Pressure them even earlier from feudal, most civs would struggle hard against this as evidence by Dravidian wins by timeline that shows it win the most before 15 mins.
One interaction you didn't point as particularly strong is Wootz Steel on Siege Elephants. SE have much bigger splash-radius than other trample-units and even hit units in the second and third row. At 8 Dmg they usually deal 4 trample-dmg wich gets negated by basic armor to only 1 dmg. But Dravidian SE deal their full 4 dmg to every enemy unit within 2 tiles of them. When 5 Dravidian SE get to a mass of 40 Arbs in the lategame it only takes 2 hits from each elephant and all Arbs are dead. In mass battle against meele units they actually outperform the dravidian battle elephant thanks to their bigger splashradius. A mass of 12 SE will even win costeffectivly against chevaliers when you standground-patrol them into the fight and then swap to aggressive.
Im glad they gave us at least a little bit of potential combat ability on the SE. it would feel silly that an elephant draped in armor and weaponized tusks would do as little as a ram would to units, and while I understand why we can’t be giving them siege bariants of war eles, I’m glad they go from “literally ineffective” to “at the very least an option” in some few niche matchups.
@@annaairahala9462 Also this, as I was just memeing. Though personally I think they're okay as they are. the longsword skirmisher play with them is very nice, and wootz steel helps with the infantry's already-fast building destruction rate, as you then ignore building armor as well. Surprised that Spirit did not mention that part
I think the weapon was supposed to be aimed for weak spots of the enemy like the less armoured regions, but I guess they couldn't make that a mechanic in Aoe so they chose this I guess
@@GnanaPrakash86AP I doubt thet was the idea behind it. Not when the upgrade Wootz Steel seems to attribute the armor penetration to the material of the weapon. Apart from that, a whip is also a terrible weapon to aim for weak spots.
Between the infantry bonuses and not having to put anything into horses you effectively have the goths bonus. You also get the Celt/teuton wood bonus until late in the game. These are two of the strongest bonuses in the game, in one civ, AND you get woodz Steel.
Viper did that, using the bonus wood to make 2 stable scout rush, it was fairly succesful too, but of course it falls flat when both player are in castle 11
I literally manually searched for Spirit of the law Dravidian last night because I wanted some ideas on how to best utilize these guys to say seem fun and sure enough the next day here we are xD spirit of the law mind-reader confirmed
The healing on the elephants is a bit better than you let on I think since they have a lot of hp so they survive longer and therefore have more time to utilise the healing effect per unit than another unit would since those units would get one-shot most of the time anyway. It's really good on the elephant archers I think, especially if you micro them a bit to try to make a different unit getting hit each time. The tech is still not that useful but u could see it as some kind of resource income through time and having it working on as many units as possible is just a good eco at that point. :)
The thing about elephants when you're using them is you don't fear taking scratch damage here and there that wears you down. You fear taking a ton of bonus damage at once from pikes (or skirms for elephant archers) or getting them converted by monks. Or well, not being able to get to them at all because of their cost. A trickle of healing will be overwhelmed in the first case, is irrelevant in the second, and exacerbates the third problem since you need to invest stone for a castle and the cost of the upgrade.
This bonus is only good if you garrison your elephants because otherwise they get killed by being too slow. Other units actually heal better since they have more chances to escape. PS: Who at Age of Empires design thought elephants are slower than humans? Armor-clad, weapon-wielding humans at that.
6:46 you display supplies as one of the techs that benefits Urumi. For an analytical creator who's been working with aoe2 for a decade, that's a massive oversight.
Possibly it was meant as indirectly, as if you went infantry before Utumi's, you'd have saved on supplies for round 1... or possibly I'm reaching a lot :)
Nice vid as always! Is there any chance you can look into the true cost of wonders? i mean looking into the max amount of villagers you can use, and how much does it actually cost for you to idle them building it so if there is any sweetspot in the time you gain from building it faster vs the lost income
Once you get to imp, their Siege elephants are also surprisingly good general combatants with the armour ignoring splash damage and 'only' taking 44 damage from halbs compared to the 67 battle elephants take. For civs without halbs they can be really annoying to kill as just a couple of them require sending some proper military to deal with. I'm also often tempted to go for MAA & archers rather than a drush and grab supplies first as it pretty much pays for itself after 4 MAA.
