacking right away but waiting to mass urumis by using the market or idling your tc. If your opponent scouts and spots what you’re upto, they’re not going to stay with 1 monk waiting for you to destroy them. Beyond a certain elo, the probability of your opponent scouting and finding out you’re going to hit them with elephant rams + urumis is higher than them being unprepared with just 1 monk and nothing else.
To summarize, castle age into castle + few urumis and 2 elephant rams within 5 mins, each conversion and unit loss is costly. Not showing up within 5 mins but massing urumis + elephant rams without adding vills → takes time and high chance of getting spotted.
People always prepare to go elite skirms + knights vs Dravidians since they don’t have their own knights and skirms do well vs xbows, monks, elephant archers and pikes - most of the units Dravidians can use. Since skirms are very common against Dravidians, as you’ve mentioned you’d never want to go for urumis given the high probability of encountering skirms from your opponents.
This is a nice advantage when you’ve dropped a forward castle and your opponent built a castle very close to yours in an attempt to stop it. But the ram’s ability to garrison pairs well with infantry. Infantry are weak against ranged units and tc fire, so they can stay garrisoned into the rams. And when opponent brings vills or small number of melee units to kill the ram, you can ungarrison and protect it. You can even garrison vill, ungarrison and repair it. I’d say Elephant rams vs regular rams is balanced but when PAIRED WITH INFANTRY, regular rams are better.
Its about villager work time. Farming rate with wheelbarrow is approx 20.5-21 food/min while wood rate even without bow saw is 25-27 wood/min. So overall 130 food takes as much time or even higher compared to 160 wood. Now the remaining part is gold and elephant rams cost 20 more gold. So it is more expensive overall in terms of villager working time.
Castle drop, urumi swordsmen, siege workshop + elephant rams, squires, husbandry, medical corps - all in “early castle age”. Do you get resources slung by gaia or something?
I don’t assume that certain things are bad, I know they are bad by just looking at the unit stats - food cost, p.armor/projectile resistance, hp, high speed, range, damage output. A castle unit that doesn’t tick atleast 3 of these 6 boxes simply cannot be used as main army in early castle age.
LOL. I don’t feel compelled to make urumis at all. I’ve always maintained that in most situations its significantly better to go for generic militia line instead of gathering stone for castle(s) to go urumis. You brought this approach of going for Urumis + elephant rams in early castle age as Dravidians and my whole argument is about why that’s terrible. 0 p.armor unranged melee infantry unit with 65 food cost and 1.1 speed is just awful and never required.
The niche is a water map with limited coast or no boars, hybrid map with fish far off from coast, with moderate level of base walling - very few and very rare. <2% of ranked games played on such maps. And even in such maps, Dravidians are good because of wood bonus, dock bonus, fish, siege discount and skirms. Urumi swordsmen have no practical niche and will always be a meme or as a unit added to flex your lead.
Like I said before, you are forgetting whatever it was you used in feudal. You also shouldn’t preemptively build urumis because you don’t need them until your enemy responds to your rams. It’s very strange to me that you seem to always default to building a massive Army before you attack, when that is essentially the opposite of how dravidians do best.
Oh, also, elephant rams haven’t cost 130 food in like 2 years.
Honestly, I think the first thing you need to do to figure out dravidians is actually go play them and try the unique options, since it seems pretty clear you haven’t done that in a while.
@DemiserofD , @Pulikesi25 Viper tried your exact strat and fell behind then GG. If Armoured elephants could garrison, he would have tried that to get the speed increase.
