This mod aims at allowing players to rush with cavalry and to test if it has a beneficial effects on gameplay. This is aimed for in order to increase the use of melee units. Melee cavarly would be the natural candidate to counter ranged infantry, which are over-prevalent in A24. If melee cavalry would beat ranged infantry in actual gameplay, that would give raise to melee units such as the spearmen. On the other hand, a combination of spearmen and ranged units should find its natural counter in infantry swordsmen (supported by range). In order to make this viable, the swordsmen are receiving an additional buff for this. Finally I would desire melee cavalry to (cost-efficiently) beat infantry swordsmen, as I would deem historically accurate.

On a comparison in a24, an spear cavalry needs about 25 hits to kill an infantry swordsmen. The swordsmen would be able to return about 33 hits to the spear cavalry dealing about 118 damage. Since the Spear cavalry is more efficient, I viewed this result not being as advantageous as it should be. Therefore I felt an attack boost for melee cavalry was in place. Also, I consider only spear cavalry to be the true melee cavalry. According to my knowledge cavalry rarely used swords as their main weapons and nearly every cavalryman would have had the wealth to add an addition spear to his inventory, which would be the preferred weapon.

This mod aims at allowing players to rush with cavalry and to test if it has a beneficial effects on gameplay. In order to aid these rushes, I nerved the usage of towers forcing players to rely on the strength of their army instead of their defenses. The aim of this mod is to get test results from games to see if melee cavalry has a place in the game. I would like to see the results of the games played on the mod and hear about your findings of the strength of cavalry. These games should revolve around discovering the balance between various units and its focus is not about finding out who is the better player. I would highly recommend that players would after the game discuss the level on which they executed their strategies and if they executed their strategies to the best of their abilities. When we want to compare strategies, we obviously need to deal with the question whether both players executed their strategies.

Carthage, Gaul, Iberians, Persian, Seleucids get access to a second melee(exception sele who get cav archer) cavalry unit in P1 at the stable/Iberian embassy. For Carthage I did some changes to get the Ib. embassy  in P1.

Melee Spear/Sword Cavalry get +1 pierce armor and +1 pierce attack for spear and +1 hack for sword.

Citizen archers get +10% spread(inaccuracy).

Infantry swordsmen get +1 pierce armor and +10% speed.

Towers take 50 seconds longer to build, but are 25 wood cheaper in compensation. This prevents panic defenses or situations were people build towers right in front of your army, which seems ridiculous to me. Also garrisoned infantry contribute less to the arrow fire of towers.

 Finally all buildings(Including towers) get less of a loyalty regen bonus per garrisoned infantry after advancing. 



Civ notions:
Carts: This aim of this mod is to add cavalry in p1, for Carthage this means that they should get access to an embassy in p1. Since I wanted to leave some goodies for p2, I wanted only to move one embassy to p1. Considering that in Iberian Colonies were both closer to Carthage and more numerous, I decided that the first embassy should be the Iberian one. Another desire of me was to give each civ a more distinctive feel, so I decided to move apartments to P1. Now it gave The Carthaginians four buildings to spend their starting stone on: The barracks, the stable, the Iberian embassy(200 stone) and the apartment. Since building the apartment directly at the start of the game seemed too much of an advantage, which was not my intention, I set a 5 building requirement before it could be unlocked. One trouble with the Iberian cavalry is that it costs mainly metal and after mining only 20 metal, the player would be able to train 4 cavalry. Since an Iberian embassy could be build right at the start, such a thing meant that the 4 cavalry would arrive very early, too early to be balanced. Therefore, I decided to increase the build time of the embassy by a factor 2.5. This allows the Carthaginians to spend 200 stone, a lot of build time and all their metal at the start to invest it in a rush (which can be empowered by building an advantageous apartment). I would be anxious to know if the investments seem to be worth it, as it certainly delays your (second) barrack and your economic upgrades. For the changed cost of the apartment I would like to note that my aim was to give the Carthaginians an option to spend their early stone on getting extra population space, while not making one building strictly superior to the other such that both buildings remain viable. I intend to set the build time back to its original time in p2, but I did not find a way to my liking to do so. Also, I am aware that the apartment does not show up in the tech tree due to a bug, I am to lazy to fix it. After all, this is a mod about testing balance and its intentions are not to look neat. I know that these changes might not be for everyone, but I at least hope that the other civs can be appreciated.

Ptol: I reduced the speed of camel archers by 10%, while increasing its hp by 10% this is based on a suggestion posted in the balancing forum. Ptolemies have a strong eco and providing them with a long ranged unit that can hit and run allows them directly to translate their economic might into control of the game. This is especially nasty for civilization without defensive archers or melee cavalry. Such a situation would always lead to imbalance and by reducing the speed, I think the defending player is more suited to deal with that.

Maur: My current views are that Mauryas are OP. Giving the melee cavalry in p1 felt like adding insult to injury, so I abstained from that. I did think about removing the starting elephant, which I deemed fair. However if both players agree gentlemanly on deleting the starting elephant at the start of the game, there is no need to remove it. On the other hand it gives players a choice on whether they want to make this fair and gentlemanly decision or on whether they prefer to see how mauryas perform in their full strength. 