You should compare Wootz steel to some other infantry and Cavalry unique techs, like Farimba, Garland Wars as examples. there's alot of variation to how good Wootz steel actually is
It depends on what units your opponent makes and what upgrades they get, factors over which you have no control. For that reason and also because none of the units that benefit from Wootz steel have mobility (except the light cav you totally want to be making), I'd say it's the worst of the three.
With full tech tree and cheaper tech I think barracks deserves A instead of A- because you can get champion faster and easier to get halbs against cavalry.
Finally your Intro is back, love it! I also love the way you mixed in the stats against Cav Civ! Awesome! Somehow, I haven‘t figured out yet how to play them.
First time i enjoy seeing a sponsor in a video, hope you get more as you truly deserve, even tho i havent plau aoe 2 in a looong time i still watch every video
And to add, one of the more rare cases where you watch several ads for the SAME sponsor without getting quickly tired of the sponsor, since SotL usually spice it up with a different touch / pun each time.
@@micahbonewell5994 They made it OP themselves. It used to only give +3 damage and they made it +6 by doubling the armor bonus vs stone defenses due to a glitch in their engine. They could have fixed it.
@@nemou4985 mayans and azteca used to be mega OP and now devs are scared of overtuning them again I think. I personally hate current gurjaras. They feel so cheap...
All the C- cavalry ratings SOTL gave have bad stables with a redeeming factor (Koreans have hussar, Vikings surprise knight rush, Malay cheaper elephants, Britons full smith techs).
@@SIGNOR-G Free mining techs for early castle knights. It just falls off fast like the Malay, without the cheaper cost to make elephants at least cost effective.
Medical corps in combination with the Dravidian stable perfectly illustrates my love/hate relationship with Dravidians. I love the easy 20pop MAA into archers with them, even more the super strong and rather easy 18 pop archer rush, with either a range and blacksmith or 2 ranges being down immediately without killing your eco. Then you have a great early game, can get ballistics quite quickly in early castle... and then when you ever fall behind in early midgame or even slightly before you just have almost nothing to defend yourself and carry yourself through to your rather strong lategame, as typical turteling and using some mobility to at least distract your opinion or snipe siege just isn't an option. But you can research a tech that - if at any point at all - will help you almost only with post imp huge elephant archer - siege ele armies. But ofc that's how they were designed and something that can happen with many civs (mongols would come to mind). To me it's just especially glaring with dravidians. I wonder what a good replacement for medical corps could be and what to do with their stable, as it kind of just feels tagged on, but offers almost zero utility. I feel like actually giving them husbandry and maybe the last armour for cav could have a big impact and actually even somewhat close some gaps for the civ (just by making lightcav situationally viable) which, for me, are a huge source of frustration. Even Ethiopians have hussar, albeit a bad version of it, and an overall way more capable stable with situational use and are one of the strongest archer civs in the game. I could also imagine buffing medical corps for battle eles and extending it to lightcav (not buffing it for ele archers as they can creep into op territory already) could actually also be an interesting idea, giving them a kind of frail but possibly cost effective mobility boost when microed nicely with regard to the light cav. But something has to be done about the elephant in the room especially imo, as it feels weird to give a civ a fully useless regional unit. Another perspective could be to have Urumis be less of a glass cannon, toning down their DPS a bit but make them less frail maybe? But yeah, the biggest sore point to me just is the stable, which just is there so it isn't not there, just as their battle elephant, which has literally zero usepoints. They never are viable in absolutely no circumstance whatsoever. Finishing that small essay off, to me the two sentiments would be: buff some small things other than the stable, optimally by replacing medical corps, and actually go bold and just scrap the stable entirely (maybe even replace their scout). Or give them something which makes battle elephants and light cav at least not a guaranteed mistake to go for, also optimally by making medical corps stronger for stable units.
