hey guys spirit of the law here in this video we're going to be taking an initial look at the
dravidian's unique water unit the thirisadai i realize water maps aren't everyone's favorite
but i think having some working knowledge of the new units seems pretty useful i want to start
first though by framing all of this within the dravidian's overall tech tree and existing bonuses
officially they're a naval sieve and at least early on here there's a lot of speculation
this is going to be a top tier sieve on water maps first they receive 200 wood when they hit
a new age second their fishermen and fishing ships carry more which gives better efficiency
on deep fish especially and third their docks provide the population room of a house they
also have a completely open water tech tree so you can see they really do have a lot going for them
the thing to keep in mind though is most of these effects are peaking in feudal age to early castle
the free wood advantage ends when you hit imperial fishing ships eventually switch
to fish traps where their bonus matters a lot less and extra population space from docks just
doesn't really mean that much in late imperial so the effect of their bonuses are much more helpful
in the early game that's where the thirisadai comes in though as an imperial age only unit
the way i see it it really is their only late game water bonus for what's supposed to be a
naval sieve so with that being the rationale for why this unit exists let's see how good it is
the description says it counters warships which is a little ambiguous of whether something like
a fire ship is included in that that's why next to the galleon you can see it's beefier with more hp
armor attack including multiple projectiles which we'll look at in a second but with one
less range ships are actually quite difficult to understand through looking at stats alone though
since there's tons of bonus damage behind the scenes that really dictate how different matchups
are gonna play out i should note here as well that the thirisadai is double the cost of the
regular galleon line though of course it's still considerably cheaper than something like the canon
galleon the prices shown here reflect their cost without ship right just to keep the numbers clean
but the wood costs can all be brought down by 20 jumping back to its attack it's really something
we need to see in action to fully understand you can see here there's two types of projectiles with
the main projectile carrying the full attack along with nine bonus damage to ships and buildings and
another four against rams and trebuchets the main projectile is what does the majority of the damage
the extra spear-looking projectiles all just carry one attack the extra projectiles have a
bit of spread and inaccuracy but you can see even at their maximum range they still land
basically 100 of the time it does reload a little bit slower than galleons but between some hidden
bonus damage and the extra projectiles that's more than compensated for in certain matchups
like against the fast fire ship it can be pretty impactful though and changes the amount of damage
they do from three to seven something else to know about the unit is it's relatively slow as
you'd probably expect given its size in hp though there are a couple of ships that it can outrun
keep in mind you can also increase its speed by 15 percent with the dry dock technology
its build time is also slightly worse than the galleon and fire ship but probably not enough that
you'd notice and with the ease of building extra docks the main bottleneck is probably going to
be its cost so now that we have a snapshot of the unit let's get right down to it and see how they
perform i'm not going to do anything too fancy here and will value gold and wood the same and
balance their cost without shipwright factored in to start with against the galleon with equal
resources they actually perform very well and end with about 40 of their hp left over this is
two gallons for every one thirisadai but the big story here is the galleon is taking 16 damage per
shot while the thirisadai is taking four thanks to some hidden armor in contrast the fast fire ship
can't give them a lot of trouble though even with the extra projectiles they just don't do very much
damage and fire ships tear right through them if you're seeing a lot of enemy fire ships then
you'd probably want to have some of your own fire ships in front to create a bit of a wall
moving on the heavy demo ship is an interesting case as remember it costs just half the total
resources and if we try it out it actually ends up being a good counter a pure demolition ship navy
is a little odd but if you can have demo ships pop out against even slightly weakened thirisadai they
can be taken out in two direct hits while also bunching up a lot more than you might expect
from their size in contrast canon galleons are of course not a great counter without other support
this is a long distance siege specialist so that's about what we'd expect and i have to
say if you're fighting thirisadai or any warship with full cannon galleon i'd say something has
already gone wrong as for how they do against some of the other unique naval units it turns
out the longboat actually wins pretty easily this is mostly carried by the fact that they cost so
much less and if we were to use equal numbers of units instead of balanced resources then
the thrift style would look much better still this matchup in particular tells me the balance for the
unit is in the right ballpark and its higher cost is appropriately compensated with better stats
without being too strong likewise in a clash between the two water titans the elite turtle
ship also beats them actually pretty handily with around half of its hp left remember longboats and
turtle ships also have elite upgrades where the thirisadai being an imperial age only unit saves
on that cost to close with a bit of redemption you can see they actually pretty easily handle
elite caravals this isn't exactly the situation where caravals thrive as pass-through damage isn't
doing very much here but again we have the sense that anything roughly galleon-like is going to be
an easy match-up of course the real test though is which has the coolest destruction animation
and i'll leave it up to you to decide which one is truly number one where it counts
so overall i'd say that thirisadai is best thought of as a double price galleon but really a great
counter to the traditional gallium line that said it has the same weakness to mass fire ships and is
a little hit or miss against other unique water units i think its biggest selling feature though
is its population efficiency large late game naval battles can get pretty awkward with ships blocking
ones in behind from attacking and being able to have the same power but in fewer units really
helps those fights happen more efficiently even their lower range can actually be an asset as
it means they'll naturally gravitate in front of any galleons you have and keep those fragile ships
protected it's a cool unit i don't think it's too strong i think it has an easy to understand role
against galleons and is a great tool in the belt of an already strong naval civilization
that'll do it for this one though thanks for watching guys and i'll see you next time