What if the Dravidians’ Medical Corps was baseline? What would you replace it with?
I’ll remove that baseline and play them like an infantry-archer civ. Replace ‘medical corps’ with an infantry unique tech called “Strike Corps”.
Strike Corps: The effect of researched barrack technologies is doubled. Supplies, Squires and arson will have double the effect on their military units. It will make Militia line cheaper(30 food) and faster(1.08 tps), Pikes(1.2 tps) and Urumis faster(1.26) as well. The building attack bonus for all infantry(+2) helps against lack of siege engineers. This mobile infantry army is a good replacement for missing knights. With this change, Dravidians could overcome the absence of Knights and cavalry upgrades.
I wanted to make medical corps a civ bonus as well. But its a futile exercise. Without huge discounts like malay or Gujjaras, you can’t make group of elephants in castle age. If Dravidian player is ahead in feudal age, Dravidian economy can use 200 wood to make forward siege workshop and make a couple of Armoured elephants and push with infantry support. If an opponent skirm+Knight army kills it, its RIP no faling back behind a castle. Even Gujjaras don’t make elephants any stage of the game since they have better mobile units. I ended up re-working the entire civ. Here is the link