Hi there! You could post this on the official forum - AOE2 Forum or Steam Discussion. It’d be really nice. Hardly people read comments here. Your points are 100% true. Why did Devs gives stables to Dravidians in the first place.? Guess Medical Corps can apply to Light Cavalry as well. Self-regenerating Light Cav with Wootzsteel is a nice idea. Not going to be OP either, since Dravidians lack the last Cav armour upgrade, Husbandry and Bloodlines. Battle Elephants are pathetic. Don’t know how to buff them. Could give Elite version of the same.
Can an imperial age Urimi 1 shot a loomed villager? Think about it, Aside from Eagles they are pretty much uncatchable to other infantry. Even slipping a few in to your opponent's base when under attack can be cause for panic as vills drops like flies when they aren't looking.
They can't, but they do 2 shot them, the charge attack + normal attack (29+14) do enough dmg to kill them. FU Elite coustillier however, can one shot vills while move fast on horseback, so I don't think handful of slipped Urumi would do much, not as much as a single Coustillier can do.
I barely play Age Of Empires 2, or RTS games in general. I've always had trouble with keeping track of different parts of the map and making sure none of my stuff is sitting idle. But I still really enjoy videos like this. Makes me wanna try my hand at it again.
dravidian Elephant Archers are probably my favourite unit to play - the dps is just insane. Also I think they could use redemption to not always get owned by a couple mangonels in castle age.
They are fun to play. Unfortunately they get wrekt by skirmishers too lol bombard cannons help, but it's really not quite enough. Wish they had useable light cav...
Any chance you can make a video to introduce the intro? Like this scene is about...and comes from this video. A lot of them seems quite hilarious or epic, like the Goth's plan or demo ship taking trebuchet. I'm relatively new to the channel, only been watching for a year or two.
For the regen, it's probably better to think of it more like an HP bonus, where the bonus grows the longer the unit stays alive. In this case, their higher HP helps them stay alive longer and get more benefit out of regeneration. You could have a unit with low HP that regenerates super fast, so they'd be easy to kill but heal to full so long as they don't die, but elephants are tanky enough that it would just be unfair if they could top off between fights. With that in mind, you might consider doing a comparison with Bloodlines (especially since Dravidians don't get Bloodlines) to see which one allows the elephant to live longer, and under what circumstances, and if it's different for different elephant units.
This thing you said is similar to Bengalis’ Rathas at the moment, and switching between ranged and melee mode is a pain in the ass. So, some players had proposed a change to elephant archers like Hul'che Javelineers tech of Mayans, wherein the unit throws two projectiles/arrow instead of one. Others have talked about having two men shoot from the top of the elephant instead of one person at a time. Garrisoning vills and/or infantry on elephants is also talked about😂 Why should only rams garrison infantry and vills and not chad elephants
I think medical corps is underrated, especially on elephant archers, but also on their battle elephants. Looking at your results, and the new stats on medical corps, your battle elephants will actually be top-tier after about 1 minute. Add to that wootz steel and you have a surprisingly potent unit. Same goes for elephant archers really. Having a healing elephant archer is roughly like having an extra villager working. I think the big challenge with dravidians is that you need to play very conservatively and take advantage of their regeneration until you can mass an unstoppable army.
from what i saw and calculated in the game, urumi charge doesnt apply to buildings but armore penetration does fully apply so they are a big anti-building raiding sepcialists :D in my view of course
As a Dravidian , I like this how AoE2 represents this Civ as Naval and infantry powered with ELEPHANTS . There should be TECH for ELEPHANT SPA and Massage :)
I am pleased to talk our civilization. Dravidians are known as people in Southern India. Dravidian civ is based on cholas empire. In game the units are speaks in Tamil. It's my mother tongue. I am happy to hear it.
I mainly play EW so the meta is different. I open with skirmishers + spears since so many make either archers or scouts to rush. I get a good mob and start to push in feudal and then will try to castle drop right away. In castle I upgrade both units and maybe make a few elephant archers. When I hit Imp I play based on how the other players react to me. If they are making knights I upgrade to halberd. I don't think this video touched on that but the barracks upgrade bonus applies to both units so you get Halberd for 150 food / 300 gold.
