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hey guys Spirit of the law here in this Civ overview we're going
to be taking a look at the Infantry and Naval Indian civilization the dravidians
now there are already a handful of civilizations with a focus on the combo of infantry and navy
including Vikings Malay and Japanese and much like those civilizations dravidians
also have pretty decent archers at the same time and fair warning to any sensitive viewers
I'd encourage you to look away if you're a bit squeamish because I'm going to show you
their stable Tech Tree it's pretty horrific and at first glance makes them appear to be
an honorary fourth American Civ in the game arguably even Aztecs have a better stable in
Castle age if they manage to convert one and make xolotl warriors despite this as
we'll see dravidians have a great feudal age fall apart a bit in Castle age and
finally emerge with an absolutely insane unit in Imperial let's check them out
we'll start off with their team bonus which is that dravidians and their allies gain five
population space for every dock they build effectively giving you a free house this is
obviously not a lot of help on land Maps but on water maps and Nomad this is a very good team
bonus and actually saves more wood than the Vikings dock discount even before factoring
in the construction time of building a house on Nomad especially this is great as you have
to build a dock and house right away whereas this does both at the same time the fact that
everyone on your team can do the same thing means this is just a great bonus assuming you're on any
map that you plan to dock moving on their first civilization specific bonus is they received 200
wood when advancing to the next age even just entering feudal there's a lot of different ways
you could approach this bonus you could either see it as a free archery range or stable you
can see it as three Farms plus a house if you're booming or since 200 wood is almost exactly what
four villagers collect in the roughly two minutes while you're advancing to feudal you could then
move four villagers off of wood onto a different resource like food or gold a bit earlier you then
get another 200 wood in early Castle age which is perfect timing for making sure you have the
wood needed for two Town centers and all the accompanying Farms that said the final 200 you
get in Imperial age is something you probably won't even notice so if there's a downside to
this bonus it's that it really doesn't scale with your economy and tends to fizzle out a bit in the
late game next up their other economy bonus is their fishermen and fish and chips carry plus
15 food similar to the team bonus this is nice on water Maps but is of absolutely no help on full
land maps to give a rough sense of how much this helps in this example if this distance dravidians
end up collecting over 20 percent more food keep in mind fishermen can also drop off food at docks
as well and this will cut down on their walking time proportionally even more as they only carry
10 by default instead of 15 food for a fishing ship their next bonus though is what really makes
them an infantry civilization and it's that their Barracks upgrades cost half as much this can help
very early in the game with a man at Arms opening for example saving 70 resources on that upgrade
alone they're a good way to add early pressure and also pair nicely with archers and that combo
of units is I'd say the most common opening plan for dravidians also playing off their early 200
wood bonus in feudal on top of this likewise in Castle age this gives you potentially over 400
resources worth of savings for long swordsman and Pikeman alone which are units you'll see dravidian
players try to use in 1v1s especially the greatest savings though come in Imperial Age first with
750 resources saved upgrading to Champion but also consider the expensive Tech switch into halberdier
whose usual 600 gold cost especially can make that tough in a late game while infantry itself
is undeniably cheap its upgrades not so much and in total with all Barracks upgrades this bonus
theoretically adds up to over 1700 resources in savings their next bonus is their skirmishers and
elephant archers attacked 25 faster personally I think this bonus in particular really ties
the civilization together nicely you have a good feudal opening already for men at Arms archers or
even theoretically Scouts but usually you stole out in Castle age with no Knights at all and
just generic crossbows this bonus at least gives you two Castle age units that are above average
even if you don't make them every game faster attacking skirmishers is great against Archer
civs of course but maybe more interesting is the elephant Archer is included here as well keep in
mind you don't have Bloodlines or husbandry at the stable and probably won't even build a stable in
most cases but as an example against a knight a dravidian elephant Archer can win one-on-one
whereas gurjara and Bengali elephant archers lose this matchup despite having better looking stats
there's an argument this passively makes dravidian elephant archers the best in Castle age and in
fact they beat the other two with equal upgrades thanks entirely to this bonus even with the extra
attack rate though dravidians still struggle in practice against good knight civs in 1v1s as you
lack a lot of mobility in fact the dravidian's worst win rates are against lithuanians Franks
berbers teutons and poles maybe you're noticing a pattern here as five very strong knight civs even
a simple combo of knights and skirmishers can be pretty hard for dravidians to handle in the mid
game and personally I see the elephant Archer as more of a team game unit where you can really mask
them up in the late game so that's their bonuses where you can see things are pushing you here
toward infantry and Archer counters with some extra help on water Maps thrown in making them
