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Decreasing speed will look weird in my opinion.  An alternative way to get at this is to make cav harder to mass. Make their train time longer and/or increase cost.   The fact that players will just stop booming around 160 pop so that they can fill it with cav says that inf doesn’t attack fast enough to punish the player that purposely stops making pop.    I’ve been saying this for awhile. I still think the tank problem exists in com mod. Cav of any type should not be able to run into spears without fear. I’m fine with champ cav being able to tank against sword or range as champ cav is supposed to easily kill those units. But spear is supposed to be the counter now, which just isn’t the case

I like a lot of things about the graphic concept, Many can be seen in this gameplay,This goes  from the ground textures to the pine trees, to the interface,to the map.  

The blue is better and the red is more associated with stopping something. Before, it was maybe seen as good vs bad.

welcome to the forum! I agree with the speed point. Cavalry are supposed to be faster than infantry but they don't need to be that much faster. What I would like is actually just to delete the cav speed tech (and for that matter the general cav HP tech). These technologies are so cheap that they basically serve as a direct buff to the late game stats of cavalry. Early on, they conflict with the actual training of cavalry. However, I know this point is controversial. Now about the com mod in general, the melee/ranged rebalance does give champ melee cavalry more damage, but it handles all melee units equally in that regard. The issue with champ cav in vanilla is that they are shockingly tanky and pretty much the only way to lose a lot of persian, seleucid, or roman champs is to either take a losing fight like you mentioned or to be forced to take the fight. Seleucid champs in vanilla: 400 hp, 15 hack, 14 pierce armor w/ hero while doing less damage than an infantry skirmisher. They have almost as much hack armor as a stable or barracks: about 9% more hack damage than a stable (88% vs 79% resistance). Also, a possible reason the champs lost is the player failed to make lots of skirm cav in order to deal damage (CS skirm cav deal much more damage than champ melee cav, 29% more damage). in vanilla, champs are extremely tanky, acting like a damage sponge so these skirm cav are very protected and are free to do tons of damage. While changes in damage are very easy to apply across unit types, armor is not. Because it is discrete, there were probably cases where the ideal armor values were not reached. So, if something should be changed, i'd suggest to decrease champ cav armor values. Decreasing hack armor in particular serves to lessen sword units' near irrelevance to melee champ cav, and will compound nicely with the existing cav multiplier for spearmen possible meaning no change to the counter value is needed.

I personally think that the problem we are talking about is rooted deeper than just champion cavalry: cavalry units in general. More specifically their mobility paired with their higher popefficiency Lets ignore their mobility for a second and just look at the raw stats compared to infantry. Take citizen javelineers as an example: 50 food cost more for a unit that has: 110hp vs 50 3, 1, 15 vs 1, 1, 10 resistance 18 vs 16 dmg Now granted you need a separate building (which costs funnily 50 stone (or wood depending on civ) less than a barrack) to train them and you need to click 2 upgrades. But still, in TGs going lategame youd be actually throwing the game if you wouldnt build cavalry from minute 16 on onwards. The 12.5% damage alone justifies its cost in scenarios where food and wood isnt a limiting factor Now lets state the obvious: Cavalry is faster than infantry 17.82 vs 11.4 speed, if we use the above example And this is not a problem per se. It is the lack of obstructions that limit that mobility. It already got mentioned briefly in this thread by breakfastbourrito_007. I do agree with most of his ideas. What i would like to add though: pallisades should be build quicker and easier placable, I am not entirely sure about the cost too. Why is that even relevant? If only one side cavalry in a game, the side with cavalry is far more likely to win. Not only due to the discussed popefficiency above, but due to mapcontrol. Let me elaborate: When players attack they usually dont attack with all their units. They anticipate having to rebuild lost troops and as you need at least some eco for that, they have their 40-50 women on food and another 15-20 citizen soldiers on wood. Well these are prime raiding targets for an oponent with 10-15 citizen cavalry to attack. Or he will just take your barracks while you are away with the main force of your troops. Or hell catch some stragglers or the units you reproduced on their way. but most likely he will raid your eco with it. His is untouched. As long as he doesnt decisively loses the fight or in a teamgame has another player to aliviate for his disadvantage (which is unlikely, since he has more popefficient units and defenders advantage), he will just be able to outproduce his opponent. Now this raiding gets especially rough when he sends in like 5 champs or even better 5 champs+cav hero. Well @#$%. if you leave your base you will most likely be outproduced and lose the game. Walling is in 95% of the cases not an options or doesnt work, due to walls/palisades are. Building towers or defensive structures? They cant kill anything. Ok so what is your realistic option? If you cant beat them, join them: Build cavalry yourself. Now that also puts you at a disadvantage: You need to build buildings, click technologies, switch up your eco, losing the initiative and completely lose map control. And when your enemy decides to take the initiative and attack with 30 champion cavalry while the tech to unlock them for you just went through, youll lose the fight. Now of course this scenario is a bit stylized. But I played and witnessed many games where that happened: You have no cav? you are doomed to sit in your base. One thing I would like to add is that building cavalry usually takes a bit of more time than just booming. So there is a small sweetspot around minute 13-14 where an all out infantry attack with is possible and has good chances. But especially in TGs where people tend to play more defensively that rarely happens and after minute 15 that opportunity has passed. Having 50-60 FU champs by minute 16 is possible and well then the game is over if no enemy did that.   Now not to dwell about my hatred for cavalry entirely, i do like cavalry in one scenario: early/mid game rushes Cavalry being an above average unit is necessary if you try to rush someone. You not focussing on eco and having to disrupt your enemies eco at least to the same amount with your units is a risk. But it can pay off, if you execute it correctly. And if you build the right units. Dont get me wrong, I think you can absolutely rush someone with normal units like archers. But it is far riskier, because they either dont have the mobility or/and arent strong enough to win against an enemy with equal numbers. Such as cavalry or naked fanatics. But the factors that make these rushes possible are exactly the same ones that make cavalry just so opressive in the late game. So I myself I am not so sure how to fix that issue. cavalry costing more pop would be one solution, but I dont think its an be all-end all fix. In conclusion: In my opinion most of the issues people and myself have with champion cavalry are just extremes of other (in my eyes) unbalanced and problematic issues. Raiding should be a valid strat, you should be able to express your skill with the micro of fast units, etc. But you should to be able to defend just as good against it, which is sadly at the moment not the case  

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