I love that the Dravidians invented Lightsabers before George Lucas. Truly our South Asian friends have a rich and powerful culture. From a certain point of view. ;)
The big problem with Dravidians is: They do not have any useful, fast pacing unit. lets compare them with Goths: Goths have a great stable and even if not-they can recruit they unique unit in their barracks(after anarchy). Also their unique unit is good at raiding because of their ability to absorb arrows. Dravidians on the other hand need castles to recruit their unique unit and their are doing essentially the same work as their infantry with wood steel. So, without a raiding unit, without a unit which can help quickly ) 12:40 in order to get wootzl steel, you need a castle. Also this upgrade is rather expensive meaning it is more for lategame. However, in late game, having a light cav unit without good armour upgrades make them weak against castle or even tc fire. So, no it is not really useful considering the costs.
Dravidians really had it bad against strong siege civs before they got access to Bombard Cannons. But even with them, Mangonels can really ruin their day in Castle Age. It's also worth noting that Wootz Steel does nothing against siege units, as armor-ignoring effects don't work on them. This usually isn't a problem since most siege units have no melee armor to begin with, though it is noticeable with Bombard Cannons (2 melee armor) and against the Teutons (Ironclad). Finally, even if they have Light Cavalry that can ignore armor, I don't see that as being very useful. They still get slaughtered by any anti-cavalry units, and the lack of Bloodlines, Husbandry and Hussar make them squishy even against regular units like Xbows, not to mention they die more easily to TC and Castle fire. Besides, you could achieve better combat performance with Champions or even Halbs due to Wootz Steel.
Some nice points. I want to add that Dravidians don’t have any units to counter Bohemian Hussite Wagons and that addition of BBC (their only civ specific buff) did nothing in this matter. A common counter to Hussite Wagons are Cavalry and Siege units, but Bohemians also have 25% faster attacking Halbs and now you can think of Dravidians. Battle Elephants and Armoured Elephants can counter Hussites but Halbs come in their way.
@@user-iz2tm5ih4e I think the Dravidian plan against Bohemians on land maps is to attack them early, before they can get out Hussite Wagons, Hand Cannoneers, and Houfnices. If things get to Imperial Age, there isn't much the Dravidians can do by that point. Lacking Siege Engineers means Houfnice will snipe Dravidian Bombard Cannons and Siege Onagers with ease. That said, Siege Onagers will devastate Hussite Wagons if they can get a shot off.
@@darkdill yes, as a Dravidian player, the first thing I do when the game starts is to check if my opponent is Bohemian, Portuguese or Korean. The first two are deadly if not finished off earlier (like in early castle age itself). Siege Onagers are a good counter (heavy cavalry is still better) to Hussites, BUT they are expensive and slower for Dravidians, plus they don’t have s.engineers. On the other hand, Bohemian Castle age tech makes Hussites move 15% faster, and rear Hussites actually take less damage. So, I use Battle Elephants (as a Dravidian player) only when I play against Bohemians and Portuguese. Wish Devs do something to Ele Archers (like adding anti-siege mechanism) so that Dravidians can hold on against siege units. You see Urumis and Wootzsteel do nothing here; their faster firing ranged units too are a waste. This civ is overrated for ‘Wootzsteel’ which is an Imperial Age Tech that is food and gold intensive, and Dravidians struggle to survive in Castle Age.
@@user-iz2tm5ih4e One idea I've seen is to give the Dravidians access to Two-Handed Swordsmen in Castle Age. Sure, it's still vulnerable to Mangonels, but if you spam a lot of THS in Castle Age, you could viably snipe the Siege Workshop. That said, I think if they want to get a real answer to Mangonel pushes in Castle Age, it should be that they get Redemption at the Monastery. EDIT: Turns out the devs' solution was to give the Dravidians a Wood discount on their siege units. That works well enough, making it so Mangonel trades will favor the Dravidians in terms of resources lost.