a great Ally now let's move on and take a look at their infantry unique unit The urumi's Swordsman
now this is quite a good unique unit but at first glance it's not super impressive with actually
slightly worse stats than a long swordsman having less HP attack and armor they also cost roughly
the same which can't be brought down with supplies they are slightly faster than the swordsman line
and are created in a very quick 9 seconds but their value really comes down to their charge
attack this adds plus 12 to their first hit and then takes 24 seconds to recharge in addition that
one extra attack also has area damage dealing half of their attack to any surrounding units
doing this once every 24 seconds may not sound incredibly impressive but is enough to actually
make them cost effective against long Swordsmen wiping out a huge chunk of their HP in the first
second even more impressively against Castle age Knights they end up winning with roughly balanced
resources so you can really see the charge attack is no joke and they're are a nice option against
Mass melee units naturally they were improved by discounted barracks and infantry blacksmith techs
and have a reasonably cheap Elite upgrade not just improving their stats but also shortening their
recharge time when they really hit their stride though is with the unique Tech wootz steel letting
them ignore all of their Target's melee armor admittedly this is starting to get pretty costly
but with this Tech a charge attack deals 29 damage to any unit you're targeting and 15 damage to any
unit around them regardless of armor though they then revert back to being something comparable to
a long swordsman for 20 seconds if that doesn't sound overwhelming consider they can beat
paladins with equal resources and maybe even more impressive can beat anti-infantry Specialists like
elite jaguar warriors Elite Samurai and even Elite Teutonic knights in fact elephants cataphracts and
konniks are the only melee units I've seen hold up against them and outside of that range units are
probably the best way to handle them while they do rely to some extent on having a critical mass
they play a very useful role as a soft counter to infantry and Cavalry becoming progressively
stronger in the late game moving on their other unique unit is the Thirisadai this is an imperial
age only unique unit at the dock and here we have them compared to a galleon Caravel and turtle ship
at first glance they look beefy with relatively High HP armor attack and four extra projectiles
on top of its main one though the main projectile actually does the majority of the damage and the
extras are all just doing one to any Target so they're mostly for show they cost double the
regular Galleon and even just looking at them you get the sense this is about population efficiency
but primarily I think of them as a galleon Hunter matched up Head to Head they're taking four damage
from The Galleon while dealing 16 damage per shot and end up winning convincingly even if you're at
a considerable resource and numbers disadvantage that said I wouldn't consider them a particularly
generalist unit as they are not very good against Fast Fire ships even the extra projectiles
guaranteed damage has little impact here and you can see the results are very one-sided
in the past I made a video diving into all of their Naval interactions but the easiest way to
summarize it is they add population efficiency and a great counter to mass galleon in the late game
so that's their two unique units and now let's move on to their unique text the first is medical
core which adds a slow healing rate to all of your elephants keep in mind elephants have a lot of HP
and this actually takes almost 12 minutes to fully heal a battle elephant generally this isn't seen
as a very good Tech though the other argument is this does help quite a few units including
also elephant archers and armored elephants which is their replacement for the battering
ram it's probably slightly more useful than you might think but considering how much HP
elephants have to start with it's a minor effect taking about three minutes to recover from a
single halberdier attack there are other much more interesting Tech is wootz steel which allows their
infantry and Cavalry to ignore enemy melee armor the impact of this is actually quite complicated
as it affects a lot of different units and does depend on what they're up against to start with
the focus on light Cavalry with this Tech on a spectrum from the teuton Scout all the way up to
malian and Bulgarian light Cavalry this actually puts them pretty squarely in the middle they are
lacking Bloodlines husbandry and the final armor but wootz steel clearly counts for something here
on the flip side within this group they're tied with Vikings for taking the least number of enemy
arrows which automatically makes them among the weakest during raids to Town Center are Blaster
and Castle fire while it doesn't give them good light Cavalry they're sneaky strong in melee with
this upgrade especially against High armor enemies of course this also helps their battle elephants
though to a lesser extent even after ignoring armor they still end up the worst aside from
Malay who remember have 40 cheaper elephants in Imperial age it's pretty clear this still leaves
dravidians with the worst battle elephants which you may have guessed from the tech tree to begin
with that said infantry are really helped by this Tech though I've already done a video breakdown
showing lots of matchups and how they fare against other units from halberdiers to Teutonic Knights
and I won't try to repeat an entire 10 minute analysis here generally the takeaway is they end
up on the same level as top tier infantry and are only outdone by Japanese Slavs with Splash damage
and Goths with their massive discount it's easy to overlook but this is effectively plus three or
plus four against low armor targets and really puts them in a class of their own against very
