agree sorry I don't think I understand this part. I thought I remembered their attack got nerfed but I'm unsure. The war horses tech only gives them more health. The HP nerf makes sense and I like it. That's why currently players with a not-so-perfect spam of less than 40 champ cav actually loose fights. But this applies to all champ cav equally. I tested it some time ago and cataphracts quite reliable win with a large numbers of survivors against other champ cav and the +2 resistances help against infantry too.

this is because they have extremely high population efficiency, and their speed makes them hugely survivable. when combined with the HP nerf, they essentially have the same resistance. When you factor in the change to nissean war horses, its a net reduction in resistance actually.

As for champ cav maybe one can make them even slower to train. The problem of champ cav being overpowered arises mostly when they are in large numbers 40 or more.  However I still don't understand why you would add resistances to cataphracts when they already were the strongest ones before for essentially the same price. Yes reducing the speed is nice and it makes sense to do so for other champ cav too. Currently melee cavalry counters ranged cavalry and they are faster. So reducing the speed makes the fight more like infantry melee vs ranged where the melee has to chase the ranged. Given that champ cav is the best unit in the game that is the better way. I personally would propose to increase training time for all champ cav by at least 10 seconds. Interestingly some chariots already have more training time. I wonder if that's part of why they are so bad. If that doesn't help maybe one has to find other ways to limit excessive production or even impose a global limit like with for example war dogs. Fanatics are meant to counter champ cav and I think we can all agree that it's fine to make them to counter champ cav. So let's move them to P3 where they would be needed. Maybe we can try out some of the ideas in this topic in a new community mod ?   Also some thoughts about the Germans here now that I had some time to watch players actually use the civ: - restore resistances upgrades affecting seeresses and maybe -15 cost. they are only very rarely used as healers and a giant death ball scenario like we tested seems unlikely - cimbri raider metal cost down from 95 to 80 like the Meroitic Temple Guard so 75 metal with the civ bonus. there is no reason to have a higher metal cost just because it's in P2; the clubman got already more crush damage in p1 and otherwise cimbri raider stats are identical to temple guard except 5/6 instead of 6/5 resistances swapped - for consistency update the territory tech to only apply to neutral territory not enemy

imo cav generally is too fast but people are probably not ready for that discussion XD. I think catas being OP must be the Ambush map speaking.