If the devs are looking to buff Dravidians on land only, swapping their UTs might be one way to do it. Medical Corps would be more suited to that stage of the game and having infantry be more viable before then sounds good to me, especially if your midgame is awkward right now. Urumis look broken. They do too well vs units they should be countered by. They also don't make any sense. The overhead strike does area damage while the wide one deals single target damage. They also have a charge attack that I don't think works well on infantry. Couldn't they just always deal area damage with the wide animation, no charge attack and possibly with reduced damage? Would excluding them from Wootz Steel be an option? Good video, btw. Didn't expect one so quickly. You're a daring one releasing these at this time of year and ahead of all the patches they promised.
Excluding them from wootz steel makes no sense as that was a very major reason their metallurgy & metal weapons were the strongest irl. Urmi's were also the last weapon trained for a reason. You have to be talented to never miss with it because it allows the user to wield centrifugal force on each slash. They were fast and strong both physically and chemically. A way to balance them would be to make it so Dravidians can research Wootz Steel during the Castle Age but not ignore 100% armor. At most., 90%, but the devs should test this out before balancing this change.
I've come to think I'd like them with my Vietnamese... Have them as a fast Imperial sort of civilisation to boom on Imperial Skirmishers with either Elephant Archers or Urumi Swordsmen... with even Siege Onagers. So Imperial Skirmishers with 8 damage & 8 range alongside tanky front-line Elephant Archers at 7 range, with just decimating ranged units or any infantry filtering in & maybe some Urumi Swordsmen or cheaper Upgraded Infantry - in particular the Halberdiers, to flank & deal massive damage to any strong cavalry.
Does the melee-armor ignoring count towards buildings? They also have arson, does this mean their infantry will melt buildings very quickly? Does the Urumis charge attack work on buildings? Does the Siege Elephant, counting as a cavalry, also ignore melee armor on buildings? And with their area of effect damage, does that mean they melt buildings faster too? Does the Light Cavalry (ignoring melee armor) do better than generic light cavalry against villagers with loom or Spanish villagers?
Honestly, there should be a mod where the units wear the outfits of the civilization they are controlled under, like Celts wear Celtic clothing, Persians wear Persian clothes, etc.
@Nimlug For better results, mix some battle elephants in with the siege elephants. They don't require much for upgrading and hit high-armored targets almost as hard in the late game as war elephants do. Paladins with 6 armor for example. BE 12+4= 16dmg WE (20+4)-6= 18dmg
African ,Mezzo, Civs that do not gain access to Good cavalry,nor gunpowder,nor elephants and a weak navy should instead receive strong bonuses for their infantry, villagers and trash. African and mezzo civs should only have canoe navies. Able to fire arrows ,fast ,agile and only using 0.5 pop space but they don't have access to Gally line, nor cannon. Gallons. All canoes can carry/transport 3-5 units and are trained twice as fast as regular ships. Don’t have access to fire ships but get fire canoes that shoot fat covered fire arrows (Fat burns intensely hot). Tech in dock:Fat covered fire arrows - +3 attack to canoes. Canoes transporting skirmishers gain added pierce armour,attack and range. Canoe upgrades are half the cost of regular ship upgrades and come in immediately when you research them. Give the imperial Skirmisher Team bonus (Vietnamese) to a Sub Sahara African civ (Shona people). Sub Sahara African civs get African huts as Dark age houses. (Already in game.) Saracen + Berber+Turks + Kurds dark age houses should be Berber tents (Already in game.) Lithuanians ‘’Skirmishers and spearmen move 10% faster’’ bonus should go to a new Mapuches/Tarascans civ that forms part of a New DLC. And the (Spearman-line and Skirmishers +2P armour) should go to the Zaputechs. In turn Lithuanians towershields tech applies to their crossbows and their sword line. . Dravidians I would love to see the Dravidian ‘’Skirmishers attack 25% faster’’ bonus go to a new Mapuches/Tarascans civ that forms part of a New DLC Tribes of the Tropics DLC Taíno/Arawak peoples / Carib kingdom/Tupi Zaputechs Mapuches/Tarascans. Toltecs Polynesians/ Tuʻi Tonga Empire. In turn the Dravidian Urumi gains the ability to build/repair docks and faster firing BBC/hand cannoneers.
My only gripe with this civ is Thirisadai design, it's more Indonesian/Malay style ship than indian ship, they should use other ship model that more like one indian people would used, other than that I'm okay with Dravidian