high melee armor targets a dravidian champion is an extreme example can almost beat a Teutonic
Knight one-on-one so this is absolutely attack that puts dravidian late game Barracks units
in the top tier though exactly where they rank depends a bit on what they're up against remember
their unique unit is also a big beneficiary thanks to its charge attack and its accompanying Splash
damage so altogether it's really a lot of units potentially affected and improved by this Tech
meaning it's worth picking up unless you're committing to going full-on archers so that's
the unique unit and tax strongly reinforcing dravidian's infantry and Naval Focus to take
a broad look at their options though let's move on and take a look at the tech tree starting with
the archers right away the archery range looks pretty good with fully upgraded arbalester hand
cannoneer and faster attacking Elite skirmishers the elephant archers also fire faster as well and
can slowly heal with unique Tech though note they don't have parthian tactics husbandry and
Bloodlines so they fall quite a bit behind in Imperial age the extra 200 wood is Handy for
either a single archery range and quick blacksmith or a double archery range opening I'd say it's a
very solid A- for the variety of good options mostly held back by the crossbows and Castle
age feeling quite generic next up for infantry you have the full Tech Tree and all Barracks upgrades
are of course half price unfortunately in Castle age especially infantry is pretty exploitable by
both crossbows and Siege there's also just a lot of civilizations with infantry stat Buffs that
I'd put ahead of dravidians here until you pick up boots Steel throwing in The urumi Swordsman though
I think bumps them up to another a minus as at least in the very late game your infantry becomes
almost Unstoppable by other melee units and almost forces your opponent to switch to something ranged
moving on to Cavalry I apologize for showing it again but we kind of have to obviously it looks
terrible when you first look at it but keep in mind wootz steel makes their light Cavalry better
than you might expect an imperial I'm going to stir the pot and say it's a c minus and not an
F because I think light Cavalry ignoring armor can be surprisingly good now and then next up
for Siege like a number of infantry civilizations they have a pretty good siege Tech Tree including
a potentially self-healing armored elephant as a replacement for the battering ram the only
blemish is lacking Siege Engineers giving you less range on onagers and scorpions or in The Siege
elephant's case less attack against buildings here and maybe a bit more pessimistic and gonna stick
with a B despite having a ton of options there's just no bonus to get excited about and your siege
onagers are also really not that impressive without Siege Engineers being outraged by even
Eric onagers moving on to the Navy this is absolutely a strength of the civilization
between their extra early wood docks giving free houses and your unique Watership on top of a full
Tech Tree recently I looked at the highest win rates for civilizations on water maps and for pure
water Maps dravidians were technically number one in their online results as well as consistently
top 5 on hybrid and swamp maps you can certainly debate if they're the best water civilization but
there's no argument they're in that discussion with an A+ in the early and late game it's only
in the middle game that they admittedly flounder a little on water but I still think they're an A+
overall taking a quick look at their monks they're missing the all-important Redemption fervor for a
bit of speed and illumination for faster Faith regeneration heresy is also missing on account
of being such an elephant focused civilization I'd say it's a pretty middling C plus for monks though
having said that monks are still an important tool against knight civs given your lack of camels and
Knights of your own moving on to defenses their towers are actually fully upgradable and you have
bracer which is great for all of your defensive buildings overall I'd give them a B for defenses
as while they are missing a few attacks like I said they have some difficulty defending
against Cavalry especially though the faster attacking skirmishers and elephant archers are
nice against Archer civs so it's a bit situational and finally for their trash units that is units
that don't cost any gold it looks pretty great until you look at the scout line remember your
skirmishers attack faster your helper deer is cheaper to upgrade and your halberdier and light
Cavalry can theoretically ignore armor with wootz steel which can sometimes double their damage or
do even more depending on what they're up against the stats I've seen suggest dravidians are pretty
respectable in games lasting over an hour and in this case I'd say it's an A minus so to close
up with some final thoughts despite an overall poor win rate on land Maps dravidians actually
have a good feudal opening with men at arms and archers Castle age is the tricky part as relying
on crossbows Elephants or infantry instead of knights or camels means you have a real lack of
Mobility with crossbow being probably the safest default Choice one of their biggest issues is
actually fighting mangonels which eat skirmishers crossbows infantry and even elephants to an extent
that said if you can hang on long enough I'd argue they have a nice late game Revival with
their infantry so at least there is a light at the end of the tunnel on the other hand with
water Maps they're just a very solid Choice with great bonuses and options in the early and late
game on any water or even hybrid map I'd be happy to have a dravidian player on the team helping out
everyone's docs and adding the powerful thisidadai in the late game but speaking of things I love to
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