The fact that it lacks Heresy makes it weak. You need it if you go E.A. if not they have to much counter (siege and monks destroys them)
Im wrong? What could make it more balanced, or its good as it is?
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Dravidians needs a lot of things, heresy isn’t one of the important things. EA are a tg unit and after a certain point, its not possible to micro dozens of monks to convert EA. If they get Heresy, it might help some black forest TG players but not regular 1v1.
There’s a dedicated thread discussing dravidian needs - checkout Dravidians are terrible - Age of Empires II: DE / II - Discussion - Age of Empires Forum
What they need is a civilization split similar to Indian split.
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That would give them a safe exit from this conundrum of having designed an unplayable civ like Dravidians.
Dravidians represents quite a few South Indian kingdoms and empires, which includes the Chola Empire, the Rashtrakutas, the Pandya Dynasty, and the Vijayanagara Empire. If you include the Sinhalese, its a DLC in its own right. However if you make them all with deficient tech trees like Dravidians, then you will have a balance nightmare. They may lack Knights as well as any viable light cavalry. Elephants are just useless in 1vs 1. You will need all these civs to have full monk tech trees.
Devs have designed themselves into a corner with Dravidians. Its best if they swallow their pride and re-work the civ first.
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Split them and give a viable shared cavalry unit.
There are multiple tech tree combs using elephants that can be used for new civis.
Siege ele and BE without EA
EA BE no SE
No EA only
No SE only
No EA upgrade
No SE upgrade
All elephant units and camel line
People say that, that E.A. its a tg unit. I think they are wrong, saw a lot of players using it, Tatoh, Daut, and low level players. Obviously if you mass them you dont care about monks, but if dravidians lacks heressy and also redemption. What happens is the next: When you have a few, monks are dangerous. When you have a lot, siege eats them.
Thanks to all, I will check the other post.
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Dravidians lacking Heresy is not proper design. Elephant civs don’t get heresy because then Opponent can’t counter ROR civs like Malay, Vietnamese or Khmer who can spam them. So Monks are decisive counters. But these Civs have the options of switching to light cavalry or heavy cavalry. Dravidians don’t. So the design itslef without Heresy is wrong. The only way to fix this no Heresy is to give an even better tech an unique tech… If they give a new unique tech in place of ‘medical corps’, which completely renders monk conversion useless, then the tech tree is proper.
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You have certainly never played me on Fortress if you think EA are a team game unit.
Elephant archers are an insane anti-archer unit that just soak up damage and protect your infantry.
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Dravidian skirmishers are enough for that. And you wouldn’t have to worry about losing the numbers to conversions before you get a strong number of them, which is OP’s topic. You can do any unit just for the sake of doing it but its neither really necessary nor advantageous.
I would argue Dravidians have the best EA in the game you get +25% faster attack rate for free with thumbring at the cost of lacking husbandry and bloodlines. Bloodlines isn’t as big of a deal for EA husbandry matter if you are retreating or advancing but not so much in a long protracted fight. The problem with Dravidian EA archer is the rest of your tech tree you lack knights and your light cav are barely usable even in Castle age, you lack redemption and only have bbc for countering siege and they are also countered by monks. Hersey could work as a bandaid solution but i don’t think that is the main problem
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Eh, I would argue that’s Bengalis. Their tankiness makes them nearly uncounterable when you get a mass (happens moreso in teamgames).
But Dravidian Ele Archers are definitely funnier. Basically machinegun. 11